As a dev I've always suspected programming was easy, but never really thought it was this easy. Literally anyone can pick it up in a few weeks. That's surprisingly depressing.
Some people can pick up the basics of programming fairly quickly, but I'm not sure most people can. Someone who truly groks software development after only a few weeks is probably an outlier.
With a basic understanding, some people can start contributing to existing projects, but it's likely that they're going to make a mess, and it's unlikely that they're going to be ready to start designing and building robust systems.
It's common for inexperienced developers to have a lot of enthusiasm and pour tons of time and effort into projects that are then hard to maintain. Management often doesn't understand the cost of this in terms of technical debt and maintenance (maybe even thinking they're saving money by paying a junior developer less for the "same" thing).
I'm not trying to diminish anyone's aptitude or enthusiasm and I don't think everyone on a team needs to be highly experienced, but I've seen this anyone-can-do-it attitude (from both developers and managers) lead to a lot of pain and unnecessary costs, including opportunity costs.
That distinction clearly doesn't matter to employers.
As this thread demonstrates, anyone can make 6 figures after spending a few weeks learning to program. They have every bit as much market value as long time software developers do.
It's only a matter of time (a year or two at most) before we're all paid slightly more than janitors - the field clearly (demonstrably) has no barrier to entry whatsoever. Literally anyone can become a professional software developer in less time than it takes to pass high school algebra.
I think that certain parts of the developer job market are easy to get into. And in those parts of the market, things feel a bit bubbly right now. And so you're seeing big salaries for new entrants to the market. If you jumped into the market and took a new job, you'd probably be able to match or beat them.
If the dev job market is in a bit of a bubble state, your experience will serve you well when it bursts. This is especially true if you have experience with distributed systems, or database optimization, or any number of complicated things that newcomers to the market aren't as likely to have.
I could certainly be wrong about the bubbliness of the market, though. I've been wrong about things often enough before. :)
What you're posting is provably false. There's a huge barrier to entry that's obscured by being selective in reading replies and your own confirmation biases.
It doesn't contribute in any way to the discussion and is misleading and quite toxic to be honest.
According to employers, it's as good or better than anything I do since they get paid more than I do. University education and professional experience are literally worthless.
I don't mean to be insulting, but maybe you need to take an honest look at yourself. Good education and worthwhile experience are indeed completely worthless if you don't interview well and can't convey your abilities. You're not entitled to a solid career just because you got a degree, you have to convince others that you have value still.
Likewise, for all we know your professors passed you to get you out of their classes and you learned nothing in school and are undeserving of a degree but have one anyways and your experience is shit and every coworker you've had thinks you're a terrible programmer and create negative value. Maybe you're being paid completely what you're worth? Maybe too much? Those sorts of people also exist.
Probably all true, but it's probably also true all of that applies to most other "professional" software developers too. I'm rather average for a Bay Area developer (by which I mean people tell me I'm above average, but I self-evaluate lower than that).
I know it must be rough for you to hear that you're easily replaceable by anyone with a few weeks of spare time, but attacking me and imagining I'm full of special flaws won't change your reality.
This is obviously not true. I'm a bootcamp grad, I got a great job right out of my program and it has been an uphill struggle ever since. If you read the answers from the other bootcamp grad devs here you will see nearly all of them mention how hard this is, and these are the successful people. As is mentioned over and over, you probably aren't hearing from the folks that dropped out, gave up or just couldn't do it (of which there are certainly a good deal). More than anything the rate of bootcamp grad hiring just demonstrates the massive demand for developers right now and the understanding that you can generally learn this stuff as you go along. Most bootcamp devs get hired to do the most basic front end work and (maybe) move to more complex stuff from there.
