Hey all! We launched App Academy on HN 6 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505752), and since then a lot’s happened. We’ve graduated and placed thousands of folks as engineers and actually placed more people as software engineers at Google (30 vs 22) than UC Berkeley has since 2016! Today, we are fulfilling a dream that I’ve had for some time: to put the whole curriculum online, for free. We’ve built a learning platform around it and we’re really excited to give people a taste (or the whole thing!) of the curriculum to help you understand what we’re about.
What does the paid service offer that this free one doesn't? I'm assuming career guidance/placement. If that's the case, will completing this free offering still grant me access to a better career?
We have 2 paid options. The mentorship option is a $29.99/month subscription to a Slack channel (i.e. chat room) with one or more App Academy instructional staff 60 hours a week (M-F 6AM-6PM). If it sounds like an insanely good deal, that's because it is :) The placement based plan is the same experience as our full-time, in-person course, but online. You get instructional support, live q&a, pair programming, career support, etc. On this option, we don't get paid until you find a job, so we keep fighting until you do. In that case, it's 17% of your salary for two years, up to $30k total.
Free version teaches you things. Just like many other resources of self-learning. In that way it gives you access to a better career. Not sure what else you might mean.
