> Why would I pay them the same amount as a college graduate
These people ARE college grads. I'm not sure where this seemingly pervasive view is coming from. My class had 1 person without an undgraduate degree, and several with masters.
> i.e. the ability to communicate clearly, how to do research, how to learn independently
The average age of my class was 29. 6-10 years in the workforce tends to demonstrate an existing ability to do this.
Echoing this - my girlfriend, 29, just went through one and the average age was similar. Everyone (but her) had a STEM background / college degree. Abstract thought isn't exclusively taught in CS.
> It's a reaction to the question, "can bootcamps replace a CS degree?"
If someone is posing this question, it's not one based in reality. The question is 4 years of a CS degree vs a bootcamp, not 4 years of college vs no college. As I clearly stated, only one classmate didn't have an undergraduate degree. That question is a strawman at best.
I think it depends on the bootcamp. Some bootcamps do market themselves as college alternatives. I spoke with a bootcamp requiter recently and he attempted to convince me that pursuing a CS degree was a waste of time.
I think of bootcamp in the same terms of the finance bootcamp I took coming out of college. It was a 1 month program mandated by my employer as focused learning. Both have been supplements to my undergrad, not replacements. The ones you mention I see more as a trade school, which I think is a different and potentially viable career path. The reason I say viable is because:
"Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity"
It's my favorite terminology from undergrad. It's from time series analysis. My job coming out of college was as an equities trader. It's hard to get much more time series analytical than that, and yet I never used it even once. Had I gone into quantitative finance, I'm sure I'd use it constantly. 95% of us just use our undergrad as a permission slip to join the real world, CS included. They hand out those permission slips like candy. Most people end up as accountants, not mathematicians. You don't need to know parametric equations to calculate EBIDTA.
It's not a waste of time if it's something you're interested in and you're intelligent enough to use it. It IS a waste of time getting an engineering degree if you think it will give you a leg up on competing for a welding job.
I agree! In my class (I go to Holberton School) the average age is 29 as well.
I wonder if this says something more about how life is lived now, and the choices we get to make because of opportunity.
Most of us are college grads, and our school is not a 12 week bootcamp. We spend 2 years learning, doing internships and coding, and there is a heavy emphasis on soft skills.
These people ARE college grads. I'm not sure where this seemingly pervasive view is coming from. My class had 1 person without an undgraduate degree, and several with masters.
> i.e. the ability to communicate clearly, how to do research, how to learn independently
The average age of my class was 29. 6-10 years in the workforce tends to demonstrate an existing ability to do this.