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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

#251

Post by jacobion »

meheleventyone wrote: post #176
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…

I don't think we need to look at apprenticeships through a lens that is quite out of date. For example you can look at the apprenticeship schemes in the UK: https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/

Do you think that apprenticeships in the UK have been successful in motivating training for shortage jobs with highly technical skills?

I don't think they have. I've seen reports which claim they are mostly used as a subsidy to training which was already taking place, as a workaround to pay workers less, and generally in low-skilled jobs.

Like the grandparent post, the UK model is guilty of assuming that the word "apprenticeship" together with a sort of folksy appeal to a golden era of apprentices will solve the hard problems of training and education.

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

#252

Post by borishn »

austenallred wrote: post #240
arenaninja wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never looked into Lambda School but some bits from this stand out to me. > We have just north of 2,000 students and ~180 full-time staff members, the majority of which are student-facing. 2000/180 = 12 students per staff member. This seems high and "student-facing" is padding the numbers. "Customer Success" people are technically student-facing but not instructors, and number of instructors per student is the mo…

> 2000/180 = 12 students per staff member. This seems high and "student-facing" is padding the numbers. It is very, very high. I’d have to dig to find the exact numbers but about 90 are directly involved in instruction, project management, etc. Not including student support. > Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible. > Isn't this something a schoo…

> > Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts > We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible.

You sold students something you can't implement. Apologize and offer a full refund.

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

#253

Post by dougSF70 »

gexla wrote: post #180
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…

> All in all, an experiment in business model is taking place Which is all businesses at that scale I think. You're not reinventing the wheel offering plumbing services in your local village. I guess we have to think about how these experiments might play out and the risks involved as we participate in them. How will food delivery services change my community? What's the risk that an investment in personal education…

Agreed, early stage start ups are experiments in business models: "is there a market for x, can I charge $y for it and accept z as payment". In edtech start ups most folks forget who the customer is e.g Altschool, a software company that used students as Guinea pigs.

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

#254

Post by ljm »

ethbr0 wrote: post #112
philwelch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some Baptists-and-bootleggers nonsense going on between right-wing Republicans tarring center-left policies as “socialist” and avowed socialists doing the same to bait-and-switch voters into supporting them.

Seriously? What's up with people who couldn't even list the basic tenets of various political systems suddenly being for this or against that, on the basis of name alone? Minor rant, but the greatest tragedy of recent American politics (1980+) has been convincing people they're dumb and will never be as smart as others. It's set up a terrible cycle of (1) listen to "experts," (2) forget that one can do one's own thin…

It really frustrates me these days when almost everything has to have a pro or anti identity. The extent to which the population has divided itself thanks to this excessive labelling is truly mind-boggling.

Is it really that difficult to discuss something without having to choose what fucking side you're on, or having it chosen for you based on a series of shallow value judgments?

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

#255

Post by FeeJai »

Siira wrote: post #186
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #181

Just going to throw this out there... The value of top schools is the professors and instruction. The administration, not so much. Perhaps the startup should be in how to automate and standardize university administration so that the majority of tuition goes to the educators. - https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septoct-2011/administ...

Most of the value is actually in signaling and the peer group.

That is the sad and dirty truth about American higher ed. It's basically just buying an entry ticket to an exclusive club

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

#256

Post by austenallred »

borishn wrote: post #252
austenallred wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2000/180 = 12 students per staff member. This seems high and "student-facing" is padding the numbers. It is very, very high. I’d have to dig to find the exact numbers but about 90 are directly involved in instruction, project management, etc. Not including student support. > Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible. > Isn't this something a schoo…

> > Do not make changes to ongoing cohorts > We really try to avoid doing so, but in some instances it is impossible. You sold students something you can't implement. Apologize and offer a full refund.

I suppose it depends on what “changes” means. We specifically tell students (and they even sign a document that says) that we will make changes to aspects of the the experience during their time as a student (e.g. schedule, specifics of curriculum).

Students can be with Lambda for as long as 2+ years. Everything being frozen in time would be to their great detriment.

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

#257

Post by lliilliillii »

airdweia wrote: post #202

Please please please under no circumstances attend Lambda, everything the poster says is true. Two weeks before the end of CS for me they initiated a pass/fail for a test that we were never taught anything about and then mandated that you repeat the entire CS curriculum if you weren’t able to pass it. They said that it didn’t matter that I passed all of my sprints and scored 100% on the unit assessment, that I needed…

Please keep speaking up.

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

#258

Post by numbsafari »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #194
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…

> 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.

Your logic seems rather self-contradictory here:

"I can't believe an organization would _praise_ the rockstar mentality"

"If an organization doesn't praise the rockstar mentality, they are lying".

As others have noted, I tend to take people at their word. Of course, you can also ask people on the team during the interview process if they feel like that's true or not.

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

#260

Post by cat199 »

notwedtm wrote: post #247
UncleMeat wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> a founder trying to disrupt an industry.

a founder should be 'trying to' make a quality product that fits a need, not 'disrupt an industry' - 'industry disruption' is a consequence, not a goal - if one is seeking the latter without focusing on the former, ones priorities are skewed, and likely for reasons of promoting one's own self-importance.

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