Flatiron School settles for operating without license, employment/salary claims
ag.ny.gov
ag.ny.gov
Good to crack down on this.
"In order to obtain a SED license, a non-degree granting career school must meet a number of criteria, including using an approved curriculum and employing a licensed director and teachers."
This is worrying. Part of why these bootcamps have been a valuable addition is that they've been able to use their own curricula and train their own teachers.
(I grew up around my parents' vocational school, board of education interactions looked totally insane)
We didn't really drop anything, an extra day appeared because they were already better prepared before starting the course with basic materials.
A syllabus -- per dictionary.com, "an outline or other brief statement of the main points of a discourse, the subjects of a course of lectures, the contents of a curriculum, etc." -- is required by a governing authority that presumably has an interest in what citizen/subject (per your local regime) are being taught. This seems legitimate in the general case.
Your syllabus can be "unit-n: overview of current layout technologies for www browsers". Problem solved, no?
Good thing you don't need your syllabus accredited to have an approved curriculum (and in fact not even sure there's such a thing?)
Also, accredited institutions make small changes to syllabi (such as the one you mentioned) all the time.
(e: Just noticed your comment down-thread, and now assume you're not in the USA. So edit, prepend "In the USA" to my comment. Relevant at least to the article I guess.)
You'd need to compare them to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley etc...
I attended this school and while most of my classmates were highly-intelligent people of diverse backgrounds, I can absolutely say it is much easier to get into Flatiron school than any of the programs listed above.
If the goal is to get a high-paying coding job as quickly as possible, bootcamps look good. Would be interesting to look at longer-term trends in a few years - career advancement, job type, management level, industry within tech, etc.
> CS graduates going into other fields [like finance]
Finance is just like every other high-professional industry, they train you for what you need to know because they are invested in your success. I worked in that industry for 6 years. Most banks run a 2-3 month internal bootcamp for fresh college hires. I was a math/econ double major and sat next to an english lit major in my class. My brother was a poli-sci major and went straight from college -> bootcamp -> Goldman Sachs as a developer.
I think people greatly overestimate the value of their major (excluding those going into academics). My personal experience in finance and tech is that Finance and CS majors are the absolute worst about overvaluing their education. 2 years of work experience^ erases any "superiority" of an industry-specific major compared to an art history major (all else equal).
^ I've done a fair amount of mid-level hiring. I've told people in the past that mentioning your major in an interview after 2 years of work experience is a strong strike #1 to me. If your major is still relevant to your ability to do a job, I generally assume your recent work experience has been worthless.
College:
30 weeks
40 hours per week
4 years
= 4800 hours
49 weeks
50 hours per week
2 years
= 4900 hours
This seems like a left turn from my comment. Nowhere did I say bootcamps are a replacement for formal education. I was comparing the value of time in the workforce vs. time spent in school. I was discussing finance majors who, shockingly, also do internships. I don't know anyone that took a bootcamp as a replacement to a college education, so I'm not sure where you pulled any of this from.
> I don't know where you work that a developer working "only" 50h weeks is "generous" but I hope I never find myself applying there.
Maybe my part of the world is unique, but I've never worked less than 50 hours per week in my 10 years and I honestly can't say I know anyone that does excluding people with "non-professional" jobs.
Some of the stats in the thread seem to indicate that a not insignificant minority do self employ or consult.
I say this as someone who just went to college because that's what you do and only got into software because my degree led to a $10/hr job which could not pay rent and student loans. If I had gotten 25 or 30 an hour there's a good chance I never would have had the impetus to teach myself anything
I wasn't, I explicitly said I can't speak for finance majors. My point I would not consider 2 years of work and a 4 year CS degree from a well-regarded school to be equivalent for technical hires.
(This is at a state school in the US.)
Seriously, that's insane. I've never heard of anything even resembling that.
My main complaint about boot camps is that they give students the impression that the 2-6 month intense boot camp is close to what they will need to be successful in their career. It's not. However, my experience has been that after boot camp it's pretty easy to reorient those people to understanding that they will need to work hard to improve for their whole career. Basically, a good boot camp graduate is very similar in skill level to a good 2nd year coop/intern student -- but then they need to study the rest of the stuff on their own.
My main complaint about university programmes is actually pretty similar. People leave the programme with the idea "I know CS", sort of like how Neo knows kung fu in the Matrix. My experience has been that it's much harder to explain to new graduates that they still have a lot to learn. People with master's degrees are even harder to convince. In addition, because coop/intern sessions are poorly monitored, quite a lot of graduates are actually completely hopeless at programming.
But either way, I think you can make a successful career. Sometimes you see boot camp graduates complaining, "How could I have known that" when the answer is, "Yeah, having 4 years to screw around with this stuff and do a variety of different projects really helps". Sometimes I see CS graduates say, "Wait, this complexity is completely ridiculous. Nobody can be productive in this mess" when the answer is, "Yeah, working on realistic projects has a huge benefit".
