Honest Review After Completing a 6-Month Government-Funded Bootcamp
Bottom line: If you meet the right people, it pays off; otherwise, it's a waste of time.
The one I attended was a regional campus, and the course was backend. The instructors were decent enough, but the problem was that the class atmosphere varied way too much. Even within the same cohort, the results differed completely depending on which class you were assigned to.
Pros
- The career support system was more organized than I expected (resume feedback, mock interviews)
- I made peers/classmates I could work with. If I had studied alone, I don't think I could have made it.
Cons
- As the course went on, the projects became increasingly formulaic
- The curriculum felt like it wasn't keeping up with current trends (especially the cloud part)
Ultimately, out of 30 graduates, I think about 18 got jobs. I joined a small-to-mid-sized SI company three months after finishing, and I've been working there for a year and a half now.
I think what really matters isn't the bootcamp itself, but what you take away from it. Before enrolling, ask graduates as many questions as you can.
4 answers
True, the class vibe alone gets you halfway there lol. It made me wonder why there's such a difference when we're in the same cohort.
Hold on—18 out of 30 is 60%, but where did you see that figure? Bootcamp employment rates are often inflated by reporting based on “job seekers” rather than “all graduates,” and some places even count small-to-mid-sized SI companies as unemployed, so it’s hard to judge from the numbers alone. That’s why, for reviews from people who actually attended like you, I’m more curious about what the class/cohort was like than the numbers. Can you give some examples of what specifically felt lacking in the cloud curriculum?
I graduated from a different regional campus last year, and the cloud part was seriously bad. All the instructor did was pull up the AWS console and launch a single EC2 instance. So after finishing, I paid for Inflearn courses and studied on my own, then added Docker and CI/CD to a personal project and built a portfolio—and that was what interviewers asked about the most. You can assume bootcamp curricula anywhere are at least six months behind, and you absolutely have to fill that gap yourself. Luck in getting a good instructor matters too, but in the end, your own effort is the biggest factor.
The advice to ask graduates before enrolling is really the key. What they say during counseling is the same everywhere lol. I didn’t believe that and just attended with the mindset that since government-funded training is free, I’d only be wasting my time—but if you’re prepared for that much, I think it’s not a bad choice.