21 ms·

BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

295 points by lxm 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago
Not sure what BloomTech gives folks over FreeCodeCamp? Accreditation? Career services?
kadomony 4y ago
Austen Allred is a fuckin' tool.
grealish56 4y ago
btheshoe 4y ago
makes sense, considering that the current economic climate in the tech industry will impact bootcamp grads the most.
vcsmjk 4y ago
Glad to see this, Lambda School is extremely scummy. Can’t be bothered to operate legally, and lied about it: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lang=en https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lan... I really think that the law should be changed so that doing stuff like that would have been a prison term for the CEO (Allred).
- avalys 4y ago
  A prison term for not registering with some bureaucratic state agency? Why? The “California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education”? This is indistinguishable from parody.
  - sandofsky 4y ago
    The BPPE was formed because California was the world capital of diploma-mills in the 80's. It falls under consumer protection, similar to how California has a special bureau that punishes scummy "extended warranty" companies. The reason you register is so the state can periodically check your marketing material and field students complaints. For example, Lambda School lied about how many students get jobs, and it would have been real nice for the agency to have stepped in before the lawsuits, which are still in litigation.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - rrss 4y ago
    Why is it unreasonable to have people in a government agency to address fraudulent colleges and stuff? Do you feel the same way about the bureau of consumer protection in the US FTC?
    - lmm 4y ago
      You don't have to register or get a license from the FTC to open a business. At least I hope you don't.
      - ffssffss 4y ago
        It's not about the importance of the act of filing paperwork, it's the fraud of lying to customers that you are following the law and then taking their money. For what it's worth, I don't think prison would help. But maybe some non-dischargable liabilities and a ban from being a corporate officer would.
        austenallred 4y ago
        If you were actually to commit fraud regulators can come for you whether you register or not. The act of registration is simply to make it easier to tell regulators what is happening.
  - swang720 4y ago
    I'm actually glad there's a state department for this. Fraudulent private colleges are a _real_ problem.
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  Ah yes, prison for trying to teach something useful across a zillion regulatory domains, sinecures for administrators at “real” universities while students rack up piles of debt for English degrees.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Just because one route is rotten doesn’t validate alternate scummy routes. Cops are rotten so drug dealers are good? Lol.
- austenallred 4y ago
  This is fundamentally not what happened and a prison term for this would be insane (even California's BPPE would agree with that). Our counsel told us we didn't need to register with the BPPE because we weren't offering in-person classes (this was somewhat rare back in 2017 - certainly more rare than now). The BPPE sent us a letter that said we needed to register and we did so and began working with the BPPE instantly. We never ever lied about that fact, and there was no attempt to avoid regulation in any way.
- ec109685 4y ago
  https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/ https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/ He also lied about having an auditor verify their placement rates. Caught asking Bookface for an auditor reference while proclaiming it was audited.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    No, that is not true. We never claimed to have an audited report until we actually had an audited report. I asked if there was an auditor who would verify them after the fact to show that they were accurate, but we had had never claimed they were audited at that point. Unfortunately auditors doing that is a months-long process, so we could only have them audit subsequent reports (which they have done).
Varauk 4y ago
> employees will get normal pay and medical benefits until January 31, 2023 and are “expected to work” through that period. So severance but they have to keep working too? Seems rough. Hard to imagine anyone in that situation would focus on working for their soon-to-be former employer.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Immigration status dodge? Say you "expect them to work", but don't enforce it, so they aren't technically unemployed and the H1B clock doesn't start ticking right away? Maybe trying to game unemployment insurance rates? If someone is employed they can't go on unemployment, hopefully in two months some of them find something new driving down your costs compared to firing them and having them apply right away? It's a pipe dream if they think anyone laid off will be putting any effort in.
  - pkaye 4y ago
    The WARN act requires 60 days of notification before a mass layoff. So the company can choose to either notify employees 60 days before layoff or pay 60 days of severance pay and layoff immediately.
- wheels 4y ago
  That's actually very common in a lot of countries. I think the US is the outlier in the expectation that notice and stopping of work are concurrent. Same with quitting a job. In Germany it's normal to give 3 months notice before quitting.
- kawsper 4y ago
  In europe it's normal to keep working after employer-side contract terminations. In Denmark, depending on how long you've been with the company your employers contract termination notice period can be anywhere between 1 month (after 5 months with the company) to 6 months (after more than 8 years and 6 months with the company). Also, most commonly, if the employee is the one terminating the contract, the notice period is 1 month (although it can be negotiated higher for key employees). It is understood that your motivation will plummet when you're terminated, but you're still expected to maintain your responsibilites, and eventually, hand over your obligations. But you're also allowed to go to interviews during and if you get a new job your own 1 month termination warning will count. I've experienced that some employers will offer garden leave to the affected employees, as in they don't have to work or show up daily, but they will hand over responsibilites immediately and be available if there's any questions.
awb 4y ago
Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had a great experience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kodah 4y ago
  I've met some people with physics and accounting degrees who took boot camps and had success, but the people I've seen succeed were already problem solvers and math-aware. They just needed to know the language and routines. On the other hand, I dropped out of school and have been programming for a majority of my life. I was never accused of being incompetent or underperforming, but there was a point in my career where I was not going to progress without deeper math skills. That said, it only takes a couple years to learn.
  - tjvc 4y ago
    I'd be interested to hear more about this, as someone potentially in a similar position. What kinds of problems did you come up against where you felt your math skills were a limiting factor? What branches of math did you focus on learning?
