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

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

#301

Post by robocat »

jedberg wrote: post #266
coryrc wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not working for twenty years (in the prime time for earning money) is not "stumbling once".

In that case the issue was that he had to stop working to take care of his mother. In most civilized countries, his mother would have sufficient help from government healthcare.

> In most civilized countries, his mother would have sufficient help from government healthcare.

I am in New Zealand, which is fairly civilised, and I think your statement is mostly wrong.

Firstly, I have seen people get some government help, but it is rarely enough. Even with government help and sharing the load with siblings you may still need to help your parents full time.

Secondly, many people choose to look after their parents because they want to, or sometimes they don’t trust that others will give them the same quality of care. Even with high quality private care, I have seen plenty of children dedicate a lot of time to their parents (similarly friends looking after sick friends).

For some children it is acceptable for them to hand parents over to aged care, provided by the state. Many other children choose instead to do as much as they can to help their parents, often because they have experience of the systems and see the reality of overburdened elderly care.

When infirm people have nobody else to help them except government services, their care is sometimes of low quality, although still expensive for the economy to provide. A mature economy with many elderly perhaps doesn’t have enough people to provide the number of dedicated hours needed to support all of their infirm? I did a quick search and it looks like New Zealand spends about 1% of GDP on long term aged health care. That seems surprisingly low to me - although I didn’t look at how much other countries spend. https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=crown+expenditure+%22aged%...

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

#302

Post by codr7 »

lazide wrote: post #272
jedberg wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case the issue was that he had to stop working to take care of his mother. In most civilized countries, his mother would have sufficient help from government healthcare.

Depending on how sick she was there are such programs in every state. If she needed round the clock care like it sounds, she was sick enough most likely. He also could probably have declared bankruptcy early and been able to focus more on learning useful skills instead of killing himself trying to pay bills he never could. That is what bankruptcy is for. But hard to say what was really going on.

Right, learning useful skills while declaring bankruptcy.

Something tells me you've never even come close to walking in those shoes.

The second you stop generating profit, the state starts treating you like a broken toy.

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

#303

Post by lmm »

ec109685 wrote: post #285
boringg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a far assessment. There is a certain level of mathematical aptitude that is essential for being able to be successful at programming. Maybe no in the strict sense of math but in understanding how different structures and concepts are able to relate to each other. However in the strict sense of math, there is a requirement there. I also posit that as bootcamps grew - the quality control and quality of…

This is a fascinating take. I consider all the advanced math that is needed for a CS degree unnecessary gate keeping. I took several years of calculus to graduate, and while I still grok the concepts somewhat, I by no means mastered any of it. It doesn’t feel necessary at all where I am now.

I don't think knowing any specific mathematics is necessary for CS, but having the capacity to learn mathematics is, and most people who have that capacity end up with a degree somewhere in the science umbrella. You don't need calculus specifically, but you need the ability to abstract, to form rules and express precisely where they apply and where they do not.

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

#304

Post by lmm »

el_dev_hell wrote: post #254
cm2012 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people to who can afford to go to school to broaden their education without a clear job benefit are those born rich. In other words, the people who used to go to college pre 1970s.

> The only people to who can afford to go to school to broaden their education without a clear job benefit are those born rich. I respectfully disagree. I've spent an enormous amount of time inside universities (as both a student and employed as an engineer). The vast majority of students have no clear job benefit at the end of their degree. Most students are studying something with no obvious job correlation. The la…

> Honestly, it's really sad to see. I've spoken with countless third year humanities/law students that are completely lost and have no idea what to do as graduation approaches (about 20% of law graduates at my last uni went on to practice law). Oh, and they're crippled with debt (in both Australia and the US).

> In my experience, the worse off the student, the more likely they were to study something with poor career outcomes (one of the worst offenders was the bachelor of business, which was a popular choice for students hoping to escape the lower/middle class but had atrocious outcomes). I chalked this up to fewer educated role models when they were growing up.

