Thought "coding bootcamps" were a scam until my friend finished one in 12 weeks

My buddy Dave signed up for a 12-week bootcamp back in March. I told him he was wasting $10k and should just use free YouTube tutorials. He graduated in June and landed a junior dev job at a local startup two weeks later making $55k. I watched him go from zero to building a full CRUD app on his own, and that proved me wrong. Has anyone else here changed their mind about bootcamps after seeing someone actually succeed with one?

2 comments

2 Comments

davis.adam12d ago

Disagree completely. That one guy is survivorship bias, not a solid bet.

charliestone12d ago

Well, I'll point to Peter Lynch's Fidelity Magellan fund returning 29% annually for 13 years. That's not just one guy getting lucky with a few picks. He had a specific method of buying what he knew and understanding the companies inside and out. Survivorship bias usually means we only see the winners and forget the losers, but Lynch's track record is a documented fact, not a statistical fluke. You can argue his era was different, sure, but the discipline of picking individual stocks carefully still applies today. Plenty of small investors have done well by following his simple principles of research, not just chasing hot tips.