Lambda School imho is one of the most interesting companies at the moment.
Many many have tried to tackle the challenges of education & its dynamics & how long-term all of it is and how short-term the typical strategic horizons and business models are.
Super excited about their journey ahead. This is one of these efforts that in this moment already have massive impact and down the road their impact can be difficult to even grasp and imagine when you think of it.
They teach html -> react in 1 month which is a bit doubtful in itself, but then they spend 1 month on C, OS's, and system calls!
Whatever knowledge, if any, people will acquire at the end is almost certainly going to be extremely shallow. Perhaps no better than reading intro sections of Wikipedia articles yourself over say 4 months instead of 1.
Hey guys, awesome to see all the attention Lambda is getting. I'm a junior in college who decided to drop out and do Lambda's iOS Program, happy to answer any questions! For those who are on the fence like I was I can talk about my experience.
I was always a self learned programmer who made projects in python for fun so I was really excited when I first got to college thinking that I'd be able to make the projects at scale that I wanted to.
But as freshman year ended I realized the department at my school for the most part was stagnant and focused excessively on the theoretical side of CS. Forget learning new frameworks we were still talking about Java at the end of the second year. This was really frustrating as I felt I had lost lot of my creative energy and started to hate coding itself. Thanks to the strength of my prior work and some connections I managed to get interviews for dev internships at some really good startups. I completely crashed and burned. I was not prepared to code under pressure or walk through my solutions with someone watching. I was really disheartened from the experience and contemplated switching majors and giving up on tech as a whole.
7 weeks into Lambda now I can create a pretty sophisticated iOS app, use custom APIs and manage sync with a database backend. I've managed to learn Swift and become decent at reading ObjC which I'm sure I can get better at with time. Most importantly though I feel like I can learn anything or at least logically approach any technical problem and I'm so ready to hit up the interviewers whom I feel I disappointed for a second chance.
Doing this program is no joke, and definitely not for everyone. I find myself coding, reading docs, watching videos for 10 hours everyday and at least 4-5 hours on weekends. From the get go I realized what you put in is what you get out. However the instructors do such a good job of keeping the feedback loop small for what you learn in class to the projects you build that it keeps you motivated to implement the next feature and keeps you hungry to learn more.
> Forget learning new frameworks we were still talking about Java at the end of the second year.
Personally I don't think people should be learning frameworks in school except for elective classes. CS is so vast that there is more than enough foundational knowledge to learn without going into specific tooling.
Learning Java in your second year seems like a problem though unless you mean the class used Java but was focused on teaching other topics like data structures/algorithms/garbage collection.
I'm a recent CS grad in a programming job now, and to be quite honest - I'm just pretty jealous of all of these schools / bootcamps that are on the up and up. On one hand, there's a part of me that wishes I did something like lambda, and on the other hand I'm just mad that all the work I put into my degree feels worthless. I struggled to understand CS, but I worked hard to get my degree. It's kind of a gut punch when I see people graduating from lambda and getting jobs that pay a $100K plus since they have all the skills needed.
As others have pointed out below, programming is becoming more of a blue-collar field - so maybe lambda is headed in the right direction. That being said, I really liked the academic side of CS! I feel like nobody ever wants to talk about CS theory, ever. Even teachyourselfcs[1], with it's focus on teaching computer science, has no recommendations for a theory book at all. I loved reading Sisper, Automata Theory was my favorite course in college.
I also feel like having a CS education is valuable because you get a chance to learn about low level things that you'll probably never touch in your career, but it's useful to know. I liked learning about logic gates, how a computer is built, how a compiler / interpreter works, the theory behind a computer, etc. I feel like once you know the low-level side of things, you can move past blue-collar type of coding and really create interesting projects. It just sucks that no employer really cares if you know about that stuff. They only really care about projects you've made yourself outside of class (preferably using a framework). None of my classes taught me to do that, and it's hard to do a side project when you're focusing on doing homework.
I apologize for the rant. I'm really happy for you fspacef. I thought about quitting my degree several times. I never got CS on the first try, it took me until 2nd semester of my sophomore year to really "get" programming. I barley passed calculus and I had to retake my algorithms class. I'm happy that you were able to find another solution when college didn't work out. I guess... I'm just jealous - haha.
