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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

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.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Or you can just keep making small projects. I got to 100k without a degree this way. I made these projects because I enjoy programming. I can't say any of my learning has been structured. Even now I'll show off my projects during interviews. The rare times this backfires I know that company would have sucked anyway.
- tayo42 5y ago
  > But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation. You need this to be successful at anything. My cynical take is most people aren't, and see programing as some get rich quick scheme. If they did have these qualities they for the most part would already be successful
- 300bps 5y ago
  But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation Could not agree more. When I was 14 years old my friends would go out to the mall to hang out. I would sit at home working on the modem routines for my BBS program. If I didn't get paid to work in IT, I would be doing it for free.
missinfo 5y ago
> things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students How does this compare to traditional colleges? We hear a lot about students saddled with massive debt and useless degrees, but I don't have a good sense of what percentage that is. And my understanding of Lambda is that you don't end up with debt if the school fails you?
- sam0x17 5y ago
  It's much worse, though. If you fail out of college, you can still transfer many of your credits years later to another institution, and simply having "some college" on your resume is enough to get your foot in the door at a lot of places. Having "some bootcamp" is not going to have the same effect (in some cases some college plays better than having graduated from a bootcamp, even), plus the debt you have is not subsidized by the federal government in any way.
notJim 5y ago
> two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads I just want to echo this, I have also worked with some really really sharp engineers coming out of these bootcamps. They were also people changing careers. I would really hate for the questionable aspects of these bootcamps to reflect on all of their grads, because some of the grads are fantastic.
- clpm4j 5y ago
  From what I've seen, I agree about some of the grads being fantastic - the types who could have been extremely successful in a traditional college CS path if they had chosen. However, these are few and far between, the exception to the rule. Most (again, from what I can tell) really struggle, and don't have what it takes to succeed in this field (be it lack of genuine interest, focus, curiosity in technology - whatever). Add to this the fact that every company has had the "only hire the best; hiring is the most important thing in the world" mantra beat into their heads, and suddenly all of these would-be developers are far from employable. I routinely see and hear of entry level dev jobs (at small mediocre tech startups) getting over a thousand applications per role, and they reject all of them.
- 1270018080 5y ago
  Some of the grads are fantastic, but not because of bootcamps. They would probably succeed only through self-teaching if they wanted. The school isn't doing them any favors besides adding a little standardized badge on their resume. I guess traditional colleges are the same way, right? A degree is like an informal union card that says "Hey this person can sit for 4 years and take tests."
  - ummonk 5y ago
    I mean there is a lot of value in getting a standardized badge for far less expense and time than a traditional degree.
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    For me this was very true, yes. Though a lot of it was just the organizing of curated topics I wouldn't have known to pick up. These days you can get all of that on github though (i.e. the open source computer science education)
sam0x17 5y ago
One huge mistake I think a lot (but not all of) the bootcamps are making is taking the easy route of simply using JavaScript to teach both frontend and backend. JavaScript is a TERRIBLE first programming language. I usually have to spend 2-3 sessions per mentee explaining the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript, where some of the OOP concepts actually come from, and how things work in other languages to put into context the really terrible implementation of these features in js. Main reason being, I tell them, things that run in the browser are different from almost every other runtime environment because on the web it is extraordinarily difficult to deprecate/change things, because if you do then X% of the web breaks. This is why we still to this day have things like "quirks mode" etc. Once a behavior is out there in the wild, you basically have to support it as a browser, and you can drop support for it virtually never. This process has led to the JavaScript we have today -- mountains of functionality dumped on top of a backwards compatible core riddled with idiosyncrasies and poor design decisions that didn't become poor until they were left unchanged for ~20 years. Anyway, my point is, it's very important to make sure students understand that their confusion surrounding how things are structured in JavaScript is natural, and that they can (and should, on their own preferably) look forward to learning more stable/sensical languages in the near future. It's a shame I have to do this for my students instead of the course just doing it for me, however.
- torben-friis 5y ago
  Why not teach them functional concepts (map, filter, reduce, etc are well supported and comfortable) and leave the horrors of Js classes alone?
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    They run into enough problems with objectness just learning map / filter / reduce. I've seen so many angry / frustrated students trying to use a for each loop to iterate over an Array only to find that although this works in most languages, in js these just loop over the fucking KEYS of the object (which now opens up the discussion about how `obj[1]` is not a key but `obj['hey']` is a key and the differences therein.
sam0x17 5y ago
This one particular student sticks with me. He was in his 60s-70s, and had a burgeoning career in IT/Security in the late 90s, but quit his job to take care of his ailing mother around 2001 or so. He took care of her, living off of her reverse mortgage for 20 years, but now she has passed away, and the term of the reverse mortgage ends soon (or I believe by now has ended) so the bank will be re-posessing his house, his only remaining asset. The guy was not doing well. Even though he was quite smart and had C++ in his distant background, he was making almost zero progress in the course. It soon became clear that he was so drained from working 12-hour days at a Costco warehouse (and doing other similar menial jobs) 6 days a week (and still not making enough to even pay his medical bills) that he wasn't going to be able to make any progress. I repeatedly recommended him for a scholarship (because of his intelligence and skill) but I never heard back, and eventually he dropped off my schedule. I did everything I could to give him what he needed to succeed, but ultimately there was nothing I could do. It haunts me. This country is so fucked.
