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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

#171

I graduated Lambda School and currently have been hired and work in a software position. I don't encourage people to go to... Bloomtech they're calling it now. AMA. I was earlier in the life of Lambda. I got what I needed out of it but I watched a lot who didn't.

Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).

Not OP, but I did go to a bootcamp but didn't get much from it. I learned a lot more from Udemy courses.

I would recommend that if your friends are serious about getting into coding, ask them to take a few React basics courses (just go by the most popular ones on Udemy).

I found that overloading beginners with theory doesn't really work. Getting them to build something and figure out the why of it works better - at least that was my experience. I learned about, say, json webtokens way before I used them, but it wasn't until I built an app of my own with account authentication feature that I figured out what JWTs actually were.

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

#172
Lambda School always looked as a scam to me. I mean, $20k+ for a "bootcamp" and couple of courses is crazy expensive. It's like they designed this program to squeeze all the money from people who can not afford ridiculous tuition fees in the US by giving them hope they will progress faster if they pay them instead of self educating or taking much cheaper competitor's offers.

Udacity has very similar thing with curriculum for various positions, 1:1 mentoring, interview prep etc. for a fraction of BloomTech price, like 1/10 or even 1/20. Which I still consider expensive, since cost of digital goods are close to 0 to replicate and deliver to more people. Point I make here is they can earn more by delivering $100 program to 1m of students or even 1/5 of that, than delivering $1.2k program to 10k students or $20k program to 1k students.

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

#173
Why anyone would give money to this guy is beyond me. Hey, we fucked up our reputation so bad, instead of making good on it, let’s change our name to a shitty Silicon Valley-esque one. It’s a shame nothing will happen to Austen after all the people he’s hurt.

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

#174
Where you get the statistics that shows real value to coding camp, despite a lack of tech passion is when you teach modern data science tools to "domain users" currently stuck within the limitations of excel(The only successful low code platform in the market), or web skills to existing content managers, but that is a much smaller market then trying to push the vision of easy money to youngsters still trying to break into the job market as something other then baristas or line cooks.

And the companies that chased the market for youngsters without any real passion or plan is now running out of customers due both the the fact credit is now tight and that the publics infatuation with the tech industries is waning. And from the looks of it BloomTech looks to definitely target the market for youngster as their primary revenue stream.

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

#175

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

Several of my relatives are Mechanical Engineers. In that field, it seems typical to have both engineers and technicians working on projects. Engineers are responsible for design, and have degrees; Technicians do assembly and maintenance, and only need on-the-job training. I’ve often wondered what our industry would look like if we adopted a similar distinction. In which case, bootcamp graduates would be a natural fi…

The difference is that mechanical engineers need math to understand what they are doing. Engineers are essentially applied mathematicians. They are responsible for design because you cannot design without math.

For software development, you don't need math. This may change when data science is taken more serious and companies have to guarantee the quality of the derived knowledge. So it's the other way round. When our industry changes, we will adopt a similar distinction.

Software doesn't need math because testing is enough. Unlike physical objects, it doesn't cost much to test software, especially because reproduction is almost free. Additionally, with SaaS, software doesn't run unsupervised and thus there is constant testing. In that environment software can almost always be adjusted and reproduced when there are problems.

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

#176

I graduated Lambda School and currently have been hired and work in a software position. I don't encourage people to go to... Bloomtech they're calling it now. AMA. I was earlier in the life of Lambda. I got what I needed out of it but I watched a lot who didn't.

Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).

Definitely App Academy Open. App Academy is one of the original bootcamps and they have solid curriculum. They have their entire course for free online

https://www.appacademy.io/course/app-academy-open

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've been over this again and again, and I know you understand that this isn't true, but don't care. The misconception comes form comparing two different measures: one that is (hired students making more than $50k/enrolled students), the other (hired students/graduated students) Your website, September 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190930144525/https://lambdasch... "86% of Lambda School graduates are hired w…

Oh boy, you keep taking all sorts of things out of context and comparing all sorts of things that don't make any sense to each other. A couple months ago I said our outcomes currently are the best they've ever been. That is a different set of students than those included in that outcomes report, and it is from a smaller subset than an entire years' worth of average placement. If you try to take a very specific commen…

Just wanted to say you have done a good job explaining here. Unfortunately people love to concentrate on negative outcomes without thinking about the positive. On balance the few, arguably "bad" things Lamda has done seem to be hugely outweighed by the positive.

