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Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

• ts0000 6y ago
  Why not link to the actual reddit thread directly? https://old.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda_school_is_the_biggest_mistake_i_made_this/ https://old.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda...
  • unixhero 6y ago
    Because it gets deleted (silenced & censored): https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/k7bmj6/it_would_be_cool_if_austin_ls_ceo_and_subreddit/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/k7bmj6/it_wou...
  • vectorcrumb 6y ago
    In case it gets deleted
  • malikNF 6y ago
    Most probably because reddit mods can take the post down.
• codetrotter 6y ago
  Archive org link submitted by OP is very broken on mobile iOS. Original post on Reddit is still there but I suppose OP may have feared that mods would remove it or something? https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda_school_is_the_biggest_mistake_i_made_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda... In case it does get removed then try this link instead: https://www.removeddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda_school_is_the_biggest_mistake_i_made_this/ https://www.removeddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/la... On the latter link make sure you then change the drop down from showing removed comments only to showing all comments. But like I said as of yet the original post and comments are still there on Reddit.
  • BoorishBears 6y ago
    To be fair, it's broken in the exact same way the actual site is: it's only viewable in landscape This URL still uses archive.org but in a non broken format: https://web.archive.org/web/20201214092323if_/https://old.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda_school_is_the_biggest_mistake_i_made_this/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201214092323if_/https://old.re...
    • codetrotter 6y ago
      The actual Reddit site never gave me trouble like that on mobile. Which OS, and OS version and browser do you use?
      • BoorishBears 6y ago
        iOS Safari, doesn't matter the OS version, their redesigned site has been broken for years.
• ruined 6y ago
  Well, this is disappointing. Lambda was my plan B if i didn't make it into the competitive program i selected.
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    Can you give a little more context on what led you to this decision? What value do you see in Lambda (or any other similar program) that you don't when learning on your own? Is it the network effect? Just curious!
    • AntiImperialist 6y ago
      I would think discipline, peer learning and also what you don't know you don't know can be picked up much more in person than by exploring yourself.
    • dna_polymerase 6y ago
      You could ask the same question for any university program. It's the degree that opens doors. HR doesn't care for your EdX or udemy certs.
      • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
        I really am just curious about the decision making process behind choosing Lambda vs traditional college vs Moocs (with certificates).
      • zimpenfish 6y ago
        As a counterpoint, in 25 years and probably as many jobs, only one or two places have cared about my degree and that was just another red flag on top of the pile of red flags those places already had.
        • loufe 6y ago
          That being said, the difficulty is getting that first experience at a reputable company. After that, at least in my industry, it's all reputation and the interview. Nobody in mining cares where you were schooled if you have experience.
• ramraj07 6y ago
  Not sure what changed in lambda school, but it's probably not a good year to do any boot camps period. My alma matter, insight data sciences program, folded last week. Laid off most staff. Grateful for their training, but not surprised that model couldn't survive this year. At the same time I'm hearing offers are starting to skyrocket for some specialists! Let's see how things evolve in 2021!
  • jamiegreen 6y ago
    Which specialities are you hearing are getting skyrocketing offers if you don't mind sharing?
• st1x7 6y ago
  People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    Time commitment, flexibility of schedule, most importantly no upfront cost(and not wanting to go into debt either). All of this is valid IF the bootcamp works. In this case, that may not be the case.
    • bambax 6y ago
      > not wanting to go into debt either But doing lambda school is going into debt, isn't it? A different kind of debt but a debt nonetheless.
      • FemmeAndroid 6y ago
        Yes. And it’s a kind of debt that actively disincentives getting a raise if that raise pushes you just above 50k. Since at that point you’ll start owing Lambda school 17% of your salary for 2 years. It actually does what people who don’t understand progressive tax rates think the tax system does. Can you imagine going to Lambda school, not getting a good education, not getting a much higher paying job, then being stuck unable to get incremental raises past $50,000 so you don’t end up down $8,500 for 2 years?
        • jokethrowaway 6y ago
          The only difference is that people can opt in lambda school but they don't get to choose with progressive tax rates. The voluntariness of a transaction makes the difference between a payment and theft, between consensual sex and rape. Progressive taxes will just punish high middle class people for creating more value than low middle class people, making it harder for them to join the class of actual rich people who can structure their income so as to pay minimal taxes (like big corps do).
• swyx 6y ago
  there have been a few prominent criticisms of lambda school recently but it is all anecdotal and disorganized. closest in my mind was fulligin's takedown on NYMag (https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/ https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/ which found some bad facts but was sensationalized beyond proportion imo, still, make up your own mind) very hard to tell what specific allegations and changes have been made without also needing to question the source (as a former bootcamper who nearly quit his bootcamp, I know how every bootcamp has a set of dissatisfied customers, but that in my mind doesn't invalidate the good work it does for the rest). has someone rounded up the basic facts and chronology so we can form some kind of objective story?
