Programs like General Assembly and Flatiron School are touted as effective ways to mint new developers very quickly, and a bunch of them boast hiring rates over 90% and average starting salaries of 100k or more.
And yet, looking around, there don't seem to be many jobs for entry-level Rails or iOS developers. If you look around on job boards, there simply is not much competition for entry-level talent. Most of the job growth appears to be in academic stuff like AI and data science which requires at the very least a BS and probably an MS. The run-of-the-mill web and mobile developer positions all demand at least some level of experience (generally 2-6 years). It just doesn't seem like there is enough demand for inexperienced talent to make this kind of program effective.
But if the stats that these bootcamps throw out are true, there are companies hiring people at $100k who, twelve weeks ago, had never opened a text editor in their lives.
If you've hired from one of these programs, what made you turn to them? Was it a success? And if it's really possible to build a rails developer from scratch in 10 weeks, why not just just do it in-house through an internship program and avoid paying commission to these schools? And why do most companies still ask for "at least a Bachelors in CS" for web and mobile development positions?
Although I think your idea of who goes to these bootcamps is pretty off. These aren't people who "had never opened a text editor in their lives." Some of them are people who were working in science, doing research and matlab programming, and wanted to make a career switch. Others are people who maybe majored in math, or perhaps a completely non-technical major but went to a bunch of hackathons or took some intro programming classes for fun, and then when they realized they loved tech it was to late for them to make the switch in college.
Top programs like the Flatiron school are NOT a walk in the park. They are intensive, 60-80 hour a week programs with a very low acceptance rate.
Of the dozen plus people I know who have gone through one, I can't think of a single person who had never programmed before entering into one of these bootcamps (not that it is not possible!).
"looking around, there don't seem to be many jobs for entry-level Rails or iOS developers. If you look around on job boards, there simply is not much competition for entry-level talent."
What? I get emails every other day from recruiters hiring for their social mobile ruby on rails web app. The tech shortage is present more than ever in every level of the industry.