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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

#161

Post by degrews »

rswail wrote: post #119
jacobion wrote: post #78

The 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…

Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that what should be happening is apprenticeships. If "industry is crying out for more people", then it should be investing in that in the same way it does in every other part of the supply chain. They should be hiring and training programmers, not externalizing their costs.

I agree, but I think that in order for that to work, we would have to accept much lower salaries for junior/apprentice engineers (until they've proven they can add value). And maybe also a higher tolerance for firing engineers who are not working out early.

As it is, I'm not surprised companies are reluctant to bet on the potential of untrained engineers, _and_ the chance that they'll stick around long enough to make the investment worthwhile.

I'm sure there are a lot of inexperienced, uncredentialed engineers out there who would take a low-paying job with a significant chance of getting fired in 3 months. I was one of them. The alternative is to not get hired at all.

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

#162

Post by shanusmagnus »

Benmcdonald__ wrote: post #124
jacobion wrote: post #78

The 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…

Same as health care. Without regulations the industry would be full of snake oil. And yet the regulation kill innovation in the industry. Money all devolutes to scam. Look at digital money. Not even HN community can spot the "crypto" scams

The HN community gets around this by defaulting to thinking that everything in the space is a scam. Just saying "scam" 100% of the time will make you mostly right.

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

#163

Post by jacobion »

Grustaf wrote: post #114
jacobion wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the internet 'alleviate issues of information asymmetry'?? I thought it was well understood that this has not generally happened, except in open markets for very transparent and easily comparable products. Holiday accommodation for example, much less complex than coding bootcamps, is far from a solved problem.

> How does the internet 'alleviate issues of information asymmetry'?? Through threads like this. Many people thinking of entering Lambda school will google it, find bad reviews and critical discussion threads and reconsider. "Alleviate" does not mean "eradicate", surely it's easier to evaluate schools and holiday homes nowadays, compared to 1980?

It might be easier to compare them, I'm not persuaded it is any easier to evaluate them.

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

#164

Post by papito »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
mxcrossb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these companies are in the “the only reason it’s a good price is we are burning VC money” and “the only reason we have VC money is our promise to grow” zone. Customers can enjoy watching the slow motion train crash.

That's why I consider startups a Faustian bargain. You get easy access to capital, in exchange for your company's soul. And the devil always comes to collect. The problems start where this deal causes collateral damage on the market - harming customers directly, or indirectly by preventing competitors who aren't looking for an exit from existing.

As David Heinemeier Hansson of Basecamp said, paraphrasing: "every time you take someone's [VC] money, you get a new boss."

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

#165

Post by atq2119 »

rswail wrote: post #130
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry. But I am Pakistani. From my perspective, if the government is providing free health coverage, subsidized accommodation to students, free education [0], and good public transit, then it is fulfilling the ideals of socialists. However, the label of the actual system might be different, which is totally fair. [0] I think Finland is now charging a small tuition fee, at least for non-EU students.

The ideals of socialism are that the means of production are owned by the community. So it owns all industry as well. Communism says that there isn't any individual property. Scandinavian countries have never been socialist.

The rate of state ownership of capital is fairly high in the Nordics, though. In that sense, they're relatively socialist countries.

Maybe they're not "really socialist", but then by that standard, is there a "really capitalist" country? Even the US, which is probably the most capitalist "developed" country, has some state ownership of production.

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

#166

Post by isthatsoup »

jo032 wrote: post #137
gexla wrote: post #96

Once you're in, why not forget about the quality and problems and just follow the program? I have only ever gone to low level state schools, but one of my instructors told me that he wasn't there to teach me. He was there to guide me through the curriculum. That stuck. Stick to the program, sweat out the X months. You'll come out as close to a programmer / designer / X as you would from any other path aside from some…

If you're self motivated enough to follow a curriculum on your own, you're probably much better off using online resources from MIT/Stanford/Harvard which are not only free but much better quality. The learning environment described in the linked thread (200 students per teacher, plus blind leading the blind with volunteer mentors) sounds terrible at any price including $0.00. Many MOOCs have community boards, TA's,…

Not really relevant but I'm basically the only person I know that thinks it's the coolest thing in the world that I can open up my computer and watch a lecture from MIT/Stanford/Harvard etc. in almost any thing I want. Such a great time to be alive for self-motivated people that like learning stuff!

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

#167

Post by sampsonitify »

RyanGoosling wrote: post #153
thinkingemote wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How many people do you hire from other places? I'm never hiring anyone again if I can help it, so I'm not the target either, and this sort of post seems to imply this is a huge loss for Lambda but I'm not sure it is.

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

#168

Post by lawn »

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 ?

As others said you also get some grants that you don't have to repay. This was also 6 years ago and the numbers have changed a little since then.

But otherwise yes. And I didn't live a very frugal life and I didn't have a lot of funds when I started out, just enough for furniture and similar.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

dougSF70 wrote: post #156

I 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 bec…

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