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Hey, folks. One of the creators of the Lambda Fellows program here. We were trying to crack several problems with Fellows: - The current hiring process in our

Hey, folks. One of the creators of the Lambda Fellows program here. We were trying to crack several problems with Fellows: - The current hiring process in our industry is broken. Interviews represent a point-in-time measurement of someone's talent when you should be "hiring for slope", it introduces bias, and it's time-consuming and costly. It also unnecessarily punishes Junior engineers. - The best learning experience for a Lambda engineer is real work. We've done our best to design an educational program that simulates real work, but it's still just a simulation. "If you want to learn how to do a thing, the best way is to do that thing." - 1-to-1 mentorship from a more experienced developer is a powerful learning too, but it's rare. It best occurs within the context of a shared work product where comments are not abstract and squishy but focused and tactical. - Despite placing over 1,000 Lambda engineers at top companies around the industry, there remains skepticism about their ability to be productive and ship software. We think Lambda Fellows is the best of both worlds: it's an unparalleled learning experience for Lambda grads (real work + mentorship) while providing companies with an accelerated onramp to experience junior talent on their team while allowing them to give back to develop the next generation of software engineers. I'll hang out here for the next hour or so. Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

sna1l 6y ago
First off, I think any innovation in the tech hiring space is good, so glad to see new models being tested. Couple questions: 1.) How do you discourage companies from intentionally using these fellows to do "grunt" work? Given that these are only 4 week projects, for a lot of complex projects, that isn't enough time to ramp up even a senior engineer to deliver a finished working product in that time. 2.) One of the huge barriers to this kind of "contract" work is the potential for a whole bunch of unmaintained code to be written. A big reason that smaller companies don't have interns is because of the time suck in terms of ramp up and long term maintainability of the code. How will this program deal with these issues?
- jessmartin 6y ago
  > How do you discourage companies from intentionally using these fellows to do "grunt" work? Great question! A couple of ways: - First off, we talk to them. We qualify every company through a conversation with the mentor, looking at the project the engineer will be working on, and assessing their onboarding process. It becomes pretty obvious when people just want "free work." We don't place Fellows at those companies. - Our North Star for this program is delivering an amazing educational experience for the Fellow. Everything else is secondary. If a company is getting real work done that's valuable to them, that's great, as long as they're delivering on the educational experience for the Fellow. We have pulled Fellows off of projects where the company is not delivering on their end of the bargain. - Finally, as you mentioned in your question "that isn't enough time to ramp up even a senior engineer to deliver a finished working product in that time." The 4 week timeframe naturally limits the usefulness for "free work." A company would have to be pretty desperate to try to get significant stuff shipped via rotating Fellows through. And companies like that would be found out pretty quickly via the above two points. > A big reason that smaller companies don't have interns is because of the time suck in terms of ramp up and long term maintainability of the code. Again, great point. Internships are not great, not because they _can't_ be great, but (I believe) because they haven't been thoughtfully designed to deliver valuable work, which it turns out, is also a superior learning experience. Let's take your two points in order: 1. "the time suck in terms of ramp up" - We saw this as a problem from the start as well. To combat this, we built out a Mentor's Guide(https://www.notion.so/lambdaschool/Lambda-Fellows-Program-4c2fbd7347174f21813f0a62a952f159 https://www.notion.so/lambdaschool/Lambda-Fellows-Program-4c...) with checklists and docs that streamline the onboarding process. We've placed 40 Fellows at different companies over the past 8 weeks, and we see our average Fellow get their dev env set up by EOD 1, their first ticket pushed to prod by EOD 3, and a WIP pull request opened with the first part of their project by day 5 of week 1. It's amazing to see how quickly you can get to productive work with just a little intentional design. 2. "long term maintainability of the code" - This is exactly why we pair each of our Fellows with a single, dedicated Mentor at the host company. The Mentor is responsible for reviewing the Fellow's code, giving feedback, helping them get unblocked, guiding them towards the right type of solution, etc. This is not "hire some interns and stick them in a corner working on something semi-interesting." It's simultaneously a more involved process for the company, while also being more focused and valuable. I hope that helps clear some things up!
jtdev 6y ago
Does Lambda School collect a percentage of the Fellow’s wages? Do these Fellows sign a contract with Lambda School? What is the model by which Lambda School makes money from this?
- mellogarrett 6y ago
  By getting Fellows jobs.
- jessmartin 6y ago
  Lambda School gets paid nothing by the host company and students, as always, don't pay us until they get a job making over $50,000.
  - jtdev 6y ago
    > "as always, don't pay us until they get a job making over $50,000" Can you elaborate on this? How do these students pay Lambda School after they've reached > $50,000 (is that $50,000 annual, cumulative, something else?). Once the indentured student reaches this income threshold, what does the compensation to Lambda School look like? Is it a percentage of the student's annual wages? How long does the student remain indebted to Lambda School? Are they required to sign a contract for a minimum term?
    - jessmartin 6y ago
      Sure! This page does a good job of explaining the ISA: https://lambdaschool.com/isa https://lambdaschool.com/isa
  - snazz 6y ago
    It's also worth mentioning that Lambda School has sold (or "financed") many of these ISAs to investors, so Lambda gets paid in advance of the student getting paid (even if it's technically a line of credit). It's a nice idea to align the incentives of the school and student, but the current implementation doesn't do that if the school sells/finances ISAs so that they get paid before the student does.

