8 ms·

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

by st1x7 6y ago

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).
      - learc83 6y ago
        You’re missing the point of the analogy. Progressive taxation doesn’t produce a cliff where you’re potentially better off if you make less money. The higher rates only apply to money over the threshold. Lambda school works the way many people think the US tax system works (but doesn’t). When you make over X, all of your money is taxed at Y. So it’s better to make X - 1 than X + 1.
        mhaymo 6y ago
        Only if you place no value on paying off your ISA. Once the ISA is paid off, the "cliff" disappears. Obviously this is quite different to taxes.
        FemmeAndroid 6y ago
        Your ISA is a sunk cost. Obviously, if you can afford to, many people will be better off in the long term having it paid off, but going from making $4,208 a month at a $49,500 salary, then getting a small raise to $50,000 and making $3,493/month is not something a lot of people can afford. Especially when you consider how that $715/month you're losing by bumping your income could be going to debt that won't expire if you just wait out the 5 years under that cap. This is especially true if you've had a few years under $50,000 before even having the chance to edge up over $50k. It can very much be in your financial interest to not take a raise, if offered.
        learc83 6y ago
        ISA expires after 5 years, so there's definitely a range where making more money during that 5 years will cost you more overall.
    - sampsonitify 6y ago
      I find it weird how often the criticisms don't cite anything real. https://lambdaschool.com/isa https://lambdaschool.com/isa is there data, and I am sure there is more. Can you reference your post to what they state they charge for?
      - FemmeAndroid 6y ago
        Yeah, that's it. "Once you begin making at least $50,000 a year, you will owe Lambda 17% of your monthly income until you reach the cap or the terms of your ISA expire." So if you go from $49,999 to $50,000 you now owe them $50,000 * 0.17, or $8,500. "Now wait just a minute, FemmeAndroid. If you're just getting a raise at your current job, that won't be covered unless you're a web dev." Now I don't know about you, but I like doing good work, and I'm a developer at heart, even if I don't have a fancy CS degree or even a Bootcamp diploma. But every desk job I've had has ended up involving development, since I can usually help automate parts of my job. It's worked out well for me, and I'd imagine anyone who comes out of a bootcamp like this without a new job will at least try and leverage their coding experience to improve their current job, get a raise, or get a promotion. Your job might not be 'web developer' but your job will start to involve the skills you learned at Lambda school. 'You will owe payments toward your ISA if your job requires skills you learned at Lambda School, even if your title isn't "Web Developer" or "Data Scientist."' Heck, even if you start a business, and grow it from the ground up, as soon as you make $50,000 a year, you immediately drop back down $8,500. (They explicitly call out 'Self-employed' as an eligible job on the page linked.) Even if you just get a second job that reasonably only makes a bit of money, you fall into this trap. (They explicitly call out 'Second Job' on the page linked.) You will be stuck in this catch-22 of not having an incentive to make over $50,000 unless you can make the jump to a little over $60,000 or so for 60 months. That's point 3 on the linked website. "[You are bound by the terms of the ISA until you pay 17% for 24 months, you pay out $30k, or...] You did not make over $4,167/month or did not have a qualifying job, and therefore "deferred" your monthly payments for a total of 60 months." All the above quotes come from your linked page. I was just simplifying the facts of that very page into a fairly big problem with how it's structured. Heck, you can even see what I'm talking about by using their own calculator. Go to https://lambdaschool.com/isa-calculator https://lambdaschool.com/isa-calculator and jump between making $49,500 and $50,000 a year, and you'll see you go from owing nothing to owing nothing a month to $715 a month while only making $4,208. That's a huge leap.
  - mhaymo 6y ago
    Different in important ways. There is no risk of ruin from an ISA: if you aren't earning you don't have to pay. The idea is also that this aligns the school's incentives with the student's: if the student doesn't prosper, the school doesn't get paid.
    - learc83 6y ago
      Public student loans (90%+ of loan disbursements) work like this as well. The max you will have to pay is 10% of your discretionary income (10% of income above 1.5x the poverty level).
thaumasiotes 6y ago
What costs more, $30,000 and 6 months, or $30,000 and 48 months?
- rootlocus 6y ago
  I think this is the wrong question. Any commitment to education is an investment. At that point, you should be thinking in terms of ROI.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    You can think in terms of ROI only if you have enough resources to dedicate 48 months to study. Otherwise it's just a race against time to become profitable. That is, to be able to think in terms of ROI is a privilege.
  - cjrp 6y ago
    If you're using both the degree and the bootcamp to achieve the same goal (e.g. a paying job), then surely being ready for employment sooner is preferable?
    - codingdave 6y ago
