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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

#431

Post by learc83 »

skylanh wrote: post #427
learc83 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But good luck getting money out of a student without actually getting a judgement. They'd basically be limited to reporting it to credit agencies and just asking them to pay. A arbitration agreement isn't enough to get a bank or an employer to hand over any money from the student.

I'm not particularly familiar with arbitration and the resulting paperwork, nor with financial claims against another party. However, I do know that minutes of mutual settlement can be filled with a court, and the court will, based on the affidavit of filing, enforce it as if that court had ruled. And for instance, this is in a Arbitration submission agreement I found: "The parties agree to abide by and perform any a…

It's not just filing with a court. You have to appear before a judge to ask for a default judgement, and the defendant can offer a defense (the options are narrow in scope, but not nonexistent).

This was in the context of the optics of 'suing their students'. So you serve the student, pay a lawyer to appear in court to ask for a default judgement, then student offers a defense, and a judge potentially grants the judgement. There's functionally no difference with respect to optics.

Also ISAs have not been heavily litigated, so no one really knows what would happen if a company tries to enforce them.

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

#432

Post by javaIsGreat »

908B64B197 wrote: post #429
javaIsGreat wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

3 months to learn a framework? I've seen web dev classes in colleges that are spread out on a semester where they basically learn whichever framework the university decided to teach. Doesn't take 3 months of full time work, more like 6 hours per week including labs. I highly doubt someone from MIT CS would go that route and pay for a bootcamp, considering how easy it's for them to get internships at companies where t…

I agree that a CS from MIT surprised me,

Like i said, if you can spare the cash, and want to do a bootcamp, it might make sense for you,

I wouldnt discredit all of the bootcamps as useless money wasters, everyone has different goals/aspirations reasons for doing a bootcamp rather than jumping straight into the workforce. The MIT CS guy did end up getting a great dev job right out of the program.

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

#433

Post by 908B64B197 »

javaIsGreat wrote: post #432
908B64B197 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 months to learn a framework? I've seen web dev classes in colleges that are spread out on a semester where they basically learn whichever framework the university decided to teach. Doesn't take 3 months of full time work, more like 6 hours per week including labs. I highly doubt someone from MIT CS would go that route and pay for a bootcamp, considering how easy it's for them to get internships at companies where t…

I agree that a CS from MIT surprised me, Like i said, if you can spare the cash, and want to do a bootcamp, it might make sense for you, I wouldnt discredit all of the bootcamps as useless money wasters, everyone has different goals/aspirations reasons for doing a bootcamp rather than jumping straight into the workforce. The MIT CS guy did end up getting a great dev job right out of the program.

> The MIT CS guy did end up getting a great dev job right out of the program.

I have no doubts he would. I'm doubting his very existence. Or, pretty sure he didn't pay retail on the bootcamp.

I think going from absolutely no code experience to 70K by doing a 6 months bootcamp is simply impossible. The many articles on lambda illustrate that.

For someone with a real CS or Engineering degree, I wouldn't waste any time or money on a bootcamp unless my employer was paying for it.

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

#434

Post by gu5 »

austenallred wrote: post #296
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?

I can imagine scenarios where a full refund would be make sense, but refund isn’t really appropriate when we’re talking about small changes in schedule, especially when everyone agreed such changes were possible.

"especially when everyone agreed such changes were possible" Looking at this thread, it doesn't seem like everyone agreed.

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

#435

Post by javaIsGreat »

908B64B197 wrote: post #433
javaIsGreat wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that a CS from MIT surprised me, Like i said, if you can spare the cash, and want to do a bootcamp, it might make sense for you, I wouldnt discredit all of the bootcamps as useless money wasters, everyone has different goals/aspirations reasons for doing a bootcamp rather than jumping straight into the workforce. The MIT CS guy did end up getting a great dev job right out of the program.