I personally don't like the current generation of boot camps, mainly because of the potential to exploit the students badly. However, I think there is a huge need for something like them and I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve. Having said that, for people who know they want to be a programmer and are young/able I still recommend getting a CS degree at the moment.
I assure you, a bootcamp for European medieval history will not produce average salaries of $73,000.
That's like saying coding bootcamps don't produce chefs. Different goals for different programs.
The parent poster is comparing how successful universities are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs, compared to how successful coding bootcamps are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs.
I point out that this is an unreasonable comparison. University averages are dragged down by low-earning, low-employable majors.
(One may conclude that going to university for the sake of a low-wage, low-employable major is worthless. To which I will have to ask - how well do you think software engineers will be paid, if the 20 million current American college students were to switch their major to comp sci tomorrow?)
One of the operating models of bootcamps is as a recruiter for tech companies. In addition to tuition from students, the bootcamp receives a fee from employers when graduates are hired. This provides incentives bootcamps to encourage students to take jobs as apprentices. And whether a student has the financial resources to take on an apprentice role can also factor into admission selection.
1. Education industry fails to meet industry demands and to offer fair, affordable education
So, 2: Innovators ask, "If it pleases the crown, we would like to be allowed to try to fill this gap and offer an education that people can voluntarily pay for if they desire."
3. Only if we say so. Prove to us you can teach adult humans, peon.
4. But you already failed to do this? And you had the advantage of taxpayer dollars funding you. Why do you have authority?
The school should be punished and pay compensation for lying. However, we should not hand over the right to offer education to a government that, given the opportunity to provide it, failed the competency test to "actually teach adult humans" already.
Any accredidation should be voluntary.
The thing that is held behind a barrier is issuing a credential. And it seems reasonable that someone generating diplomas (or claims they can teach you enough to get you a job) should itself be held to accreditation or a standards body.
But we (software developers in industry) could be making that standards body, rather than sitting on our butts and waiting for the government to do it.
A story everyone speaking of education reform should be cognizant of is that of Jaime Escalante.
Another issue aside from innovating to meet demand: Personally, if I want to sit down tomorrow and earn a degree in a subject, I don't know why I can't just self study and take exams to do this. To me, anyone in the world being able to earn the equivalent of a Harvard degree appears to be the ultimate policy in dismantling inequality and advancing opportunity. Why should Harvard degrees be limited to a small number of people? They really shouldn't.
and who manufactures these magical exams you speak of, and on what authority?
Both sets are managed by non profits.
There should be no reason why a poor minority, boy or girl, struggling to make ends meet in a rough neighborhood cannot get online, self study, and one day go and take a seat for these exams. In fact, this should be subsidized by government more than university classes--it is far more efficient and more fair, just better overall.
So these are the primary tests, both in a literal and figurative sense, which establish ability and competency to practice medicine.
After this point, getting the residency requirements and practical lab skills is just a formality.
If what it comes down to is basically some exams, we should be able to give more people access to that. Especially in STEM fields.
You can do this with some professions, but I'd like to think my medical doctor has had actual experience with living people and cadavers.
At that point, as I said, the hospital training is just a formality with some exceptions. Surgeons obviously need to demonstrate dexterity and composure. Candidates need to show up to work on time, etc.
We standardized for a reason. Could those standards be changed? Absolutely. I still don't think some poor person should be allowed online study and then to pass an exam and be a medical doctor.
Fwiw, I'm still saying we should have residencies.
In both cases you study the material and are tested on it. There is nothing magical about paying to study inside a university.
There are also labs that cover things that aren't going to be on the tests. There are practical examinations along the way. It's a whole big process and fairly standardized for a reason. It's not like many other disciplines. I got to witness my daughter go through it.
As much as love her and think she's the most brilliant person ever, she needed the full educational experience and would benefit from more. In fact, many medical doctors keep adding to their education.
Other fields could be the same way, if they could get over the cultural and authoritarian bureaucracies. Architecture has less scientific foundations, but it's nearly impossible to do without the prestige of an academic institution.
Medicine is one of the most difficult fields, but I still think if you can demonstrate the same ability, you should be able to go to a residency program.
Academia has an unfair grip on modern credentials, and I think that is one of the great things about tech. For example, some of the very most brilliant modern innovators abandoned academia, Musk, Gates and Newell come to mind.
Except that instead of checking in awful, unmaintainable spaghetti, they'll be making life or death decisions.
I wouldn't let an unsupervised zero-work-experience fresh grad be solely responsible for a product. Doctors make important decisions - without any supervision or 'code review' on a daily basis.
> Both sets are managed by non profits.
without an explanation as to how these non-profits are founded, given authority to regulate a given credential, and populated with people, fail to see how 2 negates 1.
What happens in the classroom is largely not what defines a Harvard degree/graduate -- quite the contrary, actually. While some classes are very well taught, many of them round to something like "hey, you're smart, I'm going to pretend to teach, give you some reading lists, and you can figure it out for yourself."
