Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
Yes, I work at Refinery29 (obligatory www.corporate.r29.com/careers/), a large women's fashion website in NYC.  Of our 30 person tech team, we have had about 5 people coming out of these bootcamps, and they are all awesome.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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!).<p>"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."<p>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.