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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

#241

Post by jacobion »

Siira wrote: post #182
jacobion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way apprenticeships traditionally worked is that the apprentice was bound to the master for a certain number of years, and his parents also often had to pay to have him taken on. The tension between needing trained labour, but not wanting your trained labour to walk out the door and seek employment elsewhere (literal meaning of 'journeyman') was resolved firstly by extremely severe constraints on the apprentice a…

Indeed, we already have a form of this in PhDs. They teach people more advanced skills, but they are exploitative and gatewalled.

Yes, and despite this there is commonly resentment by academics of the time they spend mentoring graduate students who then leave for higher paid posts outside academia.

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

#242

Post by eropple »

vba wrote: post #143
Tomte wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

interestingly, from joel "With all of Microsoft’s muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong." I remember AIM well (used AOL until they became TalkTalk), but I also remember using MSN messenger even more and being much more ubiquitous, granted that could have been generational (I wasn't a teenager…

It's funny that you say that, because I grew up in the same time frame (graduated high school in 2006) and I don't think I ever touched MSN Messenger. Where I was, it was AIM all the way.

So perhaps less generational, more just the network effects that existed on the ground.

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

#243

Post by dfxm12 »

gnicholas wrote: post #91
thinkingemote wrote: post #74

"I signed up for 18 months of programming... They suddenly reduced it to 12 months. As of yesterday, I've withdrawn after 4 months as this is not the program that was sold to me. I completed 22% of the program...but under their new reduction, they said I owe 37%" Seems like they would have a good case for getting their money back, but might need to consult a lawyer.

Well, it's even better for the student because the tuition is paid via an income-sharing agreement. That means you don't have to try to "get your money back" — you just have to defend yourself if they actually sue you for a share of your earnings. This means that Lambda would have to deal with the bad optics of "suing their students" (which sounds worse than simply refusing to give refunds). If Lambda did actually su…

This means that Lambda would have to deal with the bad optics of "suing their students"

There are other things that can happen. It looks like Lamba has been selling ISAs [0], [1]. These lawsuits would possibly not be coming from Lambda.

0 - https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st...

1 - https://www.wired.com/story/how-we-learn-lambda-income-shari...

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

#244

Post by jacobion »

3np wrote: post #192
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…

> 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 towards targeting degenerate gamblers in order to fleece them. Tangential, but this is pretty much emerging in the cryptocurrency/digital assets/decentralized finance (defi)…

Most people will not use the ethical projects that you mention, at least until perception of crypto changes, because they will associate crypto/defi either with full-on exit/Ponzi scams, or with experiences investing in Bitcoin and others right before the peak.

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

#245

Post by anthonycampbell »

dikeledi wrote: post #97

I got drawn into Lambda School at the peak of their hype early last year and considered myself extremely fortunate when I got admitted into one of their pilot EU classes. Suffice it to say that the reality was...significantly poorer than advertised. Not only because of the much-discussed reasons which are true, but most importantly for me because they lied about having hiring partners in Europe when they didn't, and…

I was part of the very first EU cohort and you're 100% correct. Despite being starry-eyed and optimistic when starting out, cracks quickly began to show in the facade. Curriculum changes would be announced hours before that day's lessons would begin leaving both students and instructors baffled. There were students who simply hadn't mastered the material yet and were generally not ready to move on, yet were forced to go into the next unit lest the 'pass-rate' between cohorts would be less than 100%.

Frankly, having seen the average quality of their work, I wouldn't hire 70% of all Lambda students. I've seen a handful of really talented and hard-working students who've made the most of their LS experience, but for the majority that simply followed the curriculum and did the bare-minimum I wouldn't want them anywhere near my codebase.

Thus far, it seems that almost all students who got a job either spent numerous hours studying outside of normal classes, had previous experience going into it (such as myself), or generally got a lucky break. There are numerous students who are still without a job more than a year after graduation.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

austenallred wrote: post #210
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…

CEO of Lambda School here. This is disappointing, of course. We have 180+ people working really, really hard to make Lambda School the best experience it can be. At times we’ll fall short, and, as another poster pointed out, the margin for error is just razor thin; thousands of happy and successful students can be out there, but it’s the ones who don’t make it or have a good experience that cause us to lose sleep (an…

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by notwedtm »

UncleMeat wrote: post #215
michaelcampbell wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> praise how insanely ambitious the founder was If this isn't a warning sign of a spectacular failure, I don't know what is. Not to mention praising it, after all the ink spilled on "rockstar" "ninja" types and how bad they are, yet they still get kudos and praise. If you ever have a manager that espouses the "we don't want the heroic cowboy type here", run, because that's EXACTLY what they want.

I don’t want heroes on my team. It isn’t sustainable. Heroics are discouraged in performance reviews and promotion considerations. Nobody will die if people aren’t working nights and weekends. If I see people engaging in what seems like heroics I will have a very serious chat with them to understand why they are doing it and make absolutely certain that it isn’t coming from any pressure to do so.

This reads like an idealized version of reality. Budgets exists, deadlines are a thing. "Don't be a hero" sounds like the mantra of an HR department at an insurance company; not what you want to hear from a founder trying to disrupt an industry.

Heroics can exist without them being a standardized thing. There are occasions when you need people who are willing to move mountains to get something done, and demonizing those kinds of efforts and the people who engage in them will make them scarce when you actually are in need.

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

#248

Post by twic »

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.

This is roughly how UK student loans work too. You typically borrow £55k for a three-year degree, but then repay at 9% of your annual earnings above £26,575.

There's also a rule that the remaining debt is cancelled 30 years after you graduate. Most people (perhaps not most programmers) won't repay the whole debt within 30 years. So for them, this is essentially a kind of tax, rather than a debt.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-tui...

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

#249

Post by jrochkind1 »

papito wrote: post #171
sampo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> socialist democracy In Nordic countries, we don't really like it when Americans call us socialist democracies. We are market economies like everyone else. Here's a take from the Danish prime minister: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-ministe...

Well, here in America, we don't believe that Capitalism and "society" should coexist together. The people help sustain Capitalism - not the other way around. Also, we don't believe in providing such communist things as healthcare for everyone, because we strongly believe Capitalism does NOT benefit from a strong and healthy workforce.

Haha, in America we think it's important to sacrifice society to capitalism. Funny because it's too true.

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

#250

Post by mhaymo »

learc83 wrote: post #131
jokethrowaway wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference is that people can opt in lambda school but they don't get to choose with progressive tax rates. The voluntariness of a transaction makes the difference between a payment and theft, between consensual sex and rape. Progressive taxes will just punish high middle class people for creating more value than low middle class people, making it harder for them to join the class of actual rich people who c…

You’re missing the point of the analogy. Progressive taxation doesn’t produce a cliff where you’re potentially better off if you make less money. The higher rates only apply to money over the threshold. Lambda school works the way many people think the US tax system works (but doesn’t). When you make over X, all of your money is taxed at Y. So it’s better to make X - 1 than X + 1.

Only if you place no value on paying off your ISA. Once the ISA is paid off, the "cliff" disappears. Obviously this is quite different to taxes.
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