The Bootcamp Lie: When Everyone Can Code, Perception Becomes the Scarce Resource
The coding bootcamp industrial complex sold a promise: learn to code in 12 weeks, land a $70,000 job, recoup your investment in a year. The numbers looked compelling. 71-79% of graduates secured roles within six months. Average salaries jumped 56% from pre-bootcamp levels.
Then the market shifted.
Software engineering job postings hit a five-year low in 2025—just 65% of February 2020 levels. Traditional fullstack developer roles dropped by one-third since 2020. Employment for software developers aged 22-25 declined nearly 20% from its late 2022 peak.
The bootcamps kept selling the same story. The market had already moved on.
AI Generated 41% of All Code in 2025
Here's what bootcamps didn't teach you: the skill they sold you is commoditizing in real time.
AI now generates 41% of all code written in 2025. GitHub Copilot users complete tasks 55.8% faster in controlled trials. Vibecoding and AI assistants lowered the barrier to entry so dramatically that designers and product owners spin up prototypes in hours without traditional programming knowledge.
The democratization of coding eliminated coding as a differentiator.
I've experienced this shift firsthand. Ten years ago, mastering something like Basic on my ZX Spectrum required months of focused immersion. I worked two or three months building a Mastermind game. The learning curve demanded total commitment.
Now I throw an idea into AI and learn in parallel streams. My mind flows between concepts while the machine handles execution. The relationship with time itself has changed.
The Productivity Paradox Nobody Discusses
Developers report 10-30% productivity increases with AI tools. The data tells a different story.
A METR study found experienced developers using AI tools took 19% longer to complete tasks compared to working without AI. They believed AI made them 20% more productive. The perception gap reveals the problem: speed without judgment creates fragility.
67% of developers spend more time debugging AI-generated code. One Fortune 500 company spent three months refactoring authentication modules that functioned perfectly but violated security architecture principles. The AI recreated patterns inappropriate for their context.
Execution is abundant. Judgment is rare.
What Bootcamps Actually Taught You
Bootcamps taught technical execution. The market now pays for perception.
The ability to notice what others miss. The capacity to ask which problems deserve solving. The judgment to recognize when code solves the right problem, aligns with architectural principles, or creates technical debt.
These skills don't come from 12-week programs. They emerge from understanding multiple forces, seeing systems rather than syntax, and maintaining awareness of context while machines handle implementation.
I've found this through my own practice. Flow state—that experience of total immersion where exceptional productivity happens in short bursts—requires something AI cannot replicate. It demands committed action without attachment to results. It needs presence.
AI processes data. It cannot experience being. It lacks access to the present moment. This creates an unbridgeable gap.
The Market Split You're Not Seeing
AI/ML job share increased from 10% to 50% of the tech job market between 2023 and 2025. AI Engineer roles are up 143% since 2024.
These roles don't require better coders. They require better perceivers.
Companies now prioritize "context engineering"—the ability to feed AI agents the right background so they solve problems in one pass. This demands systems thinking, product sense, and the capacity to notice architectural debt before it compounds.
Meanwhile, Salesforce paused hiring software engineers citing 30% AI productivity gains. Meta's Zuckerberg suggested AI could do the work of a mid-level engineer. Klarna let their team shrink by 1,000 employees.
The industry is eliminating entry points while expecting senior talent to materialize. McKinsey forecasts a 14 million senior developer shortage by 2030 if junior training doesn't resume.
The perception that AI replaces humans misses the real insight: humans who can perceive what matters become exponentially more valuable precisely because everyone else is optimizing for speed.
Consciousness Creates the Unbridgeable Gap
This isn't just about market dynamics. It's about what humans are.
If you believe consciousness emerges from brains—that we're just neurons firing in time and space—then AI can surpass us. It's more logical, faster, tireless. We become obsolete.
But if consciousness is fundamental to existence, if time and space emerge from it rather than contain it, then we're playing a different game entirely. AI remains our creation within the field of time and space. We exist beyond those constraints.
This philosophical position changes everything. Technology becomes a mirror reflecting our own consciousness back to us. AI shows us what we've created, what we've consented to see.
The world isn't hostile. We're not victims of machines that might surpass us. We're conscious beings whose creations exist within our awareness.
What This Means for You
If you learned to code in a bootcamp, you learned a skill that's commoditizing. That's not failure. It's evolution.
The question now: can you develop perception?
Can you notice patterns others miss? Can you see which problems deserve solving before writing a single line of code? Can you maintain awareness of architectural principles while AI handles implementation?
Can you access flow state—that space of committed action without attachment to outcomes—where real innovation happens?
These capacities don't come from more tutorials. They emerge from practice, from building things, from failing and noticing why, from developing the judgment that only comes through embodied experience.
The bootcamp taught you syntax. The market now demands wisdom.
The Hopeful Story
This shift is hopeful, not catastrophic.
When machines handle execution, humans get to focus on ideas and vision. When AI takes over repetitive tasks, we can pursue meaning-generating activities. When coding becomes abundant, perception becomes valuable.
The developers who thrive won't be the fastest coders. They'll be the clearest thinkers. The ones who can hold complexity without collapsing it. The ones who notice what matters.
I play with AI every day. I have fun with it. It accelerates my learning curve and helps my thought process. But it doesn't replace the awareness I bring to the work. It amplifies what I already see.
The bootcamp sold you a lie about what matters. The truth is more interesting: you're not competing with machines. You're learning to see what machines cannot.
That's the work now. Not faster coding. Clearer seeing.
Read more of my thinking on consciousness, technology, and human transformation at roelsmelt.com.
Disrupt Consciousness explores the collision between exponential technologies and human awakening. I write about the questions that emerge when machines solve scarcity: what becomes of human purpose? How do we navigate abundance without inner work? What does it mean to be human when AI thinks? Join me in investigating the intersection of technological disruption and consciousness evolution.