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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

#291

Post by Kalium »

sensanaty wrote: post #235

If my math is correct, they scammed roughly $44M from ~11000 people... And the fine is somewhere around $150k? In what universe is that an acceptable punishment? Whoever is running the show here should be thrown to rot in jail for the next few years, not this love-tap they're getting.

The fine is not the punishment. The bans are the punishment. They gut the business model, likely shutting down the business entirely in short order.

Making people whole is what civil lawsuits are for. Which, if I understand correctly, will be much easier with this order and findings in place. That will be some serious financial punishment on top of the ban.

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

#292

Post by ceejayoz »

willcipriano wrote: post #263
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any you’d like to highlight that come anywhere close to “we picked a sample size of one student” or “no finance charge means $4k finance charge”?

"Have a bright future as a (job)" "(job) can earn (x) dollars a year!" When in reality that career is losing jobs and less than 10% of graduates get one. Anything what would have you work in a museum would probably meet this criteria. Alternative is they told the truth, everyone went in with eyes wide open and everyone is responsible for their own student loans.

Those claims come nowhere close to the outright fraud laid out in the CFPB complaint.

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

#293

Post by Aurornis »

imzadi wrote: post #66

I attended Lambda when it was first starting out. I think I was in the third or fourth cohort. At the time, the sell was that you didn't have to pay anything unless you got a job using the skills you learned from them. I was pretty naïve, I guess. Things seemed fine in the beginning. The instructors were good, and I liked that there were actual live classes. Things degraded very quickly. They kept changing the format…

Thanks for being honest about your experience. All of the Lambda grads I’ve talked to in person have similar negative stories about how their experience felt like it was being made up on the fly.

It’s difficult to speak out about problems with your educational institutions because your own reputation is partially attached, at least in early career. I see a couple people in my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds defending BloomTech publicly today despite having previously complained about their experience in private. It must be difficult to see your educational experience being exposed as being poor, which probably prevents a lot of people from speaking out. The Lambda/BloomTech grads I know are actually smart people, but they had to self-teach their way there. Lambda lured a lot of smart people in by proximity to Paul Graham and all of the positive press they received online when they started out.

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

#294

Post by p10_user »

imzadi wrote: post #66

I attended Lambda when it was first starting out. I think I was in the third or fourth cohort. At the time, the sell was that you didn't have to pay anything unless you got a job using the skills you learned from them. I was pretty naïve, I guess. Things seemed fine in the beginning. The instructors were good, and I liked that there were actual live classes. Things degraded very quickly. They kept changing the format…

This is premeditated nefariousness! Horrible

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

#295

Post by LMYahooTFY »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #211
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> You can't expect 100% of students to have a good time, and it's not obvious what an "ethical" success bar should be No, but you can expect none of them to have been lied to. > If Allred is an unscrupulous scammer, he forgot to do the greedy part. The guy is worth less than a lot (maybe most) FAANG SWEs The defense is he's a fraudster, but incompetent?

> No, but you can expect none of them to have been lied to.

The CFPB report really doesn't make this obvious. All I've seen in this thread and in the CFPB statement are claims with nothing to back them up. The worst I've seen is "100% cohort", which doesn't seem to condemn the whole program.

> The defense is he's a fraudster, but incompetent?

The defense is I'm having a difficult time finding actual evidence of fraud.

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

#296

Post by LMYahooTFY »

alex_lav wrote: post #213
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> You can't expect 100% of students to have a good time, No one in this thread has suggested this.

The guy I responded to said 10% having a bad time was an ethical disaster, so what's the bar? 1%? 9%?

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

#297

Post by diyftw »

justin66 wrote: post #259

Unrepentant as always. We decided to settle the matter because it was clear that ongoing litigation would be extremely time consuming, incredibly expensive, and distract us from our core mission. We do so without agreeing to or denying any of the allegations in the consent order. https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1780770303406403701 Weird to read further down the thread, where he acknowledges the wording of the press…

> I can't even sum this up.

As is the intent with most serial liars, no? Twist you up so bad that it quite literally jams up your reasoning ability, making you more susceptible to the con.

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

#298

Post by LMYahooTFY »

Freedom2 wrote: post #215
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The guy is worth less than a lot (maybe most) FAANG SWEs. This is quite a definitive claim by you. Do you happen to have the data for what FAANG SWE's are worth so we can compare?

It's not exactly news that FAANG salaries have been extremely high for the last 20 years.

levels.fyi

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

#299

Post by next_xibalba »

janalsncm wrote: post #133
next_xibalba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting these together: "permanently bans BloomTech from all consumer-lending activities and bans Allred from any student-lending activities for ten years" "ordering BloomTech and Allred to cease collecting payments on income share loans for graduates who did not have a qualifying job, eliminate finance changes for certain agreements, and allow students the option to withdraw without penalty" This order seems like a…

> This order seems like a death sentence. Corporations aren’t people. Ordering a scammer to knock it off isn’t even close to being a serious penalty. Allred should be in prison.

> Allred should be in prison.

Absurd.

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

#300

Post by LMYahooTFY »

outop wrote: post #216
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a sad amount of dog piling for HN. I know dozens of students who attended and turned their lives around because of the program. I see Lambda Alumni on every page of LinkedIn job boards. I'm sure some people had a bad time, but all of the ISA issues GP stated are clearly stated in the contract, and these calls for "jail time" are absurd. People clearly know almost nothing about the program, or its success rate. D…

I'm not sure all the ISA issues are clearly stated in the contract, or whether they were clearly stated in all the contacts, before they started to get into trouble. But they clearly lied about much of this stuff in the headline publicity. Lying prominently and 'clarifying' the lies in the small print is obviously still fraud. Doing fraud and saying 'but the majority of the people we defrauded still had an overall po…

Can you point out the lies? I'm genuinely trying to find them, and the CFPB article does not provide any evidence other than a few marketing quotes.

I'm very sure all the ISA issues are clearly stated in the contract. Everything is very clear about the fact that you will pay a minimum of $17-18k, and a max of $30k as a percentage of your monthly income. It was very clear that missing a payment would incur the entire loan being owed immediately (presumably it would go to collections).

The "hidden $4000 finance charge" I don't really understand, given that it is apparently built into the loan. It's not like you get charged an extra $4000 on top of the $30k (assuming you pay that).

I'd still choose this route over 4 years plus college tuition for a CS degree.

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