Unreal: > Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.
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CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
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Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#42There's probably a good argument to ignore rule breaking and little deceptive marketing if the student outcomes are good but it looks like in-aggregate that they weren't and that students were better off taking a loan and attending Oregon State's Post Bac in CS or Hack Reactor.
And if you really believe you can succeed as an autodidact with minimal mentorship from previous batches of students, 42 schools[1] offer that for free.
It's shameful YC was still shilling Lambda one year ago[2] even though there's been a mountain of evidence about its deceptive practices for many years.
2. https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5N-on-starting-and-scali...
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they do lawyer up, they end up being forced into arbitration due to an arbitration clause in their student agreements You’re literally describing why arbitration works. Someone low income can just file for arbitration with minimal work by a lawyer. Contrast that with the tens of thousands they’d need to pay a litigator.
That true, but this ends up being a game of whack-a-mole, and even a few thousand dollars is too much for a lot of victims. Recently there was an attempt to mount a class action lawsuit, which would have settled things for everyone in one fell swoop, and it was rejected due to the arbitration clause.
> even a few thousand dollars is too much for a lot of victims
Someone angling to go into coding should be able to do the research to draft an arbitration claim on their own. In most cases that isn’t a fair assumption to make, but given the cohort, they should be able to collaborate on a draft.
The gating part isn’t doing the work. It’s knowing you have the option to.
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#44This is great. But I hope they do the same thing to so called "legitimate" universities who have long deceived students as to the value of the degrees they grant. I recently met a liberal arts student from an Ivy League university who has been under-employed for twenty years. She still has unpaid student loans and she graduated in 2007! She has had to work in retail positions from time to time. And she's considering…
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Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically, the statement is still valid. It's just that the confidence interval will be wide. :-)
He seems to be the king of technically. "For a few months in 2013, Allred camped out of his car while in Silicon Valley, and frequently describes this period as having been homeless. However, a deleted post on his blog titled 'Voluntarily Homeless in Silicon Valley' explains that he lived out of a car by choice."
I have a friend who is adamant that he lives out of his truck by choice, but it's hard to call it a choice when there's only one option. I wouldn't hold his feet to the fire if he later admitted he was in a rough spot (our friend group is all very clear on this situation). I had put Allred entirely out of my mind for a while, but I seem to recall his "homelessness" was characterized more by image than by practicality. Since we're being technical, it seems worth making the distinction.
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That true, but this ends up being a game of whack-a-mole, and even a few thousand dollars is too much for a lot of victims. Recently there was an attempt to mount a class action lawsuit, which would have settled things for everyone in one fell swoop, and it was rejected due to the arbitration clause.
> even a few thousand dollars is too much for a lot of victims Someone angling to go into coding should be able to do the research to draft an arbitration claim on their own. In most cases that isn’t a fair assumption to make, but given the cohort, they should be able to collaborate on a draft. The gating part isn’t doing the work. It’s knowing you have the option to.
Do you think they should have listed “draft an arbitration claim,” on their enrollment prerequisites?
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#47BloomTech about to get a name change.
Honestly wonder what the true placement rate was. There seem to be some success stories I’m seeing on Twitter but this could have all been avoided had they just been up front.
That $164,000 victim fund sounds pitiful but I do wonder how it is calculated.
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#48BloomTech about to get a name change. Honestly wonder what the true placement rate was. There seem to be some success stories I’m seeing on Twitter but this could have all been avoided had they just been up front. That $164,000 victim fund sounds pitiful but I do wonder how it is calculated.
> ...with inflated promises of job-placement rates as high as 86 percent, when the company’s internal metrics showed placement rates closer to 50 percent and in some cases as low as 30 percent.
> BloomTech advertised on its website that 71 to 86 percent of students were placed in jobs within six months of graduation, when its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed placement rates closer to 50 percent. Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of those situations lending support to the corporate death penalty. Allowing name changes like Worldcom, Spectrum, and so on to write off some liabilities while operating as if nothing happened.
Or you could just toss people in jail. This case is clearly wire fraud if the company knowing provided fraudulent hiring rates to get people to pay money for a service.
Why not both?
Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred
#50BloomTech about to get a name change. Honestly wonder what the true placement rate was. There seem to be some success stories I’m seeing on Twitter but this could have all been avoided had they just been up front. That $164,000 victim fund sounds pitiful but I do wonder how it is calculated.
> ...with inflated promises of job-placement rates as high as 86 percent, when the company’s internal metrics showed placement rates closer to 50 percent and in some cases as low as 30 percent. > BloomTech advertised on its website that 71 to 86 percent of students were placed in jobs within six months of graduation, when its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed placement rates closer to 50 percent.…
I’m such a derp, I literally read right past that, thanks.