[AlchemistCamp]

I completely disagree. I went to Hack Reactor in 2013 and the ROI was fantastic.

I really leveled up my JavaScript and coding skills in general and ended up dramatically increasing my earning power. I was hired about a week after graduating and just the signing bonus paid most my tuition.

If I ever see a similar kind of school for the next skill I want to build, I'll probably enroll.

That said, I've heard some of the Lambda School claims and don't believe they're honest. Vincent Woo did some solid reporting on Lambda.

[andrewzah]

I don't disagree that some of these bootcamps teach some knowledge and lead to jobs afterwards. But what you're really paying for is networking. Even junior development work requires a fairly robust set of knowledge, that isn't going to be grokked within 6 weeks or even 3 months (unless they were already familiar with computing/unix etc). That model only works for companies that are willing to onboard -very- green junior developers and mentor them long-term.

You can accomplish the same thing by following courses/books online, making a handful of projects on github to show interviewers, and networking at conferences/meetups. That's how I landed my first part-time job with programming, and then my first full-time job.

[greenie_beans]

People learn differently. Not everybody can learn on their own, especially not when encountering something like programming.

I went to a bootcamp and the network isn't what I paid for. The network hasn't given me much at all. I had a mix of previous self-learning experience, and decided to do a bootcamp to get more serious about it. It was definitely beneficial and the investment paid of 5x within two years.

[AlchemistCamp]

> But what you're really paying for is networking.

When I went, there was no network. Nobody had ever graduated from the school yet.

Nearly 100% of what I got from the school was hard skills.