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Fast Crimes at Lambda School

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Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#311

Post by 7thpower »

kccqzy wrote: post #269
7thpower wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point, I have worked with a company we’ll call “C” and they have been able to build a pipeline of folks who have been incredibly effective (>50). That being said the program is a bit more than ~3 months and the students go all in, they’re not doing it part time. The students come from different backgrounds, some have not graduated highschool, and they come hungry for better opportunities. We’ve tried this wit…

I think going all in is an important part of it. Cramming a whole CS degree in a few months does require full-time commitment. It can't be a part-time thing while working other jobs. Preferably the boot camp is in person not online, because physically relocating to the place of instruction is a big part of going all in.

To be fair, they definitely do not cram an entire CS degree into the boot camp. But when the students come out they are able to develop a full stack web app and do some Java (I believe, but do not use so have never checked) and most importantly the people who come through the program are generally do-ers who learn quickly.

Everything else they need, we will teach them. We think of our company as a university. They will never need a college degree unless it’s a compliance requirement for some reason.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#312

Post by strken »

klyrs wrote: post #251
strken wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most people" as in "most people jayd16 interacts with", "most people who hold a white-collar job", "most people who hold any job at all", "most working-age adults", or "if you randomly selected a big enough group of people, more than half of them could become professional programmers"? I suspect we're in a bubble. Consider the charts at the end of https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete.... , spe…

I think you're reading past jayd16's point. Just about anybody can figure out how to program x86 assembly, if they put in the effort. Saying this as a mom of a child who very much cannot program. It's one thing to want to be a successful programmer; and another thing entirely to want to program.

If that's the point, then in the context of bootcamps preparing people to be professional programmers it's a bit...well, pointless. Writing a program of any sort is something anyone who can use a keyboard to write "print(10)" can do, but that doesn't suggest the only thing separating that group from professional programmers is the inclination to spend time on it.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#313

Post by cm277 »

shawndrost wrote: post #255

(Note: I was a founder at a coding bootcamp, Hack Reactor.) I don't think an author who understands the domain would write like this. Even if we spot that Lambda was a tire fire that needed to die, the author's outrage doesn't square with realities on the ground in other sectors of postsecondary education, especially in programs that serve lower-income students. I wouldn't launch a general defense of Lambda/Allred bu…

Genuinely curious as I've been looking into starting a coding camp for my city: what are the unforeseen risks you saw in your experience? or delights?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#314

Post by mind-blight »

swyx wrote: post #136
rideontime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the linked article? I'm struggling to empathize with this fraud, especially after listening to the interview mentioned.

skimmed it. was a fan of @fulligin since before he became a citizen journalist and have followed it closely, i didnt really see much new info here in my browse thru. i'm not saying to empathize WITH THE FRAUD lol, just responding to GP about why austen stopped answering qtns. yes he fucked up, now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit instead of constantly reading the most negative take into simpl…

I'm usually a +1 for the empathy train and second chances, but it seems like the guy legitimately committed fraud and hasn't taken responsibility for his it his company's actions.

There's a big difference between an honest mistake and a dishonest one. Given the harm he's seemingly caused people through the dishonesty, it doesn't make sense to give him the opportunity to continue lying and harming people

Edit for typo

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#315

Post by JeremyNT »

kbigdelysh wrote: post #107

I was one of the coding instructors at Make School which was similar to Lambda School and was bankrupt couple years ago. Our major issue? It was damn hard to find enough students for our school who were talented enough to understand computer science and had enough grit to finish the program and get a job. Why? Because those students were already absorbed by the established traditional universities.

The market is very different than when I entered the field over two decades ago.

In the late 90s it made sense for people to switch to software from e.g. HR or accounting or whatever because the field was exploding in a way they couldn't have predicted when picking a field in the 80s or 70s. But why would somebody in their 30s or 40s do this today? They've lived in a world where software was always hot, and if they had the chops and wanted "in" on software they could've done it long ago.

