<story><title>Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/lambda-school-promised-lucrative-tech-coding-career-low-job-placement-2021-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>908B64B197</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA&amp;#x27;s at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their &amp;quot;placement&amp;quot; stats!&lt;p&gt;Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1]&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve seen a single hire out of a bootcamp work out in the end. Except a few cases where the person actually came from a STEM degree from a good school (and more crucially, already had some exposure to programming during the degree) but it&amp;#x27;s unclear to me that they actually needed the bootcamp and not just a good primer on modern software development and something like the Missing Semester [2] or a few classes at their school covering software engineering.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;lambda-schools-job-p...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25138610&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25138610&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;missing.csail.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;missing.csail.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>bwing</author><text>I was at Lambda when they announced the switch from 9 to 6 months and the elimination of paid team leaders. The feedback was universally negative. In a channel for open student discussion, Austen Allred deleted a poll from Slack because of how lopsided the reaction was. He explained the deletion by saying the poll was &amp;quot;misleading.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Students then got a survey &amp;quot;explaining&amp;quot; why the change was actually a good thing by asking questions such as &amp;quot;Do you understand why companies value mentoring experience?&amp;quot; Not just failing to reveal the truth (these were cost-cutting measures), but not even taking the effort to come up with a convincing lie.&lt;p&gt;It was destabilizing: Austen&amp;#x27;s twitter account would read ambitious, hyperoptimistic; meanwhile, drastic changes would be made within the program with vague rationales (&amp;quot;after speaking with hiring managers, we&amp;#x27;ve made these changes...&amp;quot;), and probing further simply got deflections or gaslighting surveys.&lt;p&gt;There were a ton of good people in the program, and I learned a lot there. But fundamentally there needs to be trust between institution and student when you&amp;#x27;re asking people to make this level of time and financial commitment. And at no point did I feel like Lambda at its top level prioritized student wellbeing over PR, costs, or metrics to be sold to investors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sokoloff</author><text>We definitely have a few career changing bootcamp grads working out for us (no STEM background, nothing to indicate they were &amp;quot;almost there&amp;quot; on their own, turned into fine employees).&lt;p&gt;That said, the hit ratio from bootcamp graduate to productive hire is incredibly, incredibly low. I think there&amp;#x27;s a place for bootcamps, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure most bootcamps are operating in that space.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how to fix it, but I did think the Lambda School income share arrangement at least served&amp;#x2F;tried to align incentives for the school to actually help the students transform themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/lambda-school-promised-lucrative-tech-coding-career-low-job-placement-2021-10</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>908B64B197</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA&amp;#x27;s at Lambda are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their &amp;quot;placement&amp;quot; stats!&lt;p&gt;Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1]&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve seen a single hire out of a bootcamp work out in the end. Except a few cases where the person actually came from a STEM degree from a good school (and more crucially, already had some exposure to programming during the degree) but it&amp;#x27;s unclear to me that they actually needed the bootcamp and not just a good primer on modern software development and something like the Missing Semester [2] or a few classes at their school covering software engineering.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nymag.com&amp;#x2F;intelligencer&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;lambda-schools-job-p...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25138610&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25138610&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;missing.csail.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;missing.csail.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>bwing</author><text>I was at Lambda when they announced the switch from 9 to 6 months and the elimination of paid team leaders. The feedback was universally negative. In a channel for open student discussion, Austen Allred deleted a poll from Slack because of how lopsided the reaction was. He explained the deletion by saying the poll was &amp;quot;misleading.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Students then got a survey &amp;quot;explaining&amp;quot; why the change was actually a good thing by asking questions such as &amp;quot;Do you understand why companies value mentoring experience?&amp;quot; Not just failing to reveal the truth (these were cost-cutting measures), but not even taking the effort to come up with a convincing lie.&lt;p&gt;It was destabilizing: Austen&amp;#x27;s twitter account would read ambitious, hyperoptimistic; meanwhile, drastic changes would be made within the program with vague rationales (&amp;quot;after speaking with hiring managers, we&amp;#x27;ve made these changes...&amp;quot;), and probing further simply got deflections or gaslighting surveys.&lt;p&gt;There were a ton of good people in the program, and I learned a lot there. But fundamentally there needs to be trust between institution and student when you&amp;#x27;re asking people to make this level of time and financial commitment. And at no point did I feel like Lambda at its top level prioritized student wellbeing over PR, costs, or metrics to be sold to investors.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MivLives</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a currently working software engineer from Lambda, who knows other people who succeeded at Lambda and other bootcamps.&lt;p&gt;The TA thing, a TA doesn&amp;#x27;t teach, a TA pretty much grades&amp;#x2F;code reviews. They answered questions. (I did this while I was hunting for a job).&lt;p&gt;They also don&amp;#x27;t count that towards placement.&lt;p&gt;I have an IS degree, but some other people I know succeed with pretty much anything you can think of. I don&amp;#x27;t have enough of a sample size to know if we&amp;#x27;re all just exceptions or not.</text></comment>