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Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

• jjar 5y ago
  ``` #piano-inline-content-wrapper { display: block !important; } ``` :)
• beepbooptheory 5y ago
  There are so many of these and they are so flawed, yet again and again its been clear to me that I would have maybe gotten a job at this point if I had just signed up for one and stomached the debt. These days I just wonder how feasible it would be to just... make one up and say that I am a graduate. I'd just need to mock up a relatively fancy website, some copy, and a good name, and then put on my resume that I am a graduate.
• DantesKite 5y ago
  I went to Lambda School. Lots of problems with Lambda, especially the way they teach. I learned a lot. Faster and better than I could on my own. I only stopped because I fell very ill. Better than college. If Austen was more truthful and transparent and moved a little slower, they'd be number one in the space. But you can't move quick when taking people's lives and time. They're not as flexible as software.
• xtat 5y ago
  I always got a lot of pressure from certain well meaning SV business types to hire from bootcamps and always struggled to find folks - suppose it depends on the industry but "learn engineering fast" isn't really a thing that works.
• tYPSyClA 5y ago
  Link without paywall: https://archive.md/Gkzcz https://archive.md/Gkzcz
• darepublic 5y ago
  Similar experience with college degree program. Was being taught table layout in web course up to and beyond 2012. The key learnings needed to be employable were really discovered in work internship and through trial and error.
• pillowkusis 5y ago
  This article takes the angle that Lambda's profitability efforts may hurt its students: > the school can still reach profitability by enrolling 2,000 students a month while only placing less than half of its graduates in qualifying jobs. >Class sizes are like 150 students to one instructor — I've only heard that number going up I don't see what the problem is here. For students, the only cost associated with Lambda is the opportunity cost. The incentives are still aligned here -- the school wants people to get placed. It can't "scam" students with higher teacher:student ratios or bad curriculums without hurting its bottom line. If it's failing at teaching students, that's incompetence, not a drive for profitability. If only 40% of students get placed -- that's still 40% more than would have been placed without Lambda, right? >"Those students that are in the bottom 10%, why would they invest resources into helping those students succeed? Just let them fail out after six months" ...exactly? You are going to school for free. The school is not obligated to waste resources on students falling behind, because those students aren't paying anything. If you think 6 months of wasted time is a bad deal, just wait until I tell you about this other educational program that lasts 4 years, costs over $100,000, and has a much lower placement rate: Your local university's liberal arts degrees. Still, it's unfortunate to hear that Lambda is playing the same placement-rate games as bootcamps. I'm surprised they have to do this at all; if I was running admissions, I would be extremely selective, only accepting extremely bright students that I feel the university system had "missed," to get placement rates as high as possible. Maybe they try to do this, and this is just a sad sign of the state of non-college education opportunities?
  • sandofsky 5y ago
    I don't see what the problem is here. For students, the only cost associated with Lambda is the opportunity cost. The terms of the ISA are five years, and they don’t just apply to coding jobs. You could conceivably go back to school for a degree after the program fails, get a job without any of their help, and still get your wages garnished. They just have to say you learned something in the program that helped you get your job. Another scenario: you’re making slightly below $50k, you get a promotion to $50k in the middle of the program. The promotion had nothing to do with what you learned in the program, but it’s up to you to argue otherwise. Students have brought up both of these things in the official subreddit, but I can’t link to them since they set it to private after last year’s major backlash. I'll also add that while most students opt for the ISA, some students pay the up-front price. That's because the ISA historically attached a premium e.g. $20k pay up front or go with an ISA with a $30k cap. If you were sold on their claimed 86% placement rate, who needs that insurance?
• danso 5y ago
  The author’s tweet thread has the key points and documents: https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569 https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569 edit: on top of the problems with Lambda’s offerings, losing 7 out of 9 executives since 2020 is rough: https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658652448362497 https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658652448362497
  • digianarchist 5y ago
    Vincent's interview with This Week in Startups on Lambda School is also very interesting despite the weird McCarthyist line of questioning the host goes down. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5hUT8VZNvm8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5hUT8VZNvm8
    • swyx 5y ago
      not weird at all if you know Jason's style. he is very biased towards supporting founders as that is his business. he's not there to be neutral. and i believe he's had some bad runs with some journos. but once they're a clear fraud i expect (hope?) Jason to concede completely.
• akanet 5y ago
  Hi I wrote this piece and am perhaps still better known here as the founder of CoderPad, etc. I'm happy to answer any questions throughout the day, so long as they are on-topic and civil.
  • mcyc 5y ago
    Hi, thanks for this piece. I've been following these stories for a while and it seems like a lot of the big players are ridiculously predatory and are providing a catastrophically bad service. I'd like to ask if there are any that you think are actually doing a good job? One in particular I'm curious about is Hackbright.
    • akanet 5y ago
      I think Hackbright is doing well, enough so that I recommended that a friend attend recently (and she did). I would look closely at the reporting from each, and interview former students. I think prospective students go along too easily with marketing. A friend and former bootcamp operator told me that students ought to think of picking a school much more like buying a house than picking the best air purifier off of Wirecutter or whatever. I think this is true.
  • spamizbad 5y ago
    Just wanted to say I'm a big fan of your journalism and CoderPad. One question I have about this: Do you think Lambda is uniquely problematic in this space or are they perhaps a more typical case? Are others worse? Anecdotally, back in 2019 I asked our internal recruiter to reach out to Lambda school to see about graduate resumes sent our way for jr software development positions. He emailed them but claims they weren't terribly responsive and never sent him any candidates. At the time, we just assumed fancy startups were getting first pick. Now I think the well was dry.
    • akanet 5y ago
      I think Lambda is an unusually bad bootcamp owing to their financialization strategy and also lack of prior educational experience in their leadership. I think there are good bootcamps, but the well is being poisoned a bit here.
• jesuis_14 5y ago
  I'm curious about the future of Lambda School. Apparently, the co-founders have been lying about the numbers for years like there's no tomorrow, but the money still came in. It's pretty clear that the business is not sustainable nor does it have much hope of becoming profitable even in the short term.In addition, the school's reputation is tarnishing, and there have also been a few clashes with the institutions that must provide the certifications necessary for the school to operate. The co-founders, particularly Allred, between the constant lies, problems with reporters, and personalities that many psychiatrists would call delusional do not bode well.Even the casual observer would easily notice his bizarre statements, the furious backpedaling observed over and over, the constant distractions that can be inferred from his almost pathological tweeting about anything but what concerns his position as CEO of a company that is making promises to people who are often in need. You could say that these visionary leaders are what is needed to disrupt entrenched industries, and that the fight with the authorities are the result of the status quo trying to hold the line, and that some lies are nothing more than making the future, present. I just don't see it for Lambda School.
  • gkop 5y ago
    Austen will get a soft landing. Look at the circle jerk of YC and YC-adjacent cheerleaders that have gone to bat for Lambda School.
    • jesuis_14 5y ago
      Funny how the pg was rooting for him by calling Allred "relentlessly resourceful" while it was clear even to naive ears and eyes that it was the lies that were relentless and the resources were mostly talking a great game, but with no results to back it up.
