[michael_chip]

I'll throw in a vote for teaching yourself or using free resources and communities. Even if you go down the bootcamp route it is going to take a lot of self motivation and work outside of the bootcamp / afterwards in order to become job ready. Or at least do this to start with to make sure you like it.

I did this myself a few years years ago over lockdown. I had a lot of down time and worked on teaching myself web development full time 5 days a week for about a year. I was then able to land a job at a FAANG company through an apprenticeship scheme that they offer in the UK (I'm not sure if these kinds of schemes are available in the US) where I stayed for a year and a half and I am now working for a startup in a position I found through connections I made at my previous job. At the time I did have other offers for non-apprenticeship roles at other companies so don't let the absence of apprenticeships put you off if they aren't on offer in the US. The job market was definitely better when I was applying for my first job so the process might be more drawn out now. The main resource I used for self teaching was The Odin Project (https://www.theodinproject.com/). I also did a batch at The Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/) which was a great experience in general, especially for getting some hands on time working on projects with other people. I would say be curious, reach out to people who are working on things you find interesting to ask them for a chat and just persevere with the applications as you will definitely get a lot of rejections.

One more thing (might be UK specific as well) but I would check to see if there are any government funded bootcamps you might be able to get a place on. I know multiple people in the UK who got the job center to pay for them to do a bootcamp while they were on universal credit and now work in the industry.