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BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

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Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#31

Post by rrss »

avalys wrote: post #21
vcsmjk wrote: post #3

Glad to see this, Lambda School is extremely scummy. Can’t be bothered to operate legally, and lied about it: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lan... I really think that the law should be changed so that doing stuff like that would have been a prison term for the CEO (Allred).

A prison term for not registering with some bureaucratic state agency? Why? The “California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education”? This is indistinguishable from parody.

Why is it unreasonable to have people in a government agency to address fraudulent colleges and stuff?

Do you feel the same way about the bureau of consumer protection in the US FTC?

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#32

Post by ajhurliman »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

The range of quality is extremely high in bootcamps. I've interviewed many bootcamp grads the median quality is pretty low. However, I went through a bootcamp (Code Fellows in Seattle) and almost my entire cohort went on to eventually join a FAANG, technical co-founder, or something fairly prestigious.

The curriculum, the teaching style, and the aptitude/ drive of the cohort matters a lot.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#33

Post by jollofricepeas »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I’ve hired quite a few mostly from the old DevBootcamp before it was acquired by Kaplan and spun down.

Like most companies, we hired them into our apprenticeship program and then they worked their way up from there.

Most of them now are senior engineers or moved into management across the globe.

I’d say DevBootcamp seems to have put out some of the strongest students and they’ve done extremely well for themselves with strong representation at FAANG and other “good” tech companies.

Can’t speak for the other camps besides saying I cant think who made it through our apprentice code day.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#34

Post by ativzzz »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I graduated from a bootcamp 6-7 years ago and had several offers for entry level positions from smaller companies I wanted to work at - that said I have a degree in math and have taken several coding classes and have done some self learning projects already so I was ahead of the pack and went overboard on all of our projects. Like some of the others have said, maybe 20-30% were employable out of the bootcamp

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#35

Post by swang720 »

avalys wrote: post #21
vcsmjk wrote: post #3

Glad to see this, Lambda School is extremely scummy. Can’t be bothered to operate legally, and lied about it: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lan... I really think that the law should be changed so that doing stuff like that would have been a prison term for the CEO (Allred).

A prison term for not registering with some bureaucratic state agency? Why? The “California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education”? This is indistinguishable from parody.

I'm actually glad there's a state department for this. Fraudulent private colleges are a _real_ problem.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#36

Post by ed25519FUUU »

jurassic wrote: post #13
awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I was a bootcamp grad in 2013. Myself and my classmates are now mostly filling Staff+ roles, many working in FAANG level companies. So, yes, many people have hired bootcampers and had a good experience.

Filling out staff roles at FANG? Not at the FANG company I work at. I’ve never met a single boot camp person, and absolutely zero staff engineers are boot camp grads that I know of, unless they scrubbed it from their LinkedIn and never talk about it.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#37

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I recently advertised a role and had over 2000 applicants (yes, really). The vast majority of applicants went through bootcamps. Personally, I'm fine with that, heck, I'm Head of Engineering and I'm a university drop-out i.e. didn't even complete a course!

One thing that irked me was bootcamps that have clearly told students to mark on their CV that they were somehow employed at the bootcamp. When I'm getting 50+ applicants who are supposedly employees of the one "company" it immediately rings alarm bells and de-legitimises the whole thing. My advice to candidates, don't do it. Well, my other advice to candidates is cover letters, cover letters cover letters. No seriously, cover letters! When I'm getting 500+ candidates who have completed a bootcamp there's next to no way for me to differentiate between candidates based on CV and a few example projects on Github (though, yes, you should include those).

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#38

Post by noodle »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I've hired quite a few, and generally speaking they've all turned out great. Having said that, the volume of resumes that come in to the ones that I've actually hired is vast. Myself and my recruiters have probably sifted through 10,000 bootcamp resumes per 1 hire. You have to be ruthless about who you actually talk to.

Another tip would be, don't interview a bootcamp grad for mid-level jobs.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#39

Post by PragmaticPulp »

ucm_edge wrote: post #20
awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

I hire them and give them a task somewhere between support engineer that executes well documented code snippets in run books and junior engineer that does very basic CRUD web app development. Making internal dashboards for the customer success team, etc. Give them about 32 hours of work a week and 8 hours of tutorials on other things. Build them up from there. I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lac…

> I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lack of ability and the devs getting upset and leaving when promotions and raises come slow.

I've had similar problems. We've had some bootcamp grads who were good to work with and acknowledged that they were still very junior. We've also had some bootcamp grads who felt entitled to mid-range to senior compensation after their first year, while still getting their bearings on basic developer work. It's hard to explain that, no, I will not give them a raise to match what we're paying people with 5+ years of experience after their bootcamp promised them $200K comp after a couple years in the industry.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#40

Post by setgree »

Not sure what to make of this, but Austen, who is normally a prolific tweeter, hasn't tweeted about this yet [0].

I have gotten used to CEOs tweeting apologetic stuff when this happens. Perhaps this is norm should be bucked? I don't know. I just note that Austen is going against the grain.

EDIT: missed this: "In a now-deleted tweet posted earlier today, Allred quoted a prior statement of gratitude for employees pushing through the work despite being attacked from all sides, adding “even more so today.”

[0] https://twitter.com/Austen

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