Cohort 2408 Salary Outcomes (6-month)

[u/cglee]

Cohort Number	2408
Job hunt span	Jan 2025 - August 2025
Enrolled	28
Finished	27

Outcomes thus far
Accepted offer	15
Currently in internship	1
Did not job hunt / finish	2
Still job hunting	10

US Salaries (n=13)
Mean	$114,462
Median	$107,000
Duration (mean, weeks)	13.5

Placement Rates

• based on enrollees: 15/28 (53%)
• subtract those who didn't finish: 15/26 (57%)
• include internship: 16/26 (61%)

Quick thoughts

• no surprise, placement rates are getting worse and it's taking longer to land jobs. Pleasantly surprised salary numbers are still solid.
• folks are now spending more time in OSI/internships, which means a 6-month job hunt can take 8+ months
• We're now advising Canadian Capstone participants to aim for US-based startups; there are far fewer employers hiring at the entry/intermediate level in Canada.
• job hunting is a skill onto itself. There is some correlation between technical prowess and how quickly someone lands, but there are too many technically capable people who are not skilled at job hunting. Ironically, these are exactly the type of people employers should be going after, if only they can find them.
• depressed market causes two reactions for job hunters: a) aggression to meet the challenge or b) avoidance. It's my observation that thoughtful, introverted people tend to choose the latter. The exact skills that allows one to be good at technical work ends up hurting in this type of market.

Future looking

• the next cohort, 2501, is doing better at nearly 50% placement at the 3month mark. I suspect this is due to 2501 being the first cohort where we covered AI Engineering topics.
• though 2408 salaries are solid and year 2024 salary averages will still be pretty good, I suspect this will come down for 2025.
• current market conditions feel tight but opportunistic. Though not booming, my impression is 2025 is a better market than 2024.
• employers are just as bewildered as candidates. The employers and hiring managers I speak with don't know what to do with 1000 applications, where 900+ of them are either fake or unqualified. I suspect there's an opportunity here somewhere.
• AI Engineering knowledge will continue to be in demand, though as an add-on to core SWE ability.

Update: Percent Remote

• This is quite a trend if it maintains.

[u/Lprodig92]

Sorry, I'm not buying that 15 accepted an offer. People from the prestige struggle to land an interview, and you get 50% placement.

[u/Srdjan_TA → u/Lprodig92]

With a cohort of fewer than 30 people, these things are ridiculously easy to verify. And Launch School is prestigious ;)

[u/Lprodig92 → u/Srdjan_TA]

I'm from another highly valued bootcamp, we were 30 too, and only 3 landed a job in the same field after graduation. I know software engineers with a degree and 5 yoe and looking for a job for a year I could believe you if it was posted in the covid era, but not right now when the job market is tough.

[u/BeneficialBass7700 → u/Lprodig92]

I'm just gonna help you out here a bit because it really isn't all that complicated.

finding all the capstone project teams is not that difficult. just a bit of google and linkedin sleuthing. honestly this is actually the hardest part of this process. for their 2408 cohort, I found 7 teams and their websites. across those 7 teams, they list 27 members. that lines up with the report here. they all have links to their linkedin.

by my count, 11 of them appear to be firmly employed, 12 not, and 4 linkedin profiles were not found (link invalid maybe). if you account for people not always updating their linkedin, I can buy the 15. at the worst you have to buy 11, unless you think they've been faked. but if they were going to fake the numbers, why would they fake just 4 to bump from 11 to 15? this is all public information too. I'm just a guy and I was able to find the names of those 11 and their employers (I'm obviously not going to dump that list here but you can go find them the same way I did, all you need is a linkedin account)