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I used to teach front-end development at a bootcamp several months ago. What once was a great opportunity to share my 15 years of experience with various startu

I used to teach front-end development at a bootcamp several months ago. What once was a great opportunity to share my 15 years of experience with various startups and fortune 500 tech companies ended up being a nightmare with management. First and formeost, I liked most of my students. They came from all kinds such as: Background Actors, wives of programmers, students, military veterans, teachers, and a hodgepodge of characters. They were eager to learn a step-by-step procedure of HTML, CSS, and Javascript Fundamentals with a bit of web design elements. What struck me as odd was the President/Founder of the bootcamp first hired me to do my job and observe the videos of what their past instructor did. So I did and found out he was too aggressive in his approach to teaching his students. He was talking too fast and went off in some awful tangents that wasn't on the itinerary. I told the founder, my boss at the time, about what changes I could do to make it less aggressive and with a flowable and presentable approach to the fundamentals of front-end development and he agreed. In my first five days, things went well. Then the boss wanted me to stick with the previous itinerary while forcefeeding javascript trends in one week. It wasn't enough to teach them basic syntaxes, array methods, loops, and other things I learned in 1 year of CS studies (I finished my undergrad in Economics). He wanted me to feed AJAX, jQuery, Angular, and APIs with javascript in one week. I hesitated at first, but he insisted as his "board of directors" feel this would give my students a reason to keep buying more advanced courses in the school I don't want to give out. I find out the real reasons for my services to my students is to not just give them a new career perspective, but to also have the boss read the idea proposals his students have as startup ideas and he would be the bridge to their funding. Except, he's the end of the bridge as an angel investor looking to own a huge chunk of their startup property before he prepares his elevator speeches to real angel investors. An another thing is he's also aiming veterans for their GI bills to be spent at his coding school. I left after a month. I felt dirty and icky just looking back at it.

alsirg 9y ago
If I were in a similar situation, I would feel an ethical responsibility to publicly out the school, report them to the state regulator and report them to VA. They can do a lot of harm and ruin a lot of lives.
- NoCoastCoder 9y ago
  Veterans Association ?
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Affairs.
austenallred 9y ago
The incentives for the bootcamp model are just so completely broken. You suck in people with promises of a career, have them pay $10k each, and if they don't get a job it's somehow their fault. It's really hard for word of mouth and reputation to kill a bootcamp because the demand outstrips supply right now. You could really suck, buy users with advertising, and make a killing for a looooong time. I truly hope the future of education is something in which the incentives of the school are aligned with the students, and if the student fails the school doesn't get paid. <shameless plug> We've been trying to do that at https://lambdaschool.com https://lambdaschool.com. We're a 6 month CS or Machine Learning/AI education, and instead of students paying up front we give them an education for free and take a portion of future earnings if they get a job in their field that pays >$50k/yr. If they don't get a job in their field it's 100% free.</shameless plug>
- 75dvtwin 9y ago
  Interesting idea. Looking at your website " $0 up-front + 17% of salary for 2 yrs (or $20,000 up-front) " is 17% before or after tax? Also does location/country matter?
  - austenallred 9y ago
    Before tax, $30,000 maximum, and currently only available in the US for a variety of reasons.
    - jypepin 9y ago
      It's an interesting idea, but according to software engineering average salaries, seems like that "cap" will most of the time be met, making the cost of your bootcamp way higher than most. I don't really get the "it's costly argument" since it is still education, and most education (at least in the US) and usually way more expensive than that. I paid 10k upfront for 3 month bootcamp and got a job in a few weeks. Because I got the job through the referral system of the bootcamp, I got 5k back on my tuition. This seems like a good deal to me. The bootcamp was aligned with my success because they make more money through the referral also.
bdcravens 9y ago
I did some mentoring sessions (via CodeMentor) with a student from a bootcamp teaching Angular 2. Mind you, this was while Angular 2 was still in beta and the API was changing every week it seemed. Turns out the bootcamp started with one thing (React maybe) and shifted gears in the middle of the cohort. I was able to help them, but it was totally a WTF moment - not only were they teaching a beta framework, with no jobs at the moment, but I'm certain it wasn't what the students thought they were paying for.
rl3 9y ago
First of all, I'm sorry your experience was so terrible. Glad you escaped. >... but to also have the boss read the idea proposals his students have as startup ideas and he would be the bridge to their funding. Except, he's the end of the bridge as an angel investor looking to own a huge chunk of their startup property before he prepares his elevator speeches to real angel investors. So he's looking to steal ideas and/or "fund" his students who are just learning how to code. Wow. Not that non-technical founders can't have good ideas, but on balance I'd say my dog could plan a more diabolical scheme than this dude. He sounds like he's just bad at being bad. Lack of morals only gets one so far at being evil, solid strategy is still required.

