I did App Academy in New York two-three years ago (10-week bootcamp). I'm now a front-end dev and work from home making about 80k per year. I believe most of my cohort are in the same situation (App Academy appears to be above average for boot camps from what I've heard about other boot camps, but not by much). Although most of my cohort probably stayed working in New York or moved to SF and so make more money but don't get the luxury of working from home.
The boot camp served its purpose in preparing me for the job. Namely, serving as a commitment device to force myself to study the initial couple hundred of hours one needs to be able to do entry level programming from scratch. Plus having them provide a curriculum and teachers was nice too, I guess, but secondary to the commitment factor. Having graduated from that was also probably not a detriment to have on my resume and I keep it on there since I have no other programming related education.
I suspect my experience is not unusual-- that the boot camp's value is in being a catalyst that unlocks someone's ability to be a programmer and teach themself most of the skills they need, rather than in being an information-imparting institution.
Ahh, a couple cohorts in front of me. I think I know your first name, actually.
My cohort graduated about 23 and only 2 didn't find work. As far as I know, all but one of those that did are still working in the field -- mostly as Front End engineers. I've doubled my pre-App Academy salary twice over and am working as Senior Full Stack Developer.
I skewed more towards the experienced side of my cohort but I was sans-degree and had a previous career in tech. I mainly went through it because I knew it would be the fastest route towards getting my portfolio together and a job, albeit an expensive way to do that.
Most of what I learned didn't really prepare my skills (I've been writing code since I was 6), but it gave me confidence that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I don't do Rails on the job and I'm pretty happy continuing that way for now. One thing I did get though was an extremely solid foundation in SQL which has paid off in my career enormously.
My skill with data, sysops and ability to keep the whole project in my head are what set me apart from my peers. I'm the guy everyone calls to do 'weird, arcane shit' (not my words) with regexp, sed, awk, etc. Small scripts combining the power of Ruby with basic shell commands that replace large, crumbling applications. Things are going great.
I do wish that we had spent more time just practicing interviewing. I consider myself a weak interview and have missed some jobs I'm well-qualified for but didn't do as well as I'd like. Or at least I'd like the ability to go back and drill with folks going through that process now.
I'd been reading/posting on HN for years before I even considered the career change, btw.
I am a September 2013 SF App Academy grad, and I found exactly the same value as you in the program. Launched programming from a thing I had a good aptitude for and played around with a lot, and gave me an the engine that made me study a lot of marketable skills (as well as interview preparation).
I am now a lead engineer at a small company. I'm grateful for the experience, although I suspect the situation is tougher for current grads. It's pretty amazing seeing 90% of applicants for dev openings be fresh bootcamp grads.
I started to see the market for Rails devs on the junior end nosedive right as my cohort was graduating. Since then AppAcademy has been stricter about who they accept and for a larger cut of salary.
Big chunks of the recent cohorts I've seen are people with STEM degrees, usually from seriously good places, who didn't get much experience writing code in school. a/A is mostly throwing them at the large companies that hire large groups of recent grads.
Switching their JS framework curriculum to React probably helped a lot and most of the people I talk to there lean more on their JavaScript than their Ruby.
I'm grateful for the experience but I'm mixed for recommending it to others. It has to be a certain kind of person in certain lucky situations to begin with. I didn't have to pay rent while I did it, which made it all possible, really.
The boot camp served its purpose in preparing me for the job. Namely, serving as a commitment device to force myself to study the initial couple hundred of hours one needs to be able to do entry level programming from scratch. Plus having them provide a curriculum and teachers was nice too, I guess, but secondary to the commitment factor. Having graduated from that was also probably not a detriment to have on my resume and I keep it on there since I have no other programming related education.
I suspect my experience is not unusual-- that the boot camp's value is in being a catalyst that unlocks someone's ability to be a programmer and teach themself most of the skills they need, rather than in being an information-imparting institution.