    • bwing 5y ago
      Yeah, this has been one of the most disappointing things for me. No way his shtick has fooled all of them. Pg in particular I would've expected more rigor from, but maybe that's naivete, or the inevitable awkwardness that comes from him living both in the world of high epistemic standards (his essays) and zero epistemic standards with rampant dishonesty (startup/VC culture). To me, the latter undermines the former, but I also am not a rich thought leader.
• 1-6 5y ago
  The best way to get your foot in the door is by actually getting your foot in the door. I had great success working with a staffing company and others who have followed my advice also became full-time employees. You'll be a contractor or vendor for a bit but you'll meet the right teams and even get a chance to sample the culture before you make the move in.
• 999900000999 5y ago
  >The school recently sent him a letter demanding his banking information so that it could track direct deposits from a job. If he doesn't comply, it threatened to charge him his full tuition of $30,000 regardless of whether he gets a job. How disgusting. He should probably tell them no. Even if they wrote some non sense allowing this in the income share agreement, let them go to court. I've never met a successful boot camp grad who didn't already have a four-year degree. This is a very complicated problem, because you really do have tons of desperate people who are willing to sign their lives away for a shot at getting ahead. $50,000 is an extremely low threshold, so if someone adds a few extra shifts working at Best Buy lambda school can then leech their meager income? I'd argue the social experience of traditional college is easily a part of its cost. If you're coming from a bad background you'll surround yourself better people than you met back home. It's also much easier to get a generic office job with a bachelor's in art history than it is with a ux certificate.
  • paulpauper 5y ago
    After factoring in all these huge fees and other hidden costs, traditional college is a better deal, and the degree is actuality valid credential, instead of a certificate, which is useless in the eyes of most employers. Plus, colleges have tons of financial aid with far less punitive repayment conditions or upfront costs.
    • honkycat 5y ago
      Anecdotal: I went to an "expensive fancy" private college and I was lucky enough to have parents who knew how to advocate for financial aid. In the end I ended up with +40k in scholarships as a mediocre high school student, plus a bunch of state grants. I graduated with <30k of debt, which I paid off aggressively with my programmer job. I like college. There is a right way to do it as an average student: - Two years of cheap community college to get the chaff out of the way - Two years in a better school for the higher level classes. You can't think of it is a party or 'summer camp' which is an image which is sold to a lot of young people. You are there to learn a skill, improve yourself, and graduate into a career.
  • 5y ago
• threatofrain 5y ago
  Large discussions from this year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26946972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26946972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26802601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26802601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26987632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26987632 Interview with Lambda School CEO Austen Allred and Vincent Woo. https://soundcloud.com/vwoo/interview-with-austen-allred https://soundcloud.com/vwoo/interview-with-austen-allred
• devteambravo 5y ago
  I come from the failed Lambda School UX program. It wasted more than a year of my life. And to add insult to injury, after having succeeded in learning UX on my own + finding employment, I now send them a mortgage payment's worth of $$$ every month, until I reach that $30k limit. What a damn scam.
  • literallyaduck 5y ago
    Start talking with your state's attorney general's office about your experiences and how you were sold something that was not as advertised.
  • arthurwu 5y ago
    How did it suck?
    • devteambravo 5y ago
      Students graded students papers. Racism. Unending trolling on Slack. Peers panicking as they realize the program was not "finished". (ie: We were paying beta testers) Being roped in to the web dev program when I didn't want to be a dev (This happened after the UX program was shut down). I could write a book
      • Daishiman 5y ago
        Move fast and break people.
        • devteambravo 5y ago
          People who aren't equipped to deal with it, mainly. People who won't fight back. It's disgusting
          • 0des 5y ago
            Your testimony sounds a lot like those of the peers I have who were from ITT Tech.
• paulpauper 5y ago
  Go figure. how is this a surprise to anyone . Not just lambda but any of these coding academies, boot camps, etc. It's an open secret that these companies vastly inflate their success rates.
• whoisjuan 5y ago
  In their eagerness to disrupt traditional education, all these programs forgot that the one single thing that makes traditional university education succesful is teaching people with aptitude and drive. To get accepted and graduate from a reputable university you have to get good results in standardized tests and work your self through multiple courses for at least 3 years. That by itself doesn't mean anything but there's a level of rigor and self-drive required to succesfully traverse this experience. I mentored in one of these bootcamp programs and you would be surprised how little people give a shit, even though they are paying. Most of them know that the job placement guarantee is a safeguard for their own laziness. These programs accept people who think pursing a career in tech would be cool and easy until they realize is a tough learning experience and a tough job. Perhaps tougher than anything else they have done in their lives. The problem with these companies is that they have to balance the quality of students with the quantity required to meet scale. This is probably the worst type of VC backed business because the investor expectations on scale are in direct conflict with the quality of potential students pre-bootcamp and the demanded quality by employers post-bootcamp.
  • dnautics 5y ago
    > one single thing that makes traditional university education succesful is aptitude and drive. Networking, connections, and (external) credentialism?
    • zenithd 5y ago
      Attending courses for four years, including many outside of your major, and doing enough work to not fail. It's a low bar. Very low. But still much higher than the bar at bootcamps. Anecdotally, the only positive interactions I've had with bootcamp cert holders were cases where the cert holder already had significant work experience that required non-trivial training (e.g., in healthcare, a trade, or logistics as opposed to retail/warehouse) or a 4 year degree. So I believe the earlier anecdote/observation that bootcamp grads -- especially "blank slates" -- often lack the grit that's required for successful employment in an IC eng role. I'm a self-taught programmer and had my first programming gigs prior to starting college. So I've been an advocate for non-traditional hires in most roles I've helped hire for. Even roles where we'd traditionally require a PhD and where the level of expertise required really is 3+ years post-graduate-coursework immersion in the research field, I've advocated for "phd in <subfield 1> and <subfield 2> or similar background" and helped source non-traditional candidates where possible. But the "lack of grit" problem wrt bootcamp grads is definitely a thing. > Networking and connections? You say this like it should be dismissed out-of-hand, but actually, having a reputation among your peers for not being a lazy idiot does not come free and is actually a useful signal in hiring.
• paulpauper 5y ago
  just change your bank account, withdraw your money. worse case, get new ID , or try to get a judge to suspend it. tons of ways to evade a civil garnishment. never keep much $ in your bank account. If lambda ripped you off, no need for you to keep having to pay for your mistake.
• Gunax 5y ago
  I think there is a double standard applied to educational reformers like MOOCs, bootcamps, and video courses. Education largely does not work for most people who enrol. Most college students do not finish, and something like a third of university students do not either. And even among those students who receive the credential, many are probably able to slide through without actually learning much. Anecdotally I think you'll find education has a pareto distribution: the top few percent of students learn enormously, the top 20% learn a decent amount, the next 20% or so squeek through with marginal benefit, and the bottom half does not even finish. The reason I get annoyed is that I think these new, data-driven forms of education shoot themselves in the foot by gathering data. If they just shut their ears and pretended that everyone was learning based on the grades/assessments like universities and colleges do, they might be just as successful. In other words, the proper comparison is not whether the education is most likely to succeed, but how likely it is to succeed in comparison to other forms. Sort of like those quit smoking aids which reportedly double your success rate of quitting--in a notoriously difficult task like quitting smoking, going from a 3% success to 6% is profound.
