Are Boot Camps Worth It in 2023? Setting the Right Expectations

When people want to learn to code, they often enlist in boot camps. In these training programs, they learn how to create applications, hoping to become skilled enough as developers. 

That's what most of these boot camps claim to advertise. After completing their course, they would promise to get you hired by top android app development companies, etc.  

But is everything all that rosy?? No! 

We will explore many problems with boot camps in this blog. This opinion should not be seen as "All boot camps are bad." Instead, it aims to help you set proper expectations around such training programs if you plan to enroll in them. First, let's start with its cost.   

How Expensive Are Coding Bootcamps

The table below shows the full costs of these technical training programs.

Such expensive courses prevent people from entering the tech industry. Especially those that come from marginalized communities.   

Brookings Institution's report revealed that 7.1% of programmers in 2002 were black. But, fourteen years later, that figure only grew to 7.6%. Hispanic workers made up to 5.1% of the tech industry in 2002, and it rose up to 6.7% only in 2016.  

Women are also a minority in the tech industry, only 28.8% of workers identified as women in 2020. The number has increased from 25.9% in 2018 to 26.2% in 2019. So, with this growth rate, it would take another 12 years for women to achieve equal representation in the tech industry.  

People cannot develop the required skills for these tech jobs as Bootcamps cost way beyond their income limitations. With universities equally costly, there is no avenue for them to get an affordable education.

But with the advent of the internet, free platforms have risen that will teach you coding for free. Take for example the Odin Project. 

Suggested Reading: How to Learn Coding: The Out-And-Out Guide for Beginner Programmers

The Odin Project: A Better Alternative to Boot Camps

People behind the Odin project realized that not everyone could afford a computer science degree or boot camps for coding. 

So, they built this project to provide high-quality education to those trying to learn to code independently.   

They have a free curriculum and are open source, allowing everyone to contribute to the project. It also gets regular updates. The Odin project isn't about “Come learn how to make a quick app” instead, it is “This will prepare you to showcase your skills and land a job.”  

The course lets you skim from the top or deep dive per your requirements. Do complete all the modules. The syllabus's strength lies in its ability to increase the difficulty slowly. 

If you know a specific section well, do it quickly, but complete the highlighted documentation, especially if you have only done video courses previously. 

I say this because videos give a false sense of mastery that makes people give up when they hit a roadblock. The Odin project pushes you to build different projects yourself. It's much better than boot camps, where you go through a single project by the end and be done with it. 

The Odin project will give you many assignments. It will make you more experienced and build a strong portfolio and CV.

Coming back to boot camps, apart from cost, they even propagate a wrong idea about programming. 

Selling a False Promise

Programming is more complex than what most of the boot camps make it out to be. Some claim to teach people to learn to code but only show them how to write a few lines of code on a web interface. 

Most people who join these boot camps have no clue about coding. So, when the entire course is completed, they feel clueless regarding where to start.

These boot camps are not going to turn you into an experienced programmer. Most of them try to sell people the idea that once the course is completed, they will become experts in their field.  

Often, people who have completed these boot camps struggle to explain basic things like the loop during interviews with iOS App Development Companies. 

"Bootcamps are equivalent to handing a chimpanzee a loaded gun. People think that just by writing a few lines of code, they can hack into software engineering. It's like taking a beginner's class on playing the violin, then thinking you can compose a symphony. Most people have no idea just how complicated the systems are in programming."

Coding is not for everyone. To succeed, you should be able to apply logic, and some boot camps are hell-bent on making everyone believe that they can do it in eight weeks, thus selling a false dream to everyone.

There Is No Magic Formula

Here is a short scenario to explain this point. 

Joel works as the managing broker of a real estate office. Often the newer agents would come to him for a secret formula. They were looking for someone to tell them exactly how to build a business. But these newer agents would feel disappointed after discovering that no such person or plan exists. They wanted to be told, "Do this, then that, then this," and be paid in return. But that's not how it works. Everyone builds businesses differently. There are no secret ingredients.

Similarly, everyone learns coding differently. 

Most Bootcamps suffer from similar problems. There are no magic formulas. You pay X amount of money, take some classes, and come out the other side rubber-stamped as a certified programmer. But this is not how things work. 

You don't gain a skill just by sitting in the class. A person becomes a developer when they have developed the skills to solve real-world problems with quality code. And there is no unique formula to learn that.

You will have to devote thousands of hours to prepare for the most entry-level roles in Flutter App Development Companies. There are no shortcuts.  

Suggested Reading: Flutter 101: Everything You Need to Know

Top Bootcamp Scams and Redflags to Watch Out For

Suppose you are planning to join a coding bootcamp in 2022. Here is the list of top scams and red flags to watch out for when you enroll. 

1. The Income Share Agreement: This legally binding document will take a considerable slice of your salary, even if you are not earning much at your job. It doesn't matter if the job is about programming or not. They can also sell your ISA to another company.
2. Most Bootcamps often hire their own graduates who couldn't crack the job interviews. They do this to inflate their job placement numbers. It's why many boot camp classes have teaching assistants. None qualified for the position, but it still counts as a job.  
3. Those teaching assistants often put the fake bootcamp jobs on their resumes and show them as real tech jobs. Getting your first job in the tech industry is tough. So, this is how they scam their way into the industry.  
4. Often these fake bootcamp TAs will claim any previous technical job as a qualification to teach computer science. Some have even used: Geology, system administration, accounting, law, and civil engineering as proof that they are qualified.  
5. Fake boot camps are often not registered as real schools in their state and don't follow the law regarding refunds. 
6. These boot camps advertise a 95%-100% job placement rate. To achieve this, they would often decrease the number of graduates enrolled in their courses. For example, if 20 people got hired, they would display only those in the entire batch. That's how they show a high job placement rate. 
7. They would demand 12-hour study days, and their teachers would be terrible and abusive. The curriculum would be shoddy and can't extend past three months. Also, their project would be vague.  
8. The teaching assistants are not given any proper training. There is zero oversight.
9. They promise to get you in touch with all the FAANGs (the five most popular and best-performing American technology companies). These boot camps would throw a huge party but invite people from some random startups to look at your application. In short, poor networking.

Parting Thoughts

Boot camps can help you gain the required skills to become a developer. But in most of them, the staff are not paid enough. They are either volunteering or doing it part-time. There is a shortage of trained teachers in programming, contributing to a shitty bootcamp experience.   

So, do your research. In this blog, I wanted to help you set the right expectations around boot camps. Make you aware of what to look out for when enrolling in one.