19 ms·

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.

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.
prescriptivist 4y ago
> AMA. Were you aware of YC before attending Lambda (ie, did the association lend credibility to Lambda) or did you find YC after attending?
- Egrodo 4y ago
  Not OP but I also attended a part time Lambda School cohort around 5 years ago and the YC association was huge for me.
- MivLives 4y ago
  I was doing help desk, but I was pretty plugged into tech news. I was on hacker news and saw the initial post here by Austin himself. It seemed like a good idea and much better then what I was doing in the time. I was frugal and had expenses saved up to go a year at it. At the time I knew YC was involved and I think it did lend an air of legitimacy to a super new concept.
onetimeusename 4y ago
Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  If you go on the HN Algolia, there are a lot of posts from students and people involved with Lambda over the years that might paint a clearer picture of what kind of dysfunction was taking place at the company.
- austenallred 4y ago
  I don't think the assertion that "lambda grads weren't able to get good jobs" is true. Obviously not every single student has been hired, but our hiring rates have always been pretty good (they're better now than they were in the past), and thousands of BloomTech (we had to change our name because of a trademark lawsuit) grads have increased their lifetime earnings by billions of dollars, and work at nearly every major company you can think of.
  - MivLives 4y ago
    There were for sure people I knew who got good positions in companies. I don't mean to imply otherwise.
  - Dwolb 4y ago
    What are the hiring rates and the average and median improvements in salary?
    - austenallred 4y ago
      You can see our 2021 audited outcomes report here with all of the data https://www.bloomtech.com/reports/outcomes-report https://www.bloomtech.com/reports/outcomes-report. (Note: 2021 outcomes report is very recent as you have to get students graduated, give them time to get placed, etc.) Some of it I'm thrilled about, some of it shows us where we have more work to do (or need to do better in admissions - candidly it's always a difficult balance between giving folks chance and certainty of those folks' outcomes.) High level: 90% of those who are job seeking got hired. Our median hired grad increased their income by $27,500 (and that's just their first job - obviously software/data science salaries shoot up quickly after a first job). About half of our students have degrees, and half do not.
kirillbobyrev 4y ago
Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).
- MivLives 4y ago
  I do not have this knowledge. There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? My general advice is to get some one to try https://www.theodinproject.com/ https://www.theodinproject.com/ as it's free. If they try it for a bit and find they don't like it, no harm they can just stop. If they want to continue after a bit and still want to go a boot camp they're more likely to succeed at any of them.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    It's certainly true that BloomTech isn't for everyone, and that not everyone will want to become a software engineer. We try to filter for that, but it's tough. Now we have a free trial (https://www.bloomtech.com/risk-free-trial https://www.bloomtech.com/risk-free-trial) that everyone can try out for three weeks without even signing any documents. A lot of people like the idea of making software engineering salaries, but don't particularly like building software. Then there are others that fall in love. We haven't found a great way to predict other than having people try it out.
  - a_lieb 4y ago
    > There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? I think you're talking about either the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) [1], or Course Report [2] (both still up). CIRR is a body run by the code school industry itself to monitor its own results; Course Report has over 50k reviews by students as well as articles with tips about how to pick a code school, "top x code schools for y" lists, etc. CIRR seems to be reasonably rigorous and honest. Their reports are easily available on the site. I've poked around in their reports, and there's a huge range of results, from less than 50% employment at 6 months to 80%+. There seems to be little to no correlation between the reputation of a given school and the actual outcomes (some of the most reputable schools had employment rates of 50%-60% at 6 months). A big trend I noticed was that the schools with the highest employment rates were relatively low-profile schools teaching unsexy technologies that are low in SV buzz but nonetheless have high demand, like Java and C#. [1] https://cirr.org/ https://cirr.org/ [2] https://www.coursereport.com/ https://www.coursereport.com/
gniv 4y ago
Somewhat tangential: Lambda School sounds so much better to me than Bloomtech. Any idea why they changed it?
- yunohn 4y ago
  I thought it was PR white washing - https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/16/lambda-school-rebrand-bloom-institute-of-technology/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/16/lambda-school-rebrand-bloo...
  - austenallred 4y ago
    No, the fact that it was a trademark lawsuit is a matter of public record. https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv04060/344815?amp https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv...
- whiplash451 4y ago
  Agree 100%
- cocoflunchy 4y ago
  There was a trademark issue with another company I think.
- austenallred 4y ago
  Because of a trademark lawsuit https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv04060/344815?amp https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv...

