Reading the headline I was like WTF that sounds like government run a muck. Then I got to this part...
"The programs typically last 10 to 12 weeks. Potential recruits are often told that they have a shot at a job or internship at a competitive tech company like Facebook or Google. Tuition costs vary widely. At Hackbright Academy, it’s $15,000 for a 10 week program. Full scholarships are available, and students who land a job at a company in the Hackbright network can request a partial refund. At Hack Reactor, where tuition costs over $17,000, 99 percent of students are offered a job at companies like Adobe and Google. The average salary is over six figures, Phillips told me."
To sum up these companies are charging a lot of money (more than college tuition) while at the same time advertising extraordinary results "99% job placement" with the likes of Google and Adobe. I'm guessing that some of them are making false advertising claims with respect to the chances of landing a job and that is why there is scrutiny here. There was a similar case with cooking schools not long ago also in CA[0] After reading that paragraph I'm a lot more skeptical of these companies.
Man, I have to say that as someone who has interviewed students from these classes, I would bet a lot of money that 99% of these students aren't being hired. It made me really uncomfortable thinking about how many people in the room had just spent 15k to hack around with some people in an almost "engineering fantasy camp" type environment. I'm all for this law honestly.
I participated in App Academy. The program had strengths and weaknesses, but to their credit, they culled the class at the halfway point, and gave folks who had no chance of getting hired within a reasonable timeframe a full refund of their deposit.
There was some bait-and-switch with regard to their "free unless/until you get a job" pitch. I think the competition for students in the space is increasing pressure, and oversight is probably a necessary thing.
In my opinion, students who went on to A-list companies probably could have gotten a job without the bootcamp. But the offer is still compelling if you get a couple months of intense introduction to an in-demand framework, and don't pay anything out-of-pocket (App Academy collects when you get hired).
Culling sounds kind of like they either needed a longer course or a deeper applications pipeline. It's definitely not a thing at Hack Reactor.
As an aside, I met most of the first class of App Academy. I was really impressed with Ned's teaching as well as the progress Hugo and a couple of the others were making. It was seeing that that lead me to go to an immersive school and it was one of the best investments I've ever made.
There was a paramedic school around that was closely tied in with one of the national ambulance companies, who offered / guaranteed jobs (matching, help with recruiting, etc) to graduates, the catch being that if you were "undesirable", but a graduate nonetheless, you'd be offered a job with the company in the middle of the rural Dakotas or West Virginia or somewhere "undesirable" (apologies to those areas - more that young people trying to do the paramedic thing are usually looking for the "excitement" of big-city medicine).
If you didn't take the job, well, they'd fulfilled things, and got you a(n undesirable) job.
What happened to the students that were culled? I can't even imagine what you'd do after getting dropped from a class you paid for (even with refund). That must be tremendously demoralizing.
that could even be true, but some for-profit schools are notorious for manipulating statistics like that in a variety of ways. Hiring people themselves, paying other outfits to hire them temporarily, offers of terrible jobs nobody would take, and flat-out lying.
That's not to say it's happening here, of course. I'm sure some of these programs are great. But it's something people should consider when looking at any program like this, especially unregulated ones.
> that could even be true, but some for-profit schools are notorious for manipulating statistics like that in a variety of ways.
The people from my cohort are not just statistics to me. I know them personally, and all I can say is that they are very satisfied with how things have turned out.
Also note that with App Academy, the tuition is a percentage of your first year's salary. So the company is incentivized to ensure that students get a job (and the highest paying one they can), because otherwise they don't get paid.
No offense intended; I'm glad you and your friends had a good experience. My concern is about the market in general.
I like App Academy's percentage-based approach. That's definitely putting their money where their mouth is. I think the only thing undemonstrated for me is how much difference their program makes. It'd be interesting to take their pre App-Academy resumes and put them in the hands of a good recruiter.
> I think the only thing undemonstrated for me is how much difference their program makes.
It can be difficult for people who have not experienced it to understand the sort of progress you can make in such a short period of time. I obviously can't speak as to the other hiring bootcamps, but the guided pair programming approach taken by App Academy is very effective for rapid hands-on learning. I had taken a CS class or two prior to App Academy, and the difference is night and day.
Also, there is more to the program than just technical learning. There is a 3 week hiring bootcamp, where everyone works together on the job search process, under the guidance of an App Academy hiring instructor. For people new to the tech industry, this is very effective at bringing them up to speed on how hiring works in tech.
At this point, there are many companies that employ App Academy alumni (including thoughtbot, Facebook, Vimeo, Hipmunk, Twilio, and Zendesk), and many have realized the quality of its graduates, and so whenever a new cohort is getting close to graduation, managers from those companies come to a "demo day," where students can show their capstone projects and get interviews.
