I have always been surprised by how many students of lambda and equivalent graduate to immediately teach at these bootcamps. It just seems gross.
Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#32I come from the failed Lambda School UX program. It wasted more than a year of my life. And to add insult to injury, after having succeeded in learning UX on my own + finding employment, I now send them a mortgage payment's worth of $$$ every month, until I reach that $30k limit. What a damn scam.
Start talking with your state's attorney general's office about your experiences and how you were sold something that was not as advertised.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#33```
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Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#34In their eagerness to disrupt traditional education, all these programs forgot that the one single thing that makes traditional university education succesful is teaching people with aptitude and drive. To get accepted and graduate from a reputable university you have to get good results in standardized tests and work your self through multiple courses for at least 3 years. That by itself doesn't mean anything but th…
> one single thing that makes traditional university education succesful is aptitude and drive. Networking, connections, and (external) credentialism?
Attending courses for four years, including many outside of your major, and doing enough work to not fail.
It's a low bar. Very low. But still much higher than the bar at bootcamps.
Anecdotally, the only positive interactions I've had with bootcamp cert holders were cases where the cert holder already had significant work experience that required non-trivial training (e.g., in healthcare, a trade, or logistics as opposed to retail/warehouse) or a 4 year degree. So I believe the earlier anecdote/observation that bootcamp grads -- especially "blank slates" -- often lack the grit that's required for successful employment in an IC eng role.
I'm a self-taught programmer and had my first programming gigs prior to starting college. So I've been an advocate for non-traditional hires in most roles I've helped hire for. Even roles where we'd traditionally require a PhD and where the level of expertise required really is 3+ years post-graduate-coursework immersion in the research field, I've advocated for "phd in and or similar background" and helped source non-traditional candidates where possible. But the "lack of grit" problem wrt bootcamp grads is definitely a thing.
> Networking and connections?
You say this like it should be dismissed out-of-hand, but actually, having a reputation among your peers for not being a lazy idiot does not come free and is actually a useful signal in hiring.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#35It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…
One huge mistake I think a lot (but not all of) the bootcamps are making is taking the easy route of simply using JavaScript to teach both frontend and backend. JavaScript is a TERRIBLE first programming language. I usually have to spend 2-3 sessions per mentee explaining the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript, where some of the OOP concepts actually come from, and how things work in other languages to put into context the really terrible implementation of these features in js. Main reason being, I tell them, things that run in the browser are different from almost every other runtime environment because on the web it is extraordinarily difficult to deprecate/change things, because if you do then X% of the web breaks. This is why we still to this day have things like "quirks mode" etc. Once a behavior is out there in the wild, you basically have to support it as a browser, and you can drop support for it virtually never. This process has led to the JavaScript we have today -- mountains of functionality dumped on top of a backwards compatible core riddled with idiosyncrasies and poor design decisions that didn't become poor until they were left unchanged for ~20 years.
Anyway, my point is, it's very important to make sure students understand that their confusion surrounding how things are structured in JavaScript is natural, and that they can (and should, on their own preferably) look forward to learning more stable/sensical languages in the near future. It's a shame I have to do this for my students instead of the course just doing it for me, however.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#36It isn't just Lambda School. I mentor for [insert large coding bootcamp here] and I will say things have been going badly across the board for more than 50% of students. They recently had to cut a lot of staff, and completion rates seem to hover around only 50-60% when you take into account all the students they remove from this calculation when they withdraw for "personal reasons". The employment numbers I don't hav…
One nice thing about software is that you can self-teach to a significant degree. But you probably need some basic aptitude and you need a huge amount of self-motivation. And, as you say, you probably want to structure your learning in a way that works for you.
Or you can just keep making small projects. I got to 100k without a degree this way. I made these projects because I enjoy programming. I can't say any of my learning has been structured.
Even now I'll show off my projects during interviews. The rare times this backfires I know that company would have sucked anyway.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#37I come from the failed Lambda School UX program. It wasted more than a year of my life. And to add insult to injury, after having succeeded in learning UX on my own + finding employment, I now send them a mortgage payment's worth of $$$ every month, until I reach that $30k limit. What a damn scam.
How did it suck?
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#38My partner went through a bootcamp, and there was an interview process after the application process. In my partner's case, they hold an advance degree in a STEM field from an Ivy League. A few of their peers had similar backgrounds, and that group didn't have trouble finishing.
I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few.
If so, the unintended consequences are interesting:
Letting in more folks -> more folks with issues finishing -> more customer support -> more issues -> more doubts about the worthiness of the credentials from employers -> more folks having trouble finding placement -> lowering standards to let in more folks.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#39In their eagerness to disrupt traditional education, all these programs forgot that the one single thing that makes traditional university education succesful is teaching people with aptitude and drive. To get accepted and graduate from a reputable university you have to get good results in standardized tests and work your self through multiple courses for at least 3 years. That by itself doesn't mean anything but th…
I can't speak to the quality of the people who are attending these bootcamp programs (I wouldn't at all be surprised that most of them aren't "successful" for a variety of reasons) but as far as traditional university education being "successful", there are tons of university graduates who have little to show for it except a piece of paper and a load of student debt. A lot of kids today go to university because they're told it's what they're supposed to do, and coming out of it with a degree doesn't require nearly as much as it used to.
Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years
#40My anecdotal experience as a part-time web dev instructor was not great - I recently quit after just 6 months. A small handful of students were curious and driven, but I have the impression that most students were not very driven. Could be an artefact of my program being part-time, not sure if it’s different in the full-time one (the part-time program enrolment was paused shortly after I joined btw). The main reason I quit was because school provided very little support for instructors in the sense of growth of our skills. I still think the idea is great, but I’m less confident in Lambda School as a company now.