- akanet 5y ago
  Thanks for the story. The most brutal thing for me about reporting this story was each individual human horror-show. It's such a serious thing to be responsible for attempting to transform the lives of people who need it so desperately. It is what's most noble about Lambda's mission, to me.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Does any country do a decent job of retraining 70 year old men for developer positions? This does not need to be a high priority for a society if the 70 year old can afford a roof of their head and a meal.
  - ericb 5y ago
    I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the United States provides such a poor safety net for those with health issues that one person's failing health destroys the economic potential of one or more people around them. From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"
gigatexal 5y ago
I think this sums up the issue with bootcamps: "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." Some folks thrive in this environment either by natural ability or their learning style and others do not. For whatever the reason the coding bootcamp gets the flack for underperforming folks and it seems to me unfair: Why are they held to this super high standard to teach a difficult subject (computer programming at a high level) to all kinds of learners at all levels?
- bwing 5y ago
  Because they have minimal admissions filter and constantly tell students not to give up, to fight imposter syndrome, student testimonials, "this is the toughest thing you'll ever do but it's so worth it." College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores. You can quibble over the effectiveness and wisdom of this specific gate, but the upside is that mediocre students aren't going to spend a year and $30,000 convincing themselves they're going to major in CS at MIT. At Lambda, students quit their jobs, and take months out of their lives, only to find out 4 months later that programming isn't for them.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It almost seems as if there should be a book or a website the gist of which is: "If you can't and don't want to plug through the concepts and problems here, you're wasting your money to go to a bootcamp." Heck, there are "intro" (OK, some of them aren't really) MOOC classes that, while more theoretical in some cases, should give you a pretty good idea if this is something you're really willing to devote a lot of time and money to.
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    > College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores I recently learned this is increasingly no longer true. Many top institutions have made standardized test scores optional in recent years, and we're a few years away from it becoming normal to not even take the SATs and get into multiple ivy league schools as a top student.
temp8964 5y ago
Is 50% really bad? How much did they pay? Compare to graduation rate of traditional colleges: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 "The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the same institution where they started in 2012. The 6-year graduation rate was 61 percent at public institutions, 67 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 25 percent at private for-profit institutions. The overall 6-year graduation rate was 65 percent for females and 59 percent for males; it was higher for females than for males at both public (64 vs. 58 percent) and private nonprofit (70 vs. 64 percent) institutions. However, at private for-profit institutions, males had a higher 6-year graduation rate than females (26 vs. 25 percent)."
- ksml 5y ago
  I think the bigger issue is with dishonesty in numbers. They're advertising a different set of numbers to students, and it does not seem like they're being very transparent with the process
- sam0x17 5y ago
  That said "some college" can get your foot in the door. "Some bootcamp" is not gonna get you anywhere
herbturbo 5y ago
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. Isn't that just a case of some students having natural ability where a large percentage do not? If being a good developer was only about knowing syntax and writing efficient algorithms boot camps would work fine.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I very much doubt it's exclusively "natural ability" (whatever that means exactly. I suspect that most people who are really motivated to finish and can set aside the time to do so can get the certificate even if they don't have the whatever to become really good developers.
  - herbturbo 5y ago
    The whatever you refer to is natural ability. Two people from a bootcamp turning out to be immediately useful developers says more about the people than the bootcamp which is what the original point was about.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Maybe it doesn't apply at the bootcamp level. But there are certainly things I could be very motivated to learn but I'm pretty sure I'd really struggle with serious math/physics even if I put a lot effort in.
gonehome 5y ago
> "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." This is what I really wonder about - how many of the negative comments are from students not succeeding possibly because of unrealistic expectations around teaching (and what's actually required for learning). Lots of kids fail in college too (particularly in CS) where the attention given to students (and projects) is often worse. I remember kids constantly complaining at University about how the teachers weren't good or giving them enough attention etc. etc. There's some truth to this, but it's also a common way people take away their own agency for failure. There's some baseline IQ requirement (for lack of a better term) - LamdaSchool puts the incentives in the right place, but they can't magically get rid of that prerequisite and if their screening isn't good enough some admitted students will fail. At least that failure won't include tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I think the outcome comparison needs to be with universities - at least with ISAs the incentive alignment protects students even when they fail.
- t-louie 5y ago
  I think a lot of complaints would come from students that did succeed, whether by having previous programming experience or having the drive to overcome Lambda's shortcomings. That's certainly the case for me - I landed a job after Lambda as a backend engineer, and I am/was extremely upset by Lambda's continuous deceptive language and degradation of their program
- sam0x17 5y ago
  I don't think I've ever encountered a student lacking the intelligence needed to succeed (I find that to largely be a myth after mentoring hundreds of students... literally anyone can code) -- it's always external factors, like too many jobs, kids, not enough motivation, etc., that get in the way.

