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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

#91

Post by philliphaydon »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #37
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 recently advertised a role and had over 2000 applicants (yes, really). The vast majority of applicants went through bootcamps. Personally, I'm fine with that, heck, I'm Head of Engineering and I'm a university drop-out i.e. didn't even complete a course! One thing that irked me was bootcamps that have clearly told students to mark on their CV that they were somehow employed at the bootcamp. When I'm getting 50+ app…

> Well, my other advice to candidates is cover letters, cover letters cover letters. No seriously, cover letters!

I just throw the cover letters in the bin...

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

#92

Post by gamblor956 »

austenallred wrote: post #72
sandofsky wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "attacked by all sides" comment is quite bizarre. Every pain the company experienced was self-inflicted. They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is a source of active lawsuits. They dodged California regulators and then lied to students about it. This invalidated every ISA in California before 2020. They launched an unpaid intern program, which created a backlash in the tech…

* They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is the source of active lawsuits No we did not. We've been over this again and again, and I know you understand that this isn't true. The misconception comes form comparing two different measures: one that is (hired students making more than $50k/enrolled students), which we share with investors because that indicates how much we get pai…

If I were your lawyer I would advise you to delete this comment as it would likely be used against you in court as proof of your pattern of misrepresentations.

But you do you, I guess.

At any rate enough people have been made aware of your lies that the harm you can continue doing is limited.

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

#93

Post by user3939382 »

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on.

These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

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

#94

Post by austenallred »

ec109685 wrote: post #77
vcsmjk wrote: post #3

Glad to see this, Lambda School is extremely scummy. Can’t be bothered to operate legally, and lied about it: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1211717254712135680?lan... I really think that the law should be changed so that doing stuff like that would have been a prison term for the CEO (Allred).

https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/ He also lied about having an auditor verify their placement rates. Caught asking Bookface for an auditor reference while proclaiming it was audited.

No, that is not true. We never claimed to have an audited report until we actually had an audited report.

I asked if there was an auditor who would verify them after the fact to show that they were accurate, but we had had never claimed they were audited at that point.

Unfortunately auditors doing that is a months-long process, so we could only have them audit subsequent reports (which they have done).

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

#95

Post by austenallred »

gamblor956 wrote: post #92
austenallred wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* They lied about how many students get jobs, which damaged their reputation and is the source of active lawsuits No we did not. We've been over this again and again, and I know you understand that this isn't true. The misconception comes form comparing two different measures: one that is (hired students making more than $50k/enrolled students), which we share with investors because that indicates how much we get pai…

If I were your lawyer I would advise you to delete this comment as it would likely be used against you in court as proof of your pattern of misrepresentations. But you do you, I guess. At any rate enough people have been made aware of your lies that the harm you can continue doing is limited.

I will happily defend everything I’ve said in a courtroom if necessary.

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

#96

Post by austenallred »

user3939382 wrote: post #93

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired.

You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job.

BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach everything there possibly could be to know about how software works.

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

#97

Post by gobias1234 »

user3939382 wrote: post #93

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

To do the frontend work with more recent tech like websockets that you're just now learning about.

In all seriousness, considering the amount of bootcamp grads now at all (yes all) levels of the industry, this is an out of touch take. They're getting hired to work hard at entry level software engineering jobs, and most of them quickly move beyond that.

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

#98

Post by lkrubner »

user3939382 wrote: post #93

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

I've hired several developers straight out of dev boot camps and I've had good experiences with them. I wrote about that here:

http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-grace-hopper-divi...

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

#99

Post by kodah »

da01 wrote: post #27
kodah wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met some people with physics and accounting degrees who took boot camps and had success, but the people I've seen succeed were already problem solvers and math-aware. They just needed to know the language and routines. On the other hand, I dropped out of school and have been programming for a majority of my life. I was never accused of being incompetent or underperforming, but there was a point in my career wher…

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.

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

#100

Post by ed25519FUUU »

jurassic wrote: post #55
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filling out staff roles at FANG? Not at the FANG company I work at. I’ve never met a single boot camp person, and absolutely zero staff engineers are boot camp grads that I know of, unless they scrubbed it from their LinkedIn and never talk about it.

> I’ve never met a single boot camp person, and absolutely zero staff engineers are boot camp grads that I know of, unless they scrubbed it from their LinkedIn and never talk about it. This comment has the same energy as the person I once worked with who told me (a lesbian) with total confidence that they'd never met a gay person before. Just because you aren't aware doesn't mean it's not happening all around you. It…

> How many people do you know in the industry without CS degrees? A lot of those folks came in through bootcamps, whether they cop to it or not.

People without CS degrees or degrees at all are fairly common, including at staff level and above. Many of these people have been in the industry since before bootcamps became a thing.

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