> The MIT CS guy did end up getting a great dev job right out of the program. I have no doubts he would. I'm doubting his very existence. Or, pretty sure he didn't pay retail on the bootcamp. I think going from absolutely no code experience to 70K by doing a 6 months bootcamp is simply impossible. The many articles on lambda illustrate that. For someone with a real CS or Engineering degree, I wouldn't waste any time…

If you are accusing me of lying im not lol. I assume he got north of 125k for a top dev job not 70k

You could grow a lot as an engineer in three months in the right environment assuming a guided curriculum is able to channel your energies in the right places and teachers/fellow students are able to help as well. I imagine you could also be bored for 3 months, or overly stressed for 3 months, and have negative feelings in regards to that experience. Like most things in life, its not right for everyone and its not wrong for everyone.

I have lots of friends who've paid for coding bootcamps, most are rather content with the services provided. I know some students as well that feel they were swindled out of cash because they weren't able to get a top tier job right out of the program and resorted to previous career path that they were already unhappy with.

I think its great that the good bootcamps that show success are trying to branch out to more normal learners, not just the greatly gifted or qualified (like an Ivy league degree) few, it is a noble sign that these schools are trying to expand using their special sauce to help more averagely qualified student transition into professional software engineering. Ivy league schools, do not do this. They have hundreds of years of success and don't feel the need to teach more students every year. (in regards to their on campus facilities not online programs that clearly dont offer the same experience)

If Lambda or the other top tier bootcamps capped their programs at 10 students a year or cohort, all of whom had ivy degrees or significant personal experience, all of whom who would get jobs immediately out of school, they would better be able to keep their graduation rates/salary rates top notch, they wouldnt have any students complaining online,

I commend them for trying to expand and help more students, and im sure they will stumble and get better as time goes on.

None of the good bootcamp schools that I am aware of just ignore feedback, because they know students will stop going to the school if feedback is ignored as they dont have hundreds of millions of dollars in funding like universities do.

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

#436

Post by mondoshawan »

thelastwave wrote: post #428
mondoshawan wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some students see it as one more thing distracting them from writing more code, and believe the only thing that will determine their career success is ability to write code (as you all know, ability to write code is necessary but not sufficient to success as an engineer). As an interviewer, engineer and lead myself, I'd say your students that think this are pretty darn close. If I get a junior candidate that can't co…

> What I can't do is teach them to be able to reason and write code and do the engineering work I hired them for. Excuse me if I'm missing the obvious, but why can't you teach them that? Seems like it'd be right up your alley.

Because its a total waste of money -- I'd be hiring someone who does not posess the requisite skills to do the base level job. My job is to create software solutions for the company by using my skills, and lead a team of engineers to produce a better solution. The role I hire a junior engineer for is the same: a much lower requisite skill level, yes, but skill nonetheless. I am not in the business of education -- that is literally what educators like Austen are for.

While the time spent teaching a blank slate how to be an engineer might benefit the person, it is literally throwing money away from the perspective of the company because it's not what I was hired to do.

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

#437

Post by yaass »

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…

Complete lack of empathy in this response. Not even “I’m sorry to hear this” or “sorry that you had this experience.” You just go straight into defence mode instead of genuinely wanting to understand the posters experience. Sorry, but you don’t get brownie points just for responding as the CEO, when it’s evident in this response and others that you don’t truly care about the people that you are serving. You are much more interested in managing the reputational risk of your business.

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

#438

Post by danielblank69 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #323
danielblank69 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course not. But it is not much easier to build a $10m lifestyle biz without VC help.

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

#439

Post by michaelcampbell »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #357
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 didnt downvote you but I'd guess it's because you're calling something "psychotic" that many on this forum aspire to or at least respect. Maybe you meant something more like "extreme" ?

> you're calling something "psychotic" that many on this forum aspire to or at least respect.

Both can be true. You've no doubt seen the CEO/psychopath studies.

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

#440

Post by michaelcampbell »

numbsafari wrote: post #258
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.

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.

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

The only that's said that is you.

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