Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#101

Post by phillc73 » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:30 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #83

phillc73 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how undergraduate University education works in Australia (at least it did when I attended. Perhaps someone younger than me can comment if things have changed in the last 20 years). Effectively the government pays your undergraduate university fees. There is then an additional tax applied against your salary, after it reaches a certain threshold. This of course results in jokes that Arts graduates may as well…

That's effectively how it works in the US as well for most people. Federal loans (90% of all loans) come with income based repayment plans that charge 10% of your disposable income and are cancelled after 20 years if you don't pay it off.

I did not know that. So why all the noise about how expensive tertiary education is in the US?

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#102

Post by hkmurakami » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:36 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #84

xiaoma wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bubble is credentialed post-secondary schools and the 1.3 trillion dollar student debt crisis. Just like the credentialed schools, there's a wide variety in quality and outcomes, but I think it's pretty clear they're doing better on ROI (and at least people aren't going into decades of debt for them en masse). > "If the school failed to survive, does it affect the survival of its graduates? Is this going to have…

Federal loans (90% of all loans) come with income based repayment plans that charge 10% of your disposable income and are cancelled after 20 years if you don't pay it off. The income based repayment plans are also retroactively available to all Federal borrowers. It's not actually as big of a problem as it sounds.

The loan forgiveness entices people who wouldn't otherwise buy the education product and further inflates the sticker price of education.

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#103

Post by Adam89 » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:49 AM UTC

phrowaway21231 wrote: post #34

Shereef Bishay sold out his staff and sold out his mission and he's going to the do the same to his staff at Learner's Guild in Oakland! He sold it off to Kaplan for 80M and his staff (with equity) got nothing!!! I interviewed for a role at Dev bootcamp in 2016 and got an odd feeling from the place and the woman who interviewed me. She took several months to get back to me after I followed up multiple times and wow a…

Oh behave! Not getting a job at DBC does not mean you can now start spreading bad rumours about Shereef Bishay. The fact that you're using a throwaway account speaks volumes.

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#104

Post by mxschumacher » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 9:55 AM UTC

BreakoutList wrote: post #42

For anyone seeking alternatives, $0 up-front cost software engineering bootcamps that I'm aware of: Learner’s Guild https://www.fastcoexist.com/3068200/when-this-entrepreneurs-... 42 (completely free) https://www.42.us.org/ Holberton School https://www.holbertonschool.com/ Lambda Academy https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science

42 student here.

The school is 100% free as in no upfront cost and no later charge. The difficulty is to get in, one has to make it through a 26 day C heavy selection process and pass logic tests beforehand.

The school is really meritocratic in the sense that formal background is irrelevant and financial assistance makes it accessible for almost everybody.

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#105

Post by Melchizedek » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:12 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #50

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is accurate, but reading between the tea leaves it seems the commitment to diversity compromised their ability to signal their student quality. Their values are certainly laudable, but perhaps unprofitable. Maybe they would have been better off as a non-profit? It seems like rich and famous people would love to throw money to this initiative as a non-profit.

How diverse was charging $10k/head in New York City in the first place? Are we just talking about racial diversity? Seems like an awfully strange hill to die on.

Diversity usually means diversity of race, sometimes gender and sexual orientation, hardly ever age or wealth, and never diversity of opinion.

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#106

Post by michaelt » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:20 AM UTC

brooklyn_ashey wrote: post #75

busterarm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who can afford to live in San Fran without working for 2 years (9 months)?

And who can afford to have $15,000 taken off the top of their salary between $51,000 and $100,000? I hope this graduate can find remote work and live in a tent in a national park campground nearby a major tech employment city with a killer public transportation system that reaches its public park campgrounds. There are actual bears on Bear Mountain by the way.

  And who can afford to have $15,000 taken off the top
  of their salary between $51,000 and $100,000?

Anyone who's BATNA is making $46,000 or less, i.e. the median working 25+ year old with an associate's degree or lower in the United States [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#107

Post by factorialboy » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:22 AM UTC

Who needs bootcamps? All you need is a decent machine and an internet connection to learn. That's how we learnt "web" back in the day. Cynical me hopes all commercial (and often spammy) bootcamps and conferences and meetups die a quick death. Also death to the hipster culture in tech. /rant over

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#108

Post by jnmandal » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:29 AM UTC

geekjock wrote: post #70

I worked at Dev Bootcamp for four years. A big part of why the company is going out of business is that it put students ahead of profits. I wrote a post about this here: https://medium.com/@abinoda/dev-bootcamp-is-dead-but-it-didn...

Thanks for writing this Abi

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#109

Post by jnmandal » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #13

arikr wrote: post #2

"Hi Andrew, we had actually been working too find a sustainable business model since the very beginning. Ultimately we couldn't find one that didn't sacrifice on our commitment to provide the highest quality program possible while keeping our program open to the most diverse students possible." What does that mean? It seems like this should've been a profitable business - 3000 graduates @ $10k/piece = $30mm revenue.

I believe that three thousand was over the last five years. So 6mm. I don't know much about it, but you could eat that up pretty easily it seems. Figure 300 students at a time, ten students an instructor, 100k per instructor, gives 3 million. Then there's rent and support staff.

The support/general overhead wasn't cheap either. When I was there we had a free therapist, mandatory morning yoga, teambuiliding exercises, and stuff like weekly free food, etc.

Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down

#110

Post by jnmandal » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 10:47 AM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #16

arikr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, wikipedia lists 40 staff, and 450 students per year. Say 40 * $200,000 = $8mm/yr, plus rent. 450 students/yr ~= $6mm. This back of the envelope would point to them being unprofitable.

Avg. salary of 200K seems to be very high?

You normally do math like this with assumption an employee costs 2x salary.