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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

#51

Post by CPLX »

afavour wrote: post #32
tempsy wrote: post #21

Biggest red flag for me is Austen has basically become a full time right wing reactionary on X/Twitter

[flagged]

You might find the book “Palo Alto” highly illuminating. I certainly did.

There’s a lot more consistency in the backstory of Silicon Valley than I realized.

There’s certainly an amazing culture of visionaries and innovation and creative people as well, it’s worth noting that, but there’s a deep history of sociopathic business practices as well that goes back 100+ years and is core to the identity of the Valley in general and Stanford in particular.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#52

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sandofsky wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Do you think they should have listed “draft an arbitration claim,” on their enrollment prerequisites?

Unless you’re a total numpty, you can learn online how to draft an arb claim. And even if you are a numpty, you should be be to find—in a half-decent cohort—someone who can do this.

The issue is rarely ability. It’s learned helplessness in the face of the legal system. The anxiety, not ability, is the limiting factor.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#53

Post by ryandrake »

wtf92345923 wrote: post #20

Am I crazy, or do fines never come close to matching damages? Or jailtime? I'm constantly seeing rulings or indictments where an article says "defendant faces $1500 in fines or two years jail time", as if those are in any way equivalent. Were all the fine quantities written up in 1875 and just never got updated? In this case, defendants are accused of conning "at least 11,000 income share loans" "carrying an average…

The US justice system and regulatory agencies treat corporations with kid gloves. They often get many strongly worded letters and many chances to correct their bad behavior before regulatory action happens, and then when it does happen, it's slow and the corporation usually continues to operate, and then when penalty comes, it's some ridiculously small fraction of the gains that came from the bad behavior, which the corporation usually appeals and gets reduced or thrown out.

There are almost never company-killing fines. There are almost never consent decrees with stipulations that change the company's behavior. There are almost never instances of piercing the corporate veil and going after executives or shareholders. It's a total joke.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#54

Post by jswartz »

solardev wrote: post #10

Are there any legit income-sharing schools of this type, tech or otherwise? Done fairly, it sounds like an interesting alternative to upfront tuition. On the surface it doesn't seem like a bad model, but of course it could be twisted to evil ends. From the article: > The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. > Studen…

> I attended Launch School and found the founder and the program to be of high quality and integrity and the success of the capstone graduates speaks for itself.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#55

Post by CatWChainsaw »

CPLX wrote: post #51
afavour wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You might find the book “Palo Alto” highly illuminating. I certainly did. There’s a lot more consistency in the backstory of Silicon Valley than I realized. There’s certainly an amazing culture of visionaries and innovation and creative people as well, it’s worth noting that, but there’s a deep history of sociopathic business practices as well that goes back 100+ years and is core to the identity of the Valley in gen…

[flagged]

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#56

Post by maxerickson »

adubashi wrote: post #16

There'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.

There's no reasonable argument in favor of deceptive marketing. This idea that we should tolerate bullshit from people trying to make money needs to go away.

If the outcomes are good for the students, there won't be an issue with making them be straightforward about it.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#58

Post by wredue »

Twirrim wrote: post #5

This is the boot camp school formerly known as Lambda School, that came under a lot of fire in the past for these types of practices, and other issues. Previous trouble they've been in: https://dfpi.ca.gov/2021/04/26/lambda-school-reaches-settlem... https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/13/lambda-school-lawsuits/

This is the school to coordinated with /r/learnprogramming to advertise and trick people in to registering, and when called on their bad practices, worked with the sub to ban users.

The sub continued to deny a connection to the school, but I still don’t believe it.

Re: CFPB Takes Action Against Coding Boot Camp BloomTech and CEO Austen Allred

#60

Post by shkkmo »

sandofsky wrote: post #24
saadatq wrote: post #8

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.

When confronted about this on Hacker News, Austen defended himself with: > I did say the hiring rate of a cohort of one student was 100%. And in the same tweet I said, in all caps BUT VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Odd how that doesn’t make the article, don’t you think? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26813371 Incidentally, it did make it into the article he's referring to, twice.

Incidentally, comments like the one you made back in 2021 are part of what make HN so great, thanks.
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