Actually, maybe don’t learn to code

Coding schools and tech bootcamps are full of pitfalls. As long as I can remember, people have been pleading with my generation to take advantage of the unique technological moment of the current century. In elementary school computer classes, I was told that the future maybe lived in our Macbooks, and that my peers and I were destined for a world of lucrative possibility if we only mastered their ways. I’ve never been inclined to take anyone up on that nearly constant offer, but as my colleague Emily Stewart reported for Vox, getting into tech jobs like coding actually isn’t so easy. In fact, it can be costly and confusing to navigate these bootcamps, which aren’t standardized by any official body. While coding courses work for some people, a lot can slip through the cracks of it all. [The world of tech bootcamps and coding schools is littered with lawsuits, a lack of general regulation and clarity, and income-sharing agreements that can thrust students into the very debts and stresses they were trying to avoid](. And as always, this nearly scammy framework targets those who just want to make a better life for themselves. It’s just another deal that shows that getting an education in America — one that is an investment that actually pays off — has never been more difficult. —[Melinda Fakuade](, associate editor, culture & features   Actually, maybe don't learn to code [photo of hands typing on keyboards]( Getty Images On its face, the idea of a tech boot camp sounds pretty nice. You take a few months to learn coding or web development or user experience design or whatever, and voila, welcome to your “future-proof” career. Some boot camps only make you pay once you land that shiny new six-figure tech job, which, they say, you definitely will. They’ve got all sorts of facts and figures about placement rates and success stories of graduates who landed at Google or Apple or Facebook. Maybe don’t look too hard at the fine print, though. Boot camps are intensive, immersive programs meant to get students the skills they need to land a job in a tech field like software design or data analytics in a short period of time. If much of that promise sounds a bit too good to be true, that’s in part because it is. “Learn to code” is not as easy as it’s made out to be, nor is it a guaranteed path to a lucrative career. Boot camps work for some people, but not everyone, and the caliber of different schools can be a real your-mileage-may-vary situation. Some students wind up with thousands of dollars of debt they struggle to pay off, or they get stuck in income-sharing agreements that cut into their paychecks for months and years — paychecks from jobs that are a far cry from the ones they were promised. [“The biggest problem with boot camps is that there are just numerous amounts of them, they’re all over, and there is no real quality control, so you don’t know what you’re getting into,"]( said Erin Mindell Cannon, the director of training and people development at Paradigm Strategy Inc., who spent more than a decade at Google. “It’s really hard for anybody to make a judgment call.” I had always assumed tech boot camps were providing bang for their buck — as a journalist, I am familiar with the “learn to code” Twitter replies that land whenever layoffs hit. But the reality is much more complicated. Boot camps sell a 21st-century version of the American dream — one where you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and into a Silicon Valley techy lifestyle in a short period of time. It’s easy to see why the prospect is attractive. Despite the tech sector’s recent woes, it’s still an enticing arena. Traditional paths to tech jobs through higher education aren’t perfect, especially with student debt mounting. It’s also easy to see why a career in tech is harder to get than boot camps would make you think. Programming is difficult and takes time to learn; the best you can do in a few months of courses is cram. These largely for-profit schools often target marginalized people who really can’t afford to fail, and then they fail them. [Read the full story »]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   Stopping inflation is going to hurt The economy will feel worse before it feels better. [Read the full story »](   Labor exploitation, explained by Minions We can understand the entire history of the capitalist labor market through the Despicable Me franchise. [Read the full story »](   More good stuff to read today - [How Catholicism became a meme]( - [It's important to talk to kids about abortion. Here's how.]( - [It's TikTok's world. 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