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    Since you asked for specifics, there is a comment in the original reddit thread where OP talks about a sort of "bait-n-switch" type situation going on in the current cohort where they go into a lot more detail. For the initiated, it shouldn't be too hard to verify.
  • meheleventyone 6y ago
    The person details the issues here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda_school_is_the_biggest_mistake_i_made_this/gfh98i2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LambdaSchool/comments/kb87od/lambda... Looks like the entire course and support being paid for basically changed.
    • swyx 6y ago
      yeah. this is really bad. austen's in here responding so its not constructive for me to play armchair CEO but i really hope they fix up their act. they were on to a good thing.
  • akanet 6y ago
    sensationalized? how dare you. it was all completely factual reporting
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
• blntechie 6y ago
  Most open world reviews i.e. non curated ones I have seen for Lambda school have been negative to at best neutral. I believe they have a place in the education market if they do it right. Model is good enough but execution appear to be severely lacking. It’s interesting that pg is a big fan though.
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    > It’s interesting that pg is a big fan though... ...as an investor. He may not be intimately familiar with the actual situations of the students from his PoV (mostly throguh conversations with Austen or his team). But then again, this is far from the first time a negative comment has come out against Lambda. And his position hasn't changed so far. So, there is that.
    • akanet 6y ago
      When I spoke to Allred about this, he indicated that he and pg did not have a particularly close relationship. If this is true, it seems likely that pg's vocal patronage is mostly based on the theory, not practice, of Lambda.
      • jrochkind1 6y ago
        are you suggesting pg sometimes takes a strong public position on things he doesn't actually know too too much about? Some of which he has a financial interest in? Could be.
  • bambax 6y ago
    > pg is a big fan though He seems to have a lax definition of the word "earnest". (See his latest blog post.)
    • richajak 6y ago
      Observe the actions, not the words. If you are confused, most probably it is a scam, trust your instinct. It takes time for everything to unravel. quoted from: richajak, the not-so-wise man
• arvindamirtaa 6y ago
  I just want to give a quick shout out to 42. They're closed for Covid19 right now. But if you can wait for them to open up, this is a good place to look into - https://www.42.us.org/ https://www.42.us.org/ or https://www.42.fr/ https://www.42.fr/ (if you're in Europe).
  • grenoire 6y ago
    42-styled schools also exist, generally loosely affiliated. A friend of mine started CODAM (42 in Amsterdam, essentially; https://www.codam.nl/ https://www.codam.nl/) around a year ago and has been quite happy so far. I recently started working with him on a couple projects and honestly I can tell the education and the syllabus he got was high quality.
    • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
      Good to know about CODAM. Will check it out. Thanks
  • FeeJai 6y ago
    42 SV in Fremont has closed down for good. Students have been transferred to an online curriculum managed from Paris and were kicked out of the dorms in a rather hastily and stresful manner. Despite having its own flaws, I was a great fan of 42 and think this is a shame
    • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
      Oh really? That is indeed a shame. I thought they were closed for now due to the pandemic and may reopen "soon".
  • jokethrowaway 6y ago
    I've read their philosophy and it sounds great Does anybody know any private school following the same philosophy for kids education? I think finding different forms of education will be especially important for boys: girls thrive in the current school environment but boys seems to do much worse.
• AntiImperialist 6y ago
  Isn't their selling point that you don't have to pay unless you get hired? I haven't read the fine print though.
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    What good is it if they just sign you up, do nothing and show up on pay day to collect without actually giving you the promised experience?
  • whatyesaid 6y ago
    The people doing such bootcamps are either going to try it, hate it and say bye; or they're going to be the type of people who are determined. To quote the guy: "People in my cohort don't even understand basic Javascript and I'm not faring much better. I'm nowhere ready for a job. Now I have to find an education elsewhere and probably teach myself because now I don't trust bootcamps. Also, I will have to pay it back...because I will get a job in tech and I will make at least 50k within 5 years. I'm not going to let the disappointment of Lambda stop me from doing so. It sucks that I will have to pay them even though they won't be the reason I get there and despite their misleading me and other students as to what their program contained." Similar to the people getting hired at Google, Twilio, it's because they took the Bootcamp and a ton of self-study. The ton factor becomes lower if you go to a brick university that forces challenging material and theory.
    • jon-wood 6y ago
      > The ton factor becomes lower if you go to a brick university that forces challenging material and theory. I'm just not sold on this. If you want to be able to actually work in software development then whether you're going to a bootcamp or a university there's going to be ton of extra-curricular learning and practice that you need. I've worked with quite a lot of fresh university graduates over my career and you can tell which ones have actually practised beyond doing the required coursework, because they understand to some degree how software is developed professionally. The ones who didn't do further learning can certainly write code to some degree, and would completely demolish me in some sort of competitive algorithm contest, but they're going to stumble on things like using git and automated testing. They're also going to have trouble taking requirements and working out what to do with them. Bootcamp graduates tend to be somewhat the other way round, they get the professional side of things, but struggle with the actual software development because they have a shallow knowledge of each element.
