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

Lambda School lays off 65 employees

lambdaschool.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 275 posts

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#251

Post by medvezhenok »

elteto wrote: post #208
medvezhenok wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, but for very few people. I went to MIT and there were stories of people there taking ~12-16 classes a semester which theoretically averages out to a course a week (though they ran concurrently and it's a crazy course load for the average person). To be fair, the people who could do that were way on the right of the distribution and it's hard to convey just how fast they could pick things up (think of t…

You simply can't take 12-16 classes a semester, the day doesn't have enough hours for that. They _might_ have gotten permission from the professors to skip classes and just show up to the exams, which is _not_ learning.

Not sure why that's not learning - if they understand the material at the time of the exams, who cares if they show up to class? Most people forget most of the stuff they "learned" in college 10 years out anyway - most of the economic worth is in the credentialing / signaling versus the actual education (since getting into the school is the hardest part)

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#252

Post by og-at »

teruakohatu wrote: post #28

Can someone explain how you can train Data Scientists in 6 months? What jobs do these grads walk into? The tech prerequisite is: "You should feel extremely comfortable with how a computer works including: touch-typing, web browsers, search engines, and basic computer programs." The Curriculum: Stats, Linear Algebra AND Data Wrangling: 4 Weeks Modeling: 3 Weeks Data Engineering, Databases, SQL, Productionisation: 3 We…

I don't know data science topics, but I can tell you a friend of mine was working on a Computer Science BS while I was in Lambda Schools CS section. He had a semester each on Algorithms and Data Structures. I had 1 month on those 2 + Graphs. At the end of my month, I was teaching him these things because his Data Structures class was basically SQL.

I can't directly answer your question, but I'm sure the answer has something to do with figuring out and teaching the base requirements of the topic, methodically, with well experienced industry professionals.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#253

Post by og-at »

tetrahedr0n wrote: post #118
nrmitchi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of suspect it's a bit of a light-weight Pareto principle: you can gain 70-80% high-level knowledge (note that I said knowledge , not understanding ), which is enough to get started with some real-world applications with sufficient handholding and mentoring. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing , but expectations should be set appropriately. If you've pre-screened to select for candidates who would be…

I think this is correct, re: the Pareto principle. I'm a Lambda grad (Full stack web, not DS) and at the end of the program, I was knowledgeable about a lot more than I understood; and that also includes being knowledgeable about a lot of my shortcomings that I was painfully unaware of before Lambda. A year after Lambda working as a SWE and I am now finally starting to feel a sense of domain... I hesitate to call it…

As a Lambda grad from about a year ago, I agree completely.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#254

Post by jwilber »

sugarwater wrote: post #248
jwilber wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ I know a few of my peers that walked out without even setting up their local development (because they were on windows and there was little help or instruction for students with windows).” I remember the pains in undergrad of trying to get tensorflow to correctly make use the gpu on a windows machine. Not fun! Anyways, not trying to be rude here, but this is pretty concerning to read. If someone needs to have their…

It's in the third month of the curriculum, after primarily only working with Google Colab in the previous two. Keep in mind that a majority of the students have never seen or touched a command-line, and trying to install various tools resulted in a lot of errors for a lot of students, troubleshooted by TLs that were only students 2+ months ahead.

Right, that all makes sense, but you can’t join a company just to say, “well only 6 months ago I’d never touched a command-line!”. I know plenty who have succeeded from boot camps and plenty who haven’t. I think the best thing boot camps can do is have a stronger acceptance criteria - letting anyone in just sets them (and the brand’s reputation) up for failure. But I guess they need to make money.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#255

Post by og-at »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #187
maximilianroos wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been critical of some of their comms before [1], but this statement seems pretty good. You seem to be working hard to read it in the worst possible light. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26948912

I don’t know, man. Hearing someone refer to layoffs as “right-sizing” leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t think that’s an unfair reaction.

"right sizing" is an age-old term for layoffs going back to the 70s. It's a corpomeme at this point.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#256

Post by rednerrus »

908B64B197 wrote: post #145
rednerrus wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could learn to be a developer/QA/OPs in 6 months on the job. I don't know enough about data science to make that call.

