4 ms·

Right, but if 12 weeks was too short to get a job then how are people getting jobs...? You’re saying that the people who do get jobs would’ve gotten them had th

Right, but if 12 weeks was too short to get a job then how are people getting jobs...? You’re saying that the people who do get jobs would’ve gotten them had they gone through the program or not? Looks like Lambda school is 9 months now (I though it was 6 but perhaps they increased it). That is equivalent to a full academic year...whats your experience with Lambda school grads and are they objectively much better than one graduating from an in person one?

austenallred 8y ago
Hour for hour 9 months of a Lambda School schedule is actually closer to two academic years.
- MechanicalTwerk 8y ago
  Yea but this is sort of akin to cramming. Some of the deeper stuff in CS and engineering, at least for me, took time to ponder and spaced repetition. I don't think 1500 hours or whatever it is over 9 months is quite the same as 1500 over 2 years.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    But most companies don’t care about the “deeper stuff”. Most development isn’t rocket science. You don’t need deep understanding of computer science writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or most bespoke internal corporate tools that will never see the light of day outside of the company.
    - learc83 8y ago
      I'd argue that most companies do care about theory based on the kinds of questions that come up in job interviews. A lot of this is cargo culting sure, and maybe some of them care about it for the wrong reasons, but they do. >You don’t need deep understanding of computer science writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or most bespoke internal corporate tools that will never see the light of day outside of the company. Sure provided you’re having your hand held by someone on your team who does have a deeper understanding--basically acting as an apprentice. There's nothing wrong with apprenticeship, but you also don't need a bootcamp to prepare your for that. And if you ever want to move beyond writing CRUD apps, you’re going to need to make your way into much more complex territory at some point.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Let’s take TurboTax as something I would call a complex piece of software. I’ve never worked on TurboTax, but I have had to develop software with a more complex set of business requirements. The complexity in much of software engineering comes from understanding the business requirements translating that to code and making a system usable. Most development is not about leetCode and DS&A. The most we can expect from a junior developer who just graduated from college with a CS degree is for them “not to eat the chalk.” At least the boot camp grad can hit the ground running and add features. The type of theory companies care about isn’t how to invert a binary tree and whether you know how to write a merge sort. Heck even C had the built in qsort that was good enough.
        learc83 8y ago
        >The most we can expect from a junior developer who just graduated from college with a CS degree is for them “not to eat the chalk.” At least the boot camp grad can hit the ground running and add features. This is the exact opposite of my experience. Bootcamp grads tend to come in well below early college interns. >The type of theory companies care about isn’t how to invert a binary tree and whether you know how to write a merge sort. Heck even C had the built in qsort that was good enough. I don't really care whether you can implement merge sort from memory. But, I've been on both sides. And understanding the relational model, graph theory, set theory, computer architecture etc... has made translating business requirements to code a hell of a lot easier.
        scarface74 8y ago
        I did C bit twiddling for the first 12 years of my career and I worked in assembly a little bit as a professional and a lot as a hobbyists growing up. I had to understand simple data structures but the most complicated algorithm I had to implement was the “shunting yard algorithm” for a preprocessor I wrote. I’ve even had to maintain a bespoke development environment/IDE/compiler/VM for Windows CE written in C when I was transitioning to an “enterprise developer”. But, for the last 10 years, I can honestly say that nothing I have done takes any level of advanced computer science understanding that you would learn in school. Schools don’t teach what I consider “computer engineering” - how to build a maintain complex system within a team that translate business requirements to working maintainable systems. Most developers aren’t doing anything new or complicated, they are just taking preexisting tools, frameworks, packages and putting them together. They aren’t even working in non memory managed languages anymore.
- masonic 8y ago
  Don't you think it appropriate that you disclose your relationship to Lambda in such a comment?
learc83 8y ago
>You’re saying that the people who do get jobs would’ve gotten them had they gone through the program or not? Yes that's what I'm saying. Except for the very top tier programs, no one cares that you have bootcamp on your resume. >Looks like Lambda school is 9 months now (I though it was 6 but perhaps they increased it). That is equivalent to a full academic year...whats your experience with Lambda school grads and are they objectively much better than one graduating from an in person one? I’ve never hired anyone from Lambda school. I did spend some time looking into it when I’ve seen it pop up on a few resumes. The threshold for repaying tuition is 50k a year and it’s 17% per year for 2 years (capped at $30k). That’s about 3x more than what the OMSCS at Georgia Tech costs. And since you can get federal loans for GA Tech, you can have a similar income based repayment plan (capped at 10% of income above 1.5x the poverty level). For an online course, that is way too much. I also found that there’s a guy claiming to be the co-founder who spends his time on reddit arguing with ex-students. https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/8qopsz/if_youre_thinking_about_doing_lambda_school_dont/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/8qopsz/if... Also other threads with people claiming to be employees arguing with former students. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
- MarkMc 8y ago
  > Except for the very top tier programs, no one cares that you have bootcamp on your resume. Couldn't Lambda School be one of those top tier programs? > For an online course, that is way too much. Lambda's co-founder recently tweeted that the number of applicants as grown six-fold in the last 3 months [0]. If their offering is such poor value for money, why is there such a huge demand? [0] https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1111324507715690496?s=19 https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1111324507715690496?s=19
  - learc83 8y ago
    >Couldn't Lambda School be one of those top tier programs? It's not. It's nowhere near selective enough to have a high enough percentage of their applicants end up at a FAANG company. >Lambda's co-founder recently tweeted that the number of applicants as grown six-fold in the last 3 months [0]. If their offering is such poor value for money, why is there such a huge demand? I have no idea whether Lambda school is effective, but number of applicants to a program with no upfront costs that makes big claims about return on investment doesn’t imply anything other than good marketing.

austenallred 8y ago

Hour for hour 9 months of a Lambda School schedule is actually closer to two academic years.

