Hacker News Reader

  > Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell 
  > (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY),

I don't see where the badness is here, and yet you're implying that it's really obvious? It's a typical programming newbie's perspective, isn't it? That moment when you're learning your second language... I'm sure we all started out this way some long, long time ago?

  > as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this:    
  > http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone).

Again, maybe it's totally obvious why I'm supposed to dislike the guy based on that post, but once again I can't spot it.

I'm also having a hard time following your argument that for-profit online education companies are bad because Coursera does it all for free. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it almost reads as if you're feeling left out because Treehouse didn't consult with you.

Jolie O'Dell is like fingernails on the blackboard for me, too, but ironically this clip of her includes none of the things that bug me.

In other forums, she is so often in a mood, rolling her eyes and making snarky asides about how we all know how sexist most developers are or how racist some conference was, or how over-the-hill some 50-something CEO is for not realizing that "young people today all [think Jolie's way]", followed shortly thereafter by "speaking out" against stereotyping. Her stereotyping of male developers or older CEOs or "corporations" apparently doesn't count as stereotyping, because stereotyping is bad, and it's not bad to criticize designated perpetrator groups. Anything that she can find a way to interpret as non-praise of a member of a designated victim group or the group as a whole seems to demand that Jolie "speak out," roll her eyes and sigh, and "not put up with it."

And yet in this video, she's not castigating the tech industry for political infractions but just trying to learn some tech herself. She's a lot more likeable in this role.

Your characterization of Jolie is unprofessional. She's a fair, fact-driven, passionate journalist. I've met her in person twice and I can vouch for this.

"Unprofessional"? I might consider a media pundit who accuses people on camera of political violations, sighs, rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and often has to have some of her snarky comments bleeped for profanity to be unprofessional. Or maybe just annoying. But an audience member who finds the pundit annoying and says so is not violating any professional code.

And unless she's different off camera than on, then the fact that you met her "in person" twice wouldn't make any difference. I've seen her express her opinions on camera more than twice, which is enough to make up my own mind.

I'm interested in useful technological insights, not in her hunt for political offenders, so she's not a pundit I look forward to hearing from.

Oh, I've seen the other sides. But that's the point. This video seems completely faked. It's clearly an advertisement, and it's not representative of Jolie's typical personality, and at the same time I feel that if I were a woman in tech, that this video would bother me (any of you care to comment?).

I don't like being lied to, especially not by journalists.

I would reserve "very much dislike" only for someone who did something truly horrible to me (e.g. mug me at gunpoint, throw my best friend out of a window, etc.).

Sounds to me like these feelings are motivated by jealousy or envy or one of those other terrible emotions.

I am so perplexed by the argument that "doing good shouldn't be profitable". Why is it that if I make a violent video game, everyone is fine with me profiting, but if I dare find a way to make money by helping people, then all of a sudden I'm scummy? Would the world really be that bad if education, feeding the hungry, and curing diseases was also super profitable? As opposed to having all our best minds enticed into making yet another crazy financial instrument where very few people will scoff at what you are doing?

Meanwhile, the alternative proposal still seems to be "we need people to do these things out of the goodness of their heart AND to simultaneously be ready to sacrifice living a comfortable life in the process. That's reserved for frivolous ventures. Make a choice: get rich or help people." Good luck with that. No wonder education is in the state its in.

Wow, I couldn't have summarized better. Thanks Francisco.

I haven't ever said that doing good shouldn't be profitable. Please don't put words in my mouth.

I've simply said that it feels like profitability here, especially given the target market of this venture, is a much more important goal than is being disclosed, and that's a problem. Further, there are already free offerings doing just what this proposes to do, so before anyone pays for it, it should be made clear what advantages this has over them.

You actually went further than disputing the goals, you specifically said "though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization". So unless I am misunderstanding, you seem to begin with a negative bias towards education in exchange for money. Furthermore, I find it strange to focus so much on the monetary goal as some sort of sinister motive. When Elon Musk tells me he wants to make an electric car, I believe that goal. I don't think to myself "well this car is for profit, so what's really going on here Mr. Musk?". When DropBox tells me they want make it easier for people to put their data in the cloud, I don't question their real motives because they charge for it. Yes, companies make money. Yes, they need profit to survive. I guess I just don't think these two goals intrinsically conflict. I personally find it somewhat wonderful when people find a way to take something they care about and charge for it so they can focus on it entirely, instead of only in their free time.

