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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#51

Post by conanbatt »

hundt wrote: post #19

> Whether or not this counts as “selling” strikes me as a meaningless semantic distinction: Either way, the school receives some money up front and an investor shoulders some of the risk of the ISA not paying out. And either way, Lambda School students don’t know that the school isn’t as incentive-aligned with them as the school’s marketing indicates. It is certainly not meaningless! Selling an ISA means that Lambda…

The value of the ISA's as sold depend on the company success. The alignment is really the same...

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#52

Post by xenihn »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

relatedly, it's so nice to see zed shaw tilting at a windmill that deserves it for once: https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069?lang=e...

He's been shitting on bootcamps for a while. I want to say it's been at least three years since he first did so.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#53

Post by heedlessly3 »

There's no point to doing coding bootcamps. I know plenty of individuals who were non-CS majors, not even STEM, switch to software developers after self-study and building up a portfolio.

if you decide you want an accredited university degree, then you can get FAFSA to fund community college, then transfer an online university such as Florida

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#54

Post by James_Henry »

chasing wrote: post #10
cm2012 wrote: post #4

I mean, it's still a vastly, vastly better deal than college or other boot camps. It has no up front monetary investment, and you only pay for it if i works for you.

It's not at all comparable to a four-year college experience. And it's a terrible solution to the problems we are having with the cost of secondary education.

Secondary education is high school. I think you mean post-secondary education, right?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#55

Post by pitt1980 »

cm2012 wrote: post #4

I mean, it's still a vastly, vastly better deal than college or other boot camps. It has no up front monetary investment, and you only pay for it if i works for you.

I'm curious what exactly happens if say you get a 55K job doing 'marketing' at a startup

are they collecting 17% of your paycheck?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#56

Post by shafyy »

cm2012 wrote: post #4

I mean, it's still a vastly, vastly better deal than college or other boot camps. It has no up front monetary investment, and you only pay for it if i works for you.

Paying $30k for a 9 month coding bootcamp is not a good deal. A lot of colleges in the US are not good deals. But this doesn't make Lambda School a good deal.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#57

Post by x0x0 »

beering wrote: post #22
hundt wrote: post #19

> Whether or not this counts as “selling” strikes me as a meaningless semantic distinction: Either way, the school receives some money up front and an investor shoulders some of the risk of the ISA not paying out. And either way, Lambda School students don’t know that the school isn’t as incentive-aligned with them as the school’s marketing indicates. It is certainly not meaningless! Selling an ISA means that Lambda…

It's not zero financial interest, but certainly more indirect and less compelling. If investors in Lambda ISAs are not getting good returns, the value of buying a Lambda ISA will go down. If Lambda can't sell ISAs for a good price, they won't get the operating income they need or will have to shoulder the ISA themselves. Still, selling the ISA just feels shady relative to the marketing that touts ISAs as aligning inc…

Why do you find that less compelling? As you point out, even if Austin sold hopes and dreams and/or investor story time for the first two years of ISAs, eventually there will be hard results to model out. So how does that misalign incentives?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#58

Post by akanet »

intherdfield wrote: post #45
akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

I don't think you mentioned that the student doesn't have to pay back Lambda after 60 months of deferred payments. That seems important. From the Lambda site: "The income share agreement has no interest. It's a flat percentage that goes away once you've reached the $30k payment cap, you've made 24 payments, or after 60 months of deferred payments (even if you haven't paid us anything)." But you wrote in the article:…

Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#59

Post by x0x0 »

intherdfield wrote: post #45
akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

I don't think you mentioned that the student doesn't have to pay back Lambda after 60 months of deferred payments. That seems important. From the Lambda site: "The income share agreement has no interest. It's a flat percentage that goes away once you've reached the $30k payment cap, you've made 24 payments, or after 60 months of deferred payments (even if you haven't paid us anything)." But you wrote in the article:…

Still seems like a way better deal than student loans, which can follow you until you die.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#60

Post by akanet »

brenden2 wrote: post #44
akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

Thanks for publishing it! It takes a lot of courage to go against the "who's hot in the valley" zeitgeist. Also, CoderPad was life changing when we started using it at Airbnb. It made phone interviews so much more effective, thanks for creating it.

Not having VCs of my own helped a lot!
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