Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

Post by JamesBarney » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:05 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #56

zachruss92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn’t agree more. The traditional education system is broken for training software engineers in my opinion. I thankfully dropped out my freshman year, but some of my classmates were literally not capable of using Git (branching & resolving merge conflicts) for their senior capstone projects. Given almost every company uses Git all day every day how is a $250k education helping prepare them for working in the rea…

That would be a waste of time to teach. It takes maybe a few hours to learn almost everything there is to know about branching or merge conflicts. You should learn the hard things in school, not the minutiae or trivia you would learn in your first month of any job. When I was in school I'm glad I went out of my way to take all the math-heavy and theoretical classes I could, and no classes like "modern web design" or…

Post by JamesBarney » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #76

austenallred wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That company has hired 20+ Lambda School grads, two hired as senior.

I believe you. But there is also significant title inflation at that specific company. There is no reasonable definition for "senior software engineer" which has qualifications that can be met from scratch in nine months. What are their "junior" engineers like? Do they have a title between junior and senior? Like I said, this isn't a comment on the Lambda School. It's a comment on the idea that this occurrence isn't…

Post by austenallred » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #92

kasey_junk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under no circumstances would I be happy if my degree program taught me how to use git. I can’t think of a single skill more stupid to learn in university. My degree came a lot cheaper than the modern ones but if I got a similar experience now as then I wouldn’t feel cheated. My undergraduate provided opportunities to program lisps & assembly & write published articles on data structures & I literally went to the loca…

Just because I like telling this story: My university taught me every sorting algorithm known to man (or at least it felt like it at the time). After graduating, I traveled for a bit in the UK and got a job at a travel tour company doing odd jobs. One day the finance department asked me to sort a room full of records. Normally it took them 2 weeks to do the work. "Right! If there is one thing I know how to do, it's s…

Post by rizwank » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #112

bbg215 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is your admissions criteria for someone to get accepted to LS? How big of a problem is that for your student-to-job conversion rate when the criteria has to become less stringent to scale?

We look mostly at how well they do on our pre course work, how hard they work and how quickly they can climb steep programming learning curves. We’re seeing over 1,000 applications/week. Top of funnel is not our issue.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:45 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #30

dtrailin wrote: post #29

While I think what Lambda School does seems pretty great I have to wonder what will happen when the next recession hits. If their new grads aren't getting hired, they can't afford to pay for their current class. It feels like something that is only possible right now because of bubble economics and cheap VC capital.

We have to prepare pretty seriously for a recession - recessions are when school enrollment explodes because job opportunities dry up. I can’t go into all the details publicly, but it’s something we have to take serious consideration to prepare for.