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.
999900000999 5y ago
Or you can just keep making small projects. I got to 100k without a degree this way. I made these projects because I enjoy programming. I can't say any of my learning has been structured. Even now I'll show off my projects during interviews. The rare times this backfires I know that company would have sucked anyway.
tayo42 5y ago
> But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation. You need this to be successful at anything. My cynical take is most people aren't, and see programing as some get rich quick scheme. If they did have these qualities they for the most part would already be successful
300bps 5y ago
But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation Could not agree more. When I was 14 years old my friends would go out to the mall to hang out. I would sit at home working on the modem routines for my BBS program. If I didn't get paid to work in IT, I would be doing it for free.

missinfo 5y ago

> things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students How does this compare to traditional colleges? We hear a lot about students saddled with massive debt and useless degrees, but I don't have a good sense of what percentage that is. And my understanding of Lambda is that you don't end up with debt if the school fails you?

sam0x17 5y ago
It's much worse, though. If you fail out of college, you can still transfer many of your credits years later to another institution, and simply having "some college" on your resume is enough to get your foot in the door at a lot of places. Having "some bootcamp" is not going to have the same effect (in some cases some college plays better than having graduated from a bootcamp, even), plus the debt you have is not subsidized by the federal government in any way.

notJim 5y ago

> two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads I just want to echo this, I have also worked with some really really sharp engineers coming out of these bootcamps. They were also people changing careers. I would really hate for the questionable aspects of these bootcamps to reflect on all of their grads, because some of the grads are fantastic.

clpm4j 5y ago
From what I've seen, I agree about some of the grads being fantastic - the types who could have been extremely successful in a traditional college CS path if they had chosen. However, these are few and far between, the exception to the rule. Most (again, from what I can tell) really struggle, and don't have what it takes to succeed in this field (be it lack of genuine interest, focus, curiosity in technology - whatever). Add to this the fact that every company has had the "only hire the best; hiring is the most important thing in the world" mantra beat into their heads, and suddenly all of these would-be developers are far from employable. I routinely see and hear of entry level dev jobs (at small mediocre tech startups) getting over a thousand applications per role, and they reject all of them.
1270018080 5y ago
Some of the grads are fantastic, but not because of bootcamps. They would probably succeed only through self-teaching if they wanted. The school isn't doing them any favors besides adding a little standardized badge on their resume. I guess traditional colleges are the same way, right? A degree is like an informal union card that says "Hey this person can sit for 4 years and take tests."
- ummonk 5y ago
  I mean there is a lot of value in getting a standardized badge for far less expense and time than a traditional degree.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  For me this was very true, yes. Though a lot of it was just the organizing of curated topics I wouldn't have known to pick up. These days you can get all of that on github though (i.e. the open source computer science education)