Has anyone ever tried hiring someone with no experience and turning him into a productive developer/QA/OPs in 6 months on the job?

I did this. I started in QA with very little experience. I had some linux experience from personal projects I'd worked on and 3 months of a pretty mediocre python developer bootcamp. The company I started at mostly hired less experienced people and had them work QA for a year to get them integrated. It worked really well. You were on an integrated team with QA/Dev/Ops and as QA you sat with other team members and did manual testing while you figured it out. They had a great mentorship program and were serious about training and promoting from within.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#257

Post by MivLives »

lifer555 wrote: post #153
maximilianroos wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your classmates also get good jobs, on average? > I joined right before they made a ton of terrible changes to the program What were these?

On average, no not really. I'd say that roughly 15-20% have found decent positions but it is really hard to say because some students just might not be very active on slack/linkedin. I'd take a look at the subreddit r/LambdaSchool to read more about the changes (note that Austen the CEO is the only mod there and removes posts). One example is the removal of the Team Lead program (which kind of sucked in the first pla…

I went through the program much earlier than you did. Having a good TL (or PM as they used to call them) was the biggest difference between passing and not some units. I was one at one point too, and there are a lot of bad habits you need to get students out of by pointing out in reviews repeatedly.

I haven't had contact with anyone from the school since they exiled all the alumni last year. But before that I'd say at least 80% of my cohort got hired by 4 months out. Sad to hear how far it's fallen.

Out of curiosity what was your cohort size?

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#258

Post by fridif »

andrew_ wrote: post #246
fridif wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree with you that the system blocks more people than it should. Personally, I think there should be many more apprenticeships than there are currently. There are many technical roles that can be fulfilled by people of all backgrounds. But, for the most serious roles, there needs to be skill scrutiny and performance under pressure. Think of the difference between a performing artist and a music teacher. Both ar…

Are we going to ask a symphonic performer to produce scales during an interview, a heart surgeon to suture a laceration? We would not, it would be insulting for a myriad of reasons.

If a symphonic performer can't run through some scales, or a doctor cant suture a laceration, I would say that is indicative of a major problem.

If you owned a restaurant, would you hire a hostess that couldn't operate a telephone, or a cook that couldn't turn on a stove?

Similarly I wouldn't hire a programmer that could not turn an array into a linked list.

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#259

Post by fridif »

confidantlake wrote: post #247
fridif wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree with you that the system blocks more people than it should. Personally, I think there should be many more apprenticeships than there are currently. There are many technical roles that can be fulfilled by people of all backgrounds. But, for the most serious roles, there needs to be skill scrutiny and performance under pressure. Think of the difference between a performing artist and a music teacher. Both ar…

The vast majority of software jobs do not need performance artist skills. Most of the pressure is deadline pressure, not "stage" pressure.

Say that you own an auto repair facility. You have 10 mechanics who have applied, and all ten have previous experience on their resume.

How would you interview them, so as to choose the best candidate the first time?

Re: Lambda School lays off 65 employees

#260

Post by nrmitchi »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #220
nrmitchi wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambda was securitizing the ISAs and selling them to investors on the backend, obviously with a discount based on risk. Some people treat this like a bad thing, but it's really pretty basic risk-mitigation and cash-flow stabilization. This is kind of like basic factoring, or "modern" solutions like Pipe ( https://www.pipe.com/ ). There is an argument to be made that it disaligns Lambda and student incentives ("outcom…

> calling these ISAs non-dischargable would lower the risk to the investor, which would make those ISAs worth significantly more I wonder how true this is. Declaring bankruptcy comes at a huge cost. It's not something people do lightly. Most people, if they have the money to pay back the loan, would probably do so. Once they're in that position (presumably with a stable job), they have little incentive to declare ban…

If they are in that position, you're right.

But that goes hand-in-hand with the aligned outcomes; it's best for Lambda if these people get good jobs afterwards, because they're more likely to pay the ISA in full.

If they don't, they're less likely, the risk is higher, and the ISA is worth less (to the investor).

The potential for bankrupcy is also a risk, which lowers the yield. Removing the risk of bankrupcy heightens it.

We could argue about the magnitute of these risks all day; I'm sure people significantly better at math than I am have done a lot of work here.

Post reply on HN