The American-Dream-as-a-Service • Hacker News Board

Re: The American-Dream-as-a-Service

#21

Post by theriddlr » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

A percentage of future earnings is a good fee repayment structure. This incentivises the bootcamps to make grads employable.

A few bootcamps in the UK are being sued by former graduates who couldn't secure a guaranteed job after a year. Note that in the UK, university fees are £9k for a Master's whereas bootcamps cost £4k. Bootcamps still work out cost-effectively as they can be taken as evening classes and there's fewer months of living expenses to pay for (3 months for a bootcamp vs 12 months for a Master's)

Re: The American-Dream-as-a-Service

#22

Post by smoll » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

alexfromapex wrote: post #6

I think people need to realize you’re getting a terrible deal when you give Lambda School x% of your earnings at your first job. Also as someone who went to college and paid for it myself these bootcamps are detracting from my American Dream because they’re empowering corporations to pay lower salaries to everyone because they have boot camp grads eager to be paid lower wages. Other specialized fields don’t allow thi…

> I think people need to realize you’re getting a terrible deal when you give Lambda School x% of your earnings at your first job

To people who have other options, yes, it's a bad deal. But to those who have no way of navigating those options, like the people mentioned in the article, fundamentally changing your options landscape in exchange for a fixed percentage of an income bump you never would have realized otherwise is a fantastic deal.

I say this as a largely self-taught programmer who at one time considered giving away a huge chunk of 2 years of salary in exchange for a programming bootcamp + apprenticeship type of opportunity (this was a few years before bootcamps became a mainstream thing). It was extremely tempting and many times on my self-taught journey I second-guessed whether I could figure it out on my own and TBH, without an extremely high level of self-confidence in my intelligence and scrappiness, I probably wouldn't have figured it out on my own.

Re: The American-Dream-as-a-Service

#23

Post by alexfromapex » Thu, Mar 04, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #9

alexfromapex wrote: post #6

I think people need to realize you’re getting a terrible deal when you give Lambda School x% of your earnings at your first job. Also as someone who went to college and paid for it myself these bootcamps are detracting from my American Dream because they’re empowering corporations to pay lower salaries to everyone because they have boot camp grads eager to be paid lower wages. Other specialized fields don’t allow thi…

Is this a joke or are you being serious? The last thing we need is a mandatory certification program for software developers. If employers aren't willing to pay you extra for your degree then that's your problem. All that matters is ability to do the work.

No, it's not a joke. In fact, many developers agree: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-pro...

Re: The American-Dream-as-a-Service

#24

Post by NotSammyHagar » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #19

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest practicing over and over again to reduce your anxiety. We all feel anxious when doing a whiteboard or now VC interview where they can ask you anything and you feel like you have to instantly answer.

> I suggest practicing over and over again Anxiety isn't related to experience (or actual competence). When it's on the level mentioned, what works is CBT (if you're lucky). That may include practice, but it will certainly not be the only element.

I guess it will vary from person to person. For me, my anxiety is definitely reduced the more prepared I actually am, and the more I feel. Have I implemented all the basic algorithms in the last month in my test language, did I actually run them, do quick sort and other sorts whats the time complexity, then try a series of harder programming projects. Do some of the super common ones like design twitter. Binary search - can you avoid the overflow things when doing the divide by two...

And for experienced people, be ready to say what you left your most recent job, what you gained, what did't work well, is there a noticable arc to your career, if you want a new job type how are you prepared.