Viking Code School

http://www.vikingcodeschool.com

38 21 11 years ago

The interesting part of this is the "don't pay if you don't get hired" part of the policy. Sure, a couple of the big in-person boot camps have that, but I've never seen it online-only.

DaFranker• 11 years ago

The trick here is the required 2000$ deposit upon obtaining a reserved spot in the course. This 2000$ is refunded (with fees deducted, I would guess) 6 months after the end of the course if no job offers were made to you.

I'm guessing that receiving a 40k/yr offer from a small-town business on the other side of the country means they clap their hands and claim their prize. Of course they want you to have the biggest salary you/they can find within 6 months, but other than that, location and conditions and other factors are irrelevant. If that's all they can find for you, they'll take it, and from what I could tell of the fine print you either take it too or pay the remaining 10800$ in full immediately.

some_furry2• 11 years ago

The Iron Yard (Orlando, FL) is also a coding school that guarantees a job to its graduates. They don't offer the same "don't pay if you don't get hired" policy, to my knowledge.

I can't vouch for the efficacy of either, but learning programming from 0 in N weeks and guaranteed employment seems... unlikely.

parenthetically3• 11 years ago

I don't think any of these boot camps promise 0 to N anymore; most require weeks or months of prep work and strong demonstrated interest.

some_furry2• 11 years ago

If you're going to put in months of "prep work", you don't really need a boot camp to learn how to be a programmer. At best, it's an expensive job placement program that forces you to do a lot of homework to cover their own reputation. Which is brilliant.

Background: I've been programming for over a decade; I'm self-taught and I've taught a handful of other people very early in their programming careers. Even the folks who mastered the fundamentals didn't really grasp the advanced concepts in a few weeks (probably due to being really busy with work, etc.).

Also, I rather dislike the term "software engineer" when referring to developers who have not been licensed: http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/positions/Engineertitle0213.pd...

vkjv• 11 years ago

At risk of admitting tl;dr... how long do you have to find a job? For example, if I find a job programming 10 years after graduating from an accredited university, do I need to pay them?

eriktrautman• 11 years ago

You're supported directly in the job search for 6 months post-graduation. After that, there's no tuition obligation and the deposit is returned if it hasn't worked out.

parenthetically3• 11 years ago

Spoiler Warning: The fine print says 6 months.

6d0debc071• 11 years ago

The problem I have with this is that a certain percentage of people will get a job anyway. I could, theoretically speaking, set up a school that promises you only pay if you get a job - teach nothing - and then rake in the profits.

Where this falls on a line between 100% of people get a job and only the background rate get a job is questionable - and I'd be interested to see the degree of investment that they place in each student because there will be Kelly Criterion that determine how rational it is for them to gamble on that at any particular point of value-add to the student.

rip7472• 11 years ago

"Participants will need to complete a binding job search agreement and must be willing to relocate for a job if they reside outside of selected cities."

Really? So basically you have no choice but to relocate if they can't place you in a job where you live.

Also, they never say what type of programming job they can give or if you have a choice on accepting the job or not. what if you graduate and they get you a job across the country that paying $50K a year? do you have to accept it or pay the tuition fee?

also the curriculum posted on the site, isn't that detailed on what you will learn.

JoeAltmaier2• 11 years ago

So don't sign up. For some this is the golden ticket into the middle class, and worth the price.

I'm guessing its really a trainer/recruiter for a contracting firm. But so what? That's a great first job for a graduate - lots of experience quickly.

Kalium3• 11 years ago

So don't sign up. For some this is the golden ticket into the middle class, and worth the price.

Therein lies the catch, I think. It's not the golden ticket people want to believe it is... but telling people that the offer of their dreams is a sham is a losing proposition.

rip7472• 11 years ago

middle class is all relative to salary and location. if you're making $50K a year and living somewhere in North Dakota, then yes, you're probably well above middle class. But making $50K and living in LA, well, you're in poverty.

scobar• 11 years ago

I really like their concept, and believe this is the direction non-free education should move toward (satisfying the goals of both the provider and most students). I hope that they are so confident in their program that the answers to your questions will lean much more toward giving the job seeker the freedom to choose what is best for him/herself.

VikingCoder• 11 years ago

Boy given my user name, it seems like I should try this out!

Kalium3• 11 years ago

"Complete software engineers", eh? Does that mean things required for modern software engineering, like complexity theory and relational calculus?

Or are they just skipping over this?

hashberry• 11 years ago

It is also my pet peeve to call a Web Developer a Software Engineer. It's rather antiquated. Being a full-stack webdev is about knowing how all the different pieces fit together.

Kalium3• 11 years ago

I suspect they're relying on the confusion. A fully educated software engineer likely has a long and remunerative career ahead of them. A web developer may not, and one trained this way almost certainly lacks the breadth of skills required for said career as a software engineer.

dogma1138• 11 years ago

12K$ tuition, a contract that forces you to not only accept any job offers but also relocate for them... eh ok...

Most public 2-year collages cost 3-5K (Google, not experience so forgive me if I'm off by a bit, and yes that doesn't cover board and living expenses but neither does the 12K for the 7 months you go to this school) a year, you can get an associate in applied Science degree in programming for about the same costs as that course and most likely lower.

This looks more like an indenture scam than a coding school. And while their teaching might be top notch you will probably won't be hired into a top tier company with a 100K+ salary just because you've attended an online course no matter how good it was.

At best you will end up working for some filling some low paid job for some generic software company.

What sad is that they are also most likely being paid by the companies they arrange jobs for just like any other recruitment company does.

Their curriculum is also a bit meh, I really don't see the value of coding schools that don't integrate math into their curriculum. I'm sorry but there's a good reason why college degrees in Comp. Sci or Software Engineering are mostly maths. It's fairly tough facing actual programming challenges without it, now I'm not saying every programmer, eh sorry "coder" has to have MSc level of math but quite a bit of it is actually important into forming how a programmer "thinks" even if they are not directly implementing it in their programming.

Viking Code School

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