    - kodah 4y ago
      Well, I've worked in cryptography orchestration (not actual cryptography, but I needed to understand how it worked from a basic POV) and in reliability engineering which is very stats heavy. Both of those became limited as I got more senior. For instance, a lot of problems can be identified by bucketing them in distributions - I didn't even really know or understand the math for representing a distribution. The long tail of where I actually used that was in a program that I used to create mock data for a set of devices my company was working on that simulated real household resource usage. These same math skills also became problematic as I started to need to learn/understand better applications of algorithms and data structures. There's a lot of assumptions baked in to things like asymptotics that you won't get without a background in math as well. You can certainly memorize certain things, but that has diminishing returns imo. I think I answered the last part above, but I refresh algebra and calculus. I read a stats book, took a Discreet course on Udemy, and read a lot on DS&A. I think that covers it. Took me about 3-4 years to chew through most of what I learned in my spare time.
babelfish 4y ago
Perhaps irrelevant to the thread at hand, but as I see other commenters mentioning programming fellowships I'll ask here: I recently saw a mention of a programming fellowship program on HN that I thought sounded really interesting. It was for experienced programmers, I believe mostly virtual, and was free-or-cheap. The idea behind it was to give programmers excited about programming a space to explore new ideas. I've been unable to find it since - Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
- cyberbanjo 4y ago
  Recurse Center? https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/ ?
  - babelfish 4y ago
    Definitely it, thank you!
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
Have any ISA bootcamps become sustainable, or even better, led to VC-grade returns so far? It seems like a model that hasn't proven its ability to scale, but I'd be happy to see some counter-examples.
throwaway2729 4y ago
The CEO was cheering on when Musk laid off half the company. Not surprised.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
    - astura 4y ago
      Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  Absolute dirtbag
- austenallred 4y ago
  I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.
setgree 4y ago
Not sure what to make of this, but Austen, who is normally a prolific tweeter, hasn't tweeted about this yet [0]. I have gotten used to CEOs tweeting apologetic stuff when this happens. Perhaps this is norm should be bucked? I don't know. I just note that Austen is going against the grain. EDIT: missed this: "In a now-deleted tweet posted earlier today, Allred quoted a prior statement of gratitude for employees pushing through the work despite being attacked from all sides, adding “even more so today.” [0] https://twitter.com/Austen https://twitter.com/Austen
- sandofsky 4y ago
  The "attacked by all sides" comment is quite bizarre. Every pain the company experienced was self-inflicted. They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is a source of active lawsuits. They dodged California regulators and then lied to students about it. This invalidated every ISA in California before 2020. They launched an unpaid intern program, which created a backlash in the tech community. They told students they couldn't discharge their debt, which was a lie that go them in even more legal trouble. I could go on and on, but the recurring pattern is them doing something reprehensible and the "attack" is "getting caught."
  - digianarchist 4y ago
    Vincent Woo’s reporting is a must read if you’re considering any interaction with this company.
    - ZephyrBlu 4y ago
      Seconded. Vincent puts out good stuff! https://twitter.com/fulligin https://twitter.com/fulligin
  - ec109685 4y ago
    Also, lame they charge companies to attend Bloomtech career fairs: https://www.bloomtech.com/hire-from-bloomtech https://www.bloomtech.com/hire-from-bloomtech
AlbertCory 4y ago
I interviewed a number of veterans & spouses for Operation Code: https://operationcode.org/podcast https://operationcode.org/podcast Not all were bootcamp grads; a lot went to traditional 4-year colleges. One guy said that in his bootcamp, several of the students had a job offer before they even finished. Things may be different now, a few years later, but we tend to underestimate how many regular old businesses need a web site and some kind of analytics. They don't pay like FAANG companies and they can't hire the sort of people who'd work there. Edit: I should have mentioned that one of Operation Code's signal achievements was to make code schools eligible for GI Bill money. I found, in asking vets why they enlisted, that "paying for college when you get out" is a big, big motivator. There are some who study remotely while they're still in.
MivLives 4y ago
I graduated Lambda School and currently have been hired and work in a software position. I don't encourage people to go to... Bloomtech they're calling it now. AMA. I was earlier in the life of Lambda. I got what I needed out of it but I watched a lot who didn't.
- malikNF 4y ago
  What do you wish they could have done differently?
  - MivLives 4y ago
    Honestly, not much. I'm one of the success stories. I think I was just early enough to have small classes and knew enough basic html and programming concepts from doing IT work to have the bootcamp work for me. I was also incredibly lucky the company that hired me had a program where they took on essentially fresh college grads and boot camp grads, and funneled them into Junior positions with a project before you were assigned a team. It took me a lot of interviews before I actually got a job.
    - OrwellianChild 4y ago
      What do you think you learned at the company thru the early project and junior work that you didn't get from Lambda?
      - MivLives 4y ago
        This is a really good question. 1. Scale. When you're self taught you can make decisions that only really impact yourself. Or maybe 3-4 other people for some of the projects. The company that I walked into has two monoliths (front end, and backend), and working in a code base that's 5 gigs files is a lot different. There's so many files. My editor is now slow. There's no way for me to understand the details of the entire codebase. Badly documented internal libraries are all over the place. This isn't what a bootcamp or self made codebase looks like for a beginner normally. 2. Specific practical stuff. I had been coding JS mostly on Linux. I had to learn PHP on Mac OS. I had never used either. And a number of other tools connected to the build process that are internal to this company. By not dropping you straight into a team you can also control where you landed a bit. People who didn't like UI stuff ended up a deeper backend team, people who prefer ui ended up more towards the front end. Almost everyone in the group I cam with (17 people) had to learn PHP. When you have 16 other people learning the same stuff at the same time, you start to work together and organize into groups. We begin producing our own docs for the project and other helpful things.
tschellenbach 4y ago
Teaching more people how to code is a very noble and worthy goal. I for one applaud the hard work the team at Lambda/Bloom does. The press coverage has been insane especially if you think about all the problems universities have.
user3939382 4y ago