• panorama 6y ago
  It's upsetting to see Lambda making so many negative headlines because it truly is in a position to do the most Good and provide the most value (especially after Dev Bootcamp and Hack Reactor were acquired). I attended Dev Bootcamp in early 2013, when bootcamps were still largely unknown, and had a transformative time. Just stellar teachers all around that compensated for any perceived weakness in curriculum. The industry business model hasn't changed much, so this implies to me that a bootcamp is really only as good as its instructors and the amount they care.
  • joshxyz 6y ago
    Part of me honestly thinks they're getting torn in being a missionary and mercenary at the same time.
  • driverdan 6y ago
    Having researched and hired people from bootcamps Dev Bootcamp did seem to be one of the best. I was sad when it folded. It seems they were pushed out by lower quality companies with better marketing (eg Lambda).
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    At this point I have to believe there is a financial bottleneck limiting their growth. As you said, they’re i a prime position to shake up the industry with world class education under a new business model. They’ve had a staggering amount of positive press in the past few years. Yet time and time again we hear about they’re using this opportunity to basically test how much they can get away with in terms of educational quality. The optimistic take is that they’re bootstrapping their way into being able to afford top quality instructors after the cash flow is established. The cynical take is that they’re getting hooked on the easy boot camp cash while the market is hot and they’d rather expand as fast as possible than invest in quality education. I just hope they don’t sour the business model before someone figures it out.
• joshxyz 6y ago
  Relevant experience I've read from twitter months ago: https://mobile.twitter.com/watsonwaswrite/status/1230900126627106816 https://mobile.twitter.com/watsonwaswrite/status/12309001266...
  • jrochkind1 6y ago
    > finally, my first day. and i was immediately disappointed to learn that the "team leads" in charge of grading our designs and reviewing our work.... were actually students two months ahead of us. two months!!!! Wow. While not an exact analogy, something about that makes me want to say MLM/"pyramid scheme" > i was so depressed. i started sleeping longer hours, i lost all enthusiasm. i was ashamed to tell my partner. i was genuinely struggling and still am. As I would be too in that position, I really sympathize. They are taking advantage of people and that has consequences, it isn't just a "failed startup".
    • QuixoticChris 6y ago
      I've seen this pattern before with other bootcamps. If you want to advertise "99% employment after 3 month", the people who aren't succeeding have to go somewhere. Failing them out of the program is one way, but also hiring the borderline cases you couldn't fail out is another.
      • jrochkind1 6y ago
        It sounds like this in this case it's not recent grads, it's the people still paying the bootcamp, who are grading other's work. That is one way to reduce costs!
  • MivLives 6y ago
    Even worse, since the curriculum changes so much there's a chance that the person grading you is three months ahead, and also hadn't actually originally gone through the unit they need to grade at all.
  • 908B64B197 6y ago
    I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
• soneca 6y ago
  What is sad to me looking from the outside it is that it didn’t have to be that way. Most of negative reviews seem to boil down to too many students, not enough support, not professional enough course management. Symptoms of growing pains. But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? It didn’t. It shouldn’t. It was at the expense of their students. Lambda School seemed a great idea from the start, revolutionary even. And the investors (pg mostly) would praise how insanely ambitious the founder was. Then I started following him on Twitter and saw that. He had that drive to be the Facebook of education, the slack of boot camps. But education doesn’t work that way. A new Facebook user can start using it 4 hours a day from the first day and get all the value they expect. A student can’t. Students need time and support to learn. But Lambda and its founder couldn’t wait for that if they wanted to become a unicorn.
  • Tomte 6y ago
    > But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? Isn't that obvious? They have investors. It's precisely what Joel writes about in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-and-jerrys-vs-amazon/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...
    • soneca 6y ago
      I know the incentives are there to have exponential Silicon Valley hyper growth. But there are also incentives to be a company that still exists and it is big 20 years from now. And there are ethical decisions that could be made despite of the incentives. Even being a YC company, I believe it didn’t have to be that way. Edit: thanks for the link, great article. ”Land grab” is a great term for what I currently think about Lambda School. Except the “land” is people’s life and hopes.
      • morelisp 6y ago
        > Even being a YC company, I believe it didn’t have to be that way. YC is a startup incubator. A startup, as defined by YC's founder, is a company that grows fast. Trying to convince anyone in SV that this is extremely dumb or dangerous or unethical is a waste of time.
• Antoninus 6y ago
  Relevant thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223
• thinkingemote 6y ago
  "I signed up for 18 months of programming... They suddenly reduced it to 12 months. As of yesterday, I've withdrawn after 4 months as this is not the program that was sold to me. I completed 22% of the program...but under their new reduction, they said I owe 37%" Seems like they would have a good case for getting their money back, but might need to consult a lawyer.
  • gnicholas 6y ago
    Well, it's even better for the student because the tuition is paid via an income-sharing agreement. That means you don't have to try to "get your money back" — you just have to defend yourself if they actually sue you for a share of your earnings. This means that Lambda would have to deal with the bad optics of "suing their students" (which sounds worse than simply refusing to give refunds). If Lambda did actually sue, students would have to defend themselves. But it's always better to be the party that starts out having the thing at issue (i.e., the money).