      No. I can get a paying job right out of high school, while someone going to medical school will be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for over a decade. If you are just looking at wealth at age 25, people working in fast food made better choices than doctors. Yet somehow, 10 years later, the doctors are ahead. Clearly that is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point - getting a paying job quickly does not mean it is the best answer for long-term salary and career growth. Getting any old coding job just to get one is not the same thing as getting the full education that comes from a degree. That doesn't make it the wrong answer... getting a job matters. But if you are comparing long-term outcomes, you need to look at it with more context.
      - st1x7 6y ago
        The analogy doesn't scale because additional years of fast-food work don't add anything to your prospects. On the other hand, additional years of software development add a lot to your employability so the value of getting your first job is much higher. Once you have several years of experience, the lack of a 4-year degree is far less harmful to your employability.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lawn 6y ago
Fun fact: $30k is almost exactly how much the Swedish student loan gives you for 5 years of full time study, which I used to pay for everything (housing, food, clothes, computers, books for school etc).
- codethief 6y ago
  You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden?
  - Legogris 6y ago
    If you're able to score affordable housing (~$300/month is not uncommon for student accommodation and if sharing even $150~200 is not unheard of) it's not that much of a stretch. Also big difference between Stockholm (and to some extent Gothenburg) and the rest of the country in living costs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sampo 6y ago
    Seems you get $84 per week as an allowance, and can withdraw $210 a week as a loan. These are 2016 numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden) You also get, I think, about $150 a month housing allowance. So on top of your $150 + 4×$84 = ca. $500 monthly income, you only need to take about $800 a month as a loan to survive. (Remember, no tuition fees.)
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    My friend did his Masters from Finland and said his monthly expenses were about 200-300 Euros in his first year. I think he spent a bit more in subsequent years after getting a part-time job. That's 18000+ euros if extended to 5 years. Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.
    - 6y ago
michaelt 6y ago
Lambda School pushes "income sharing agreements" where once you're paid over $50k you pay back 17% of your income until you've paid back $30k. Depending on your opinion, it's either a brilliant investment in students, aligning the interests of the school and the students - or it's a loan by a slightly different name, fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  For the consumer therefore it matters what the actual value of the thing they bought for $30k is. Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job? Will not doing it lead to a $80K job? For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product? I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.
  - freshhawk 6y ago
    Trust or a monopoly position. And in this context trust doesn't scale, you need good teachers for every [class size] students. That means profit only scales linearly with good teachers (the scarce resource). Marketing scales though, and what matters to the consumer is how much they believe the actual value is compared to the competition for what they believe their options are.
  - RyanGoosling 6y ago
    It’s worthless. I’m not hiring someone from some bootcamp
    - sampsonitify 6y ago
      How many people do you hire from other places? I'm never hiring anyone again if I can help it, so I'm not the target either, and this sort of post seems to imply this is a huge loss for Lambda but I'm not sure it is.
    - 6y ago
burnthrow 6y ago
The dirty secret of free market capitalism is that you can basically open a lemonade stand with sign "HAPPINESS" and charge any amount. There are some hopelessly thick people out there, and a shortcut to success is taking advantage of them. Probably many of these students paying $30k could not even complete a college application before a deadline. I don't know how these "entrepreneurs" can sleep at night.
MivLives 6y ago
One thing to keep in mind about the 30k number. Unless it's changed it is percentage based with a min. If you're making less then 50k it's nothing, if you're making 50k it's 17k in repayment. If you're making a 150k it's capped at 30k, but you're paying 2125 dollars a month until you hit that. It's 17 percent of your salary for 2 years or you hit 30k repayment whichever is first. If you don't make over 50k, or don't get a job in a related field (which includes things like IT support I believe) it disappears. You can kind of see why a student would think that the bootcamp is aligned with their interests. They want you to get a high paying job so they get paid more, and if you don't succeed you owe nothing. I went through this, and my salary went up 2.25 times what it was previously. I also enjoy my job significantly more. To me this was worth 30k. Why didn't I just teach myself? A few reasons, one is motivation/accountability, another is structure, and a third was a hope that career services would help me on the other side. I won't claim it was my smartest move, it got me out of the hole I was in. Edit: want to be clear I'm not recommending doing this, I'm just saying what my/other students I talked to decision process was
Axsuul 6y ago
A degree in what? The return on investment of a coding bootcamp I’d wager is still higher due to the supply and demand of the market for coders.

