First, to say there's no skills gap is insanity. I refuse to believe anyone in the industry actually believes that - even the worst bootcamps are placing folks, they just place folks that are not well prepared and shift the burden of training to the company. I'm constantly blown away that some of those people get jobs, and they somehow keep them, as the companies just start training from almost scratch. That really sucks, and a lot of companies are (rightly) wary of that, and a lot of companies throw bootcamp resumes straight in the trash can, but there are enough that won't that it doesn't matter.
Don't get me wrong, most of the skills gap is for capable engineers, and if you understand data structures, algorithms, architecture, memory management, etc. you'll get a job very quickly. We're talking within a week. But most bootcamp grads don't know any of that stuff, so the market is flooded with junior rails devs. (And even those folks still slowly get OK jobs).
There are audited, standardized reports from an organization called CIRR. Look at them - you'll see 90%+ placement rates, audited and from third parties. Granted there are a lot of lies on the home pages of bootcamp grad websites, but the perception HN has is much worse than reality at the good bootcamps.
I know the internal financials of quite a few bootcamps, and most are making a killing. It's really not hard to make money by charging $10,000/head so long as you keep demand. Iron Yard got out ahead of its skis and tried to open 16 locations at once. I have no idea what happened to Dev Bootcamp but the only way they could be losing money is if their expenses were absurd. They were bought for $80 million. I think the most likely scenario is the acquirer tried to change things up and killed everything.