There are little learning hacks like office hours (maybe) or talking with TAs (maybe), but again these are not the defining features of a Harvard grad (high quality or otherwise).
Most law schools lie about their graduate employment prospects as well. If the risk of being caught times the penalty is smaller than the increased revenue, why not fudge the numbers?
"The government" can only do the job that elected politicians allow it to do: the dedication and professionalism of front-line staff can easily be wasted by poor strategy and questionable agendas from the people at the top. Source: 10 years experience working in education.
This is way too generic. To grant a standardized degree (e.g., BS, MBA, PhD), sure. As a generic, "show me that you are qualified to teach adults before I let you" I could not disagree more. Adults can decide what they want to learn (karate or Python, basket weaving or machine learning) and where they want to go. The state's role, if there is one, should be to inform, not limit the options. My 2c.
No opinion about this. But taxpayer's money should not be used to enable schools that do not provide an adequate education. No one is better off with a diploma from ITT Technical Institute or Corinthian College, there is no good reason for places like ITT or Corinthian to exist and even less reason to support them with public money.
When I worked MakerSquare about three years ago they, Hack Reactor, and I think Dev Bootcamp were trying to lead an initiative that would lead to standardized reporting of hiring stats. This was something we were excited about at MakerSquare because our hiring stats were legitimately great at the time and we knew that in many cases this wasn't true of our competitors. When Hack Reactor bought the company it was assuring to see that they were finding similar success.
One thing that concerns me today, however, is that I still see ads on Facebook and other places for Hack Reactor's immersive program that report the exact same stats they were reporting three years ago. I find it very, very hard to believe those numbers are still accurate. In fact I'd go so far as to say they must be lying. They expanded their program dramatically through acquisition (MakerSquare and others) and then ramping up a very large "remote" program (a program that follows the same curriculum but taught entirely online). When I left MakerSquare (then acquired by Hack Reactor) I was under the impression that career services were not provided for remote students. They must be messing with the numbers somehow.
There needs to be more honesty in the industry because I believe there really is a great opportunity to do good.
I can't speak to their advertising and if the new numbers are reflected in that. I can't see bootcamps being around in 5 years without some major changes.
P.S. Career services are provided for remote students.
Good to hear. There was some debate about whether or not to provide services when I was there. I do wonder how effective those services are however. A big part of providing them is relationships with hiring partners in cities. It's a very tough thing to do from afar.
I agree with your headline: this is a much bigger problem than people realize. The solution is CIRR (http://cirr.org). CIRR schools -- including Hack Reactor -- generally report outcome statistics that are similar to Course Report's third-party industry averages (~70% placement rate), whereas non-CIRR schools generally report 9X%.
It sounds like you've gotten the a couple of wrong impressions about Hack Reactor. No offense taken (thanks for the kind words too!) and I hope you don't mind if I issue some corrections:
We don't use out-of-date statistics in our marketing, and we really don't market based off of statistics at all. It is hard to do so given the problem you pointed out. If you see out-of-date statistics anywhere, it is a grave error that I would love to correct. Please screenshot and email to shawn@hackreactor.com. Current statistics are on our site and cirr.org.
Students in our remote program receive the same career services that our other campuses do: about a third of student-facing staff work full-time on helping alums get jobs. The program is not very large (~20 students per cohort) and is one of our better-performing "campuses".
The ~70% placement rate seems to refer to what percentage of applicants get full time jobs within 6 months of graduating. For within 3 months of graduating, the placement rate seems to drop to 30-40%. (See https://cirr.org/data)
https://www.coursereport.com/reports/2016-coding-bootcamp-jo...
What you said is also true though.
As long as there is money to be made by throwing around misleading statistics, this is unfortunately not going to happen.
Transparency can come from many fronts.
NYT on 24 August 2017: "The Flatiron School in New York may have discovered one path. Founded in 2012, Flatiron has a single campus in downtown Manhattan and its main offering is a 15-week immersive coding program with a $15,000 price tag. More than 95 percent of its 1,000 graduates there have landed coding jobs."
two months later
NY AG, 17 October 2017: "However, Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously that the 98.5% employment rate included not only full time salaried employees but also apprentices, contract employees and self-employed freelance workers, some who were employed for less than twelve weeks. Similarly, Flatiron failed to clearly and conspicuously disclose that its $74,447 average salary claim included full time employed graduates only, which represent only 58% of classroom graduates and 39% of online graduates."
Instead of writing, "More than 95 percent of its 1,000 graduates there have landed coding jobs." The Times should've written "Flatiron claims more than 95 percent of its 1,000 graduates there have landed coding jobs." Those two words Flatiron claims are the difference between reporting and restating as fact.
Ironic that the only audited school is now the one having issues with misleading statistics.
https://abovethelaw.com/2010/06/the-secret-to-100-employed-a...
