Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#191

Post by shagie » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #150

ResearchCode wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not having majored in medicine myself, I see no reason why CS couldn't have a 99% placement rate too.

Most CS programs do not have 99% placement. There are a few reasons 1. Some people who graduate with CS degrees can't write good code. It is shocking how little you can learn while still graduating. 2. Some college graduates are lack the social/organizational skills for office work 3. Industry has a limited appetite for junior engineers because they're often a net drain on the company for the first 6-12 months and on…

Additional items:

Many new grads have exaggerated expectations and refuse to consider or accept "lower" than working in big tech.

Related to this, there are also the new grads that have some extremely niche role that they want to fill. I recall from a bit ago a new grad on reddit that wanted to do machine learning to save the whales while traveling on a research ship. Coming to the realization that most jobs aren't in the "safe the world" category was something of a shock / disillusionment for them.

At least traditionally, many new grads have refused to consider other geographic areas. The "I want to do software development, but I am not willing to move out of {local area}." Some of this may be changing with remote jobs being more feasible - though there may still be restrictions on "you must reside within {some state} to qualify for WFH". This may be changing a bit, for some companies... but I still suspect that some companies are still going to require a "you may need to come into the office occasionally with a 24h notice."

To point 3, even with the "they are a net drain and they job hop soon" there's also the "we need to add more capacity in the mid and senior levels before we add additional juniors to these teams." There are a lot of places where it's "here's a new junior, there's the code - go for it" because the mid and senior devs don't have the capacity to mentor them.

I also suspect there is a common thought process of new grads that the quantity of applications is more important than the quality of the application -- sending out hundreds of applications even if there significant mismatches between the resume and the job posting that could be trivially corrected.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#192

Post by verogianno » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

I was a 2015 UX Bootcamp grad (Chicago local, later acquired and run into the ground.) I think I paid $8k and have had a pretty great career, though it took a couple months to find that first job. The last 2 years, I've had a side gig where I do practice UX interview - usually to bootcamp grads.

Y'all I felt bad for most of these folks. The majority were not taught how to solve problems, but rather how to take generic steps in design thinking in order to create a cookie cutter portfolio. There was rarely any consideration for anything on the either side of UX, be it business or development, so they were learning in a vacuum. A couple of the schools had former grads teaching in order to boost placement %. How are you supposed to learn from someone who's never executed in the real world is beyond me. The most successful folks almost always had tangental previous work experience to draw from. And in the rare instances someone had learned some UI skills? Yikes. All that in a market that has been oversaturated with junior UX/UI candidates the last couple year, it's no wonder places are starting to ditch the UX programs. Plus now, you always have college students with UX degrees to compete with.

I think a lot of people believed it would be easier to break into UX because there was no code/is less technical which led to this burst bubble. Not to say that's not true, but designing software for humans is more complicated than a persona and some low-fi wireframes!

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#193

Post by MivLives » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

I was at Lambda, graduated, got a job, and have been working since. Interesting to see I'm in the minority. I watched a lot of change happen. The classes ballooned in size, they kept rearranging the curriculum. At one point the curriculum (broken into thirds) had the 2nd and 3rd bits flipped. Then a forth bit was added on. I actually agreed with that change, as it the extra 3 months that were added on were just about finding a job, a task students were silently doing anyway.

Did the TL/PM/TA thing for a bit too. There were clearly people in it that were struggling. They started to have the ability to drop backwards a single week of course. That decision was reversed as it was kind of crazy to have people in between cohorts.

By the time I was done I don't think the UI program had anyone graduate from it. I was interviewed by lawyer at one point who was working on behalf of someone in that program. I am unsure of the quality of the program but it doesn't seem good.

Most of the people I saw who were doing well were going faster then the curriculum. The alumni program was sorta hard to keep track of after the slacks split, a lot of people never made the transition.

I know a lot of people who were successful after bootcamps, Lambda and otherwise. That may just be survivorship bias. I think one of the things that may also influence is when you went into the program. If you were going because you heard about it on hackernews when it was brand new, it was a different experience then when you had people coming in from everywhere.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#194

Post by ummonk » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #65

ctvo wrote: post #38

My partner went through a bootcamp, and there was an interview process after the application process. In my partner's case, they hold an advance degree in a STEM field from an Ivy League. A few of their peers had similar backgrounds, and that group didn't have trouble finishing. I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few. If s…

I've interviewed a few candidates in a similar situation to your partner. My impression is that the bootcamps had very little to do with their success. I would put it more down to personal drive and possibly the programming STEM grads tend to get exposed to.