  • bwing 5y ago
    It's only a double standard if you're assuming the people critical of Lambda aren't also critical of selling valueless $200k college educations to checked-out students.
  • akanet 5y ago
    I agree but would suggest you apply further rigor. There are bootcamps that are performing well. Bootcamps should be compared to other bootcamps.
    • threatofrain 5y ago
      Do you have any recommendations or a shortlist?
      • sanxiyn 5y ago
        cirr.org has data you can compare.
• sam0x17 5y ago
  It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't have as much insight into but I have definitely had students who I don't think will get hired easily, and students reach out via LinkedIn 6th months later still looking for a job and wondering if they can work for me. That said, two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads respectively, and neither of them had any background in programming and went right from bootcamp into their current positions. So it definitely works for some people. One thing I've tried to emphasize with my mentees is the need to go beyond the curriculum (because it simply doesn't cover enough) and do personal projects. I always tell them the narrative about how back in the early 00s, the only resources available were things like w3schools.com, documentation, and the occasional dubiously accurate blog entry. I was able to learn almost everything I learned not for the sake of learning it but because I wanted to build X or Y. Bootcamps will teach you a vertical slice of some skills that are relevant in [current year], but they do not do a very good job of getting you started on a lifelong process of self-learning and side projects, which is the only way you get anywhere in this industry. Plus the only way to stand out when you went to a bootcamp anyway is having a very exceptional github profile with open source contributions that demonstrates you actually have an interest and do things beyond what is required by the bootcamp.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    One nice thing about software is that you can self-teach to a significant degree. But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation. And, as you say, you probably want to structure your learning in a way that works for you.
    • sam0x17 5y ago
      I will say, the formalism mainly helps to fight off imposter syndrome. I was the same programmer I was before and after my CS degree, the difference being with the degree I had a chip on my shoulder, and that helped significantly.
• Gortal278 5y ago
  I have always been surprised by how many students of lambda and equivalent graduate to immediately teach at these bootcamps. It just seems gross.
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    I get the impression that the business model for these bootcamps is largely the modeled after the one used in startup funding, where the bulk of the money will be made on the top 5-10% of the class. There's also likely some element of grabbing mind-share while they work to automate the process (plus, gathering data on who make profitable students). Eliminating the instructor will allow N to grow much higher than 150 per course and reduce costs dramatically.
  • brian_spiering 5y ago
    I have worked at many bootcamp-style educational programs. Teaching in a bootcamp-style environment is a team endeavor. Recent graduates can be a part of that mix. Generally, it makes sense to hire some of the instructor pool out of recent graduates. It is often difficult to find instructors at all. The recent graduates know the curriculum. It also helps those recent graduates develop a deeper understanding of the material and extend their job searching window. It can be a form of peer learning that some students respond well to. There are also definite limitations. Primarily, the recent graduates might not have great teaching skills, knowledge outside of the curriculum, and knowledge of real-world applications.
  • sanxiyn 5y ago
    I wonder why? I learned most of what I learned in university from student group, and sophomores teach freshmen there. I learned as a freshman and taught as a sophomore. It is normal.
• ctvo 5y ago
  My partner went through a bootcamp, and there was an interview process after the application process. In my partner's case, they hold an advance degree in a STEM field from an Ivy League. A few of their peers had similar backgrounds, and that group didn't have trouble finishing. I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few. If so, the unintended consequences are interesting: Letting in more folks -> more folks with issues finishing -> more customer support -> more issues -> more doubts about the worthiness of the credentials from employers -> more folks having trouble finding placement -> lowering standards to let in more folks.
  • elliekelly 5y ago
    > I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few. This always seems to be the rub with for-profit education. When you need to grow at all costs eventually that means accepting more students...
  • tjpnz 5y ago
    I've interviewed a few candidates in a similar situation to your partner. My impression is that the bootcamps had very little to do with their success. I would put it more down to personal drive and possibly the programming STEM grads tend to get exposed to.
    • ctvo 5y ago
      Right, I agree. I think that's the problem. Misattributing initial successes to the program, and not the people you filtered in, meant it became progressively harder to achieve the same placement rates year over year. I imagine the above coupled with investor pressure and your own hype / marketing makes for a situation like Lambda School.
    • cactus2093 5y ago
      It's interesting that you call this having "very little to do with" the success. It's a philosophical argument, I guess. If there's boulder at the top of a hill and I give it a little nudge so it rolls all the way to the bottom - did I have very little to do with the boulder rolling down, since gravity did most of the work? Or did I play the most important role? Even if it's true that selection bias is huge and the best qualified people going into a bootcamp are the best performers coming out, that doesn't necessarily mean the bootcamp wasn't useful. These people could have otherwise gone their whole lives always being one small nudge away from becoming a great programmer, but would have never realized it without the right conditions. If a bootcamp simply creates those conditions for them to make it happen for themselves, that still seems important.
• poundofshrimp 5y ago
  My anecdotal experience as a part-time web dev instructor was not great - I recently quit after just 6 months. A small handful of students were curious and driven, but I have the impression that most students were not very driven. Could be an artefact of my program being part-time, not sure if it’s different in the full-time one (the part-time program enrolment was paused shortly after I joined btw). The main reason I quit was because school provided very little support for instructors in the sense of growth of our skills. I still think the idea is great, but I’m less confident in Lambda School as a company now.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  The problem with any education is how do you figure out the actual value added? We all know that kid who would learn stuff regardless of what environment he was put in, and his opposite. And then probably a fair few in the middle where the environment actually matters. When you're looking at outcomes, how do you know which school is worth paying for? I'm facing this issue myself right now for my primary school kids. The big issue statistically is selection. For an analogy, think of cars. Are Volvos safe, or do they just attract safer drivers? It's not impossible to tease out from stats in principle, but has anyone done it? With schools it's even worse. Is one school in a richer area? What about the cost, that will skew selection too? Does one school use an entrance exam? And the really big one, does a school kick out underperformers? With respect to coding schools you have to wonder whether the "best" students are already creamed off by universities, such that Lambda School and their like are really just salvaging a few people who fell into unfortunate circumstances and are trying to help themselves out. Along with some unfortunates who are never going to be coders but buy the premise that you can be taught these things in a short period of time, you just have to pay. In any case it seems like they are forced to produce numbers quite fast for business reasons, and this has caused them to present the stats in the most positive light possible. The virus situation is not an entirely crazy excuse, but it will be interesting to see what happens.
  • MarkMc 5y ago
    > The problem with any education is how do you figure out the actual value added? Answer: with a randomised controlled trial. That is, the school randomly rejects a number of applicants who meet the enrolment criteria, then it follows up after 5 years to see if the accepted students are significantly better off than the rejected candidates (eg. in terms of income). Austen Allred, the CEO of Lambda School, has already floated such an idea: "I’d love to eventually do an impact study that statistically shows how much more attendees of Lambda School make over the course of their lifetimes." https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1433260773040693257 https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1433260773040693257
    • lordnacho 5y ago
      Doesn't it need to be doubly randomized? They'd have to accept people they'd otherwise reject?
