u/Spunky_Pineapple wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I mean, this feels a bit like complaining about the thing that was asked for... a pretty consistent criticism of bootcamps overall (Codesmith included, but this is often a general bootcamp gripe), is that the teachers don't have industry experience. I agree that teaching is an
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
FWIW you can't have "contractors" be training in a strict style of teaching and force them to teach that way, otherwise they are employees. You can't give contractors mandatory training on how to do something and you can't give them performance reviews and direction on how to do their job.
Obviously there is a massive gray area and a lot of factors play into this, but that's the general overview, but if they are systematically making people contractors and exerting strong control over their work, that might be illegal.
Finally, you mention you "could", that's the key thing here. Very strong industry engineers have complex jobs and can't commit to consistent teaching or projects as "faculty". You need to build a system around managing these people so they can "teach a workshop" every few weeks that makes sure everything is covered. Which my company has patented and built.
Giving back and helping people are strong reasons to do it too. 100%, and you have to balance that with reasonable compensation. Intrerviewing.io costs hundreds of dollars for some interviews and that attracts a certain engineer. The numbers I've seen from Codesmith are a bit on the low side. You can't tell an alumni they are a senior engineer worth $150K salaries and they pay them the equivalent of $90K run rates to do sessions. But then if they pay them all at higher rates the whole model doesn't work.
Anyways, I'm rambling a bit, there a large number of practical problems they will have in bringing alumni back in as faculty.
If you are such an alumni, strongly look at your conflicts of interest rules at your company if you are going to be the official "faculty" of a "school" and your company allows that. Some do and some don't, but even if they do they often need to know about it and review the contract anyways.