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

#178
Vincent Woo who sold CoderPad also did some investigative journalism on Lambda School / BloomTech showing that they didn't really place as many people as they claimed they did and that generally the company had some internal dysfunction.

https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1452658640809197569?lang...

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've been over this again and again, and I know you understand that this isn't true, but don't care. The misconception comes form comparing two different measures: one that is (hired students making more than $50k/enrolled students), the other (hired students/graduated students) Your website, September 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190930144525/https://lambdasch... "86% of Lambda School graduates are hired w…

Oh boy, you keep taking all sorts of things out of context and comparing all sorts of things that don't make any sense to each other. A couple months ago I said our outcomes currently are the best they've ever been. That is a different set of students than those included in that outcomes report, and it is from a smaller subset than an entire years' worth of average placement. If you try to take a very specific commen…

> I don't know whether it's intentional or not, but you continually, over and over, take two numbers that are not the same thing whatsoever and compare them or multiply them or whatever else and it simply makes no sense.

You keep running in circles around a very simple statement that was on the front page of your website: "86% of Lambda School graduates are hired within 6 months and make over $50k a year."

Just tell me how you got to 86%, because that's wildly inconsistent with years of outcomes data, in addition to the leaks.

> This is fair - there were students who just wanted experience even if unpaid, and the initial intent was to build it into the school itself literally with no pay. I changed my mind on that one after conversations with a few students, and we changed the design as you pointed out, but no student ever did any unpaid work, so it's also not accurate to say that we had a bunch of students doing unpaid work.

I'm sorry, did you just lie to my face, say, "This is fair" and try move on?

I'll be honest, I can't follow the story you're trying to tell. It sounds way more complex than what everyone watched unfold.

Your FAQ at launch clearly says it's unpaid. You had a product manager on Hacker News trying to defend the program while all the commenters explained, "This is an unpaid intern program and probably illegal." He even tried the same, "Well our lawyers said it was ok." After the Twitter backlash, you tweeted and deleted an apology, and then started acting like none of that stuff happened.

As for "no student ever did any unpaid work," didn't you pilot the program for months before publicly announcing it? (This is a rhetorical question. At this point I lack faith you'll tell the truth.)

>> > It was not a qualified educational loan. Section 523(a)(8) is all about how student loans are not dischargeable.

> Ironically other regulatory bodies disagree with the DFPI on this one, and part of the issue of ISAs is everyone wants to regulate it differently but there's no agreement

Let me get this straight. You're saying, "There's no legal precedent, but hey, it might be true? So we threw it in!"

> OK, I really am spending too much time here now. I remember distinctly when you told The Verge that our iOS curriculum didn't include things that would get a student through a phone screen, I offered a bounty to your favorite charity for you to point out any single thing that we were missing

You blocked me, making it impossible to reply.

> and you backtracked and said, "Well some of your students' code on github wasn't very good."

Despite the block, I said: "Your students publish their homework to GitHub. Half a cohort failed to grasp memory management, but you rubber stamped them through the program.

You even hired one of those students to be a section lead, to teach other students."

https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1270761157595262976

"I am not publicly linking to the students who struggled with it, because it’s not their fault. But I did share the GitHub projects with two senior iOS developers I trust, and they agreed these students didn’t get it."

https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1270761955976859650

So to answer your challenge: memory management. I have sign-off from two senior, ex-Apple iOS devs. Please wire that money to the National Student Legal Defense Network, who seems to be handling that lawsuit against you.

> I don't know why this has become such a personal grudge.

It's interesting that you think this is all about you.

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

#180
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, my other advice to candidates is cover letters, cover letters cover letters. No seriously, cover letters! I just throw the cover letters in the bin...

Yep, a lot of companies would bin them for unconscious bias reasons too.

That seems like a odd reason. Are they also tossing the resumes in the bin for potential bias?
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