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Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here. We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years ago. Now with thousands of students enrolled
by austenallred 8y ago
Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here.
We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years ago.
Now with thousands of students enrolled and hundreds already employed and paying back we wanted to take the next step and open up access to folks who couldn’t afford to pay to survive while attending.
Of course, that introduces significant risk on our part, as students still only pay us back if they get a job paying $50k/yr or more, but we’ve spent the last two years perfecting our admissions and course to select hard-working folks who are likely to have what it takes to get hired and do everything we can to get them there.
For context, we have dozens of full-time interview sourcers and multiple companies per day coming in to interview our students - incentive alignment is powerful. Now that that’s working we can afford to take more risk.
We’re hoping we reach a point where anyone anywhere can move quickly to a high paying job, and only pay back if it works!
- kermittd 8y agoIncredible opportunity! If I wasn't familiar with Lambda School it would be hard to believe. I think that shows just how good of a deal it is. - current Lambda Student
- bluedevilzn 8y agoHow do you collect the money? What's preventing a student from not paying you?
- austenallred 8y agoWe get students’ tax returns to verify income and they sign a contract. What’s stopping them from not paying is the American contract law system which is severely underrated.
- incompatible 8y agoI suppose the contract obliges them to look for / accept a job after graduating? I mean, I'd be happy to take money to study for a while, but I wouldn't look for a job afterwards.
- austenallred 8y agoLooking for a job is built into the curriculum itself. Of course, you could just turn job offers down and never get paid a high salary, but most people aren’t optimizing like that.
- incompatible 8y agoInteresting, is the job market in the US so good that even new graduates without work experience can expect to find well-paying jobs? I'm in Australia, where things seem a bit different.
- austenallred 8y agoThe good ones can with a lot of help. Weak ones or those that don’t know how to navigate a job search well struggle. Our first cohort, for example, hit 100% employment.
- kennbutler 8y agoAll +$50k?
- austenallred 8y agoI’d have to look but I believe so yes
- meowface 8y agoIn software development and other IT fields, yes. In many other fields, not so much.
- wikibob 8y agoYes. In major tech cities (NYC, Seattle, Silicon Valley) the starting salaries are over $100,000, plus $20-40,000 in Restricted Stock Units, and $20-40,000 in yearly bonus. Importantly, RSUs from public companies are directly convertible to cash once they vest (usually 12 months). Startup options lottery tickets are a different story. See http://comp.fyi http://comp.fyi
- icedchai 8y agoIs there any concern about them sending fake tax returns?
- austenallred 8y agoThe IRS copies us on their returns. So, no.
- pbreit 8y agoSame as any other IOU.
- busk07 8y agoThis sounds amazing. Any chance this will be available for EU students in the future?
- austenallred 8y agoAs quickly as we can go!
- ddon 8y agohttps://lambdaschool.com/eu/ https://lambdaschool.com/eu/
- jamestimmins 8y agoThis is amazing! I'm curious, one of your student stories mentions a student who was immediately hired into a senior engineering role upon graduating. While I've heard great things about Lambda School and its students, that gives me pause. When companies hire new grads directly into senior roles, do you think that they're set up to succeed in those roles? I'm genuinely curious.
- austenallred 8y agoIt’s rare that that happens. That particular student is now leading a team of 40, so he was well suited, but we tell most students to be at “try to go senior quickly” level (with regard to ability not necessarily title).
- jamestimmins 8y agoImpressive. As someone a bit later in their career (4 years in), I'm a bit jealous of this opportunity. I'd be very curious in some kind of midlevel->senior program like this. Something like Bradfield but more widely available geographically. The content is more difficult at that level, but the salaries are substantially higher as well.
- austenallred 8y agoComing soon.
- anonymousJim12 8y agoThis isn't that surprising for someone that has a lot of experience in something like project management or academia and/or is very good at negotiating. For instance the place I work just hired as a senior engineer a former math professor with a math PhD that hasn't written a line of production code in their life. If this person decided to go through a 9 month bootcamp before applying the outcome would have been the same.
- austenallred 8y ago
- vikp 8y agoThis is very interesting, and I'm curious about the nature of the risk that you're taking on. It seems like risk would only become a factor for Lambda School if you're taking 10% of pre-tax income from graduates for the 5 chronological years immediately after they graduate (regardless of employment status). If you're instead taking 10% of pre-tax income from graduates for the next 5 years in which they're working (non-chronological), then the risk on your side actually seems fairly low, since most software jobs in the US pay >50k a year. If you're taking 10% of pre-tax income from folks for the next 5 years in which they're employed AND making >50k, then the risk for Lambda School is basically zero. I believe this scenario is what is actually happening. If the final scenario I laid out is what is happening, then this seems very close to traditional debt (take a loan out for living expenses + tuition, then repay a much larger amount down the line).
- austenallred 8y ago> then the risk to Lambda School is practically zero If only! We only get paid if a student is making $50k/yr or more and the agreement is time-bound (10 yrs). A student may teach those levels of salary without our involvement, but when our possible downside is $18k + the cost of training and our potential upside is somewhere between $0 and $50k any level of default or non-hiring destroys returns immediately.
