[amotinga]

serious question: what does lambda school or any other bootcamp provide that isn't available online already for free or cheap?

freecodecamp.org theodinproject limitless various courses.

curriculum is out there, /r/learnprogramming is very helpful, plethora of discords. what do they provide in 2022 that is worth ~10-20k?

[ptmcc]

Structure, guidance, accountability, connections. At least theoretically.

It's wonderful that so much material is free, but it's an overwhelming amount of information for the uninitiated. Some people can self-motivate and self-teach starting from zero. Some cannot. Some would just prefer a formal curriculum and instructor. Nothing wrong with that.

And the best bootcamps have a direct relationship into companies for internships and junior dev positions.

Unfortunately as bootcamp hype has exploded, many bootcamps do not offer these things and are of dubious value.

[amotinga]

structure. assuming it costs 50k to develop curriculum and 1000 ppl take it price becomes 50 per person. more people take it, price if it (theoretically) has to move towards 0. guidance. this one I can understand. having person always available to help out when something unexpected happens, which btw happens constantly is extremely helpful. this is def value added.

accountability. this one I'm not sure what you mean. meaning I invest 10k now I really have to make it work. yeah, unfortunately people tend to value expensive things more than free.

connections. yes, this is perhaps biggest selling point, the idea that they will place the student, or at the very least help significantly.

hmmm... I wonder if there is a way to quantify that. is it really ~ 1k/week to do all of that?

[swyx]

bootcamp grad here (different bootcamp - Fullstack Academy in NYC). i completed freecodecamp before doing my bootcamp. did not feel job ready, did not have any leads on jobs, barely made it thru freecodecamp copying and pasting code that kinda sorta worked.

let me put it this way. at the end of my bootcamp they had a "hiring day". ~20 employers came by for ~40 students, including Google. I ended up getting a job with the very first hiring manager I sat down with that day, for 160k base.

granted, i'm abnormal, and we had "failures" too, but i have many friends whose career change was eased because the bootcamp had taken care to build quality relationships with employers.

one more example. one time my computer just borked. create react app (or whatever we were doing that day) just refused to run. I had no idea but something in my $PATH was corrupted somehow. i was unable to do anything, and asking for help online wouldve been very futile. instead, i raised my hand, and my instructor (hi Cassio!) came over, showed me how to debug, and had me back up and running in 5 mins so I could continue learning.

[amotinga]

if you somehow managed to get 160k out of the bootcamp I would guess bootcamp is only part of why you got such an offer. you are extreme outlier.

[swyx]

yes definitely. i applied to a place where my previous career (finance) could potentially help (ended up not being used at all lol).

BUT i did get a 120k-150k offers elsewhere (ranging from adtech to music), and had friends join FB/Google out of bootcamp and thats easily six figures

being in NYC helps. the low end was like 90k.