MechanicalTwerk 8y ago
Yea but this is sort of akin to cramming. Some of the deeper stuff in CS and engineering, at least for me, took time to ponder and spaced repetition. I don't think 1500 hours or whatever it is over 9 months is quite the same as 1500 over 2 years.
- scarface74 8y ago
  But most companies don’t care about the “deeper stuff”. Most development isn’t rocket science. You don’t need deep understanding of computer science writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or most bespoke internal corporate tools that will never see the light of day outside of the company.
  - learc83 8y ago
    I'd argue that most companies do care about theory based on the kinds of questions that come up in job interviews. A lot of this is cargo culting sure, and maybe some of them care about it for the wrong reasons, but they do. >You don’t need deep understanding of computer science writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or most bespoke internal corporate tools that will never see the light of day outside of the company. Sure provided you’re having your hand held by someone on your team who does have a deeper understanding--basically acting as an apprentice. There's nothing wrong with apprenticeship, but you also don't need a bootcamp to prepare your for that. And if you ever want to move beyond writing CRUD apps, you’re going to need to make your way into much more complex territory at some point.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Let’s take TurboTax as something I would call a complex piece of software. I’ve never worked on TurboTax, but I have had to develop software with a more complex set of business requirements. The complexity in much of software engineering comes from understanding the business requirements translating that to code and making a system usable. Most development is not about leetCode and DS&A. The most we can expect from a junior developer who just graduated from college with a CS degree is for them “not to eat the chalk.” At least the boot camp grad can hit the ground running and add features. The type of theory companies care about isn’t how to invert a binary tree and whether you know how to write a merge sort. Heck even C had the built in qsort that was good enough.
      - learc83 8y ago
        >The most we can expect from a junior developer who just graduated from college with a CS degree is for them “not to eat the chalk.” At least the boot camp grad can hit the ground running and add features. This is the exact opposite of my experience. Bootcamp grads tend to come in well below early college interns. >The type of theory companies care about isn’t how to invert a binary tree and whether you know how to write a merge sort. Heck even C had the built in qsort that was good enough. I don't really care whether you can implement merge sort from memory. But, I've been on both sides. And understanding the relational model, graph theory, set theory, computer architecture etc... has made translating business requirements to code a hell of a lot easier.
        scarface74 8y ago
        I did C bit twiddling for the first 12 years of my career and I worked in assembly a little bit as a professional and a lot as a hobbyists growing up. I had to understand simple data structures but the most complicated algorithm I had to implement was the “shunting yard algorithm” for a preprocessor I wrote. I’ve even had to maintain a bespoke development environment/IDE/compiler/VM for Windows CE written in C when I was transitioning to an “enterprise developer”. But, for the last 10 years, I can honestly say that nothing I have done takes any level of advanced computer science understanding that you would learn in school. Schools don’t teach what I consider “computer engineering” - how to build a maintain complex system within a team that translate business requirements to working maintainable systems. Most developers aren’t doing anything new or complicated, they are just taking preexisting tools, frameworks, packages and putting them together. They aren’t even working in non memory managed languages anymore.
masonic 8y ago
Don't you think it appropriate that you disclose your relationship to Lambda in such a comment?

learc83 8y ago

>You’re saying that the people who do get jobs would’ve gotten them had they gone through the program or not? Yes that's what I'm saying. Except for the very top tier programs, no one cares that you have bootcamp on your resume. >Looks like Lambda school is 9 months now (I though it was 6 but perhaps they increased it). That is equivalent to a full academic year...whats your experience with Lambda school grads and are they objectively much better than one graduating from an in person one? I’ve never hired anyone from Lambda school. I did spend some time looking into it when I’ve seen it pop up on a few resumes. The threshold for repaying tuition is 50k a year and it’s 17% per year for 2 years (capped at $30k). That’s about 3x more than what the OMSCS at Georgia Tech costs. And since you can get federal loans for GA Tech, you can have a similar income based repayment plan (capped at 10% of income above 1.5x the poverty level). For an online course, that is way too much. I also found that there’s a guy claiming to be the co-founder who spends his time on reddit arguing with ex-students. https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/8qopsz/if_youre_thinking_about_doing_lambda_school_dont/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/8qopsz/if... Also other threads with people claiming to be employees arguing with former students. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

MarkMc 8y ago
> Except for the very top tier programs, no one cares that you have bootcamp on your resume. Couldn't Lambda School be one of those top tier programs? > For an online course, that is way too much. Lambda's co-founder recently tweeted that the number of applicants as grown six-fold in the last 3 months [0]. If their offering is such poor value for money, why is there such a huge demand? [0] https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1111324507715690496?s=19 https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1111324507715690496?s=19
- learc83 8y ago
  >Couldn't Lambda School be one of those top tier programs? It's not. It's nowhere near selective enough to have a high enough percentage of their applicants end up at a FAANG company. >Lambda's co-founder recently tweeted that the number of applicants as grown six-fold in the last 3 months [0]. If their offering is such poor value for money, why is there such a huge demand? I have no idea whether Lambda school is effective, but number of applicants to a program with no upfront costs that makes big claims about return on investment doesn’t imply anything other than good marketing.