
Iron Yard code school to close all campuses - huntermeyer
http://blog.theironyard.com/2017/07/20/message-iron-yard/
======
Unbeliever69
I am going to go out on a limb here and say it has nothing to do with the code
school business model but instead by the for-profit colleges that bought both
the Iron Yard and Dev School (which shut down recently).

It is my belief that for-profit schools (in these cases Apollo Group and
Kaplan Test Prep) have looked at code schools as potential cash cows devoid of
the complications of both federal financial aid and the gainful employment
entanglements associated with the "type" of students that typical for-profits
schools attract. While for-profits seemed like a perfect fit for acquiring
code schools (and I'm sure led to handsome paydays for the founders), these
businesses brought bloat, inefficiencies, and baggage that could not operate
in the fast-paced and nimble environments they bought into.

I can't speak for these two code schools but I heard from a reliable first-
hand source that when Dev Mountain was bought out by Capella Education, the
founders "checked out." What checked in was a bureaucracy that was more
concerned about asses-in-seats than providing a bleeding-edge,
entrepreneurial-driven education. If you look at the reviews of Dev Mountain
by recent students there is no doubt whatsoever that this is what happened. Is
this possibly what befell Iron Yard and Dev School? I can't say. What I can
say from decades is that when you sell out to a for-profit school, you are
very well dancing with the devil.

~~~
jrichards
I was one of the original advisory board members of DevMountain (and father of
one of the three founders). I also run an entrepreneur bootcamp in Utah, where
DevMountain is located. This assertion about the founders of DevMountain
"checking out" is unfounded. Sure, they are now wealthier than they were and
have security and may seem more at ease (a natural occurrence after an exit),
but they take their continuing roles seriously. Only one of the three to date
has "retired" (about 8 months after the acquisition) and the other two
(including my son) are still there working every day. Capella has been pleased
with them. Also, just 10 minutes ago I heard about some exciting things being
worked on and arranged by the founders -- innovative approaches to the
industry. These two founders are still the top two leaders in the DevMountain
subsidiary of Capella. They continue to innovate in the areas of coding
bootcamp curriculum development, student success, marketing, and much more. As
a side note, Capella has been a great acquirer, basically leaving DevMountain
as it was, only adding some financial clout and general oversight, leaving the
original DevMountain CEO in that position with nearly full discretion over the
enterprise.

------
CivilianZero
I can tell you all without a doubt, The Iron Yard closing has nothing to do
with its performance. Someone bought somebody else and the new people in
charge just don't want to spend the money. That's all.

Unfortunately there's nothing to be learned about code-bootcamps from this. I
can tell you, however, as someone who recently completed TIY and now has a
better job than any of my college-completing friends have, going through TIY
was the best decision I ever made.

And you can safely ignore anyone who dismisses the level or quality of what
you learn at TIY. I learned how to code and I learned how to continue to learn
how to code. That's more than I can say for any of my other learning
experiences which were almost completely focused on "passing".

~~~
brightball
I went to one of their showcase events where the students show projects and
bring resumes to meet potential employers. The amount of progress the students
made from "never done this before" to show day was really impressive.

~~~
CivilianZero
Yeah, only one person in my 8 person class had ever done any coding before. It
would've taken me significantly longer than 3 months to get to that point and
I don't know if I ever would've understood as much as I do now.

------
rmason
Knew two people who worked at their Detroit campus. If I'm remembering
correctly they had more jobs lined up than students. Now Detroit isn't even
listed on their website, yet it only opened in 2015. This filled a real need
in Detroit and it saddens me.

~~~
chao-
_> This filled a real need in Detroit and it saddens me._

The same is true for Houston. I'm about to hire an Iron Yard graduate for a
junior dev position, and if I had the budget to more people, one of the other
top candidates was also an Iron Yard grad.

~~~
bdcravens
If you'd like you could send me that dev's info (also in Houston)

------
Flammy
The comments are pretty heart warming and show they definitely got something
right.