Additionally, so what if there are already free offerings? There's room for both. I agree people should look into all the options before choosing one, that's just common sense. Perhaps the free one is better, perhaps not? This is a purely voluntary thing here, so I see no harm in a paid-for alternative. You'll for example see many people on Hacker News telling startups "please charge for your product so I know it won't go away in the future." It's possible that the same applies here. By pricing this product the motivation I see is a clear incentive to continue improving the product full-time, as opposed to when you can find people to help out.

I mean paywalled in the sense of you pay up front for access to something without a good way to determine the quality of what you'll get. When I buy a book, I have extensive reviews, recommendations, and I can go to a store and flip through the pages to see if I will benefit from it. Schools tend to advertise very much towards what kind of quality education you'll get, and accreditation is in some ways a guarantee of that. I just really dislike that model of monetization.

My focus on monetization isn't that "any motive to make money instantly undermines the effort." It's that in this very specific case, with this specific target audience, it seems extremely suspect.

Sure there is room for both, and I don't dispute that. I was pointing out that if we're going to ask people to pay for this service, especially schools that will use tax money, that it should be made very clear what benefits it has over what is already available for free.

I'm with you, Middlebrow. I love the idea of giving poor kids direct vocational training for vocations that are solidly middle class. We need more such programs. But I'm not crazy about the sales pitch that they can take this small but useful bit of vocational training, jump right into $40K/yr jobs out of high school, "and if they’re good, they’ll get fast-tracked up to $100,000 within a couple years."

"Fast-tracked to $100K"? How is it that his programming class is going to get them into this special express lane to big bucks a couple of years out of high school? Is this some affirmative action program certain employers have agreed to? Or is this supposed to be a description of our industry in general? What percent of new high school grads who took a programming class does the industry consider "good" and fast track to $100K in a couple of years? If the answer is that, well, it DOES happen, well so does becoming a millionaire before you even leave high school. It happens. But the question is, is it likely enough to be sold as a significant benefit of the program?

I'm happy to see good vocational training in high school. I'd just be much happier to see it sold for what it should be: a way to give kids enough of a start on a useful skill that they can see with their own eyes that they really could, if they continued, become valuable enough to others that they could earn a good living with their own skills. They should then also be taught HOW to continue on to a professional level (including ancillary skills such as writing and math) after the program ends so that the claims can be about helping most of those who continue succeed in a realistic way rather than being an infomercial about a few outliers on a fast track.

My statement was based on fact. We start quality developers at $80,000 and they can quickly move up to $100,000. If a developer starts at $40,000 and they demonstrate over two years (which is an eternity in tech) that they're talented and hard-working, I can guarantee they'll be bumped up to be in line with their colleagues. In tech, pay isn't based on years experience. It's based very simply on skill.

I think your numbers are off. One you seem to be speaking only of developers in the San Francisco and valley area. $100K for 2 years of experience is by no means a norm for 99% of the country.

Also, you seem to be saying that after some high school courses you're going to be dropped into a job immediately. I don't think so. One, it's a huge hurdle to bypass college. You're going to have to spend a lot of time refining your skills and then more time building some portfolio if you don't go to college.

Also, it's not normal to get 60% raises your first and second year in the workforce. You have to be exceptional and changing jobs. More likely the student will be earning $42.5K the third year if they stay at the same job. Even transitioning jobs, it's going to be hard (outside of the valley microcosm) for any hiring manager to give you a 60% pay raise for an entry-level position.

I think a better sales pitch and more realistic one is that after your courses and with several hard years of refining your programming skills, you can expect to make the median US household income your first year ($50K). And that with changing jobs, you can expect to be in the top 35% of income in a few years ($70K). (edited: percentiles and clarified I mean household... and doing some pot odds of failures rates of 66% never grasping advanced programming, their expectation is $16K/yr, or, right where they were headed anyway)

> you seem to be speaking only of developers in the San Francisco and valley area.

Nope. Our app team is distributed across the USA and we've been paying $80k from the start and several of those folks have earned raises that have brought them up to $100k+ in under two years. Every tech startup I've spoken to has similar patterns.

> Also, it's not normal to get 60% raises your first and second year in the workforce.

The tech industry is not a 'normal' sector.

> More likely the student will be earning $42.5K the third year if they stay at the same job.

Nope. I've interviewed many non-valley based startups and they've verified they will pay $40k for an entry-level, young developer.

> If a developer starts at $40,000...