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.

prescriptivist 4y ago

> AMA. Were you aware of YC before attending Lambda (ie, did the association lend credibility to Lambda) or did you find YC after attending?

Egrodo 4y ago
Not OP but I also attended a part time Lambda School cohort around 5 years ago and the YC association was huge for me.
MivLives 4y ago
I was doing help desk, but I was pretty plugged into tech news. I was on hacker news and saw the initial post here by Austin himself. It seemed like a good idea and much better then what I was doing in the time. I was frugal and had expenses saved up to go a year at it. At the time I knew YC was involved and I think it did lend an air of legitimacy to a super new concept.

onetimeusename 4y ago

Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?

heavyset_go 4y ago
If you go on the HN Algolia, there are a lot of posts from students and people involved with Lambda over the years that might paint a clearer picture of what kind of dysfunction was taking place at the company.
austenallred 4y ago
I don't think the assertion that "lambda grads weren't able to get good jobs" is true. Obviously not every single student has been hired, but our hiring rates have always been pretty good (they're better now than they were in the past), and thousands of BloomTech (we had to change our name because of a trademark lawsuit) grads have increased their lifetime earnings by billions of dollars, and work at nearly every major company you can think of.
- MivLives 4y ago
  There were for sure people I knew who got good positions in companies. I don't mean to imply otherwise.
- Dwolb 4y ago
  What are the hiring rates and the average and median improvements in salary?
  - austenallred 4y ago
    You can see our 2021 audited outcomes report here with all of the data https://www.bloomtech.com/reports/outcomes-report https://www.bloomtech.com/reports/outcomes-report. (Note: 2021 outcomes report is very recent as you have to get students graduated, give them time to get placed, etc.) Some of it I'm thrilled about, some of it shows us where we have more work to do (or need to do better in admissions - candidly it's always a difficult balance between giving folks chance and certainty of those folks' outcomes.) High level: 90% of those who are job seeking got hired. Our median hired grad increased their income by $27,500 (and that's just their first job - obviously software/data science salaries shoot up quickly after a first job). About half of our students have degrees, and half do not.

kirillbobyrev 4y ago

Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).

MivLives 4y ago
I do not have this knowledge. There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? My general advice is to get some one to try https://www.theodinproject.com/ https://www.theodinproject.com/ as it's free. If they try it for a bit and find they don't like it, no harm they can just stop. If they want to continue after a bit and still want to go a boot camp they're more likely to succeed at any of them.
- austenallred 4y ago
  It's certainly true that BloomTech isn't for everyone, and that not everyone will want to become a software engineer. We try to filter for that, but it's tough. Now we have a free trial (https://www.bloomtech.com/risk-free-trial https://www.bloomtech.com/risk-free-trial) that everyone can try out for three weeks without even signing any documents. A lot of people like the idea of making software engineering salaries, but don't particularly like building software. Then there are others that fall in love. We haven't found a great way to predict other than having people try it out.
- a_lieb 4y ago
  > There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? I think you're talking about either the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) [1], or Course Report [2] (both still up). CIRR is a body run by the code school industry itself to monitor its own results; Course Report has over 50k reviews by students as well as articles with tips about how to pick a code school, "top x code schools for y" lists, etc. CIRR seems to be reasonably rigorous and honest. Their reports are easily available on the site. I've poked around in their reports, and there's a huge range of results, from less than 50% employment at 6 months to 80%+. There seems to be little to no correlation between the reputation of a given school and the actual outcomes (some of the most reputable schools had employment rates of 50%-60% at 6 months). A big trend I noticed was that the schools with the highest employment rates were relatively low-profile schools teaching unsexy technologies that are low in SV buzz but nonetheless have high demand, like Java and C#. [1] https://cirr.org/ https://cirr.org/ [2] https://www.coursereport.com/ https://www.coursereport.com/

gniv 4y ago

Somewhat tangential: Lambda School sounds so much better to me than Bloomtech. Any idea why they changed it?

yunohn 4y ago
I thought it was PR white washing - https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/16/lambda-school-rebrand-bloom-institute-of-technology/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/16/lambda-school-rebrand-bloo...
- austenallred 4y ago
  No, the fact that it was a trademark lawsuit is a matter of public record. https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv04060/344815?amp https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv...
whiplash451 4y ago
Agree 100%
cocoflunchy 4y ago
There was a trademark issue with another company I think.
austenallred 4y ago
Because of a trademark lawsuit https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv04060/344815?amp https://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/4:2019cv...