
Kaplan to Buy Software-Development School Dev Bootcamp - whbk
http://online.wsj.com/articles/kaplan-to-buy-software-development-school-dev-bootcamp-1403660869
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whbk
Without paywall:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://online.wsj.com/articles/kaplan-
to-buy-software-development-school-dev-bootcamp-1403660869)

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mrshaasha
I must say this is quite exciting! Disclaimer, I am one of the founders of
MakerSquare (makersquare.com), a similar software development school currently
in Austin, San Francisco, and Houston.

It’s great to see that the HN community is not surprised by this acquisition.
As a witness of this space for the past 2-3 years, I am excited for the future
of the education space. I can say with confidence that some of the top
programs (like Dev Bootcamp - [http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-five-best-
coding-bootcamps](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-five-best-coding-
bootcamps)) have been training and placing great talent (up to ~90-95% of
graduates).

Also, we have also have had a number of meetings regarding acquisition,
mergers, and investment; however, I never imagined an acquisition of this size
would happen so quickly. Congrats to Dev Bootcamp and their team (especially
one of the cofounders, Dave Hoover, who has been so helpful for so many people
since the start).

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netcan
These boot camps are obviously a reaction to the current demand for
developers. I'm not sure if that is permeant.

That aside I like the idea here. I think 1-4 months is a greta period of time.
You can maintain a great pace that way. Personally, I do better in sprints. My
University years were really 5-6 2 week sprints a year spread out between long
periods of procrastination (and fun). The useful work I did outside of sprints
doesn't amount to much.

The idea of paying your tuition (ideally, lower than £12k), working hard for 9
weeks and expecting to meet some legitimately valuable goals at the end of it
is appealing to me.

Obviously I'm getting speculative, but I can imagine something like this being
a fixture of 'lifelong education. Something you can do dozens of times in a
lifetime.

Zero-to-junior developer is obviously in the current market, can sustain that
high tuition. But, I would like to see tuition go down to levels that can make
it available for other markets.

I can imagine a lot of useful 9-week sprint courses that could be very
effective, if the quality was high enough. Writing. Data mining. Accounting.

~~~
dakotaben
as a side note (and recent grad), we actually started working several months
prior to the 9 week on site curriculum. We had 12 weeks of organized
curriculum at home and some prep for that. I feel that by the time you arrive
on site, you already feel a little comfortable with procedural ruby,
javascript, html & css.

The real hard work and long hours do happen while on site though.

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create_acct
It'd be interesting to hear the hire's perspective on people who come out of
these schools.

Where I work we get a lot of these applicants but their applications are so
generic and skill sets so shallow that we've never seriously considered hiring
one -- and about half our team is completely self taught, so I don't think we
are bias against non-degree holders.

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TinyBig
The prospect of bootcamps graduating tens of thousands a year instead of
hundreds is quickly becoming a very real thing. Will be very interested to see
how this affects the job market over the next few years.

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stephenitis
Education has some deep pockets behind it I can see why this is a smart move,
even moreso that international students may be able to get their kickstart
without having to deal with visa issues all over.

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bpyne
I came into the field without a background in computer science. I learned on
the job how to design, develop, and test software. However, I wasn't allowed
to work on high value projects at the time and a formal mentoring system was
in place. I haven't seen an office environment with formal mentoring since the
late 90's.

I'm a little worried that a crash course in particular development stacks are
going to put people with some literacy in a language but no professional
judgment (takes years to develop) in positions in which they can do damage.
Software is socially pervasive now so mistakes from underdeveloped judgment
can have great effect.

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dsk139
I think this problem does exist for graduates of bootcamps, but more for any
graduates of universities.

We've been working with companies to provide technical mentorship and we've
found that generally those who went through some of the top bootcamps actually
are more "successful" at being careful with what they are doing since many of
them come from other positions in the industry (former PMs, QAs, etc) and are
well aware of the impact that they are making.

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bpyne
Ah, your population is different than I imagined. I had a Doomsday vision of
high school graduates and former tradespeople, for example, going for quickie
certification.

I'd still feel better if we had formal mentors in the office place and
projects suited to novices. Even with industry experience in some other
occupation (former PM, QA, BA, etc.), it takes years to learn software
development properly. Learning a language or stack just gives you an entry
point.

~~~
dakotaben
Don't you feel the same about college grads needing formal mentors?

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bpyne
College grads are further along the learning curve when they come out. They've
had more time to develop skills. They've had more time to make mistakes, which
affected their grades only, and learn from the mistakes. Should they have
mentors?

Formal mentoring should be the norm again PERIOD. Even a new senior level
developer coming to a new organization should be paired with a developer
familiar with that organization. Although it seems like overhead organizations
would only be helped by it.

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withdavidli
Went to a bootcamp myself. These are fairly profitable businesses. I can see
it making sense for an acquisition, especially for one that's as recognizable
as Dev Bootcamp.

Also wondering if the bootcamps sorted out their government issues.

~~~
stephenitis
Apparently it was never a real threat to dev bootcamp in particular. They got
their paperwork done did.

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jhylau
Love it! Great for the industry. I'm a former bootcamp student too and can
vouch that this immersive learning model can be very effective.

As an industry, we still have a long way to go but with news like this, we
will become more and more trustable in the public's eyes.

Like the article says - it's one thing to educate a few hundred people - can
we do it at scale? Can we educate hundreds of thousands of students and get
all of them jobs?

We need to work together as an industry and really try to figure out what are
the next best steps to move forwards.

We need to diversify the technologies that we teach, curriculum, class
sizes... Above all, we need to establish an amazing brand in the public eyes.
That's where transparent, third-party review sites like
[http://www.switchup.org](http://www.switchup.org) can really help.

Started by students, Switch is focused on producing the most cutting edge
content that will help transform public perception of this industry and give
it credibility.

We need alumni to speak out about their experiences. Talk about the pros and
cons. We need prospective students to voice their concerns. We need schools to
be transparent. We need standardized definitions of hiring rates...

I could go on and on... If we all work together, this industry will grow and
help boost our economy. Are you ready to make the Switch? :) Shoot me a
message at jonathan@switchup.org,
[http://www.switchup.org](http://www.switchup.org)

~~~
xiaoma
I'm also an alumni of a software immersion school and I've shared a lot of my
experiences online. Consequently, I've been emailed by no fewer than four
sites similar to yours.