~~~
christophilus
I was an instructor there for 2 cohorts. It was probably the hardest I ever
worked. The same was true for my fellow instructors. We were/are senior
engineers who took the job for reasons other than money (it was a pay cut for
me). We wanted to contribute back.

A few students had pretty bad experiences, I think. It was a _very_ demanding
program. Several times, I had full-grown adults break down and cry during our
1:1s. But over all, the majority of students thrived. It was life-changing--
in a good way-- for most of them, and that's why I and my fellow instructors
were there.

It was one of the most meaningful periods of my career. I wouldn't go back and
undo any of it, but I also won't be teaching at a code-bootcamp again. I'd
consider a slower-paced program such as a university, tech school or high-
school, though.

~~~
hkmurakami
Question: if the pay was such that you weren't taking a pay cut, would that
have made you stay longer? What would the conditions have to be like for
someone who's a senior engineer to even consider making "a career change" into
teaching swe for the next 10 years of their career, rather than a 2 year
moonlighting stint? (Wondering what the setup had to be too make this
sustainable)

~~~
christophilus
Well, market-rate pay would be a good starter. TIY was really close. It was
_almost_ a horizontal move for me.

But there are a few other things that these kinds of institutions need to
solve:

\- How to keep your staff from burning out

\- How to keep your staff up to speed

Both are hard problems. TIY (at the time that I taught there, anyway) was
staffed by people who had 10-15 years (and more in some cases) of industry
experience in a broad range of fields. If I spent the next 10 years of my
career teaching, I suspect my value proposition would go down over time, as I
began to have less and less relevant industry experience.

One thought was that schools of this nature should be a two-sided business.
Instructors would teach for a cohort (or two) and then flip over into the
consultancy side of the business for some time doing real-world industrial
work.

~~~
MikeTheGreat
I have a genuine question: What's different about doing consultancy that
allows one to keep up to date? (As opposed to teaching)

My confusion comes from thinking of them both as full time jobs (so therefore
where would you get the time to do extra study on the side).

Would the consultancy allow you to 'learn by doing' (i.e., you pick a new
technology to use and figure it out as you build and deploy it)?

~~~
sdenton4
Consulting exposes you to problems in the field; teaching is where you tell
others about problems you're familiar with. If you don't have an input of new
problems, you're eventually just recycling the same material...

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
But then the great teaching would have to be informed by coding's great
problems. Your average consultant doesn't encounter "the great coding
problems" on a daily or even yearly basis. This is why it might be better for
teachers to devote themselves to seeking and researching these challenges and
problems as a part of their teaching like all great teachers of any lifelong
pursuit have done. If these bootcamp teachers did that, the level of teaching
would rise very high. It might finally be worth its price tag, even if
students didn't get jobs. I guess that is why the pro-level musicians pay so
much for a summer spent with master teachers with no promise of work at the
end-- it is because those teachers actually teach them something of great
value at the craft that pays for itself and helps the student become an artist
at what they do. And for the most part, unfortunately, software engineers are
not treated by their companies as artists of value either, like these
classical musicians were, at least for many years before that began to decline
sharply. There is so much precedent about where this bootcamp model and this
"dearth of technical talent" will lead- and these places are not good. They
lead to the worker getting paid very little and there being very few low-
paying jobs in the end. But this is tech, so it will happen at speed and scale
like never before. I've already watched tech do everything in classical music
from 1950-1990 in about five years (including the sexism and its accompanying
legal battles and outcries). Well, everything except great teaching at the
"camp" level.

------
keyle
Shouldn't place like these be growing instead of closing down? What did they
get wrong? The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik.

~~~
tptacek
1\. People who can effectively teach others to program well enough to secure
professional employment may have better options than teaching open-enrollment
entry-level programming classes.

2\. Because of that, and for any of a number of other reasons, we may
generally be overestimating how effectively these kinds of schools are
educating people.

3\. It's an open secret that hiring in the technology industry isn't based on
aptitude, but rather on credentials and hazing rituals. Something like 3
decades of cultural development have trained developers that the most
important risk they face in hiring is accepting someone underqualified, rather
than passing on someone who is in fact qualified.

Given all these problems, it's not surprising that a school with a model of
charging a 4-5 figure tuition in exchange for attempting to increase the
likelihood of graduates employment would fail.

