However, I take issue with two things they are promoting,
First, this line, "Now they're employed as web developers making $70-100k." The Omaha and Lincoln area have a much lower cost of living than SF obviously, but developer salaries are also much, much lower. An entry level dev is likely to find something closer to $35,000-50,000. I'd say the salary range in the midwest is something like $35,000-100,000 depending on where you work, experience, and so on. Selling devs on the idea that this 12 week course will get you a $70-100k job in the midwest is at least a bit misleading.
Second, even a very intense 12 week course is a good start, but I don't know how many employers are going to hire someone with 3 months training. Now, I don't doubt that the training is FAR more applicable than what they are teaching at the local universities, but real world project experience counts for a lot and some lessons you never really learn until you get the experience of building something.
Also, I really think that the line "Omaha Code School is special" kind of exudes this weird notion I've seen popping up in the "Silicon Prarie" that doing tech in the midwest somehow makes you special because you're not doing it in Boston or SF. I don't really get why they think that, but that vibe seems to permeate the culture of midwest startup land.
Anyway, I hope this does awesome things, but I am worried they are setting the wrong expectations for potential students.
I graduated from Hack Reactor this April, the only school I know of a with similar number of instruction hours to those quoted here—about 800. Back then, the school had little brand, but I still got hired by Groupon, and not in a junior role. I was a liberal arts major.
Since that time, I've seen demand for students of later cohorts grow and grow. Some have gotten into white hot start-ups like famo.us, Google and Yahoo! offered interviews to practically the entire current graduating class. One of my friends who started right after me is leading Keychain Logistic's front-end development (YC2012). More interestingly is that while we learn Node, Meteor, Backbone and a lot of other JS-related technologies, a large number of formerly non-technical students have gone on to take roles that have little to do with JavaScript. A couple of examples I can think of off the top of my head are senior Java developer at Pandora and chief data scientist at Node Prime. I really can't emphasize strongly enough what 800 hours in 12 weeks can do in the right program.
My biggest concern with what I can see of the Omaha Code School is actually the low price tag. These schools are not commodities with roughly similar pros and cons. There is a huge variance in outcomes and if you're going to put your life on hold for months while spending all your waking time investing in a new career, it would be madness not to invest in the highest quality program you can.
The adjective "nationwide" is an important qualifier. http://omahacodeschool.com/articles/building_talent_in_the_p...
...or NY!
On the other hand, they're not funded by student loans, so at least they can't prey on poor people. Still, they can go after someone who's desperate and just happens to be sitting on some cash.
Some big red flags, in my opinion, about Omaha School web page as it currently stands:
-- Who is actually teaching this class from the crowd of mentors depicted? Are they competent/qualified and have they been respected/successful in their career up to this point? Why are they doing this? The "Who We Are" is currently just pictures and twitter links, which doesn't inspire confidence.
-- I see absolutely no information about outcomes for program grads. Industry average salaries doesn't mean squat, because people doing this bootcamp don't have the profile of the average junior dev with a CS degree and the knowledge/experience that entails. What is the average salary of a program grad and what kind of places are they working? What percent drop out? What percent are kicked out because they can't learn at the pace required? (Kicking people out occasionally is good and indicates there is some combination of rigor/expectation/structure.)
-- The application asks nothing of the applicant and emphasizes how low their expectations are. This signals desperation to me. And what's with the weird age buckets?
A quick search into the mentors will reveal that many of them are indeed highly respected members of their community and skilled developers. Some of the skilled developers have also worked in or built startups and have experience with doing much more than development.
Also, its pretty clear this will be the program's inaugural class, so providing outcomes from program grads is obviously not possible. The fact that this is the inaugural class might give some cause for concern, but they are very up front about that.
Your criticisms about the application seem valid, though minor.
I am in no way affiliated with the school, though I have met a few of the mentors before.
In contrast, the average 4-year college student has $27k in debt, has about a 60% chance of full-time employment and an average salary of $45k if they do manage that.
- Their curriculum seems very similar to App Academy's (from what I've gathered from friends/acquaintances who have gone there). This isn't a bad thing in any way; I think Rails is a solid foundation for web development, regardless of my personal opinion of it.
- They have a lot of mentors. I wonder how many students they expect to accept, and how many of these mentors are full time?
- I'm glad there's a self-learning curriculum before starting, but I worry about students getting hung up here/whether they'll have easy access to mentors before actually starting.
- The straight tuition cost is somewhat disconcerting. Hacker School gets its money from a hiring fee, while Flatiron School offers a partial refund if you find a job through them. App Academy only charges tuition if you get a job afterwards, and will also refund you part of it if you use their job placement programs. The use of a straight tuition cost makes me wonder if Omaha Code School isn't confident in its ability to place students in jobs, and thus doesn't want to tie their revenue to that. To be fair, Omaha Code School is significantly cheaper than App Academy or Flatiron School, around half the price!
- Does Omaha Code School only plan to work with partner companies in Omaha? While I'm happy to hear Omaha has a growing startup scene, it seems like a potential limiting factor.
Also, FWIW, while I expect there to be a lot of comments saying things like "why Omaha?," I actually think it's super exciting to see this code school concept spreading throughout the country. Hacker School had quite a few midwest migrants, but I think that something closer to home can drastically lower the barrier to entry (especially considering the incredibly difficult cost of SF or NYC).
I doubt it, I can count the number of local companies using Rails one one hand. It's a Java/.Net town. But physical location isn't nearly the limiting factor it used to be.
Totally true, most of the work in Omaha, Lincoln, and Des Moines is enterprise/government .NET or Java. The web dev shops tend towards PHP and as a guy working at a Ruby shop, I'm pretty sure there are < 5 companies actively using Ruby in Lincoln, not sure about Omaha or Des Moines.
I think other comments that Omaha is / has been an enterprise Java and .NET scene are accurate, but perhaps this program will help shift things for the better. Let's hope.
Looks great!
Why Omaha? Not saying bad just not a place that you would think of normally.
Location might be good for some as renting there will be 1/3? of the price of SF
I'm also pretty sure this is the first semester so there wouldn't be any former students.
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.
If you are the application owner, check your logs for details. --- So much for a code school