If you read the AG release, the complaint was that "Flatiron did not disclose clearly and conspicuously" what the 98.5% and $75k numbers consisted of.
This information was included, in detail, in each of their job reports. This is from their earliest one from December of 2014:
"Of the 225 job seeking graduates with salary information available:
a. 162 accepted full-time salaried roles,
b. Forty-one accepted paid apprenticeships (An apprenticeship is defined as a paid position of defined duration, usually 8-12 weeks, often paid hourly and on a contract basis. Often an apprenticeship is used to evaluate a candidate for full time salaried status),
c. Twelve accepted contractor positions (A contractor position is defined as full-time or voluntary part-time, paid at market rate, and without the expectation that the initial rate is temporary and will be re-evaluated in 3-6 months).
d. Ten accepted freelance opportunities."
"7. Initial compensation for the full-time salaried roles ranged as follows:
a. Salary range of $40,000-$59,999 – nine individuals,
b. Salary range of $60,000-$69,999 – forty-six individuals,
c. Salary range of $70,000-$79,999 – forty-four individuals,
d. Salary range of $80,000-$89,999 – thirty-eight individuals,
e. Salary range of $90,000+ - nineteen "
On the web pages that contained the 98.5% and 74k figures, there was a link to download the report with the detailed data. The AG did not think that was clear enough for consumers - likely because the average consumer isn't going to download and read the details.
There's a difference between saying the data wasn't clear enough and the data was fraudulent. In this case, they are not disputing the numbers, they were disputing the marketing around those numbers.
Full Disclosure: I am a Flatiron alum and I worked at Flatiron for 3 years. I have problems with the top-level management team and would not work for any of them again. None of my reasons are related to their desire and ability to create great outcomes for the students that come through Flatiron School. I would (and have) recommend the immersive programs to people who want to start careers in web development.
I can't remember last time I saw anyone but lawyers manage to defend someone they really don't like
* Past performance may actually be totally made up.
They would have you believe that you can come in with little to no relevant experience, spend 3 months learning ML in python and walk out with a job as a Data Scientist - when the reality is what job you can land post-bootcamp is probably going to be based on what experience you had going in. A couple years of experience in analytics, research, finance, or similar plus a DS bootcamp will lead to a very different outcome than 1-2 years of sales or retail + the same bootcamp.
But that's not a great sales pitch from the bootcamp org, so its "in 3 Months you'll be a data scientist working on cutting edge ML/AI!" instead of "in 3 months you can probably get an entry level data scientist role if you have 2+ years of relevant experience, or if you're completely new to this a data analyst job where if you work hard and keep your skills up in the mean time you can get a better gig in a year or two!".
I did meet a Galvanize DS grad who was working as a DS at a large SF startup...in a probationary role created explicitly for bootcamp graduates. (I had applied for the same startup with a strong referral and was eventually ghosted due to lack of Masters/Phd)
I believe the 90% claim, historically, is close to valid. A fairer representation might have been 5 in 6 (83.3%), but it was pretty close to the mark. You can see where people in the early cohorts are working, and the success rate is very high.
What has changed? (1) Job market is more competitive. There are more "graduates" of "boot camp"s out there, as well as graduates of accredited degree programs.
(2) Admissions standards have dropped. With more boot camps, there are more students attending boot camps everywhere. Galvanize used to admit half as many students. Correspondingly, less qualified applicants are attending boot camps than before. More than half the reason prior Galvanize graduates succeeded in obtaining data-scientific positions was because many of them were already very well qualified for many STEM jobs _before_ entering the program.
(3) Hiring standards have tightened. With a body of data scientists out there, organizations don't need to hire newbies.
Boot camps can augment your résumé, but can't substitute for lack of relevant experience. A data science bootcamp will have great difficulty in magically taking a person from 0 to a data scientist job offer in the absence of relevant experience. Many of the people I've seen struggle to obtain employment had thin résumés before entering the program or had weak interview skills.
> One of the things that attracted me to Flatiron School was their audited jobs placement report. Very detailed statistics about how many students graduate, how long it takes them to find jobs, and how much they earn. I've never seen traditional colleges hold themselves to that standard of disclosure.
Apparently these phony statistics played a huge role in many student's choices to attend.
edit: 'illegitimate' or 'misleading' would apparently be a better choice than 'phony.'
Still, at the end of the day I’m getting a lot more mileage out of my Flatiron experience than I have from any of my three degrees from “real” accredited schools.
I really enjoy my job as a dev, and based on the amount of recruiter spam I get, feel that I have lots of flexibility and options should I ever need them.
I hope that whatever changes arise from this don’t impede Flatiron from making constant changes to their curriculum, and employing amazing non-certified instructors like the ones I am honored to have studied with.
I just want to point out the the numbers in the audited jobs report were never 'phony'. The report, which was available for download long before the settlement, clearly shows the %s of full-time salaried, full-time contract, part time and self employment used for the totals.
