Linked – Junior tech workers can’t find jobs. Are coding boot camps in trouble?
Remember when the typical response to anyone being laid off or struggling to find a job was the dismissive “learn to code?”
Those days have been over for a while, but I think the Launch Academy’s decision to pause future enrollment in its boot camps is a pretty good sign that they’re over for anyone who doubted that.
The tech layoffs should have been the first sign:
What’s happening, in short, is that the supply for able coders has, for the first time, dramatically outpaced demand. So far, nearly 84,600 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2024—after nearly 263,000 tech workers lost theirs last year. Postings for software-development roles on the jobs site Indeed have dropped 30% from pre-pandemic levels, according to The Wall Street Journal. The arrival of ongoing layoffs collided with a surplus of fresh tech-world job seekers, and now boot camp and university graduates are competing with experienced engineers for entry-level jobs.
Frankly, I think the CEO, Dan Pickett, deserves some kudos for this:
“It fundamentally comes down to a value proposition,” Pickett says. “We promise students that if they come to us and study hard the odds are in their favor to secure employment. Those odds have to be better than a coin flip. We can’t continue to sell something that doesn’t deliver the outcome that the student is paying us for.”
The job market for people who can write code has fallen apart. Partly because of AI and partly because companies over-invested in engineers and tools that never could be as successful as they thought. (Remember when we were all going to be hanging out in the metaverse?) Of course, the people running these companies weren’t held accountable for those choices, but I’m past hoping that will ever happen.
So, now the mantra will be “learn AI,” at least until that market isn’t everything companies are currently promising and we go through this whole thing again.
It’s best not to get comfortable with anything in the current tech marketplace. The skills in high demand today won’t be those in high demand five years from now. If you’re entering college and embarking on a technology major, the tech will be changed by the time you graduate.
Be flexible, always willing to learn, and assume that every new technology will experience an extreme version of the hype cycle and never be as large as its founders claim it will be.