If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?
- austenallred 4y ago
  If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired. You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job. BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach everything there possibly could be to know about how software works.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    My point isn’t to learn 100% but how about 5 or 10? The complexity of the work just doesn’t seem to match the duration of these programs.
    - austenallred 4y ago
      I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally. That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than most of us like to pretend). If you eliminate context switching, have the right tooling and instruction, yeah you aren't coming out the other side a principal engineer, but you can certainly build stuff, contribute to code the right way on teams, understand data structures and algorithms enough to make stuff performant, problem solve and build a whole lot of stuff and a lot of value. That's enough to start getting paid, and 30 years later you can continue to marvel at how you're still just scratching the surface. That's kind of beautiful, actually.
connectsnk 4y ago
hancholo 4y ago
I've been on the fence on going to a bootcamp for years, since the dev bootcamp days because I don't feel I could complete a CS degree given all that math. I've also been in various FAANG companies the past 5 years and while not in a dev/swe role I have picked up some things as I go. The front end and user interfaces is something I've been interested for a while so I think I may pivot to front end dev or some kind of automation engineer for UI testing. Are there any release engineers here?
- lazypenguin 4y ago
  If you are motivated you can learn everything that’s in a boot camp on your own. However, going through a boot camp successfully is a good signal during hiring that you have some experience in programming in relavent technology. It’s much harder to signal your experience when it’s all self taught. Whether it’s good value for the money depends on your own circumstances.
  - hancholo 4y ago
    That's a fair point. From what I've seen it really comes down to the hours you put in outside of class and your own side projects. Being able to speak the language, walk through the stack you used and why, issues you ran into and how you overcame them.
mirzap 4y ago
Lambda School always looked as a scam to me. I mean, $20k+ for a "bootcamp" and couple of courses is crazy expensive. It's like they designed this program to squeeze all the money from people who can not afford ridiculous tuition fees in the US by giving them hope they will progress faster if they pay them instead of self educating or taking much cheaper competitor's offers. Udacity has very similar thing with curriculum for various positions, 1:1 mentoring, interview prep etc. for a fraction of BloomTech price, like 1/10 or even 1/20. Which I still consider expensive, since cost of digital goods are close to 0 to replicate and deliver to more people. Point I make here is they can earn more by delivering $100 program to 1m of students or even 1/5 of that, than delivering $1.2k program to 10k students or $20k program to 1k students.
- dzader 4y ago
  it's a verified scam, your intuition was correct
throwaway5959 4y ago
Why anyone would give money to this guy is beyond me. Hey, we fucked up our reputation so bad, instead of making good on it, let’s change our name to a shitty Silicon Valley-esque one. It’s a shame nothing will happen to Austen after all the people he’s hurt.
- j-bos 4y ago
  Were you hurt?
  - dzader 4y ago
    no, but thousands of people who were simply trying to make a better life for themselves were grifted by Austen and his merry gang of con artists
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - j-bos 4y ago
      Sorry about the phrasing of my comment, reading it now it comes off as snarky. I ask because before I attended, I read many posts by people who left Lambda with a bad taste and that put me off from attending. But I did, and now I could play in an ad copy. But that's my data point. I'd like to talk to someone who had a bad time with Lambda, in a non combat context, because we clearly had vastly different outcomes and I clearly I'm missing or misunderstanding some important context.
Stranger43 4y ago
Where you get the statistics that shows real value to coding camp, despite a lack of tech passion is when you teach modern data science tools to "domain users" currently stuck within the limitations of excel(The only successful low code platform in the market), or web skills to existing content managers, but that is a much smaller market then trying to push the vision of easy money to youngsters still trying to break into the job market as something other then baristas or line cooks. And the companies that chased the market for youngsters without any real passion or plan is now running out of customers due both the the fact credit is now tight and that the publics infatuation with the tech industries is waning. And from the looks of it BloomTech looks to definitely target the market for youngster as their primary revenue stream.
- miketery 4y ago
  This is excellent insight. In a previous role, on the side I ran an SQL training for the customer success team, and that was fun and beneficial. What kind of curriculum do you think is best for these folks coming from excel or the other BI tools? Is python jupyter too advanced? It feels like we’re still early in the tooling for “no code”.
  - Stranger43 4y ago
    SQL is definitely where the curriculum should start. and Jupyter(or in reality pandas and matplotlib) is definitely not too advanced unless you make it so by talking machine learning and complex statistical modelling. What gets used in the organizations that do try and exit excel is typically batch jobs written in either python(pandas) or powershell taking data from one or more databases for display in a reporting framework like tableau. no code is im my view basically a myth when we start dealing with systems more complex then what the average high school student can create as a spreadsheet, as the effort in learning the low code platforms idiosyncrasies are similar to those needed to use an modern scripting language.
cercatrova 4y ago
Vincent Woo who sold CoderPad also did some investigative journalism on Lambda School / BloomTech showing that they didn't really place as many people as they claimed they did and that generally the company had some internal dysfunction. https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569?lang=en https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569?lang...
yrgulation 4y ago
Bootcamp “grads”? I mean really? Folks, this is a scam.
bitL 4y ago
Wasn't BloomTech replacing its staff with contractors from the some tech sweatshop for a year already?
j-bos 4y ago
Bias declaration: I'm a hired Bloomtech grad, so overall a satisfied customer/student. Meta comment: It's intersting to see how many comments on any Bloomtech/Lambda post are very knee-jerk in nature, mostly negative some positive. And to be clear, I'd say most are thoughtful. The thing that strikes me is that I can't tell if this is normal HN tenor for a tech story or if it's just because I have opinions on the subject. The only other stories witg comments that strike me as remotely similar are those dealing with privacy. So an ask, if Bloomtech is something you don't care about, neither positively nor negatively, do you find the comments for this article of average "pitch"?
- lazypenguin 4y ago