I've been pair programming for more than a decade, so I definitely know how much it can help newbies. My point is more that one way they can skew the stats in their favor is by hiring people who would have been hired by those companies with or without the program. E.g., people whose issue is self esteem, or people who aren't good at self-evaluation, or people who lack the sort of personal connections that let other hard-to-evaluate candidates get their first break.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing, of course I'm just saying that in this market a strong hiring rate alone doesn't prove anything about the program.
I'm with you there. I was here for Bubble 1.0 as well, and there was a similar frenzy around hiring and job seeking.
The big difference now for me is that in 1999, the tools were much more primitive. Then, it was more plausible to me that somebody smart with a little technical training could just leap in and figure a lot out. Now, though, the technologies are much more elaborate.
They aren't being hired. I met with a bunch of Dev Bootcamp students and their number one complaint was they couldn't find jobs. Maybe I'll write a story about that.
Confirming that my sample size of X Bootcamp students have trouble finding jobs. It's still a competitive market, but it seems like there is an increased demand for skilled talent.
What seems really odd to me, is that the market for creative talent seems to want the cheapest, least skilled talent for some reason. I suspect this has something to do with how we as a culture value creative art labor versus programming labor.
What happened in this country to personal responsibility? It's gotten so bad at this point that if a company charges what seems to be a large amount, that we justify imposing ridiculous laws just because it seems "right" or "fair." As long as these companies aren't guaranteeing 100% a job and merely advertising the statistics, it is solely on the student to decide whether or not 20k is an absurd price for a 70% (or whatever chance). If the company guarantees a job and doesn't fulfill, then you have a law suit and you recoup your money that way. There is absolutely no regulation necessary in this instance. Take responsibility for your own actions.
Edit: Downvotes? Let me clarify. I want Americans to prosper. Absolving people of the need to make sound decisions and placing the burden on the government in more and more scenarios is not going to help our populace become any wiser. If a law suit doesn't work, report them to the BBB. If that's a joke, write a post and leverage the internet to inform people of the company's malpractice. Getting the government involved hurts everyone, from the higher barrier to entry to comply with regulations, to higher consumer prices due to lack of competition for the incumbents who can afford to enter. This isn't what we stand for.
You sound like somebody who has never actually tried suing somebody.
Lawsuits are hard. They take years, are very stressful, and you generally need significant up-front capital to make them happen. Then if (if!) you win a lawsuit the cash doesn't magically appear when the judge bangs his gavel; there's a whole process for trying to extract your money. And if they have spent the money and are now broke? Well, basically, tough shit.
And of course, winning a lawsuit and recovering money doesn't actually turn back the clock on the lost time and heartache. It just means you've managed to get some of your cash back. Which may feel like a very poor return, and is certainly a waste.
And that's even before we get to the various theoretical reasons that regulation makes sense here. For example, there's an information asymmetry: these instant schools know a ton more about what they're selling than their customers do, making it much easier for them to exploit. Plus they're selling training; students, by definition, are missing a lot of important knowledge and are outsiders to the industry. The normal feedback loops of commerce work best with repeat purchases; one-time purchases greatly restrict the invisible hand's power. And if nothing else, we need a regulator to make sure that the statistics are solid.
As somebody who has hired developers in CA and will likely do so again, I think this is great. I don't want bright young people getting fucked over. I want them to enter the industry in a way that gives them a real shot at a career.
Thanks for your perspective. You are correct, I have never personally sued anyone. I was given a great opportunity by one of these such programs and it has completely changed my life for the better. That's not to say all of them provide the same for all students, but I believe they deserve a fair defense at this point.
Glad to hear it. But given that, you should be strongly in favor of reasonable regulation.
These programs cost basically nothing to start, and the major qualification needed is marketing expertise, not technical or educational skill. And, as others have pointed out, the profits could be substantial.
No barrier to entry, an uneducated market susceptible to manipulation, and no easy way to evaluate product quality means that even if the early entrants are perfectly good, the incentives are such that I'd expect a lot of their competitors to be fools or scam artists, unable to deliver good results. In which case, the whole thing will get a bad reputation, harming not only a lot of students, but the programs who are doing well.
As a parallel, consider food quality and safety regulation. It's hard for a consumer to tell what's in a sausage. It's to the benefit of all quality sausage-makers to have enough regulation to make sure their competitors are all doing a reasonably good job. If any fool or criminal can jump into the business, the best case is that good producers will be trying to compete with companies using 30% dog food and old meat. But more likely is that a bunch of people will get sick, causing a giant scare where people, unable to tell good from bad, stop buying all sausage.
What happened in this country to personal responsibility?
What happened to fraud being frowned upon? If you take someone's money in exchange for something you can't follow through on, that is fraud, pure and simple. Shouting "caveat emptor" doesn't change that, and doesn't change the fact that fraud needs a remedy.
Of course fraud is frowned upon. You seem to be jumping to the conclusion that these companies are definitely up to no good. Can you provide any evidence of that anecdotal or otherwise that they are defrauding people?
The allegation seems to be they are charging a lot of money for something they can't deliver on (i.e., a promised high placement rate in well-paying jobs).