My feedback in every case is that only listing a program's price but not its
hiring statistics makes it impossible for potential students to properly
evaluate the programs. At a bare minimum, each profile should include both
links to their yelp reviews and their self-reported hiring rates (and how they
were calculated). Self-reported stats may not seem very useful, but lying
about them can get a school into legal troubles very quickly.

~~~
jhylau
good point - that feature will be rolled out within a few weeks and we'll have
stats and more detailed info!

Thanks for the feedback - would you be interested in doing a blog post or
leaving a review on our site?

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rjaquino
Interesting, considering Kaplan already has a bootcamp arm, Metis
([http://www.thisismetis.com/](http://www.thisismetis.com/)). From what I can
tell, Metis provides courses developed by industry groups, although it's not
clear what Kaplan provides - infrastructure for applications and buildings,
perhaps? Either way, this purchase shows they're serious about the whole
thing.

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tqn
I believe the content and instruction for Metis is provided by the Rails
consultancy, Thoughtbot. This seemed to be a recent foray into the space for
both parties; perhaps, Kaplan saw some encouraging traction from the joint
partnership and thus decided to make an acquisition.

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Beliavsky
From the DevBootCamp web site:

"We offer a $500 scholarship if you're female, a veteran of the U.S. Military,
or from an ethnic minority group underrepresented in the software engineering
field (African American, Chicano/Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander)."

Isn't charging someone more because of their race or sex is illegal? That's
what a "scholarship" for only certain groups amounts to.

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kaonashi
Are you suggesting that this puts white males at a disadvantage in the
software industry?

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Beliavsky
I don't need to answer that question. The general principle is that businesses
are not allowed to customers different prices for the same product based on
race or sex.

~~~
kaonashi
The base price is the same; some just aren't eligible for a scholarship. How
is this different than any other scholarship?

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evancharlz
Congrats to Shereef, Dave and now Tanner in NYC!

I am the co-founder of a similar program, Launch Academy
([http://www.launchacademy.com](http://www.launchacademy.com)) in Boston.
We're a more intimate program than Dev Bootcamp but share some of their early
core principals towards educational diversification.

I first met Shereef Bishay in early 2012 after he wisely took an MVP approach
to what is now known as Dev Bootcamp via his cousin and a small group of other
aspiring developers based on a 'bet' that he couldn't teach them to code in
10-weeks. Not only did Shereef prove that small group wrong (winning the bet)
but he's gone on to pioneer an industry that has benefited thousands of people
to change their lives for the better through immersive education in software
development.

These programs are not for everyone however. Are you ready for a bootcamp?
I've written a bit about this here [http://qr.ae/sVVQs](http://qr.ae/sVVQs)

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barry-cotter
That is amazing. Good for them.

But how did the first mover in this space, Dev Bootcamp, lose out to App
Academy in the prestige stakes? Was it expelling people without giving them a
full refund? Counting people who were working for them and for themselves as
working? Something else>

~~~
whbk
They went for scale before App Academy and in doing so exacerbated an already
present schism in the quality of each players' respective applicant pools
created by App Academy's more flexible payment options.

Dev Bootcamp initially was a 10 week program for 20 students, then that was
upped to ~40 students, and finally to 54. So in the first year, ~110-120
students were educated. Then, in an effort to scale, they moved to a 9-week
rolling cohort broken into 3-week phases where ~16 new students walk in the
door every 3 weeks. This means they are now bringing in almost 3x as many
students per year (only considering the main SF branch) as when they started,
and doing so in a time where there are plenty of other coding schools around
as alternatives for prospective students.

Where before they got basically the whole applicant pool and brought in a
smaller percentage of them, they now get a fraction of the (admittedly larger)
pool and accept more of them. Oh, and they charge $12,200 upfront whereas App
Academy allows you to opt only to repay them out of your first year salary
after the program. I just saw an article earlier this week about how a much
too high percentage of the American populace has no emergency fund (a few
month's expenses to float them in the case of job loss, etc.), so given that
it's no surprise that people with a choice of those 2 payment options will opt
to choose App Academy. Frankly a lot of people don't even have the ability to
choose because they don't have the upfront $12k + living expenses to cover Dev
Bootcamp -- not sure if it's still the case but App Academy's office at one
point was also zoned as a live-work space and students were able to live
there, reducing their expenses _during_ the program to almost nothing.

There is some (mostly) back-channel chatter about the potential padding of
hiring numbers, but I think the prestige difference is more so the result of
App Academy's more measured approach to scaling and more student-friendly
terms resulting in less brand dilution, though perhaps at the cost of missing
out on the big payday here.

~~~
SilasX
>Dev Bootcamp initially was a 10 week program for 20 students,

Nitpick: it was actually 8 weeks. I was in the first cohort.

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lquist
Flatiron did a $5.5M round at a $15M (guesstimated) valuation, and DBC is
probably 4x bigger, so this was probably in the $60M range, with a bit more
thrown in for being a big player?

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nhans
Very exciting news. It will be interesting to see which direction Kaplan takes
Dev Bootcamp. The article seems to indicate that the high placement percentage
may have been a driving motivation. Congrats to Dev Bootcamp.

