Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by soneca » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

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…

Thanks for your response. I’ll take your word that the mistakes are not due to too much ambition and are not originated by biting more than what you can chew or a “land grab” market strategy. I have no primary knowledge on Lambda School to do otherwise.

But it is worth paying more attention to the frustrated students feedback. The OP one is about lack of team leaders and having “mentors” that are qualified just by having two more months of online classes than them. And it is not the first time a similar issue arises. Lambda School seems to always be justifying mistakes after some disgruntled student testimonial gets some traction.

My personal unsolicited advice: listen more to your students ahead of time and not employers. Employers are full of bullshit. They have a huge list of qualities that they want to see in a candidate, then go on to hire someone that is not at all like that, but the hiring manager liked (for whatever subjective reasons). It seems to be a wrong step to follow employers gospel and go against students expectations. You say that you know more about what students want and need than themselves. I doubt that. Give what students want: confidence that they learned something useful and, moreover, confidence that they can continue to learn about UX/software development through their career. That confidence in their knowledge will earn them jobs, not employers with no skin in the game telling you want they ideally want.

Don’t patronize your students. When you do, it feels from the outside that you are taking shortcuts to people’s education in favor of short term market share growth.

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

#272

Post by whereistimbo » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #242

vba wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember the times where Yahoo! Messenger and MSN/Windows Live Messenger could chat each other. Those were the days.

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

#273

Post by forgingahead » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #228

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…

Hey airdwea, I’m sorry you were frustrated by the GCA assessment. We don’t use assessments as a means of harming students, but we do genuinely want to make sure that you are ready to move onto the next level before doing so. I understand this can be frustrating. This particular assessment, you’re correct, is not a direct map to the previous couple weeks of content, but rather a summative general assessment that cover…

Why are people downvoting this? The CEO of the company being discussed is replying to people voicing their concerns. If you think he's saying something wrong, write a comment to it. Don't simply downvote it. Too many sensitive trigger-fingers here.

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

#274

Post by austenallred » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #271

austenallred wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for your response. I’ll take your word that the mistakes are not due to too much ambition and are not originated by biting more than what you can chew or a “land grab” market strategy. I have no primary knowledge on Lambda School to do otherwise. But it is worth paying more attention to the frustrated students feedback. The OP one is about lack of team leaders and having “mentors” that are qualified just by ha…

Hmm, agreed that employers can be full of shit, but I try to look at what they do and who they hire not what they say.

There can never be too many reminders to listen to student feedback. Thank you!

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

#275

Post by MivLives » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

crumbshot wrote: post #95

> After I was a few Units in (3) and thus financially obligated to pay the ISA, they removed core components of the program. > Where a mentor was paid to mentor you, you are now forced to mentor other students and vice versa. So Lambda School is essentially an bait-and-switch pyramid scheme purporting to be an educational institution? For-profit schools are scams in general, but this one sounds particularly scammy an…

I and a lot of other students used the payment from mentoring to eat, and pay rent during the job search after graduation. The one thing that Lambda claimed it did, was never count anyone doing that as having been placed in a job. Forced mentorship sounds horrid, even when were paid a lot of people were not good at it. Making it required sounds like it could make that problem worse.

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

#276

Post by FemmeAndroid » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #256

borishn wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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.

Why not let them opt in to new things if they really are benefits?

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

#277

Post by tharne » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #260

notwedtm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> a founder should be 'trying to' make a quality product that fits a need, not 'disrupt an industry'

This 1000%.

The frequent use of the term "disrupt", just shows how much the culture has descended into degeneracy. When entrepreneurs and their backers are no longer making even a pretense toward things like progress, improvement, or even just running a profitable business, you know things have gotten bad. It seems like the model now is, "Hey, let's see if we can f--- up industry X, who cares if we actually improve anything or if our business is even viable, so long as we turn some established part of the economy on its head."

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

#278

Post by papito » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #212

papito wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Adam Neumann was ambitious, with a "unique leadership style".

I get the feeling some older VCs are playing out their mid-life crises by vicariously enjoying the lifestyles of their "crazier" founders. Perhaps it would be better for the world if they just bought that motorbike or sports car instead.

It's hard to do when the VC next door just bought a super-yacht that can launch its own mini-yacht, yo.

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

#279

Post by specialist » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

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…

> scams can block activity which would be highly wealth creating

What's this phenomenon called?

"Spoiling the market"? "Shitting the bed"?

Basically, when inauthentic activity so increases transaction costs that the authentic market is harmed.

My aunt once had a pretty good cottage business selling bespoke wall paper stuff on eBay. Over time, inauthentic entries crowded out her real product. SEO, fakes, knockoffs, misnaming stuff. Her customers could no longer find her products thru eBay, even when using exact match search terms.

Sound familiar?

Using terms like "fraud" and "scam" seems grossly inadequate. I'm provisionally using "authentic" vs "inauthentic", which suck, for lack of better terms.

A parting thought: Somehow Amazon managed to become worse than eBay, for both vendors and customers. Amazon boosts their own brands. And has a separate payola lane for "sponsored" entries.

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

#280

Post by nicoburns » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

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…

> The first is a mentor/mentee program we set up within the school. Employers tell us literally every day they want students who truly understand the development and release cycle, and work on teams. We created a mentor/mentee program where every student has a chance to do that, and the result of that program so clearly creates better outcomes that employers ask specifically for students who have done that.

One thing that jumps out at me is that students who have only just gone through the course themselves may not make the best mentors. They top x% percent probably make excellent mentors, but they rest still don't really know what they're doing themselves. You may want to actually build in some kind of assessment here and have mentoring as a "high performance track" (ideally with this being something the high-performing students can put on their resumes). I've seen this done very successfully in traditional schools (for children).