alsirg 9y ago

If I were in a similar situation, I would feel an ethical responsibility to publicly out the school, report them to the state regulator and report them to VA. They can do a lot of harm and ruin a lot of lives.

NoCoastCoder 9y ago
Veterans Association ?
- KGIII 9y ago
  Affairs.

austenallred 9y ago

The incentives for the bootcamp model are just so completely broken. You suck in people with promises of a career, have them pay $10k each, and if they don't get a job it's somehow their fault. It's really hard for word of mouth and reputation to kill a bootcamp because the demand outstrips supply right now. You could really suck, buy users with advertising, and make a killing for a looooong time. I truly hope the future of education is something in which the incentives of the school are aligned with the students, and if the student fails the school doesn't get paid. <shameless plug> We've been trying to do that at https://lambdaschool.com https://lambdaschool.com. We're a 6 month CS or Machine Learning/AI education, and instead of students paying up front we give them an education for free and take a portion of future earnings if they get a job in their field that pays >$50k/yr. If they don't get a job in their field it's 100% free.</shameless plug>

75dvtwin 9y ago
Interesting idea. Looking at your website " $0 up-front + 17% of salary for 2 yrs (or $20,000 up-front) " is 17% before or after tax? Also does location/country matter?
- austenallred 9y ago
  Before tax, $30,000 maximum, and currently only available in the US for a variety of reasons.
  - jypepin 9y ago
    It's an interesting idea, but according to software engineering average salaries, seems like that "cap" will most of the time be met, making the cost of your bootcamp way higher than most. I don't really get the "it's costly argument" since it is still education, and most education (at least in the US) and usually way more expensive than that. I paid 10k upfront for 3 month bootcamp and got a job in a few weeks. Because I got the job through the referral system of the bootcamp, I got 5k back on my tuition. This seems like a good deal to me. The bootcamp was aligned with my success because they make more money through the referral also.

bdcravens 9y ago

I did some mentoring sessions (via CodeMentor) with a student from a bootcamp teaching Angular 2. Mind you, this was while Angular 2 was still in beta and the API was changing every week it seemed. Turns out the bootcamp started with one thing (React maybe) and shifted gears in the middle of the cohort. I was able to help them, but it was totally a WTF moment - not only were they teaching a beta framework, with no jobs at the moment, but I'm certain it wasn't what the students thought they were paying for.

rl3 9y ago

First of all, I'm sorry your experience was so terrible. Glad you escaped. >... but to also have the boss read the idea proposals his students have as startup ideas and he would be the bridge to their funding. Except, he's the end of the bridge as an angel investor looking to own a huge chunk of their startup property before he prepares his elevator speeches to real angel investors. So he's looking to steal ideas and/or "fund" his students who are just learning how to code. Wow. Not that non-technical founders can't have good ideas, but on balance I'd say my dog could plan a more diabolical scheme than this dude. He sounds like he's just bad at being bad. Lack of morals only gets one so far at being evil, solid strategy is still required.