I’ve been calling this a scam since day one. And the founder has been trying to promote anti-college sentiment. It just needs to die.
Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
181–190 of 412 posts
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#182Earlier 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…
JS is a small language when you consider the core of constructs which are in use today. I'd ballpark JS to be around 80-120 "constructs", which will differ based on how you divide semantic and conceptual units of learning. I'd ballpark Go to be around 80-120 as well. A junior developer who is just learning how to code will not deal with all of JS historical baggage; they will deal with historical JS when joining a la…
Learning an additional, "learning language", be it a real language like Pascal or an entirely conceptual/theoretical language like pseudocode or flowchart is the only way to become a programmer.
Programming is a very particular and abstract way to look at performing a task and most people need to be eased into it, trained to think like a computer.
This ideea that you can take a shoe salesman, make them "proficient" at JavaScript, and let them loose in the job market is a bit strange. It might work for a very limited number of people with an knack for it, but most people I've seen will approach the task as some sort of incantation of magic formulas that make the computer work. When the complexity of the task exceeds what can be achieved with magic formulas, they give up in frustration.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#183Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#184The methodology they use to calculate the placement rate is clearly misleading, and given that methodology, the 2019 placement numbers are rather mediocre. They shouldn’t be tricking students into making major life decisions based on misleading statistics.
On the other hand, some of the arguments in the article are silly. Tech companies drastically cut back on entry level hiring in 2020, and when this happens the non conventional pipelines tend to be the first to go. I wouldn’t extrapolate out this decline as a permanent issue beyond the pandemic. Additionally, the article expresses skepticism that expanding student enrollment at the expense of placement would hamper profitability - common sense is that there will be some variable costs that scale proportionally with student enrollment, and as such the path to profitability would be to improve placement rates. Perhaps most egregiously, the article talks about the high opportunity cost for students investing 9-12 months in lambda school and the immediately after that switches to attacking lambda school for shortening its class lengths. A curious juxtaposition. Frankly, this is a good example of incentive alignment.
Finally, there is the ridiculousness of the graduate at the end who doesn’t want to find a designer job because that would entail making income share payments. Not only is that cutting off your nose to spite your face, but it’s rather odd to feel you didn’t get your money’s worth from a service operating at a significant loss. I guess taxpayer funded K-12 and community college education has made a lot of people accustomed to being insulated from the true cost of education.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#185I was at Lambda when they announced the switch from 9 to 6 months and the elimination of paid team leaders. The feedback was universally negative. In a channel for open student discussion, Austen Allred deleted a poll from Slack because of how lopsided the reaction was. He explained the deletion by saying the poll was "misleading." Students then got a survey "explaining" why the change was actually a good thing by as…
I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] I don't think I've seen a single hire out of a…
I'm a currently working software engineer from Lambda, who knows other people who succeeded at Lambda and other bootcamps.
The TA thing, a TA doesn't teach, a TA pretty much grades/code reviews. They answered questions. (I did this while I was hunting for a job).
They also don't count that towards placement.
I have an IS degree, but some other people I know succeed with pretty much anything you can think of. I don't have enough of a sample size to know if we're all just exceptions or not.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#186My partner went through a bootcamp, and there was an interview process after the application process. In my partner's case, they hold an advance degree in a STEM field from an Ivy League. A few of their peers had similar backgrounds, and that group didn't have trouble finishing. I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few. If s…
I've interviewed a few candidates in a similar situation to your partner. My impression is that the bootcamps had very little to do with their success. I would put it more down to personal drive and possibly the programming STEM grads tend to get exposed to.
It's interesting that you call this having "very little to do with" the success. It's a philosophical argument, I guess. If there's boulder at the top of a hill and I give it a little nudge so it rolls all the way to the bottom - did I have very little to do with the boulder rolling down, since gravity did most of the work? Or did I play the most important role?
Even if it's true that selection bias is huge and the best qualified people going into a bootcamp are the best performers coming out, that doesn't necessarily mean the bootcamp wasn't useful. These people could have otherwise gone their whole lives always being one small nudge away from becoming a great programmer, but would have never realized it without the right conditions. If a bootcamp simply creates those conditions for them to make it happen for themselves, that still seems important.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#187It 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 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…
Yes, javascript has some quirks. But most bootcamps are trying to get their students from "zero to employable developer" in a very short amount of time, and "employable entry-level developer" is almost always synonymous with "employable entry-level web developer". Given that mandate, you basically have to teach people the basics of web applications, which means talking about what happens on the client, which means javascript. And at that point, it's pretty reasonable to not spend your limited time teaching them a whole other language, especially because Node is extremely popular at the kinds of places your students are likely to work.
Also, most languages have quirks. What are you going to teach them? Python, which also has almost 30 years of baggage? Java, which requires you to spend significantly more time to produce basic functionality? Haskell, so they can gloat about the power of purity and monads on Hacker News?
I understand that javascript might not be the ideal intro language in theory. But I think it probably is the best one in the bootcamp specific use case.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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."
I mean there is a lot of value in getting a standardized badge for far less expense and time than a traditional degree.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
While not having majored in medicine myself, I see no reason why CS couldn't have a 99% placement rate too.
Most CS programs do not have 99% placement. There are a few reasons 1. Some people who graduate with CS degrees can't write good code. It is shocking how little you can learn while still graduating. 2. Some college graduates are lack the social/organizational skills for office work 3. Industry has a limited appetite for junior engineers because they're often a net drain on the company for the first 6-12 months and on…
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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#190"Lambda School placed only 30% of its 2020 graduates in qualifying jobs during the first half of 2020. This figure is in stark contrast to the 74% placement rate it advertised for its 2019 graduates" It's almost as if something happened in 2020 that reduced the number of open positions available...
> It's almost as if something happened in 2020 that reduced the number of open positions available... Did it? My impression has been that software dev jobs have exploded (or maybe continued to explode) during COVID. Maybe there was a bit of a slowdown in the first half of 2020?
There were a LOT of hiring freezes and substantial layoffs in the first half of 2020.