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Startup Coding Bootcamp Modern Labor Says It Will Pay You $2,000 a Month For 5 Months To Learn To Code, and Take Roughly 15% of Your Salary For 2 Years Later (vice.com)
Modern Labor promises to teach you to code in five months and help find you a job when you graduate -- but you're on the hook for the next two years. From a report: Most coding bootcamps almost sound like get-rich-quick schemes: Devote a few months to learning a new skill from home, and walk into a job that could pay you $70,000 a year to start. For the most immersive programs, you'll need to put your life on hold while you learn full-time. Usually, students pay for those coding bootcamps upfront while they take time off their jobs to learn.
Startup coding bootcamp Modern Labor pays people $2,000 a month for five months while they learn to code, following a curriculum remotely from wherever they live for at least 30 hours every week (working out to roughly minimum wage). After graduation, if they land a job that pays at least $40,000, Modern Labor takes 15 percent of their salary for the next two years. For example, if they find a job that pays $80,000, they'll pay Modern Labor $24,000 over two years. [...] Modern Labor's business model is an example of an "income sharing agreement," a scheme that's on-trend for Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs looking to disrupt education.
Startup coding bootcamp Modern Labor pays people $2,000 a month for five months while they learn to code, following a curriculum remotely from wherever they live for at least 30 hours every week (working out to roughly minimum wage). After graduation, if they land a job that pays at least $40,000, Modern Labor takes 15 percent of their salary for the next two years. For example, if they find a job that pays $80,000, they'll pay Modern Labor $24,000 over two years. [...] Modern Labor's business model is an example of an "income sharing agreement," a scheme that's on-trend for Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs looking to disrupt education.
that so many IT analysts are making that being a programmer is becoming a "blue collar" job. Boot camps prey on people with promises of glory and being a hacker, but most of them emerge to work in places where the pay is fairly low and the job basic, like front-end Web development. Very, very few of these "graduates" go on to do systems programming, graph theory, AI/ML, etc. They just don't teach that kind of stuff, and what they do teach is fairly shallow anyway. It's better to go to a community college for two years and get an AS degree in programming. You'll have at least some credibility and an actual degree. And in many cases, it's cheaper than a lot of these boot camps.
I've worked with some of these guys, and they don't emerge knowing much. A few couldn't even set up their own programming environments, as the labs at these places are run by sysadmins who ensure the labs are up to spec all the time. If you want to make money and you're good at math and enjoy numbers, learn Python, R, Go, and some systems stuff. Wall Street loves them some R hackers.
This is exactly the kind of thing Government should be providing for free. It's even mostly the same deal, you earn more money, and the government takes a higher percentage of your salary.
The fact that private enterprise is doing this shows the failure of government to provide free education.
Let's say you make $75K per year. That's like $22K over 2 years you have to pay. Minus the $10K they paid you to learn, that's only $12K for an education and a job. Better than most college deals where you pay upfront with the possibility of maybe making some money in the future
It is worse than that. TFA isn't clear, but it looks like they pay you $2000 per month, yet you are still responsible for paying tuition that exceeds that. So YOU are paying THEM in net payments even while you are still taking the class. Since these are "online" courses, their net cost to educate you is near zero.
Only a complete idiot would sign up for this scam.
When my company is interviewing, and we have two candidates:
Candidate 1: I learned to code in a 3 month boot camp that cost me $15k.
Candidate 2: I learned to code in my mom's basement using free tutorials and Stackoverflow.
we will definitely prefer #2, who is not a fool parted from his money, but has also shown himself capable of self-learning.
Why don't all colleges provide free education, but in return, your wages are garnished for a period at a set percent? This would provide a huge incentive for colleges to graduate students with real world skills. If your university turns out students who can't make money, your institution fails quickly thus freeing up resources for better ones.
We've successfully brought back indentured servitude. This will go nicely with those Debtors Prisons we bought back years ago and the modern slavery this is prison labor.
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if they do manage to find you a job you'll be in deep if you ever lose it. These days you can't make it past an HR filter unless you've got a 4 year degree from a proper University. My bud's been looking for months and the only thing he can get is weekend graveyards where they're so desperate they'll take anything with a pulse. He's had a few of those, they don't last because they're always working to offshore you...
In 1990 this would have worked. But in 1990 I could crack open a book, read it, and go get a job making $70k/yr writing code because that was before H1-Bs and offshoring.
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As someone who has done boot camps before, never a 5 month one, but still, what you learn in them doesn't stick very well because of the accelerated pace. You need to use it as soon as you get out for it to form into long term memories.
what you learn in them doesn't stick very well because of the accelerated pace.
