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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

#261

Post by [deleted] »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #119
MivLives wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. They were taking what they learned and applying it. Others organized groups of people, and essentially formed a small support network of people in a similar position. I completely understand that not everyone has the time for that. I think two things happened over Lambda's life span that effected the qual…

> Most of the people I saw get successful were people were people doing like... extra stuff outside of the classes. Ironically this is not that different from my university experience.

[deleted]

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

#262

Post by ucm_edge »

disruptthelaw wrote: post #86
ucm_edge wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hire them and give them a task somewhere between support engineer that executes well documented code snippets in run books and junior engineer that does very basic CRUD web app development. Making internal dashboards for the customer success team, etc. Give them about 32 hours of work a week and 8 hours of tutorials on other things. Build them up from there. I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lac…

Have you observed any other path for new want-to-be developers other than boot camps that tends to yield better outcomes ?

Activity is the signal. Self taught but goes to a ton of meetups. Enrolled in one of the legit online master's programs, etc. Ofttimes bootcamps can appear on these resumes. Someone did a bootcamp, realized it wasn't enough and kept growing in a manner.

People who treat the bootcamp as the terminal level of knowledge plateau.

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

#263

Post by phillipcarter »

blululu wrote: post #257
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?

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…

Former CC student, yep. The folks who do the transfer program are extremely motivated. A lot of them had shitty jobs beforehand. Far better students than the average 4-year university student I'd work with when I transferred. The quality of education was great and the teachers were wonderful people. Class sizes were usually small and it was easy to get a lot of 1:1 time with the profs.

Cost is more expensive than a code school but not absurd like the first two years of university. My alma mater (is that a thing?) is now $46 a credit, up from about $35 when I attended.

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

#264

Post by rchaud »

ibarearer wrote: post #214
laserlight wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment got me interested, so I dived deeper into the report [0]. Learners are divided into three groups: graduated (59%), still enrolled (5%), and withdrawn (36%). Graduated learners are further divided into two groups: job seeking (63%: ~37% of all learners) and non-job seeking (37%: ~22% of all learners). Here's the definition of “non-job seeking”: “A BloomTech graduate who has been unresponsive to outreach,…

I see, that’s … extremely unimpressive especially if you take the median salary increase from above. And I think maybe we should take everything else this guy is saying as potentially dishonest. Not including people who stopped trying to get a job is just an absurd way to do this calculation. Imagine a clinical trial that just ignores everyone who disconues due to adverse events. These stats seem borderline predatory

It's largely unregulated. Institutions formally registered as colleges and universities have more stringent disclosure requirements.

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

#265

Post by chis »

j-bos wrote: post #193

Bias declaration: I'm a hired Bloomtech grad, so overall a satisfied customer/student. Meta comment: It's intersting to see how many comments on any Bloomtech/Lambda post are very knee-jerk in nature, mostly negative some positive. And to be clear, I'd say most are thoughtful. The thing that strikes me is that I can't tell if this is normal HN tenor for a tech story or if it's just because I have opinions on the subj…

HN really hates the idea of coding bootcamps for some reason. I think it's because the median HN person is pretty independent, libertarian, self-taught, etc and can't imagine any other model working for people.

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

#266

Post by rchaud »

sokoloff wrote: post #90
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…

I have a couple of bootcamp grads who are good. Thing is, I’m 99% sure they’d have been good without the bootcamp time as well.* Overall, I’ve had a terrible experience with the bootcamp “mills” that cram people though dozens in a batch and where all of them have some bullshit story about how they did customer interviews and then built an inventory manager or CRM or e-commerce site for this (made-up) business. The st…

That's a very rare exception: the mid-career professional that has already coded in a professional setting, and used the bootcamp to figure out how to market himself for SE roles.

Most bootcamp students will be young and not know the rules of the game, or the cultural signifiers that make them look 'employable'.

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

#268

Post by edgyquant »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #267

The entire anti-college movement needs to die. This is a good step in that direction. LambdaSchool was an exploitative bad idea from the start.

I agree that the percentage they take is predatory. However I have a junior we hired right out of lambda school who was not in a position to go back to college even if they could have gotten loans. He now makes six figures and has a career he doesn’t hate.

The elitism of keeping knowledge in overpriced institutions is what needs to die. I know dudes who work construction that have deep math skills, but believe themselves idiots because schools don’t meet them half way or peak their curiosity and thus they did poorly.

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

#269

Post by ChicagoDave »

kirillbobyrev wrote: post #113
MivLives wrote: post #52

I graduated Lambda School and currently have been hired and work in a software position. I don't encourage people to go to... Bloomtech they're calling it now. AMA. I was earlier in the life of Lambda. I got what I needed out of it but I watched a lot who didn't.

Where _would_ you encourage people to go for similar purpose with higher quality? Are there any particular bootcamps/online schools you think are good? Some of my friends and family are eager (and IMO perfectly capable) to learn CS and enter the Software Engineering field, so I'm curious what would be a good way for them to do so (without spending 4 years on college again).

Community colleges are cheap, supported by federal grants, and deliver proper education.

There are no shortcuts unless you’re self-motivated/have a knack and can use online resources to learn (of which there are many).

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

#270

Post by whatever1 »

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?

Great talent is lost as a result of missing resources and connection and thus opportunities.
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