I guess I haven’t clearly articulated this in writing, but friends do not let friends without substantive IT work experience and/or a credible IT degree take cybersecurity career bootcamps in 2025.
They are up to no good. Shenanigans. Malfeasance. They are not a safe way to get a job.
People salty that I am gatekeeping - I am literally trying to keep them out of paying a bunch of money to skeevy organizations who will not help them land a job at all in the collapsing cybersecurity job market.
Get a degree in CS or computer/network engineering. Pick a general niche in cybersecurity, preferably less popular. Get your basic IT certs. Get a generalist IT support role. Get your second-tier certs. Network with people like hell for a couple years. Keep up your self-study. Participate in the community. Get somewhat lucky.
If you can't get the degree, then everything is the same but a lot more of the general IT work and all the other stuff to make a lateral career move later. The military is a possibility if that's your thing.
@hacks4pancakes you're doing the right thing here. And when you do the right thing in a big, visible way there will always be people telling you that you're doing the wrong thing.
Sometimes they'll be right, so it's always good to check in every now and then to be sure. But as someone who has been hiring security people for a long time, I agree with your position. They don't turn people into the sort I want to hire.
Lesley Carhart 
Michael Weiss