<story><title>Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?</title><url>http://hackeducation.com/2017/07/22/bootcamp-bust</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>austenallred</author><text>There are so many things wrong with this that I don&amp;#x27;t know where to start.&lt;p&gt;First, to say there&amp;#x27;s no skills gap is insanity. I refuse to believe anyone in the industry actually believes that - even the worst bootcamps are placing folks, they just place folks that are not well prepared and shift the burden of training to the company. I&amp;#x27;m constantly blown away that some of those people get jobs, and they somehow keep them, as the companies just start training from almost scratch. That really sucks, and a lot of companies are (rightly) wary of that, and a lot of companies throw bootcamp resumes straight in the trash can, but there are enough that won&amp;#x27;t that it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, most of the skills gap is for &lt;i&gt;capable&lt;/i&gt; engineers, and if you understand data structures, algorithms, architecture, memory management, etc. you&amp;#x27;ll get a job very quickly. We&amp;#x27;re talking within a week. But most bootcamp grads don&amp;#x27;t know any of that stuff, so the market is flooded with junior rails devs. (And even those folks still slowly get OK jobs).&lt;p&gt;There are audited, standardized reports from an organization called CIRR. Look at them - you&amp;#x27;ll see 90%+ placement rates, audited and from third parties. Granted there are a lot of lies on the home pages of bootcamp grad websites, but the perception HN has is much worse than reality at the good bootcamps.&lt;p&gt;I know the internal financials of quite a few bootcamps, and most are making a killing. It&amp;#x27;s really not hard to make money by charging $10,000&amp;#x2F;head so long as you keep demand. Iron Yard got out ahead of its skis and tried to open 16 locations at once. I have no idea what happened to Dev Bootcamp but the &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; way they could be losing money is if their expenses were absurd. They were bought for $80 million. I think the most likely scenario is the acquirer tried to change things up and killed everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JCzynski</author><text>&amp;gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, most of the skills gap is for capable engineers, and if you understand data structures, algorithms, architecture, memory management, etc. you&amp;#x27;ll get a job very quickly. We&amp;#x27;re talking within a week.&lt;p&gt;Empirically, that&amp;#x27;s totally false. The people I knew who went to the same bootcamp (App Academy) as me and had the strongest skills took longer, not shorter, to get jobs. The average was around 9 months.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?</title><url>http://hackeducation.com/2017/07/22/bootcamp-bust</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>austenallred</author><text>There are so many things wrong with this that I don&amp;#x27;t know where to start.&lt;p&gt;First, to say there&amp;#x27;s no skills gap is insanity. I refuse to believe anyone in the industry actually believes that - even the worst bootcamps are placing folks, they just place folks that are not well prepared and shift the burden of training to the company. I&amp;#x27;m constantly blown away that some of those people get jobs, and they somehow keep them, as the companies just start training from almost scratch. That really sucks, and a lot of companies are (rightly) wary of that, and a lot of companies throw bootcamp resumes straight in the trash can, but there are enough that won&amp;#x27;t that it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, most of the skills gap is for &lt;i&gt;capable&lt;/i&gt; engineers, and if you understand data structures, algorithms, architecture, memory management, etc. you&amp;#x27;ll get a job very quickly. We&amp;#x27;re talking within a week. But most bootcamp grads don&amp;#x27;t know any of that stuff, so the market is flooded with junior rails devs. (And even those folks still slowly get OK jobs).&lt;p&gt;There are audited, standardized reports from an organization called CIRR. Look at them - you&amp;#x27;ll see 90%+ placement rates, audited and from third parties. Granted there are a lot of lies on the home pages of bootcamp grad websites, but the perception HN has is much worse than reality at the good bootcamps.&lt;p&gt;I know the internal financials of quite a few bootcamps, and most are making a killing. It&amp;#x27;s really not hard to make money by charging $10,000&amp;#x2F;head so long as you keep demand. Iron Yard got out ahead of its skis and tried to open 16 locations at once. I have no idea what happened to Dev Bootcamp but the &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; way they could be losing money is if their expenses were absurd. They were bought for $80 million. I think the most likely scenario is the acquirer tried to change things up and killed everything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hasenj</author><text>&amp;gt; There are so many things wrong with this that I don&amp;#x27;t know where to start.&lt;p&gt;Exactly my thoughts. The whole premise if false. It conflates  people coming fresh off a coding bootcamp with &amp;quot;competent programmers&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not even funny.</text></comment>