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Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

businessinsider.com

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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#111

Post by xtracto »

spoonjim wrote: post #79
sam0x17 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one particular student sticks with me. He was in his 60s-70s, and had a burgeoning career in IT/Security in the late 90s, but quit his job to take care of his ailing mother around 2001 or so. He took care of her, living off of her reverse mortgage for 20 years, but now she has passed away, and the term of the reverse mortgage ends soon (or I believe by now has ended) so the bank will be re-posessing his house, h…

Does any country do a decent job of retraining 70 year old men for developer positions? This does not need to be a high priority for a society if the 70 year old can afford a roof of their head and a meal.

My thought was around those lines: 60/70 year olds shouldn't be struggling to get retrained. They should be able to live the rest of their lives in retirement. Society should take care of their elders. That's where I would start a UBI program if I could.

Sure, if anyone wants to use their time to learn something new that would be a plus for them.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#112

Post by 300bps »

ghaff wrote: post #30
sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

One nice thing about software is that you can self-teach to a significant degree. But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation. And, as you say, you probably want to structure your learning in a way that works for you.

But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation

Could not agree more. When I was 14 years old my friends would go out to the mall to hang out. I would sit at home working on the modem routines for my BBS program.

If I didn't get paid to work in IT, I would be doing it for free.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#113

Post by 1270018080 »

notJim wrote: post #27
sam0x17 wrote: post #24

It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…

> two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads I just want to echo this, I have also worked with some really really sharp engineers coming out of these bootcamps. They were also people changing careers. I would really hate for the questionable aspects of these bootcamps to reflect on all of their grads, because some of the grads are fantastic.

Some of the grads are fantastic, but not because of bootcamps. They would probably succeed only through self-teaching if they wanted. The school isn't doing them any favors besides adding a little standardized badge on their resume.

I guess traditional colleges are the same way, right? A degree is like an informal union card that says "Hey this person can sit for 4 years and take tests."

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#114

Post by vorador »

akanet wrote: post #8

Hi I wrote this piece and am perhaps still better known here as the founder of CoderPad, etc. I'm happy to answer any questions throughout the day, so long as they are on-topic and civil.

Would love to hear a bit about what got you interested in journalism and in lambda school – thank you!

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#115

Post by gkop »

jesuis_14 wrote: post #9

I'm curious about the future of Lambda School. Apparently, the co-founders have been lying about the numbers for years like there's no tomorrow, but the money still came in. It's pretty clear that the business is not sustainable nor does it have much hope of becoming profitable even in the short term.In addition, the school's reputation is tarnishing, and there have also been a few clashes with the institutions that…

Austen will get a soft landing. Look at the circle jerk of YC and YC-adjacent cheerleaders that have gone to bat for Lambda School.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#116

Post by akanet »

throwaway789257 wrote: post #55

I used to work as a technical recruiter and made several hires out of coding bootcamps (though never from Lambda, which didn't exist at the time). One rule of thumb that we drew after many trials was that, if a candidate coming out of a coding bootcamp did not have a math or science background prior to that bootcamp, they probably would not pass our interview process. That is, people with a certain intellectual found…

We didn't have to trick anyone for this piece - all dialogue with the school was conducted through a fact checker hired by the publication. I didn't talk to Austen at all.

That said, I definitely did trick him a little bit last year for that first interview. I'll own that. It was worth it.

I'm unsure what the conflict of interest would be - but I no longer run CoderPad nor own any equity in it.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#117

Post by horsawlarway »

ericb wrote: post #89
spoonjim wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any country do a decent job of retraining 70 year old men for developer positions? This does not need to be a high priority for a society if the 70 year old can afford a roof of their head and a meal.

I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the United States provides such a poor safety net for those with health issues that one person's failing health destroys the economic potential of one or more people around them. From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"

It's worse than just lost startup opportunities.

I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation.

Long term care is needed by a lot of folks over the age of 65 (~70% of adults age 65 will require at least partial long term care).

Even "reasonably cheap" care (in my experience, roughly the same quality as living in a college dorm, with a roommate and a meal plan) can easily run 10k/month - or 120k a year.

Of those needing long term care (roughly half of all folks): Men will need that care for an average of ~2 years, women nearly 4 years. 20% will need that care for 5 years or longer.

I watched my parents spend all of their inheritance covering long term care costs for their parents (Alzheimers is a bitch). Once the inheritance was gone, they worked longer than they would have preferred to continue covering those costs (my mother only retired this year when my grandmother died of covid - as horrendous as it sounds, it was almost a blessing).

My personal take is that "single family homes" and "private healthcare" are a literal fucking disaster for long term wealth inequality. That policy combination takes a lot of middle class families and leaves them poor.

* - I personally don't think it's an accident at all, I think it's very, very intentional.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#118

Post by akanet »

Gunax wrote: post #23

I think there is a double standard applied to educational reformers like MOOCs, bootcamps, and video courses. Education largely does not work for most people who enrol. Most college students do not finish, and something like a third of university students do not either. And even among those students who receive the credential, many are probably able to slide through without actually learning much. Anecdotally I think…

I agree but would suggest you apply further rigor. There are bootcamps that are performing well. Bootcamps should be compared to other bootcamps.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#119

Post by pharmakom »

notJim wrote: post #69
sam0x17 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One huge mistake I think a lot (but not all of) the bootcamps are making is taking the easy route of simply using JavaScript to teach both frontend and backend. JavaScript is a TERRIBLE first programming language. I usually have to spend 2-3 sessions per mentee explaining the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript, where some of the OOP concepts actually come from, and how things work in other languages to put into context the…

I agree with this. It seems like they should start with python or even java to learn the basics in a relatively straightforward environment, but one that also implements a lot of constructs in a fairly standard way. They also both have well-documented and large standard libraries. I feel like they should spend a bit of time on that, and then switch to JS, which is relevant for so many jobs these days.

It's niche, but I really think F# is the best language to learn first. Not all of F#, but the basics of let, records, tuples, recursion... All that's required is FSI (the interactive interpreter). You can even fetch dependencies from Nuget inside a script, so there's less setup than Node or Python.

Elm would probably work too.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#120

Post by akanet »

spamizbad wrote: post #95
akanet wrote: post #8

Hi I wrote this piece and am perhaps still better known here as the founder of CoderPad, etc. I'm happy to answer any questions throughout the day, so long as they are on-topic and civil.

Just wanted to say I'm a big fan of your journalism and CoderPad. One question I have about this: Do you think Lambda is uniquely problematic in this space or are they perhaps a more typical case? Are others worse? Anecdotally, back in 2019 I asked our internal recruiter to reach out to Lambda school to see about graduate resumes sent our way for jr software development positions. He emailed them but claims they were…

I think Lambda is an unusually bad bootcamp owing to their financialization strategy and also lack of prior educational experience in their leadership. I think there are good bootcamps, but the well is being poisoned a bit here.
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