  Yes and perhaps your bias clouds your perception or desires a more positive reception of your “alma mater”. Boot camps generally illicit a negative reaction from experienced programmers. Primarily because their primary stated goal is to give a “student” enough experience in an extremely compressed amount of time for them to enter the workforce as productive developers. The issue is that experience, by definition, can only be gained over time and with diverse trials and tribulations. Only the most motivated bootcampers can achieve this during their program by supplementing with copious amounts of self-learning. Unfortunately even then a boot campers “experience” is quite limited but many come out of their program believing they are equals to more experienced mid/senior level programmers which results in those in the industry having animosity to those individuals. I think this explains the general “negative tone” you see in this comment section. Are boot camps bad? No, I think they are quite useful but I think we need to acknowledge that they really only effectively create a pipeline of junior developers and replace the need for corporations to have internal education/training programs.
  - sidlls 4y ago
    The experience argument seems thin: new grads have a similar issue, and yet companies have hiring programs targeting these individuals, sometimes aggressively. It seems the core of your argument is not that they are inexperienced, but rather that the bootcamps somehow convince them they are not and this leads to friction in the positions they seek and the expectations around the work they're capable of accomplishing.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I've always been conflicted about this company. The marketing/news is always controversial(ISA, outcomes, lawsuits, etc), but clever in terms of media manipulation(more eyes on it to their service). The service is noble and good to fill the demand and change people's lives. It's hard to use the words morally wrong and noble goals in the same sentence though given it's a contradiction. Layoffs suck regardless though.
segmondy 4y ago
No surprise, the founder was just on Twitter praising Elon for staff cutting and marveling at the amount of money saved.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
adamsmith143 4y ago
This one's a head-scratcher. Presumably in a downturn people want to upskill or change careers so demand would go up for a program like this? Though I do think it is far too expensive for what you get.
adoxyz 4y ago
My brother went to Lambda school 2019-2020. Would not recommend. They had recent grads that had just completed Lambda the previous year teaching the new students and most of them had just a vague grasp on the content matter. So many inaccuracies and bad practices taught. The only good thing about it was that it was structured and you were coding each day for 5-8hrs so if you weren't the most self-motivated person, you were held accountable. But again, a lot of it was taught badly or inaccurately, so unless you spent a lot of time doing outside research on your own, you weren't learning much. If you do have self-motivation, you don't need Lambda or BloomTech. After graduation, there was no follow up of any kind. So overall, pretty disappointing.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  I guess that sounds a lot like a community college to me, but maybe faster and better. Can non-self motivated people succeed if they go to say an Ivy League? I didn’t, so it’s a sincere curiosity for me. Would Zuckerberg have ended up bagging groceries if he went to a community college rather than Harvard?
  - Kalium 4y ago
    My understanding of community colleges is that they generally make a sincere effort to have qualified instructors with a good grasp of the materials.
    - austenallred 4y ago
      If I am interpreting the parent's comment correctly, he's referring to TAs (we called them "team leads") not instructors. Based on the context of the comment I'm assuming that this was a time when we had a TA for every 8 students on top of a layering of instructors for each cohort, and indeed the TAs would do a lot of the 1:1 interaction. There has never been a time we didn't have qualified instructors, though I would readily admit the quality of our instructors has improved over time as we got better at instructional design and hiring.
  - blululu 4y ago
gigatexal 4y ago
Ahh a rebrand is always a good sign /end-sarcasm.
gigatexal 4y ago
Wtf. This is not how layoffs work. “ Employees were called into an All Hands meeting this morning in which BloomTech CEO Austen Allred notified staff of the impending layoffs. After the meeting, those impacted were notified via e-mail. According to documents seen by TechCrunch, employees will get normal pay and medical benefits until January 31, 2023 and are “expected to work” through that period. Those laid off were also offered optional time with managers to talk.” If you lay me off you give me severance and I say adieu. I need that time to find other work. What kind of dystopian BS is this?
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  This is literally how they should works as directed by federal WARN act. Usually corporations just cut ties and pay out at least 60 days tho because it’s easier for both parties and you can get some concessions from employees like a gag clause
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    ‘ are “expected to work” through that period.’ That’s the bit that makes no sense though. A lay off means I get to fuck off. Bye. You cut ties with me. Pay me what I’m owed and then leave me be to find new work. Do not expect me to work knowing I’m being let go.
ChicagoDave 4y ago
The entire anti-college movement needs to die. This is a good step in that direction. LambdaSchool was an exploitative bad idea from the start.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  I agree that the percentage they take is predatory. However I have a junior we hired right out of lambda school who was not in a position to go back to college even if they could have gotten loans. He now makes six figures and has a career he doesn’t hate. The elitism of keeping knowledge in overpriced institutions is what needs to die. I know dudes who work construction that have deep math skills, but believe themselves idiots because schools don’t meet them half way or peak their curiosity and thus they did poorly.
  - ChicagoDave 4y ago
    The overpriced part is the problem, not college itself. 40 years ago anyone could complete a 4-year degree at nearly any college with grants and a part-time minimum wage job working 10/hrs a week. Today you could only do the same if that job paid $70/hr. The reason? Reagan and his racist republicans hated that college was a leveling playing field. They wanted to put a financial gate in front of college that only white upper middle class/rich students could navigate. Unfortunately, it went too far and it’s now even too expensive for anyone but the most wealthy people. We need to go back to subsidizing public college so anyone can work a part-time job with federal grants to complete a 4-year degree while affirming minimal grades along the way.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      I disagree here. Unified courses work for only a percentage of people, a lot of (most?) people find it boring. These are the people we are failing. We teach math, history you name it in such a mundane way that even I (who is obsessed with math and history) did poorly in the day to day (but passed because I’m a good test taker.)
      - 4y ago

