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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

#321

Post by danielblank69 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #290
cat199 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Semantics. Founders building potentially billion dollar businesses (not $10m lifestyle companies) need to have a psychotic drive to achieve that goal. That often creates tough work environments in the early stages of the company. To many people, failing to build that billion dollar company is the same as outright failing completely. They’ll do whatever it takes to get there. I’ve worked with engineers and designers t…

I love it how you casually mention $10m lifestyle companies as a chill, comfortable goal :)

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

#322

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

blntechie wrote: post #234
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... then immediately monetize that ISAs by selling them with a discount to a 3rd party Is that really true? If so, this is shocking to me. If LS sells the ISA, then, obviously, they are no longer "aligned" with their students' success. What's the point of their "revolutionary" arrangement then? This makes perfect sense out of the jumble of anecdotes I'm reading. From further below: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/1…

It is known that they package and sell the ISAs like other credit products. But regarding their alignment with student success, it’s to their benefit that these ISAs realizes i.e. students succeed as the ISA quality determine how much they can sell them for.

But that coupling is much looser, and lagging, than keeping those contracts in-house.

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

#323

Post by ryanSrich »

danielblank69 wrote: post #321
ryanSrich wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semantics. Founders building potentially billion dollar businesses (not $10m lifestyle companies) need to have a psychotic drive to achieve that goal. That often creates tough work environments in the early stages of the company. To many people, failing to build that billion dollar company is the same as outright failing completely. They’ll do whatever it takes to get there. I’ve worked with engineers and designers t…

I love it how you casually mention $10m lifestyle companies as a chill, comfortable goal :)

I mean, does it really make sense to target a goal of $10m valuation for a VC backed company?

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

#324

Post by gorbachev »

nrmitchi wrote: post #299
tvanantwerp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory the ISA should incentivize the bootcamp to work hard on the student's behalf. If they don't get high-paying jobs, the bootcamp doesn't get paid back. From what I've read though, they actually bundle the ISAs and sell them off to investors--just like the mortgage-backed securities that led to the 2008 financial crisis. So the bootcamp's real incentive would be to generate as many ISAs to sell as possible, no…

When you're selling a securitized asset, you need to show the quality of that asset. You can't just pull together a pile of shit and call it AAA (Yes, 2008 was a thing, and wrong, but lets not assume here that Lambda is borderline to committing fraud). If the ISAs don't perform, then Lambda will (likely) have no future in selling them. Do you really think they're risking their future cash flow in order to bundle up a…

> but lets not assume here that Lambda is borderline to committing fraud

Why not? They've already been proven to falsify the employment rates of their students. Their marketing material is significantly off from reality.

Obviously they could be telling the companies buying the ISAs the truth though.

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

#325

Post by confidantlake »

rorykoehler wrote: post #142
jstummbillig wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest mistake ls could make is not recognizing how little room there is for (perceived) failure with their product. It is among the most impactful, personal products you can buy online (considering life time and money investment). Customers will understandably be in a vulnerable place. You are not exactly selling someone a boat. You are quite literally selling tech savvy people their future and they know how to…

> You are quite literally selling tech savvy people their future It's a bit overkill. You can just do it yourself. Plenty of resources available for free. Students have to put the work in regardless.

I went to an in person bootcamp. There was nothing they taught that wasn't available elsewhere. It cost around $20,000 just for tuition, plus I paid SF rent and living expenses. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.

The biggest benefit imo was being around smart motivated people doing the same thing. It was much easier to work from 9 am to 8 pm 6 days a week if you were around others smart motivated people doing the same. Also being able to talk to people about what you were learning helped tremendously. It helped to clear up misconceptions, develop mental models, ect. Working on group projects helped me to learn to read others code and to learn git. The network I developed has proven useful in later job searches and just in general keeping abreast of developments. It was honestly the best 6 months of my life.

Not everything was perfect obviously. My biggest gripe is the outcomes were oversold. I remember being told they had a 99% placement rating within 3 months. Each cohort was somewhere around 33 people. That would mean that around 1 person for every 3 cohorts would not get a job within 3 months. However just in my cohort, 5 did not have a job within 3 months. Within 6 months all but two had jobs, but still, 95% in 6 months is not 99% within 3. Other than outcomes I had a few gripes with how the teaching was done. Overall though it was a great experience for me.

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

#327

Post by jrochkind1 »

mcculley wrote: post #269
jrochkind1 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did work briefly work for a small consultancy that decided to take on juniors, even though it was anticipated that for probably a year they woudln't be billing enough to cover their salary; because there weren't a lot of qualified applicants anyway where we were located, and as a sort of intentional public service to help people get into the field (especially underrepresented people etc). Of course, the most skille…

I also did this with my consultancy along with reimbursing employees for passing certifications and paying for tuition. Three of them work for Microsoft now and one works for Amazon. Others are at other big firms. I don't regret how I invested in them and I think it is great that they are doing so well in their careers, but I will not make an unsecured investment like that again.

Yup. I guess one way to "secure" it would be to try to make them promise to keep working for you for a certain amount of time, but even if there's a legal way to do it, that just seems icky, who wants to force people to keep working for you when they don't want to, or the environment that will come from working with people who would rather be somewhere else but are being forced to stay. That's not a good solution.

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

#328

Post by effingwewt »

forgingahead wrote: post #273
austenallred wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All Austin or in fact anyone from lambda does is pr speak questions/comments he thinks are softballs. Simply search every lambda post on hn.

He and his pyramid scheme lost the benefit of doubt years ago.

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

#329

Post by confidantlake »

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

The bootcamp I went to had someone with a perfect SAT and an engineering degree from Princeton. She is wicked smart and works for google. You would be crazy not to hire her just because she went to a bootcamp.

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

#330

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

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…

If 3/4ths of a cohort have to repeat the material, it's not the students who have failed.
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