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Comment by ruggeri | Hacker News Reader

[Instructor at App Academy here]

I'm really proud of Hugo; he came in to App Academy as an 18 year old kid with no coding experience, and through sheer force of will, learned enough to land a junior dev job in nine weeks.

If you're interested in the course that Hugo took, check us out (appacademy.io). Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program.

Hugo's fellow students are doing great. 11/15 of our students were unemployed before attending App Academy. 13/15 of our graduates have offers or are working in tech jobs now at an average salary of $83,000.

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nicholasreed makes a good point. Let me make some stuff clear:

- I paid a $500 refundable deposit by mailing them a check they never cashed.

That was legit. A $3,000 deposit is silly though.

- To the best of my knowledge no jobs were found from App Academy's partner companies.

- I don't believe the $83k average salary thing.

That said, Ned is one of the greatest mentors I've ever met, and he's radically changed my life.

Hugo! I never really announced it but I accepted an offer with Twilio to join as a mobile engineer. I only interviewed with partner companies. I was going to mention it when I got back from my trip. I think other people got offers from partner companies as well.

[Edit] - Looks like I had some bad info. Several offers to students were from partner companies.

edskim case in point. He's off to Twilio now.

whoops ;)

Another App Academy kid here. Like Eddie, I too received and accepted an offer from one of AA's parter companies after I finished the program. I'm an apprentice at Thoughtbot now!

> Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program.

Either that statement is incorrect, or you are only charging some students. What would you refer to the $3,000 upfront payment as?

We ask all students to put down a $3,000 fully refundable deposit.

There are clearly defined rules for deducting from the deposit (e.g., arrive late for class: $10, etc.). The money deducted does not go to us, but is distributed evenly among the other students.

The reason for the deposit is that students are working in pairs throughout the class, and if a student doesn’t show up, he/she disrupts the classroom experience for everybody. The system was successful for our summer course; it both helps ensure that students have a pair programming partner everyday and that even though the class is free upfront, everyone feels invested.

As long as students show up everyday and stay focused, they get their deposits back at the end, as all of the summer students have.

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