• bingohbangoh 5y ago
  Wonder if Austen is gonna make an appearance and say hes happy to answer any questions
  • minimaxir 5y ago
    Here's the last time Austen answered questions about Lambda School, which did not go well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26948258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26948258
    • bingohbangoh 5y ago
      FWIW, I greatly appreciate when founders go to these lengths but this happens over and over again. It does not feel significant anymore and rings hollow.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Having majored in English Literature at an Ivy, let me just say, 30% is a pretty damn good industry placement rate. That said, I'm sure the large majority of those people could have done just as well through self-study and $1-2k worth of MOOCs
  • ResearchCode 5y ago
    While not having majored in medicine myself, I see no reason why CS couldn't have a 99% placement rate too.
    • 1270018080 5y ago
      I think placements rates are just a way to game data. I'm imagining two schools, one that accepts everyone that applies, and one that filters the bottom half out before acceptance. After graduation, the first school has a 50% placement rate, and the second has a 100%. Which one is better? Sure we can all pretend that "everyone can do it" but... everyone can't. Placement rates as a metric are just deciding when to filter the low performers out.
    • ska 5y ago
      It's an interesting point, not just the placement rate but the graduation rate for medical schools is very high (barring a few last-chance, offshore type places if I understand correctly). I never did it but have watched the process from a few different viewpoints. My impression is that the gatekeeping on the entry side is pretty strong (not just exam results, good schools may have multiple interviews before letting you in) but they also have ton of resources available to help you if you are bogged down. This latter part is helped by high tuition. As for the vetting, as far as I can see they are fine with a bunch of false negatives, which results in more homogeneity than may be desired. It doesn't seem to be particularly empirical.
    • Hermitian909 5y ago
      Most CS programs do not have 99% placement. There are a few reasons 1. Some people who graduate with CS degrees can't write good code. It is shocking how little you can learn while still graduating. 2. Some college graduates are lack the social/organizational skills for office work 3. Industry has a limited appetite for junior engineers because they're often a net drain on the company for the first 6-12 months and once they become productive can usually get a pay bump by switching jobs.
• mym1990 5y ago
  Anecdotal, but here is my experience: I graduated from General Assembly back in 2015, and bootcamps were just starting to crop up back then. I really liked the experience but it was definitely very clunky, I don't think I learned much about code. My first job afterwards ended up being a support engineer role for a year where I touched code maybe a handful of times, I started out at 55k which I was ELATED with. I then got an opportunity to learn development on the Salesforce platform and took a paycut to 35k just so I can learn the ropes and be 'coding'. This proved to be invaluable experience. 1 year later I moved to SF and I haven't looked back since. It wasn't really the trajectory I saw back in 2015, but it felt that the bootcamps focused so much on teaching popular JavaScript tools and not really how to problem solve or even the language basics or even what the technology space can offer. I think it is a very tough thing to get right in 3 months(my class length) or even less...
• throwaway789257 5y ago
  I used to work as a technical recruiter and made several hires out of coding bootcamps (though never from Lambda, which didn't exist at the time). One rule of thumb that we drew after many trials was that, if a candidate coming out of a coding bootcamp did not have a math or science background prior to that bootcamp, they probably would not pass our interview process. That is, people with a certain intellectual foundation and aptitude can acquire useful skills from coding bootcamps. But people without that aptitude will not obtain it simply because they attended a coding bootcamp. Separately, while I appreciate that Vincent got answers to questions that many people are asking, the fact that he had to hide his intentions to get an interview with Austen is exhibit number 1 why people have grown to mistrust reporters. And that's interesting, because often you can't have both. That is, either you accept that corporations lie while the press plays by certain rules of honesty, which prevent them from getting past the smokescreen of lies. Or you support the press in its schemes to penetrate the smokescreen by using deception themselves. But if you support them against Lambda, then you should support them, too, in lying to the institutions you may support, which are also hiding something. Muckrakers need to disguise themselves. DELETED: A sentence claiming that Vincent runs Coder Pad and has a conflict of interest. I apologize for the error. See his comment below.
  • boringg 5y ago
    I think this is a far assessment. There is a certain level of mathematical aptitude that is essential for being able to be successful at programming. Maybe no in the strict sense of math but in understanding how different structures and concepts are able to relate to each other. However in the strict sense of math, there is a requirement there. I also posit that as bootcamps grew - the quality control and quality of hires(students) decreased with the continued pressure of growing for their investors. Leads to bad outcomes. It is not dissimilar to when a company blitzscales and the quality of incoming hires diminishes the further down the graph you go. I realize its a bit harsh of a comparison but I do tend to find the earlier hires at solid companies typically have something the later hires don't (though many of the later hires are quite good at their specific roles).
    • ghaff 5y ago
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  The profitability slide with the cute animal pictures is a pretty good summary of everything that's disgusting about startup culture. Allred is clearly a huge piece of shit & YC should be ashamed of having funded this scam that preys on some of the most desperate, credulous, and vulnerable populations. Not that other bootcamps are better - and definitely not that most universities are better, either. Most are as bad or worse
• twofornone 5y ago
  It's high time we as a society rejected this nonsensical idea that you can teach anyone anything. Not everyone is suited to learn programming at a professional level; certainly not by cramming in x weeks at some bootcamp. For most students I suspect these are effectively scams. Not unlike college these days...
• bwing 5y ago
  I was at Lambda when they announced the switch from 9 to 6 months and the elimination of paid team leaders. The feedback was universally negative. In a channel for open student discussion, Austen Allred deleted a poll from Slack because of how lopsided the reaction was. He explained the deletion by saying the poll was "misleading." Students then got a survey "explaining" why the change was actually a good thing by asking questions such as "Do you understand why companies value mentoring experience?" Not just failing to reveal the truth (these were cost-cutting measures), but not even taking the effort to come up with a convincing lie. It was destabilizing: Austen's twitter account would read ambitious, hyperoptimistic; meanwhile, drastic changes would be made within the program with vague rationales ("after speaking with hiring managers, we've made these changes..."), and probing further simply got deflections or gaslighting surveys. There were a ton of good people in the program, and I learned a lot there. But fundamentally there needs to be trust between institution and student when you're asking people to make this level of time and financial commitment. And at no point did I feel like Lambda at its top level prioritized student wellbeing over PR, costs, or metrics to be sold to investors.
  • gameswithgo 5y ago
    Why don't companies just speak plainly about these kinds of changes? "We are doing this to cut costs, which we need to do to [Survive/Buy a Yacht/Whatever]" People tend to be really understanding when you are brutally honest, and brutally cynical when you bullshit them even a little.
    • bingohbangoh 5y ago
      That might work if its a few decisions here and there that look like they're being taken with much gravitas. But I'm not sure that would work if you're pivoting constantly and in a downward spiral. There are simply too many decisions happening for "we need to cut costs" to feel valid all the time. Lambda school appears to be in that category so far as I can see.
    • t-louie 5y ago
      Lambda framed these changes as beneficial to students, for reason XYZ. I remember seeing a lot of student comments saying things like "Is lambda ok??" or "We're adults here, if lambda needs to cut costs they can tell us."
• felistoria 5y ago
  Are there any reputable bootcamps? Serious question as someone who wants to transition from IT Management to programming.
