Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 26 posts

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#11

Post by sugarwater »

sugarwater wrote: post #5
sugarwater wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that Lambda has now implemented an auto-grader, but it came too late for me. I was in that hole post-changes where Lambda seemed not to know what the hell it was doing, and graduated after. There was even a week where I tested whether or not Lambda cared if I was submitting anything at all by NOT submitting anything. And... crickets. No more accountability. There were even form submissions where a student coul…

Students all across the board were and are still really upset. Some student posted a poll asking whether or not students liked the changes. Overwhelmingly, students answered NO, but soon after the poll was deleted by the CEO Austen. He's deleted quite a few negative posts on the Lambda subreddit, too. I'm obviously no fan of his, after he described the changes Lambda made as "small changes in schedule" when [this pos…

Here are a couple more recent links relevant to Lambda School:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA8obAJa414&t=500s

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/lvi6mz/lamb...

https://twitter.com/namssus/status/1339037833386930177?s=20

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#12

Post by sugarwater »

teachrdan wrote: post #10
sugarwater wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they can turn it around? Idk. They certainly couldn't improve things quick enough when I was there. The most unfortunate thing is that Lambda is walking away with a tainted reputation.

Certainly the most unfortunate thing is that students committed thousands of hours to a business that knowingly lied to them about the value of their program?

You're absolutely right.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#13

Post by andrewzah »

All bootcamps are a sham. They make lots of promises, but end up just churning out candidates who can barely reason about the material that was foisted upon them in rapid-fire succession.

I don't see bootcamp experience as being useful for a hiring metric. You can get the same exact results by independently studying yourself, and save yourself the stress and money. You're better off finding peers/mentors to talk to through programming meetups/conferences.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#15

Post by sugarwater »

llacb47 wrote: post #14

This is just a link to a subreddit with infrequent posts. Not worthy of a post here

The point is that for all posts spanning back to 5+ months ago, the entire comment section is filled with students sharing their story and trying to stop other people from enrolling at the school. I'm not sure your post about the $100 dollar toothbrush was worthy of a post here, either.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#16

Post by AlchemistCamp »

andrewzah wrote: post #13

All bootcamps are a sham. They make lots of promises, but end up just churning out candidates who can barely reason about the material that was foisted upon them in rapid-fire succession. I don't see bootcamp experience as being useful for a hiring metric. You can get the same exact results by independently studying yourself, and save yourself the stress and money. You're better off finding peers/mentors to talk to t…

I completely disagree. I went to Hack Reactor in 2013 and the ROI was fantastic.

I really leveled up my JavaScript and coding skills in general and ended up dramatically increasing my earning power. I was hired about a week after graduating and just the signing bonus paid most my tuition.

If I ever see a similar kind of school for the next skill I want to build, I'll probably enroll.

That said, I've heard some of the Lambda School claims and don't believe they're honest. Vincent Woo did some solid reporting on Lambda.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#17

Post by 908B64B197 »

ibeckermayer wrote: post #8

Sad tale. I went to a competitor of theirs, Holberton School, and also left with a bad taste in my mouth (whole other story). I would recommend others try Lambda, which in retrospect seemed like a better choice. It sounds like the quality has really degraded since then (this was 2018). I can’t help but think this is related to chasing venture returns. College needs to be “disrupted”, but there’s not necessarily a way…

> I went to a competitor of theirs, Holberton School, and also left with a bad taste in my mouth (whole other story)

Please tell

> It sounds like the quality has really degraded since then (this was 2018).

I'm skeptical of bootcamps. Lambda has "student TAs" that are basically three months ahead of the students they coach. Contrast this to a real school where your TAs are, at worse, undergrads who completed the course and were personally selected by the professor in charge.

That and, from what I've seen, a lot of bootcamps are light on theory and are more focused on rote. A lot of "graduates" will have a "portfolio" but if you go peek at the code from multiple students of the same batch you'll see that it's basically the same project 30+ students did. Same structure, same lines. What I would expect out of a first year CS lab assignment.

> College needs to be “disrupted”, but there’s not necessarily a way to do this that creates the type of leverage of a SaaS company.

It's a policy issue. Having easy access to (non defaultable) students loans created an amenities arm race.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#18

Post by andrewzah »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #16
andrewzah wrote: post #13

All bootcamps are a sham. They make lots of promises, but end up just churning out candidates who can barely reason about the material that was foisted upon them in rapid-fire succession. I don't see bootcamp experience as being useful for a hiring metric. You can get the same exact results by independently studying yourself, and save yourself the stress and money. You're better off finding peers/mentors to talk to t…

I completely disagree. I went to Hack Reactor in 2013 and the ROI was fantastic. I really leveled up my JavaScript and coding skills in general and ended up dramatically increasing my earning power. I was hired about a week after graduating and just the signing bonus paid most my tuition. If I ever see a similar kind of school for the next skill I want to build, I'll probably enroll. That said, I've heard some of the…

I don't disagree that some of these bootcamps teach some knowledge and lead to jobs afterwards. But what you're really paying for is networking. Even junior development work requires a fairly robust set of knowledge, that isn't going to be grokked within 6 weeks or even 3 months (unless they were already familiar with computing/unix etc). That model only works for companies that are willing to onboard -very- green junior developers and mentor them long-term.

You can accomplish the same thing by following courses/books online, making a handful of projects on github to show interviewers, and networking at conferences/meetups. That's how I landed my first part-time job with programming, and then my first full-time job.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#19

Post by dghlsakjg »

andrewzah wrote: post #13

All bootcamps are a sham. They make lots of promises, but end up just churning out candidates who can barely reason about the material that was foisted upon them in rapid-fire succession. I don't see bootcamp experience as being useful for a hiring metric. You can get the same exact results by independently studying yourself, and save yourself the stress and money. You're better off finding peers/mentors to talk to t…

I disagree. Many bootcamps overpromise/underdeliver. Some are fantastic:

I went to Turing a few years ago. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm happy to claim that a Turing grad will be able to be competitive with most CS grads in a a junior position. In a lot of ways they will be more prepared.

I also disagree that you can get the same education on your own. Good bootcamps have an incredibly short feedback loop, and there are actual professionals in the loop. You simply won't get daily feedback about best practices, code reviews, git training, etc. from an experienced professional if all you do is watch youtube and read books.

Re: Lambda School can't catch a break from upset students

#20

Post by greenie_beans »

andrewzah wrote: post #18
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. I went to Hack Reactor in 2013 and the ROI was fantastic. I really leveled up my JavaScript and coding skills in general and ended up dramatically increasing my earning power. I was hired about a week after graduating and just the signing bonus paid most my tuition. If I ever see a similar kind of school for the next skill I want to build, I'll probably enroll. That said, I've heard some of the…

I don't disagree that some of these bootcamps teach some knowledge and lead to jobs afterwards. But what you're really paying for is networking. Even junior development work requires a fairly robust set of knowledge, that isn't going to be grokked within 6 weeks or even 3 months (unless they were already familiar with computing/unix etc). That model only works for companies that are willing to onboard -very- green ju…

People learn differently. Not everybody can learn on their own, especially not when encountering something like programming.

I went to a bootcamp and the network isn't what I paid for. The network hasn't given me much at all. I had a mix of previous self-learning experience, and decided to do a bootcamp to get more serious about it. It was definitely beneficial and the investment paid of 5x within two years.

Post reply on HN