My understanding of the settlement is that the AG's office was upset that the quoted numbers in advertisements did not make the type of employment clear and did not make it clear that the average salary included only the employed students who took a full-time salaried position.
This was certainly a misleading aspect of the advertising, but a prospective student who downloaded and read the report would have been able to see these numbers clearly.
question: "The rise of the coding boot camp has resulted in a recognized glut of junior developers. How does Flatiron plan to distinguish its students in future?"
Enbar's answer, in part: "Look at salary data and remember what we’re talking about here: a three-month educational program that leads to a ~$75,000 salary (for Flatiron graduates; Course Report lists about $68k for a national average of bootcamp grads). The point at which there are more people prepared for those jobs than there are existing job openings, we will see salaries decrease—that’s supply and demand. But the “price” to hire a developer has not gone down because the supply has not grown enough. There may be a giant, growing supply of unqualified talent who are not getting jobs. But the supply of qualified talent? It’s been so far behind the demand that the salaries have not lowered. (It’s also worth noting that for a three-month education training program, given average salaries across this country, a $75,000 salary is insane! There is room for average salaries to come down and still provide a great ROI on bootcamps, so long as they are providing outcomes.)..." ---
He doesn't even answer the question! He challenges its "assumption" that there is a glut of junior dev talent out there now in a tightening market. He offers no information about how future Flatiron grads will distinguish themselves in this market except the implication that they will continue to get jobs and make money because these jobs are just so plentiful, and he implies that Flatiron grads are just so exceptionally skilled. "Skills Gap", the old refrain- but the issue of this recent ruling is that the Flatiron School's outcomes in this junior dev job-plentiful market aren't as super duper! as they make them out to be. (or since Enbar claims there are just so many junior dev jobs, perhaps Flatiron grads aren't distinguishing themselves within that pool?...which was the original question he was supposedly answering) Then, Enbar flatly states that his coding bootcamp leads to ~$75,000 salary job. He even says that it's "insane"!But do note the huge emphasis on supply and demand (and the salary lowering potential offered by a "distant" future glut) for these ~$75,000 jobs. It's a long answer, but within his answer, Enbar cites a graph from code.org highlighting everybody's favorite "skills gap". The problem is again conflict of interest with this graph and where it comes from- the source is not an uninterested party just doing a study. The founder/CEO of code.org, Hadi Partovi is an investor. Code.org itself is supported by donations from all of the big tech companies who would ever require coding talent. These companies have an interest in driving supply so that one day, salaries cold be lowered, and one day, H1B visas could be a thing of the past to solve this "skills gap" "problem". In fairness, toward the end, Enbar points to the outcomes report link from The Flatiron School, but the real deal is always hidden in the fine print. And there isn't even enough detail in the report to get a real handle on who gets what. That would be the "transparency" Enbar constantly 'advocates for". This ruling is just scratching the surface's surface of what is going on in these bootcamps and with this so-called "skills gap". We need an anonymous transparency platform. Enbar says he's all for real transparency when it comes to coding education and this "skills gap". So I'm guessing he won't mind.
That's better than a fine. Though, it does mention 1000 students total, so perhaps not enough.
Let's assume a very conservative estimate of 800 students doing 1 of online work, and 200 students paying $12k for a class. That works out to $1.2M in online tuition, and $2.4M in in-person tuition. Given how conservative my estimate is, $375k seems like a pittance for operating without a license and lying about success rates.
In the end, when the truth is revealed, each eligible student gets only $375? That might be enough for some raw denim. Who cares about any kind of certification? Real penalties for false claims alone would do it. How about providing each student with that salary they signed up to the program for for a full year? I have a feeling the teaching would get a whole lot better and the admissions process would keep the program small and help with individual mentorship. Not only are these programs wasting students' money, but they are eating up their time in a youth-favoring labor landscape. These schools should have to pay hefty restitution to every student who, encouraged by the so-called "verified", robust outcomes, signed up, and who eventually stopped doing their online course mid-program because they correctly assessed the bootcamp's lack of honesty/interest/vigor regarding the post-apocalyptic tundra that is the web-dev software employment landscape for career changers just entering it.
If a student/grad gets more employer response from a résumé with the "well-respected" bootcamp removed from it...is that something that gets a bootcamp to hold a school-wide pow-wow to brainstorm ideas on how to approach the issue? Does the director send everyone a sincere and heartfelt apology for that? Are there transparent steps taken to get to the bottom of the issue and change it? No, the problem(s) get buried deep under the suffocating culture of infinite positivity that is designed to mute productive critique (that critique, if encouraged, might inspire positive change).
The current students and grads talk to each other and find out just how few employers are interested in bootcamp grads, and of those employers the even smaller group who is interested in bootcamp grads who are also career changers and let's just say "those who are not an obvious culture fit".
Jeff Casimir, admittedly somewhat biased, can lay claim to being one of the world's top experts on running code bootcamps. He has a great writeup about it here: https://medium.com/@turingschool/why-i-recommend-flatiron-sc...
