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Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

lambdaschool.com

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Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#171

Post by influx »

throwawaymath wrote: post #76
austenallred wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That company has hired 20+ Lambda School grads, two hired as senior.

I believe you. But there is also significant title inflation at that specific company. There is no reasonable definition for "senior software engineer" which has qualifications that can be met from scratch in nine months. What are their "junior" engineers like? Do they have a title between junior and senior? Like I said, this isn't a comment on the Lambda School. It's a comment on the idea that this occurrence isn't…

It is ridiculous. At Uber they hired so many “seniors” that at some point they made two levels of “senior” and arbitrarily moved some folks to the “real” senior level.

You can imagine how well this went over.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#172

Post by Nasrudith »

austenallred wrote: post #28
hkdobrev wrote: post #23

While this program could be useful to many students, it's a loan program. > Upon completion of the program, students will pay 10% of their salary for a five year period once they're making at least $50,000 per year. The max possible payment is capped at $50,000.

It’s an income share agreement, which is quite different than a loan, and you only repay if you get hired making $50k 94 more. And it’s also a school that’s run quite differently than other schools out there. We have to do everything differently from first principles to make this work. If your point is “the $2,000 isn’t free” then yes you’re 100% correct.

That brings to mind the literal classical lawyer joke/logic exercise Paradox of the Court. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_the_Court Paradox of the Court.

I suspect the $2k could suffer from a free-rider problem from those who never intend to acquire such a job - especially in low cost of living areas with few jobs but unwilling or unable to relocate. Ideally it wouldn't make sense to do so.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#173

Post by kasey_junk »

arcturus17 wrote: post #130
kasey_junk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under no circumstances would I be happy if my degree program taught me how to use git. I can’t think of a single skill more stupid to learn in university. My degree came a lot cheaper than the modern ones but if I got a similar experience now as then I wouldn’t feel cheated. My undergraduate provided opportunities to program lisps & assembly & write published articles on data structures & I literally went to the loca…

Harvard now teaches git fundamentals in their intro CS classes. It adds like 15min of work and in most cases you’re expected to do it on your own, but you don’t graduate without some git basics under your belt. The idea that universities should only teach theory is preposterous. While Bolonia or Harvard or Oxford might not have been founded on the idea of helping students find jobs, that’s an implicit - and legitimat…

Just to show my age a little the equivalent sentence when I did my degree would be “it would be criminal for schools to drop students out without knowing clearcase”.

I’ve used at least 8 source control systems in my career. Knowing them have not been long term beneficial. Especially in comparison to the other things I did learn.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#174

Post by _JasonE »

Hey Lambda team. Congratulations on the ISA program and living stipend! I'm sorry for having so many questions. We have an ISA program as well and I found these to be the most important questions people have about coding bootcamp ISAs:

1. Do the payments begin if the new job is not in-field (not related to Software Engineering)?

2. Is there a grace period or deadline (depending on your point of view) before the payments begin? If so, how is the monthly payment amount calculated?

2. Is there a grace period in the event they stop working after the payments begin?

3. Do the ISA payments kick in if it's not a new job? In other words, if they continue working in a job that makes >=$50K/yr?

4. Are the requirements for participating in your ISA program similar to obtaining a loan? Good credit, no defaults, etc..

Sorry if I missed any of these answers in the announcement or terms. We have been offering an ISA program at our Houston and Atlanta based bootcamp for just over 6 months now and recently adjusted it based off feedback so that payments only kick in when the new job is in-field, includes a grace period, and must be a new job. However, we couldn't do much for the credit history requirements. An ISA is essentially a delayed loan and requires the same (if not stricter) credit history requirements. It's a good alternative to taking out a loan for some, but it's usually not a fallback if you can't get one.

Thanks Lambda team!