    • lordgrenville 6y ago
      "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
    • skylanh 6y ago
      I imagine they have the elusive and ever present "arbitration clause" where they don't actually have to actually sue their students.
      • gnicholas 6y ago
        You're probably right, though I think the press would still present this as "coding bootcamp sues its students". The fact that the process is unfolding in front of an arbitrator doesn't change the fundamental story.
      • learc83 6y ago
        But good luck getting money out of a student without actually getting a judgement. They'd basically be limited to reporting it to credit agencies and just asking them to pay. A arbitration agreement isn't enough to get a bank or an employer to hand over any money from the student.
• jacobion 6y ago
  The thing about efficient markets is that lucrative activities which don't produce much value—borderline scams—can block activity which would be highly wealth creating. For example, there could be a huge untapped retail market for financial derivatives such as interest rate and fx hedges. However, it's very hard to access this market because historically anyone who has started selling such products has pivoted towards targeting degenerate gamblers in order to fleece them. Normal people who want to hedge conclude that it's better to live with the risk than to be the sucker. Here we can see that there are lots of people who are prepared to make significant personal sacrifices to work in the software industry. The industry itself is crying out for more people and new people. But it literally doesn't make economic sense, either for universities or for new players such as bootcamps, to train people properly. It's vastly more lucrative to confuse them and then rip them off. It's hard to see a simple market mechanism which can resolve this, as opposed to rebuilding something similar to the gatekeeping and signalling functions around universities, commonly regarded as broken nowadays.
  • Grustaf 6y ago
    Just because it’s more lucrative to rip people off doesn’t mean it doesn’t make financial sense to run a good code bootcamp. That’s like saying it doesn’t make sense to work because it’s more lucrative to steal or live off welfare. But sure, it’s a common problem in a market economy. Presumably issues of information asymmetry should be alleviated in the days of the internet.
    • watwut 6y ago
      > Just because it’s more lucrative to rip people off doesn’t mean it doesn’t make financial sense to run a good code bootcamp. The good code bootcamp wont be able to compete in the sort term. The scam version will first attract more customers in short term and destroy overall trust in the long term.
      • Grustaf 6y ago
        This is a good point, although I am not sure that it makes it impossible to survive as a good school, it just makes it harder.
• crumbshot 6y ago
  > After I was a few Units in (3) and thus financially obligated to pay the ISA, they removed core components of the program. > Where a mentor was paid to mentor you, you are now forced to mentor other students and vice versa. So Lambda School is essentially an bait-and-switch pyramid scheme purporting to be an educational institution? For-profit schools are scams in general, but this one sounds particularly scammy and unpleasant. I'm not surprised to see it's being backed by YC. Yet another example of venture capitalists using their vast wealth to greedily build even more wealth, no matter who is abused in the process.
  • alexpetralia 6y ago
    Yeah I noticed this pyramid scheme as well. I am sure some enterprising product manager suggested "let's have the students teach as part of their education, and we can tell them that teaching enhances learning!"
  • MivLives 6y ago
    I and a lot of other students used the payment from mentoring to eat, and pay rent during the job search after graduation. The one thing that Lambda claimed it did, was never count anyone doing that as having been placed in a job. Forced mentorship sounds horrid, even when were paid a lot of people were not good at it. Making it required sounds like it could make that problem worse.
  • trefoiled 6y ago
    And it's even worse than that, because they offer the ISAs to investors to purchase. Meaning they're bait and switching both the student and investors.
• gexla 6y ago
  Once you're in, why not forget about the quality and problems and just follow the program? I have only ever gone to low level state schools, but one of my instructors told me that he wasn't there to teach me. He was there to guide me through the curriculum. That stuck. Stick to the program, sweat out the X months. You'll come out as close to a programmer / designer / X as you would from any other path aside from some sort of paid internship where you can teach yourself on the job. You could teach yourself. Many do. But most will not.
  • Grustaf 6y ago
    Of course you could teach yourself, but why pay 30 k for the pleasure of doing that?
    • gexla 6y ago
      Couldn't you make this same argument for any school in the US? Maybe We're getting vague here (my fault.) What do we actually mean by "teach yourself?" Nobody is spoon-feeding you knowledge. You get a curriculum to follow. It seems to me that if you get through the program and then land a job from it, then you got some value from the program. Maybe you could have done that on your own. But if you're looking at a bootcamp to learn in the first place, then you probably weren't going to learn on your own anyways.
      • Grustaf 6y ago
        Well, a normal university provides much more support than Lambda school seems to do, lectures, graded homework, labs, exams etc, so my point was that if Lambda doesn't provide that and is only really a way to teach yourself, then 30k is too much. University of course also provides a lot of things not directly related to the teaching, the student experience, a network, for some people the first experience of living on their own etc.
