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Lambda School lays off 65 employees

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Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#151

Post by tetrahedr0n »

afavour wrote: post #5

Also of note: > One immediate change, however, is that we are pausing new enrollment in our part-time programs. This all surprised me a little since I imagined schools like this would be doing well, pandemic job losses and expanded unemployment ought to make for a great market of prospective students. I guess it hasn’t been that simple.

I think the problem is that their part time outcomes were much smaller than full time. And it wasn't entirely an instructor or curriculum related problem.

You are correct that schools like this (secondary/trade, not ISA, necessarily) do well during economic downturns, historically.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#152

Post by dnautics »

jurassic wrote: post #79
mxschumacher wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you have a STEM degree, what value can you derive from short introductory classes on linear algebra, Python and relational databases? Countless truly excellent and free/cheap resources on these topics exist and you don't have to give a way a significant percentage of your yearly salary.

I think the value is similar to the value of a personal trainer. There's no rocket science involved in maintaining fitness, but many people find value in the added accountability and planning support.

serious question: Why isn't there a service "personal trainer for coding"? Not so much for juniors looking to get into the industry, but... I'm sure there's a continuous pipeline of high-value people who would pay $$$ to keep them accountable to doing say three coding exercises a week while they are getting ready to switch jobs or are between jobs.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#153

Post by lifer555 »

maximilianroos wrote: post #111
lifer555 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really regret attending Lambda School because it gave me structure that I needed, but I just got super lucky. I joined right before they made a ton of terrible changes to the program. I would either attend a better/different bootcamp or self teach and start working on solo projects. I participated in a few different hackathons and learned a whole lot more than I did during my 9 months at Lambda School.

Did your classmates also get good jobs, on average? > I joined right before they made a ton of terrible changes to the program What were these?

On average, no not really. I'd say that roughly 15-20% have found decent positions but it is really hard to say because some students just might not be very active on slack/linkedin.

I'd take a look at the subreddit r/LambdaSchool to read more about the changes (note that Austen the CEO is the only mod there and removes posts). One example is the removal of the Team Lead program (which kind of sucked in the first place because they didn't vet anyone) and replaced it with an auto-graded system so everyone was just on their own. There are students who went through the entire curriculum and didn't have a single person review their code. Ever. This is just one example of how chaotic it is.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#154

Post by borroka »

chrisseaton wrote: post #73
teruakohatu wrote: post #28

Can someone explain how you can train Data Scientists in 6 months? What jobs do these grads walk into? The tech prerequisite is: "You should feel extremely comfortable with how a computer works including: touch-typing, web browsers, search engines, and basic computer programs." The Curriculum: Stats, Linear Algebra AND Data Wrangling: 4 Weeks Modeling: 3 Weeks Data Engineering, Databases, SQL, Productionisation: 3 We…

How complex do you think most data science jobs are?

It is a bit like playing tennis. Playing against your 75 years old limping neighbor is easy, playing against competent people is hard, playing on the tour is for the very talented only.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#155

Post by whymauri »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #141
whymauri wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You assign precourse work that rejects 98% of applicants. I think a good model for this is the Insight Fellowship. By selecting mostly STEM Ph.D. graduates, the pool of students already has some relevant background/foundation. The focus can then be on the tools and methods for applying DS in a corporate/business setting, which is actually relevant for jobs.

Insight grads, in my experience, have been a notorious joke. Nothing has diminished my respect for a PhD from a top-tier institution more than the people I have worked with coming out of that program.

Interesting, I've had the opposite experience. One of the best managers I've ever reported to and worked with came from the project. I've also worked with a few good engineers and scientists from there, too.

I suppose this is a reminder of The Law of Small Numbers and sample size importance!

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#156

Post by tetrahedr0n »

bboylen wrote: post #62
lifer555 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a recent LS graduate. The program is a total shit show. I was able to get a job but I would never recommend it to anyone. They are just very good at marketing. Great idea, terrible execution.

How was the job search? Was LS' career services useful at all? I'm a self taught dev that is going to start looking for a job in a few months

Things might have changed since I finished the program, but their career services were effective for me.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#157

Post by threatofrain »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #120
mehlmao wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>legal thuggery Lambda lied to their students for years about loan dischargeability. They were told to stop by the regulator, so Lambda did. The regulator did nothing to penalize them.

Didn't they lie by wrongly saying the loan can't be discharged through bankruptcy? Surely that would make candidates less likely to join Lambda? Why is it even in their interest to say that? It's not like them saying it makes it true. And if it were true, it would mean that Lambda is a bigger risk for the student who therefore may be less likely to apply.

The worth of the ISA's you sell depend on how easy it is to discharge the loan...

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#158

Post by dsr_ »

dnautics wrote: post #152
jurassic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the value is similar to the value of a personal trainer. There's no rocket science involved in maintaining fitness, but many people find value in the added accountability and planning support.

serious question: Why isn't there a service "personal trainer for coding"? Not so much for juniors looking to get into the industry, but... I'm sure there's a continuous pipeline of high-value people who would pay $$$ to keep them accountable to doing say three coding exercises a week while they are getting ready to switch jobs or are between jobs.

Then you may have a business model.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#159

Post by spindle »

calderarrow wrote: post #95
teruakohatu wrote: post #28

Can someone explain how you can train Data Scientists in 6 months? What jobs do these grads walk into? The tech prerequisite is: "You should feel extremely comfortable with how a computer works including: touch-typing, web browsers, search engines, and basic computer programs." The Curriculum: Stats, Linear Algebra AND Data Wrangling: 4 Weeks Modeling: 3 Weeks Data Engineering, Databases, SQL, Productionisation: 3 We…

I think most people who would be considering bootcamps are comparing it to a traditional 4-year college curriculum -- at least I did. I enrolled in the full-time web program a few years back and this was the back-of-the-napkin math I used to make my decision: Total Hours of College: 4 years, of which 2 years are "core" coursework and 2 years are general education. 2 Years * 2 semesters per year * 15 weeks per semeste…

I have trouble getting students to concentrate on difficult material for anywhere near a whole class even if it's their only class of the day (and I'm considered a good and entertaining professor, honest). No WAY I could get anyone to concentrate on difficult material for 40 hours per week. I mean really no way, even if I were a teaching genius.

Learning difficult material means taking breaks and digesting stuff subconsciously.

Therefore, learning anything difficult takes a certain minimum of calendar time as well as hours in the classroom.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#160

Post by joebob42 »

Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #102
temp8964 wrote: post #65

I hope they success. The traditional higher education is becoming more and more a scam. Federal government is backing almost all the student loans, but universities automatically increase their tuitions. The student loan crisis is a clear indication that this model is not working. For the past 20 years, in-state public university tuitions have increased more than 200% [1]. Now the total student loans count to approxi…

> Federal government is backing almost all the student loans, but universities automatically increase their tuitions. On the condition of getting the federal student loan is that the loan is exempts from bankruptcy. The loans follow us to the death or until it is paid off. It actively screws those naive students until to the point of no return. I have a friend who is still stuck paying the loan more than 15 years bec…

On the other hand, this sort of needs to exist on some level for two reasons:

1. If you go bankrupt, most stuff can be taken away if you can't pay for it. I can take your car, house, etc, but I can't take you education. You still have the full and complete value of that, so I'm not sure it's obvious that bankruptcy should remove the debt.

2. When you graduate, you typically haven't really got any money yet. It would be very easy for recent grads to just go bankrupt before they start accumulating wealth, and then go on with their lives without the loan debt.

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