~~~
eropple
Regarding #1, an Iron Yard competitor offered a six-month contract for
$45,000, 1099, here in Boston (with "an option" to re-up, at the same rate).
It would not exactly be difficult to beat that number by doing almost anything
else.

Another was talking about $80K/year...in freaking Ohio.

I would love to teach more than I do, and I'm starting to work on some web
courses because I've learned from corporate training that I'm _good at it_ ,
but the money doesn't make sense at all.

~~~
bschwindHN
> $80K/year...in freaking Ohio

I don't get this sentence, is this good or bad? I grew up in Ohio and for the
majority of people I know there, they would be absolutely thrilled at that
salary. The cost of living is nowhere near SF levels.

The "freaking Ohio" part, yeah I can understand that for a lot of parts of
Ohio, but it's highly dependent on where in the state you're talking about.

~~~
mathattack
80k is great in Ohio - I think that's the implication. 80k goes a long way
when rent is 800/month.

~~~
bschwindHN
Agree that it's great, but the feeling I got from the OP was along the lines
of "They only offered 80k, and on top of that it was in Ohio"

------
brightball
They were a staple of the community in Greenville, SC. This news was a shock
all around.

~~~
bschwindHN
I was surprised by this as well, when I think of Greenville and tech startup-
ish companies, I think of the The Iron Yard. Are there any other companies
around with that sort of strong presence? I haven't lived in Greenville for
two years now but I've had thoughts of moving back there.

~~~
Valien
ChartSpan and eRad are 2 'startups' in the area growing relatively fast and
blend tech and healthcare. Other than that it's a lot of smaller groups. Lot
of automotive and Windstream, GE, Fluor, INFOR have strong dev presence here
as well.

~~~
brightball
Don't forget Benefit Focus. They have office in Greenville and Charleston
(HQ), have been growing like crazy and went public a couple years back. That
company is doing really well and can't seem to hire people fast enough.

~~~
Akkuma
Benefit Focus from everyone I've known who has worked there pre-public said
the company is absolutely terrible to work for from the engineering department
perspective.

~~~
bschwindHN
I worked there for two years. Loved the people there, but the engineering
definitely wasn't great. Imagine a Java application that started in 2000 and
hasn't really had any significant rewrites and is now too big to change. They
run a good business and offer a lot of value to companies who use their
product, but the engineering was definitely tough in the not-so-fun way due to
the sheer amount of legacy code.

------
jaboutboul
Anyone care to shed some light on what precipitated this?

~~~
patio11
Can I make a comment which is not specific about this school, to which I have
no connection, or to coding bootcamps?

For-profit education is a regulated industry in the United States and is
experiencing significant adversarial attention at the moment, as a result of
widespread looting of federal tuition assistance programs, to the tune of
billions of dollars.

Can I name a Greek god who has non-zero relevance to this story? Apollo.

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
Why Apollo? I got this from Wikipedia: "...Apollo was also seen as a god who
could bring ill-health and deadly plague." In that case...I see your point.

~~~
christophilus
[http://www.apollo.edu/](http://www.apollo.edu/)

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
oh, okay. thanks. but still funny anyhow.

------
adamzerner
Dev Bootcamp just shut down also -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758364).

------
aryehof
What is the root cause for the decision to end this business?

Insufficient income? Costs too high? Cash flow issues - unsustainable inflows
vs outflows? Mismanagement or something else?

~~~
nashashmi
So according to the numerous comments below asking the relatively similar
question, it was difficult to run the business, partially because good
teachers are hard to find and partly because the program is intense on the
student and lastly because the money to run such operations is unsustainable
in the long run.

There is a business model that works but the industry is still in an
exploratory phase in trying to discover it.