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

by st1x7 6y ago

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

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).
    - learc83 6y ago
      You’re missing the point of the analogy. Progressive taxation doesn’t produce a cliff where you’re potentially better off if you make less money. The higher rates only apply to money over the threshold. Lambda school works the way many people think the US tax system works (but doesn’t). When you make over X, all of your money is taxed at Y. So it’s better to make X - 1 than X + 1.
      - mhaymo 6y ago
        Only if you place no value on paying off your ISA. Once the ISA is paid off, the "cliff" disappears. Obviously this is quite different to taxes.
        FemmeAndroid 6y ago
        Your ISA is a sunk cost. Obviously, if you can afford to, many people will be better off in the long term having it paid off, but going from making $4,208 a month at a $49,500 salary, then getting a small raise to $50,000 and making $3,493/month is not something a lot of people can afford. Especially when you consider how that $715/month you're losing by bumping your income could be going to debt that won't expire if you just wait out the 5 years under that cap. This is especially true if you've had a few years under $50,000 before even having the chance to edge up over $50k. It can very much be in your financial interest to not take a raise, if offered.
        learc83 6y ago
        ISA expires after 5 years, so there's definitely a range where making more money during that 5 years will cost you more overall.
  - sampsonitify 6y ago
    I find it weird how often the criticisms don't cite anything real. https://lambdaschool.com/isa https://lambdaschool.com/isa is there data, and I am sure there is more. Can you reference your post to what they state they charge for?
    - FemmeAndroid 6y ago
      Yeah, that's it. "Once you begin making at least $50,000 a year, you will owe Lambda 17% of your monthly income until you reach the cap or the terms of your ISA expire." So if you go from $49,999 to $50,000 you now owe them $50,000 * 0.17, or $8,500. "Now wait just a minute, FemmeAndroid. If you're just getting a raise at your current job, that won't be covered unless you're a web dev." Now I don't know about you, but I like doing good work, and I'm a developer at heart, even if I don't have a fancy CS degree or even a Bootcamp diploma. But every desk job I've had has ended up involving development, since I can usually help automate parts of my job. It's worked out well for me, and I'd imagine anyone who comes out of a bootcamp like this without a new job will at least try and leverage their coding experience to improve their current job, get a raise, or get a promotion. Your job might not be 'web developer' but your job will start to involve the skills you learned at Lambda school. 'You will owe payments toward your ISA if your job requires skills you learned at Lambda School, even if your title isn't "Web Developer" or "Data Scientist."' Heck, even if you start a business, and grow it from the ground up, as soon as you make $50,000 a year, you immediately drop back down $8,500. (They explicitly call out 'Self-employed' as an eligible job on the page linked.) Even if you just get a second job that reasonably only makes a bit of money, you fall into this trap. (They explicitly call out 'Second Job' on the page linked.) You will be stuck in this catch-22 of not having an incentive to make over $50,000 unless you can make the jump to a little over $60,000 or so for 60 months. That's point 3 on the linked website. "[You are bound by the terms of the ISA until you pay 17% for 24 months, you pay out $30k, or...] You did not make over $4,167/month or did not have a qualifying job, and therefore "deferred" your monthly payments for a total of 60 months." All the above quotes come from your linked page. I was just simplifying the facts of that very page into a fairly big problem with how it's structured. Heck, you can even see what I'm talking about by using their own calculator. Go to https://lambdaschool.com/isa-calculator https://lambdaschool.com/isa-calculator and jump between making $49,500 and $50,000 a year, and you'll see you go from owing nothing to owing nothing a month to $715 a month while only making $4,208. That's a huge leap.
- mhaymo 6y ago
  Different in important ways. There is no risk of ruin from an ISA: if you aren't earning you don't have to pay. The idea is also that this aligns the school's incentives with the student's: if the student doesn't prosper, the school doesn't get paid.
  - learc83 6y ago
    Public student loans (90%+ of loan disbursements) work like this as well. The max you will have to pay is 10% of your discretionary income (10% of income above 1.5x the poverty level).

thaumasiotes 6y ago

What costs more, $30,000 and 6 months, or $30,000 and 48 months?

