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Coding Boot Camps in 2026
I don’t regret attending a coding boot camp in 2021, it seemed like the best decision at the time. Customer service and retail had devastated my mental health, I needed a change, and all the numbers seemed to add up on paper.
But, in 2026, with LLMs basically killing entry level software engineering jobs, I would say a coding boot camp is a horrible choice, and I genuinely feel horrible for anyone who’s been through one in the last couple years.
From where I’m sitting, it seems like I got in at the best and worst time – long enough ago to be in demand, but not long enough ago to gain enough experience to be competitive once the market got rough. If my demonstrable work experience isn’t enough to stand out in the job market, what chance to newer boot camp grads have?
Perhaps these boot camps were never a good idea, and perhaps the last 5 years of my life would have been better spent working on a computer science degree, but even CS grads are struggling to get entry level jobs in the current climate.
What I can say for sure is, if someone came up to me and asked me for my advice for getting into tech, my answer would be: “don’t.” And that makes me incredibly sad.