~~~
aryehof
> There is a business model that works but the industry is still in an
> exploratory phase in trying to discover it.

Industry business model? The cynic in me says that there is still interest in
how to best extract money from the growing flood of people interested in
programming as a job.

------
amcooper
Maybe the truly surprising thing about The Iron Yard is that they were able to
run so many campuses in third tier markets for as long as they did.

------
matthiasak
Ex TIY employee here. I only left the place because I wanted to go back to
developing fulltime.

As someone who worked with the instructors and campuses, the global team, and
taught for years at The Iron Yard, I can tell you the team -- especially the
campus teams -- were largely the right mix of talent - great engineers that
cared about communicating well and respecting folks from all walks of life.

With that said, after the investment rounds some things definitely began to
take shape:

1\. The global staff slowly became more and more steps removed from the daily
convo's of the instructors and campus directors

2\. There were regional managers and others who were brand new to the
business; the company hired mostly from outside to bring in management team
and half of them never ran a local campus first (to me their credentials from
prior positions didn't always matter). They should have hired all mgmt from
within, as they sadly did not mirror the culture of the campus teams.

3\. There's such a plethora of schools out there now competing for the same
customer-base. The Iron Yard spent a LOT of time, effort, and money making
some of the best curriculum I've ever seen - including its own platform for
distributing content, videos, running live-editable code blocks of any
language on Docker instances on the fly, and homework and review features for
staff. But a lot of places competed on price and still operated without
approval from state education boards or meeting any national standards.

4\. Instructors needed a change of pace, as they are constant learners too.
Any churn and change of staff usually meant that "If it wasn't documented,
then the lessons were not learned in-full for the next employee". So, I
definitely saw some campuses run into trouble because when a veteran employee
left (no upward movement for them, etc because there was already too much mgmt
in-place) the impact was quite hard.

I loved the team, but ultimately a few miscalculated moves and
operational/strategic retries burned the candle at both ends faster than the
mgmt expected.

------
kennydude
This is the first I've heard of them, and having colleges/universities
dedicated to teaching coding is impressive, and hearing positive things out of
it.

------
microcolonel
There are a great number of excellent reasons not to be in Detroit, as a
business or an individual. The taxes are outrageous, the government is
corrupt, the people who could afford to leave have all but left, the
infrastructure is even worse than you'd expect given the ratio of revenue to
services. 90% of murders go completely unresolved. That is, out of every ten
people killed, and there are a lot, the perpetrators in nine of those murders
will likely walk completely free. I don't know how anyone gets by, except
perhaps in the gated communities, and in the communities which have organized
more closely despite the odds. Even there, the shallow/immediate opportunities
are effectively gone.

You truly can not expect many with another option to choose Detroit as it
stands. My family on my mother's side grew up there, and it seems it's really
breaking their heart to see it today. My mother holds on to hope that the
artists will somehow "save" Detroit, which could be somewhat true. I'm of the
opinion that nothing will save Detroit until it is so bad that the politicians
no longer get anything for their corruption and excess.

~~~
dang
> _You truly can not expect any sane person with another option to choose
> Detroit_

This is the second time today that we've had to ask you to stop posting
uncivil comments to HN. I don't want to ban you, but if you don't fix this
we'll have to, so would you please fix this?

(Re-)reading the following might help:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14817477)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
microcolonel
I guess I didn't see it that way, I hope my change is adequate.

That said, I think that what I said was about as tame as newsguidelines.html
itself: "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments
saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as
old as the hills.", which resorts to some light chiding which _I personally do
not mind being subjected to_.

Note: I think you'll find Detroit1234's and Detroit12345's genuine account by
looking at the list of people who have downvoted all of my comments in this
thread. This is, assuming you folks aren't already doing work like this.

And again, sorry to waste your time. The expected colour of discourse here is
a bit different from what I'm used to in person.

------
b34r
Never heard of it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

