freecodecamp.org theodinproject limitless various courses.
curriculum is out there, /r/learnprogramming is very helpful, plethora of discords. what do they provide in 2022 that is worth ~10-20k?
It's wonderful that so much material is free, but it's an overwhelming amount of information for the uninitiated. Some people can self-motivate and self-teach starting from zero. Some cannot. Some would just prefer a formal curriculum and instructor. Nothing wrong with that.
And the best bootcamps have a direct relationship into companies for internships and junior dev positions.
Unfortunately as bootcamp hype has exploded, many bootcamps do not offer these things and are of dubious value.
accountability. this one I'm not sure what you mean. meaning I invest 10k now I really have to make it work. yeah, unfortunately people tend to value expensive things more than free.
connections. yes, this is perhaps biggest selling point, the idea that they will place the student, or at the very least help significantly.
hmmm... I wonder if there is a way to quantify that. is it really ~ 1k/week to do all of that?
let me put it this way. at the end of my bootcamp they had a "hiring day". ~20 employers came by for ~40 students, including Google. I ended up getting a job with the very first hiring manager I sat down with that day, for 160k base.
granted, i'm abnormal, and we had "failures" too, but i have many friends whose career change was eased because the bootcamp had taken care to build quality relationships with employers.
one more example. one time my computer just borked. create react app (or whatever we were doing that day) just refused to run. I had no idea but something in my $PATH was corrupted somehow. i was unable to do anything, and asking for help online wouldve been very futile. instead, i raised my hand, and my instructor (hi Cassio!) came over, showed me how to debug, and had me back up and running in 5 mins so I could continue learning.
BUT i did get a 120k-150k offers elsewhere (ranging from adtech to music), and had friends join FB/Google out of bootcamp and thats easily six figures
being in NYC helps. the low end was like 90k.