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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#211

Post by topherPedersen »

TaylorGood wrote: post #5
ucha wrote: post #2

I'm wondering why it is that two hit pieces came out at the same time [1]? Is it just a coincidence? https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-co...

I’m neutral on this, but if I had to guess: @DHH shed light on it via his twitter recently in a big way.

I noticed that too. @DHH appears to have been one of the biggest names/voices to speak out against Lambda School recently. In their defense however, I follow a YouTuber that goes by "Dummy Codes" that landed a pretty good job doing Flutter development after attending Lambda School. So it looks like they are at least helping some people find jobs. It'll be interesting to see if Lambda School survives and thrives, or if it goes the way of Theranos. Only time will tell!

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#212

Post by barry-cotter »

dx87 wrote: post #204
barry-cotter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you think schools can scale? You need instructional material and the equivalent of professors/lecturers and TAs. Instructional material scales really well; that's what textbooks and MOOCs are. Professors scale well; otherwise 100 plus lectures wouldn't work at all. They obviously do. Intro classes in the huge majority of US universities are in the 100-600 range. I wouldn't be surprised if there are bigger.…

> So the only possible limiting factor that might not scale is TAs. You can render this irrelevant by having high enough standards for entry, like GA Tech's OMSCS, or you can work on scaling it. They said bootcamps don't scale, not that education or schools as a whole doesn't scale. And your solution of raising the entry requirements so only people who can teach themselves can attend is proving their point. Someone w…

Bootcamps are a kind of school. If we agree that schools can scale why should bootcamps specifically not be able to scale?

I mentioned two solutions, raising entry standards and providing greater support. There are people who can teach themselves. There are very few people who can teach themselves as fast and as well in a self-directed environment as they can learn with a real curriculum and some feedback on their work. If you are confident you can teach yourself in two years or reach the same level of employability after nine months of Lambda School the latter looks pretty good even at $30K once you get a job paying over $50K.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#213

Post by barry-cotter »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #200
barry-cotter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you think schools can scale? You need instructional material and the equivalent of professors/lecturers and TAs. Instructional material scales really well; that's what textbooks and MOOCs are. Professors scale well; otherwise 100 plus lectures wouldn't work at all. They obviously do. Intro classes in the huge majority of US universities are in the 100-600 range. I wouldn't be surprised if there are bigger.…

It is dubious to me that 40+ lectures work well (especially with first year students).

I didn't say they work well. But they definitely work. And you can take an existing crappy partial solution like video lectures, and add support structures until you have something that in aggregate works as well as a university course. Plain vanilla MOOCs work well for a small minority, about 10% now, when no one cares at all about them. If you can't quadruple that by actually trying I'd be very surprised.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#214

Post by barry-cotter »

runako wrote: post #101
songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is fantastic! Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard, so it's also worth noting that there is a whole range of options for folks. Obviously, there are public and community colleges that teach programming. Many of these have a long history of working with non-traditional students who have jobs or other commitments. Some are remote-only or remote-friendly. I…

> Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard

These are very much not the same. For profit schools have an incentive to get more students through while maintaining an acceptable level of quality because that way they make more money. Non-profits have much less motivation to make more money. If they get more applications than they want to fill their prestige goes up as does the quality of their student body. So you see the top US universities having more or less the same size student bodies as when there were 200m people living in the US.

Non-profits optimise for a pleasant work environment for faculty, for profits for maximum numbers students.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#215

Post by barry-cotter »

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…

> What pains me is the embarrassment of appearing like some clueless fool who got caught up in some get-rich-quick scheme. I love programming, and I just wanted a structured curriculum to train as a professional.

If you are learning more than you would have otherwise, or if you get a decent job at the end of this joining does not make you a clueless fool. Other people who don't know you or what you have done might think so but they don't matter. What matters is what you've learned, and that you'll get a job out of this in the end. Haters gonna hate.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#216

Post by MarkMc »

All the haters seem to be piling onto Lambda and its CEO, but looking at actual reviews by students it is clear that most students are very happy with Lambda: https://www.switchup.org/bootcamps/lambda-school

And the problems mentioned in the article are straightforward to fix:

(a) Be honest and transparent about the job placement rate for each batch

(b) Don't sell the ISA or borrow against it

(c) Improve the quality of teaching and accept a lower growth rate

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#217

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is such a great demonstration of the value of public libraries.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#218

Post by songzme »

barry-cotter wrote: post #214
runako wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fantastic! Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard, so it's also worth noting that there is a whole range of options for folks. Obviously, there are public and community colleges that teach programming. Many of these have a long history of working with non-traditional students who have jobs or other commitments. Some are remote-only or remote-friendly. I…

> Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard These are very much not the same. For profit schools have an incentive to get more students through while maintaining an acceptable level of quality because that way they make more money. Non-profits have much less motivation to make more money. If they get more applications than they want to fill their prestige goes up…

> Non-profits optimize for a pleasant work environment for faculty

Some do, some don't. Some Non-profits optimize for maximize impact to their vision.

> for profits for maximum numbers students.

Some do, some don't. Some for-profits optimize a small number of wealthy clients.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#219

Post by shalmanese »

glenngillen wrote: post #208
chrisseaton wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people This idea doesn't pass a common sense test to me - I'm sure bootcamps can be profitable, but the people running them are used to building things that scale. Bootcamps definitely don't scale. If these tech people were looking to get-rich-quick they surely wouldn't be running a school, of all things,…

I did some back-of-the-envelope numbers on the one I came into contact with previously (also keep in mind this was 6 years ago now too!): 20-30x students per cohort who paid ~$20K upfront for a 12 week program. 20% signing fee (based on 1st year comp) from employer on placement. We definitely were not paying top of market as some of these students ended up at Uber and Facebook. That said the all in 1st year cost betw…

I've had a look at the books at a few different types of training style companies and the economics are always grim. It's one of those businesses where to the outsider, it's impossible to believe they're not spinning off unbelievable amounts of cash but they are always pretty marginal.

As additional evidence for this, the number of 1B+ exits in this space can be counted on one hand. General Assembly, for example, was acquired for ~$400M and it was one of the largest players. There was a player from Utah whose name eludes me now that had a, I think, ~$2B exit but that might be the only one.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#220

Post by barry-cotter »

songzme wrote: post #218
barry-cotter wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Other posts here are suggesting the choice is either a commercial school like Lambda or Harvard These are very much not the same. For profit schools have an incentive to get more students through while maintaining an acceptable level of quality because that way they make more money. Non-profits have much less motivation to make more money. If they get more applications than they want to fill their prestige goes up…

> Non-profits optimize for a pleasant work environment for faculty Some do, some don't. Some Non-profits optimize for maximize impact to their vision. > for profits for maximum numbers students. Some do, some don't. Some for-profits optimize a small number of wealthy clients.

Please tell me of these non-profit schools that maximise for impact to their vision, or for-profit schools that optimise for small numbers of wealthy clients.
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