Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fast Crimes at Lambda School

sandofsky.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 354 posts

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#231

Post by [deleted] »

jdminhbg wrote: post #223
goat_whisperer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you aren't familiar with the term. Graduate Student = someone enrolled in a Masters Program, Post doc, PHD program, etc. This is quite different from a using a recent Bootcamp grad, likely without any industry experience, as a TA in a Software Dev Bootcamp. Especially because the main purpose of this is just to inflate job placement statistics.

> Perhaps you aren't familiar with the term. Graduate Student = someone enrolled in a Masters Program, Post doc, PHD program, etc. I'm familiar, thanks. Why is someone who graduated last year and went into a Master's program different from someone who graduated last year and became a bootcamp TA?

[deleted]

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#232

Post by rideontime »

jdminhbg wrote: post #223
goat_whisperer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you aren't familiar with the term. Graduate Student = someone enrolled in a Masters Program, Post doc, PHD program, etc. This is quite different from a using a recent Bootcamp grad, likely without any industry experience, as a TA in a Software Dev Bootcamp. Especially because the main purpose of this is just to inflate job placement statistics.

> Perhaps you aren't familiar with the term. Graduate Student = someone enrolled in a Masters Program, Post doc, PHD program, etc. I'm familiar, thanks. Why is someone who graduated last year and went into a Master's program different from someone who graduated last year and became a bootcamp TA?

This whole conversation seems moot considering Lambda did away with paid TAs and instead had students filling in the role without pay.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#233

Post by jayd16 »

strken wrote: post #211
jayd16 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are smart enough to program, I think. The biggest hurdle is being able to sit down and work on a program for 8 hours a day. All the other skills can be learned.

"Most people" as in "most people jayd16 interacts with", "most people who hold a white-collar job", "most people who hold any job at all", "most working-age adults", or "if you randomly selected a big enough group of people, more than half of them could become professional programmers"? I suspect we're in a bubble. Consider the charts at the end of https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete.... , spe…

My conjecture was whether most people have the mental acuity to write a program and I stand by that. I really don't think you need to be especially "smart". I specifically mention that many do not have the capacity to succeed in the office setting we picture when we think of professional programmers.

And I make no mention of professional success especially in the face of a competitive market and no definition of success so I'm not sure where you're pulling any of this from.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#234

Post by Aeolun »

bitwize wrote: post #187
networked wrote: post #168

The HN comment originally made by 'austenallred in https://www.sandofsky.com/content/images/2024/05/image-13.pn... is still available at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13502774 but is now by user '_pecl. The ownership of the comment changed between July 3, 2019 and January 31, 2020 according to https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com/i... . I guess the author realized it reflected badly on hi…

Hackernews has "protected people", typically high-ranking Silicon Valley types, for whom, if it is revealed they are scumbags, they will run interference, changing account names and replacing their powerwords with [redacted]. An example is the high-ranking GitHub engineer who has an Indian first name but goes by "Alex", who was accused of mistreating women, and actually pled guilty to at least one incidence of such.

I’m inclined towards believing highly ranking people are more interested in reputation management, and that’s why they request these things a lot more often.

I’ve literally never felt the need to request a change, even though I’ve written a bunch of boneheaded stuff.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#235

Post by lmm »

wmf wrote: post #118
jonathankoren wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISAs were indentured servitude. That's literally what they were. It was the single most scummy concept that Austin came up with and PaulG endorsed.

What does that make student loans? Slavery?

Non-dischargeable debts are unconscionable, something we recognised when the bankruptcy code was originally set up. Sadly "child support" has been used as the thin end of the wedge to bring them back.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#236

Post by ertian »

virissimo wrote: post #33
dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

I did a year of computer science, but ended up going to App Academy with an ISA, because I couldn't really afford another couple of years. If ISAs are indentured servitude, but are still better than going to university, then what does that say about universities?

For real, if you applied the same level of scrutiny and the same kind of aggressive rhetoric to universities, the result would be a devastating critique. I think the same is true of other 'disruptive' companies that people love to hate (Uber, AirBnB, etc).

We uncritically accept the status quo, and at the same time compare all upstarts against some platonic ideal of what we imagine could exist.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#237

Post by golergka »

jonathankoren wrote: post #89
dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

ISAs were indentured servitude. That's literally what they were. It was the single most scummy concept that Austin came up with and PaulG endorsed.

There's no logic on earth that can simultaneously say that ISA is slavery and an income tax isn't. The only difference is that you have to give your consent for ISA.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#238

Post by golergka »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #227
pxeger1 wrote: post #147

The government student loan system in England effectively uses an income sharing agreement: with the most recent version, you pay 9% of your income over £25,000/year and if you haven’t finished paying it back within 40 years, it gets forgiven. This scheme doesn’t pay for itself though. (it costs the government money).

Imagine you go and work for a hedge fund straight out of university, have a great year, and earn £1m. Does the government get 9% of that? Or is it capped at the outstanding loan amount? If the latter, and someone earning $1m pays the same as someone evening $500k, it doesn't seem like an income share agreement.

I suspect the government gets much more than that, because it also taxes it.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#239

Post by smabie »

jjmarr wrote: post #170
AJC-Official wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISAs are equity in the student's future performance, up to a cap. This can result in paying a huge premium for relatively small amount of effort (a $30k cap for 6 months of online class is comparable to a semester at uni), but with 2 key advantages: a money-back-guarantee and accessibility. With a fixed-cost tuition program, students who can't afford to pay don't go. This prices out students who would benefit from th…

Buying equity in a person is literally what indentured servitude is. Someone making a deal to give up their future earnings for several years in exchange for a trip to the American colonies and a better life isn't fundamentally different than giving up your future earnings to a coding bootcamp in exchange for a trip to FAANG. The difference is in the degree of future earnings ceded.

Well maybe indentured servitude is fine too?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#240

Post by Fripplebubby »

busterarm wrote: post #31
DetroitThrow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's awesome to hear that there are more scrupulous alternatives. You say everyone is working in industry - if in a %, you mean to say like 100% of those who graduated with you work(ed) in tech afterwards, right?

Our cohort was 23. 2 people basically scammed AppAcademy by not finding a job for two years but did find jobs after that and didn't have to pay their ISA. Everyone else did find jobs within about 3 months. All but three have moved into senior roles. Of those three, one prefers just being an IC and two moved into product management. I don't know how things are lately but given sentiment I hear about hiring from bootca…

Maybe you're being a little tongue-in-cheek about the crypto thing, but, assuming you are at least a little sincere: I think if you drop the benefit of hindsight and change the proposition to "changing careers to one that you are well suited to (apparently) which the market favors" vs "gambling your net worth with no backup plan", I think just about anyone would say you did the right thing.
Post reply on HN