        • gexla 6y ago
          Let's say you have two programs to select from. One program has a 60% placement rate, but has horrible quality. The other has a 30% placement rate, but high quality. Let's say that an independent 3rd party does the quality assessment from invites to participate and from student feedback. This same body also finds that the employers and starting salaries for each program is roughly equal. Would you care about quality? I would select the first option. The higher placement rate has the greater value due to the greater probability of landing a job. It's like playing a pocket pair of Aces vs a pocket pair of Jacks in Texas Hold'em. I would consider the possibility of placing myself with a job as coming in with a pocket pair of 7's. What else matters? I guarantee that you'll learn something through an intensive effort of pacing along with the curriculum. I'm also sure that it's not going to be enough to feel comfortable that first day of the job. What's the placement rate? If that rate has plummeted or has always been horrible, then that's all I need to hear. Maybe what they are really teaching is the process of getting yourself into a self-learning mode of work. I have to learn new things every day. I would bet my day looks similar to those in Lambda. Maybe it's a "wax on, wax off" sort of thing which looks like BS but actually works if you don't get hung up on things outside of the end-goal. As long as the employer placement numbers are good (and maybe they aren't,) then I'm a believer.
• dikeledi 6y ago
  I got drawn into Lambda School at the peak of their hype early last year and considered myself extremely fortunate when I got admitted into one of their pilot EU classes. Suffice it to say that the reality was...significantly poorer than advertised. Not only because of the much-discussed reasons which are true, but most importantly for me because they lied about having hiring partners in Europe when they didn't, and left the students to fend for themselves after graduating. Most of the students saw this happen with earlier cohorts and there was a steady trickle of dropouts while I was there. To top it off, around October last year, LS suddenly announced that they would be "pausing" the EU programs indefinitely to "focus on improving the student experience" which seriously drained student morale. I'm pretty sure no more than 35% of students who enrolled to Lambda EU have jobs currently and since they're not as loud as the Americans, their plight isn't really highlighted. Most of the students who managed to get hired either did it on their own, or were previously experienced and came to Lambda to improve their prospects. I managed to get a job through my own means, but would unequivocally consider enrolling to LS a mistake, and it's telling that they've not bothered to follow up with me for ISA payments. Addendum: This was the kind of delusional fever dream perpetuated by Austen that kind of attracted me to LS last year: https://www.coursereport.com/blog/lambda-schools-europe-income-share-agreement https://www.coursereport.com/blog/lambda-schools-europe-inco... https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/people/after-us-india-will-be-our-second-largest-market-by-year-end-austen-allred/articleshow/68974149.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/people/after-us-india-wi...
  • anthonycampbell 6y ago
    I was part of the very first EU cohort and you're 100% correct. Despite being starry-eyed and optimistic when starting out, cracks quickly began to show in the facade. Curriculum changes would be announced hours before that day's lessons would begin leaving both students and instructors baffled. There were students who simply hadn't mastered the material yet and were generally not ready to move on, yet were forced to go into the next unit lest the 'pass-rate' between cohorts would be less than 100%. Frankly, having seen the average quality of their work, I wouldn't hire 70% of all Lambda students. I've seen a handful of really talented and hard-working students who've made the most of their LS experience, but for the majority that simply followed the curriculum and did the bare-minimum I wouldn't want them anywhere near my codebase. Thus far, it seems that almost all students who got a job either spent numerous hours studying outside of normal classes, had previous experience going into it (such as myself), or generally got a lucky break. There are numerous students who are still without a job more than a year after graduation.
• tester34 6y ago
  in "my country" programming bootcamps are considered as a big scam that rely on selling dreams to people like: becoming SE* in 3-6 months or some shit like that for N minimal wages ofc bootcamps do work for some people (minority) *let's not argue about developer vs engineer vs coder vs programmer
  • yodsanklai 6y ago
    Where I live, education is free and quality is strictly controlled by the governement. It's a bit rigid and not perfect, but overall I think it works pretty well. For that reason, we are usually quite suspicious of private alternatives. It's not only universities, even sport clubs are often non-commercial structures and instructors are required to have official certifications. Americans have a different mindset, they are more business-oriented, for the better and the worse.
• offtop5 6y ago
  I'm a bit split on boot camps. On one hand if you're already a high income earning person, such the lawyer and you need to pivot it can be an option. But they're targeting high school grads and others who aren't as prepared. I don't think you actually need any formal training to become a programmer, I don't and I do exceptionally well. Once you add in investors who expect returns, why wouldn't lambda School enroll as many people as they could without any regard to education. Those who are motivated will learn on their own, find themselves entry level tech jobs and can be put up as an example of successful students. Those who fail will be shown as too lazy to put in the effort. If I was to advise a new student on what path to take, I had almost always say to go to college. The main advantage being that you can grow a real Social circle, and with the coming saturation of boot camp grads you'll have an actual degree. For non-traditional students, such as working parents many state schools offer online curriculums which will be a much better fit versus an exploitive boot camp.
