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Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

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Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#131

Post by learc83 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #116
FemmeAndroid wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And it’s a kind of debt that actively disincentives getting a raise if that raise pushes you just above 50k. Since at that point you’ll start owing Lambda school 17% of your salary for 2 years. It actually does what people who don’t understand progressive tax rates think the tax system does. Can you imagine going to Lambda school, not getting a good education, not getting a much higher paying job, then being stu…

The only difference is that people can opt in lambda school but they don't get to choose with progressive tax rates. The voluntariness of a transaction makes the difference between a payment and theft, between consensual sex and rape. Progressive taxes will just punish high middle class people for creating more value than low middle class people, making it harder for them to join the class of actual rich people who c…

You’re missing the point of the analogy. Progressive taxation doesn’t produce a cliff where you’re potentially better off if you make less money.

The higher rates only apply to money over the threshold.

Lambda school works the way many people think the US tax system works (but doesn’t). When you make over X, all of your money is taxed at Y. So it’s better to make X - 1 than X + 1.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#132

Post by jokethrowaway »

Galanwe wrote: post #37
jcelerier wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a degree for muuuuch less in europe. In france it'd be something like 1k€ at most over your whole post-high-school studies unless you go to specialized art school or something like that.

(Did all my studies in France at public schools (university).) I think the fee was 300€/year, most of it was headed toward paying mandatory access to the university library. That would be 300x5=1500€ (~2k$) for a complete engineering degree. Lets not forget that all this is paid with tax money though. You will sort of pay back these studies when paying your taxes once working :)

In Italy, it depends on how much money you have. Under a certain threshold you don't pay anything, most people pay something, I had to pay full price which was around 3k per year.

Also, forget having a campus, classrooms looks like they haven't been renovated in 200 years, you need your own computers because labs are too outdated, professors salaries are a joke, professors keep mixing their personal interests / companies with university - basically getting free work out of students for their businesses, majority of students move out of Italy after graduating because high taxes and bureaucracy make it impossible for profitable business to start up (estimated 250k€ in taxes invested in education lost per student).

I'd rather live in Italy than other countries but I won't uniquely for tax reasons.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#133

Post by mhaymo »

bambax wrote: post #44
arvindamirtaa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time commitment, flexibility of schedule, most importantly no upfront cost(and not wanting to go into debt either). All of this is valid IF the bootcamp works. In this case, that may not be the case.

> not wanting to go into debt either But doing lambda school is going into debt, isn't it? A different kind of debt but a debt nonetheless.

Different in important ways. There is no risk of ruin from an ISA: if you aren't earning you don't have to pay.

The idea is also that this aligns the school's incentives with the student's: if the student doesn't prosper, the school doesn't get paid.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#135

Post by jokethrowaway »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #15

I just want to give a quick shout out to 42. They're closed for Covid19 right now. But if you can wait for them to open up, this is a good place to look into - https://www.42.us.org/ or https://www.42.fr/ (if you're in Europe).

I've read their philosophy and it sounds great

Does anybody know any private school following the same philosophy for kids education?

I think finding different forms of education will be especially important for boys: girls thrive in the current school environment but boys seems to do much worse.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#137

Post by jo032 »

gexla wrote: post #96

Once you're in, why not forget about the quality and problems and just follow the program? I have only ever gone to low level state schools, but one of my instructors told me that he wasn't there to teach me. He was there to guide me through the curriculum. That stuck. Stick to the program, sweat out the X months. You'll come out as close to a programmer / designer / X as you would from any other path aside from some…

If you're self motivated enough to follow a curriculum on your own, you're probably much better off using online resources from MIT/Stanford/Harvard which are not only free but much better quality.

The learning environment described in the linked thread (200 students per teacher, plus blind leading the blind with volunteer mentors) sounds terrible at any price including $0.00. Many MOOCs have community boards, TA's, interactive assignments and cost little or nothing. If their plan is to just bundle that same experience with a job placement sales team and a private slack, then they'll just be yet another for-profit credential mill

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#138

Post by yodsanklai »

tester34 wrote: post #103

in "my country" programming bootcamps are considered as a big scam that rely on selling dreams to people like: becoming SE* in 3-6 months or some shit like that for N minimal wages ofc bootcamps do work for some people (minority) *let's not argue about developer vs engineer vs coder vs programmer

Where I live, education is free and quality is strictly controlled by the governement. It's a bit rigid and not perfect, but overall I think it works pretty well. For that reason, we are usually quite suspicious of private alternatives. It's not only universities, even sport clubs are often non-commercial structures and instructors are required to have official certifications.

Americans have a different mindset, they are more business-oriented, for the better and the worse.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#139

Post by arvindamirtaa »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #135
arvindamirtaa wrote: post #15

I just want to give a quick shout out to 42. They're closed for Covid19 right now. But if you can wait for them to open up, this is a good place to look into - https://www.42.us.org/ or https://www.42.fr/ (if you're in Europe).

I've read their philosophy and it sounds great Does anybody know any private school following the same philosophy for kids education? I think finding different forms of education will be especially important for boys: girls thrive in the current school environment but boys seems to do much worse.

I know this sort of instructor-less has been experimented before.

Sugata Mitra tried this in Indian villages called "Hole in the wall project".

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#140

Post by nikanj »

rswail wrote: post #119
jacobion wrote: post #78

The thing about efficient markets is that lucrative activities which don't produce much value—borderline scams—can block activity which would be highly wealth creating. For example, there could be a huge untapped retail market for financial derivatives such as interest rate and fx hedges. However, it's very hard to access this market because historically anyone who has started selling such products has pivoted toward…

Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that what should be happening is apprenticeships. If "industry is crying out for more people", then it should be investing in that in the same way it does in every other part of the supply chain. They should be hiring and training programmers, not externalizing their costs.

Junior programmers suffer from the tragedy of the commons.

Why waste $$ training juniors, when for a fraction of that $$ you can poach a ready-trained senior from the company next door?

Every company wants someone else to take apprentices and carry the burden of on-the-job training

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