But that's the big "if." It just doesn't seem realistic that any but a tiny minority of students would be qualified for even an entry-level position at that salary right after graduating from such a short vocational program.

There's nothing wrong with saying that this training program can well prepare them for an eventual career in tech, but selling it as, "You'll be able to make $40k/year as soon as you graduate." seems quite disingenuous unless you honestly believe it to be true. If so, I hope you're right. I am very doubtful.

How many developers have you hired who have no college degree, and moved up quickly to $100k?

Why bother writing such a wall of text, when the whole thing can be summarized as "I believe non-free educational materials are bad".

Selling educational materials to schools in the form of textbooks has been going on for a long time. If you replace "Treehouse" with "textbook", your rant reads like it was written by a crazy person.

I didn't really say that, nor did I imply it. I said I'm for high quality, free educational materials at all levels.

There's an entirely different rant about textbook sales in schools, more to do with corruption, greed, and sweetheart deals than trying to provide quality materials for learning. I definitely believe those materials (the ones marketed at the expense of students) are entirely bad, no doubt.

I don't believe that "high quality, free educational materials" is something that is easily attainable. I will say that the "free" part will exist but "high quality" may not be there. I don't think we can equate educational materials as the same level and quality of open-source software.

If you look at Khan Academy, really the forefront in this area, you quickly realize that someone is absorbing the cost. In this case, Bill Gate's foundation and others. As a result, you have someone with the calibre of John Resig working for the organization and they are putting out job postings.

I really like Coursera. I like the open-course offerings from MIT, Harvard, etc. Someone is definitely paying for these as it is not cheap. In this case, the universities are paying (and implicitly the students).

So, I definitely agree with your sentiments but I do believe we will get high-quality when there is a profit motive. I am not saying free and high-quality cannot co-exist with educational materials but I don't believe its very common.

In addition, my hope is that there is enough traction that the subscription plans stay low for these learning companies. One of the benefits in this area is that it has become very competitive and hence costs are coming down. Just take a look at what Pluralsight was charging five years versus now (or even Tekpub). There is a definate downwards pressure on how much these companies can charge.

I agree. Anyone can make educational materials. Making a relevant curriculum is hard. Making a relevant curriculum for teenagers is very hard. The amount of preparation that goes into just 1 hour of class time is often overlooked by those who haven't spent any time teaching.

The problem with your comparison is that a textbook does not claim to somehow fast-track you to $100/year. It only claims to help you with the current step in your learning which Treehouse doesn't even do effectively.

I tried the Treehouse lectures when I started learning how to code and found them long-winded and basic. A friend of mine also came to the same conclusion independently; he even called to warn me to avoid Treehouse if i hadn't tried it a already... I already had.

In their marketing, Treehouse makes a lot of promises their material is unable to deliver which for me is the big problem here.

Their "perceived value" comes from the fact that they package their basic content very well in a pretty wrapper but these kids would be better off with code-academy, code-school and then the django book or Hartl's Rails tutorial.

That would put them on a path to 100k/year, not Treehouse but as usual, the school officials wont do their research well so they'll just pick the shiniest option.

The only winner here is Treehouse; good for them.

Because its better to write a long wall of text where you describe things in detail than it is to write a one sentence statement that doesn't accurately summarize your position...?

Textbooks should be free too. It doesn't make you crazy to say so.

It doesn't make you crazy, it just means your thought lacks substance. "Textbooks should be free too" is so vague and ambiguous that it has no useful meaning.

just2n already provided plenty of substance. Don't expect me to repeat what he's already written.

You very much dislike Ryan Carson on the basis of a blog post he wrote arguing that you don't necessarily need a co-founder to run a successful company ?

Way to go in writing off a significant portion of the startup community !

Have you ever even spoken to Ryan ? I've met him a few times - he's a genuinely nice guy, passionate about running good businesses which are successful and provide real benefits to his customers.

> You very much dislike Ryan Carson on the basis of a blog post he wrote arguing that you don't necessarily need a co-founder to run a successful company ?

Not quite. I don't believe it's necessary to have a co-founder to run a successful company. I agree completely with the headline. But the primary arguments for why this was done were to maintain equity and control. It came off as though he wasn't sharing equity with early employees and wanted to keep an extraordinary level of equity. It seems to me like the company is being set up for an acquisition in which 1 person and exactly 1 person benefits. Additionally, it felt like there was an innate distrust in all employees and potential business partners, and a need to assert dominance and complete control. What kind of professional relationships do you have to suffer through before the only thing you are interested in is total ownership? A company should be much more than a bunch of people being paid to do your bidding, and that's what I took away from the post.

