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Businesses Programming

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) 161

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.

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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

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    .... wait, and Take Roughly 15% of Your Salary For 2 Years Later? Hahaa... KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN (academy)

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @04:33PM (#58350326)

      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.

      • by oic0 ( 1864384 )
        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.
        • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @05:20PM (#58350614)

          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.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Of course but that is true of anything you learn in college as well. You just cut out the cruft they use to pad it, accelerate it how long it actually takes to learn that material. Either way if you actually want it to be functional you need to couple it with experience. These things are for entry level gigs. Sadly finding somewhere that doesn't want you to already have experience for an entry level position is going to be tough these days.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          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. T

          • Hello, it is me Courtney the vlogger I was commenting on someone elseâ(TM)s misinformation but saw this just wanted to say the 30 hours is all you have to do but they want you to go at your own pace so some people will want to use more time and move at a slower pace it has never been needed to do more but all three of us are working on different things some days and we help each other move along with tips that work for each other. I totally appreciate you sharing the knowledge !!! -Courtney Angotti Ak
          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            What is very sketchy to me is the 30hr [per week] minimum.

            Might that have something to do with a threshold in the US Affordable Care Act or some other labor law?

      • I think this is designed to be applied to states like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I live in Alabama and I can tell you that people will line up for this sort of ...thing.

      • But #2 has to have extensive retraining. Well, so does #1 of course. But if those are the only two candidates then go digging for more resumes.

        • But #2 has to have extensive retraining.

          #2 has shown he can learn on his own, without needing babysitting.

          But if those are the only two candidates then go digging for more resumes.

          For a $20/hour code-monkey position? In today's economy, this is as good as you are gonna get.

          • by dwpro ( 520418 )
            What sort of work would you expect a 'code monkey' to do? This value proposition has always eluded me.
          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            #2 has shown he can learn on his own, without needing babysitting.

            #2 hasn't shown that he can learn industry best practices for quality control or security. Instead of a full stack developer, you get a full Stack Overflow developer [christianheilmann.com] who is more skilled at using the clipboard than anything else.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        Yeah but 2 won't get an interview with your company, in fact if comments you've made previously are an indication 2 could have solved classically unsolvable computation problems or solved a few with previously thought impossible efficiency and you'd toss his resume in the trash because it doesn't list a degree.

      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        "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 enab

        • I can't find anything on their website indicating that you pay any tuition at all.

          TFA states that tuition for the course is $14,987.

          It doesn't sound like the worst plan for a new college student

          According to TFA the people running the bootcamp have a history of involvement in other scammy organizations.

          especially if it enables them to get an entry level position at a company with tuition reimbursement.

          TFA implies that employers don't place much, if any, value in the certification.

          It is really just a piece of paper that says "I failed an IQ test."

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @10:42PM (#58351798)

            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.

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            "TFA implies that employers don't place much, if any, value in the certification."

            That is going to be on an individual basis. You can apply for an entry level position with a resume that says "Voted Most likely to hangglide in high school" and "Shaved roast beef with precision at Arby's for six months" or you can put those AND "Attended Modern Labor Development Bootcamp" and reference the 15-20 production projects you contributed to and show examples of your work. You are getting shafted in that this is rea

            • That is going to be on an individual basis. You can apply for an entry level position with a resume that says "Voted Most likely to hangglide in high school" and "Shaved roast beef with precision at Arby's for six months" or you can put those AND "Attended Modern Labor Development Bootcamp" and reference the 15-20 production projects you contributed to and show examples of your work.

              Your comparison doesn't make sense. If someone, who is applying for a tech job, includes anything else but tech related experiences in his/her resume, then the person is very likely not to be selected. This is a known way of presenting your resume -- show only relevant experiences to the job applied. Though, this also enable another issue where people exaggerate their experiences/skills to look better than their real ones.

              You can self study or you can do Khan's but a boot camp which includes actual inbound for profit tasks is probably going to be more efficient.

              That is not the case here, at least for now. From TFA -- "Although people enrolled in

              • We do not copy paste codes not sure where this information is from? You do not learn to code without a little struggle and doing your own research that is what we are doing there is less hand holding than my previous front end bootcamp I attended. Feel free to pose these questions on my Courtney tech vlog and ask someone whoâ(TM)s in the program. I will answer to the best of my ability. I keep everything 100 and I also ask my boss to share his input before I answer :) thanks Courtney tech Courtney Ang
              • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

                "Your comparison doesn't make sense. If someone, who is applying for a tech job, includes anything else but tech related experiences in his/her resume, then the person is very likely not to be selected. This is a known way of presenting your resume -- show only relevant experiences to the job applied."

