10 ms·

California Cracks Down on Hacker Boot Camps

85 points by ahmadss 13y ago

mschuster91 13y ago
> He says the only exemptions are for courses than cost less than $2,500, programs affiliated with accredited schools, and certain religious education programs. Well then, problem solved: turn the buildings into Pastafarian temples and the act of coding into religious service - should be more or less the same as Scientology is doing already.
- archgoon 13y ago
  > turn the buildings into Pastafarian temples and the act of coding into religious service I'd recommend against embracing Pastafarianism for this. The last thing that the industry needs is legions of spaghetti coders.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - zigger 13y ago
    Hahaha! Brilliant.
- CoachRufus87 13y ago
  Don't forget to run a Super Bowl ad.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    For anyone else who was not aware of the ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0JEc0arOQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0JEc0arOQ
- WalterBright 13y ago
  I dunno, a number of my programs worked only after I applied some black magic.
Camillo 13y ago
> They’re usually staffed by professional coders, not licensed teachers. Many of the teachers are volunteers — even though the schools are usually private companies, not non-profit organizations. And many schools are backed by investments from big-name Silicon Valley venture capital firms. I was very surprised to read this. Volunteering can be appropriate if you're helping the less fortunate, or if you're sharing with your peers; but if you volunteer for a for-profit organization, you're devaluing your own skills while enriching those who are already rich. It's not just self-damaging, but socially regressive too.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Sharing knowledge is not socially regressive. I'd argue that sharing is a key part of society.
  - navyrain 13y ago
    There is a substantial difference between freely sharing knowledge to any inquiring mind, and sharing knowledge with only those people who have paid gobs of money, while receiving none yourself.
- blahedo 13y ago
  I'd also like to know how many is "many". It would seem... odd... for there to be a substantial number of them (although I could imagine a few edge cases, I guess).
  - bradhe 13y ago
    I have had multiple hacker "schools" ask me volunteer.
- mquander 13y ago
  The difference between running your own tutoring business and volunteering for a hacker school is that N dollars go into the school's pocket, instead of yours. Why would society care about that difference?
codezero 13y ago
What exactly are they trying to license these bootcamps as? They are basically job placement agencies with training included, right? This is a bit off topic, but the prices that they command seem ludicrous. $1k a week or so, for most of them. I know that a person attending stands to get a high paying job, but 10k seems like a lot.
- pbiggar 13y ago
  Why is that ludicrous?
  - codezero 13y ago
    I said it seems ludicrous. It just tastes bad, but since you asked, I decided to approximate the cost per unit/hour, and it actually costs about the same as California's public community colleges, so I guess this isn't crazy. All the same, California's community college prices are kind of out of hand if you ask me, but since you asked, I guess I take it back, but lacking any actual accreditation or guarantee, it's unclear how valuable such programs are in the long run.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      California's community colleges pay their lecturers.
      - codezero 13y ago
        Definitely not enough if you ask me :) That said, I didn't realize that some (many?) boot camps were using volunteers as instructors. Who would volunteer for such a thing?
- jonursenbach 13y ago
  I don't know, 10k compared to 100k+ at a proper four year college seems fair to me
  - 13y ago
pavs 13y ago
Anyone actually successfully attended this boot camps and got a job offer for their coding skills? Specially for someone who never had any prior coding knowledge. I don't know why but this just smells like scam to me. Why would a company hire you, who just finished a boot camp, as opposed to someone who have years of coding experience and knowledge?
- jcagalawan 13y ago
  Boot camp devs who have never coded before attending boot camp are more likely to work for a significantly lower level of compensation than those who have experience.
  - kybernetyk 13y ago
    As someone who runs a software business I can't even begin to imagine to hire someone who has only 3 months programming experience. Even if it was a super low paid position - it still would be wasted money. I guess companies in the valley are becoming really desperate - or they build trivial products where someone with almost no programming experience can productively fill a role.
- hwang89 13y ago
  I was in a Dev Bootcamp cohort of 10 students. All of us found jobs within 3 months of completing the program. Companies are looking to fill junior roles.
  - codezero 13y ago
    Have any of the people moved on to more senior roles? I guess I am curious how this kind of bootcamp can prep someone to continue to grow/learn once in the office. Companies are always looking to fill junior roles until the economy hits a downturn.
    - coolsunglasses 13y ago
      I've worked with people that went through code bootcamps. It's anecdotal, but even after 1 year+ spent working as a programmer lots of hand-holding still involved. More so than a typical "junior" hire that went through uni + internships. I was originally keen on the idea of bootcamp hires because I've tutored a good number of people over the years but I'm beginning to see that it's closer to O'Reilly Cookbooks than SICP. Edit: To be more topical, while I'm generally irritated by anything that could be perceived as nanny-state brigading I have a hard time working up any froth on behalf the bootcamps after the experiences I've had with their students. Possible biases: didn't go to uni, self-taught programmer, some class-based baggage.
