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Fast Crimes at Lambda School

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Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#131

Post by tptacek »

I share the same feelings, directionally, as the author --- though I don't believe DoorDash was somehow bad for the world, but:

Lambda School was on-par with an average code bootcamp. Students got a taste of programming, but when it came to getting hired, neither the training nor credentials held a candle to a college degree

Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

Lambda seems to have been real bad in the aggregate, but I'm wary of people leveraging that scary story as a vector for restoring college credentialism. Plenty of esteemed colleges have comparable track records, and deserve comparable stories.

Let's skip the math, physics, and other code-free classes give you a foundational understanding of computers [...]

Yes, let's, please. Programmers in the main connect form fields to SQL columns. Calc II is a hazing ritual that supports an elite credential structure, not foundational knowledge for the practice.

In reality, one iOS instructor had just graduated from a competing boot camp before getting hired, having never spent a day in the industry. The head of the data science program was Austen's brother, Ryan, whose only experience was another bootcamp and internship.

Again: real bad. Lambda: not good. But the author knows full well who teaches a lot of university courses, and that's not a great story either.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#132

Post by swyx »

simplify wrote: post #85
swyx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or months and months of defending your reputation can wear you down. have a little empathy for the flawed human on the other side of the screen.

Someone being exposed for leading a fraud organization for several years is not the time to call for "empathy". This reads as a astroturf manipulation tactic to make the guilty seem not as bad as they are.

thankfully this account has plenty of credibility and i have no ties to lambda whatsoever. tinfoil hat off. i can want more empathy while not absolving the guy of guilt.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#133

Post by throwawaymaths »

busterarm wrote: post #31
DetroitThrow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's awesome to hear that there are more scrupulous alternatives. You say everyone is working in industry - if in a %, you mean to say like 100% of those who graduated with you work(ed) in tech afterwards, right?

Our cohort was 23. 2 people basically scammed AppAcademy by not finding a job for two years but did find jobs after that and didn't have to pay their ISA. Everyone else did find jobs within about 3 months. All but three have moved into senior roles. Of those three, one prefers just being an IC and two moved into product management. I don't know how things are lately but given sentiment I hear about hiring from bootca…

Took a risk hiring out of App academy once. Guy had gone through hundreds of interviews and just bombed on all of them. I know why, he just sucked at interviews and exudes a Morty's dad kind of vibe. Perfectly fine programmer, it turned out.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#134

Post by llamaimperative »

virissimo wrote: post #33
dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

I did a year of computer science, but ended up going to App Academy with an ISA, because I couldn't really afford another couple of years. If ISAs are indentured servitude, but are still better than going to university, then what does that say about universities?

Perhaps your second premise isn't true...?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#135

Post by mcguire »

afavour wrote: post #103
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't every VC-funded startup overly optimistic? I've seen pitch decks before where founders promise 10x growth over the next 2 years to an impossible projected revenue. It is obviously not going to happen, and indeed did not. Should those founders be criminally charged as well?

IMO there’s a meaningful difference between pitching to VC investors and selling a product to individual customers.

There is a meaningful legal difference between lying to VC investors and lying to people taking out loans from you.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#136

Post by swyx »

rideontime wrote: post #48
swyx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or months and months of defending your reputation can wear you down. have a little empathy for the flawed human on the other side of the screen.

Did you read the linked article? I'm struggling to empathize with this fraud, especially after listening to the interview mentioned.

skimmed it. was a fan of @fulligin since before he became a citizen journalist and have followed it closely, i didnt really see much new info here in my browse thru. i'm not saying to empathize WITH THE FRAUD lol, just responding to GP about why austen stopped answering qtns. yes he fucked up, now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit instead of constantly reading the most negative take into simple things like stopping his hn activity as "A sure sign of the dismal state of things at Lambda/Bloom."

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#137

Post by TrackerFF »

davidw wrote: post #44

I have this sense that the world of tech needs the pendulum to swing back a bit towards geeky hacker types who are in it for the love of building cool things, tinkering, exploring and all that. There is a bit too much of the "bro" side of things - hustlebros and techbros and VC bros and that culture. Where are my people at these days?

I think tech workers, whether it's the passionate geeks or materialistic frat bros, need to understand that a decent chunk of people just want a regular/safe office job that's more exciting and stimulating than spreadsheets and powerpoint slides.

They don't want to engage in intellectual/nerdy pissing contests, nor do they want to jump through a million burning hoops to increase their total compensation. They want to show up 9 o'clock, do their work, and leave around 5 - and that's that.

No hacky side projects. No late evenings reading up on shiny new tools, no grinding leetcode and prepping for interviews, no hustles.

(You'll find the geeky hackers at startups, open-source projects, etc.)

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#138

Post by csa »

ryandrake wrote: post #72
Bjorkbat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former instructor (not at Lambda), I'm kind of inclined to believe it has more to do with the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to put up with the demands of corporate software engineering. Getting both kids and adults (especially kids) to figure out how to program is easy if you understand that most of the concepts are better taught visually through p5js or what have you. Once they leave that sandbox,…

> Programming is easy. Putting a bunch of black-boxes together in order to build some app or whatever is much, much harder and more complex This is why I think those low-level "invert a binary tree" and "find a substring in a string" questions are not really that great if you're trying to find someone to actually build an application. Many more people know how to invert a binary tree than know how to go from an empty…

> Many more people know how to invert a binary tree than know how to go from an empty text file to a non-trivial mobile app distributed in an App Store.

As someone who can do both but values the latter skills much more, I wonder about what these “low level questions” actually optimize for selection at some companies.

Part of me says that many companies want to select for willingness to “play the game” / conform rather than actually code deliverable product. In fact, being able to go from blank page to decent app in an app store might be considered a contra-indicator of a good applicant — easier for them to bail and do their own thing or be a hired gun.

Most orgs I’ve seen need a relatively small percentage of their devs to be creators and builders, but a large percentage need to be good maintainers and tweakers of existing code. These are vastly different skill sets and personalities, imho.

Thoughts on this?

And what sort of company / department do you work at that needs/wants a lot kf true builders?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#139

Post by throwawaymaths »

dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

I think it is more of indentured servitude than an uncollateralized loan, but not by much. Since getting rid of chattel slavery our society has generally found ways to eke our that unearned productivity from people via fractional servitude schemes. The (thin) line between an ISA and a loan is that the can discharge the loan through bankruptcy, im not certain you can do so as easily for an ISA.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#140

Post by swyx »

goat_whisperer wrote: post #119
swyx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just to level set, i myself went thru a normal (non lambda school, but still highly rated) bootcamp in 2017 (some of which were ISAs, the rest regular tuition), and about 30% of my classmates went back to their past jobs and careers. i'm sure about 20-30% of the rest are in tech but in unhappy situations. but for the remaining 30-50% of us it was a lifechanger. i wish that people would not throw out the baby with the…

"TAs are TAs, all colleges have them; they do not replace full instructors, but some of them are worth their weight in gold due to their student empathy." Lol. TAs in colleges are graduate students. They aren't undergraduates who can't find a job.

like i said i cant speak for lambda school, but at my bootcamp the TAs were the best of us, not the "ones who can't find a job". and at my (fairly prestigious, hopefully not non-legit) university, TAs were very often upperclassmen and sometimes sophomores that -just- completed the previous class.
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