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Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

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Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#61

Post by sampo »

codethief wrote: post #48
lawn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: $30k is almost exactly how much the Swedish student loan gives you for 5 years of full time study, which I used to pay for everything (housing, food, clothes, computers, books for school etc).

You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden ?

Seems you get $84 per week as an allowance, and can withdraw $210 a week as a loan. These are 2016 numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden)

You also get, I think, about $150 a month housing allowance.

So on top of your $150 + 4×$84 = ca. $500 monthly income, you only need to take about $800 a month as a loan to survive. (Remember, no tuition fees.)

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#62

Post by soneca »

What is sad to me looking from the outside it is that it didn’t have to be that way. Most of negative reviews seem to boil down to too many students, not enough support, not professional enough course management. Symptoms of growing pains. But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? It didn’t. It shouldn’t. It was at the expense of their students.

Lambda School seemed a great idea from the start, revolutionary even. And the investors (pg mostly) would praise how insanely ambitious the founder was. Then I started following him on Twitter and saw that. He had that drive to be the Facebook of education, the slack of boot camps. But education doesn’t work that way. A new Facebook user can start using it 4 hours a day from the first day and get all the value they expect. A student can’t. Students need time and support to learn. But Lambda and its founder couldn’t wait for that if they wanted to become a unicorn.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#63

Post by FeeJai »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #15

I just want to give a quick shout out to 42. They're closed for Covid19 right now. But if you can wait for them to open up, this is a good place to look into - https://www.42.us.org/ or https://www.42.fr/ (if you're in Europe).

42 SV in Fremont has closed down for good. Students have been transferred to an online curriculum managed from Paris and were kicked out of the dorms in a rather hastily and stresful manner. Despite having its own flaws, I was a great fan of 42 and think this is a shame

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#64

Post by thinkingemote »

michaelt wrote: post #42
st1x7 wrote: post #8

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

Lambda School pushes "income sharing agreements" where once you're paid over $50k you pay back 17% of your income until you've paid back $30k. Depending on your opinion, it's either a brilliant investment in students, aligning the interests of the school and the students - or it's a loan by a slightly different name, fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.

For the consumer therefore it matters what the actual value of the thing they bought for $30k is.

Will it lead to a $150K job, or a $80K job?

Will not doing it lead to a $80K job?

For the company, what risk do they have if most students will earn over 50K regardless of the quality of their product?

I'm not good at economics, but I think one can look at this deal from both the consumer and the provider and see that there are flaws from both sides. Trust is key.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#65

Post by jon-wood »

whatyesaid wrote: post #51
AntiImperialist wrote: post #22

Isn't their selling point that you don't have to pay unless you get hired? I haven't read the fine print though.

The people doing such bootcamps are either going to try it, hate it and say bye; or they're going to be the type of people who are determined. To quote the guy: "People in my cohort don't even understand basic Javascript and I'm not faring much better. I'm nowhere ready for a job. Now I have to find an education elsewhere and probably teach myself because now I don't trust bootcamps. Also, I will have to pay it back.…

> The ton factor becomes lower if you go to a brick university that forces challenging material and theory.

I'm just not sold on this. If you want to be able to actually work in software development then whether you're going to a bootcamp or a university there's going to be ton of extra-curricular learning and practice that you need.

I've worked with quite a lot of fresh university graduates over my career and you can tell which ones have actually practised beyond doing the required coursework, because they understand to some degree how software is developed professionally. The ones who didn't do further learning can certainly write code to some degree, and would completely demolish me in some sort of competitive algorithm contest, but they're going to stumble on things like using git and automated testing. They're also going to have trouble taking requirements and working out what to do with them.

Bootcamp graduates tend to be somewhat the other way round, they get the professional side of things, but struggle with the actual software development because they have a shallow knowledge of each element.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#66

Post by Tomte »

soneca wrote: post #62

What is sad to me looking from the outside it is that it didn’t have to be that way. Most of negative reviews seem to boil down to too many students, not enough support, not professional enough course management. Symptoms of growing pains. But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? It didn’t. It shouldn’t. It was at the expense of their students. Lambda School seemed a great idea from the start, revolutio…

> But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast?

Isn't that obvious? They have investors. It's precisely what Joel writes about in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#67

Post by dave_sullivan »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #11
st1x7 wrote: post #8

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

What costs more, $30,000 and 6 months, or $30,000 and 48 months?

Bit of a fallacy to think you’ve become a better programmer by spending $5,000 per month on instruction instead of $625 per month, isn’t it? Or that the student with 6 months instruction is somehow more employable than the student with 48 months?

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#68

Post by p_l »

sivizius wrote: post #41
jcelerier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a degree for muuuuch less in europe. In france it'd be something like 1k€ at most over your whole post-high-school studies unless you go to specialized art school or something like that.

or Germany, where the only cost you might have is for the public transport ticket or something like that, and even this is often optional…I am actually curious why there are not so many students from the USA in German universities? Or is this due to language?

Foreign students usually don't fall under the same funding and have to pay full price, while EU citizens are entitled to the same level of support as localssl.

Which leads to fun times where English had to pay max UK rate at Scottish universities but EU citizens paid the same as Scots.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#69

Post by Zitrax »

henye wrote: post #57
pram wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$30k covered housing and food for 5 years? Seems like there has to be some other subsidy present you're not mentioning lol

The author numbers are outdated. You can get up to $65k for 5 years of studies.

Yes. I got ~30k in Sweden, but that's around 20 years ago.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#70

Post by raverbashing »

michaelt wrote: post #42
st1x7 wrote: post #8

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

Lambda School pushes "income sharing agreements" where once you're paid over $50k you pay back 17% of your income until you've paid back $30k. Depending on your opinion, it's either a brilliant investment in students, aligning the interests of the school and the students - or it's a loan by a slightly different name, fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.

> fooling the naive into overpaying for instruction from teachers who barely make minimum wage.

Regular degrees are pretty much just like that as well

The problem with regular degrees is not their actual cost. It's that you're sold (and most people want to buy) the experience. That's where they compete (and what "drives costs" up).

Don't play that game. Though of course not studying in an Ivy League univ. means you don't get to be buddy buddy with the next Mark Z which might just offer you a job at a nice place because you were buddies and oh this "entry level job" starts at 200k and there's your student loans sorted. But that's if you're moderately lucky and are competent at either tech and/or some form of people skills.

(before I "something something public education something something it's cheaper to study somewhere else even considering relocation costs")

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