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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#241

Post by lazyasciiart »

tomhoward wrote: post #240
lazyasciiart wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Demeaning to cancer patients? Huh. I thought I was writing out a really incredibly obviously clear instance of "if a thing is bad, you cannot criticize it unless you provide an alternative - if you cannot provide a better option, then the thing must not be bad". I didn't realize I needed to scaffold this so much for people to actually focus on the logic being criticized and not get hung up on "but this thing isn't bad!?@!??!" How would you have presented it? Or, do you think it's not actually possible in this context to explain why that construction is illogical without upsetting people who like the school?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#243

Post by tomhoward »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #241
tomhoward wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Demeaning to cancer patients? Huh. I thought I was writing out a really incredibly obviously clear instance of "if a thing is bad, you cannot criticize it unless you provide an alternative - if you cannot provide a better option, then the thing must not be bad". I didn't realize I needed to scaffold this so much for people to actually focus on the logic being criticized and not get hung up on "but this thing isn't ba…

Anyone who is committed to serious enquiry and good-faith discussion understands that there is a very large class of things that might seem bad at first glance, but turn out not to be so bad, or indeed quite good, when compared against the available alternatives.

This class of things includes pretty much anything that's really important in the world - including economic systems, government policies, human behaviours, and, yes, companies, including ones that offer deferred payment for education that can lead to higher incomes and better standards of living for the customer.

You're clearly intelligent enough to know this but are poisoning the debate by making a comparison with something that is horrible but not at all comparable.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#244

Post by lazyasciiart »

tomhoward wrote: post #243
lazyasciiart wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demeaning to cancer patients? Huh. I thought I was writing out a really incredibly obviously clear instance of "if a thing is bad, you cannot criticize it unless you provide an alternative - if you cannot provide a better option, then the thing must not be bad". I didn't realize I needed to scaffold this so much for people to actually focus on the logic being criticized and not get hung up on "but this thing isn't ba…

Anyone who is committed to serious enquiry and good-faith discussion understands that there is a very large class of things that might seem bad at first glance, but turn out not to be so bad, or indeed quite good, when compared against the available alternatives. This class of things includes pretty much anything that's really important in the world - including economic systems, government policies, human behaviours,…

What the hell. Obviously I know that many things are maybe not bad. That's why I picked an example where people would not argue about whether it was bad in order to demonstrate the logical point.

It is clear that I not only didn't get my point across but that people don't even believe that the point existed, and I miscommunicated so badly that you're not even willing to believe that I was ever arguing in good faith. Fuck this.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#245

Post by Step888 »

hydrarijar wrote: post #135
akanet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Writes a 2000+ word article, cuts 14 "for brevity". Overall, I think this was an insightful article, but cutting that out seems misleading, even underhanded.

And let's be honest here, I am no fan of Lambda school and I think it's way too expensive for an online school.

But if the editor cut those 14 words out, it wasn't to make the article more concise, it was to make the audience more outraged and more likely to share that article with others -- thereby increase the number of page views.

Not that I would expect the author to admit that. The author can't speak to the intent of his editor, obviously. And even if he could, I don't think his editor would be too pleased with him if he did that.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#246

Post by Step888 »

MarkMc wrote: post #216

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…

Take a look at the other coding bootcamps on that site. They all seem to have very positive reviews.

The problem is that switchup uses the affiliate links of the bootcamps, so it has a financial incentive to sell the bootcamps it features to its viewers. That's how it makes its money.

Now Amazon does the same thing, you'll say. And you'd be right, but with Amazon, it has a reputation to maintain. If Amazon reviews are unreliable, people will stop shopping at Amazon.

With Switchup, it's different. Most people will only buy one coding bootcamp in their lifetime. So withchup doesn't have the same incentive to make its reviews super accurate. It mostly has the incentive to sell as many coding bootcamps as it can.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#247

Post by mattmcknight »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #233
mattmcknight wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't just criticism without an alternative. It was saying, this thing is bad, don't use it. If the other things are worse, you still have to use it. This is why your analogy was ineffective, because you used a thing that was obvious worse than the other approaches.

People need to learn things. If funding education through an ISV is the best way to do that, then they should do that, even if there are problems with it. What the article really seemed to be implying was that they shouldn't do it that way, that there was something wrong with it, which justified an extremely negative view of the company, and leaves people with no option to learn to code without large upfront costs or loans to pay back if they are unsuccessful.

Describing the very best option in purely negative terms is misleading.

If you are telling people to stop doing a thing with a x% chance of working, but the other options have a lower chance of working, you are effectively saying don't do the thing at all.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#248

Post by lazyasciiart »

mattmcknight wrote: post #247
lazyasciiart wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't just criticism without an alternative. It was saying, this thing is bad, don't use it. If the other things are worse, you still have to use it. This is why your analogy was ineffective, because you used a thing that was obvious worse than the other approaches. People need to learn things. If funding education through an ISV is the best way to do that, then they should do that, even if there are problems wit…

You are assuming here that you and the speaker have a shared belief that this way to accomplish the thing has a chance of working and is worth doing in the absence of alternatives (or that it is obviously better than alternatives). That is almost certainly a false assumption when someone tells you "don't do that thing". Instead of continuing to hold those assumptions, you should either ignore their opinion altogether or attempt to find out which of those beliefs you don't share.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#249

Post by BlueTemplar »

barry-cotter wrote: post #213
BlueTemplar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMHO we should aim at better than 40%, and I doubt that can be done without actual presence ?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#250

Post by prawn »

taytus wrote: post #98

Austen has totally disappeared from twitter. He used to tweet all the time about their AMAZING success rate.

He was also quick in the past to post about LS on HN but no comment in this thread at all. Might be responding in blog form and outlining a few changes they're making to address the concerns?
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