sam0x17 5y ago

One huge mistake I think a lot (but not all of) the bootcamps are making is taking the easy route of simply using JavaScript to teach both frontend and backend. JavaScript is a TERRIBLE first programming language. I usually have to spend 2-3 sessions per mentee explaining the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript, where some of the OOP concepts actually come from, and how things work in other languages to put into context the really terrible implementation of these features in js. Main reason being, I tell them, things that run in the browser are different from almost every other runtime environment because on the web it is extraordinarily difficult to deprecate/change things, because if you do then X% of the web breaks. This is why we still to this day have things like "quirks mode" etc. Once a behavior is out there in the wild, you basically have to support it as a browser, and you can drop support for it virtually never. This process has led to the JavaScript we have today -- mountains of functionality dumped on top of a backwards compatible core riddled with idiosyncrasies and poor design decisions that didn't become poor until they were left unchanged for ~20 years. Anyway, my point is, it's very important to make sure students understand that their confusion surrounding how things are structured in JavaScript is natural, and that they can (and should, on their own preferably) look forward to learning more stable/sensical languages in the near future. It's a shame I have to do this for my students instead of the course just doing it for me, however.

torben-friis 5y ago
Why not teach them functional concepts (map, filter, reduce, etc are well supported and comfortable) and leave the horrors of Js classes alone?
- sam0x17 5y ago
  They run into enough problems with objectness just learning map / filter / reduce. I've seen so many angry / frustrated students trying to use a for each loop to iterate over an Array only to find that although this works in most languages, in js these just loop over the fucking KEYS of the object (which now opens up the discussion about how `obj[1]` is not a key but `obj['hey']` is a key and the differences therein.

sam0x17 5y ago

This one particular student sticks with me. He was in his 60s-70s, and had a burgeoning career in IT/Security in the late 90s, but quit his job to take care of his ailing mother around 2001 or so. He took care of her, living off of her reverse mortgage for 20 years, but now she has passed away, and the term of the reverse mortgage ends soon (or I believe by now has ended) so the bank will be re-posessing his house, his only remaining asset. The guy was not doing well. Even though he was quite smart and had C++ in his distant background, he was making almost zero progress in the course. It soon became clear that he was so drained from working 12-hour days at a Costco warehouse (and doing other similar menial jobs) 6 days a week (and still not making enough to even pay his medical bills) that he wasn't going to be able to make any progress. I repeatedly recommended him for a scholarship (because of his intelligence and skill) but I never heard back, and eventually he dropped off my schedule. I did everything I could to give him what he needed to succeed, but ultimately there was nothing I could do. It haunts me. This country is so fucked.

akanet 5y ago
Thanks for the story. The most brutal thing for me about reporting this story was each individual human horror-show. It's such a serious thing to be responsible for attempting to transform the lives of people who need it so desperately. It is what's most noble about Lambda's mission, to me.
spoonjim 5y ago
Does any country do a decent job of retraining 70 year old men for developer positions? This does not need to be a high priority for a society if the 70 year old can afford a roof of their head and a meal.
- ericb 5y ago
  I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the United States provides such a poor safety net for those with health issues that one person's failing health destroys the economic potential of one or more people around them. From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"

gigatexal 5y ago

I think this sums up the issue with bootcamps: "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." Some folks thrive in this environment either by natural ability or their learning style and others do not. For whatever the reason the coding bootcamp gets the flack for underperforming folks and it seems to me unfair: Why are they held to this super high standard to teach a difficult subject (computer programming at a high level) to all kinds of learners at all levels?