                And what precisely is it that you expect to be present on the resume of a person applying for their first tech job? There are no previous experiences to list and it is insane to claim there are labor shortages

              • If someone, who is applying for a tech job, includes anything else but tech related experiences in his/her resume, then the person is very likely not to be selected. This is a known way of presenting your resume -- show only relevant experiences to the job applied.

                Unless the employer specifies otherwise in the job posting. I've seen a few employers that explicitly require candidates to explain all gaps in the candidate's employment history since high school graduation.

        • There is no tuition . This is just to help you focus on studying and not working 40 hours while trying to immerse yourself in program itâ(TM)s proven quite helpful for me . -Courtney tech Courtney Angotti cohort #1
      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        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 r

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        I would just sit them down in front of a computer, assign them a programming task and watch them complete it and make sure the program runs. Then inspect the code for neatness, logic, compactness and accuracy and of course how long it took. The problem would be relatively simple but require some complex logic to compete. The best three then go on to be interviewed to evaluate psychological worth, how good a team player are they and honestly I would be tempted to send the final person to a psychiatrist for a

        • That testing for psychopathy and narcissism, a bit costly but hey a few hundred dollar test versus ten even hundreds of thousands of dollars (be it stolen proprietary data, stolen company property, in office conflicts and fights or simply primitive sexual assaults, that test will reduce those risk a lot, seriously well worth the investment).

          Autism spectrum disorder used to be called "autistic psychopathy". How do autistic candidates score on the "psychopathy" scale that you use? I imagine that the leaders of an employer or employment agency don't want it to end up the target of a disability discrimination lawsuit.

      • 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.

        I don't see anything in TFS, TFA, or on the Modern Labor website that says there is any tuition fee.

        Since these are "online" courses, their net cost to educate you is near zero.

        The fine website talks about being assigned projects under the leadership of a project manager, with code reviews. This is not "near zero" cost.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This is just capitalism in action, right? When you ask the repair shop in the desert "how much to fix my car" and they respond "how much you got?" , it's the same premise. If the company can get you trained and into a job, they will try to extract as much of your future earnings as they can, because in their eyes, without them, you wouldn't have that job.

    This is not much different from the philosophy of private colleges. Just a slightly different payment method.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      No, it isn't the same premise. In the desert, you have no choice. In learning how to code, you have many choices.

      The scam here is saying that you can learn to code in 5 months. It's almost as though you went to some entity that promised you could learn to reason in 5 months. I sure hope you didn't pay them for the "privilege".

    • If you really need it explained to you, here is a link explaining how to learn to code.

      http://programming-motherfucke... [programmin...fucker.com]

      Don't forget to read the Manifesto while you're there.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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 fo

    • by ghoul ( 157158 )

      Programming was always a blue collar job. The problem that happened was we threw engineers at it. We have wasted an entire generation of engineers doing draftsman work - coding. Finally things are getting back to normal. The difficult part in any software is figuring out what to build and the overall architecture. After that the actual typing to pass test cases is something Teenagers should do for pocket money (aka its a McJob)

      • The difficult part in any software is figuring out what to build and the overall architecture.

        If you find that you've fully specified what the software you're building is supposed to do, you might have also just finished implementing it.

        If for some reason that is not true, you should stop everything and write a code generator that accepts your specification as input. That is, if you're really sure that you've actually specified everything already.

        • If you find that you've fully specified what the software you're building is supposed to do, you might have also just finished implementing it.

          If for some reason that is not true, you should stop everything and write a code generator that accepts your specification as input.

          I'd be interested to see a proof of concept that automatically translates ISO's international standard for the C language and the datasheet of the Intel 80386 CPU into a working C compiler.

          • Try harder.

            Just assume, for your first reading, that I'm saying something that is literally true, and obviously correct to experts. See if there is a way to parse the words for that to be true. If so, then you understood me. If it sounds like it would be easily dismissed, you probably selected different definitions for the various words I used than the ones that make sense in the context.

