edit: Thank you all for the good comments.
I've spent the past 5 years aimlessly freelancing, and my family is thrilled that I've finally done a big thing by entering into a coding bootcamp in search of full-time employment, however I might have to further disappoint them by dropping out.
It's so expensive and it's such terrible education. The instructors are shockingly amateurish and unprofessional. The bootcamp is supposed to help land jobs, but all of the instructors are just a year or two out of this very bootcamp, which reveals the ineffectiveness of their job placement claims.
I also thought the bootcamp would be able to accommodate more advanced students like myself, but instead I've just sat here for a week (worth over $1.5k) hustling on my own project without any guidance at all because the teachers are training complete beginners.
Instead of shelling out a ridiculous amount of money, I could drop out and go back to the self-learning that I've become disenchanted with over the past 2 years. I'm scared that I'll return to the aimlessness that defined my life before. That is definitely what my family will expect me to do. But I feel determined to save money on a fruitless endeavor and make a much more effective decision, for example, by torrenting Udemy courses and building my skills and portfolio that way.
The way I see it, there are 3 types of employers with regard to your situation:
Require degree, dgaf about boot camps.
Will consider your application if you do a boot camp.
Will consider your application despite zero credentials, and let you do some aptitude test, and interview you for an entry level job if you do well on the test.
All types will probably test you after the interview on practical problems.
You can only get a job from type 3, and you can get to type 2 by finishing the course. Just better chances. If you have aptitude already, then you will be more hirable than your peers when you get done.
I mean if it sucks, I would try to find out if your bootcamp is known by employers as being shit. If not, then it's a credential.
Thanks, these are good points.