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BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

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Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#251

Post by miketery »

Stranger43 wrote: post #174

Where you get the statistics that shows real value to coding camp, despite a lack of tech passion is when you teach modern data science tools to "domain users" currently stuck within the limitations of excel(The only successful low code platform in the market), or web skills to existing content managers, but that is a much smaller market then trying to push the vision of easy money to youngsters still trying to break…

This is excellent insight. In a previous role, on the side I ran an SQL training for the customer success team, and that was fun and beneficial.

What kind of curriculum do you think is best for these folks coming from excel or the other BI tools?

Is python jupyter too advanced?

It feels like we’re still early in the tooling for “no code”.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#252

Post by austenallred »

a_lieb wrote: post #243
MivLives wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not have this knowledge. There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? My general advice is to get some one to try https://www.theodinproject.com/ as it's free. If they try it for a bit and find they don't like it, no harm they can just stop. If they want to continue after a bit and still want to go a boot camp they're more likely to succeed at any of them.

> There used to be a site that categorized boot camps by results. Maybe try that? I think you're talking about either the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) [1], or Course Report [2] (both still up). CIRR is a body run by the code school industry itself to monitor its own results; Course Report has over 50k reviews by students as well as articles with tips about how to pick a code school, "top x code sc…

I love the idea of CIRR but it is largely a failed institution. Their measures have changed dramatically over the years (the last CIRR event anyone at BloomTech attended resulted in the notion that anyone who adds anything new on LinkedIn could be considered "hired," even if it was a portfolio project or self-employment), and are used very differently from school to school, resulting in every major school I know of stopping to work with them.

For example, we used them for our first outcomes report and paid extra to have them "verify" our outcomes report, but they literally never opened the Google Drive file we sent them.

I think it was a great idea set up by well meaning people, but the self-governing aspect and comparisons created ended up in weird incentives that resulted in it falling apart.

The review sites are perhaps marginally better, but the positivity of reviews are almost 100% correlated with how hard schools work to farm for positive reviews, and their business model is selling leads to the schools, so the incentive isn't for objectivity there either.

Honestly the best way, though it requires more work, is to find a handful of recent grads on LinkedIn and ask them about their experience.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#253

Post by IggleSniggle »

Tade0 wrote: post #188
IggleSniggle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m coming from the other side of things. I was a non-programmer with a programming passion that used programming as a part of my work voluntarily, but didn’t know the first thing about the kind of programming that companies hire for. I took a coding boot camp when I decided to leave academia to join industry, and it was a useful primer on the “in” technologies that folks would be hiring for, and of the “style” of co…

> I'm coming from the other side of things. I was a non-programmer with a programming passion that used programming as a part of my work voluntarily I would love to ask why didn't you pursue programming in the first place, but last time I did that the person explained to me that they have a complex, chronic, hard to diagnose rare digestive tract disease and they went to study nutritional science specifically so that…

Honestly, I thought there was more glory AND autonomy in academia than in "industry." I came from a family that valued education and learning and monastic-like traditions over things like money or productivity. With the way my blinders had been fashioned, it simply didn't occur to me until later in my life that doing "problem solving for hire" was a viable life-path, and that software as a pursuit in and of itself offered me everything academia offered me and more.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#254

Post by austenallred »

Kalium wrote: post #244
2devnull wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that sounds a lot like a community college to me, but maybe faster and better. Can non-self motivated people succeed if they go to say an Ivy League? I didn’t, so it’s a sincere curiosity for me. Would Zuckerberg have ended up bagging groceries if he went to a community college rather than Harvard?

My understanding of community colleges is that they generally make a sincere effort to have qualified instructors with a good grasp of the materials.

If I am interpreting the parent's comment correctly, he's referring to TAs (we called them "team leads") not instructors. Based on the context of the comment I'm assuming that this was a time when we had a TA for every 8 students on top of a layering of instructors for each cohort, and indeed the TAs would do a lot of the 1:1 interaction. There has never been a time we didn't have qualified instructors, though I would readily admit the quality of our instructors has improved over time as we got better at instructional design and hiring.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#256

Post by enumjorge »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #246
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lack of ability and the devs getting upset and leaving when promotions and raises come slow. I've had similar problems. We've had some bootcamp grads who were good to work with and acknowledged that they were still very junior. We've also had some bootcamp grads who felt entitled to mid-range to senior compensation after their first year, while still getting the…

Are they able to go elsewhere and find better pay?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to in the 2020 to early 2022 job market. Today’s market will be a good litmus test to see if people with surface-level knowledge and limited experience can land $200k+ a year jobs in tech.

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#257

Post by blululu »

2devnull wrote: post #240
adoxyz wrote: post #233

My brother went to Lambda school 2019-2020. Would not recommend. They had recent grads that had just completed Lambda the previous year teaching the new students and most of them had just a vague grasp on the content matter. So many inaccuracies and bad practices taught. The only good thing about it was that it was structured and you were coding each day for 5-8hrs so if you weren't the most self-motivated person, yo…

I guess that sounds a lot like a community college to me, but maybe faster and better. Can non-self motivated people succeed if they go to say an Ivy League? I didn’t, so it’s a sincere curiosity for me. Would Zuckerberg have ended up bagging groceries if he went to a community college rather than Harvard?

Community colleges deliver a reasonably good quality of education at a very modest price point. They do accept basically anyone who shows up and unfortunately a lot of people are just not that motivated or are not adequately prepared for college level work. That said, if you show up and do the work you can easily get an associates degree and spin that into a career or transfer into a 4 year university. In California I believe that community college transfers generally have a higher graduation rate from 4 year schools than their their freshman admit peers. I have known many people who went to community college who are doing fine. I'm sure Zuckerberg would have been just fine with a community college curriculum (he might not be a billionaire but he could easily achieve a pleasant middle class lifestyle).

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#258

Post by gigatexal »

Wtf. This is not how layoffs work. “ Employees were called into an All Hands meeting this morning in which BloomTech CEO Austen Allred notified staff of the impending layoffs. After the meeting, those impacted were notified via e-mail. According to documents seen by TechCrunch, employees will get normal pay and medical benefits until January 31, 2023 and are “expected to work” through that period. Those laid off were also offered optional time with managers to talk.”

If you lay me off you give me severance and I say adieu. I need that time to find other work. What kind of dystopian BS is this?

Re: BloomTech, previously Lambda School, cuts half of staff

#259

Post by adam_arthur »

awb wrote: post #6

Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? I’ve interviewed dozens and their resume will say something like “Fellow at [bootcamp]” or “Instructor at [bootcamp]”, and it turns out they made a simple programming 101 app and taught a 1hr intro to JavaScript class. None have ever passed an initial screening by me for mid level dev jobs, but I’m curious if anyone else has hired a bootcamp grad for a junior role and had…

One of my best new hires is a bootcamp grad with 0 real world experience. But he's a huge outlier, very self motivated, hardworking.

Personality type tends to trump experience. Unless of course you need a specialist to hit the ground running out of the gate.

In general, I have not hired many bootcamp grads over the years. They tend to present as very non-technical in most cases

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