ivanca 13y ago
I'm also wary of boot camps but this is definitely not the way; if you want to pay for something you pay for something. They are not pretending to be a college, they are not pretending to be a substitute for it. The only scam here is this part of the USA law, is scamming people into believing that everything needs to be regulated or otherwise it's evil.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Modest regulation of the education industry is entirely necessary. It has a long history of trouble, from low-quality schools to out-and-out scams. Students by definition aren't able to directly evaluate the educational experience up front; if they could, they wouldn't need the classes. Plus, with high prices and long feedback cycles, there's a large amount of value at risk, and market mechanisms don't work particularly well. Even if the current crop of boot camps is all awesome, it's an ideal model for a scam. With new ones popping up all the time, anybody with more greed than sense could open up a well-marketed school, make some great promises, collect a couple hundred thousand dollars, give some half-assed classes, and shut it all down again before the first bad Yelp reviews come in. And then they could do it again with a different name instantly.
  - progg798 13y ago
    "Students by definition aren't able to directly evaluate the educational experience up front" And government regulators with no technical background would? Please tell me you're kidding.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    Yes, in theory. Here the only ones with more greed than sense are the ones behind the enforcement of bankrupting-expensive-regulations. If you really care that much you just need someone that knows the subject to go the classes and see for themselves if everything is being taught good enough. You don't need to inject a bureaucratic debt in their finances in the name of "regulations".
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
verteu 13y ago
This is terrible news. California is full of people who are structurally unemployed due to technological incompetence. The vast majority of "licensed teachers" know nothing about coding. Why obstruct hackers who teach valuable skills to others?
- djur 13y ago
  > California is full of people who are structurally unemployed Do you have a cite for that? Nationwide there's very little evidence of structural unemployment, and I'd be surprised to find that California (which is a state people tend to be interested in living in) has an unusual problem with finding skilled workers.
welder 13y ago
"it would be relatively easy for a fly-by-night operation to advertise a developer bootcamp, collect tuition, and then provide low-quality education — or skip town before the courses were even set to begin" These bootcamps don't charge students until after they complete the course and get an industry job.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dschiptsov 13y ago
So there will be rise of "traditional" underground ones.) In some sense "legal" hacker conferences sponsored by MS and Cisco is utter nonsense. Strong disliking of cargo cults, bandwagon and peer effects of brainwashed mediocrity is a part of so-called hacker culture.)
anateus 13y ago
When the story first hit Venture Beat I stuck to reading what the BPPE actually said, and then I checked out the website to try and dig up the regulations. Unless someone has information I haven't been able to dig up "crack down" just means that they've been requested to comply. BPPE decided that these sorts of programs are under their purview and so they need to cough up some amount of cash and submit some paperwork. Quotations in the Venture Beat article very clearly state BPPE are not going after them, just notifying them of their need to comply under California law. So much polemic either on government regulation or on the merits of these programs. BPPE places schools into either "approved" or "accredited" categories. These programs need only be approved. As far as I can tell BPPE is fairly minimal in its requirements basically ensuring the schools are real things and not diploma mills. This isn't anywhere as much of a crackdown as CPUC making it harder for ride-shares (for a bit). Discussion of the programs makes sense, but in the context of an imagined witch hunt it just seems strange.
wyclif 13y ago
So I suppose this thread is just as good a place as any to ask the following question, which I've been curious about for a while now: What, in your opinion, is the highest quality coding boot camp and why? Follow-up: what should a person who qualifies for one of these schools be looking for?
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
> many of these companies charge upwards of $10,000 and make bold claims about alumni making six figure salaries upon graduation I think the word "scam" applies here.
- djur 13y ago
  There's a program like that here in Portland that makes claims on its website about Rails developers being able to immediately earn upwards of $80k a year. Maybe in the Bay Area, but definitely not in Portland. And they charge up front, no placement guarantees.
freemanindia 13y ago
This isn't going to help the industry. The Internet is changing the way we learn and software development is at the edge of the trend. Software lends itself to this in part because its a meritocracy in which competence is easy to recognize independent of accredited degrees, and because the tools change so fast traditional institutions have trouble keeping up. Its extremely unlikely regulation can do as good a job as the default market forces in identifying quality programs, and it will likely put a huge damper on people trying to do innovative things with technical education in the state. disclaimer: I run a one year 'developer bootcamp' in rural india - http://jaaga.in/study http://jaaga.in/study
godgod 13y ago
Intrusive government always has to get their slice.

