I'm also a current student at Hack Reactor, and while this probably won't change yours or anyone else's sentiment regarding such schools, I still feel the need to say it.

Yes, the claims are bold and certainly that could be an issue. It's certainly hard to believe the numbers stated on some of these bootcamps websites, and I'm okay with regulations and compliance, so long as they do what is intended.

You don't want to sound snobbish, but you've made a blanket statement by saying that " I know plenty of grads from top tier bachelor CS programs at some of the highest ranked schools, and I'd still say that roughly less than half get a job offer at Google. I don't want to sound snobbish... but no doubt these guys would have a better shot than someone who began coding less than 3 months before?"

It appears that you value a CS degree quite a bit, but can you tell me how often the courses you've taken in computer science are applicable to the work that you do on a daily basis?

What you may be surprised to find out is that there are people in these programs who have been software engineers, who have bachelor degrees in CS, lots of advanced degrees in the sciences, and a nice blend of smart people from top tier universities across the US and other countries. In addition to that, there are students who have programmed in other languages and in other contexts. The students who end up being a part of some of these programs have identified themselves as those with the desire to learn and to write code. A majority have learned to write code on their own for a long time. It may even surprise you that some of the BEST people are those that have never written a line of code prior the the months before doing Hack Reactor and have become experts in some frameworks with badges from those respective organizations as being members of the team, like AngularJS (Google).

A person with a CS degree from a top-tier school doesn't exactly mean the person can write software. Just because a person from a top school knows how to write C and Java doesn't mean they can immediately write web applications.

If you actually know how companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft hire, you likely may have come across Gayle Laakman's book, "Cracking the Coding Interview". A person can significantly increase their chances of being hired at a top-tier company by knowing how to tackle the puzzles and algorithm problems found in the book. I mention this, because a traditional CS program may or may not bring light to this material, and a person from a top-tier program could just simply miss an opportunity at a company, because he or she was never exposed to it.

I know I've already said a lot, but let me say something about Hack Reactor, because it seems that it's receiving flak for charging $17.8K. Hack Reactor provides a facility that's accessible to students at almost all times of the day with good and functional equipment to learn on. The instructors are some of the most well-respected people in the industry from Twitter, Google, Walmart Labs, Adobe, etc. I might even add that one graduated with nearly top honors in CS at one of the best programs in North America. They brought in Gayle Laakman to speak to us. We also saw Pamela Fox, who works directly with John Resig (jQuery) on the CS curriculum at Khan Academy, one of the founders of MeteorJS, and talks from founders and developers at Famo.us, Firebase, and others. They also hire out of our program. I almost forgot to mention -- when I say well-respected, I mean these are instructors AND former students that end up speaking at HTML Dev Conference, JS Conference, and are contributors to many open source projects that you may even be using. That says a lot about Hack Reactor's quality.

Whether or not I'll be able to help Hack Reactor's hiring rate and average salary claims remain to be seen, but I have no doubt that Hack Reactor delivers something invaluable to the tech community as a whole and giving people a chance they otherwise wouldn't have.

I will say this, though, personally I do know people from other programs that haven't fared well, and it certainly factored into my decision on whether or not to try one of these programs out. They're not all cut from the same cloth, therefore the types of students chosen vary, materials covered vary, and results vary. I think you'd find it comforting to know that, at least at Hack Reactor, we cover some fundamentals, like data structures, and are asked to implement them (although it is highly unlikely many do this exercise at a job), but do encounter problems where such knowledge is extremely helpful and useful. We also practice algorithms regularly to train us to become problem solvers and to recognize patterns. It's not just a language and framework and off you go... it's a lot more than what many doubters may think.