That would be fraud, and if it's happening, it's entirely OK to do something about it.
It sounds extra-ordinary to have 99% hiring rate. However it isn't as an amazing claim as it sounds.
Hack Reactor is the only boot camp to advertise this 99% hiring rate (and they weren't all at Adobe and Google...) and they have a few reasons for it:
1) There's roughly a 1 million deficit of developers in the US right now - If you can set up a website, you can get a job. If you can get a job, you will get a job in the Bay Are at some crummy startup.
2) They don't count people who aren't looking for employment afterwards. In the bay a lot of people have money and ideas but not skills and sense. A good portion of their students are startup wannabes who go on to try and start a company. If you're not directly looking for employment after the class is over, you're not included in the statistics.
3) $17,000 to get in. This cuts out all and any non-invested students. No degree, no diploma, only $17,000 and an ad. Those applying are guaranteed to believe they can succeed.
4) There's an interview process. All boot camps have interviews, however Hack Reactor has probably the strictest there is and their heaviest hitter. The interviewers aren't HR people, they're veteran developers, and they screen out anyone who isn't already employable.
5) They hire students as 'hacker-in-residence'. These are people they deem either fit to teach, or want to train more. Or both. These are now employed, for however short period of time.
These things combined, Location, Cost, Screening, Being an Employer and Selective population, all add up to being able to boast an honest 99% hiring rate.
And in the end, even if it sounds amazing, again keep in mind that the market is still exploding and anyone who can set up a website and write a few scripts can get a job as a developer right now. It sounds amazing and, honestly, it is.
That's exactly what I'm thinking. If you're going to charge tuition in excess of what existing community colleges do, I think you need to expect to be regulated like one.
I just don't see how the cost structure of putting a dozen students and an instructor in a room with laptops for a week comes to ~$20000. That seems pretty suspicious.
It's not even the price that is a problem per se the problem is the extraordinary claims. It's like the Bernie Madoff of education schemes. Who wouldn't invest 15k to have a "99%" chance of getting a 6 figure job with Google? Of course when you think about it that is almost certainly a false claim but someone w/o engineering experience probably doesn't realize that.
As a graduate of Hack Reactor, the one program that places 99% of its students, I find this comment offensive.
I've known students in every cohort from the first one (which was halfway finished when I started as part of the second) to the current group. I was in the interview pike at Google, a Japanese game company and a number of start-ups when I took my current position. One of my classmates took a position at Adobe. Many of my good friends from the program took jobs at YC companies. Google has been interviewing pretty much everyone from the two most recent classes. Not to mention the fact that a few students are already profitable on their group projects before even leaving: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/honeybadger/
Hack Reactor has been extremely active on Quora answering exactly how their hiring rates are calculated. The stats only include base salary and don't yet include the most recent couple of classes, which have done even better. The mean result is significantly over 100k/year and are a far better ROI than any credentialed degree I know of.
The level of transparency Hack Reactor offers is unparalleled. Their directory has been updated to include what every single student from the first three cohorts was doing before and after the program here: http://www.hackreactor.com/engineers/
I do not work for the school and have no financial incentive to say this. I've kept close to the HR network out of gratitude for what truly was a life changing inflection point for me. Doing the program was one of the very best investments I've ever made. It saddens me to see the school threatened by reactionary bureaucratic regulators and it angers me to see people like pmorici quoting their extremely conservative report on student outcomes and making accusations of false advertising.
My comment wasn't direct at Hack Reactor in particular which if you read it carefully you would realize. If they are different than the typical for profit education outfit that's great but I really doubt the state is out on some witch hunt for no reason in general.
Indeed, I too started off wondering what kind of regulation the state was interested in imposing. While the article does not mention any specific regulation, the inclusion of a "bootcamp's" claim that 12 weeks and $17,000 would get you on average a "six figure" job made it pretty clear why the state is interested. (For quick reference, keeping an average of 13 students enrolled for a year is $1M revenue, and "getting a job offer" for a "six figure" job doesn't actually make a verifiable claim that these people get or keep those jobs.)
"The programs typically last 10 to 12 weeks. Potential recruits are often told that they have a shot at a job or internship at a competitive tech company like Facebook or Google. Tuition costs vary widely. At Hackbright Academy, it’s $15,000 for a 10 week program. Full scholarships are available, and students who land a job at a company in the Hackbright network can request a partial refund. At Hack Reactor, where tuition costs over $17,000, 99 percent of students are offered a job at companies like Adobe and Google. The average salary is over six figures, Phillips told me."
To sum up these companies are charging a lot of money (more than college tuition) while at the same time advertising extraordinary results "99% job placement" with the likes of Google and Adobe. I'm guessing that some of them are making false advertising claims with respect to the chances of landing a job and that is why there is scrutiny here. There was a similar case with cooking schools not long ago also in CA[0] After reading that paragraph I'm a lot more skeptical of these companies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/06/culinary-school-gra...