  • tayo42 5y ago
    why do you feel you need a bootcamp? open a text editor and start programing
    • felistoria 5y ago
      I've actually been off and on programming for a few years and have done my tour in tutorial hell on Udemy. Just thought maybe a bootcamp would give me experience programming with a team like you would at a job. I also have a unique opportunity next year where I will have 6 months off paid, which I plan to spend programming full time. Thought a bootcamp may be a good way to spend that time.
      • Off 5y ago
        You might wanna check c0d3[0] or fullstackopen[1], they are both free and self paced, c0d3 is opensource and has a nice small community and some mentors/students/engineers always ready to help on Discord. Once you finish the curriculum, you get in engineering team and start contributing back and gain some real world experience. [0] https://www.c0d3.com/ https://www.c0d3.com/ [1] https://fullstackopen.com/en/ https://fullstackopen.com/en/
        • felistoria 5y ago
          Thanks, I will check those out. Much appreciated!
        • Apotheos 5y ago
          Huh is C0D3 brand new? I've been going through full stack open but this is the first time I'm hearing about the other one.
      • 5y ago
• ptudan 5y ago
  Anyone else think using the placement rate from the first half of 2020 is a bit cherry picked? That's right when covid hit and hiring froze eveywhere. Yes it picked back up by the end of the year, but in April 2020 I can only assume that the demand for bootcamp graduates was at its lowest. Bluechip companies like Airbnb were reneging on offers to ivy league candidates. It was a unique period in time.
• katmannthree 5y ago
  It's not just lambda. There's another bootcamp, lets call it crap college, which effectively asks their ~~customers~~, sorry, _students_ to work 10+ hours a day 6-7 days a week for months. If you fail or withdraw, you have to pay back prorated tuition at the rate of several hundred dollars per day you were there. There is no grace period, if you get three days in and decide it's not for you then you owe them almost a thousand dollars. Ever worse: their instructional material is very much lacking rigor, the degree of guidance they provide is far lower than you'd get at a community college (which would also be a lot cheaper), and the whole vibe of the community borders on cult-like toxic positivity (any criticism of the company will get you kicked out). It's very close to predatory. They lure in disadvantaged people with promises of vastly improving their lives, but I'm betting a substantial percentage of them leave with thousands in debt and virtually nothing to show for it. And the best part? If you're dismissed or withdraw that nice easy-to-pay income share agreement goes away and you just owe them thousands effective immediately regardless of your financial situation.
  • akanet 5y ago
    Can you email me about this? me@vincentwoo.com
    • lostinquebec 5y ago
      I think it's a veiled reference to traditional college?
      • ummonk 5y ago
        Not unless they're counting student loan deferral / income driven repayments as an income share agreement.
        • katmannthree 5y ago
          It's not, I just don't want to name them for reasons that should be obvious. There may or may not be enough info in my post to figure out what I'm talking about, you'll have to use your best judgement.
• weezin 5y ago
  Lambda School was great for me. You get out of it what you put into it. Why are there never stories like these about specific university programs with higher opportunity cost and financial cost?
• alasdair_ 5y ago
  "Lambda School placed only 30% of its 2020 graduates in qualifying jobs during the first half of 2020. This figure is in stark contrast to the 74% placement rate it advertised for its 2019 graduates" It's almost as if something happened in 2020 that reduced the number of open positions available...
  • autarch 5y ago
    > It's almost as if something happened in 2020 that reduced the number of open positions available... Did it? My impression has been that software dev jobs have exploded (or maybe continued to explode) during COVID. Maybe there was a bit of a slowdown in the first half of 2020?
    • alasdair_ 5y ago
      There were a LOT of hiring freezes and substantial layoffs in the first half of 2020.
• foxbee 5y ago
  As the landscape gets more competitive, the promises will only get larger leading to lots of disappointed students sadly
• sunny--tech 5y ago
  > “Danner, who invested $1 million shortly after Lambda School's Series A, compared the complaints to his own experience launching the charter school Rocketship Education, which received public backlash for teaching elementary-school students on laptops without instructors for part of their day. "They said we were experimenting on the backs of children," Danner said. "But when SpaceX launched their first five rockets and they blew up, was that OK?" he continued. "We're in a more high-stakes world of human development. Still, you can't say that you don't like the way things are but don't want people to try new things." This is one of the problems of mixing VCs in the education space. “Move fast and break things” doesn’t work when the “things” are humans, not code and technology. Also, last time I checked, SpaceX wasn’t promising 80% of its rockets would work back in its early days. Good ol’ fashion false equivalency.
  • lostinquebec 5y ago
    > last time I checked, SpaceX wasn’t promising 80% of its rockets would work back in its early days. Is your criticism that these places are making false promises, or: > “Move fast and break things” doesn’t work when the “things” are humans, not code and technology. RCTs and placebos work exactly this way. People literally die to help us learn what does and does not work. We lost 8-9 months of COVID-19 deaths because of a system that needs to go slow, and yet had experimentation regimes that still put participants at risk. I don't know of any verification method that doesn't require some degree of risk for the participants, but I'd love to hear one.
    • sunny--tech 5y ago
      Why are you bringing up vaccines and medicine in a discussion about bootcamps? I’m criticizing both the false claims and the VC model of hyper scaling and hyper growth being applied to education. "Move fast and break things" isn't the motto of the medical industry, but it is for tech. So how is this even related? If you want to talk about medicine, that’s a completely different discussion.
    • lozenge 5y ago
      People joining trials aren't given fake information about how 70% of participants are given immunity from COVID...
• TameAntelope 5y ago
  I've had to hire for a few developer positions over the past ~6 months, and I was honestly shocked by how many cases of, "Have never coded in my life, but I am enrolled in Bootcamp X, and look to complete the coursework soon!" there were. Often, you find cases of people who claim to be "software engineers" and list working at the Bootcamp company on their resume. You also get a number of "instructors" who apply for senior roles, which I find interesting. I guess, overall, I'm not opposed to hiring someone who attended a school like this, I am just not in any way impressed by seeing it on someone's resume. For a junior role, I think it can make sense, but for anything more senior, it's become a bit frustrating to deal with these (and the contractors who pretend like they're interested in full time work until the last second).
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  So, I learned to code at an odd program at Univ. of Texas - Austin, essentially a bootcamp for coders that began in the 1970's and still runs today. They take about 9 months to get you to a beginning programmer level, then you program (for UT administration) up through a kind of apprenticeship. It worked very well, and the washout rate has historically been about 10%; that is, 90% of those initially admitted go on to become professional programmers. That 10% includes people who quit, move, are expelled, etc. Truly 90% of those admitted get programmer jobs. They have an admissions test, which is essentially an IQ test. They would never admit to that, and their admitted population is very diverse (gender, race, age, etc.). But, they don't just admit anybody; in times of high unemployment the vast majority of people who take the test are not admitted. They also interview prospective candidates to weed out anyone with obvious, serious people skills issues. I wonder if this is what's missing from most bootcamps?
