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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

#411

Post by regretful_llama »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #318
swyx wrote: post #13

there have been a few prominent criticisms of lambda school recently but it is all anecdotal and disorganized. closest in my mind was fulligin's takedown on NYMag ( https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/ which found some bad facts but was sensationalized beyond proportion imo, still, make up your own mind) very hard to tell what specific allegations and changes have been made without also needing to ques…

> there have been a few prominent criticisms of lambda school recently but it is all anecdotal and disorganized. Keep in mind that unlike most products, Lambda School purchasers have an incentive to praise Lambda School regardless of the truth. These are all young people looking to jump start their careers with the benefit of a glamorous Lambda School education. They don’t benefit by publicly admitting that it wasn’t…

From what I've seen, there's some mentality among current students to keep your head down so you don't get kicked out for criticizing it before you land the job. Also, it's probably more like 40% or less new grads, it seems to mainly be people changing careers right now. Bootcamps are a bit less than "glamorous" now, and the pandemic shook things up for a lot of people, especially coming from retail/restaurants/small businesses.

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

#412

Post by BoorishBears »

codetrotter wrote: post #337
BoorishBears wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's broken in the exact same way the actual site is: it's only viewable in landscape This URL still uses archive.org but in a non broken format: https://web.archive.org/web/20201214092323if_/https://old.re...

The actual Reddit site never gave me trouble like that on mobile. Which OS, and OS version and browser do you use?

iOS Safari, doesn't matter the OS version, their redesigned site has been broken for years.

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

#414

Post by polishdude20 »

wyclif wrote: post #403
mcculley wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's sad to read comments like yours because I'm a junior dev myself. I can't blame you, though, because as I pointed out above, it's all due to perverse incentives in this industry.

This must be why I don't see many junior dev jobs on HN or many other places. The software industry is very lucrative IF you're not a junior.

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

#415

Post by nunya_bidness »

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…

This is what happens when you suppress complaint and disagreement internally. The truth will come out. It always does. You can choose to ignore that truth or justify your position which this post certainly does. Take any substance and press down on it and does it stay contained within it's original shape as force multiplies or does it expand outward?

Lambda School made 2 promises to students when I joined. 1. They promised that students would always have access to the most up to date curriculum that was offered. This is no longer true. 2. They promised a network that connected students to alumni in an ever expanding community. They started separating alumni from the student workspace in Slack months ago. That community doesn't exist.

These are the 2 most fundamental promises that Lambda School made to students and it has broken both. Add to this incompetence or indifference the damaging changes that have been made to the curriculum and no one can reasonably accept the same price tag, $30K, for the diminished service, unaccountable support and lower quality curriculum product.

Students aren't the only population at Lambda School who are unhappy with these changes that Allred claims, "some of the changes that a subset of students did not like are unquestionably for their benefit". If this is true why is Lambda School losing or in the process of losing key instructors further degrading the quality of the product.

Lambda School can no longer rely on student referrals for driving growth in enrollment. Lambda School current and future instructor departures will continue the downward spiral. Allred seems to believe he can will the bleeding to stop. A bit of humility and self awareness would be a better path for him to consider over his protestations. Those on the inside at Lambda School recognize his words as nonsense.

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

#416

Post by digianarchist »

ExLambdaStudent wrote: post #384
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…

This, right here, is Lambda's biggest trick. I created a hacker account just because of how much it infuriates me to see Austen doing it again here. Austen is very very good at finding public criticism and responding to it. In contrast, in Lambda's slack, every criticism is automatically taken to private PM, to get it out of the way as soon as possible and to immediately shutdown any ensuing conversation. (A few time…

It’s like when the manufacturer responds to negative reviews on Home Depot. There’s no follow up from the customer so people just assume it was resolved.

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

#417

Post by FemmeAndroid »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #407
FemmeAndroid wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in those rare circumstances, why not offer refunds to those who don't want to stay with Lambda School after the change?

Do universities offer full refunds for the whole 4 years of a course if they had to change the curriculum while a student was studying there? If not, why such elevated expectations for a school that’s trying to align their interests with that of their students (school only gets paid if the student is financially successful), but not for other institutions that leave their students with massive debt that is not contin…

University credits are transferable in a way a partial education from Lambda School is not, and you can pause at any time. Universities do let you stop part way through your education. Most universities do have options to get partial refunds that are more reasonable than the ones Lambda school seems to offer. Instate tuition across the US is also a fraction of Lambda School, with multiple options if you want to transfer credits.

For what it’s worth, major changes in curriculum do lead to refunds at schools. There have been two examples in my education where mid-year I had a graduate level class need to be rescheduled from a night class due to a professor’s illness. Both were fully refunded when I couldn’t fit the class into my work schedule. That seems to be pretty analogous here, and I wasn’t charged a percent based on how many weeks I attended the class before the change. I was just refunded the total amount of the course because I wouldn’t be able to gain its value. It wasn’t even a difficult process to get the refund, unlike the weeks of trying to get support it seems like the person in this situation attempted.

I think I would place ‘elevated’ expectations for refunds on a founder due to the elevated risk of trying a Startup’s unproven, expensive, and risky education model. I don’t think the expectations are ‘elevated’ but I also think your baseline for doing good for students shouldn’t be ‘it’s only as bad as I perceive the alternatives.’ I think we should strive to do better.

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

#418

Post by [deleted] »

blntechie wrote: post #14

Most open world reviews i.e. non curated ones I have seen for Lambda school have been negative to at best neutral. I believe they have a place in the education market if they do it right. Model is good enough but execution appear to be severely lacking. It’s interesting that pg is a big fan though.

[deleted]

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

#419

Post by javaIsGreat »

908B64B197 wrote: post #380
javaIsGreat wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know anything about Lambda's failures to serve students other than most students are upset at paying for less than steller experiences (most of the other prestigious bootcamps share this), but my gut tells me I dont think they grew to fast, its just the calibur of student went down, i feel like the hot new bootcamp of the day is able to get really bright and/or qualified students. More average learners require…

> I was surprised to learn the guy I was pair programming with had a CS degree from MIT lol. That surprises me. Someone who could drink from the firehose should not need some bootcamp to learn web dev.

I think some CS grads come out of school with a lack of practical framework knowledge, i mean like React or Ruby on Rails, rather than spend 5 months learning/building on their own, these top tier students choose to learn/build in a managed environment so it takes them 3 rather than 5 months. They are promised assistance with applying to jobs as well which can be a nerve wrecking process for a university grad. If you have the money and want to jump into the work force ASAP it makes sense to me.

The in person bootcamps ive found have had great community vibes to them. Fun being surrounded by fellow students/teachers, schools all have fun/studious/interesting faculty and students.

I taught the first few weeks of a FREE intro to software engineering bootcamp and had a few lower tier university CS grads who were happy with the curriculum/services rendered, they would just tune me out when i was covering something they already knew and would study/program while the less informed students would work through problems/Q/A with me.

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

#420

Post by digianarchist »

isaacaderogba wrote: post #174

Awh man, this is a bummer. I attended Lambda School from April-November 2019. I was in the Web Dev unit for 4 months and a Team Lead for the remainder. I got a job early so didn't get to do Labs or Computer Science, though I've heard they weren't great experiences. I'm not 100% looped in what's happening with Lambda anymore (they removed the Alumni from the student Slack channels), but I hope they're able to turn thi…

That’s more than my 4 year UK undergraduate degree.
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