• huntleydavis 6y ago
  I think the ultimate question is whether it's markedly better on average than what the rest of the market can offer for $30k. Covid has reduced the value of almost all education services that aren't exclusively online, thus has Lambda's perceived reduction in value in line with the average reduction across the industry or is it uniquely bad?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kostyal 6y ago
  I went to Lambda School. The cohort based ISA model is groundbreaking. Lambda's execution of it is nowhere near a fraction of its potential
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    This is the root of the problem. People love to champion the business model and they simply assume that the education part is easy. Meanwhile, Lambda appears to be cashing in on those assumptions to sell a sub-par product.
• RyanGoosling 6y ago
  What happened to good ol’ 4-year college educations?? Lmao what even is this
  • JacobSuperslav 6y ago
    people are trying to skip it in fields where it isn't really necessary. why waste time and resources if you dont have to? my buddy spent 6 years in higher education now he's clicking things in excel and pasting snippets in Apex. I'd argue that these 6 years were mostly a waste of time for him.
• dougSF70 6y ago
  I suspect they set out with noble intentions and then realised it is a conversion-funnel game where they absorb the cost up front with the hope of recouping cost and profit later on. If 100% students passing through landed a job then the unit economics would work provided hard costs are low enough. Business might even be successful at 30% post Lambda School employment. However, as they scale that number will fall because the type of student they recruit might change and the pandemic also having a short term effect. As % post employment falls revenues fall and more students are needed to increase absolute revs. This could also go hand in hand with cost-cutting, of which there is evidence. All in all, an experiment in business model is taking place.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • gexla 6y ago
    > All in all, an experiment in business model is taking place Which is all businesses at that scale I think. You're not reinventing the wheel offering plumbing services in your local village. I guess we have to think about how these experiments might play out and the risks involved as we participate in them. How will food delivery services change my community? What's the risk that an investment in personal education with this newly launched service won't pay off? What am I giving up by opening a free account with Facebook? There's a strong likelihood that any of these experiments will blow up. Just as there's a strong likelihood that a direct investment in any of these companies won't pay off (especially as an early investor, which is at the point where we're likely using these services.) Maybe people shouldn't be so quick to jump in early, and more accepting of the mistake once they find out they placed a bad bet.
    • dougSF70 6y ago
      Agreed, early stage start ups are experiments in business models: "is there a market for x, can I charge $y for it and accept z as payment". In edtech start ups most folks forget who the customer is e.g Altschool, a software company that used students as Guinea pigs.
  • deleted 6y ago
• coldtea 6y ago
  Paying "30k for a code bootcamp"? Is that in US dollars? That's insane, regardless of the quality of the instruction...
  • GuardianCaveman 6y ago
    I guess it was 18 months before being reduced to 12 months during the guys course.
• isaacaderogba 6y ago
  Awh man, this is a bummer. I attended Lambda School from April-November 2019. I was in the Web Dev unit for 4 months and a Team Lead for the remainder. I got a job early so didn't get to do Labs or Computer Science, though I've heard they weren't great experiences. I'm not 100% looped in what's happening with Lambda anymore (they removed the Alumni from the student Slack channels), but I hope they're able to turn things around. For what it's worth, I did enjoy my time there. It helped me get over anxiety around tackling projects, and it gave me a taste of what fast-paced learning looks like. Was also able to use what I learned for Pioneer and YC. That said, it does feel weird to be on the hook for €27,500 - for what was effectively 4 months of instruction in my case.
  • MivLives 6y ago
    Computer science and labs kept changing. When I went through they were doing C. Apparently they don't do that anymore. The order of the two kept flipping too from what I remember.
  • digianarchist 6y ago
    That’s more than my 4 year UK undergraduate degree.
• 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  Just going to throw this out there... The value of top schools is the professors and instruction. The administration, not so much. Perhaps the startup should be in how to automate and standardize university administration so that the majority of tuition goes to the educators. - https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septoct-2011/administrators-ate-my-tuition/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septoct-2011/administ...
  • Siira 6y ago
    Most of the value is actually in signaling and the peer group.
    • FeeJai 6y ago
      That is the sad and dirty truth about American higher ed. It's basically just buying an entry ticket to an exclusive club
    • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      That doesn’t contradict the idea that the value is in the top quality professors. Much of the signaling value is that the person has already spent four years studying under top quality professors and managed to pass without dropping out or failing out. The idea that someone can get admitted to a top university and then somehow graduate without managing to learn at a high level and pass all of their courses is basically a myth.
    • NationalPark 6y ago
      That's definitely what some students extract from it but the professors are indeed real and they will talk with you if you ask nicely.
• Mikho 6y ago
  Happens when a business model is to sign up as many people as possible for the ISA (Income Sharing Agreement) and then immediately monetize that ISAs by selling them with a discount to a 3rd party. That's basically Lambda business model. The main part is to sign up as many people as possible since in mean hard cash right away for every account that became locked in the debt. Education is just an irrelevant theme-trick to make people owe money. That's classic sting of when a mob seduces a target person to play in a rigged gamble game just to make the target owe this mob some money.
