Arbitration clauses aren't a sign of a scam. Almost every top tier company employment contract has arbitration clauses in them.
Job placement claims are absolutely an easy stat to manipulate. There are always caveats in how the number was measured and when. If they can't provide the source of data or explain the methodology that's suspicious. CIRR and GRAD are two standards, flawed as they may be, that at least explain the methodology so you interpret.
I have a lot more thoughts but not enough time so I might come back later with more.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Arbitration clauses aren't a sign of a scam. Almost every top tier company employment contract has arbitration clauses in them.
Job placement claims are absolutely an easy stat to manipulate. There are always caveats in how the number was measured and when. If they can't provide
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
More thoughts and random points /u/Independent-Tear3960, also /u/BudgetSense8077 and /u/InTheDarkDancing as I commented some of this on your thread and then deleted to move here. **I think point 4 is most important to the OPs questions**
1. The hiring market is partially to blame because it changed so quickly. One week Amazon was hiring, the next week they were laying off. People started bootcamps in a great environment and the carpet was pulled out underneath them.
2. I'm also not seeing bootcamps meaningfully adapt their program and strategies fast enough. Codesmith still tells people "taking a junior job is the worst thing you can do for your career". Now this is super bias, but I believe the way bootcamps are structured make it very hard to change everything overnight. At Formation, we are feeling the market pressure as well, we have much fewer opportunities to refer people to top tier companies than last year, and we are responding by making weekly fundamental changes to adapt to the market. We can do this because our Fellowship is built on technology that allows things to change overnight (and we are simultaneously building the tech to change even faster). I've said this several times, but I think this market is going to cause a few programs to shut down that have no ability to adapt.
3. In a good market bootcamps with very high bars to get in got disproportionate credit for the outcomes that were largely because the people who they let in and finished the program were stronger. There's correlation between placement percentage + salary and how hard the program is to get into. With the good comes the bad, and now bootcamps are being blamed disproportionately for poor outcomes when they probably shouldn't be either.
4. Related to 3, but there is a massive industry wide problem with bootcamps tying their marketing and value props to outcomes. You don't see Stanford's homepage advertising the average salary of graduates in giant numbers... they are instead featuring the cool stuff students do. We've flipped many a table at trying to come up with good marketing language for Formation that explains what we **actually** do, and when you go to bootcamp websites they sound like everyone gets six figure jobs at <wall of logos of top companies> and it was hard for people to tell the difference, to this day! **Bootcamps need to start selling the training as the value and not the job.** You pay $20K to cover a curriculum and you should judget by whether you feel like you learned that curriculum well. They are spending/spent all their time coming up with that curriculum and teaching it and they spend relatively minimal time on the career services part. So from the staff's point of view you are paying mostly for a curriculum and 12 weeks of teaching and you should judge them on that.