> cheap labor

I'm an ex-con developer. To be fair, my dev roots go back to childhood. I make around a quarter million a year in a mid-range cost of living city in the mid-west US.

What industry do you work in?

Digital signage

Nothing cheap about it. More like an expensive way to make all kinds of middle-people feel good and collect a check.

Did you see how many organizations are behind the effort? It probably took millions of dollars to go from zero to hiring ex-con coders.

The "but our jobs! but our pay!" refrain is a common one, but our industry has WAY too many job openings for this to be a legit worry (the very presence of the h1b visa proves this). As for salary, as those jobs get filled, whether by bootcamp grads, or journeymen, or trained individuals with a criminal record - it will push income down for some. Some incomes are a product of scarcity, and you only need to look at a supply/demand curve to know what will happen to prices. In the late 90s, you'd spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a basic website. Now you can get one for a few hundred.

I can assure you the companies mentioned in the article are spending a lot more on this program than they would just hiring a new college graduate.