So who is left who plausibly could do the job who isn't already in the industry? Mostly people who couldn't handle or get into college (for whatever reason), but also aren't talented enough to learn on their own. I'm sure there are some people like this, but now you have to wonder: if college wasn't "right" for these people, what pedagogical "secret sauce" can boot camps add to actually get to them?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#316

Post by giraffe_lady »

vunderba wrote: post #283
giraffe_lady wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is really not as hard as you're making it out to be. I've taught it to beginners both children and adults and they struggle but they all learn it. Professional software development is quite difficult, but programming is only a portion of why. And even then, software dev is only like the second or third most technically difficult job I've had. Any welder or marine upholsterer or nurse or whatever has about…

I'm sorry, but this take is just ridiculous. I say this as somebody who has worked in various fields (education, medicine), gotten my private pilot's license, worked in education as a foreign language teacher, and done EMT and paramedic work. Your examples are just absurd. Software development and software engineering is such a vast and broad field that your comparison doesn't really apply. It's more of an indictment…

Yeah now that you put it that way it may have something to do with our individual particulars but I just don't find it as difficult as you seem to sorry.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#317

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

seoulmetro wrote: post #206

Not sure why the writer attacks his "sock puppet", it's not a sock puppet, his wording actually obscures but does not lie. He is in that discord, with other students. If you think he's trying to hide on that account, and that's all your evidence, then you're just being emotional. Don't trust anyone you meet on the internet as they may be the CEO.

"I and many other former students"

My grasp of English isn't without flaws, but that seems to be a pretty direct lie unless he was also a former student at Lambda School.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#318

Post by baud147258 »

ekidd wrote: post #310
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #43

Back in the late 80s / early 90s, I taught non-traditional students coming in through state-funded retraining programs at UT Arlington Continuing Education and Texas State Technical Institute (now TSTC) in Waco. The idea was "here are a bunch of laid-off manufacturing workers who want to retrain as SOMETHING with high-tech." The most popular courses were of the very short "here's how to do some things with Unix" vari…

> I've yet to see ANYONE (myself included) do an excellent job teaching the kind of programming employers want. I saw another comment here about how "programming" is simple, but teaching architecture and putting things together is hard. Dartmouth College once had a course called CS23 (Software Engineering) that was infamous for introducing students to "real world" development. The first half of the course was dedicat…

> Once students can program, the best way turn them into developers is to make them build and ship something as a team.

I had a semester project like that, in a team of 7, though we didn't had the changing spec... But it was a really good learning experience

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#319

Post by ornornor »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #290
mlinhares wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredibly hard to find ANYONE at any of these "coding bootcamps" or online education platforms that has any idea about what pedagogy is (or that it even exists) to the point that I seriously think anyone that makes it out of these programs and lands a job was mostly because they got the focus and time to learn by themselves (due to being in the program) than due to the program itself. They just needed a kick i…

I joined a bootcamp once, already knowing most of the material covered. I wasn't the only one in my cohort (of 4 people) who already knew how to program. My hope was that the bootcamp might make it easier to find a job , which didn't happen. They put more effort into instruction than into placing applicants. Not sure why; I can easily cover any material that would be covered in a bootcamp myself.

> the bootcamp might make it easier to find a job

Did a few stints at a couple boot camps as an instructor. Many other students thoughts that too because it’s half the boot camps’ marketing efforts.

But it was a big lie both times. They are friendly with a few startups who are looking for cheap labor at terrible conditions and they only have a handful of positions. « Career services » in the worst boot camp was an intern that changed every six months because you can’t have a longer internship and then they’d have to pay that person an actual salary. Swap for a new free intern and voila you can market your « dedicated career and placement service for graduates only »…

A despicable industry.

Those who actually make it are rare and had grit, luck, and sometimes previous knowledge. Most graduates stay unemployed a very long time, or underemployed if they’re lucky.

Don’t go to a boot camp. Use the tuition to sustain yourself while you’re learning using free resources. The ROI is much better.

If you insist on attending a boot camp, find graduates and ex instructors on LinkedIn first and talk to them to get a sense of what it’s like. Don’t just throw thousands at a shady organization without doing your own research.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#320

Post by dang »

networked wrote: post #309
DistractionRect wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of the flaming, I'd like to underscore why it's entirely reasonable to redact the author of the comment in question: the author outted themselves as knowingly and egregiously violating a ToS for another site, and using//promoting services which are at best unethical, but probably illegal (residential proxies//large scale proxy services are usually built off the backs of botnets//malware). This isn't, IMO, fa…

I think this is correct. My intent was to point out it looked like 'austenallred realized he'd admitted to doing wrong. I knew HN could redact a user's data at their request and wrote my comment accordingly, but I didn't make it explicit. Unfortunately, my comment became a magnet for accusations against HN staff and 'dang personally. The lesson seems to be to anticipate moderators being accused of conspiracy and mali…

I doubt that it will deter accusatory responses, and you may get a few yourself! But it's helpful to disambiguate intent and I personally appreciate it.
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