bwing 5y ago
Because they have minimal admissions filter and constantly tell students not to give up, to fight imposter syndrome, student testimonials, "this is the toughest thing you'll ever do but it's so worth it." College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores. You can quibble over the effectiveness and wisdom of this specific gate, but the upside is that mediocre students aren't going to spend a year and $30,000 convincing themselves they're going to major in CS at MIT. At Lambda, students quit their jobs, and take months out of their lives, only to find out 4 months later that programming isn't for them.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It almost seems as if there should be a book or a website the gist of which is: "If you can't and don't want to plug through the concepts and problems here, you're wasting your money to go to a bootcamp." Heck, there are "intro" (OK, some of them aren't really) MOOC classes that, while more theoretical in some cases, should give you a pretty good idea if this is something you're really willing to devote a lot of time and money to.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  > College is gated by GPA and standardized test scores I recently learned this is increasingly no longer true. Many top institutions have made standardized test scores optional in recent years, and we're a few years away from it becoming normal to not even take the SATs and get into multiple ivy league schools as a top student.

temp8964 5y ago

Is 50% really bad? How much did they pay? Compare to graduation rate of traditional colleges: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 "The overall 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at 4-year degree-granting institutions in fall 2012 was 62 percent. That is, by 2018 some 62 percent of students had completed a bachelor’s degree at the same institution where they started in 2012. The 6-year graduation rate was 61 percent at public institutions, 67 percent at private nonprofit institutions, and 25 percent at private for-profit institutions. The overall 6-year graduation rate was 65 percent for females and 59 percent for males; it was higher for females than for males at both public (64 vs. 58 percent) and private nonprofit (70 vs. 64 percent) institutions. However, at private for-profit institutions, males had a higher 6-year graduation rate than females (26 vs. 25 percent)."

ksml 5y ago
I think the bigger issue is with dishonesty in numbers. They're advertising a different set of numbers to students, and it does not seem like they're being very transparent with the process
sam0x17 5y ago
That said "some college" can get your foot in the door. "Some bootcamp" is not gonna get you anywhere

herbturbo 5y ago

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. Isn't that just a case of some students having natural ability where a large percentage do not? If being a good developer was only about knowing syntax and writing efficient algorithms boot camps would work fine.

ghaff 5y ago
I very much doubt it's exclusively "natural ability" (whatever that means exactly. I suspect that most people who are really motivated to finish and can set aside the time to do so can get the certificate even if they don't have the whatever to become really good developers.
- herbturbo 5y ago
  The whatever you refer to is natural ability. Two people from a bootcamp turning out to be immediately useful developers says more about the people than the bootcamp which is what the original point was about.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Maybe it doesn't apply at the bootcamp level. But there are certainly things I could be very motivated to learn but I'm pretty sure I'd really struggle with serious math/physics even if I put a lot effort in.

gonehome 5y ago

> "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." This is what I really wonder about - how many of the negative comments are from students not succeeding possibly because of unrealistic expectations around teaching (and what's actually required for learning). Lots of kids fail in college too (particularly in CS) where the attention given to students (and projects) is often worse. I remember kids constantly complaining at University about how the teachers weren't good or giving them enough attention etc. etc. There's some truth to this, but it's also a common way people take away their own agency for failure. There's some baseline IQ requirement (for lack of a better term) - LamdaSchool puts the incentives in the right place, but they can't magically get rid of that prerequisite and if their screening isn't good enough some admitted students will fail. At least that failure won't include tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I think the outcome comparison needs to be with universities - at least with ISAs the incentive alignment protects students even when they fail.

t-louie 5y ago
I think a lot of complaints would come from students that did succeed, whether by having previous programming experience or having the drive to overcome Lambda's shortcomings. That's certainly the case for me - I landed a job after Lambda as a backend engineer, and I am/was extremely upset by Lambda's continuous deceptive language and degradation of their program
sam0x17 5y ago
I don't think I've ever encountered a student lacking the intelligence needed to succeed (I find that to largely be a myth after mentoring hundreds of students... literally anyone can code) -- it's always external factors, like too many jobs, kids, not enough motivation, etc., that get in the way.