295 points by lxm 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago

Not sure what BloomTech gives folks over FreeCodeCamp? Accreditation? Career services?

kadomony 4y ago

Austen Allred is a fuckin' tool.

grealish56 4y ago

btheshoe 4y ago

makes sense, considering that the current economic climate in the tech industry will impact bootcamp grads the most.

vcsmjk 4y ago

Glad to see this, Lambda School is extremely scummy. Can’t be bothered to operate legally, and lied about it: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lang=en https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lan... I really think that the law should be changed so that doing stuff like that would have been a prison term for the CEO (Allred).

avalys 4y ago
A prison term for not registering with some bureaucratic state agency? Why? The “California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education”? This is indistinguishable from parody.
- sandofsky 4y ago
  The BPPE was formed because California was the world capital of diploma-mills in the 80's. It falls under consumer protection, similar to how California has a special bureau that punishes scummy "extended warranty" companies. The reason you register is so the state can periodically check your marketing material and field students complaints. For example, Lambda School lied about how many students get jobs, and it would have been real nice for the agency to have stepped in before the lawsuits, which are still in litigation.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rrss 4y ago
  Why is it unreasonable to have people in a government agency to address fraudulent colleges and stuff? Do you feel the same way about the bureau of consumer protection in the US FTC?
  - lmm 4y ago
    You don't have to register or get a license from the FTC to open a business. At least I hope you don't.
    - ffssffss 4y ago
      It's not about the importance of the act of filing paperwork, it's the fraud of lying to customers that you are following the law and then taking their money. For what it's worth, I don't think prison would help. But maybe some non-dischargable liabilities and a ban from being a corporate officer would.
      - austenallred 4y ago
        If you were actually to commit fraud regulators can come for you whether you register or not. The act of registration is simply to make it easier to tell regulators what is happening.
- swang720 4y ago
  I'm actually glad there's a state department for this. Fraudulent private colleges are a _real_ problem.
SamReidHughes 4y ago
Ah yes, prison for trying to teach something useful across a zillion regulatory domains, sinecures for administrators at “real” universities while students rack up piles of debt for English degrees.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Just because one route is rotten doesn’t validate alternate scummy routes. Cops are rotten so drug dealers are good? Lol.
austenallred 4y ago
This is fundamentally not what happened and a prison term for this would be insane (even California's BPPE would agree with that). Our counsel told us we didn't need to register with the BPPE because we weren't offering in-person classes (this was somewhat rare back in 2017 - certainly more rare than now). The BPPE sent us a letter that said we needed to register and we did so and began working with the BPPE instantly. We never ever lied about that fact, and there was no attempt to avoid regulation in any way.
ec109685 4y ago
https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/ https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/ He also lied about having an auditor verify their placement rates. Caught asking Bookface for an auditor reference while proclaiming it was audited.
- austenallred 4y ago
  No, that is not true. We never claimed to have an audited report until we actually had an audited report. I asked if there was an auditor who would verify them after the fact to show that they were accurate, but we had had never claimed they were audited at that point. Unfortunately auditors doing that is a months-long process, so we could only have them audit subsequent reports (which they have done).

Varauk 4y ago

> employees will get normal pay and medical benefits until January 31, 2023 and are “expected to work” through that period. So severance but they have to keep working too? Seems rough. Hard to imagine anyone in that situation would focus on working for their soon-to-be former employer.

willcipriano 4y ago
Immigration status dodge? Say you "expect them to work", but don't enforce it, so they aren't technically unemployed and the H1B clock doesn't start ticking right away? Maybe trying to game unemployment insurance rates? If someone is employed they can't go on unemployment, hopefully in two months some of them find something new driving down your costs compared to firing them and having them apply right away? It's a pipe dream if they think anyone laid off will be putting any effort in.
- pkaye 4y ago
  The WARN act requires 60 days of notification before a mass layoff. So the company can choose to either notify employees 60 days before layoff or pay 60 days of severance pay and layoff immediately.
wheels 4y ago
That's actually very common in a lot of countries. I think the US is the outlier in the expectation that notice and stopping of work are concurrent. Same with quitting a job. In Germany it's normal to give 3 months notice before quitting.
kawsper 4y ago
In europe it's normal to keep working after employer-side contract terminations. In Denmark, depending on how long you've been with the company your employers contract termination notice period can be anywhere between 1 month (after 5 months with the company) to 6 months (after more than 8 years and 6 months with the company). Also, most commonly, if the employee is the one terminating the contract, the notice period is 1 month (although it can be negotiated higher for key employees). It is understood that your motivation will plummet when you're terminated, but you're still expected to maintain your responsibilites, and eventually, hand over your obligations. But you're also allowed to go to interviews during and if you get a new job your own 1 month termination warning will count. I've experienced that some employers will offer garden leave to the affected employees, as in they don't have to work or show up daily, but they will hand over responsibilites immediately and be available if there's any questions.

awb 4y ago

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had a great experience.

deleted 4y ago
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kodah 4y ago
I've met some people with physics and accounting degrees who took boot camps and had success, but the people I've seen succeed were already problem solvers and math-aware. They just needed to know the language and routines. On the other hand, I dropped out of school and have been programming for a majority of my life. I was never accused of being incompetent or underperforming, but there was a point in my career where I was not going to progress without deeper math skills. That said, it only takes a couple years to learn.
- tjvc 4y ago
  I'd be interested to hear more about this, as someone potentially in a similar position. What kinds of problems did you come up against where you felt your math skills were a limiting factor? What branches of math did you focus on learning?
  - kodah 4y ago
    Well, I've worked in cryptography orchestration (not actual cryptography, but I needed to understand how it worked from a basic POV) and in reliability engineering which is very stats heavy. Both of those became limited as I got more senior. For instance, a lot of problems can be identified by bucketing them in distributions - I didn't even really know or understand the math for representing a distribution. The long tail of where I actually used that was in a program that I used to create mock data for a set of devices my company was working on that simulated real household resource usage. These same math skills also became problematic as I started to need to learn/understand better applications of algorithms and data structures. There's a lot of assumptions baked in to things like asymptotics that you won't get without a background in math as well. You can certainly memorize certain things, but that has diminishing returns imo. I think I answered the last part above, but I refresh algebra and calculus. I read a stats book, took a Discreet course on Udemy, and read a lot on DS&A. I think that covers it. Took me about 3-4 years to chew through most of what I learned in my spare time.

babelfish 4y ago

Perhaps irrelevant to the thread at hand, but as I see other commenters mentioning programming fellowships I'll ask here: I recently saw a mention of a programming fellowship program on HN that I thought sounded really interesting. It was for experienced programmers, I believe mostly virtual, and was free-or-cheap. The idea behind it was to give programmers excited about programming a space to explore new ideas. I've been unable to find it since - Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

cyberbanjo 4y ago
Recurse Center? https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
gregsadetsky 4y ago
https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/ ?
- babelfish 4y ago
  Definitely it, thank you!

