Lambda School’s Misleading Promises • Hacker News Board

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#121

Post by awareware » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #63

hundt wrote: post #19

> Whether or not this counts as “selling” strikes me as a meaningless semantic distinction: Either way, the school receives some money up front and an investor shoulders some of the risk of the ISA not paying out. And either way, Lambda School students don’t know that the school isn’t as incentive-aligned with them as the school’s marketing indicates. It is certainly not meaningless! Selling an ISA means that Lambda…

It is selling, because the loan is backed by the ISA. Which means if Lambda can not repay the loan, the loaning company now owns the ISA and can use any sort of aggressive tactics to get the student to repay their ISA. Just like if you take out a mortgage on a house and fail to pay the loan back, then the bank owns the house. In this case since the ISA is used as collateral, the company that originated the loan now o…

I don't think that's quite right. Lambda is taking out loans against the ISA but the only way to discharge the debt is by declaring bankruptcy. If Lambda defaults on these loans the bank will indeed own them but won't be satisfied just taking back the ISA contracts and enforcing them themselves (and presumably, if they default, the ISAs aren't worth what they were financed at anyway). Lambda is still on the hook for the full balance of the debt unless they want to close up and liquidate or file chapter 11.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#122

Post by manfredo » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

The lambda school struck me as odd due to its very long 18 month duration. Most successful bootcamps I've seen have been focused on 2-4 month programs. They also try to get students that have already taught themselves some coding (at least be able to code up a hang-man game in a terminal), and focus on teaching effective abstraction and how to use git. Basically, they don't seek to take people who don't know how to code and turn out engineers more than a year later. They take people who know how to code, and refine their skills to the point that they are employable.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#123

Post by LordFast » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

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…

Kudos to you for your actions. Much respect.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#124

Post by Grustaf » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

As a working developer you will spend a sizeable portion of your time learning new things, so if you are not good at teaching yourself programming, maybe it's not a suitable career choice? Especially with amazing MOOCs like Stanford's Swift course?

At least in the context of something like Lambda school, that does not teach computer science, as I understand it.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#125

Post by heedlessly3 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #89

heedlessly3 wrote: post #53

There's no point to doing coding bootcamps. I know plenty of individuals who were non-CS majors, not even STEM, switch to software developers after self-study and building up a portfolio. if you decide you want an accredited university degree, then you can get FAFSA to fund community college, then transfer an online university such as Florida

Strongly disagree with this. I know 50 people that think they can learn to do Data or something with an Udemy class and end up doing nothing. I think the negative picture painted by the author masks that the company is placing 50% of graduates which mostly paid nothing for the education they received. Lambda is not high quality education, but its super cheap and higher quality than just reading a Knuth Book, or Skenn…

Sounds like you know unsuccessful people. I know plenty of developers who became front-end or dev ops from their own studies. It's not too hard to learn SQL or data visualization. The majority of questions can be answered via stackoverflow or slack communities. You don't need to know everything to land a entry-level job, you just need to prove you know how to problem solve.

Either way, you are not becoming a true machine learning researcher via self-study nor a bootcamp. You will need at least a master's in CS/Math/Stats to land those roles. A bootcamp is neither the lowest cost to a softwaredev career nor is it the a career effective maximizing choice.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#126

Post by mattcdrake » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

xwowsersx wrote: post #49

I co-started LS before it was in YC. Here's the original course I taught https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnUp9BNCQZM Weird seeing stories about it now.

Are the other videos in this series publicly available? You are great at explaining things.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#127

Post by songzme » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

20years wrote: post #75

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 awesome! I love hearing that others are doing this. I do something similar but I run after school clubs. I work mostly with 5th through 8th graders and run clubs 5 days per week in 5 different local schools. It is a lot of work but so rewarding and I feel it has made me a better developer. I myself have learned so much from doing it. I have met so many amazing kids & parents too and it's made me a much bigger…

I love hearing stories like this, and I feel what you feel. Definitely rewarding and fun, playing a bigger part in your local community feels amazing.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#128

Post by xwowsersx » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #87

xwowsersx wrote: post #49

I co-started LS before it was in YC. Here's the original course I taught https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnUp9BNCQZM Weird seeing stories about it now.

What happened afterwards?

We went separate ways. I had a job offer I couldn't turn down and it was still very early days in the venture.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#129

Post by xwowsersx » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

mattcdrake wrote: post #126

xwowsersx wrote: post #49

I co-started LS before it was in YC. Here's the original course I taught https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnUp9BNCQZM Weird seeing stories about it now.

Are the other videos in this series publicly available? You are great at explaining things.

Thanks! I'm not sure where the other videos are (I don't see them on my Youtube). I'll see if I can dig them up.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#130

Post by sjc33 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #30

I could be wrong but isn't Lamdba School a perfect example of destroying a noble idea due to the venture capitalish returns expected from the company ? If there wasn't so much pressure to grow that fast, perhaps they would have done a better job focussing on the quality and outcomes instead of growth at any cost ?

Yep, exactly. This is Kaplan 2.0.