What happened to good ol’ 4-year college educations?? Lmao what even is this
Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
151–160 of 444 posts
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#152The thing about efficient markets is that lucrative activities which don't produce much value—borderline scams—can block activity which would be highly wealth creating. For example, there could be a huge untapped retail market for financial derivatives such as interest rate and fx hedges. However, it's very hard to access this market because historically anyone who has started selling such products has pivoted toward…
Just because it’s more lucrative to rip people off doesn’t mean it doesn’t make financial sense to run a good code bootcamp. That’s like saying it doesn’t make sense to work because it’s more lucrative to steal or live off welfare. But sure, it’s a common problem in a market economy. Presumably issues of information asymmetry should be alleviated in the days of the internet.
The problem is when you sell the truth and your competitors sell "all of our graduates earn 500k within two months of graduating", which one is going to get the customers?
Part of the problem is the students themselves who see six figures and think "I want a piece of that" without necessarily being interested. The code bootcamps take full advantage of this.
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
It’s worthless. I’m not hiring someone from some bootcamp
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#154Most open world reviews i.e. non curated ones I have seen for Lambda school have been negative to at best neutral. I believe they have a place in the education market if they do it right. Model is good enough but execution appear to be severely lacking. It’s interesting that pg is a big fan though.
> pg is a big fan though He seems to have a lax definition of the word "earnest". (See his latest blog post.)
Observe the actions, not the words. If you are confused, most probably it is a scam, trust your instinct. It takes time for everything to unravel.
quoted from: richajak, the not-so-wise man
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couldn't you make this same argument for any school in the US? Maybe We're getting vague here (my fault.) What do we actually mean by "teach yourself?" Nobody is spoon-feeding you knowledge. You get a curriculum to follow. It seems to me that if you get through the program and then land a job from it, then you got some value from the program. Maybe you could have done that on your own. But if you're looking at a boot…
Well, a normal university provides much more support than Lambda school seems to do, lectures, graded homework, labs, exams etc, so my point was that if Lambda doesn't provide that and is only really a way to teach yourself, then 30k is too much. University of course also provides a lot of things not directly related to the teaching, the student experience, a network, for some people the first experience of living on…
Let's say you have two programs to select from. One program has a 60% placement rate, but has horrible quality. The other has a 30% placement rate, but high quality. Let's say that an independent 3rd party does the quality assessment from invites to participate and from student feedback. This same body also finds that the employers and starting salaries for each program is roughly equal. Would you care about quality? I would select the first option. The higher placement rate has the greater value due to the greater probability of landing a job. It's like playing a pocket pair of Aces vs a pocket pair of Jacks in Texas Hold'em. I would consider the possibility of placing myself with a job as coming in with a pocket pair of 7's.
What else matters? I guarantee that you'll learn something through an intensive effort of pacing along with the curriculum. I'm also sure that it's not going to be enough to feel comfortable that first day of the job.
What's the placement rate? If that rate has plummeted or has always been horrible, then that's all I need to hear.
Maybe what they are really teaching is the process of getting yourself into a self-learning mode of work. I have to learn new things every day. I would bet my day looks similar to those in Lambda. Maybe it's a "wax on, wax off" sort of thing which looks like BS but actually works if you don't get hung up on things outside of the end-goal. As long as the employer placement numbers are good (and maybe they aren't,) then I'm a believer.
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#156I suspect they set out with noble intentions and then realised it is a conversion-funnel game where they absorb the cost up front with the hope of recouping cost and profit later on. If 100% students passing through landed a job then the unit economics would work provided hard costs are low enough. Business might even be successful at 30% post Lambda School employment. However, as they scale that number will fall because the type of student they recruit might change and the pandemic also having a short term effect. As % post employment falls revenues fall and more students are needed to increase absolute revs. This could also go hand in hand with cost-cutting, of which there is evidence. All in all, an experiment in business model is taking place.
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#157Paying "30k for a code bootcamp"? Is that in US dollars? That's insane, regardless of the quality of the instruction...
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it doesn't make economic sense to work rather than steal, unless there are enforced rules and sanctions against stealing. Most people who choose to work do so either because of the sanctions, or because of various reasons which are not about maximizing returns in a narrow economic sense.
The post didn't say that it made sense _relative_ to something else, it just said running a school in the proper way didn't make economic sense, and that is not true (except in the sense pointed out in another comment, that honest schools may be outcompeted). My point is just that a project's economic viability doesn't depend on the relative merits of other projects.
> a project's economic viability doesn't depend on the relative merits of other projects.
I'm not sure this is true - certainly the opposite of this statement is the central thesis of most investment activity.
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden ?
My friend did his Masters from Finland and said his monthly expenses were about 200-300 Euros in his first year. I think he spent a bit more in subsequent years after getting a part-time job. That's 18000+ euros if extended to 5 years. Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.
It’s not a “social democracy” It’s a democratic country, with a market economy, and a social democratic approach to labor relations.
Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
#160What 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…
> praise how insanely ambitious the founder was It seems to me that VC's often link ambition with intelligence and other assorted skills needed to get the job done.
I believe Adam Neumann was ambitious, with a "unique leadership style".