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For those commenting on the price, I'd point out that if you're a consultant or freelance developer you should be able to justify adjusting your rates enough af

For those commenting on the price, I'd point out that if you're a consultant or freelance developer you should be able to justify adjusting your rates enough after this to make the $1500 back in a month or so, and if you're a salaried employee with a smart employer, you should be able to negotiate a reasonable raise or get your employer to cover the cost for you. I operate on a shoestring budget, I'm just about the most price-sensitive guy on here, and I'm still going to do my best to scrape together the money for this.

shubb 13y ago
I think your price is reasonable for people that will get a good return from this, and not for people that won't. I'm not going to get a raise from doing the course, and my employer is not going to pay out for it, so I'd like it to be $500. People who are going to make the money back will pay more. If you fill the seats, the price is right.
- tptacek 13y ago
  If you have no way of recouping the cost of the class, the class isn't targeted at you. The most common pricing fallacy on HN (perhaps after cost-plus pricing) is the idea that every product must be targeted at all people to make sense.
  - riquito 13y ago
    So a person that simply want to learn something for the sake of knowledge is not the target of a teacher?
    - Pwnguinz 13y ago
      Not the target of a teacher that is asking for this price. There are plenty of teachers out there that can, presumably, teach the same material just as well for probably less cost to the student, however it's not the OP's job to find those alternative sources for you.
    - guizzy 13y ago
      Consider that for that price, the teacher offers his time to help students. If the price was lower, it's likely he'd have more students; perhaps a lot more. The more students he has to deal with, the less time the teacher will have to help each one of them. On one side you've got private tutoring, where a teacher can work 100% of his time with one student, and at the other end are free MOOCs with tens of thousands of students, where the students are peer-graded and are unlikely to ever interact directly with the teacher. While MOOCs are great for what they cost, it's pretty obviously not the same quality of education as private tutoring, or by directly interacting with a teacher. So for this class, the teacher decided the minimal level of interaction he thinks is necessary to make a high quality web security course, and decided the price so that he gets an amount of highly motivated students that he can manage with the time he has.
- thaumaturgy 13y ago
  Counterpoint: completing the course might make you a better candidate for the kind of employer that values their employees enough to pay for training like this. ;-)
  - shubb 13y ago
    Oh I'm not complaining. 2 of my colleagues just went on security training, so I think we have enough 'security experts' right now. I'd be more likely to get an android course.
StavrosK 13y ago
Hum, I already know most of this stuff. Maybe I should raise my rates.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Maybe?
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Do you mean that I should, or are you asking me why I am uncertain? If it's the former, you don't know my rates, maybe they're already too high (they're not) :p If it's the latter, I have no answer.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I mean you should.
      - StavrosK 13y ago
        Yeah, that's the prevailing viewpoint. I will raise them by quite a bit, thanks.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        I'd like to raise my rates too. I'm not an expert at security by any stretch but I don't completely fail at it like ~70% of the code I inherit. But it is difficult to figure out how to sell that. Most clients don't seem give a shit about security until they've actually lost money due to it. It's also hard to prove that my code will be any more secure than the next guy.
        thaumaturgy 13y ago
        This is IMO one of the strong benefits of daeken's course: he's formalized it to the extent that you should be able to turn it into a selling point if you wish to do so.

shubb 13y ago

I think your price is reasonable for people that will get a good return from this, and not for people that won't. I'm not going to get a raise from doing the course, and my employer is not going to pay out for it, so I'd like it to be $500. People who are going to make the money back will pay more. If you fill the seats, the price is right.

tptacek 13y ago
If you have no way of recouping the cost of the class, the class isn't targeted at you. The most common pricing fallacy on HN (perhaps after cost-plus pricing) is the idea that every product must be targeted at all people to make sense.
- riquito 13y ago
  So a person that simply want to learn something for the sake of knowledge is not the target of a teacher?
  - Pwnguinz 13y ago
    Not the target of a teacher that is asking for this price. There are plenty of teachers out there that can, presumably, teach the same material just as well for probably less cost to the student, however it's not the OP's job to find those alternative sources for you.
  - guizzy 13y ago
    Consider that for that price, the teacher offers his time to help students. If the price was lower, it's likely he'd have more students; perhaps a lot more. The more students he has to deal with, the less time the teacher will have to help each one of them. On one side you've got private tutoring, where a teacher can work 100% of his time with one student, and at the other end are free MOOCs with tens of thousands of students, where the students are peer-graded and are unlikely to ever interact directly with the teacher. While MOOCs are great for what they cost, it's pretty obviously not the same quality of education as private tutoring, or by directly interacting with a teacher. So for this class, the teacher decided the minimal level of interaction he thinks is necessary to make a high quality web security course, and decided the price so that he gets an amount of highly motivated students that he can manage with the time he has.
thaumaturgy 13y ago
Counterpoint: completing the course might make you a better candidate for the kind of employer that values their employees enough to pay for training like this. ;-)
- shubb 13y ago
  Oh I'm not complaining. 2 of my colleagues just went on security training, so I think we have enough 'security experts' right now. I'd be more likely to get an android course.

StavrosK 13y ago

Hum, I already know most of this stuff. Maybe I should raise my rates.

tptacek 13y ago
Maybe?
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Do you mean that I should, or are you asking me why I am uncertain? If it's the former, you don't know my rates, maybe they're already too high (they're not) :p If it's the latter, I have no answer.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I mean you should.
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      Yeah, that's the prevailing viewpoint. I will raise them by quite a bit, thanks.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      I'd like to raise my rates too. I'm not an expert at security by any stretch but I don't completely fail at it like ~70% of the code I inherit. But it is difficult to figure out how to sell that. Most clients don't seem give a shit about security until they've actually lost money due to it. It's also hard to prove that my code will be any more secure than the next guy.
      - thaumaturgy 13y ago
        This is IMO one of the strong benefits of daeken's course: he's formalized it to the extent that you should be able to turn it into a selling point if you wish to do so.