I've only worked with one bootcamp grad, but I've done a fair bit of hiring over the past 15 years, including a number of junior folks.
My main concern with bootcamp grads is that it is not much of a positive signal. My (admittedly biased and unscientific) sense is that you really have to be hopeless to flunk out. The training period is so short that the assignments are necessarily small and limited in scope, so they don't test any kind of tenacity or the problem solving and lateral thinking required as a professional. Granted, University degrees have this same problem, but there at least for a proper CS degree there is some heavy math and theory and exams which over a period of four years will tend to winnow the field a bit more. Plus, if someone has gone through four years of CS assignments, they should be able to show some kind of programmerly reasoning ability and debugging techniques—if they don't at all I think they are pretty easy to write off, whereas someone who has only been coding for 3 months should not necessarily be written off so quickly because they still may need to pass a few eureka moments.
I remember my first year of CS after having been generally obsessed with computers and fooling around with programming for over a decade in HyperTalk, AppleSoft BASIC, Pascal and even C. There was this moment when it just clicked in my head how code was logic manifest. I know it sounds trite, but there really was this moment where I went from thinking of code as a magic incantation to achieve some result to understanding that code can be anything you imagine, and that you can map your very thoughts to code. There was some transformation that happened from years of curiosity and obsession, and from what I can tell a lot of people never pass that phase of thinking of code as magic incantations. I'm not sure what's necessary to make that leap, but I'm fairly certain a 3-month bootcamp will not be sufficient to draw it out for most people.
The other problem with bootcamps is that they are just too visible and attractive to people looking for a good career. I see parallels to Indian outsourcing attempts I was involved in 10-15 years ago. It was apparent there were a huge number of programmers who had no interest in the craft, but went into the field simply because their parents thought it was a good job. 20 years ago I don't think anybody in the US wanted their kids to be programmers, so if someone showed up looking for a programming job they were already most likely brimming with the requisite curiosity to become a passable programmer (even if they weren't a genius!). With the US economy tanking and startup culture being glorified and mainstreamed I feel like bootcamps are the obvious outlet for people seeking the media-fueled romance of being a bonafide Silicon Valley engineer.
All of this is a bit unfair to bootcamps. They may well be the fastest way to learn, and the curriculum may be top notch, but for me personally it's a negative signal. I would be more impressed with a candidate who saved their money and spent 3 months teaching themselves to code using on-line resources. Perhaps that's unfair, but that's my bias. God I would have killed for the web in 1987. Do you have any idea how much Inside Macintosh (the Mac OS API reference) cost? Or a C compiler for that matter?
One thing I'd like to add to your comment is that I think quite a few people that enter these boot camps are self taught and just need some molding for entry into the professional world. I did exactly what you mentioned and taught myself ( and continue to), but I also did a small three month for-profit online program that pairs you with a mentor. I did this to tuck in any loose ends in my understanding as well as imbue myself in any cultural assumptions that I was blind to.
I have encountered a number of people who share your sentiment, that attending a bootcamp is a negative signal. I went through one of these bootcamps after a few years of learning on my own. While it was an awesome experience and I learned a lot, I find it necessary to pretend it never happened - it's as if the years I spent teaching myself and my passion for the subject are undone by association with a bootcamp.
Have you not encountered people with the opposite sentiment? I'm in your same situation (but I haven't gone to a bootcamp yet) so I'm wondering what I should do.
I suggest not going, but at least be careful which one you pick. We've interviewed a bunch of people from General Assembly LA and none of them have the right kind of experience for us to hire, so now we don't really consider anyone whose only experience is GA.
Have you tried applying for jobs? Working anywhere >> going to a dev bootcamp (with the possible exception of NYC Hacker School, which seems incredibly impressive and self-motivated)
Are you assuming that you can get into the camp as a hopeless flunky? That may be true for some bootcamp environments but is certainly not the case for all of them.
My main concern with bootcamp grads is that it is not much of a positive signal. My (admittedly biased and unscientific) sense is that you really have to be hopeless to flunk out. The training period is so short that the assignments are necessarily small and limited in scope, so they don't test any kind of tenacity or the problem solving and lateral thinking required as a professional. Granted, University degrees have this same problem, but there at least for a proper CS degree there is some heavy math and theory and exams which over a period of four years will tend to winnow the field a bit more. Plus, if someone has gone through four years of CS assignments, they should be able to show some kind of programmerly reasoning ability and debugging techniques—if they don't at all I think they are pretty easy to write off, whereas someone who has only been coding for 3 months should not necessarily be written off so quickly because they still may need to pass a few eureka moments.
I remember my first year of CS after having been generally obsessed with computers and fooling around with programming for over a decade in HyperTalk, AppleSoft BASIC, Pascal and even C. There was this moment when it just clicked in my head how code was logic manifest. I know it sounds trite, but there really was this moment where I went from thinking of code as a magic incantation to achieve some result to understanding that code can be anything you imagine, and that you can map your very thoughts to code. There was some transformation that happened from years of curiosity and obsession, and from what I can tell a lot of people never pass that phase of thinking of code as magic incantations. I'm not sure what's necessary to make that leap, but I'm fairly certain a 3-month bootcamp will not be sufficient to draw it out for most people.
The other problem with bootcamps is that they are just too visible and attractive to people looking for a good career. I see parallels to Indian outsourcing attempts I was involved in 10-15 years ago. It was apparent there were a huge number of programmers who had no interest in the craft, but went into the field simply because their parents thought it was a good job. 20 years ago I don't think anybody in the US wanted their kids to be programmers, so if someone showed up looking for a programming job they were already most likely brimming with the requisite curiosity to become a passable programmer (even if they weren't a genius!). With the US economy tanking and startup culture being glorified and mainstreamed I feel like bootcamps are the obvious outlet for people seeking the media-fueled romance of being a bonafide Silicon Valley engineer.
All of this is a bit unfair to bootcamps. They may well be the fastest way to learn, and the curriculum may be top notch, but for me personally it's a negative signal. I would be more impressed with a candidate who saved their money and spent 3 months teaching themselves to code using on-line resources. Perhaps that's unfair, but that's my bias. God I would have killed for the web in 1987. Do you have any idea how much Inside Macintosh (the Mac OS API reference) cost? Or a C compiler for that matter?