  • texasbigdata 6y ago
    Anytime you securitize an asset like that credit quality gets heavily scrutinized. From a working capital perspective you can cause a real liquidity crunch if you’re simultaneously a) growing and b) deteriorating factored asset quality leading to lower advance rates on subsequent tranches in the SPV. Restated in English, if you’re taking payday loans and your income is declining you’re about to have a bad time.
  • TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
    > ... then immediately monetize that ISAs by selling them with a discount to a 3rd party Is that really true? If so, this is shocking to me. If LS sells the ISA, then, obviously, they are no longer "aligned" with their students' success. What's the point of their "revolutionary" arrangement then? This makes perfect sense out of the jumble of anecdotes I'm reading. From further below: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-students-edly-isa-debt-swapping-partnership-shares-investors https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st.... In other words, yes, this is what's happening, and it's a disaster, for exactly the stated reason.
    • blntechie 6y ago
      It is known that they package and sell the ISAs like other credit products. But regarding their alignment with student success, it’s to their benefit that these ISAs realizes i.e. students succeed as the ISA quality determine how much they can sell them for.
• snissn 6y ago
  Is lambda school a yc company?
  • digianarchist 6y ago
    Yes
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Seems like weird time for moocs and boot camps overall. On one hand they are ideally positioned to teach “real world” it engineering. On the other, by the time teaching materials are polished and presentable the landscape had already moved making your freshly acquired skills outdated. And there is no way to differentiate your offerings if you stick to fundamentals.
• airdweia 6y ago
  Please please please under no circumstances attend Lambda, everything the poster says is true. Two weeks before the end of CS for me they initiated a pass/fail for a test that we were never taught anything about and then mandated that you repeat the entire CS curriculum if you weren’t able to pass it. They said that it didn’t matter that I passed all of my sprints and scored 100% on the unit assessment, that I needed to repeat a class (along with 3/4 of my cohort) just to pass this test. They never owned up to the fact that they didn’t teach the material on the test, as was evident by the fact that they removed ALL GitHub projects in CS and replaced them with Codesignal challenges. I messaged “Student Success” for weeks and was ignored and when they did deign to respond to me it was a generic canned response that addressed none of my issues save “Deal with it”. I took to speaking about the problems in the open channels and I was removed from Slack and forcefully “withdrawn” from Lambda. It is utter chaos there.
  • austenallred 6y ago
    Hey airdwea, I’m sorry you were frustrated by the GCA assessment. We don’t use assessments as a means of harming students, but we do genuinely want to make sure that you are ready to move onto the next level before doing so. I understand this can be frustrating. This particular assessment, you’re correct, is not a direct map to the previous couple weeks of content, but rather a summative general assessment that covers material taught over longer periods of time. Anyone who is interested can google “CodeSignal General Coding Assessment” and find the assessment. I don’t believe we’ve removed anyone from Slack for voicing concerns, but if you’d like to email me austen@lambdaschool.com I’ll look into it.
    • forgingahead 6y ago
      Why are people downvoting this? The CEO of the company being discussed is replying to people voicing their concerns. If you think he's saying something wrong, write a comment to it. Don't simply downvote it. Too many sensitive trigger-fingers here.
      • ecshafer 6y ago
• Liron 6y ago
  If the top of HN had posts like this every day: "College is the biggest mistake I made in my life, I'm trapped in deep debt forever", that would be good perspective.
• eoinlynch95 6y ago
  Lambda School was the hardest thing I've done. I learned a lot and happy with it but have been having a really hard time finding a job. I am in the EU. Today I spoke to a recruiter who suggested a few changes in my CV. Lambda's staff for helping graduates find jobs are not doing a good job. I've been trying to get endorsed and don't know how many times I had to message different people about getting it sorted. Overall, Lambda is great and worth doing but its not perfect. Everyone there means well but there needs to be better structure.
• faizmokhtar 6y ago
  I find it weird that this post is not in the front page of HN considering the number of points, comments and the time it was posted
  • airdweia 6y ago
    It was for a little bit
• timavr 6y ago
  Lambda School run into the realities of education economics. As a society, we decided to subsidize high performers so they can actually focus on building/researching things and securitize everyone else. The fact of the matter is educating high performers is cheaper short term( they teach themselves and process information better) and exponentially more valuable long term (they get good jobs, go into business or lead lucrative fields) If we sort out people based on similar ratings as applied to bonds, Lambda school works with Cs. It doesn't mean that everyone is bad, it just means on average the level of people is bad. All A people are picked by good unis via scholarships. B people can't get a scholarship but have good enough grades to get into B schools and pay via a loan or via relatives. Lambda School is focusing on everyone else, but hopefully, there is a lot of everyone else. The model should have been on looking at Cs and separating good Cs from bad Cs. A good C is normally a student that didn't have opportunities or environment to become A, but have innate ability to do so, given the opportunity and resources. If you don't really have the tools to distinguished good Cs from bad Cs, you can enroll as many people as possible and hopefully RNG your way to success. The problem with that strategy is that a lot of bad Cs will be unhappy with job outcomes, struggle with courses, generate bad press impacting recruitment, and more importantly be a massive drain on teaching resources. I still think Lambda School is onto something but trying to do this via hypergrowth focused VC funding is a challenge. On another topic, the hack I use in recruiting people who didn't have the opportunity to learn CS is to ask them to do CS50 in their own time. About 90% of people never come back, about 5% start but never finish or take too long to finish, and about 5% knock it out of the park. Those 5% generally were always worth my time advising and if we were lucky working with them. It doesn't mean they will become rockstar programmers, but it means they have learning ability and with enough time and resources will become a net positive to the company in a variety of engineering and engineering adjacent roles.