  • weezin 5y ago
    Its funny because Lambda School sent me (alumni) a test recently which was basically a wonderlic test.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • tschwimmer 5y ago
    This sounds like a decent way to run an educational program but a very poor way to run a business (at least a VC backed one). You probably won't get enough volume by doing a hard screen. You need to ensure that your program is good enough that even moderate or marginal candidates come out able to find a job. Otherwise, your business is quite small.
    • rossdavidh 5y ago
      I think you would probably need to sell a "first look" privilege to prospective employers. The program at UT required volunteers from various administrative departments to spend time supporting it, and the primary reason they did so was to get a peek at who they wanted to hire, ahead of competition (from other departments). Of course, this would only work in times of labor shortage for good programmers, but that is most of the time.
• jimbob45 5y ago
  It's been my experience that there is knowledge that can only be taught in high school for some subjects. Not because the information is inherently specific to high schoolers but because high school is the only place that allows for the leisurely-enough pace to teach the knowledge. For example, I learned Pascal as a first language. Outside of high school, no one has the time to learn a dead language for the few cool ideas it has but in high school, it provides indispensable background for a lot of concepts that come later (e.g. BEGIN/END being written out to teach you how much that sucks so that you understand why we use {} in every other language, the := operator making far more sense than the = operator, and other little tidbits). The same logic applies (for me) to Latin, cooking classes, and Calculus. Ironically, I find that music classes have become so subsumed by the struggle to justify their funding that HS music brushes off non-essential skills just as shamelessly as university music does.
• samsolomon 5y ago
  An anecdote from an early bootcamp grad—I graduated from what was then known as The Starter League in 2012. Those I have kept in touch with have all done pretty well. My guess is: —1/4 are doing what they did before or something similar. —1/4 became engineers. Some have moved more into management roles. —2/4 have ended up as PMs, founded a startup or in product design, like myself. Those were successful gave it 100% of their time and focus. Those who stuck with their day job and tried to do it in the evenings struggled. Also, nobody got a job straight out of bootcamp. Many did after 3 to 6 months of additional work post graduation. Also, It's interesting to see how things have changed. I paid like $6,000 and we met for class 3 days a week and had hours of pairing work and mentoring outside of class each week for 12 weeks. Now it seems like many of these schools cost at least $20,000 and are much more hands off. It is amazing that was almost 10 years ago. Time flies.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I've been coding since I was a wee bairn (well, 21, really). I was introduced to programming, in 1982-3, during a tech school course. I don't really consider the Heathkit calculator I built and programmed in the 1970s to be "real" programming. Mostly self-taught. I'm smarter than the average bear, and pick things up, fairly well, but I've also taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bootcamps, seminars, and college classes. Not one single one of them (after my tech school, which was actually quite vocationally-based) was particularly useful for immediate use in the real world. I think one or two of the project management ones were in the same zip code, and the Apple DU (dating myself) courses were relatively practical, but they were all "training wheels" classes. What has been my real education, has been writing code to ship. Everything I write, I write as "ship" code. Even my "throwaway" projects and experiments. Having a clear end goal, and becoming habituated to finishing all my work, has been incredibly valuable. Solving my own problems, doing my own research, not "kicking the can down the road," and releasing with full tests, documentation, and support, have been great teachers. People seem to like the work I do. Bootcamps are nice, but they only light the fuse. I don't think I was ever qualified to write ship code after any one of my classes. In many cases, I already knew how to ship, and just wanted to learn about different directions. In the last year or so, I've taken a whole bunch of short courses on new Apple tech. I probably won't use what I learned for months, but I like to keep the axle greased.
• kregasaurusrex 5y ago
  I'm a Lambda School data science graduate that's currently looking for a job, have been doing plenty of leetcode problems and DS&A studying recently. Resume & contact info is available on my profile if your company has any openings or if you just want to chat.
• Ansil849 5y ago
  Every time I read about a coding bootcamp, it comes off as, if not outright fraud, then at the very least sleazy and deceptive.
• ChicagoDave 5y ago
  I’ve been calling this a scam since day one. And the founder has been trying to promote anti-college sentiment. It just needs to die.
• ummonk 5y ago
  The methodology they use to calculate the placement rate is clearly misleading, and given that methodology, the 2019 placement numbers are rather mediocre. They shouldn’t be tricking students into making major life decisions based on misleading statistics. On the other hand, some of the arguments in the article are silly. Tech companies drastically cut back on entry level hiring in 2020, and when this happens the non conventional pipelines tend to be the first to go. I wouldn’t extrapolate out this decline as a permanent issue beyond the pandemic. Additionally, the article expresses skepticism that expanding student enrollment at the expense of placement would hamper profitability - common sense is that there will be some variable costs that scale proportionally with student enrollment, and as such the path to profitability would be to improve placement rates. Perhaps most egregiously, the article talks about the high opportunity cost for students investing 9-12 months in lambda school and the immediately after that switches to attacking lambda school for shortening its class lengths. A curious juxtaposition. Frankly, this is a good example of incentive alignment. Finally, there is the ridiculousness of the graduate at the end who doesn’t want to find a designer job because that would entail making income share payments. Not only is that cutting off your nose to spite your face, but it’s rather odd to feel you didn’t get your money’s worth from a service operating at a significant loss. I guess taxpayer funded K-12 and community college education has made a lot of people accustomed to being insulated from the true cost of education.
• verogianno 5y ago
  I was a 2015 UX Bootcamp grad (Chicago local, later acquired and run into the ground.) I think I paid $8k and have had a pretty great career, though it took a couple months to find that first job. The last 2 years, I've had a side gig where I do practice UX interview - usually to bootcamp grads. Y'all I felt bad for most of these folks. The majority were not taught how to solve problems, but rather how to take generic steps in design thinking in order to create a cookie cutter portfolio. There was rarely any consideration for anything on the either side of UX, be it business or development, so they were learning in a vacuum. A couple of the schools had former grads teaching in order to boost placement %. How are you supposed to learn from someone who's never executed in the real world is beyond me. The most successful folks almost always had tangental previous work experience to draw from. And in the rare instances someone had learned some UI skills? Yikes. All that in a market that has been oversaturated with junior UX/UI candidates the last couple year, it's no wonder places are starting to ditch the UX programs. Plus now, you always have college students with UX degrees to compete with. I think a lot of people believed it would be easier to break into UX because there was no code/is less technical which led to this burst bubble. Not to say that's not true, but designing software for humans is more complicated than a persona and some low-fi wireframes!
  • dustintrex 5y ago
    > How are you supposed to learn from someone who's never executed in the real world is beyond me. As the old saw says, those who can do, those can't teach. And this is sadly particularly prevalent in IT, because a competent SWE will make a lot more grinding out code at a FAANG than teaching at a boot camp.
• MivLives 5y ago
  I was at Lambda, graduated, got a job, and have been working since. Interesting to see I'm in the minority. I watched a lot of change happen. The classes ballooned in size, they kept rearranging the curriculum. At one point the curriculum (broken into thirds) had the 2nd and 3rd bits flipped. Then a forth bit was added on. I actually agreed with that change, as it the extra 3 months that were added on were just about finding a job, a task students were silently doing anyway. Did the TL/PM/TA thing for a bit too. There were clearly people in it that were struggling. They started to have the ability to drop backwards a single week of course. That decision was reversed as it was kind of crazy to have people in between cohorts. By the time I was done I don't think the UI program had anyone graduate from it. I was interviewed by lawyer at one point who was working on behalf of someone in that program. I am unsure of the quality of the program but it doesn't seem good. Most of the people I saw who were doing well were going faster then the curriculum. The alumni program was sorta hard to keep track of after the slacks split, a lot of people never made the transition. I know a lot of people who were successful after bootcamps, Lambda and otherwise. That may just be survivorship bias. I think one of the things that may also influence is when you went into the program. If you were going because you heard about it on hackernews when it was brand new, it was a different experience then when you had people coming in from everywhere.
