Live data from Hacker News

Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

twitter.com

131–140 of 142 posts

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Colleges are predatory, putting kids deep into debt that they may never be able to repay and can't even remove with bankruptcy. We're not talking about colleges. The fact other scams exist in the world has zero bearing on whether one specific company is scamming people. > Whereas Lambda aligns their interests with the student. They align themselves with their investors. That's their fiduciary duty. If you want to u…

Can Lambda School still sell the debt to hedge funds without the student getting a job ?

We sell it to an SPV that we own, and have to pay back the amount that is received.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was involved in 223 words of a 1,645 word article. I don't want to take full credit for those words; I showed your students' homework to two other senior iOS developers before commenting, to make sure I wasn't off base. They reached the same conclusions. You're welcome ignore my sound bite, and focus on the other 87% of the article which shows a pattern of unethical behavior. For example, the screenshot where…

Part of what our students do is visible on GitHub; until graduation some of it is not. Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified. You had no idea. Then students, who are qualified and battling with intense imposter syndrome, come to me terrified and doubting themselves because someone who has literally never seen the full cu…

> I did say the hiring rate of a cohort of one student was 100%. And in the same tweet I said, in all caps BUT VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Odd how that doesn’t make the article, don’t you think?

It's in the article. Twice.

> Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified.

I said, "Students are going to struggle with very basic questions you’ll get on first phone screens." I have never blamed the student. I feel terrible for them, and I'm impressed by students who succeed in spite of the program.

> You had no idea.

I read the whole curriculum. I even sped through the videos. How else would I know about the two Block Chain lectures?

You asked for evidence. I can't think of better evidence than student projects that should have failed, but you rubber stamped through anyway.

As mentioned in the article, I had found ten student projects. Is that too little? Is it ok to just review one, as long as I say "VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE"?

> Then students, who are qualified and battling with intense imposter syndrome, come to me terrified and doubting themselves because someone who has literally never seen the full curriculum is making stuff up about it on the record.

I know plenty about the suffering of your students. When things are clearly broken in the program, they seek out help, and they're fed a bunch of garbage about it just being imposter syndrome.

Or that time you cut the staff who grades homework, and told everyone this had nothing to do with money. Later you admitted it was all about money.

These students thank me for speaking out, because they're afraid of retaliation. They feel lied-to and manipulated. They feel trapped.

And in this vulnerable state, you leverage the power dynamics to pressure them into signing NDAs.

Do you ever question what you're doing?

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#133
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it surprising that they sell their ISAs (it seems to be true based on a quick look at this https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st... ). Doesn't this look bad to prospective students? It implies that they don't think that they'll pay off. Is there a good faith explanation for this?

The cash to train students needs to come from somewhere. So in Lambda School's case that's either VCs or some other investors. Instead of running the entire school on venture capital, which wouldn't make sense (VCs need a huge return per dollar), we use an advance from investors based on the future value of an ISA to offset the cost. If we work with investors to say that an ISA will be worth $x, we can borrow $x minu…

Wow, thanks for the answer Austen! Very cool to see that you're around to answer questions.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#134
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search tells me that the median is 35k per year, the mean time off is 10 days and there are 13 national holidays. So that would put it at roughly $15 * 48 hours * 48 weeks. For 35k . I agree, that's devastating.

I don't know if you are in the US: US national holidays mean nothing in the context of employment. The US does not require private employers to close, pay extra, or provide paid time off for those holidays.

Nope, I'm not. Fair enough: 46.6 hours per week at 50 weeks then, not 48 hours at 48 weeks.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#135
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pair programming is the best way to learn so that's unfortunate.

I wish people would stop saying things like this. Nothing against you, but no, pair programming is not the best way to learn. There are various learning styles and people fall in diverse ways to learn best. I hate visual and social learning. Just doesn't work for me. Youtube videos and pair programming is just the worst thing you can do for me if you want me to retain any information. While some say there is 8, other…

We learn from our peers. Sure a teacher helps but most learning is peer based.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ISAs don't pay out, then hedge funds will not be willing to pay as much to buy them. So at least on that point, the mere fact that they're sold off doesn't cause any misalignment.

_laughs in 2008 subprime mortgages_

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#137
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would stop saying things like this. Nothing against you, but no, pair programming is not the best way to learn. There are various learning styles and people fall in diverse ways to learn best. I hate visual and social learning. Just doesn't work for me. Youtube videos and pair programming is just the worst thing you can do for me if you want me to retain any information. While some say there is 8, other…

We learn from our peers. Sure a teacher helps but most learning is peer based.

Lets assume that is true, it doesn't mean you need or should use pair programming to learn from your peers. Depending on your style of learning, pair programming may work, a visual presentation may work better, or just typed docs for other people.

Pair programming may have originated in the 70's (depending on source), but there are hundreds of years of research on learning, please don't make the mistake of taking something as gospel.

(and in case you would like to point to apprenticeships in the past, they look nothing like pair programming, as it was mostly a subordinate relationship between master and student)

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely criticizing Lambda is far less useful than criticizing the university system, which provides far worse outcomes for far more money? You have to compare apples to apples. The university system encompasses far more than Lambda school. I think a fair comparison would be how well does the average person with a degree in CS or Software Engineering from a university do (or even maybe a community college so the tim…

and how do the people who drop out of a university with student loans but no degree do? If you drop out of lambda school, or even if you graduate but don’t make 50k / year in a tech job, you pay nothing .

Obviously, not well. We would have to do statistical analysis on the outcomes of everyone who did lambda school and everyone who did traditional CS at community colleges to reach any kind of meaningful conclusion. My main point is that comparing to the whole university system is pointless. Also, if we narrowed our focus to community colleges, they're typically very inexpensive and free for low-income students.

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what our students do is visible on GitHub; until graduation some of it is not. Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified. You had no idea. Then students, who are qualified and battling with intense imposter syndrome, come to me terrified and doubting themselves because someone who has literally never seen the full cu…

> I did say the hiring rate of a cohort of one student was 100%. And in the same tweet I said, in all caps BUT VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Odd how that doesn’t make the article, don’t you think? It's in the article. Twice. > Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified. I said, "Students are going to struggle with very basic questi…

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

#140
post #124
post #10

HN constantly attacks Tesla and Elon so you shouldn't be surprised. In fact, I've associated negative attacks from HN as an indicator that the company/person being attacked is probably doing something good.

HN is divided on divisive issues. It's that simple. People overgeneralize about that because of cognitive bias: the bad (what you don't like) stands out more than the good (what you agree with). What's negative (to you) is what you're more likely to notice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... . That's why people with the opposite tastes make the opposite generalizations. For every comment…

We're not allowed to criticize HN? I'm not sure which rules I was breaking? I simply gave my opinion on a pattern I've noticed on HN. You're censoring me because you disagree?
Post reply on HN