Shut the Front Door! What’s Going to happen to Coding Bootcamps now?!?

When Dev BootCamp announced on Wednesday that they were running their final cohort this month, and closing their doors officially in December 2017, the industry felt a wave of shock and sadness. As an outsider looking in, one might assume that this is a classic story of a small business who didn’t make it in their first 5 years. And on the surface it is. But from the perspective of a fellow bootcamp from the early days of the industry, we might as well be mourning the death of our grandfather. Not to say that DBC was an old, or outdated company. Rather, that they pioneered the very industry that we are all so incredibly passionate about.
Five years ago, the coding bootcamp industry wasn’t the thriving and fast growing industry it is today. Five years ago, bootcamps barely existed. We all saw that with the rise of technology came a massive increase in the number of developers needed both in and outside of the tech industry. Computer Science degrees took too long to solve the urgent problem and had mixed results in preparing graduates for the workforce. And DBC played a critical role in proving out the need for an accelerated, hands-on education solution in the marketplace. Along with this pressing need for talent they saw a market of smart people, with a high aptitude of learning, willing to work hard to change their careers. DBC helped prove that high intensity skill training works for coding.
So, where did DBC go wrong? We’ll share our thoughts, but first some backstory.
V School started around the same time as DBC. Back then we were a premier software development shop building sexy software for enterprise companies including DirectTV, ADP and Logitech. We also did work for huge financial corporations and tech start ups. Just like everyone else, our clients were searching for talented developers, and started asking us what we could do to help them fill those roles. Over the years we had built out a robust onboarding process and decided to run two small classes through a custom tailored version of it to test the idea of whether accelerated, hands-on training could produce competent developers. Similar to DBC, we had success, and decided to take it further. As we continued testing our classes, we noticed that a few other companies popped up doing something similar. These other pioneers included Flatiron, General Assembly, and DBC. We decided to reach out to them, as well as others, and start building a community around us.
We were impressed that almost everyone we reached out to was cooperative. As a group our goal was to prove that this could work, and we were more excited about helping our students successfully change careers than competing with each other. There was a beautiful culture of collaboration and a real effort to optimize education to solve for the need in the marketplace. There is serious magic in having passionate founders building something meaningful and having the flexibility to innovate and find ways to continue to improve the student experience.
As these things go, within a short amount of time, new schools began to pop up all over the place, and with them came a flood of both copycats, and new innovation. We saw things like new languages and technology stacks, testing of different lengths of programs, direct partnering with hiring companies to funnel graduates, multiple campuses around the country so students didn’t have to travel, variations of job placement guarantees and outcomes, and “promise to pay” tuition plans that didn’t require students to pay for their education until they obtained their first job. The pace of innovation in this brand new market was staggering, and the competition became fierce. The industry started to feel crowded, especially in major tech hubs like San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, and Seattle.
It’s not easy to answer, “what happened?” when referring to a company shutting its doors. For DBC, I’m sure it is more complex than financial viability or missing the mark on a sustainable business model (because, let’s be honest- there are various business models that have, do, and look like they will continue to work in the industry).
For roughly two years, DBC remained one of the key leaders in the industry. Their founder and CEO, Shareef Bishay, was well respected by basically everyone. In 2014, they were one of the first bootcamps to be acquired by a larger corporation. This is what DBC said about their acquisition: “Kaplan offered us the financial support that allowed us to concentrate on our jobs of better serving students for as long as we did. And it afforded us the financial freedom to experiment with different delivery models as well as product offerings.”
From my view of the industry, that’s when things started to change. That’s not to say that acquisitions are bad, or joining forces with traditional for-profit can’t work to the benefit of both the students and the company. But somehow, after raising money in order to be able to experiment more, DBC stayed essentially the same. While the rest of the industry was tweaking the model and finding new ways to create and deliver value, DBC started to fade. And in an industry still in its infancy, the playbook for success is still evolving, and requires that we keep iterating to stay relevant.
The canary in the coal mine may have been a few weeks ago when we were gathered in Chicago with 30 other schools and industry partners as members of CIRR (Council on Integrity in Results Reporting) to discuss outcomes and lead the charge to bring higher standards and greater transparency for the industry. We know that outcomes are king, and while most major schools were represented, a few key exceptions were noted, DBC being one of them.
I don’t know why they weren’t there. Or what straw eventually broke the camel’s back and made them decide to close their doors. But for all of us that remain, what I do know, is that to succeed in this industry we have to optimize the student learning experience. The world will continue to need talented developers. So as long as we continue to provide a fast and effective pathway to a career in technology, bootcamps with continue to thrive.
Michael Zaro, CEO V School
#DBCShutdown #bootcamps #coding #VSchool
