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BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

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Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#121

Post by MivLives »

austenallred wrote: post #85
onetimeusename wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?

I don't think the assertion that "lambda grads weren't able to get good jobs" is true. Obviously not every single student has been hired, but our hiring rates have always been pretty good (they're better now than they were in the past), and thousands of BloomTech (we had to change our name because of a trademark lawsuit) grads have increased their lifetime earnings by billions of dollars, and work at nearly every maj…

There were for sure people I knew who got good positions in companies. I don't mean to imply otherwise.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#122

Post by Dwolb »

austenallred wrote: post #85
onetimeusename wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?

I don't think the assertion that "lambda grads weren't able to get good jobs" is true. Obviously not every single student has been hired, but our hiring rates have always been pretty good (they're better now than they were in the past), and thousands of BloomTech (we had to change our name because of a trademark lawsuit) grads have increased their lifetime earnings by billions of dollars, and work at nearly every maj…

What are the hiring rates and the average and median improvements in salary?

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#123

Post by austenallred »

user3939382 wrote: post #116
austenallred wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired. You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job. BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach every…

My point isn’t to learn 100% but how about 5 or 10? The complexity of the work just doesn’t seem to match the duration of these programs.

I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally.

That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than most of us like to pretend).

If you eliminate context switching, have the right tooling and instruction, yeah you aren't coming out the other side a principal engineer, but you can certainly build stuff, contribute to code the right way on teams, understand data structures and algorithms enough to make stuff performant, problem solve and build a whole lot of stuff and a lot of value.

That's enough to start getting paid, and 30 years later you can continue to marvel at how you're still just scratching the surface.

That's kind of beautiful, actually.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#124

Post by MivLives »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #119
MivLives wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. They were taking what they learned and applying it. Others organized groups of people, and essentially formed a small support network of people in a similar position. I completely understand that not everyone has the time for that. I think two things happened over Lambda's life span that effected the qual…

> Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. Ironically this is not that different from my university experience.

Mine too actually.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#125

Post by [deleted] »

MivLives wrote: post #106
onetimeusename wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?

Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. They were taking what they learned and applying it. Others organized groups of people, and essentially formed a small support network of people in a similar position. I completely understand that not everyone has the time for that. I think two things happened over Lambda's life span that effected the qual…

[deleted]

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#126

Post by hancholo »

I've been on the fence on going to a bootcamp for years, since the dev bootcamp days because I don't feel I could complete a CS degree given all that math. I've also been in various FAANG companies the past 5 years and while not in a dev/swe role I have picked up some things as I go. The front end and user interfaces is something I've been interested for a while so I think I may pivot to front end dev or some kind of automation engineer for UI testing. Are there any release engineers here?

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#127

Post by Manuel_D »

MivLives wrote: post #106
onetimeusename wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why weren't lambda grads able to get good jobs? I think that was the main controversy. Was it the instruction or what went wrong there?

Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. They were taking what they learned and applying it. Others organized groups of people, and essentially formed a small support network of people in a similar position. I completely understand that not everyone has the time for that. I think two things happened over Lambda's life span that effected the qual…

Did lambda school have any sort of assessment before accepting students? This really resonates with my observations. The people who got the most out of software bootcamps were those that had tinkered with video game modding, WordPress, etc. and had done some self-learning of coding before going to a bootcamp. In other words, people who knew they liked hacking on tech and had a basic ability to code. They approached the bootcamp with the mindset that they already knew they had technical interest and ability, and wanted direction on building marketable skills.

Do you think greater selectivity applicants would increase the success rate? I had thought the ISA model would incentivize this, but when I learned lambda was selling ISAs that seemed like it removed this incentive.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#128

Post by austenallred »

Dwolb wrote: post #122
austenallred wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the assertion that "lambda grads weren't able to get good jobs" is true. Obviously not every single student has been hired, but our hiring rates have always been pretty good (they're better now than they were in the past), and thousands of BloomTech (we had to change our name because of a trademark lawsuit) grads have increased their lifetime earnings by billions of dollars, and work at nearly every maj…

What are the hiring rates and the average and median improvements in salary?

You can see our 2021 audited outcomes report here with all of the data https://www.bloomtech.com/reports/outcomes-report. (Note: 2021 outcomes report is very recent as you have to get students graduated, give them time to get placed, etc.)

Some of it I'm thrilled about, some of it shows us where we have more work to do (or need to do better in admissions - candidly it's always a difficult balance between giving folks chance and certainty of those folks' outcomes.)

High level:

90% of those who are job seeking got hired.

Our median hired grad increased their income by $27,500 (and that's just their first job - obviously software/data science salaries shoot up quickly after a first job).

About half of our students have degrees, and half do not.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#129

Post by ZephyrBlu »

digianarchist wrote: post #61
sandofsky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "attacked by all sides" comment is quite bizarre. Every pain the company experienced was self-inflicted. They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is a source of active lawsuits. They dodged California regulators and then lied to students about it. This invalidated every ISA in California before 2020. They launched an unpaid intern program, which created a backlash in the tech…

Vincent Woo’s reporting is a must read if you’re considering any interaction with this company.

Seconded. Vincent puts out good stuff!

https://twitter.com/fulligin

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#130

Post by austenallred »

MivLives wrote: post #118
kirillbobyrev wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).

I do not have this knowledge. There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? My general advice is to get some one to try https://www.theodinproject.com/ as it's free. If they try it for a bit and find they don't like it, no harm they can just stop. If they want to continue after a bit and still want to go a boot camp they're more likely to succeed at any of them.

It's certainly true that BloomTech isn't for everyone, and that not everyone will want to become a software engineer. We try to filter for that, but it's tough.

Now we have a free trial (https://www.bloomtech.com/risk-free-trial) that everyone can try out for three weeks without even signing any documents.

A lot of people like the idea of making software engineering salaries, but don't particularly like building software. Then there are others that fall in love. We haven't found a great way to predict other than having people try it out.

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