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

Have any ISA bootcamps become sustainable, or even better, led to VC-grade returns so far? It seems like a model that hasn't proven its ability to scale, but I'd be happy to see some counter-examples.

throwaway2729 4y ago

The CEO was cheering on when Musk laid off half the company. Not surprised.

mikeyouse 4y ago
Not aware of that but he always seemed like the kind of CEO who would benefit from a lot less time on social media trying to be a thought leader and a lot more time working on the company.
- austenallred 4y ago
  Hmm, perhaps. I actually don't spend as much time on social as it would seem. It takes very little time to dash off a tweet. It's almost like a background process that runs in my mind, and it helps me think through things and shave the edges off of my thinking. There's also probably a dopamine hit that I get from it that I'm not as aware of being a driving indicator, but I don't believe it negatively impacts my ability to run the company.
  - astura 4y ago
    Dude, bragging about how little thought you put into your social media posts is really not a good look.
wittycardio 4y ago
Absolute dirtbag
austenallred 4y ago
I wouldn't say I was cheering; I was simply acknowledging that, though difficult, Twitter certainly has too many employees for the amount of revenue they're bringing in, and I am skeptical of claims that Twitter will cease to function as they go from 8,000 employees to whatever the new number is (2,500 seems to be the latest)? There's certainly internal knowledge that is lost in a transition of that kind, but the amount of money Twitter was burning makes no sense, and while reducing numbers of engineers is risky (and complex systems require more engineers than most people assume), I completely believe that Twitter will be able to sustain the technical operations and move quickly in shipping product with a mere 2,000 engineers.

setgree 4y ago

Not sure what to make of this, but Austen, who is normally a prolific tweeter, hasn't tweeted about this yet [0]. I have gotten used to CEOs tweeting apologetic stuff when this happens. Perhaps this is norm should be bucked? I don't know. I just note that Austen is going against the grain. EDIT: missed this: "In a now-deleted tweet posted earlier today, Allred quoted a prior statement of gratitude for employees pushing through the work despite being attacked from all sides, adding “even more so today.” [0] https://twitter.com/Austen https://twitter.com/Austen

sandofsky 4y ago
The "attacked by all sides" comment is quite bizarre. Every pain the company experienced was self-inflicted. They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is a source of active lawsuits. They dodged California regulators and then lied to students about it. This invalidated every ISA in California before 2020. They launched an unpaid intern program, which created a backlash in the tech community. They told students they couldn't discharge their debt, which was a lie that go them in even more legal trouble. I could go on and on, but the recurring pattern is them doing something reprehensible and the "attack" is "getting caught."
- digianarchist 4y ago
  Vincent Woo’s reporting is a must read if you’re considering any interaction with this company.
  - ZephyrBlu 4y ago
    Seconded. Vincent puts out good stuff! https://twitter.com/fulligin https://twitter.com/fulligin
- ec109685 4y ago
  Also, lame they charge companies to attend Bloomtech career fairs: https://www.bloomtech.com/hire-from-bloomtech https://www.bloomtech.com/hire-from-bloomtech

AlbertCory 4y ago

I interviewed a number of veterans & spouses for Operation Code: https://operationcode.org/podcast https://operationcode.org/podcast Not all were bootcamp grads; a lot went to traditional 4-year colleges. One guy said that in his bootcamp, several of the students had a job offer before they even finished. Things may be different now, a few years later, but we tend to underestimate how many regular old businesses need a web site and some kind of analytics. They don't pay like FAANG companies and they can't hire the sort of people who'd work there. Edit: I should have mentioned that one of Operation Code's signal achievements was to make code schools eligible for GI Bill money. I found, in asking vets why they enlisted, that "paying for college when you get out" is a big, big motivator. There are some who study remotely while they're still in.

MivLives 4y ago

I graduated Lambda School and currently have been hired and work in a software position. I don't encourage people to go to... Bloomtech they're calling it now. AMA. I was earlier in the life of Lambda. I got what I needed out of it but I watched a lot who didn't.

malikNF 4y ago
What do you wish they could have done differently?
- MivLives 4y ago
  Honestly, not much. I'm one of the success stories. I think I was just early enough to have small classes and knew enough basic html and programming concepts from doing IT work to have the bootcamp work for me. I was also incredibly lucky the company that hired me had a program where they took on essentially fresh college grads and boot camp grads, and funneled them into Junior positions with a project before you were assigned a team. It took me a lot of interviews before I actually got a job.
  - OrwellianChild 4y ago
    What do you think you learned at the company thru the early project and junior work that you didn't get from Lambda?
    - MivLives 4y ago
      This is a really good question. 1. Scale. When you're self taught you can make decisions that only really impact yourself. Or maybe 3-4 other people for some of the projects. The company that I walked into has two monoliths (front end, and backend), and working in a code base that's 5 gigs files is a lot different. There's so many files. My editor is now slow. There's no way for me to understand the details of the entire codebase. Badly documented internal libraries are all over the place. This isn't what a bootcamp or self made codebase looks like for a beginner normally. 2. Specific practical stuff. I had been coding JS mostly on Linux. I had to learn PHP on Mac OS. I had never used either. And a number of other tools connected to the build process that are internal to this company. By not dropping you straight into a team you can also control where you landed a bit. People who didn't like UI stuff ended up a deeper backend team, people who prefer ui ended up more towards the front end. Almost everyone in the group I cam with (17 people) had to learn PHP. When you have 16 other people learning the same stuff at the same time, you start to work together and organize into groups. We begin producing our own docs for the project and other helpful things.