I would give Avi and Flatiron School the benefit of the doubt in this case. I don't think they were out to do anything malicious or fraudulent.
Flatirons full jobs report for 2017 is here: Online: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/69751/2017%20Online%20Outcome...
Onsite: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/69751/NYCJobsReport%20July%20...
Looks like these reports were made before the fine. Inside these reports, salary and job type are broken down and clearly stated.
Were these reports altered after the fact?
Before the fine is not before the investigation though.
They may have changed those as the investigation started and they got questions about the disclosure.
They may have fined them on the basis of the students who went through the program before they made the changes.
https://www.ucsc-extension.edu/certificate-program/software-...
That bootcamps produce similar graduates as (community) colleges in less time is up for discussion, but having to fudge your numbers as FlatIron has done doesn't necessarily move the debate in your favor.
I know people I've talked to (work with a similar company) feel the weight of family duty very heavily with career decisions. Having children or other family to be responsible for is one of the things that holds people back. Child care is incredibly expensive and having to carry that burden on your own can be very taxing and can get in the way of your work if you're at home.
Shorter runway to earn more is a much more desirable option.
1. I got to write code in an environment alongside other equally motivated peers, because let's face it: An $18k commitment is more difficult to let go of than a few credits at a community college
2. Our focus was on writing code and doing things that professional software engineers did, not satisficing or cheating our way towards a letter or percentage grade
My tuition also mostly paid for itself with the +$15k they helped me negotiate with my first job.
In the worst cases, all 200 or so U.S. law schools would boast about high percentages of students landing 6-figure starting salaries. In reality, schools often only disclosed statistics based on students who completed enrollment surveys.
https://www.lawschooltransparency.com came about as a resource to try to correct the record, but surely a lot of young people got swept up in the marketing only to discover the real outlook was much more grim.
Not saying that's normal. But my very limited experience with bootcampers has been positive.
Yes, they were hired for the same reason bootcamps exist: demand.
Obviously not all CS grads are clueless, but unless they spend some time independently learning something beyond the college curriculum, they're often worthless when they start their first job. A bootcamp person (I've hired from General Assembly in NYC,) can generally build a complete CRUD app without much help, including deploying it to AWS or Heroku, using SCM correctly and ensuring it's covered with tests.
Of course, everyone's business has different needs. If I were working with SPARK or Ada on ultra-critical systems, at the entry level, I'd definitely prefer the CS grad, but for general web applications, the bootcamp grad often hits the ground running.
I think one major issue people like you have is that they don't realize that most people who take these courses aren't baristas. My class average was late 20s with 5+ years of proven work experience, most frequently in high professions (law, medicine, finance). I worked in finance for 6 years. I didn't need to take "CS250" to be capable of learning data structures. I just did it on the job instead of over one semester. It's easy to train people who have a proven history of success at work. It is much harder to gamble on a 22 year old with no work experience, regardless of their degree. That's a pretty easy decision for many hiring managers.
There are plenty of reasons to go to a bc besides "welp, I woke up today and felt like being an engineer"-- maybe you're working for a doomed company, or you want to change cities, you feel your growth is limited at your current gig, or you just want a break from your routine. Ymmv but it's a mistake to flat out dismiss all bc grads.
The one person we ended up hiring had previous experience in a very relevant field and we felt would add perspective. We recognized they would need some work and we all took / take time after work to work with them. They've improved a lot and now are a pretty potent developer (six months after we hired them).
I think that's probably a standard experience. Perhaps a 5% pass rate for new junior developers from bootcamps, followed up with a known need to develop them further. That's fine though, because we can pick them up at a much lower rate (initially) and grow them. Those people are usually much more loyal, and will have a lower turn over. As long as their salary grows consistently with their competency.
Of course, anyone coming out of a bootcamp (or undergrad if they have no work experience) is going to be a relatively inexperienced hire, and not all companies have the inclination/ability/experience/desire to support these kinds of hires and the mentorship they require.
I've been a hiring manager for a very long time, and my opinion is that it's foolish to dismiss any potential source of candidates, especially one where you are not directly competing with google/facebook/amazon/goldman sachs. Many people from flatiron have engineering or math degrees, and realized after school they loved to code.
Also, back in the day, when I was a sophmore in college, someone hired me to be a sysadmin when the only experience I had was running the network in my college dorm for 6 months. Within a very short time I was writing all kinds of code, learning a ton, and making small but meaningful contributions. I've worked as a software engineer ever since. My first boss took a risk on me, and it worked out really well for him, and me. Some of the best hires I've ever made had skillsets that didn't, on paper, line up very well, but they turned out great. These experiences are why I'm willing to take risks in hiring.
I think most hiring managers are far too narrow minded when it comes to this stuff, although I understand why that's the case, too.
We (the interviewers) did spend a lot more time discussing him than other candidates that same year. He interviewed extremely well, had a compelling story about why he took the path he took, but we hadn't hired somebody without a 4-year STEM degree in ages. He was persistent, didn't get scared off by our hesitation, and we decided that his persistence was a strong enough additional signal to take the risk and make an offer.
