I think structured learning is useful for many - the sad part of being an adult is that for most people, their lives become driven by responsibilities instead by curiosity. Sure, you may want to learn programming (and maybe you even have a good economic reason for that), but there are always "more important" things that need to be done right frakin now. Some people are good at self-organizing and can cut out time for learning, but for many, having an external entity create and enforce a structure for learning is a good way to hack one's problems with prioritizing stuff.

That's the point -- I didn't. I just needed it to convince someone to give me a chance. Employers would assume someone still in college for CS can program, and so look there. They don't automatically make that assumption for some rando with a different degree.

To be sure, there were also probably some job-searching techniques that would have worked, but they're also hard to learn from reading pointers online if you don't automatically have the skill.

I worked in chemical engineering roles for 5 years before deciding to attend a bootcamp. It seems like a refresher/shortcut to get into the webdev or programming industry, so a bit myopic, but it at least gives the added advantage of reducing the amount of time traditional programmers enter and gain traction in software development. Sometimes we only know that we love programming when we hate everything else, at least in my case.

Bear in mind that the tech job market is a lot different than much of the U.S. economy right now. There are fields where experienced candidates with strong resumes can go job hunting and hear crickets. To go from that to not really needing any formal credential is a big mental leap.