85 points by ahmadss 13y ago

> He says the only exemptions are for courses than cost less than $2,500, programs affiliated with accredited schools, and certain religious education programs. Well then, problem solved: turn the buildings into Pastafarian temples and the act of coding into religious service - should be more or less the same as Scientology is doing already.

archgoon 13y ago
> turn the buildings into Pastafarian temples and the act of coding into religious service I'd recommend against embracing Pastafarianism for this. The last thing that the industry needs is legions of spaghetti coders.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- zigger 13y ago
  Hahaha! Brilliant.
CoachRufus87 13y ago
Don't forget to run a Super Bowl ad.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  For anyone else who was not aware of the ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0JEc0arOQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0JEc0arOQ
WalterBright 13y ago
I dunno, a number of my programs worked only after I applied some black magic.

Camillo 13y ago

> They’re usually staffed by professional coders, not licensed teachers. Many of the teachers are volunteers — even though the schools are usually private companies, not non-profit organizations. And many schools are backed by investments from big-name Silicon Valley venture capital firms. I was very surprised to read this. Volunteering can be appropriate if you're helping the less fortunate, or if you're sharing with your peers; but if you volunteer for a for-profit organization, you're devaluing your own skills while enriching those who are already rich. It's not just self-damaging, but socially regressive too.

lostlogin 13y ago
Sharing knowledge is not socially regressive. I'd argue that sharing is a key part of society.
- navyrain 13y ago
  There is a substantial difference between freely sharing knowledge to any inquiring mind, and sharing knowledge with only those people who have paid gobs of money, while receiving none yourself.
blahedo 13y ago
I'd also like to know how many is "many". It would seem... odd... for there to be a substantial number of them (although I could imagine a few edge cases, I guess).
- bradhe 13y ago
  I have had multiple hacker "schools" ask me volunteer.
mquander 13y ago
The difference between running your own tutoring business and volunteering for a hacker school is that N dollars go into the school's pocket, instead of yours. Why would society care about that difference?

codezero 13y ago

What exactly are they trying to license these bootcamps as? They are basically job placement agencies with training included, right? This is a bit off topic, but the prices that they command seem ludicrous. $1k a week or so, for most of them. I know that a person attending stands to get a high paying job, but 10k seems like a lot.

pbiggar 13y ago
Why is that ludicrous?
- codezero 13y ago
  I said it seems ludicrous. It just tastes bad, but since you asked, I decided to approximate the cost per unit/hour, and it actually costs about the same as California's public community colleges, so I guess this isn't crazy. All the same, California's community college prices are kind of out of hand if you ask me, but since you asked, I guess I take it back, but lacking any actual accreditation or guarantee, it's unclear how valuable such programs are in the long run.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    California's community colleges pay their lecturers.
    - codezero 13y ago
      Definitely not enough if you ask me :) That said, I didn't realize that some (many?) boot camps were using volunteers as instructors. Who would volunteer for such a thing?
jonursenbach 13y ago
I don't know, 10k compared to 100k+ at a proper four year college seems fair to me
- 13y ago

pavs 13y ago

Anyone actually successfully attended this boot camps and got a job offer for their coding skills? Specially for someone who never had any prior coding knowledge. I don't know why but this just smells like scam to me. Why would a company hire you, who just finished a boot camp, as opposed to someone who have years of coding experience and knowledge?

jcagalawan 13y ago
Boot camp devs who have never coded before attending boot camp are more likely to work for a significantly lower level of compensation than those who have experience.
- kybernetyk 13y ago
  As someone who runs a software business I can't even begin to imagine to hire someone who has only 3 months programming experience. Even if it was a super low paid position - it still would be wasted money. I guess companies in the valley are becoming really desperate - or they build trivial products where someone with almost no programming experience can productively fill a role.
hwang89 13y ago
I was in a Dev Bootcamp cohort of 10 students. All of us found jobs within 3 months of completing the program. Companies are looking to fill junior roles.
- codezero 13y ago
  Have any of the people moved on to more senior roles? I guess I am curious how this kind of bootcamp can prep someone to continue to grow/learn once in the office. Companies are always looking to fill junior roles until the economy hits a downturn.
  - coolsunglasses 13y ago
    I've worked with people that went through code bootcamps. It's anecdotal, but even after 1 year+ spent working as a programmer lots of hand-holding still involved. More so than a typical "junior" hire that went through uni + internships. I was originally keen on the idea of bootcamp hires because I've tutored a good number of people over the years but I'm beginning to see that it's closer to O'Reilly Cookbooks than SICP. Edit: To be more topical, while I'm generally irritated by anything that could be perceived as nanny-state brigading I have a hard time working up any froth on behalf the bootcamps after the experiences I've had with their students. Possible biases: didn't go to uni, self-taught programmer, some class-based baggage.