- vikp 8y agoIf you're only getting repaid when someone is employed and making over 50k, which seems to be the case from your website ("Upon completion of the program, students will pay 10% of their [pre-tax] salary for a five year period once they're making at least $50,000 per year"), then the "repayment floor" for Lambda school is 25k (with probably a close-to-50k "repayment average"). I'm assuming that if someone loses a job, and later regains one, then payments pause while they're unemployed, but don't count for "repayment time", due to an article I read -- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/business/dealbook/education-student-loans-lambda-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/business/dealbook/educati.... How I think it works is that once someone graduates, they have 5 years of "repayment time debt". Once they get a job that pays >50k, the "repayment time debt" starts ticking down. If they lose their job, or start making <50k, then their "repayment time debt" stops ticking down, and will resume when they next get a job. Even with a 10-year cap, this seems very close to traditional debt. It seems likely that software engineers will make more than 50k for 5 out of 10 years.
- AlexeyBrin 8y ago> We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years ago What about international students ? Can a Canadian apply to Lambda School ?
- austenallred 8y agoAsk me again in about two weeks :)
- chirau 8y agoWho should ask you in two weeks? Internationals or Canadians specifically? Huge difference because the latter is for most intents and purposes, 'half American'. The Canadian case is super different from the rest of the outsiders. So some clarity would be nice.
- austenallred 8y agoCanadians should in two weeks. EU is live now (https://lambdaschool.com/eu https://lambdaschool.com/eu), no firm plans elsewhere but working on it.
- keiraarts 8y agoI'm planning my life around it already haha!
- victorhn 8y agoAny chance there may be also opportunities for Mexicans? The TN visa is the same used for Canadians.
- austenallred 8y agoIt’s not a Visa thing we need to solve, we need to set up infrastructure (economic and legal) in each country. But hopefully soon.
- anonymousJim12 8y agoFor people with their sights set on a FAANG type company, do you have a "grind leetcode" track?
- austenallred 8y agoMeaning a hyper-focus on data structures and algorithms to get you through the interview circuit? We train students on that stuff but they’d really struggle in the long run if that were too much of a focus.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stale2002 8y agoHey, may I just say that I really appreciate what you are doing. The biggest problem in education right now, IMO, is that incentives are not aligned. What happens with college is that students put themselves 100K+ in debt, but the college doesn't really care if the people get jobs in not. It is an extremely upstanding and honest business model, to make is so the educational institution (you, in this case), only get paid if the students get paid. I really hope that more educational institutions follow your example of taking on the risk of the students.
- Eridrus 8y agoI think Lambda school is great, and applaud what you are doing. College needs some.seroous rethinking, so I applaud basically all the ideas we are trying. I wonder what you make of the argument that most of what colleges/boot camps/etc are providing is largely just signaling, rather than education? Obviously there is some education component, but I'm wondering how you think about the nature of the value you are providing.
- austenallred 8y agoI don’t think anyone believes in any sort of a “signal” from Lambda School yet. That’s something you can coast on after years of success.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- developerlow 8y agoIt's not great, when it will result in huge decline in wage to level of janitors then you guys will realize what LambdaSchool is doing.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- spdebbarma 8y agoAny news on expanding yet beyond the EU and US? I'm in India and I would absolutely love this program.
- austenallred 8y agoWe need a few more key hires in order to scale internationally, and hiring is what I work on all day every day. When we do it will be everywhere and fast. We're single digit months away.
- allwynpfr 8y agoI think there would be huge demand for such a thing in india, especially in the coming years as the internet continues to reach the remotest (ones who would need this the most) corners of the country. Kudos to you!
- kaveh_h 8y agoAwesome, and kudos for having real skin in the game. Hopefully it will be well executed and rewardful for everyone involved.
- westpfelia 8y agoAre you thinking of expanding into programs outside of web development? As a cyber security engineer I think that this is something that would really help get more people into the industry. And there just isnt enough universities that have programs. My Alma Mater is going to be starting one soon but... Looking at the class list I cant help but feel like the 4 years are wasted and a more concentrated program would yield better results.
- developerlow 8y agoDo you realize this will kill developer wage? All this will overload supply side and the demand isn't increasing much and developers will be on the whims of companies. This is already so so bad
- blenderpride 8y agoBrace yourself, huge developer job/wage decline is coming Soon developer will come in the same category as musicians.
- austenallred 8y agoYes, cyber security will be our next track. We also have a UX design track, as well as data science, iOS development and android development.
- westpfelia 8y agoThats really cool to hear! I'd be interested in what you guys end up commiting to teaching for it.
- clanmachine 8y agoWhile I am very happy for this but this will over the time out downward pressure on the developer wage. Today, atleast in US it requires taking significant debt/risk to become a developer which keeps away the people who are risk averse. I seriously suggest stopping this program otherwis there will be massive supply of developers resulting in huge wage drop.
- austenallred 8y agoThe number of engineering openings is growing much faster than a single school can.
- JoannaPolov 8y agoDo you realize over the time it will result in huge developer wage drop?
- dbancajas 8y agodo you have C++/low-level programming track? and do you have to be on-site or remote is possible?
- kilim1202 8y agohow do you guys make sure student pays back? What if student just goes MIA and never pays back?