Love the concept! What about the people who want to freelance after the program? What will be the fees for them?
Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
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Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#152Love the concept! What about the people who want to freelance after the program? What will be the fees for them?
The same! It's income-based regardless of where you work.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
We only take a percentage if you get a career in software engineering, so we have built that kind of risk into our model.
Is there a time limit after which the debt is forgiven? What prevents someone with no intention of finding a job of signing up for the free education? EDIT: I'm entirely serious about part two. I know quite a few people that would love to learn programming but, AFAIK, have no intention of working in the tech world. I could see them taking advantage of something like this. Most of them work in non-tech functions in an…
You know me?
I'am considering taking CS as a part-time education, but I have no intention of becoming a software engineer.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#154Australia has the best of all of this already to study at any Australian University!
- Depending on your social-economic background, The government pays you a cost-of-living income [1],
- pays your university fees [2] which are tiny compared to US fees,
- and you repay back 4%/year once your have an income > than approx A$55,000.
17% looks very painful in comparison!
Of cause, you need to be an Australian, so it probably doesn't help most of you!
[1] Depending on your Probably actually less than cost of living, so most students also work a day or more a week while studying.
[2] They cover the university fees -- You still need to pay for books, and other similar expenses up front.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#155Great idea. Great business model. I think the issue will be for the engineers who graduate to get over the bias that software companies have today over hiring from a code bootcamp/code school.
Yeah, we hope to be the antidote to that and create our own brand.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Came across your site the other day. I was wondering is the 17% from their base salary before taxes? So they (if in say California) pay federal, state, & you guys off the top? Great idea either way!
Before taxes.
I applaud your effort and am interested in how you're working out the tax implications. $17,000 doesn't come of the top in reality, for the marginal $50k person you'd be taking nearly 1/2 of their take home pay. Seems like a longer repayment would be more fair. Also if you forgive the $30,000 that's still a taxable event for the student; they'd owe the IRS as through you'd given them the money, might cost the student $10,000 or more depending on the person's situation.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a time limit after which the debt is forgiven? What prevents someone with no intention of finding a job of signing up for the free education? EDIT: I'm entirely serious about part two. I know quite a few people that would love to learn programming but, AFAIK, have no intention of working in the tech world. I could see them taking advantage of something like this. Most of them work in non-tech functions in an…
You know me? I'am considering taking CS as a part-time education, but I have no intention of becoming a software engineer.
Exactly. There's tons of people like that. Not sure how they'd filter them from the rest. There's a lot of careers where it'd be incredibly useful too. Even just basic data munching with awk/sed puts a person light years ahead of people stuck with Excel copy pasta.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#158Australia has the best of all of this already to study at any Australian University! - Depending on your social-economic background, The government pays you a cost-of-living income [1], - pays your university fees [2] which are tiny compared to US fees, - and you repay back 4%/year once your have an income > than approx A$55,000. 17% looks very painful in comparison! Of cause, you need to be an Australian, so it prob…
4% a year for how long and what's the cap? What if you never get a job? Any other restrictions?
Ps - forgive my shortness I'm on mobile.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best researchers are often emphatically not the best instructors, and for this venture instructors are much more important. This is very true. Most of our instructors are refugees from an academic world; they really just want to teach, and research for them was a necessary evil. We have a pretty rigorous hiring process (and we're hiring now! careers@lambdaschool.com) >I'd be interested to see more on the syllab…
>What would you like to see? Not OP, but I think your "syllabus" is seriously lacking in detail. For example, you have a week and a half of "operating systems" That is summarized as 4 bullet points. I would really expect to see at least a paragraph under each of the three sections describing exactly what a student should understand after completing each module. For the operating systems section, I would like to see s…
Curriculum becomes outcomes through building competencies. The outcomes are pretty clearly defined here.
Building the competencies? There could be a bit more information regarding that once the activities to build the competencies is run through.
If you're looking for more of that content to be posted publicly, that may be a separate question.
Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job
#160How do you know that your graduates are or aren't making more than 50k? How do you know that you're getting your 17%? Aside from that, you're essentially giving your students a loan and then having them repay it once they start earning money. How is this any different than a regular student loan (but with way more risk on your end)?
> How do you know that your graduates are or aren't making more than 50k? Great question. In addition to our income share agreement, each student submits a form to the IRS that will essentially copy us on their taxes. We have annual reconciliation based on those numbers to see if they match a student's self-reported numbers. > You're essentially giving your students a loan and then having them repay it once they star…
It's fing brilliant. You guys are heros, don't let anyone say anything different. This sort of thing really changes the world when your goals are aligned like this. Just.. wow.