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Lambda School lays off 65 employees

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Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#201

Post by sugarwater »

lifer555 wrote: post #153
maximilianroos wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pla…

As a student that experienced the changes you were talking about... Before the TLs were removed, my code was vetted by my TL (and she was a good one, thank goodness), but after the changes, not a single person vetted it. I could probably have sent DMs to various people to get some sort of code review, but as a standard process, it wasn't available anymore.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#202

Post by pmorici »

akanet wrote: post #63

Any former employees interested in speaking to a motivated reporter about their experience, please feel free to contact me. My contact information is on my account bio. I am happy to speak to you completely off the record, in any manner that makes you comfortable. I have never lost a source.

"motivated reporter" Strange way to describe oneself as a reporter isn't it? Shouldn't a reporter's goal to be to follow the facts where ever they lead devoid of any particular motive?

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#203

Post by nrmitchi »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #169
threatofrain wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wait, people can sell the contracts for their future salary? I had no idea how wild that industry had gotten. Or do you mean Lambda was selling them to banks?

Lambda was securitizing the ISAs and selling them to investors on the backend, obviously with a discount based on risk.

Some people treat this like a bad thing, but it's really pretty basic risk-mitigation and cash-flow stabilization. This is kind of like basic factoring, or "modern" solutions like Pipe (https://www.pipe.com/).

There is an argument to be made that it disaligns Lambda and student incentives ("outcome it doesn't matter because Lambda already got paid") but long term, defaulting students would definitely decrease the sales values of the ISAs.

Part of the argument here is that calling these ISAs non-dischargable would lower the risk to the investor, which would make those ISAs worth significantly more.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#204

Post by bigiain »

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.

Perhaps because one of the "three virtues of great programmers" is hubris - which Larry Wall optimistically defined as "The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about." but which also/really means "Excessive pride or self-confidence."

I suspect many/most coders think a "personal trainer for coding" is a great idea - for other people (especially their idiot co workers). But they obviously don't need one themselves, and would never need to pay for new...

http://threevirtues.com

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#205

Post by sutterbomb »

painfulpox wrote: post #168
elliekelly wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lambda now has a program where you can "try" one of their graduates for a few weeks free of charge. Any idea how this works? It seems like it would be difficult to have such a program without running afoul of labor laws. Does Lambda have the equivalent of a temp staffing agency subsidiary to facilitate this program?

I am about to start with a company through the Fellowship program on Monday. There is a staffing agency that we are paid through. The pay isn't phenomenal, but it is a buck or two above a living wage for the state you reside in. If the company decides they like us and want to keep us on, then they reimburse Lambda for what they paid us during the Fellowship. We aren't locked into the Lambda pay rate if we are hired,…

Above a living wage means what exactly? Above minimum wage?

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#206

Post by fnord77 »

rednerrus wrote: post #143
HenryKissinger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stats, Linear Algebra AND Data Wrangling: 4 Weeks Ridiculous. Introductory statistics and linear algebra are two separate undergraduate level courses. And if you want a real grasp of statistics, you need to learn probability theory first, which is another semester long course. To say nothing of "data wrangling", whatever the fuck it means.

Your intro stats and Linear Algebra classes are 4 hours a week. These classes are 40 hours a week. Every week is essentially a quarters worth of work. You can take undergrad courses like that in the summer.

my god, I cannot fathom taking a single class 40 hours a week.

the worst I've seen for summer undergrad classes are 2.5 hours M-F = 15 hours a week

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#207

Post by musicale »

breck wrote: post #53
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…

> Can someone explain how you can train Data Scientists in 6 months? Doesn't it ring alarm bells that society attempts to herd 100% of students through 4 year programs? That sounds far from optimal, no? It seems highly likely to me that if you get someone who excels on the steep parts of learning curves, 6 months studying the right things would be just as effective (if not more) than 4 years doing mostly busy work. >…

> 4 years doing mostly busy work

I expect that is not typically the case at MIT.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#208

Post by elteto »

medvezhenok wrote: post #84
mrcartmenez wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s decent science on why this isn’t possible. Basically you need to space things out to give the brain time to work out what to put into long term memory

It's possible, but for very few people. I went to MIT and there were stories of people there taking ~12-16 classes a semester which theoretically averages out to a course a week (though they ran concurrently and it's a crazy course load for the average person). To be fair, the people who could do that were way on the right of the distribution and it's hard to convey just how fast they could pick things up (think of t…

You simply can't take 12-16 classes a semester, the day doesn't have enough hours for that. They _might_ have gotten permission from the professors to skip classes and just show up to the exams, which is _not_ learning.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#209

Post by [deleted] »

least wrote: post #199
NationalPark wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the actual stats: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpa.asp About 45% of high school graduates enroll immediately in a 4 year program.

Statistics of enrollment percentage doesn’t really describe the culture surrounding college in the United States, though. Plenty of people don’t end up going to college but that certainly hasn’t stopped it being considered a panacea for employability in this country. This is still being pushed by politicians. It’s still what pretty much every parent hopes for their children as well. On this website I’ve seen people d…

[deleted]

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#210

Post by jishnum »

pmorici wrote: post #202
akanet wrote: post #63

Any former employees interested in speaking to a motivated reporter about their experience, please feel free to contact me. My contact information is on my account bio. I am happy to speak to you completely off the record, in any manner that makes you comfortable. I have never lost a source.

"motivated reporter" Strange way to describe oneself as a reporter isn't it? Shouldn't a reporter's goal to be to follow the facts where ever they lead devoid of any particular motive?

Off-topic, is there any cue in the above comment to indicate 'motivated' should be read as 'has a defined motive' vs 'enthusiastic / hard-working' ?
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