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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

#351

Post by beej71 »

sandofsky wrote: post #339
beej71 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edit: I've been informed on a side channel that non-disparagement clauses can no longer be enforced. IANAL--can someone elaborate?) As someone who was a low-ranking insider at Lambda some years back, it was my perception that the people calling Lambda out presented a mixed bag in terms of veracity. Someone here commenting on this story said that Lambda counted their student TAs in their employment stats, for example…

> Someone here commenting on this story said that Lambda counted their student TAs in their employment stats, for example, but to the best of my knowledge this never happened. There were a handful (like three or four that I know of) that we did hire as full-time staff doing real jobs, and I'm pretty sure we counted them as employed, but not the student TAs. That's true. A source of confusion is that the school did hi…

> I imagine that they got that $4,000 number from all the people who attended the program, received zero practical skills to get jobs, went on to further training

But to be clear, that's not where they said they got the $4000 number. It would be one of those things that'd be nice to correctly know. Do ISAs come with a hidden $4000 fee? The answer: no. Did they have to pay $4000 more because of additional training? No. Did the ISAs last 8 years? No. (At least not for any of the years I was there.)

> Given the ISAs disappeared from the marketplaces that resold them to hedge funds, that sounds like exactly what happened.

I have no knowledge of their final disposition, whether or not the purchasers realized gains on the ISAs.

I know other companies like App Academy and Launch School have had successes with ISAs. For me, this is the real pisser of all this. I think done right it's a workable, useful model, but it got dragged through the mud here, and now we're left with the same old bullshit loans that are fucking the country over. I don't care about Lambda, but I really wish ISAs had been worked on to greater effect globally and hadn't gotten this tarnished image.

> A few people on the internet getting the details wrong doesn't invalidate that.

Of course not. But it also doesn't make the wrong details right, or something you should believe, which is what this subthread is all about.

How can we be expected to make any learned decisions about these sorts of financing instruments if we're throwing bad information in with the good?

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

#352

Post by reducesuffering »

ignoramous wrote: post #249
reducesuffering wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambda School and Mighty having the biggest PG cheerleading support of anything else kind of seals the deal. You can be great at something for awhile but youll always lose the zeitgeist eventually.

Pinpointing two duds among a sea of hits to smear Paul is... berserk.

Not really "pinpointing" when those two were 1/2 of any specific startup mentions: "check out this amazing startup that has a whole lot of haters." How many startups have an entire essay written in support of them? https://paulgraham.com/fh.html

PG stepped away from YC 10 years ago to raise his kids in the English countryside. I don't see what seems to indicate he has a great thumb on the pulse of Silicon Valley startups in 2024.

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

#354

Post by Tommah »

debo_ wrote: post #153
sandofsky wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In January 2020, as news broke about Lambda School's scummy behavior, Graham gave Austen a pep talk which he later expanded into the essay, "Haters." It has aged like a fine milk. https://paulgraham.com/fh.html

From the footnotes: > There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud. I guess all those folks calling…

This is pretty poor writing by PG here. What is "neutral opinion"... fact? Or the people who answer "I don't know" in political polls? And saying "Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous" is silly. If an attempt at fraud were really obvious, it wouldn't trick many people. The big frauds are the ones that are outwardly plausible and therefore trick lots of people.

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

#355

Post by berniedurfee »

beej71 wrote: post #333
debo_ wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the footnotes: > There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud. I guess all those folks calling…

(Edit: I've been informed on a side channel that non-disparagement clauses can no longer be enforced. IANAL--can someone elaborate?) As someone who was a low-ranking insider at Lambda some years back, it was my perception that the people calling Lambda out presented a mixed bag in terms of veracity. Someone here commenting on this story said that Lambda counted their student TAs in their employment stats, for example…

“… all the instructors who worked there back in the day were absolutely fucking passionate about getting students into jobs and changing the world”

100%

The fundamental concept had merit, but the business had a very very low probability of succeeding financially. Once the financials flipped, the original mission went out the window.

I’m proud of the work I did there and I know we gave many students great opportunities. It was sad, but not surprising to see it go so wrong. But for a time, for many students, good things happened.

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

#356

Post by jerrygenser »

hackerlight wrote: post #189

> 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. This is shameful behavior. And to think prominent people were propping him up after so many stories had already come out, all in the name of not cowing to the mob. They all have figurative blood on their hands, and I already know they…

PG tweeted today in support, kind of: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1780897522778554841

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

#357

Post by sn9 »

nolongerthere wrote: post #202
adeon wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 90% of students have a good experience but the 10% of students have a similar experiences to the poster there, then I still think Lambda is another ethical disaster of a start-up. "It's better than a typical USA student loan" is a very low bar.

> "It's better than a typical USA student loan" is a very low bar. But that the literal alternative, so feels pretty fair to compare.

Not with learning programming.

You can simply self-teach.

A bootcamp isn't a CS degree.

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

#358

Post by eadler »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #217
sandofsky wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company targeted the poor, single mothers, reformed convicts, and other disadvantaged groups. They tend to lack the free time or guidance to navigate these situations. If this work is trivial to you, I am happy to connect you with them to provide your services.

> If this work is trivial to you, I am happy to connect you with them to provide your services It is. I won't because this isn't something I care deeply about. The question is whether they would have been better off without arbitration, and the answer is no.

The problem is never arbitration. The problem is mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements which have, after considerable research, shown to be a negative for consumers. If it were really better you could always select arbitration as a part of the ADR process during during a standard Civil suit.

This is also an area I care deeply about. And have read north of 2000 pages of cases, analysis, and position papers on the topic.

I also have a list of about 90 more documents to read. Slow but steady progress.

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

#359

Post by hysan »

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…

Thank you for speaking up. This made me recall an interaction[1] I had with Austen Allred, the CEO, on HN way back in Lambda School’s early days. I was skeptical of his claims that experiences like yours were the outlier. His response was that they had a dedicated “student success” team. I didn’t quite believe his claims at the time, but I was willing to wait and see. I guess my instincts were right and that all of the things he’s said on HN very much stretched the truth.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=20965780

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

#360

Post by dukeyukey »

sn9 wrote: post #357
nolongerthere wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's better than a typical USA student loan" is a very low bar. But that the literal alternative, so feels pretty fair to compare.

Not with learning programming. You can simply self-teach. A bootcamp isn't a CS degree.

Between smarts, motivation, and time most people cannot "simply self-teach". There's a reason education is such a massive industry, and entire professions exist around it.
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