We Pay You to Learn to Code

Way down at the end of the page an &quot;oh, by the way...&quot; disclosure:<p><pre><code> After the program graduates pay 15% of their income for 2 years if they are earning over $40,000, capped at $30,000 total paid back to Modern Labor. </code></pre> There is also the implication that a potential starting salary is $91,476:<p><pre><code> $91,476 The salary of an entry-level front-end developer (Source: PayScale, 2019) </code></pre> Assuming that was somehow true...<p><pre><code> %15 * $92K * 2yr - ($2K&#x2F;mo * 5mo) = $17.6K total cost of tuition </code></pre> Looking around, ~$11.4K is the average tuition for a coding school, so this proposition works out to be a rather high interest loan (that can&#x27;t be paid off early):<p><pre><code> $17.6K - $11.4K = $6.2K in interest $6.2K &#x2F; $17.6K &#x2F; 2yr = 17.6% APR</code></pre>

&gt; 100% remote - work from wherever you want<p>&gt; $91,476 - The salary of an entry-level front-end developer<p>These two things should not be next to each other. It&#x27;s exceptionally rare to get $90k a year remotely with no prior work experience.

Can you remove people from the program midway through, if it seems like they&#x27;re not doing well? If so, what are the rules around this?<p>In some ways this seems like a very selective program, since you pay people to do something whereas your competitors charge people. But selective programs would want to get the very best students — and here there&#x27;s actually an adverse selection problem. That is, people who think they will be rock stars and get high-paying jobs will not want to enroll with you since they would expect the longer payback period (at their presumed high salary) would be less favorable than doing a typical program with a payback period that is half as long.

They really expect to have someone from zero coding to full stack in only 12 weeks? 3 months is barely enough to get started on modern front end, assuming you already have programming experience.<p>Either they have found some revolutionary new way of injecting data into the brain Matrix style, or the people coming out of that program won&#x27;t be even close to ready and will probably have a mess in their heads.<p>Also 90K for an entry level remote position? I have 20 years of experience, where do I have to sign for that? I&#x27;d gladly take an entry level position with zero responsibilities for that kind of money.

This is a really great idea.<p>I could easily see variants of this happening. For example, companies could fund the students and get to pick first.<p>I can think of at least 5 people I know that has the potential to become competent developers, but their problem is exactly what this solves: they already have jobs and mortgages.

Who is the target audience specifically? There are lots of organizations who work with state unemployment agencies around the country to try to place people with training, and then help find them jobs. This seems perfectly placed for that.<p>Assuming I could find 10 formerly convicted felons who live on unemployment&#x2F;welfare and dropped out of high school and got them to apply to this program, would they get accepted? If <i>&quot;The most important thing we care about is evidence of grit&quot;</i> is true, I think these individuals should qualify.

I am surprised that nobody has raised the question of whether this is 15% of gross pay, pre-tax or 15% of net pay, post-witholding (well assuming W2 positions)? Those are very different things, especially in states like CA&#x2F;NY where I imagine many candidates might end up being placed. In those contexts 15% of gross might be more like a 25-30% effective share of the developer&#x27;s net income (?)

I&#x27;ll be the competitor.<p>We will pay you to learn to code, then place you on projects for real clients. They will then have the option to hire you within 6 months. It&#x27;s outsourcing cross training. (We&#x27;ll have a few senior devs to mentor the teams, and we&#x27;ll hire an exec or three involved in government contracting to give ourselves multiple options.)<p>Who wants to fund? <i>laughs</i>

This smells too much of Unbounded Solutions&#x2F;BrighterBrain style scumbaggery -- a wooden nickel I would advise anyone not to take. Want to learn programming on the cheap? Take or audit courses at your local community college or state university, or learn on your own.

What alarms me is that students are tying up a large portion of their future income to self-teach from MOOCs and other freely available online sources. If I have the gumption to learn on my own, is a little bit of cash really what&#x27;s holding me back?

