Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?

When Florencio Rendon was laid off from his third construction job in three years, he said, “it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

He was 36, a father of two, and felt time was running out to find a career that would offer higher pay and more stability. “I’ve always been doing jobs that require physical labor,” he remembers thinking. “What if I start using my brain for once?”

An Army veteran, Mr. Rendon explored training programs he could fund using his military benefits. He landed on a coding boot camp.

At first, the intensive courses seemed intimidating. Mr. Rendon had gotten his high school equivalency diploma before joining the Army, and he had taken some college courses, but he didn’t consider himself book smart.

Still, he thought about his children, who are now 4 and 2, and reasoned, “If I can make this work, then I should at least give it a try.”

His application to a course run by the company Fullstack Academy was accepted, and he started classes in April 2023, with a grant for military veterans that covered the $13,000 tuition. While the material was challenging, he was pleasantly surprised to learn he could get the hang of it, and four months later, he graduated from an online program that he completed from his home in the Bronx.