According to TFA, many of the people signing up for these bootcamps are recent college graduates. They are finding out that their degrees are worthless, so they are hoping to learn something useful in a crash course.
If they had put more thought into their college major, they could have learned to code over 4 years instead of 5 months.
This model is fantastic.
Think about how modern education is currently conducted, regardless of public or private university, student loan or cash payment:
The student puts money down upfront for an uncertain outcome at an institution that, once payment is received, has no vested interest in the student even completing courses, let alone finding rewarding employment. In fact the institution is financially rewarded for keeping the student as a student for as long as possible.
In modern education, ALL the risk is laid in the lap of the student.
This model completely reverses this insanity. The student has virtually no risk up front besides their invested time. The institution has a financial incentive in student in multiple ways:
#1 Keep them a student for as short a time as possible, the longer they're a student the more they have spend on the student
#2 Find rewarding employment. The more money the student makes as a result of their success, the more money the company makes, then the more students they can invest in and so and so forth.
This is a genius model and it's how the airline and trucking industries are moving towards as finding qualified applicants has become a very difficult endeavour.
Always include the complete job description back at them in the margin in 2 pt, white on white text.
They prefer to waste your time over there's, you just have to be smarter than some HR drone. You should not be at all concerned about wasting their time, they don't care about wasting yours.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He gets the rejections in about 2 hours or less, even if it's late at night. There are scam jobs out there ($40k/yr, 80hr/week, bring your own car, no we don't pay mileage, yes you will drive all over this 150+ mile wide city) and there's the weekend graveyards, and there's the folks offering $10/hr for 6+ years of experience and training. Everybody else demands a college degree because, well, they can get it. And if all else fails there's the H1-B program.
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"TFA isn't clear, but it looks like they pay you $2000 per month, yet you are still responsible for paying tuition that exceeds that. So YOU are paying THEM in net payments even while you are still taking the class. "
I can't find anything on their website indicating that you pay any tuition at all.
They pay $2000/mo for the camp, if you get a job paying more than $40k/yr they get 15% for 2yrs with a cap of $30k paid to them.
It doesn't sound like the worst plan for a new college student, especially if it enables them to get an entry level position at a company with tuition reimbursement.
More like the HR person only actually sends you Candidate 1 if that.
If HR is the gatekeeper for technical hiring, then you work for a dysfunctional organization.
HR's job is to do the paperwork, not make the decisions.
Hiring good people is the most important competency that an organization can have.
It is astounding how many companies are so bad at it.
TFA actually has info from someone in the program. They have you working projects, she indicated she's already completed 15. Afterward they don't guarantee placement but they have an optional staffing platform for gigs 1mo-contract to hires. So you produce actual work output as part of the camp.
I mean at face value it isn't that unreasonable. You don't need 4yrs to learn most development especially web front/backend development and getting it in one place alongside practical experience is all to the good. Technically it is a little sketchy wanting participants to work on projects the company is getting paid for AND wanting them to pay back what they make is a bit greedy but like you said, you DO need things to practice on and it will help build something for a resume if you are entry level or making a career change.
What is very sketchy to me is the 30hr minimum. They have an activity tracker app that monitors your usage to make sure you are actively working on everything for at least 30hrs a week and have people competing to log as many hours as possible 45-60hrs+. Which makes it dramatically lower than minimum wage AND they want to pay up to 3x whatever they are giving you back. Sweatshop style.
If you really need it explained to you, here is a link explaining how to learn to code.
http://programming-motherfucke...
Don't forget to read the Manifesto while you're there.
TFA is titled "This Company Will Pay You to Learn to Code, and Take 15 Percent of Your Income Later" written by Samantha Cole on 3/28/2019
You are referencing the next similar topic but unrelated FA on the page titled, "The CEO of a Failed For-Profit College Started a Coding Bootcamp" written by Jordan Pearson 2/24/2016.
There is no tuition stated or implied in TFA.
MOD DOWN, mistaken and inaccurate. My own post is redundant but this correction needed to be more visible.
TFA is titled "This Company Will Pay You to Learn to Code, and Take 15 Percent of Your Income Later" written by Samantha Cole on 3/28/2019
You are referencing the next similar topic but unrelated FA on the page titled, "The CEO of a Failed For-Profit College Started a Coding Bootcamp" written by Jordan Pearson 2/24/2016.
There is no tuition stated or implied in TFA nor shady implications and details you refer to.
Is it just me, or is this more 30% than 15%?
It's just you.