• zbtaylor1 5y ago
  I completed Lambda's part-time web program about a year ago and while I did come out with more knowledge than when I entered, I do not think it was worth the time or the money I have invested. I was not the target Lambda student in that I already had web dev knowledge but wanted to delve deeper and felt like I was spinning my wheels on my own. The accountability created by the program is what I was after. The curriculum was adequate and, with one exception, the instructors were engaging and knowledgeable. While we did have some limited interaction with the instructors themselves, digging in to individual problems was the job of the team lead (a student further ahead in the program who went through an application process) and this is where things got grim. TLs changed frequently and their quality was all over the place. Some followed the meeting protocol, some let their group run the meetings, others missed meetings regularly. Multiple times my TLs were unable to help much because the curriculum had changed and we were learning something they hadn't been taught. At best, they made sure we all understood the lecture by being thorough during our 1 on 1 meetings. At worst, they were a hindrance. The final for the web dev curriculum is what they call "labs" and the TL for your labs group has expanded responsibilities. In theory, having gone through labs already, they are supposed to be kind of like lead devs - offering architecture suggestions, helping with deployment snags, shepherding us through merge conflicts, etc. My labs TL was, more than anything, an obstacle. Mostly they forwarded our questions to the section lead and they weren't a particularly efficient go-between, so after a few weeks of deflecting our follow-ups we started messaging with the SL directly and were receiving timely responses. Our TLs only contributions to our project were the initial heroku projects and an unfinished code climate integration. In the end, having projects and due dates was helpful for me but in no way do I feel it was worth the cost of tuition. Another Lambda alum here mentioned feeling like student wellbeing took a back seat to marketing and PR and nothing encapsulates this more perfectly than the photo at the top of their homepage of a student who dropped out after repeating one of the early sections once or twice. Who cares what became of them as long as it looks good on the website!
• lanecwagner 5y ago
  This is exactly why I started building https://qvault.io https://qvault.io over a year ago. Boot camps are full of shit, they aren't teaching all they need to. We need an alternative to college that isn't expensive and based on exaggerations and lies.
  • amotinga 5y ago
    how is it going? do you have a lot of subscribers? any of them landed a job?
• shawndrost 5y ago
  IAMA Former founder @ Hack Reactor, one of the larger coding bootcamps. I left Hack Reactor some time after selling to Galvanize in 2018. I now run a clean energy startup and am commenting as a bystander (no insider knowledge @ Lambda). Here are some thoughts in no particular order. Feel free to AMA as well. 0) Bootcamps are extremely sensitive to complaints to their regulators. If you are eg. seeking a refund for monies paid and have a grievance, know that forms like this [https://www.bppe.ca.gov/forms_pubs/complaint.pdf https://www.bppe.ca.gov/forms_pubs/complaint.pdf] exist for your state, and know that bootcamps will be very motivated to reconcile the matter before you fill one out. 1) Many bystanders think the ISA business model is predatory. I've seen it compared to slavery. I've talked with hundreds of low-income, high-promise people, and ISAs are 1000% more attractive to that audience than more conventional debt-like instruments, even debt-like instruments with forgiveness protocols. When people talk about what's good for low-income students, and say it's not ISAs... I don't think these people have a cohesive theory of educational access??? I can't explain it. 2) There is a lot of skepticism about the practice of hiring recent grads as alums. I think it's a good idea for prospective bootcamp students to ask a) which specific individuals with work experience will teach me, b) what kind/how much access will I have, c) can I talk to them. I will also observe that recent grads do the bulk of of non-lecture/non-curriculum work in pretty much every educational context ever. I live next to UC Berkeley, which has more graduate TAs than all other instructional staff put together. 3) This looks bad for Lambda. I hope they course-correct and I hope prospective students look at all their options. PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS: You should write off Lambda because a) you have better options, or b) because you've talked to current students, not c) because of coverage like this. I can't speak to Lambda but I can say I've read coverage like this about places that might be the best option out there for some students (eg General Assembly). Anyone who likes coding and wants to make it their job should go to the best bootcamp they can get into. It's an incredible onramp into a world of prosperity, and "worst bootcamp" is a quality designation that is close to "median university CS program" in terms of return on investment IMO.
  • RNCTX 5y ago
    > 1) Many bystanders think the ISA business model is predatory. I've seen it compared to slavery. I've talked with hundreds of low-income, high-promise people, and ISAs are 1000% more attractive to that audience than more conventional debt-like instruments, even debt-like instruments with forgiveness protocols. When people talk about what's good for low-income students, and say it's not ISAs... I don't think these people have a cohesive theory of educational access??? I can't explain it. Yeah, the state pays for education and people like you pay taxes to the state. Anything else trends toward slavery.
• anon-grad 5y ago
  I liked this article a lot because it provided many perspectives. So here's mine, as a Lambda grad. Mileage may vary. For smart poor folks, Lambda School is a pure good. I come from a blue collar background, I have no college or university degree, and enough debt to make liberal arts student blush. Before Lambda I was able to slowly chip away at that debt by working outside from the literal dawn to dusk, Monday through Saturday, rain, shine, snow. This was horrible both for my body and my family. We decided to try Lambda and it worked. I'm gainfully employed as a developer for a large company, we have health insurance, and I have double digit hours to spend with my family. Sounds like a fairy tale straight outta Austen's book I know. But I tell you this as background, not as the reason why Lambda's good. The reason I was willing to take the risk at all is because of the ISA. There is no way under my previous circumstances I would have done anything like taking 9 months of work to study without a walk away free card. Before attending Lambda I read every bad review I could find, parsed the complaints, cross-referenced the news articles and comments, and decided "good enough". Worst case scenario I'd waste a few months learning enough to play around with and go back to back breaking labor. Debt-free. But what about being owing them money for a dev career that they didn't deliver? If I had a dev career, Lambda earned my money, because I sure didn't have one before. Your case may be very different, if you're a great auto-didact, forget Lambda, you can do anything you set your mind to all alone and with full freedom. But I'm not. I know I procrastinate, I can get demotivated, I can get sidetracked, I overplan, I underplan. So I chose Lambda, let them handle the schedule, the planning, and the social proof. More importantly, there was only upside. Of course if someone is already highly compentent dev, Lambda makes no sense, at least not as currently structured. But even a competent dev could benefit from the career services, I certainly did. Lambda has plenty of room to improve, but as a safeish ladder out of lower income drudgery and into skilled modern work it's good enough.
