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Paul Graham, 2020: "Lambda School will teach you programming faster than most colleges. And it not only works well remotely, but was designed to from the start." [1] Paul Graham, 2022: "Of 1277 students who graduated from Lambda School in 2020 and sought jobs, 950 got them, for a placement rate of 74.8%. (Lambda's weirdly dedicated haters will be happy to hear that these numbers were audited by an accounting firm.)"…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The math ends up wildly unfavorable unless you are EXTREMELY confident in your teaching/transformation abilities. If you look good on paper before the school then you don't need it and won't be motivated to share your income. So the applicant pool reduces itself to those who on-paper don't have great chances. So you need to cause a really big delta in the ability of those people to make good money in the industry for…
There was a time about 5 years ago where tech companies were desperate to fill various minority quotas. The idea was those people were very valuable, there were very few applicants who were hotly contested by other tech companies, and lack of skills wouldn't matter - they'd learn on the job. In that world, the school only has to get the students to do a "hello world" in python and apply for the right jobs. Such a sch…
pg in 2019: > Lambda School will go on growing and transform education. Few will remember having been part of the jeering mob. https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20lambda&src=typed...
In January 2020, as news broke about Lambda School's scummy behavior, Graham gave Austen a pep talk which he later expanded into the essay, "Haters." It has aged like a fine milk. https://paulgraham.com/fh.html
> There are of course some people who are genuine frauds. How can you distinguish between x calling y a fraud because x is a hater, and because y is a fraud? Look at neutral opinion. Actual frauds are usually pretty conspicuous. Thoughtful people are rarely taken in by them. So if there are some thoughtful people who like y, you can usually assume y is not a fraud.
I guess all those folks calling these guys "frauds" weren't "thoughtful" enough.
Colleges have worked in the past because the outcomes were more or less guaranteed (i.e. if you got good grades and graduated, you would very likely land a job), but even that is no longer valid (outside of regulated domains like medicine, law, etc.).
I predict we will see many, many more pay-to-learn companies, institutions fall in the coming years. ("fall" could also mean become irrelevant, and catering only to those that don't understand how the world has changed and still incorrectly think that such programs will prepare them well).
BloomTech, in order to survive, had no choice but to try and play the games they did, and mislead. It's a byproduct of not having a business that is viable.
I attended Lambda when it was first starting out. I think I was in the third or fourth cohort. At the time, the sell was that you didn't have to pay anything unless you got a job using the skills you learned from them. I was pretty naïve, I guess. Things seemed fine in the beginning. The instructors were good, and I liked that there were actual live classes. Things degraded very quickly. They kept changing the format…
Please contact the CFPB, it is worth your trouble. Everyone's blood should be boiling reading TFA, such as: > Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was a time about 5 years ago where tech companies were desperate to fill various minority quotas. The idea was those people were very valuable, there were very few applicants who were hotly contested by other tech companies, and lack of skills wouldn't matter - they'd learn on the job. In that world, the school only has to get the students to do a "hello world" in python and apply for the right jobs. Such a sch…
What tech companies do you allege have/had "minority" quotas to fill?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they do lawyer up, they end up being forced into arbitration due to an arbitration clause in their student agreements You’re literally describing why arbitration works. Someone low income can just file for arbitration with minimal work by a lawyer. Contrast that with the tens of thousands they’d need to pay a litigator.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40071539 > I went to a lawyer and was told it wasn't worth suing, because they required arbitration in NYC, which would cost more than I would save. It sounds like arbitration does not work, according to people who had their lawyer look into it for this exact case. What are your thoughts on it given this new information available to you?
Curious who that lawyer is. Because for financial arbitration, the win rates are ridiculously skewed in favour of borrowers and retail investors.
https://twitter.com/austen/status/1780428614192033999 lmao
Are there any legit income-sharing schools of this type, tech or otherwise? Done fairly, it sounds like an interesting alternative to upfront tuition. On the surface it doesn't seem like a bad model, but of course it could be twisted to evil ends. From the article: > The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. > Studen…