ivanca 13y ago

I'm also wary of boot camps but this is definitely not the way; if you want to pay for something you pay for something. They are not pretending to be a college, they are not pretending to be a substitute for it. The only scam here is this part of the USA law, is scamming people into believing that everything needs to be regulated or otherwise it's evil.

wpietri 13y ago
Modest regulation of the education industry is entirely necessary. It has a long history of trouble, from low-quality schools to out-and-out scams. Students by definition aren't able to directly evaluate the educational experience up front; if they could, they wouldn't need the classes. Plus, with high prices and long feedback cycles, there's a large amount of value at risk, and market mechanisms don't work particularly well. Even if the current crop of boot camps is all awesome, it's an ideal model for a scam. With new ones popping up all the time, anybody with more greed than sense could open up a well-marketed school, make some great promises, collect a couple hundred thousand dollars, give some half-assed classes, and shut it all down again before the first bad Yelp reviews come in. And then they could do it again with a different name instantly.
- progg798 13y ago
  "Students by definition aren't able to directly evaluate the educational experience up front" And government regulators with no technical background would? Please tell me you're kidding.
- ivanca 13y ago
  Yes, in theory. Here the only ones with more greed than sense are the ones behind the enforcement of bankrupting-expensive-regulations. If you really care that much you just need someone that knows the subject to go the classes and see for themselves if everything is being taught good enough. You don't need to inject a bureaucratic debt in their finances in the name of "regulations".

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

verteu 13y ago

This is terrible news. California is full of people who are structurally unemployed due to technological incompetence. The vast majority of "licensed teachers" know nothing about coding. Why obstruct hackers who teach valuable skills to others?

djur 13y ago
> California is full of people who are structurally unemployed Do you have a cite for that? Nationwide there's very little evidence of structural unemployment, and I'd be surprised to find that California (which is a state people tend to be interested in living in) has an unusual problem with finding skilled workers.

welder 13y ago

"it would be relatively easy for a fly-by-night operation to advertise a developer bootcamp, collect tuition, and then provide low-quality education — or skip town before the courses were even set to begin" These bootcamps don't charge students until after they complete the course and get an industry job.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

dschiptsov 13y ago

So there will be rise of "traditional" underground ones.) In some sense "legal" hacker conferences sponsored by MS and Cisco is utter nonsense. Strong disliking of cargo cults, bandwagon and peer effects of brainwashed mediocrity is a part of so-called hacker culture.)

anateus 13y ago

When the story first hit Venture Beat I stuck to reading what the BPPE actually said, and then I checked out the website to try and dig up the regulations. Unless someone has information I haven't been able to dig up "crack down" just means that they've been requested to comply. BPPE decided that these sorts of programs are under their purview and so they need to cough up some amount of cash and submit some paperwork. Quotations in the Venture Beat article very clearly state BPPE are not going after them, just notifying them of their need to comply under California law. So much polemic either on government regulation or on the merits of these programs. BPPE places schools into either "approved" or "accredited" categories. These programs need only be approved. As far as I can tell BPPE is fairly minimal in its requirements basically ensuring the schools are real things and not diploma mills. This isn't anywhere as much of a crackdown as CPUC making it harder for ride-shares (for a bit). Discussion of the programs makes sense, but in the context of an imagined witch hunt it just seems strange.

wyclif 13y ago

So I suppose this thread is just as good a place as any to ask the following question, which I've been curious about for a while now: What, in your opinion, is the highest quality coding boot camp and why? Follow-up: what should a person who qualifies for one of these schools be looking for?

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

> many of these companies charge upwards of $10,000 and make bold claims about alumni making six figure salaries upon graduation I think the word "scam" applies here.

djur 13y ago
There's a program like that here in Portland that makes claims on its website about Rails developers being able to immediately earn upwards of $80k a year. Maybe in the Bay Area, but definitely not in Portland. And they charge up front, no placement guarantees.

freemanindia 13y ago

This isn't going to help the industry. The Internet is changing the way we learn and software development is at the edge of the trend. Software lends itself to this in part because its a meritocracy in which competence is easy to recognize independent of accredited degrees, and because the tools change so fast traditional institutions have trouble keeping up. Its extremely unlikely regulation can do as good a job as the default market forces in identifying quality programs, and it will likely put a huge damper on people trying to do innovative things with technical education in the state. disclaimer: I run a one year 'developer bootcamp' in rural india - http://jaaga.in/study http://jaaga.in/study

godgod 13y ago

Intrusive government always has to get their slice.