Lambda School’s Misleading Promises • Hacker News Board

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#171

Post by conanbatt » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

kostyal wrote: post #144

I'm a current student at Lambda School. It's a pretty stressful time at the moment - I don't have any loyalty to Lambda, but the recent string of damaging stories about the quality of teaching and average graduates is concerning. It's true that Lambda is incredibly disorganised and the build weeks etc are chaotic. Equally true that they don't do a good enough job of ensuring we have something to show for ourselves on…

Just keep at it. The one thing that Lambda does best is the constant drilling of practicing. That method of learning is second to none.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#172

Post by conanbatt » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #166

The more I think about bootcamps, the more they appear to be a rather insulting business proposition. Did they genuinely believe that one can take someone off the street, albeit someone relatively intelligent and motivated, and teach them enough to be a professional programmer in 9 months? Imagine that we replaced programmer with mechanical engineer. Or with marketing executive. Would that sound believable? What is i…

Because you can, and because lots of people are doing it.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#173

Post by conanbatt » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #111

>Lambda School is free, but with an asterisk: To attend, you sign a contract that says that if you get a tech job paying $50K or more, you have to pay 17 percent of your pre-tax income to Lambda School for two years, or until you pay back $30K, whichever comes first. 30k? Seriously? my trade tech certification was only $2900 for two years . Is Lambda School a 4 year program or a college of some sort? Is room and boar…

Was it an 8 hour a day 5 days a week program for two years?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#174

Post by ubu7737 » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

There just isn't a way to speed up comprehension of computing systems and computing technology. Software development is highly conceptual and concepts don't materialize in the brain in a way that's independent from the time variable.

I initially thought bootcamps would be a good idea because I thought they could use a streamlined curriculum to put difficult concepts in front of students and then winnow them quickly based on the reactions of said students. Like a phone screen that you spend 2-4 months performing. It costs you up-front to do all that education and subsequent scrutiny of the candidate, but you win by identifying people with the potential you want to migrate into the SD workforce. With public funding and a long schedule, I believed this could be a sustainable way to populate those vacancies.

That's not how bootcamps work. Bootcamps are trying to launch people into careers, and I just find that absurd on its face. No level of training is going to compress years of plastic changes in the brain into a shorter amount of time.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#175

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #163

akanet wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Its prominence.

"How do you propose that people learn these skills- or learn if they are capable of achieving these skills?" Is that too difficult to answer for you?

There might not be a good answer, but that doesn't make the existing attempts good. That argument is the same logic I could use to say "Why did you criticize their plan of hitting people in the head as treatment for stage IV cancer if you haven't got a better proposal?"

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#176

Post by sean2 » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #166

The more I think about bootcamps, the more they appear to be a rather insulting business proposition. Did they genuinely believe that one can take someone off the street, albeit someone relatively intelligent and motivated, and teach them enough to be a professional programmer in 9 months? Imagine that we replaced programmer with mechanical engineer. Or with marketing executive. Would that sound believable? What is i…

I don't think we could pump out the well rounded developers like 4 years of undergrad can, but I don't see how we couldn't pump out SQL technicians, front-end developers, or otherwise specialized workers that could alleviate the supposed shortage of developers.

I also helped a person go from zero knowledge of programming to pumping out android games in a month of self study. So I know that smart, motivated people can get pretty far pretty fast. In regards to your point, I don't think this person knows UML or ever learned big O notation, but this person was able to gain the skills required to do what they wanted, plus some pro-programmer friends and stackoverflow to fill in the "semi-arcane knowledge" when required.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#177

Post by surferbayarea » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

A skill of knowing how to use React in a particular way to create simple views is something that will be redundant in a few years. These people will unfortunately be out of jobs. The mundane work of converting sketch files to react views will be automated soon

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#178

Post by blackholesRhot » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

akanet wrote: post #58

intherdfield wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you mentioned that the student doesn't have to pay back Lambda after 60 months of deferred payments. That seems important. From the Lambda site: "The income share agreement has no interest. It's a flat percentage that goes away once you've reached the $30k payment cap, you've made 24 payments, or after 60 months of deferred payments (even if you haven't paid us anything)." But you wrote in the article:…

Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon.

"Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon."

Lambda School is <5 years old. Pretty disingenuous man.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#179

Post by surferbayarea » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

kostyal wrote: post #144

I'm a current student at Lambda School. It's a pretty stressful time at the moment - I don't have any loyalty to Lambda, but the recent string of damaging stories about the quality of teaching and average graduates is concerning. It's true that Lambda is incredibly disorganised and the build weeks etc are chaotic. Equally true that they don't do a good enough job of ensuring we have something to show for ourselves on…

Also learn generic problem solving VS just pattern matching on how to do a specific thing. Frameworks, languages and patterns themselves will keep changing. Core problem solving skills and understanding will stay relevant always.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#180

Post by AlchemistCamp » Thu, Feb 20, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

Hey Vincent! Great to see you here. Are you gonna go back on IH for office hours this year?

Also how much time did you spend on all of the research for this piece?