> Have you ever even spoken to Ryan ? I've met him a few times - he's a genuinely nice guy, passionate about running good businesses which are successful and provide real benefits to his customers.

No I haven't, but I'm not sure I see it. I wouldn't go so far as to say he's not a nice guy (I have no idea), but I disagree strongly with some of his views from a leadership role, and it feels to me there are other motives than just making a great product and providing benefits to customers.

This statement is pure conjecture on your part and is therefore invalid:

> It seems to me like the company is being set up for an acquisition in which 1 person > and exactly 1 person benefits. Additionally, it felt like there was an innate distrust > in all employees and potential business partners, and a need to assert dominance and > complete control.

Treehouse is my fourth company. I sold two and one failed. I have no interest in "setting up for an acquisition". Treehouse is the most meaningful thing I've ever done and probably will ever do. I'm fortunate to live comfortable and to be doing something that I passionately believe in. Why would I engineer the company for a sale?

Happy to battle it out with commenters on facts but your conjectures about my motivations for structuring Treehouse are silly unless you bother to ask me first.

A conjecture is not invalid by default.

My reasoning is based on what appear to be, to me, on the surface, primarily selfish reasons for wanting to be the sole founder. As I observed when this blog post was originally made, it seems to me that you're setting up a situation where you'd almost exclusively benefit if the company succeeds (or gets acquired). This certainly wouldn't inspire confidence in me if I were looking for a new startup, so I would assume others would feel the same way. Given that it looks like there's very little equity sharing, I'd expect a very high salary and potentially turnover given that there isn't long-term incentives, and I don't, as an outsider, see long-term plans for building something huge. I'd be wary, to say the least, but that's me.

Maybe I'm wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first time, so while it may be a conjecture, it may also be true.

Except it's not true because the founder of the company just addressed your point head-on when he said:

> I have no interest in "setting up for an acquisition".

Conjecture is fine, if you are able to change it in the light of new evidence. Otherwise you just look like an ostrich :)

That's not really "new evidence."

Look at the value of derived from the price.

-Centralized resources (Because I doubt the average child will go to IRC channels let alone know what they are)

-Consistency in service and access (Because even if a kid did use IRC / Stack Overflow, they're not guaranteed an answer)

-Tolerance and willingness to teach (Cough Stack Overflow "Closed because question isn't a proper format"; Flame posts like "Wow, you're an idiot, never use X technique")

-Quality of resources (Graphics, video, demonstrations project files vs. sifting through disjointed posts)

-Physical, Local Community (If you want to teach a kid to swim, put him in a class with kids his age. Not in an IRC full of varying ages and no faces)

From an educational standpoint this makes perfect sense. From an open-source hacker's perspective maybe not. But that's why this isn't geared towards open-source hackers. It be fo teh children dawg.

Centralized resources have a one-time construction cost and typically don't need too much maintenance unless they try to reflect living standards or moving targets (see: MDN / whatwg), and hosting isn't really expensive these days, not even for video content.

What would make sense to me is that the content is available freely, but if you need help, tutorship is a paid service, and potentially with credit that means something (affordable MOOC accreditation, pls?). That's a model I think would work great in education, not a premium on the content itself, because the focal point is "sale of content = money" not "providing excellent tutorship = money."

You already have the in-person tutorship in the form of teachers. The problem there is that they aren't paid well enough to attract people who really want to teach, and there isn't a surplus of them, either. There's an entire discussion here on education reform. I don't like to put the profitability in education in the content itself (I'm not entirely against it, though, but I'm especially against paywalled content or subscription content, which is why I still refuse to get an ACM subscription even though I could really use it, and instead use arXiv), but rather in the teaching/mentoring role. Then a business can profit but so can people who are passionate about teaching.

I personally hate that the only way to make a good living in this world right now is to go work for some company or startup in some crowded area, or to do something dangerous. In 20-25 years, I'd love to teach, but that means I'd have to finish my Ph.D., then maybe make 60-80k (where I'd like to end up) after a long career, and given I'd probably have kids and maybe grandkids soon to follow, it seems ridiculous that I'd have to accept the cost of grad school + a terrible salary, and that's in a university where ALL the money is. <jackiechan.jpg>

> Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone)

I just don't like the stupid hat (http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ryan-car...). I am probably more superficial than you.

I don't wear the hat any more: http://ryancarson.com/

Fair play :-)