• thatonecoder 6y ago
  At the start Lambda seemed to be an okay "school" to attend, for me it was a continuing education thing. I wanted to add to my skill set and learn a new language (react/node) as I have been a PHP developer for roughly 10 years now. The more time I spent at Lambda things started to become apparent that the instructors are very ill prepared to teach other students. For example, whenever a problem was met that they could not solve they would just skip it and move on to the next problem...How is this supposed to help students learn to solve problems. That is just the tip of the iceberg. Once we got to the CS portion they force you to use Python and explain very little about it. When I was going through the CS course after 4 months they added the GCA (general coding assessment proctored by a third party) with a 2 day notice. "Take the test for the first time by x day and you will have a chance to take it again in 2 weeks, if you do not achieve a 650 or higher (which is what the one instructor that attempted to take the GCA scored) you will be flexed back to CS again. I gave notice to Lambda that proctored test would hinder me as I have sever social anxiety and even need a service dog to go out in public. (proctored is recording your screen/sound/webcam) Lambda made 0 attempt to accommodate my medical issues. So I went ahead and took it anyways. While nearly passing out due to anxiety I ended up scoring a 606 (not bad right) but failed. I was then put in a hospital days before the second attempt of the GCA was allowed with a life threating bacterial infection. I contacted my TL (team lead) and asked if I need to do anything. I scored in the 90s for the CS assessment and I knew I still needed to take the GCA again but he said everything for now is okay. I was released from the hospital on that Friday, the GCA was apparently due on that Thursday. I contacted Student Success and nothing...Was flexed into CS again which is no NO ASSIGNMENTS, NO GRADING, NO TEAM LEADS, NO CODING TO PUT ON GITHUB, it was reduced to taking tests on code signal and that's it. I finally got ahold of someone 4 days into the new CS cohort when I was told "What would taking the GCA accomplish for you", I was willing to set aside all the changes that made Lambda into a glorified Udemy to continue and finish but I was met with rude incomitance and negativity when I just wanted the same chance as everyone else...Take the test and move on. Since then I have been removed from the Slack for speaking my mind. There is NO RIGHT to free speech within Lambda, if you don't follow their ideology you have no voice. Your only choice is to shut up and comply. DO NOT be wronged by this "school"/"bootcamp" that is nothing but a glorified Udemy that will force you into free labor in their new "mentorship" program that you will have to help other students for free on your own time, even if you are struggling. Make a better choice and good luck future coders.
• bird_monster 6y ago
  I think these code schools are clearly defining the need for vocational programs to get into tech. I don't know why these vocational programs have to be fundamentally different from the vocational programs that exist for other industries. Code schools seem to be extreme, "4-8 hours a day commitment, 5 days a week", in my experience, which obviously means most students can't really have another job. I wish there was a 1-2 hour a night, 2-3 nights a week program that took a year and output a reasonable junior candidate for most software companies. Meaning, not FAANG, not SF, not unicorn startup. A program to take a person with no background and make them capable of being entry level employees for local mid-sized insurance companies or banks.
• hermanradtke 6y ago
  If you have had a bad experience with Lambda School, consider filing a complaint at https://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/complaint.shtml https://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/complaint.shtml
• trefoiled 6y ago
  This feels like the 2009 financial crisis, but instead of trading subprime mortgages they're trading code school student debt. Bizarre.
• aw9f70gae 6y ago
  Is General Assembly as bad as Lambda School?
• tim333 6y ago
  It's amazing how the reviews have changed on coursereport.com (https://www.coursereport.com/schools/lambda-school#reviews https://www.coursereport.com/schools/lambda-school#reviews) The 10 most recent reviews from May on are all one star Whereas before that there are loads of 5* reviews. I wonder why they changed it?
• bryanwb 6y ago
  The solution to student debt it Georgia Tech's OMSCS. It is super cheap ($8k whole MS degree), amazing, very hard, and takes a long time. UTexas and ASU's programs are also excellent and not much more expensive. I think OMSCS isn't more popular because it is so damn hard. People always want the quick and easy road.
• ndrestone 6y ago
  Lambda School is the biggest mistake. The most interesting part of Lambda School is that MOST (if not all) claim to have learned to code by themselves. I'm yet to see a decent programmer who attributes their skill level to their school and not the books they read, the hours they practiced and stackoverflow / google.