Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 444 posts

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#71

Post by swaxx »

lawn wrote: post #36
st1x7 wrote: post #8

People are paying ~$30k for bootcamps? Why not get a degree at that point?

Fun fact: $30k is almost exactly how much the Swedish student loan gives you for 5 years of full time study, which I used to pay for everything (housing, food, clothes, computers, books for school etc).

Do not think that's correct. The loan part is about 9300 USD per year (40 weeks full time study), which sums up to about 46500 over five years. On top of that is a grant of about 3900 USD that you don't have to pay back. Reference : https://www.csn.se/languages/english/student-grants-and-loan...

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#73

Post by abdullahkhalids »

codethief wrote: post #48
lawn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: $30k is almost exactly how much the Swedish student loan gives you for 5 years of full time study, which I used to pay for everything (housing, food, clothes, computers, books for school etc).

You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden ?

My friend did his Masters from Finland and said his monthly expenses were about 200-300 Euros in his first year. I think he spent a bit more in subsequent years after getting a part-time job. That's 18000+ euros if extended to 5 years.

Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#74

Post by thinkingemote »

"I signed up for 18 months of programming... They suddenly reduced it to 12 months. As of yesterday, I've withdrawn after 4 months as this is not the program that was sold to me. I completed 22% of the program...but under their new reduction, they said I owe 37%"

Seems like they would have a good case for getting their money back, but might need to consult a lawyer.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#75

Post by soneca »

Tomte wrote: post #66
soneca wrote: post #62

What is sad to me looking from the outside it is that it didn’t have to be that way. Most of negative reviews seem to boil down to too many students, not enough support, not professional enough course management. Symptoms of growing pains. But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? It didn’t. It shouldn’t. It was at the expense of their students. Lambda School seemed a great idea from the start, revolutio…

> But why Lambda School had to grow that much that fast? Isn't that obvious? They have investors. It's precisely what Joel writes about in https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...

I know the incentives are there to have exponential Silicon Valley hyper growth. But there are also incentives to be a company that still exists and it is big 20 years from now. And there are ethical decisions that could be made despite of the incentives.

Even being a YC company, I believe it didn’t have to be that way.

Edit: thanks for the link, great article. ”Land grab” is a great term for what I currently think about Lambda School. Except the “land” is people’s life and hopes.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#76

Post by arvindamirtaa »

FeeJai wrote: post #63
arvindamirtaa wrote: post #15

I just want to give a quick shout out to 42. They're closed for Covid19 right now. But if you can wait for them to open up, this is a good place to look into - https://www.42.us.org/ or https://www.42.fr/ (if you're in Europe).

42 SV in Fremont has closed down for good. Students have been transferred to an online curriculum managed from Paris and were kicked out of the dorms in a rather hastily and stresful manner. Despite having its own flaws, I was a great fan of 42 and think this is a shame

Oh really? That is indeed a shame. I thought they were closed for now due to the pandemic and may reopen "soon".

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#77

Post by FemmeAndroid »

bambax wrote: post #44
arvindamirtaa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time commitment, flexibility of schedule, most importantly no upfront cost(and not wanting to go into debt either). All of this is valid IF the bootcamp works. In this case, that may not be the case.

> not wanting to go into debt either But doing lambda school is going into debt, isn't it? A different kind of debt but a debt nonetheless.

Yes. And it’s a kind of debt that actively disincentives getting a raise if that raise pushes you just above 50k. Since at that point you’ll start owing Lambda school 17% of your salary for 2 years. It actually does what people who don’t understand progressive tax rates think the tax system does.

Can you imagine going to Lambda school, not getting a good education, not getting a much higher paying job, then being stuck unable to get incremental raises past $50,000 so you don’t end up down $8,500 for 2 years?

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#78

Post by jacobion »

The thing about efficient markets is that lucrative activities which don't produce much value—borderline scams—can block activity which would be highly wealth creating. For example, there could be a huge untapped retail market for financial derivatives such as interest rate and fx hedges. However, it's very hard to access this market because historically anyone who has started selling such products has pivoted towards targeting degenerate gamblers in order to fleece them. Normal people who want to hedge conclude that it's better to live with the risk than to be the sucker.

Here we can see that there are lots of people who are prepared to make significant personal sacrifices to work in the software industry. The industry itself is crying out for more people and new people. But it literally doesn't make economic sense, either for universities or for new players such as bootcamps, to train people properly. It's vastly more lucrative to confuse them and then rip them off. It's hard to see a simple market mechanism which can resolve this, as opposed to rebuilding something similar to the gatekeeping and signalling functions around universities, commonly regarded as broken nowadays.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#79

Post by jstummbillig »

blntechie wrote: post #14

Most open world reviews i.e. non curated ones I have seen for Lambda school have been negative to at best neutral. I believe they have a place in the education market if they do it right. Model is good enough but execution appear to be severely lacking. It’s interesting that pg is a big fan though.

The biggest mistake ls could make is not recognizing how little room there is for (perceived) failure with their product. It is among the most impactful, personal products you can buy online (considering life time and money investment).

Customers will understandably be in a vulnerable place. You are not exactly selling someone a boat. You are quite literally selling tech savvy people their future and they know how to use social media. Those who are brave enough to voice their troubles with education in the open – which is a stigma, maybe so than ever – will have no trouble finding an empathic, educated audience.

This is akin to treading in self-driving space: Every player is super aware of the non-existent room for error. The whole space has constantly been 3-5 major consecutive incidents away from imploding under the sheer pressure of human perception.

ls cannot merely be slightly better than established programs in giving people an education and a job. You have to outperform by a substantial margin to get everyone on board when you inject yourself into peoples lives to this extent. You ALSO have to convince everyone that you do.

It's pretty unfair and also pretty exciting.

Re: Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year

#80

Post by Grustaf »

jacobion wrote: post #78

The thing about efficient markets is that lucrative activities which don't produce much value—borderline scams—can block activity which would be highly wealth creating. For example, there could be a huge untapped retail market for financial derivatives such as interest rate and fx hedges. However, it's very hard to access this market because historically anyone who has started selling such products has pivoted toward…

Just because it’s more lucrative to rip people off doesn’t mean it doesn’t make financial sense to run a good code bootcamp. That’s like saying it doesn’t make sense to work because it’s more lucrative to steal or live off welfare.

But sure, it’s a common problem in a market economy. Presumably issues of information asymmetry should be alleviated in the days of the internet.

Post reply on HN