            So obviously, if you understood what I was saying, and you understand that it is unlikely that you would "automatically t

      • by dwpro ( 520418 )
        To have this view, you must never have personally coded anything complicated and large. I will admit, we do expend valuable engineering man hours on small problems sometimes, but there's no shortcut to clean, maintainable code. Find me a pool of teens that can write code that meets specs that include multi threading and bitwise operations who will do it for pocket change and you've found an endless revenue stream.
        • To have this view, you must never have personally coded anything complicated and large.......Find me a pool of teens that can write code that meets specs that include multi threading and bitwise operations who will do it for pocket change and you've found an endless revenue stream.

          To have this view, you must never have personally worked in any of the millions of small businesses which just need some analyses a step above a pivot table or to automate some of the regular tasks that an employee has to do.

          There are tons and tons of jobs for programmers which do not require any significant software engineering. Almost any business with more than six people could likely use someone hacking together some scripts and analyses to automate blue-collar tasks. An intranet inventory sheet that's

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • by lamer01 ( 1097759 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @04:30PM (#58350300)
    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
    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @04:45PM (#58350408)
      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.
      • if they do manage to find you a job you'll be in deep if you ever lose it.

        It's bad to lose a job and income, and there is risk in spending time and effort, if not money, on education and training. However, this income sharing arrangement seems to be much less risky than a student loan. Losing a job after graduating with a student loan at best postpones loan repayments and sometimes not even that. The main reason to get the 4-year traditional degree with the sunk upfront costs is the expectation of better job and income prospects. Unfortunately, there are many cases where this

        • every year you get older after 25 it's harder to get a job. Companies want young folks with just enough training to do the job. So it's important to consider how you spend those early, high value years of your career.

          The trouble with these sorts of phony degrees is they won't get you past HR filters designed to hire and H1-B over an American. You need a 4 year degree for that. During the last recession folks with proper, 4 year degrees in useful fields (medical, business, legal, STEM, etc) were largely
          • The trouble with these sorts of phony degrees is they won't get you past HR filters designed to hire and H1-B over an American. You need a 4 year degree for that.

            I think this is the crucial point, i.e., is this type of 5-month training phony or real? Despite good intentions, the only thing that matters is getting a job. There are plenty of fake diploma mills that are fake because the chance of getting a real job based on that degree is small. If this 5-month program doesn't lead to a job, then it's also phony. But the free, 5-month phony program is still better than the costly, longer phony program, as the only real risk is time.

            With the diploma mills, it's clea

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Sounds like your bud has some other problems as well. No way you can't find a job if you have any experience, degree or training certification. We have a hard time filling openings, our HR department is a bit slow and candidates get scooped not even a week after being available and this is an issue across the country.

        My local McD is advertising $12.60, Walmart $15 as a minimum and I don't even live in any big city. If you want to work you can.

        • 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.
          • It sounds like your bud needs to move.

            I was in a similar pickle in Charlottesville Virginia in ~2002. An ISP had gone out of business dumping me and over 100 other technically skilled workers into a tiny labor pool. Six months of unemployment* and fervent job searching from North of DC all the way down to Richmond yielded nothing. I packed up, moved back to Middle Tennessee, and found a job in under two weeks.

            It was crazy hard, but it was the right thing to do. It was obvious that staying in Charlottesv

            • by tepples ( 727027 )

              It sounds like your bud needs to move.

              Which changes the question to how to find a job (like your welding job) in order to save up enough money to cover to moving to a more lucrative area (like your Middle Tennessee) and surviving there for a few months while seeking a job in your preferred field.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I live in a town with a 36% unemployment rate. Walmart receives a lot of applications (ones they never even review because timing matters). Most people don't get an interview. I was actually rejected by an interviewer at Walmart in the early/mid-2000s, but was luckily, on my way out, stopped by the head of HR, who listened to my hard luck story of impending eviction and went over their heads to hire me. I was being passed up because I worked a government job previously, was laid off, but was making "too muc

        • by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )
          Those other problems might well have to do with geography. The job market for IT in some cities is white hot, and in others it's quite chilly.
      • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

        You only pay 15% of your earnings, not 15% of your initial salary for 2yrs. If you lose the job you don't pay but if you get a new one you'll have to pay from that.

        They actually have a staffing platform for finding gigs ranging from 1mo-FT

      • Yeah, no. I was in the business in 1990. What you described in your last paragraph simply is not true.
    • Minus the $10K they paid you to learn, that's only $12K for an education and a job.