tschellenbach 4y ago

Teaching more people how to code is a very noble and worthy goal. I for one applaud the hard work the team at Lambda/Bloom does. The press coverage has been insane especially if you think about all the problems universities have.

user3939382 4y ago

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

austenallred 4y ago
If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired. You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job. BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach everything there possibly could be to know about how software works.
- user3939382 4y ago
  My point isn’t to learn 100% but how about 5 or 10? The complexity of the work just doesn’t seem to match the duration of these programs.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally. That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than most of us like to pretend). If you eliminate context switching, have the right tooling and instruction, yeah you aren't coming out the other side a principal engineer, but you can certainly build stuff, contribute to code the right way on teams, understand data structures and algorithms enough to make stuff performant, problem solve and build a whole lot of stuff and a lot of value. That's enough to start getting paid, and 30 years later you can continue to marvel at how you're still just scratching the surface. That's kind of beautiful, actually.

connectsnk 4y ago

hancholo 4y ago

I've been on the fence on going to a bootcamp for years, since the dev bootcamp days because I don't feel I could complete a CS degree given all that math. I've also been in various FAANG companies the past 5 years and while not in a dev/swe role I have picked up some things as I go. The front end and user interfaces is something I've been interested for a while so I think I may pivot to front end dev or some kind of automation engineer for UI testing. Are there any release engineers here?

lazypenguin 4y ago
If you are motivated you can learn everything that’s in a boot camp on your own. However, going through a boot camp successfully is a good signal during hiring that you have some experience in programming in relavent technology. It’s much harder to signal your experience when it’s all self taught. Whether it’s good value for the money depends on your own circumstances.
- hancholo 4y ago
  That's a fair point. From what I've seen it really comes down to the hours you put in outside of class and your own side projects. Being able to speak the language, walk through the stack you used and why, issues you ran into and how you overcame them.

mirzap 4y ago

Lambda School always looked as a scam to me. I mean, $20k+ for a "bootcamp" and couple of courses is crazy expensive. It's like they designed this program to squeeze all the money from people who can not afford ridiculous tuition fees in the US by giving them hope they will progress faster if they pay them instead of self educating or taking much cheaper competitor's offers. Udacity has very similar thing with curriculum for various positions, 1:1 mentoring, interview prep etc. for a fraction of BloomTech price, like 1/10 or even 1/20. Which I still consider expensive, since cost of digital goods are close to 0 to replicate and deliver to more people. Point I make here is they can earn more by delivering $100 program to 1m of students or even 1/5 of that, than delivering $1.2k program to 10k students or $20k program to 1k students.

dzader 4y ago
it's a verified scam, your intuition was correct

throwaway5959 4y ago

Why anyone would give money to this guy is beyond me. Hey, we fucked up our reputation so bad, instead of making good on it, let’s change our name to a shitty Silicon Valley-esque one. It’s a shame nothing will happen to Austen after all the people he’s hurt.

j-bos 4y ago
Were you hurt?
- dzader 4y ago
  no, but thousands of people who were simply trying to make a better life for themselves were grifted by Austen and his merry gang of con artists
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - j-bos 4y ago
    Sorry about the phrasing of my comment, reading it now it comes off as snarky. I ask because before I attended, I read many posts by people who left Lambda with a bad taste and that put me off from attending. But I did, and now I could play in an ad copy. But that's my data point. I'd like to talk to someone who had a bad time with Lambda, in a non combat context, because we clearly had vastly different outcomes and I clearly I'm missing or misunderstanding some important context.

Stranger43 4y ago

Where you get the statistics that shows real value to coding camp, despite a lack of tech passion is when you teach modern data science tools to "domain users" currently stuck within the limitations of excel(The only successful low code platform in the market), or web skills to existing content managers, but that is a much smaller market then trying to push the vision of easy money to youngsters still trying to break into the job market as something other then baristas or line cooks. And the companies that chased the market for youngsters without any real passion or plan is now running out of customers due both the the fact credit is now tight and that the publics infatuation with the tech industries is waning. And from the looks of it BloomTech looks to definitely target the market for youngster as their primary revenue stream.

miketery 4y ago
This is excellent insight. In a previous role, on the side I ran an SQL training for the customer success team, and that was fun and beneficial. What kind of curriculum do you think is best for these folks coming from excel or the other BI tools? Is python jupyter too advanced? It feels like we’re still early in the tooling for “no code”.
- Stranger43 4y ago
  SQL is definitely where the curriculum should start. and Jupyter(or in reality pandas and matplotlib) is definitely not too advanced unless you make it so by talking machine learning and complex statistical modelling. What gets used in the organizations that do try and exit excel is typically batch jobs written in either python(pandas) or powershell taking data from one or more databases for display in a reporting framework like tableau. no code is im my view basically a myth when we start dealing with systems more complex then what the average high school student can create as a spreadsheet, as the effort in learning the low code platforms idiosyncrasies are similar to those needed to use an modern scripting language.

cercatrova 4y ago

Vincent Woo who sold CoderPad also did some investigative journalism on Lambda School / BloomTech showing that they didn't really place as many people as they claimed they did and that generally the company had some internal dysfunction. https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569?lang=en https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569?lang...

yrgulation 4y ago

Bootcamp “grads”? I mean really? Folks, this is a scam.

bitL 4y ago

Wasn't BloomTech replacing its staff with contractors from the some tech sweatshop for a year already?

j-bos 4y ago

Bias declaration: I'm a hired Bloomtech grad, so overall a satisfied customer/student. Meta comment: It's intersting to see how many comments on any Bloomtech/Lambda post are very knee-jerk in nature, mostly negative some positive. And to be clear, I'd say most are thoughtful. The thing that strikes me is that I can't tell if this is normal HN tenor for a tech story or if it's just because I have opinions on the subject. The only other stories witg comments that strike me as remotely similar are those dealing with privacy. So an ask, if Bloomtech is something you don't care about, neither positively nor negatively, do you find the comments for this article of average "pitch"?

