Thread about Holberton School and the bootcamp warning signs

We (along with the review sites) will hold a raffle or offer swag to anyone who leaves a review (positive or negative).

One of our students last year won a gift card from the review site for leaving a review and tweeted “I just got a $50 Amazon gift card for leaving a review for Lambda School” and it turned into a whole thing. We literally weren’t involved in that in any way.

Trying to twist that into “Lambda School pays students to leave reviews” is 100% incorrect.

The thing is, reviews (in general) are usually biased towards the positive. Even more strongly so when you consider that (in the case of a coding bootcamp) you've just spent an enormous amount of time, money and energy there - nobody's going to want to trash it.

I think we'd agree that in the case where someone had a great experience with your school, they'd post a great review, and when someone had a truly terrible experience, they'd probably post a terrible review. But what about when someone has a merely "meh" experience? In that case, someone will likely (with a bit of a push towards the positive) write a simple, positive review. Maybe they thought they'd have learned faster by themselves... but there's a gift card? And my friends will see the review? Hmm... I'll just write something short and positive.

In general, I think there are a lot of things that are a careful balance, easy to tip in one way or another - politics, public opinion, social issues - and reviews are certainly one of these things.

I read through her criticisms of lambda as well, I've been keeping tabs on them and they seem legit. Again the only real complaint I've seen people have has been related to price. Not in a "I won't pay it" kind of way but in a "wish it was less" kind of way. To me that's just grumbling and not a real critique.

This was interesting to read as I attend a school called 42, which functions very similarly to Holberton but free. I've not been to Holberton but I'm about 80% sure that their and our initial curriculum was both based off the work done by Epita and Epitech. I should note that ours has changed as there are teams working on it and many of our students and former students create some as well (I myself made a suite of projects for swift that is about to be rolled out). So it would make sense if they changed theirs too.

The no teacher thing works a lot better than you would think, it teaches you to figure things out, to ask questions, to collaborate and usually when you teach others it helps to solidify your understanding. I actually think if anyone studied this way for a few months it would improve them more than any degree. I'm not advocating against degrees, but this being able to figure things out for yourself skillset often feels like a superpower.

None of these schools are without their problems, everything in life is a tradeoff after all. But I'm insulted that she would imply that everyone who writes about their school in a positive way would be paid. I genuinely believe in building up a community and in strengthening my network, so when I write an optimistic piece on medium or twitter or HN or wherever it's not because I don't believe in it or am being paid, but an effort to pay it forward.

I'm not willing to shift through her tweets to find out what she said about Lambda, I have friends doing that program, and have considered it myself, I follow Austen and some of their staff on twitter, they seem genuine, people that have graduated from it have only good things to say. The only real criticism I've heard is that it's fast paced, which isn't even necessarily a bad thing.