My anecdotal observation is that bootcamp grads favor consumer tech companies where the product (or sub-product) isn't very technologically complex, and has room for (very) junior developers. It does not take a senior dev nor a CS degree to stand up Rails and produce by-the-numbers CRUD workflow apps.
I think the reasons for hiring bootcamp grads are varied, but they are much cheaper than degreed candidates, get the job done (for junior-level work at least), and are "hungrier" than degreed candidates - especially compared with candidates from pedigree schools who sometimes perceive themselves as being above junior-level grunt code.
Anecdotally everyone I've hired from a bootcamp has worked out, but it's worth noting that the pickings can be slim. I reviewed two graduating classes for candidates and would say maybe 1/4 of them even come close to being interviewable.
When I was interviewing right out of bootcamp, there were hiring / engineering managers who told me straight up that their companies would never hire bootcamp grads and that they didn't know any 'reputable' eng orgs that did either. Which was hilarious given that I knew people at the top companies whose only software background was in bootcamps.
Part of the reason is that most of my friends took the bootcamp experience off their linkedin after working for a year or two. It wasn't relevant anymore, and there were always people who think bootcamp grads only get hired out of desperation.
The main allegations, aside from the SED license, are that they did not clearly state their methods of arriving at these numbers on their marketing materials. While that's true, I have faith that someone who has been thinking seriously about a career change enough to apply to a costly educational program such as Flatiron School would do their research.
Based on my experience, I don't find the numbers they report to be surprising. I'm personally more than a year into my first job (was hired almost immediately out of FS at almost exactly their 'average salary') and many if not most of my classmates have a similar experience. Flatiron, like any school, has students who put in the extra effort and students who expect to be successful when they're done just because they showed up every day. Those students tended to struggle throughout the course, and many needed to take internships before landing a full-time gig.
When I first looked into Flatiron, I checked the jobs report. When I saw that 52% of grads landed a full-time job, my thought was not 'oh good this school gets me a job.' It was 'I know with relative certainty that I will learn enough to be useful in a full-time junior dev role if I continue to work my ass off.'
Full disclosure: I graduated from Hack Reactor in Austin, and got a job 2.5 months after graduation at a very reputable company in town. We also have 3 other HR grads, and a 30-ish person engineering team. This shit works. It's a shame schools like Flatiron drag the industry name down.
Pardon the throwaway to not identify myself from my actual account, which has lots of identify-able info.
Flatiron is one of the better orgs with a pretty good reputation. It's tough to read that they've fallen short for their students. It causes a lot of anxiety for those trying to utilize these schools to learn coding.
I have an employee (graphic design) that has shown an aptitude in web development, but I do not have the time to devote to mentoring him.
I can afford to send him to a bootcamp, but stories like this make me hesitant.
Also, I have a front-end guy and a CS intern, who both could benefit from a SQL bootcamp (as another poster mentioned, team development, source control, and SQL do not seem to be emphasized in the CS curriculum). Is there such a thing?
I am only interested in on-site, immersive experiences for all of them.
Hack Reactor recently merged with the Maker Academy, which had locations in SF, LA, and Austin. Not sure what the quality of the other campuses are, but I know that they all use the same syllabus / course material now. Hack Reactor on Market St is the original location.
No SQL bootcamp that I'm aware of, however.
They spend about a week on SQL, mostly going through SQL Zoo, and later on you build your own toy clone of ActiveRecord.
For me, it was probably the best part of the whole curriculum -- it was the only part that I didn't already have experience in.
That said, I have sort of mixed feelings about that bootcamp and the industry as a whole right now. For the right people, on a short schedule, it's great. If you gave those same people the same curriculum for self study, they'd probably get the same out of it though. If your employee is motivated, I'd spend that same money on books and time in their schedule (or pay them for the extra study hours) and the promise of a pay bump if they can get through it and show competence.
Many years ago I was consulting when HungryAcademy graduated 24 engineers into the ranks of a large Washington DC based company. And they were all excellent as well. That program was run by Jeff casimir, who has also started several other programs, not at Turing School in Colorado.
I'd recommend any of those programs based on first hand experience hiring their graduates.
If this is "most trusted" , i wonder what shady stuff is going on in other bootcamps.
The conversation, IIRC, was something like this:
ZS: Why can't I import or translate Python2 into Python3?
P3: That would be a technically challenging thing to do.
ZS: But surely it is technically possible, even if it is pragmatically unfeasible?
P3: We can't do it.
ZS: OK, Python 3 must be Turing-incomplete, ha ha ha!
source: https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html
So, I don't know if he was serious and then later edited that page to say it was a joke, or if he meant it as a joke and intended to misteach beginners, or if he meant it as a joke and did not realize he was misteaching beginners, but in all three of those cases, I don't see why he's a person worth listening to, especially on the subject of training programmers.
