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Interestingly enough, all of these comments could have been said about my experience at $BOOTCAMP that I attended and then was later hired at as a mentor. The

Interestingly enough, all of these comments could have been said about my experience at $BOOTCAMP that I attended and then was later hired at as a mentor. The degradation of quality from the removal of human presence is a common narrative, and the students react to it so much more than management ever realizes. > 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. This is exactly how I would describe it. $BOOTCAMP was around for a few years, was purchased by private equity, immediately doubled it's prices, gutted the mentoring team, and "revamped" the curriculum, which really meant they were just pushing everything to video learning. They have made some minor curriculum improvements as of late, but they have a long way to go to get back to what the program was when it was just starting out - which was ironically much higher quality in my opinion.

akanet 5y ago
I have a guess at which bootcamp you mean, but I'd love to talk to you more - me@vincentwoo.com
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
afsafsaf 5y ago
Just going to add a positive anecdotal example since most of this thread is negative. I finished App Academy back in 2015 and 6 years later, most of my friends are a top tier software companies. In general our cohort did well, although there were definitely people who did not succeed. The experience was truly life changing for some of the folks. I do agree that I've seen a LOT of bootcamps try to "scale" out their programs by removing human teachers and using video/written content or by increasing student to teacher ratios. I'm curious if the experience I had still holds today at any bootcamps or if the drive to "scale" has messed up the industry
- tdeck 5y ago
  > do agree that I've seen a LOT of bootcamps try to "scale" out their programs by removing human teachers and using video/written content or by increasing student to teacher ratios. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how every bootcamp pitches to their investors. "We're just starting out with an MVP. Once we've nailed the curriculum we're going to scale our instruction without increasing labor costs".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
edgefield 5y ago
Every time I’ve seen a company bought by private equity, it spells the beginning of the end. The strategy always seems to milk every last drop of cash from the business, without any long term sustainable plan. As an anecdotal case, I visited Sea World over the summer and half the concessions and shows were closed. It was still expensive and crowded and and there were service bottlenecks everywhere. Long lines for a bottle of water. Midday I said to myself, I bet this place was bought out by private equity. I looked up Sea World’s ownership structure when I got home and low and behold, private equity is involved.
- harry8 5y ago
  It's an issue in market information where regulation can't really work [1]. Vendors have a brand. They establish the value of the brand such that purchasers have a signal that they aren't going to be ripped off. For example you can be pretty sure coca-cola isn't going to cut costs to the point where they don't care about putting poison in the bottle - and you don't need regulation to know they won't do it. Zeus-Cola? Brand means nothing. On holiday in an unregulated land when it's only just launched do you advise your family it will be completely safe to drink? An entrepreneurial team comes along and puts their hearts and souls into setting up a business and establishing the brand with some high quality product. That brand becomes worth something. The easiest way to monetize that brand is to use it for a con job. It sucks. You thought you were getting quality, it's what you paid for, well you're getting cheap and nasty and we're taking excess profit for as long as the brand lasts. You took the bait and got the switch. Usually (but not always) the original entrepreneurial team is unwilling to do this, because they believed what they were doing was something more than just making money. Private equity is just making money and are extremely willing to do this. [1] I prefer unregulated markets as far as the alternative is usually worse. There are obvious exceptions at the extreme ends (monopoly, health and safety, fraud, adverse externality etc.) How far away from the extreme you think regulation stops working is a lot of interesting case-by-case discussion where intelligent, reasonable and informed people can disagree in good faith improving their understanding and the quality of suggested policy in the process. It would be nice to see a bit more of it in the media!
  - 5y ago
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I had a sort of similar thing with Udacity and their front end web dev nanodegree program. They would literally change the content of classes WHILE people were taking them. I got so confused and fed up that I just quit the program altogether, even though the only thing I had left to do was an exit interview. They weren't going to see another dime of my money.

akanet 5y ago

I have a guess at which bootcamp you mean, but I'd love to talk to you more - me@vincentwoo.com

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

afsafsaf 5y ago

Just going to add a positive anecdotal example since most of this thread is negative. I finished App Academy back in 2015 and 6 years later, most of my friends are a top tier software companies. In general our cohort did well, although there were definitely people who did not succeed. The experience was truly life changing for some of the folks. I do agree that I've seen a LOT of bootcamps try to "scale" out their programs by removing human teachers and using video/written content or by increasing student to teacher ratios. I'm curious if the experience I had still holds today at any bootcamps or if the drive to "scale" has messed up the industry

tdeck 5y ago
> do agree that I've seen a LOT of bootcamps try to "scale" out their programs by removing human teachers and using video/written content or by increasing student to teacher ratios. I wouldn't be surprised if this is how every bootcamp pitches to their investors. "We're just starting out with an MVP. Once we've nailed the curriculum we're going to scale our instruction without increasing labor costs".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

edgefield 5y ago

Every time I’ve seen a company bought by private equity, it spells the beginning of the end. The strategy always seems to milk every last drop of cash from the business, without any long term sustainable plan. As an anecdotal case, I visited Sea World over the summer and half the concessions and shows were closed. It was still expensive and crowded and and there were service bottlenecks everywhere. Long lines for a bottle of water. Midday I said to myself, I bet this place was bought out by private equity. I looked up Sea World’s ownership structure when I got home and low and behold, private equity is involved.

harry8 5y ago
It's an issue in market information where regulation can't really work [1]. Vendors have a brand. They establish the value of the brand such that purchasers have a signal that they aren't going to be ripped off. For example you can be pretty sure coca-cola isn't going to cut costs to the point where they don't care about putting poison in the bottle - and you don't need regulation to know they won't do it. Zeus-Cola? Brand means nothing. On holiday in an unregulated land when it's only just launched do you advise your family it will be completely safe to drink? An entrepreneurial team comes along and puts their hearts and souls into setting up a business and establishing the brand with some high quality product. That brand becomes worth something. The easiest way to monetize that brand is to use it for a con job. It sucks. You thought you were getting quality, it's what you paid for, well you're getting cheap and nasty and we're taking excess profit for as long as the brand lasts. You took the bait and got the switch. Usually (but not always) the original entrepreneurial team is unwilling to do this, because they believed what they were doing was something more than just making money. Private equity is just making money and are extremely willing to do this. [1] I prefer unregulated markets as far as the alternative is usually worse. There are obvious exceptions at the extreme ends (monopoly, health and safety, fraud, adverse externality etc.) How far away from the extreme you think regulation stops working is a lot of interesting case-by-case discussion where intelligent, reasonable and informed people can disagree in good faith improving their understanding and the quality of suggested policy in the process. It would be nice to see a bit more of it in the media!
- 5y ago

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

I had a sort of similar thing with Udacity and their front end web dev nanodegree program. They would literally change the content of classes WHILE people were taking them. I got so confused and fed up that I just quit the program altogether, even though the only thing I had left to do was an exit interview. They weren't going to see another dime of my money.