rootlocus 6y ago
I think this is the wrong question. Any commitment to education is an investment. At that point, you should be thinking in terms of ROI.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  You can think in terms of ROI only if you have enough resources to dedicate 48 months to study. Otherwise it's just a race against time to become profitable. That is, to be able to think in terms of ROI is a privilege.
- cjrp 6y ago
  If you're using both the degree and the bootcamp to achieve the same goal (e.g. a paying job), then surely being ready for employment sooner is preferable?
  - codingdave 6y ago
    No. I can get a paying job right out of high school, while someone going to medical school will be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for over a decade. If you are just looking at wealth at age 25, people working in fast food made better choices than doctors. Yet somehow, 10 years later, the doctors are ahead. Clearly that is an extreme example, but it illustrates the point - getting a paying job quickly does not mean it is the best answer for long-term salary and career growth. Getting any old coding job just to get one is not the same thing as getting the full education that comes from a degree. That doesn't make it the wrong answer... getting a job matters. But if you are comparing long-term outcomes, you need to look at it with more context.
    - st1x7 6y ago
      The analogy doesn't scale because additional years of fast-food work don't add anything to your prospects. On the other hand, additional years of software development add a lot to your employability so the value of getting your first job is much higher. Once you have several years of experience, the lack of a 4-year degree is far less harmful to your employability.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lawn 6y ago

Fun fact: $30k is almost exactly how much the Swedish student loan gives you for 5 years of full time study, which I used to pay for everything (housing, food, clothes, computers, books for school etc).

codethief 6y ago
You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden?
- Legogris 6y ago
  If you're able to score affordable housing (~$300/month is not uncommon for student accommodation and if sharing even $150~200 is not unheard of) it's not that much of a stretch. Also big difference between Stockholm (and to some extent Gothenburg) and the rest of the country in living costs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sampo 6y ago
  Seems you get $84 per week as an allowance, and can withdraw $210 a week as a loan. These are 2016 numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden) You also get, I think, about $150 a month housing allowance. So on top of your $150 + 4×$84 = ca. $500 monthly income, you only need to take about $800 a month as a loan to survive. (Remember, no tuition fees.)
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  My friend did his Masters from Finland and said his monthly expenses were about 200-300 Euros in his first year. I think he spent a bit more in subsequent years after getting a part-time job. That's 18000+ euros if extended to 5 years. Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.
  - 6y ago

michaelt 6y ago

Lambda School pushes "income sharing agreements" where once you're paid over $50k you pay back 17% of your income until you've paid back $30k. Depending on your opinion, it's either a brilliant investment in students, aligning the interests of the school and the students - or it's a loan by a slightly different name, fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.

thinkingemote 6y ago
For the consumer therefore it matters what the actual value of the thing they bought for $30k is. Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job? Will not doing it lead to a $80K job? For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product? I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.
- freshhawk 6y ago
  Trust or a monopoly position. And in this context trust doesn't scale, you need good teachers for every [class size] students. That means profit only scales linearly with good teachers (the scarce resource). Marketing scales though, and what matters to the consumer is how much they believe the actual value is compared to the competition for what they believe their options are.
- RyanGoosling 6y ago
  It’s worthless. I’m not hiring someone from some bootcamp
  - sampsonitify 6y ago
    How many people do you hire from other places? I'm never hiring anyone again if I can help it, so I'm not the target either, and this sort of post seems to imply this is a huge loss for Lambda but I'm not sure it is.
  - 6y ago

burnthrow 6y ago

The dirty secret of free market capitalism is that you can basically open a lemonade stand with sign "HAPPINESS" and charge any amount. There are some hopelessly thick people out there, and a shortcut to success is taking advantage of them. Probably many of these students paying $30k could not even complete a college application before a deadline. I don't know how these "entrepreneurs" can sleep at night.

MivLives 6y ago

One thing to keep in mind about the 30k number. Unless it's changed it is percentage based with a min. If you're making less then 50k it's nothing, if you're making 50k it's 17k in repayment. If you're making a 150k it's capped at 30k, but you're paying 2125 dollars a month until you hit that. It's 17 percent of your salary for 2 years or you hit 30k repayment whichever is first. If you don't make over 50k, or don't get a job in a related field (which includes things like IT support I believe) it disappears. You can kind of see why a student would think that the bootcamp is aligned with their interests. They want you to get a high paying job so they get paid more, and if you don't succeed you owe nothing. I went through this, and my salary went up 2.25 times what it was previously. I also enjoy my job significantly more. To me this was worth 30k. Why didn't I just teach myself? A few reasons, one is motivation/accountability, another is structure, and a third was a hope that career services would help me on the other side. I won't claim it was my smartest move, it got me out of the hole I was in. Edit: want to be clear I'm not recommending doing this, I'm just saying what my/other students I talked to decision process was

Axsuul 6y ago

A degree in what? The return on investment of a coding bootcamp I’d wager is still higher due to the supply and demand of the market for coders.