sna1l 6y ago

First off, I think any innovation in the tech hiring space is good, so glad to see new models being tested. Couple questions: 1.) How do you discourage companies from intentionally using these fellows to do "grunt" work? Given that these are only 4 week projects, for a lot of complex projects, that isn't enough time to ramp up even a senior engineer to deliver a finished working product in that time. 2.) One of the huge barriers to this kind of "contract" work is the potential for a whole bunch of unmaintained code to be written. A big reason that smaller companies don't have interns is because of the time suck in terms of ramp up and long term maintainability of the code. How will this program deal with these issues?

jessmartin 6y ago
> How do you discourage companies from intentionally using these fellows to do "grunt" work? Great question! A couple of ways: - First off, we talk to them. We qualify every company through a conversation with the mentor, looking at the project the engineer will be working on, and assessing their onboarding process. It becomes pretty obvious when people just want "free work." We don't place Fellows at those companies. - Our North Star for this program is delivering an amazing educational experience for the Fellow. Everything else is secondary. If a company is getting real work done that's valuable to them, that's great, as long as they're delivering on the educational experience for the Fellow. We have pulled Fellows off of projects where the company is not delivering on their end of the bargain. - Finally, as you mentioned in your question "that isn't enough time to ramp up even a senior engineer to deliver a finished working product in that time." The 4 week timeframe naturally limits the usefulness for "free work." A company would have to be pretty desperate to try to get significant stuff shipped via rotating Fellows through. And companies like that would be found out pretty quickly via the above two points. > A big reason that smaller companies don't have interns is because of the time suck in terms of ramp up and long term maintainability of the code. Again, great point. Internships are not great, not because they _can't_ be great, but (I believe) because they haven't been thoughtfully designed to deliver valuable work, which it turns out, is also a superior learning experience. Let's take your two points in order: 1. "the time suck in terms of ramp up" - We saw this as a problem from the start as well. To combat this, we built out a Mentor's Guide(https://www.notion.so/lambdaschool/Lambda-Fellows-Program-4c2fbd7347174f21813f0a62a952f159 https://www.notion.so/lambdaschool/Lambda-Fellows-Program-4c...) with checklists and docs that streamline the onboarding process. We've placed 40 Fellows at different companies over the past 8 weeks, and we see our average Fellow get their dev env set up by EOD 1, their first ticket pushed to prod by EOD 3, and a WIP pull request opened with the first part of their project by day 5 of week 1. It's amazing to see how quickly you can get to productive work with just a little intentional design. 2. "long term maintainability of the code" - This is exactly why we pair each of our Fellows with a single, dedicated Mentor at the host company. The Mentor is responsible for reviewing the Fellow's code, giving feedback, helping them get unblocked, guiding them towards the right type of solution, etc. This is not "hire some interns and stick them in a corner working on something semi-interesting." It's simultaneously a more involved process for the company, while also being more focused and valuable. I hope that helps clear some things up!

jtdev 6y ago

Does Lambda School collect a percentage of the Fellow’s wages? Do these Fellows sign a contract with Lambda School? What is the model by which Lambda School makes money from this?

mellogarrett 6y ago
By getting Fellows jobs.
jessmartin 6y ago
Lambda School gets paid nothing by the host company and students, as always, don't pay us until they get a job making over $50,000.
- jtdev 6y ago
  > "as always, don't pay us until they get a job making over $50,000" Can you elaborate on this? How do these students pay Lambda School after they've reached > $50,000 (is that $50,000 annual, cumulative, something else?). Once the indentured student reaches this income threshold, what does the compensation to Lambda School look like? Is it a percentage of the student's annual wages? How long does the student remain indebted to Lambda School? Are they required to sign a contract for a minimum term?
  - jessmartin 6y ago
    Sure! This page does a good job of explaining the ISA: https://lambdaschool.com/isa https://lambdaschool.com/isa
- snazz 6y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that Lambda School has sold (or "financed") many of these ISAs to investors, so Lambda gets paid in advance of the student getting paid (even if it's technically a line of credit). It's a nice idea to align the incentives of the school and student, but the current implementation doesn't do that if the school sells/finances ISAs so that they get paid before the student does.