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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

#281

Post by tndl »

benbjohnson wrote: post #68
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've hired 2 bootcamp grads from Turing in Denver. They were great and have both gone on to senior roles. I mentored another woman in a bootcamp about ten years ago and she later went on to be a senior engineer at HashiCorp. She then got a PhD in Mathematics and eventually got into an academic role in cryptography/security/privacy. I only have a high school diploma and I've had a successful 20+ year career in softwar…

Was also going to comment about Turing school. I've worked with Turing school grads who were really strong, as well as Galvanize/gSchool grads from the period when Turning and Galvanize were still the same thing. I think Turing School's non-profit (not for profit?) status affects its practices a lot, as I know it has smaller cohort sizes and pretty rigorous entry requirements.

In my mind, code bootcamps are just like anything else in the realm of professional education - there's a ton of scammy and low quality stuff out there, but there are genuine upsides to the format and some people are served really well and come out as strong engineers.

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

#282

Post by shytey »

austenallred wrote: post #237
dzader wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Hmm, it is interesting to me that sometimes when clear evidence conflicts with an existing mental model it’s easier to create imaginary evidence than to adjust the mental model.

Literally every past comment of his is contentious or negative. Probably worth ignoring from here, clearly isn't acting in good faith on here.

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

#283

Post by wheelinsupial »

kodah wrote: post #99
da01 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on how/where you got your deeper math skills?

Books. A lot of people gave me books, many college-level books are free on the internet in PDF form. I also had to read back through algebra and calculus to pick up on some concepts I had forgotten. Earlier in my search I used Udemy and Khan Academy. There's good courses on both but they really only get you so far, imo.

> many college-level books are free on the internet in PDF form

As are many of the college-level lecture notes, assignments, and answer keys.

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

#284

Post by ec109685 »

austenallred wrote: post #89
ec109685 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for misrepresenting. Are there free career fairs arranged by your school that companies can attend?

“Career fairs” as such haven’t been very successful for us, so we don’t run them, but it’s not because we charge for them. There are other mechanisms to meet grads (and our most successful connections are 1:1, not many:many) but until recently when we had some major hiring partners come in for our backend program most of our grads were hired by companies that don’t pay anything.

Okay.

Is there a place where we can view your graduates? Not at this time.

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

#286

Post by j-bos »

dzader wrote: post #222
j-bos wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you hurt?

no, but thousands of people who were simply trying to make a better life for themselves were grifted by Austen and his merry gang of con artists

Sorry about the phrasing of my comment, reading it now it comes off as snarky.

I ask because before I attended, I read many posts by people who left Lambda with a bad taste and that put me off from attending. But I did, and now I could play in an ad copy. But that's my data point.

I'd like to talk to someone who had a bad time with Lambda, in a non combat context, because we clearly had vastly different outcomes and I clearly I'm missing or misunderstanding some important context.

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

#287

Post by dilyevsky »

gigatexal wrote: post #258

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…

This is literally how they should works as directed by federal WARN act. Usually corporations just cut ties and pay out at least 60 days tho because it’s easier for both parties and you can get some concessions from employees like a gag clause

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

#288

Post by zerkten »

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?

This is nothing like community college. Community colleges are held to some reasonable level of accountability. It's unlikely that they are going to be leading edge, or trendy, but you know that people learning some critical skills to a reasonable level.

Lambda School and other tech education programs start out well with VC money but it's not sustainable because there is no money in it. This is something that can be reasoned about a priori because you can see the budget focus of community colleges. Tech doesn't change the fundamentals, but the illusion can be sustained in the good times.

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

#289

Post by austenallred »

user3939382 wrote: post #274
austenallred wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally. That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than…

> BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program I helped run a large school for 6 years with 4,000 students/year who took an 850 hour program. Sad to say that amount of training isn't necessarily as much as it sounds.

850 actual hours, butt-in-seat and required, or 850 scheduled hours?

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

#290

Post by hancholo »

lazypenguin wrote: post #209
hancholo wrote: post #126

I've been on the fence on going to a bootcamp for years, since the dev bootcamp days because I don't feel I could complete a CS degree given all that math. I've also been in various FAANG companies the past 5 years and while not in a dev/swe role I have picked up some things as I go. The front end and user interfaces is something I've been interested for a while so I think I may pivot to front end dev or some kind of…

If you are motivated you can learn everything that’s in a boot camp on your own. However, going through a boot camp successfully is a good signal during hiring that you have some experience in programming in relavent technology. It’s much harder to signal your experience when it’s all self taught. Whether it’s good value for the money depends on your own circumstances.

That's a fair point. From what I've seen it really comes down to the hours you put in outside of class and your own side projects. Being able to speak the language, walk through the stack you used and why, issues you ran into and how you overcame them.
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