      There is also a $15k tuition for the bootcamp. Nowhere do they say tuition is waived for people being "paid to learn".

      So $27k not $12k.

      But this is not comparable to a college degree. A BS-in-CS will get you a job interview, and likely a well paying job. A bootcamp certificate has NEGATIVE value in the job market. It is best to not even mention it in the interview. The skills you learn in a cram course are going to get you an entry level code-monkey job at best.

      • The skills you learn in a cram course are going to get you an entry level code-monkey job at best.

        Even code monkey jobs pays well. At least better than the average salary. Hell with 2 years experience as a code monkey under your belt, you can leverage this into a much better IT position somewhere.

      • There is also a $15k tuition for the bootcamp. Nowhere do they say tuition is waived for people being "paid to learn".

        Nowhere do they say there is any tuition fee for their class. There is nothing to waive.

    • You don't get a 4 year degree to write code. You either learn it yourself, or go to a community college.
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        You get a 4 year degree in order to get past HR departments that are under the misconception that you do get a 4 year degree to write code.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @04:36PM (#58350350)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Why don't all colleges provide free education, but in return, your wages are garnished for a period at a set percent?

      Some colleges do offer these plans. There are also lenders that offer them.

      Income Sharing Agreements [wikipedia.org]

      They have a mixed track record.

      A big problem is that the students with the most earning potential (engineering, CS, MBA) are not stupid, and are the least likely to sign up. So the ISA programs are stuck with the liberal arts dregs who have little more earning potential than a high school graduate. So they end up with high default rates.

      Instead of focusing on "How to fund college?" we should focus on "Why

  • Hooray (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday March 28, 2019 @04:39PM (#58350368)
    We've successfully brought back indentured servitude. This will go nicely with those Debtors Prisons [aclu.org] we bought back years ago and the modern slavery [theguardian.com] this is prison labor.
    • Do you know what any of the words you just used mean? It doesn't seem like it, because most really have nothing in common with this program.

      1) This is voluntary. 2 out of 3 of the things you mention aren't.
      2) This is a paid educational opportunity. Nothing that you mentioned is. (Neither are college or trade school for that matter.)
      3) You only have to pay for this education if you get a job paying more than $40k in the 5 years after the program. And they only take 20% of your salary for 2 years, so no 30 ye

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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 i

    • by Anonymous Coward

      And forgot to mention:

      This company takes 15% of your salary for 2 years.

      "Free education" advocates want to take 30% for the rest of your life.

  • Find me a new job and you can have 5% for 1 year.

    • Where can I apply for a phone app job? I wanna get the hell out of deeply embedded.

    • I heard McDonald's is hiring. You're welcome. Bank details to follow.
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        I admit I'm moving the goalposts, but let me try to narrow the search:

        Find me a job that pays living expenses in the part of the country where the rest of my family lives and you can have 5 percent for one year.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    My wife gradually moved from being a business analyst into support and maintenance on the IT side of her organization, but she didn't really have much programming experience. So her employer sent her to (and paid for!) a C# "coding" bootcamp. After a little probing I determined it wasn't just about C# but Microsoft's whole MVC-pattern framework. Ok, fine.

    She's pretty smart, so she passed with flying colors and got her precious certificate. And I'm sure if she had a computer with visual studio or whatever it

  • 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.

    Is it just me, or is this more 30% than 15%?

  • I thought such contracts were illegal or invalid.
    NIH had similar requirements that if your education or training was paid thru an NIH fellowship, you had to "payback" by working in the field of training for several years. That arrangement was later ruled to be illegal indenturing.

    Should make it a form of loan.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Easy enough to get around that. Make it a loan, with an interest rate and payback schedule calculated to yield 15% of the maximum expected salary over two years. Then forgive any overrun if the salary is less than the max.

      You'd have to be completely nuts to sign such a thing, but people are stupid.

  • It starts with 15%. Then it goes to 20%. Then 25%. Then 50%. ...sooner or later you get your education paid for, but the cost is ~100% servitude [reddit.com]
  • The typical bootcamp typically charges around 15 K. The student usually spends around three months in training with no income and at the end is on his own to find a job. The school will offer assistance in putting together a resume for the student but after that the student must rely on his networking and interview skills to find employment. Success was very high at first but has dramatically cooled down as more students graduate. At least with this arrangement if the student never finds work then he is at

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