How did they (both the school/bootcamp and the General Attorney) verify the data?
I mean, I go to the bootcamp and give them US$ 15,000 for the course (whether this is a fair amount or not is a distinct matter).
I learn something, get a diploma/certificate whatever and that's it, reciprocal obligation are fulfilled, it's not like we became friends or something like that.
I then find a job in the field.
Why would I:
1) tell them that I found a job in the field (or outside the field for what it matters)?
2) tell them how much I make on that job?
Why hasn't capitalism made flipping the classroom a reality?
Hi Joseph,
On Friday the New York Attorney General announced a settlement with Flatiron School. In the press release, they discussed our licensure and our student outcomes. Everyone at Flatiron School and our community has felt this deeply and we wanted to speak to you directly.
Regarding our license - we’ve been working with the NY State licensing agency for nearly four years. We were licensed in our Brooklyn location. We also sent in an application for our Manhattan location. It was only when we reached out about an extension for the Manhattan location a year later that we found out that the application was never processed. We immediately filed the appropriate paperwork and have since been licensed by NY State.
The second issue was about our student outcomes. We present data on our website in aggregate, such as our 98.5% employment rate for graduates. The Attorney General felt a link labeled “Download our Outcomes Report” next to “98.5% employment rate” taking you to the full breakdown of jobs was not “Clear and Conspicuous”. We understand that in our efforts to be transparent, we exposed ourselves to a new level of scrutiny and we will live up to that in the future. Here’s an example from our settlement:
The NYAG finds that Flatiron’s claim that 98.5% of its graduates are employed in the software engineering field within 180 days of graduating, does not clearly and conspicuously disclose that “employed” includes not only full time salaried positions, but also paid apprentices, contract employees and self-employed/freelance employees. This information was available by clicking on the “Download Our Outcomes Report” link and entering an email address in order to download a multi-page report that contains graduation and employment rate information. The NYAG finds that labeling the link “Download Our Outcomes Report” did not sufficiently convey that it contains information relevant to the employment calculation.
We're proud of all of you and have shared your success on our website to inspire others. Ultimately, we know that the concerns of our students and community are about the truth of our outcome data. We want to restate, unequivocally, that our reports are accurate and have not been falsified. In fact, the Attorney General explicitly agreed that we can continue using all of our historical reports and you can find them on our website today.
That’s really it. We understand how it’s been easy for these important details to become lost in the public discussion around this settlement. We’re most sorry for the way this affects our community of students and alumni. Learning to code is hard enough and thinking of the distraction this causes breaks our hearts.
I encourage any alumni reading this to focus on what matters - themselves, their code, their work, and their community. We are going to do everything in our power to make sure this does not blemish your journey. We hope you still feel proud that your journey began at Flatiron School, we still feel it a privilege to have been part of your lives. We will continue teaching passionate people how to code and helping them find the jobs they love. We are excited about the future of the school.
If you have any questions about this, please do reach out. We always love to hear from our alumni.
Learn, Love, Code // <3
Avi Flombaum and Adam Enbar
- Fullstack Academy: 97%
- Hack Reactor: 99%
- App Academy: 98%
- Dev Bootcamp: 90%
- Flatiron School: 98%
(He edited his post to take this down literally as I write my comment. Ie. after this article exploded on Hacker News. See the logs for proof: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-job-placement-rates-at-va.... Here is his original post: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jsek2oum4lioeja/Screen%20Shot%2020...)
The Quora post doesn't mention it, but I assume these numbers refer to job placement rate within three months. I attended Fullstack Academy back in 2014 and recall being told these numbers by Fullstack, and by all of those other bootcamps (I applied to them too). And I recall all of them referring to job placement rate within three months.
I believe there is plenty of evidence that all of this is true. There are plenty of press articles, such as http://www.businessinsider.com/4-traits-that-make-developers... corroborating it. And there are thousands of applicants and students who probably remember being told about job placement rates in the upper 90s.
Now take a look at the data from CIRR. Below I list the percentage of graduates who are hired as full time employees within 90 days of graduating:
- Fullstack Academy (New York City): 30.4%
- Hack Reactor (New York): 43.6%
See for yourself: https://cirr.org/data.
I can only conclude that back when we were all told that the numbers were in the upper 90s, we were either lied to, or intentionally mislead. Credit to them for pushing for transparency with CIRR, but shame on them for lying/intentionally misleading us all for a very, very long time.
However, I'd bet a shiny nickel that auditing students aren't part of their advertised statistics. Or at least auditing students that don't make the numbers better. I "graduated" just fine and found a job at above their salary avg, so who knows if I'm part of their numbers or not.
Edit to add: Not trying to say anything bad about AA here, I really enjoyed the program and it has been money well spent. I just wanted to chime in on the topic of "9X% of students make 6 figures after graduation"
Also, I find it suspicious that App Academy seemingly isn't taking part in CIRR.