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I suppose this might be better place to ask than trying to resurrect a previous thread:
What kind of statistics can Signal offer on prior cohorts? E.g. percentage with jobs, percentage with jobs in data science field, percentage with incomes over $100k, median income of graduates, mean income of graduates, mean income of employed graduates, etc.? And how do the different cohorts compare? (Those are just examples; I don't necessarily expect to get those exact answers, but it would be good to have some data and have it be presented in a manner that is at least partially resistant to cherry picking/massaging, etc.) Basically, what sort of evidence E does Signal have to offer, such that I should update towards it being effective, given both E, and "E has been selected by Signal, and Signal has an interest in choosing E to be as flattering rather than as informative as possible" are true?
Also, the last I heard, there was a deposit requirement. What's the refund policy on that?
Hello! I'm a cofounder of Signal Data Science.
Because our students have come into the program from very heterogeneous backgrounds (ranging from high school dropout to math PhD with years of experience as a software engineer), summary statistics along the lines that you're looking for are less informative than might seem to be the case prima facie. In particular, we don't yet have meaningfully large sample of students who don't fall into one of the categories of (i) people who would have gotten high paying jobs anyway and (ii) people who one wouldn't expect to have gotten high paying jobs by now, based on their backgrounds.
If you're interested in the possibility of attending the program, we encourage you to fill out our short application form. If it seems like it might be a good fit for you, we'd be happy to provide detailed answers to any questions that you might have about job placement.
Wait, your category (ii) is surely exactly what we care about here. We want to know: For someone whose background would lead you not to expect high-paying data science jobs, is Signal effective in getting them a better chance of a high-paying data science job?
Yes, I see how my last message was ambiguous.
What I had in mind in bringing up category (ii) is that we've had some students who had a priori worse near term employment prospects relative to the usual range of bootcamp attendees, who are better positions than they had been and who got what they were looking to get from the program, while not yet having $100k+ paying jobs. And most students who would have gotten $100k+ paying jobs even if they hadn't attended appear to have benefited from attending the program.
The nature of the value that we have to add is very much specific to the student.
One relevant consideration in such an evaluation is that Signal's policies with respect to various things (like percentage of income taken, initial deposit, length of program) may have changed since the program's inception. Of course, the program itself has changed since it started. Therefore, feedback or experiences from students in initial cohorts needs to be viewed in that light.
Disclosure: I share an apartment with Jonah Sinick, co-founder of Signal. I have also talked extensively about Signal with Andrew J. Ho, one of its key team members, and somewhat less extensively with Bob Cordwell, the other co-founder. ETA: I also conducted a session on data science and machine learning engineering in the real world (drawing on my work experience) with Signal's third cohort on Saturday, August 20, 2016.
Well I got a job out of it.
As for statistics, they're new enough that you'd want to wait a bit.
IMO Signal is worth the ~very little that you have to pay for it unless you already are getting job offers or already are very good with R (but then why do you want a bootcamp?)
They should have some statistics, even if they're not completely conclusive.
As I understand it, the costs are:
$1400 for lodging (commuting would cost even more) $2500 deposit (not clear on the refund policy) 10% of next year's income (with deposit going towards this)
I wouldn't characterize that as "very little". It's enough to warrant asking a lot of questions.
How would you characterize the help you got getting a job? Getting an interview? Knowing what to say in an interview? Having verifiable skills?
Well, they taught me R and they helped me (along with some kind alumni) to go a bit further with neural networks than I otherwise would have. Having spent time hacking away at neural networks allowed me to pass the interview at the job I just got.
Knowing R caused me to get another generous offer that I have had to turn down.
Interview skills training with Robert was valuable, especially at the beginning. Robert seems to have a fairly sound understanding of how to optimise the process.
Well, that's only a cost if (as in my case) you had to keep your normal home empty amd thereby double pay accommodation for that period.
Also some people on the course were local.
I was told that this is fully refundable if you don't like the course within the first week, though I am not sure they would extend that to anyone (but you can ask).
I can answer the deposit one: Signal told me personally that they'd refund it in the first week if I wanted to quit due to it being a bad program. In reality it was good. I cannot guarantee that they'd extend this to anyone but you can ask.
What about after the program, if you don't get a job, or don't get a job in the data science field?
The deal I was given is that if you earn less than $40k for the next year, you get the whole program for free.
If you earn $lots as a painter, porn star, film producer - whatever - you still pay your 10% of what you earn above $40k capped at $250k. But if you plan on having a very lucrative non-data science career in the next year, then why are you on the program?