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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#101

Post by runako »

songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is fantastic!

Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard, so it's also worth noting that there is a whole range of options for folks.

Obviously, there are public and community colleges that teach programming. Many of these have a long history of working with non-traditional students who have jobs or other commitments. Some are remote-only or remote-friendly. In my state (GA), tuition for an accredited public community college is about $6,000 over 2 years for a programming diploma. That's $3,000 per year, and there's no income share required. (I'm not sure if people can do it faster for less money.)

There are also a set of nonprofits and foundations that offer free programming programs to certain populations. I believe NYC has something along these lines.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#102

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

raiyu wrote: post #73

I've had a fair amount of experience with coding boot camps having have helped several friends and coworkers apply, get accepted, attend, and complete bootcamps across various cities and institutions. The idea of bootcamps is fantastic, they allow people that may have not been exposed to computer science to get up to speed on technology and transition careers. However, there are several problems. First and foremost,…

I've found online courses can actually be MORE expensive than meatspace courses because online, they usually make me buy some DRM nonsense that self-destructs at the end of the course. So it's not possible to acquire "books" through any of the traditional means secondhand, theft, borrowing.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#103

Post by jariel »

These courses should be free.

If government agencies really had their acts together, then these courses, as well as many others would be free, as part of 'extended learning' programs.

For all the crazy amount of grant money being thrown around by so many governments, and given the need for certain disciplines, it's odd that this doesn't happen.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#104

Post by songzme »

cheshireoctopus wrote: post #83
songzme wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for asking! 1. I simply created the meetup group. Showed up, people came. It was empty the first week couple of days, I just made it a point to show up. When there were no people, I simply just read hn or did some work. When the first student came, I made sure to be nice so he feels inspired to come back. The library took note, wanted to make it official with their library program and give us a dedicated room…

Appreciate you taking the time to answer. I am really into what you are building here - are you looking for volunteers to help?

Yeah! We are always needing help. Just consistently show up if you are around the area and answer questions. Or signup and go through help people in the chatroom! The instructions are here: https://www.notion.so/Table-of-Contents-a83980f81560429faca3...

Basically... if you are a seasoned engineer, just going through what we are working with and being curious about it and understanding our approach is really helpful.

What wouldn't be helpful is to show up (in person or online), try to implement a bunch of new changes without understanding the current student journey, and then don't follow through. The intention is good, but I think the students end up more confused.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#105

Post by 737min »

akanet wrote: post #72
mattmcknight wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose to write about this program as opposed to other programs that teach people coding skills, but have vastly worse payment plans, including some which can't even be dispensed in bankruptcy? The criticism seems unmoored from its placement in the set of alternatives for people who want to try to see if they can get a job coding. The undergraduate degree is notoriously bad for this purpose, from time, pr…

Why? Its prominence.

Exactly ^, Lambda has gotten a lot of mindshare quickly, based on some provable misrepresentations. That’s not good for either bootcamps or startup ecosystem generally.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#106

Post by 737min »

wbharding wrote: post #62

Mildly interesting how this story has gotten 130 points in two hours but is still placed beneath numerous other HN front page stories with less points in more time. Not least since the incentives of YC would be to want this story dead. In the 5 mins it took me to login on mobile it dropped from 15 to 25.

Indeed, odd to see this story is dropping off the front page so quickly. Someone ought to do some datascience analytics on how YC-negative bs YC-positive stories do on HN.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#107

Post by songzme »

hundt wrote: post #94
songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is very cool! How did you choose the curriculum that you are following?

I made it over time based on observations with my coworkers and my personal work experience (I'm currently a tech lead at PayPal, formerly L4 at Google). What I want to do is to teach people to become good engineers, getting a job should be a side effect of that.

I think mainstream bootcamps value getting a job more than actually becoming a good engineer, which is something I disagree with. This also motivates me to show up at the library every day.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#108

Post by songzme »

taytus wrote: post #99
songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

Thank you for the inspiration. I'm tempted now to start doing the same myself.

Do it! We can share ideas :)

You can reach me via email: library at zheng.network

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#109

Post by dang »

wbharding wrote: post #62

Mildly interesting how this story has gotten 130 points in two hours but is still placed beneath numerous other HN front page stories with less points in more time. Not least since the incentives of YC would be to want this story dead. In the 5 mins it took me to login on mobile it dropped from 15 to 25.

The submission hit some software penalties, like HN's flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it or even see it until a few minutes ago (I'm getting a late start this "morning"), when I saw it and turned off that penalty. This placed the article back on the HN front page.

We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC-funded startups are in a story. That's literally the first principle of HN moderation, in the sense that it's the first thing PG told me when he was training me to do this in 2012. I didn't even have time to grab a chair before he blurted it out.

It's natural for people to question this, so such questions will always come up. We're scrupulous about following this rule for two reasons. The first is that we need to be able to answer the questions in good conscience; the second is that moderating any other way would be dumb. The community's trust is the most valuable asset HN has. In fact, if you think about it, it's the only asset HN has.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#110

Post by auston »

raiyu wrote: post #73

I've had a fair amount of experience with coding boot camps having have helped several friends and coworkers apply, get accepted, attend, and complete bootcamps across various cities and institutions. The idea of bootcamps is fantastic, they allow people that may have not been exposed to computer science to get up to speed on technology and transition careers. However, there are several problems. First and foremost,…

Having worked on low cost online educational content & as a bootcamp instructor previously - I think there are a few forces that lead to suboptimal outcomes:

1. No or low admissions bar. Some students very simply SHOULD NOT be admitted to what is intended to be a 3 month course. They either don’t have the learning ability that is required to absorb all of the content in 3 months or the drive.

2. Curriculum pacing - pretty much every human learns different concepts at different pace. A lot of code schools are just trying to assembly-line their course & put people in one end and shove them out the other end in 3 months. If these boot camps offered remediation at a unit level, students on the whole would go much further much faster.

3. Curriculum focus - some people want to be data scientists, others want to write backend code, others want to be iOS developers, others front end. A lot of bootcamps really have curriculum hitting very broad strokes in that 3 month period: big-o, SOLID, html, css, npm/yarn/etc, command line interface, JavaScript, react, elixir, etc. etc. is too much to cram into 3 months IMO. This is a consequence of students hearing this buzzword soup from friends and internet & bootcamps not owning responsibility to serve students.

4. Outcome reporting is hazy at best - CIRR is IMO the best framework for reporting student numbers & should be used as the gold standard. However it should be enforced strictly, if a member doesn’t report CIRR numbers within 3 or 6 months of a cohort finishing they should be penalized in some way by being removed or fined or something. Students need good & recent data to make good decisions & it’s just not their these days.

There are more problems but those are the biggest IMO. There is still a huge opportunity in helping people learn to code but I think it looks more like learncodethehardway.com than Lambdaschool.com

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