Would they have been given an interview without going through the bootcamp?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#195

Post by ummonk » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

lostinquebec wrote: post #170

akanet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you email me about this? me@vincentwoo.com

I think it's a veiled reference to traditional college?

Not unless they're counting student loan deferral / income driven repayments as an income share agreement.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#196

Post by sanxiyn » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

Gortal278 wrote: post #31

I have always been surprised by how many students of lambda and equivalent graduate to immediately teach at these bootcamps. It just seems gross.

I wonder why? I learned most of what I learned in university from student group, and sophomores teach freshmen there. I learned as a freshman and taught as a sophomore. It is normal.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#197

Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

MivLives wrote: post #185

908B64B197 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] I don't think I've seen a single hire out of a…

I'm a currently working software engineer from Lambda, who knows other people who succeeded at Lambda and other bootcamps. The TA thing, a TA doesn't teach, a TA pretty much grades/code reviews. They answered questions. (I did this while I was hunting for a job). They also don't count that towards placement. I have an IS degree, but some other people I know succeed with pretty much anything you can think of. I don't…

> The TA thing, a TA doesn't teach, a TA pretty much grades/code reviews. They answered questions.

That sounds like... teaching doesn't it?

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#198

Post by MivLives » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #197

MivLives wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a currently working software engineer from Lambda, who knows other people who succeeded at Lambda and other bootcamps. The TA thing, a TA doesn't teach, a TA pretty much grades/code reviews. They answered questions. (I did this while I was hunting for a job). They also don't count that towards placement. I have an IS degree, but some other people I know succeed with pretty much anything you can think of. I don't…

> The TA thing, a TA doesn't teach, a TA pretty much grades/code reviews. They answered questions. That sounds like... teaching doesn't it?

I guess I should have used the word lecture. Maybe they do lecture now, it's been awhile since I was involved.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#199

Post by ativzzz » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #163

ghaff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However in the strict sense of math, there is a requirement there. As someone who tutored first year MBAs at one point... My observation in general was that most people could at least muddle through most classes, even if they were at best mediocre students. But some subset of students pretty much froze at anything beyond the most basic arithmetic--and then probably only because they had calculators. Whether you call…

I always find it funny that MBAs struggle with math and that so many MBAs aren't actually that good at excel. It seems like it is a core tenant of success of the program. I fully understand that business isn't strictly math and there are so many other dimensions of importance. However in its purest form, it is mathematical. Then again I guess you could always buy talent to shore up your insecurities.

Expert Excel proficiency is mostly useful in data heavy roles such as finance, which is just one subset of MBAs. For other roles, it's useful to be able to calculate simple sums/averages/vlookups but going beyond that is outside of their required skillset

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#200

Post by zbtaylor1 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

I completed Lambda's part-time web program about a year ago and while I did come out with more knowledge than when I entered, I do not think it was worth the time or the money I have invested.

I was not the target Lambda student in that I already had web dev knowledge but wanted to delve deeper and felt like I was spinning my wheels on my own. The accountability created by the program is what I was after.

The curriculum was adequate and, with one exception, the instructors were engaging and knowledgeable. While we did have some limited interaction with the instructors themselves, digging in to individual problems was the job of the team lead (a student further ahead in the program who went through an application process) and this is where things got grim.

TLs changed frequently and their quality was all over the place. Some followed the meeting protocol, some let their group run the meetings, others missed meetings regularly. Multiple times my TLs were unable to help much because the curriculum had changed and we were learning something they hadn't been taught. At best, they made sure we all understood the lecture by being thorough during our 1 on 1 meetings. At worst, they were a hindrance.

The final for the web dev curriculum is what they call "labs" and the TL for your labs group has expanded responsibilities. In theory, having gone through labs already, they are supposed to be kind of like lead devs - offering architecture suggestions, helping with deployment snags, shepherding us through merge conflicts, etc.

My labs TL was, more than anything, an obstacle. Mostly they forwarded our questions to the section lead and they weren't a particularly efficient go-between, so after a few weeks of deflecting our follow-ups we started messaging with the SL directly and were receiving timely responses. Our TLs only contributions to our project were the initial heroku projects and an unfinished code climate integration.

In the end, having projects and due dates was helpful for me but in no way do I feel it was worth the cost of tuition.

Another Lambda alum here mentioned feeling like student wellbeing took a back seat to marketing and PR and nothing encapsulates this more perfectly than the photo at the top of their homepage of a student who dropped out after repeating one of the early sections once or twice. Who cares what became of them as long as it looks good on the website!