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#175

Post by austenallred »

westpfelia wrote: post #149
austenallred wrote: post #7

Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here. We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years ago. Now with thousands of students enrolled and hundreds already employed and paying back we wanted to take the next step and open up access to folks who couldn’t afford to pay to survive while attending. Of course, that introduces significant risk on our part, as students still only pay us back if they…

Are you thinking of expanding into programs outside of web development? As a cyber security engineer I think that this is something that would really help get more people into the industry. And there just isnt enough universities that have programs. My Alma Mater is going to be starting one soon but... Looking at the class list I cant help but feel like the 4 years are wasted and a more concentrated program would yie…

Yes, cyber security will be our next track. We also have a UX design track, as well as data science, iOS development and android development.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#176

Post by dbancajas »

austenallred wrote: post #7

Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here. We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years ago. Now with thousands of students enrolled and hundreds already employed and paying back we wanted to take the next step and open up access to folks who couldn’t afford to pay to survive while attending. Of course, that introduces significant risk on our part, as students still only pay us back if they…

do you have C++/low-level programming track? and do you have to be on-site or remote is possible?

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#177

Post by duxup »

MarkMc wrote: post #95
duxup wrote: post #53

It is an interesting system. I did a "full time" 3 month long more "traditional" structured boot camp. I really wish it had been longer and that they.... filtered .... students as it went.

Do you mean the teacher's effectiveness would be improved if slow learners were cut from the class?

Absolutely. Many students in my class were not going to get far / absolutely not going to be capable of working in the industry / struggling at even the basics .... and they eat up a ton of instructor time.

And just as bad they ate up a lot of my time on group projects. It's no fun working with people who aren't capable. I don't mean lesser skilled, there's always stuff for lesser skilled folks to do IMO. But if they can't do anything, not worth it.

Having said that, I was happy to help any fellow students when I was in class, but if it is clear they're not doing well / not getting the thing for the 8th time, I don't think it is worth anyone's time anymore, including the person not getting it.

I think there is a line between "slow" and "not gonna get it". I ran into a great deal of the "not gonna get it" and it burned a lot of my time / instructor time.

Also, to some extent "slow learner" and a bootcamp could be a mismatch from the start. I'm by no means "fast" but if i were slower the class maybe fundamentally wouldn't have been a good match for me. I did put in a lot of outside work to catch up at times, but that was on me.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#178

Post by duxup »

RandomBacon wrote: post #98
duxup wrote: post #53

It is an interesting system. I did a "full time" 3 month long more "traditional" structured boot camp. I really wish it had been longer and that they.... filtered .... students as it went.

Are there any bootcamps that filter/drop students?

I don't know of any. I asked about it but obviously they don't like to talk about it so you never get a straight answer.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#179

Post by raj7desai »

sharcerer wrote: post #131

Austen, I was wondering if you would consider some online version of Lambda for regions where Lambda isn't there. I don't mean the academic part, but the hiring part. Sort of an evaluation of a student's skills to see if they are on par with those educated by Lambda Faculty. On the basis of those evaluations/tests/ projects , you can use your network to get those people jobs/ internships. For eg: I am from India. Cur…

Do check out schoolofacceleratedlearning.com. Might interest you. Mail me on raj@soal.io in case you're interested.

Re: Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month

#180

Post by duxup »

tdfx wrote: post #106
MarkMc wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the teacher's effectiveness would be improved if slow learners were cut from the class?

I wouldn't say slow learners are typically the problem. From my experience in teaching it's the students with lazy habits that tend to break down the professors' effectiveness. People that refuse to "learn how to learn" and expect everything to be googled for them can be difficult to filter for during the interview process and really cause a drag on the class as a whole.

> teaching it's the students with lazy habits

I think that's very much a thing. I do think that some folks ... just can't beyond that, but I agree lazy habits are the worst and frustrating.

I put in a TON of time outside class when I went to a bootcamp. I'd make progress and come back with a quick question for the instructor, and there would be a series of people with the same questions waiting to talk to the instructor who clearly did nothing since the last time they talked to the instructor and were asking the same question as the day before who are mildly perturbed the instructor doesn't just give them the answer...

A lot of the time I just gave up trying to talk to the instructor.

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