$75k is about what the typical new college graduate with no industry experience gets as a salary for any major CS company in the bay area.

For a program that does 9-6 PM 5 days a week for 10 weeks, that's ~8 hours (not including lunch) x 5 days x 10 weeks = 400 total hours. That's about the equivalent class time to 8 semester-long CS courses.

Realistically, in terms of what they actually cover and what projects students have produced by the end of them, these programs are the equivalent of about 3 semester-long CS courses, in the best case. At best they are equivalent to around 10-15% of a degree.

> these programs are the equivalent of about 3 semester-long CS courses

I currently study at a top-5 CS school and previously attended a bootcamp. This comparison feels awkward to me, because they have neither equivalent structures nor goals.

The aims of most bootcamps, if I am to generalize, is to teach a relatively specific skillset applicable to industry. The most reasonable comparison would then be CS / ECE courses that aim to do the same (e.g. java & j2ee, web application development, java for android, etc.).

In this particular respect I would consider a bootcamp to be the equivalent of at least 4-5 "CS" courses, if not more. For one thing, the student teacher ratio is almost orders of magnitude better, and the material is often more relevant to current industry needs. I would also go as far as to say the quality of instructors at "bootcamps" teaching this material (at least, the one I attended) is superior.

On the other hand, there are more than a few individual semester long courses that are easily as grueling as a bootcamp. The courses I'm thinking of are traditional CS & ECE fare : compiler design & OS being prime examples. These are topics the bootcamp I attended (and, I assume all bootcamps) barely touch on, if at all - and all individually require almost as many hours as an entire 3 month bootcamp [1].

However, effort is pretty much also the only metric that can be used to compare the latter with "bootcamps". Since there is virtually 0 overlap [2] in material, it really is a matter of apples and oranges.

[1] For anyone but the exceedingly gifted, these courses require a minimum of 50 hrs a week.

[2] this lack of overlap also extends to classes on data structures & algorithms. This is material that's only taught obliquely (albeit somewhat effectively) at coding camps.

> a seasoned Python or Java developer who spends 10 weeks intensively learning Rails/iOS (and going beyond the curriculum, if the curriculum is also aimed at beginners) is probably worth $100K in the NY/SF area.

That's it?

Man, I'm suddenly feeling better about my higher salary in relatively less expensive LA.

I think that's a bit low. I'm a seasoned programmer with no CS degree, but an advanced degree "in a related field", live and work in the Bay Area (not SF) and my salary is closer to the mid-$100's per year.

A Rails "developer" might be worth just $100k, but that's because there are so many hipster/naive fresh graduates in the area willing to work for (relative) peanuts on social web app fluff.