lazypenguin 4y ago
Yes and perhaps your bias clouds your perception or desires a more positive reception of your “alma mater”. Boot camps generally illicit a negative reaction from experienced programmers. Primarily because their primary stated goal is to give a “student” enough experience in an extremely compressed amount of time for them to enter the workforce as productive developers. The issue is that experience, by definition, can only be gained over time and with diverse trials and tribulations. Only the most motivated bootcampers can achieve this during their program by supplementing with copious amounts of self-learning. Unfortunately even then a boot campers “experience” is quite limited but many come out of their program believing they are equals to more experienced mid/senior level programmers which results in those in the industry having animosity to those individuals. I think this explains the general “negative tone” you see in this comment section. Are boot camps bad? No, I think they are quite useful but I think we need to acknowledge that they really only effectively create a pipeline of junior developers and replace the need for corporations to have internal education/training programs.
- sidlls 4y ago
  The experience argument seems thin: new grads have a similar issue, and yet companies have hiring programs targeting these individuals, sometimes aggressively. It seems the core of your argument is not that they are inexperienced, but rather that the bootcamps somehow convince them they are not and this leads to friction in the positions they seek and the expectations around the work they're capable of accomplishing.

thenerdhead 4y ago

I've always been conflicted about this company. The marketing/news is always controversial(ISA, outcomes, lawsuits, etc), but clever in terms of media manipulation(more eyes on it to their service). The service is noble and good to fill the demand and change people's lives. It's hard to use the words morally wrong and noble goals in the same sentence though given it's a contradiction. Layoffs suck regardless though.

segmondy 4y ago

No surprise, the founder was just on Twitter praising Elon for staff cutting and marveling at the amount of money saved.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

adamsmith143 4y ago

This one's a head-scratcher. Presumably in a downturn people want to upskill or change careers so demand would go up for a program like this? Though I do think it is far too expensive for what you get.

adoxyz 4y ago

My brother went to Lambda school 2019-2020. Would not recommend. They had recent grads that had just completed Lambda the previous year teaching the new students and most of them had just a vague grasp on the content matter. So many inaccuracies and bad practices taught. The only good thing about it was that it was structured and you were coding each day for 5-8hrs so if you weren't the most self-motivated person, you were held accountable. But again, a lot of it was taught badly or inaccurately, so unless you spent a lot of time doing outside research on your own, you weren't learning much. If you do have self-motivation, you don't need Lambda or BloomTech. After graduation, there was no follow up of any kind. So overall, pretty disappointing.

2devnull 4y ago
I guess that sounds a lot like a community college to me, but maybe faster and better. Can non-self motivated people succeed if they go to say an Ivy League? I didn’t, so it’s a sincere curiosity for me. Would Zuckerberg have ended up bagging groceries if he went to a community college rather than Harvard?
- Kalium 4y ago
  My understanding of community colleges is that they generally make a sincere effort to have qualified instructors with a good grasp of the materials.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    If I am interpreting the parent's comment correctly, he's referring to TAs (we called them "team leads") not instructors. Based on the context of the comment I'm assuming that this was a time when we had a TA for every 8 students on top of a layering of instructors for each cohort, and indeed the TAs would do a lot of the 1:1 interaction. There has never been a time we didn't have qualified instructors, though I would readily admit the quality of our instructors has improved over time as we got better at instructional design and hiring.
- blululu 4y ago

gigatexal 4y ago

Ahh a rebrand is always a good sign /end-sarcasm.

gigatexal 4y ago

Wtf. This is not how layoffs work. “ Employees were called into an All Hands meeting this morning in which BloomTech CEO Austen Allred notified staff of the impending layoffs. After the meeting, those impacted were notified via e-mail. According to documents seen by TechCrunch, employees will get normal pay and medical benefits until January 31, 2023 and are “expected to work” through that period. Those laid off were also offered optional time with managers to talk.” If you lay me off you give me severance and I say adieu. I need that time to find other work. What kind of dystopian BS is this?

dilyevsky 4y ago
This is literally how they should works as directed by federal WARN act. Usually corporations just cut ties and pay out at least 60 days tho because it’s easier for both parties and you can get some concessions from employees like a gag clause
- gigatexal 4y ago
  ‘ are “expected to work” through that period.’ That’s the bit that makes no sense though. A lay off means I get to fuck off. Bye. You cut ties with me. Pay me what I’m owed and then leave me be to find new work. Do not expect me to work knowing I’m being let go.

ChicagoDave 4y ago

The entire anti-college movement needs to die. This is a good step in that direction. LambdaSchool was an exploitative bad idea from the start.

edgyquant 4y ago
I agree that the percentage they take is predatory. However I have a junior we hired right out of lambda school who was not in a position to go back to college even if they could have gotten loans. He now makes six figures and has a career he doesn’t hate. The elitism of keeping knowledge in overpriced institutions is what needs to die. I know dudes who work construction that have deep math skills, but believe themselves idiots because schools don’t meet them half way or peak their curiosity and thus they did poorly.
- ChicagoDave 4y ago
  The overpriced part is the problem, not college itself. 40 years ago anyone could complete a 4-year degree at nearly any college with grants and a part-time minimum wage job working 10/hrs a week. Today you could only do the same if that job paid $70/hr. The reason? Reagan and his racist republicans hated that college was a leveling playing field. They wanted to put a financial gate in front of college that only white upper middle class/rich students could navigate. Unfortunately, it went too far and it’s now even too expensive for anyone but the most wealthy people. We need to go back to subsidizing public college so anyone can work a part-time job with federal grants to complete a 4-year degree while affirming minimal grades along the way.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    I disagree here. Unified courses work for only a percentage of people, a lot of (most?) people find it boring. These are the people we are failing. We teach math, history you name it in such a mundane way that even I (who is obsessed with math and history) did poorly in the day to day (but passed because I’m a good test taker.)
    - 4y ago