Off topic am I the only one fascinated that Eliezer commented in the other discussion? I am just excited that this guy is still using hacker news for 10 years now (he mentioned in 2009 q&amp;a that).<p>27 days ago (my favorite non fiction writer of all time): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=Eliezer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=Eliezer</a><p>His comment is this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19231120" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19231120</a>

&gt; After the program graduates pay 15% of their income for 2 years if they are earning over $40,000, capped at $30,000 total paid back to Modern Labor.<p>Something about taking a cut of someone&#x27;s salary doesn&#x27;t feel right to me.<p>If you were to borrow the $10k that they give you, over a 2 year period at a 10% rate (maximum allowed by law in CA), you&#x27;d pay a little over $11k. Modern Labor will charge you up to $30k over that same 2 year period, for an interest rate north of 100%.<p>How is this initial $10k different from a loan? Just because it&#x27;s coming out of your salary doesn&#x27;t mean it&#x27;s not usurious.

How&#x27;s this different from Lambda School?

I know another company that has been doing something similar in the UK for a few years. In their model they pay for you to train and guarantee you a job at the end of it. The catch is that you have to repay your tuition if you leave that job within 1 or 2 years. They send you on crappy consultancy projects and pay you a relatively low wage while they rake in high consultancy fees.<p>The people I know who had trained through that could not wait to leave and didn&#x27;t feel that it had been overall positive.<p>On the upside you get some work experience too.

This page may be advertising an entirely legitimate program, but it&#x27;s going out of its way to set off as many &quot;shady business&quot; alarms as possible. The cynic in me says this may even be intentional, for the same reason that Nigerian scammers keep saying they&#x27;re from Nigeria: to filter out the suspicious.

&gt; Currently, you must have the right to work in the US in order to apply.<p>I wonder why, though? Is there a legal barrier that prevents them from introducing this to foreign students as well? Or is it just because US-based salaries are much higher than in many other parts of the world?

Is it 15% of everything <i>above</i> $40k or does it include the $40k as well?

I feel like this might be solving the wrong problem. Are we at the point where we don&#x27;t have enough experienced coders looking for work? Why not create a better way to find jobs for them first?

This is very similar to Lambda School, another YC backed startup that is doing very well. Lambda School went through the YC program just 1.5 years before YC decided to back a competitor. Not cool. Good VCs will bow out if they have a conflicting investment. YC sets a great example for many policies, but I think they got this one very wrong.<p>Now, if I am applying to YC I&#x27;m going to have to consider that they will have access to sensitive plans, strategies, strengths, and weaknesses of my startup, and that they might inadvertently share that with a competitor in a later batch.<p>I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll say they have a Chinese wall and don&#x27;t share information, but YC as a company now has a conflict of interest.<p>Really makes you think twice.

Their Launch HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19227441" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19227441</a>

Dupe of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19227441" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19227441</a> ?

Is there anything for similar for Europeans? 42 is tuition free and now age agnostic but that’s it as far as I know...

This is exactly the LAMBDASCHOOL model.<p>I fully support more attempts to spread this out! Competition is good!

What about outside US?

Wow, this is significantly more than what I make in Eastern Europe. Sign me up!

I don&#x27;t seem to be understanding the finances behind it.<p>The agreement is by completing the program, you pay 15% of your salary for 2 years as long as you&#x27;re receiving more than $40,000. However, it also says it&#x27;s capped at $30,000 total over that period.<p>If you pay someone a $2,000 a month salary for 21 weeks, that&#x27;s already $42,000. Where&#x27;s the extra $12,000 coming from?<p>I&#x27;m just trying to understand since if I agree to quit my &quot;current job&quot; and rely on another company to help pay for me, I&#x27;m relying on that company to not pull the rug out from under me when I&#x27;m half-way through the program. How do I know this is a reliable and sustainable program?<p>Interesting concept! That&#x27;s just the first question that comes to mind for me.