• babaroo 5y ago
  Having worked in a similar space/company, there are a few fundamental flaws in the business model that make me very bearish on companies like Lambda: 1/ Taking VC money requires hyper growth. That’s fine if your product is software where the marginal product gets better over time. In their model, you get the early adopter students, who are talented/motivated and juice up the placement stats. But after some critical mass, the marginal student is not as talented or as motivated. It pushes the company to lower its bar and erodes the overall experience for everyone. Same thing happened to General Assembly. 2/ Iterating your business model and making tweaks to the product is fine when you’re dealing with software. It doesn’t go well when you’re dealing with students. People inherently don’t like change. They have feelings and don’t like being lied to. Sure, some people will drink the typical rah-rah startup Koolaid, but over time, most people will see right through it and will assume that management is either incompetent or lying (or both). It’s especially bad when companies use the “do things that don’t scale” PG motto. That’s fine in software but in education you die through death by a thousand cuts when your unit economics don’t work and you need to fix them in a way that deteriorates the student experience. 3/ ISA’s, like communism, sound nice in theory but don’t work at scale and in practice. They’re essentially unsecured student debt. Even student debt — which has long arms and can garnish wages for nonpayment has recently taken a hit from loan forgiveness. ISA’s have none of those protections. They’re also tied to a student’s performance and career luck — which has many factors outside the quality of education. Student debt doesn’t care how motivated you are or how unlucky you are — the security holder must get paid. In ISA’s the security holder is stuck with an IOU that may never get paid. Education sorely needs reform but I don’t think Lambda is the way. Entrepreneurs also need to think about it a bit differently than how normal startups are built. The software model doesn’t translate well.
• mbesto 5y ago
  I think we're proving over and over that scaling education is not possible.
• PostThisTooFast 5y ago
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• jimpix45 5y ago
  I'm glad I came across this as I was considering whether or not a boot camp would make sense for me. I'm not turned off against it, but this is a good data point for me to consider.
• amotinga 5y ago
  serious question: what does lambda school or any other bootcamp provide that isn't available online already for free or cheap? freecodecamp.org theodinproject limitless various courses. curriculum is out there, /r/learnprogramming is very helpful, plethora of discords. what do they provide in 2022 that is worth ~10-20k?
  • swyx 5y ago
    bootcamp grad here (different bootcamp - Fullstack Academy in NYC). i completed freecodecamp before doing my bootcamp. did not feel job ready, did not have any leads on jobs, barely made it thru freecodecamp copying and pasting code that kinda sorta worked. let me put it this way. at the end of my bootcamp they had a "hiring day". ~20 employers came by for ~40 students, including Google. I ended up getting a job with the very first hiring manager I sat down with that day, for 160k base. granted, i'm abnormal, and we had "failures" too, but i have many friends whose career change was eased because the bootcamp had taken care to build quality relationships with employers. one more example. one time my computer just borked. create react app (or whatever we were doing that day) just refused to run. I had no idea but something in my $PATH was corrupted somehow. i was unable to do anything, and asking for help online wouldve been very futile. instead, i raised my hand, and my instructor (hi Cassio!) came over, showed me how to debug, and had me back up and running in 5 mins so I could continue learning.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • amotinga 5y ago
      if you somehow managed to get 160k out of the bootcamp I would guess bootcamp is only part of why you got such an offer. you are extreme outlier.
      • swyx 5y ago
        yes definitely. i applied to a place where my previous career (finance) could potentially help (ended up not being used at all lol). BUT i did get a 120k-150k offers elsewhere (ranging from adtech to music), and had friends join FB/Google out of bootcamp and thats easily six figures being in NYC helps. the low end was like 90k.
• riffic 5y ago
  jeez just take classes at a community college instead. there will be more academic rigor and your money isn't going to these types.
• dogman144 5y ago
  If you have been remotely involved in mentoring aspiring engineers, and especially if you did it at the nonprofit level, the data and student feedback out of lambda was looking obviously bad as of 1-2 years ago. If you threw a test rock into a alumni or currently attending code school student forum, bad lambda stories always came up. What’s so distasteful about this is a lot of the code school community closed ranks around Lambda, refused to acknowledge really absurd student experiences and bad employment rates, and at worst still partnered with it. My guess is this is because admitting a place as polished as Lambda had a problem leads to questions about other schools out there. When you top it off with the insane ISAs Lambda wanted, that school and its defenders put themselves in an extremely ethically dubious position.
• alex504 5y ago
  Another anecdote: I did Dev Bootcamp in NYC in 2015, during what was probably the golden age for these bootcamps. I had a very very good experience, as did about 80% of the people who went through it at that time. The program was hemorrhaging money and was shut down in 2017. The cost was about 12k for 9 weeks onsite in a big office they rented in downtown Manhattan. Every 3 weeks they had a new cohort, with about 15 students. You could repeat a 3 week section up to 2 times for no extra cost. I got an airbnb in Brooklyn and took the train in. The curriculum was focused on Ruby on Rails, with Javascript in the last 3 weeks. We had about 5 or so instructors who had real working experience as web developers (so about 1 instructor to every 10 people or so). The instructors were all in their 30s or 40s and were passionate about teaching and had a decent amount of industry experience. They were all sick of doing engineering and enjoyed teaching so were basically taking a break from engineering jobs. We also had a counselor, two administrators, the head of the program, a full time recruiter, and a yoga teacher who came in three times a week. If you didn't make it through the program for whatever reason, they would refund whatever time you had remaining. If you didn't make it through the first 3 weeks they would refund you 100%. About 1/5 of the people were clearly not cut out for it, about 2/5ths were capable but didn't have much aptitude for coding, and the other 2/5ths learned stuff very fast. The 4/5ths all managed to get entry level jobs eventually. The people on the low end of that 4/5ths sometimes fizzled out pretty quickly or ended up with support jobs. I know some of them who ended up having pretty good careers as support engineers, making over 100k within a couple of years I am guessing. We all felt sorry for the 1/5th of the people who were just not cut out for it at all. Some of them left but occasionally one would graduate which was a shame because they really had no chance of being successful. There were also people who were not very good but managed to get entry level coding jobs, but I think it was a struggle for them and they eventually left the industry afaik. Everyone had to really hustle for an entry level job but it was definitely doable. I came out being able to create full stack apps, knew how to build a front end with Angular (very poorly obviously but still) and with a decent enough understanding of how Javascript worked. The bootcamp had a decent network. It took me about 2 months to get a job making 75k, which I got through a friend at the bootcamp. I managed to get interviews at about 6 or so places leading up to that, but had no idea what I was doing on those interviews. Most of the interviews I think I got from the recruiter at the bootcamp, including one at Bloomberg which would have netted me a pretty big starting salary. About a month into my job my boss remarked to me that I probably would have taken far less than 75k and we laughed about it. One year later I was making 140k, and today I am making about 70% more than that so yeah, pretty good ROI. I felt like I learned about as much as possible as I could have in this short period. I kept learning stuff afterwards until getting a job, and continued to be interested in learning for years. I am sure there is still a good business model here. The price I paid seemed like a lot at the time but in retrospect it was absurdly low. I make as much as a doctor now. The race to the bottom some of these businesses are engaging in seems like an awful approach because it is a zero sum game making it into the industry. The rewards are such that if you could get people there with a decent success rate the value of the program would be a lot higher than 12 or even 30k.