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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#231

Post by dathanb82 »

shalmanese wrote: post #219
glenngillen wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Are you thinking of Instructure? They're based in Salt Lake City, and Marketwatch gives their current market cap as $1.86B

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#232

Post by lazyasciiart »

tomhoward wrote: post #223
lazyasciiart wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Can you explain in what sense people voluntarily signing up for an educational course that they only have to pay for if they make a solid living within 5 years is the equivalent of hitting terminal cancer patients in the head?

Well, I can try. So, are you familiar with the general construction "A is to B what C is to D"? If you're American, you might have seen these analogy questions on the SAT.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#233

Post by lazyasciiart »

mattmcknight wrote: post #230
lazyasciiart wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

It's more like, these guys are offering a plan where you get treatment for stage IV cancer and you only have to pay if it works. The other options require you or someone else to pay huge amounts up front, regardless of outcome, and are no better at getting results.

I wasn't commenting on whether it works. I was showing that his objection to criticism that didn't include a suggested better alternative was illogical.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#234

Post by cambalache »

akanet wrote: post #170
intherdfield wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems really disingenuous. Can't you update the article with this important detail?

It's not disingenuous; I think an earlier draft had it. This came down from 4000 words. I'll try to ask my editor to add this as a correction but things are pretty hectic. It's a fairly minor omission in my opinion, but I understand disagreeing.

Well, it is to me.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#236

Post by jmastrangelo »

_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…

Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. Even in large organizations promotions tend to slow after reaching senior engineer as the job becomes more about people management than actually improving as an engineer. Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#237

Post by songzme »

simplify wrote: post #155
songzme wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made it over time based on observations with my coworkers and my personal work experience (I'm currently a tech lead at PayPal, formerly L4 at Google). What I want to do is to teach people to become good engineers, getting a job should be a side effect of that. I think mainstream bootcamps value getting a job more than actually becoming a good engineer, which is something I disagree with. This also motivates me to…

If neither you nor universities think that getting a job is more important than becoming a "good engineer" (whatever that means), then who is left to fill this void but the bootcamps you disagree with?

I think if a bootcamp is good enough, it will feed people directly into jobs (possibly without even a technical interview). This is my dream, I have no idea how realistic it is. My library experience (and my work experience) is one giant experience to find out.

If I find some great engineers in the library and bring them into my team directly, will they do good work? If they prove to do good engineering, would it be a sustainable model to hire directly from our volunteer program?

If this works out, we could replicate this model in other public libraries as well.

The comments above are my moonshot ideas, I'm currently experimenting to see if it can be possible.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#238

Post by Strom »

jmastrangelo wrote: post #236
_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…

Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. Even in large organizations promotions tend to slow after reaching senior engineer as the job becomes more about people management than actually improving as an engineer. Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.

> Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. [..] Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.

In my own 20 years of programming experience I've kept improving significantly every year. There are so many different areas to cover (hardware internals, compilers, languages, tooling, databases, networking, graphics, user interaction, i18n, cryptography, compression, etc) and in each area there are so many different competing ideas. Each of them, when deeply understood, will provide insights in other areas. I don't see my learning hitting significantly diminishing returns before death by old age.

I'm curious, at what year of your programming history did you find yourself not progressing in fundamental software thinking and how long has the plateau lasted?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#239

Post by raiyu »

superduperuser wrote: post #224
raiyu wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think community colleges are great, and if you can get one on one instruction anywhere it is fantastic. The challenge is that bootcamps are really designed for people who are changing careers. Which means they have already gone through college or actively working. So it becomes an issue because they are reliant on income to survive and they aren't living with their parents. Basically it's unplanned and so much hard…

"" Computer Science" is the equivalent of math 100 years ago..." Would mind expanding on that?

You can't live in the modern world today without understanding math.

You also can't live in the modern world without language and the ability to communicate.

To me math is a language. Different than our verbal languages, but it is still a language none the less and essential.

Programming to me is also a language. And it is as essential today as math was originally. There was a long period of history where lower economic classes were prevented from learning and educating themselves and the fact that we have education that is subsidized by the government to various levels in all major countries is something that we take for granted, but it wasn't a right that our ancestors had.

The way schools force all kids to learn math, I feel is how schools today should force all kids to learn programming and computer science.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#240

Post by tomhoward »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #232
tomhoward wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain in what sense people voluntarily signing up for an educational course that they only have to pay for if they make a solid living within 5 years is the equivalent of hitting terminal cancer patients in the head?

Well, I can try. So, are you familiar with the general construction "A is to B what C is to D"? If you're American, you might have seen these analogy questions on the SAT.

Yes, I understand what that kind of comparison is, but you haven’t substantiated it.

It’s a pretty horrible analogy - demeaning to cancer patients aside from anything else, and seems to seek to tarnish a seemingly well-intentioned business by linking it to something awful, without any basis.

I don’t suggest the company is beyond criticism or without a need to improve; it’s still a fairly new company after all.

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