Programming Bootcamps: Has the grass roots industry DevBootcamp made popular jumped the shark?

It's an interesting take on a business model that seems to be proving itself over and over again, if the program is setup correctly.  http://www.codercamps.com has had great success thus far and we are expanding our operations to include mobile and other technologies next year. I guess the skepticism comes from the indoctrinated idea that being a developer is super difficult and only a handful of the greater population is cut out for it.  That fallacy is being proven wrong every day here and at other camps as well. Like anything else, if the people only take what we teach and do not continue their learning, they will ultimately not be successful, in my opinion.  But unlike the traditional university models of teaching, we aren't teaching people facts in a book, but instead how to think and solve problems on their own.  A skill that is applicable to many facets of their lives, not only programming. It all comes down the success rate and how you measure success.  If the test is that the students can find high paying jobs in a growing industry at companies that have the ability to absorb talented, passionate people, then programs like ours have been hugely successful, and only limited by skepticism.

Lazlo Bock, VP of People Operations at Google had an interesting interview recently (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html).  The findings lined up with my experience when I was a hiring manager for an Insurance company's IT shop. For the most part, people are really bad at interviewing.  In the Google study there was zero relationship between interview score and job performance. Brain teasers, made popular by Google and Facebook, have been found by Google to be absolutely useless in predicting employee success. GPAs from college are also relatively useless, only slightly useful for a new grad and completely useless after a few years out of school. And a direct quote: "What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college." Is a college degree worthless?  No!  It gives you time to grow up, learn to manage yourself, learn and grow.  However the skills you learn in college, particularly in technology are not the skills you need to perform on the job.  In an Academic environment the skills you need to succeed are being able to figure out what the professor wants and regurgitating it on demand.  In the real world demands change and goals are not often clear.  It's completely different. So there's a couple things I see happening that helps out with. Regardless of degree or not, employers want people who can do things.  They want just in time employees who have some familiarity with tools they are using or planning to use.  The #1 reason I get from employers when I ask "why do you only have job reqs open for mid and senior IT people?" is "It is far too risky to take on someone who hasn't been vetted in these skills".  IT workers don't come cheaply, and hiring someone with zero experience is a very expensive bet.  Our hundreds of hours of project work makes them reconsider. The pace of change in technology means that employee skills are getting obsolete faster.  We use the same methods in our bootcamps to do corporate training, skills upgrading.  Existing employees have a lot of domain knowledge that makes them valuable but if you let their skills stagnate you will fall behind. While we have placed people without college degrees, the typical Guild student has a degree of some kind and often has prior work experience.  Employers absolutely love this because they bring maturity and domain experience that a typical college new grad does not have.  How cool is it for a financial services company to be able to hire a junior developer who has 5 years experience previously working in the accounting department?  Very cool. The social contract that once existed where companies spent years developing talent is broken.  There is no pension, little incentive to stay in the long term.  Companies want "just in time" skills, and even when investing in their own staff they want a quick ramp-up.  The collegiate model is not equipped to handle this. As we continue to see talent shortages, it is part of our mission to spread awareness that the solution is not more H1-B Visas, there plenty of capable people right here, the underemployed or want to career change.  It is not feasible for them to spend 2 or more years and tens of thousands of dollars on higher education programs that aren't providing the just in time skills employers demand. Have we jumped the shark at Software Craftsmanship Guild?  No.  If anyone has jumped the shark it's the higher education system which has seen over 1000% increase in tuition rates over the last few decades and is churning out people with excessive debt and skills that aren't in demand by employers. Bootcamps like ours, MOOCs, free internet training.  The education model is shifting.  Even Google, arguably one of the top tech firms on the planet doesn't give a damn about higher education in their hiring. Passionate people, demonstrable skills.  That is all that is required, and what we do.  HR is slow to change at many companies though, but the change is coming.  Those that don't get on board are going to be missing out on exceptional talent.

No data here, just my vision for where career accelerators fit in the evolving educational landscape:  They are a bridge between MOOCs and other forms of online learning, and a job.  They help people learn how to put knowledge that they learned online into use as an industry professional.  I think they fact that fewer career accelerators are accepting true beginners is evidence that online learning is fantastic, but these schools are filling a real need for polished professionals, that internet only education just can't meet yet.