Grandparent said these people can't afford to go to school; I don't think what you've said contradicts that.

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

#305

Post by lmm »

willhinsa wrote: post #298
cm2012 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the dirty secret of all higher education. The value of the credential comes from the screening, not the education. Research shows people accepted to ivy league schools who don't attend have the same future incomes as the people who attend.

Because we as a society decided that IQ testing job applicants was illegal, we created the behemoth that is our student loan crisis. Fun times.

I'm sympathetic to that kind of view, but it's not quite as simple as that. It's legal to ask job applicants for their SAT scores (which are directly comparable to IQ tests), but most employers don't.

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

#307

Post by conartist »

908B64B197 wrote: post #171
bwing wrote: post #70

I 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…

Maybe the failure of bootcamp grads not working out is on your end? We've seen plenty of bootcamp grads succeed at our company.

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

#308

Post by webmaven »

cwilkes wrote: post #259
edgefield wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I’ve seen a company bought by private equity, it spells the beginning of the end. The strategy always seems to milk every last drop of cash from the business, without any long term sustainable plan. As an anecdotal case, I visited Sea World over the summer and half the concessions and shows were closed. It was still expensive and crowded and and there were service bottlenecks everywhere. Long lines for a b…

Beginning of the end happened before that because most healthy companies don’t need private equity unless they need a lot of cash for an expansion. Part of the reason they got in that position is that they were charging to little to make money. It only follows that prices will go up and probably service down as the company stressed customer service in the hopes of attracting better future capital.

Too many companies end up in a leveraged buyout by PE that is ultimately based not on unprofitability, but just insufficient profitability to satisfy shareholders (some of which are buying in just to force the issue and then unload the stock before the bill comes due for the short-term thinking).

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

#309

Post by oceanghost »

lmm wrote: post #270
harry8 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an issue in market information where regulation can't really work [1]. Vendors have a brand. They establish the value of the brand such that purchasers have a signal that they aren't going to be ripped off. For example you can be pretty sure coca-cola isn't going to cut costs to the point where they don't care about putting poison in the bottle - and you don't need regulation to know they won't do it. Zeus-Cola?…

I keep redrafting a blog post in my head about this cycle and how it means that even though the world is getting better, every specific brand is getting worse. (There was a wonderful post about Starbucks specifically that I now can't find, talking about how they grew their reputation by having hand-made coffee that people loved before switching to machine brewing that required less skill and people wouldn't hate). I…

I've have had this theory for years-- that restaurants start out, and the ones that survive and multiply do something unique. And then at some size, where economy of scale is involved, they cost reduce to the point that, they've reduced out whatever made them special in the first place. Then you end up with these giants that exist on momentum but are unable to produce a quality product.

It works for any business really.

Starbucks in particular-- there's not enough quality coffee in the world for them to serve it at any price.

They've even gone so far as to redefine the term "blonde" to something that's more like full-city--lighter roasts imply higher quality beans--full city is several shades darker than blonde, and blonde should almost always come with at least some chaff. I've never seen chaff in a bag of Starbucks beans, but it could be possible they're taking extraordinary measures to remove it... But I doubt it.

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

#310

Post by lmm »

ResearchCode wrote: post #215
syndacks wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a troll comment.

The 99% placement of medical schools is not a "troll", no. There is no reason it could not apply to CS. Also note that most of the points made in contention would apply just as well to medical schools and medical school graduates. For instance, there are plenty of unsocialized medical school graduates - they are still called doctors. But if they studied STEM, they're supposedly "too bad to deserve a job". Weird. I'm…

I'd flip that around: there's a huge undersupply of medicine graduates, because the medical establishment very deliberately limits the number of students who are accepted. And while that does ensure that it's very easy for a doctor to find work, there are huge costs - huge competition for admissions, excessive working hours (with correspondingly high rates of burnout and suicide), routine interpersonal toxicity, spiralling prices for medical care that damage the rest of society.
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