I'm curious what long-term revenue story Lambda School would have convinced investors to shell out $14Mn. Perhaps, dominating a world where universities are irrelevant?
I do wonder though that with MOOCs becoming cheap, and that motivated students are able to get a lot of value from them, would Lambda School slowly transform into another credentialing/ signaling system for hiring? If that happens, I guess we will come around to a full circle of disruption in education.
How much you make per student * how many students = revenue.
How much you make per student is a factor of how much they’re getting paid.
If we help a student get hired for $90k they’ll pay us back $30k. So if we place 3,333 students/yr at that price point over the long run we’ll do $100m/yr in revenue. Of course, that’s a lot of students, but that’s also a lot of revenue, yet a tiny fraction of the total market of up-and-coming software engineers.
Cost of capital is very real, and it’s one thing to say that and another thing to do it, but we don’t have to replace the university wholesale for that to work, we just have to be the best trade school there is.
MOOCs are great, but are hardly the be-all-end-all of education. Content is everywhere, ability to actually learn from it is more difficult, and expert help, structured end-to-end curriculum, a community of learners on the same pace, etc. just make for a better learning experience. Sometimes it feels like if I made a nickel for every time I heard, “I learned more in 3 weeks of Lambda School than a year of self study” I could fund the whole company.
Their debt mechanism is a lower risk model for investors -- After you sign on, before you finish the program, you sign future income away. And investors are buying into that pool of future revenue.
There are arguments for and against this mechanism. I'm against it, clearly they are for it -- everyone should make up their own mind. Wikipedia has a high-level write up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_Share_Agreement
I love what Lambda School is doing. I was part of the first cohort of the first ever coding bootcamp. It felt so scary to move to Chicago to participate, but it seemed so promising. It has worked out so well for myself and my family, but I recognize that there are so many people out there who financially could not do what I did at the time (I took out a loan to go and my wife and three kids moved in with my in-laws).
This school is solving a very real problem and giving hope to so many people who feel trapped in their current situation. I am really excited they are getting this funding and looking forward to see what the school, and its graduates, accomplish.
I have been following Lambda School and I am really happy to see them succeeding in this space.
I've a question: how is Lambda School different from the other many other coding bootcamp programs (apart from the unique model of paying the fee only upon finding a job with adequate salary)?
That "except" part isn't trivial. The chief problem of education (not just programming boot camps) is that incentives of institutes are more aligned with increasing their prestige than the practical value of what they teach. Lambda school is a fascinating "experiment" into what happens when incentives are clearly aligned with the students' future.
The reality is the alignment of incentives causes everything else to be different. There are a few concrete examples, but it really flows through everything we do.
1. Length: your average code school needs to pump you in and out of the same physical location and still have margins on what they charge upfront, so the standard is 12 weeks. That’s generally 8 weeks of “instruction” time and 4 weeks of “project” time. The fact that they can get anyone at all to semi-employable with 8 weeks of instruction is a miracle, but most employers agree it’s not enough, and frankly most bootcamp grads look pretty weak. Lambda School is 30 weeks full-time plus 4 weeks of required precourse work, so our instruction time is at least 3x that of most code schools. That, of course, lets us cheat relative to most other schools.
2, Curriculum. What you’ll usually hear separates us are that we teach CS fundamentals, write code in Python and C not just JS, and that kind of thing. But what is harder to explain is how much time and effort we put into instructional design. We’re entirely online and free upfront, so if we suck you close your laptop in week 3 and walk away, and we’re required by contract to forgive the entire income share agreement. We have some of the best instructional designers in the world on staff, and if an instructor isn’t performing they’re sadly let go. It’s that simple.
3. Mastery-based progression, and Bloom’s 2 sigma problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem). Perhaps the most remarkable study in the history of pedagogy was Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem. I’m not the instructional designer so I’ll let you read about it yourselves, but basically we practice small group and one-on-one instruction with a mastery component. Specifically, every student is placed in a group of 8 students with one PM (what we call our TAs), and at the end of every week we have what we call a “sprint challenge.” That tests all of the cumulative knowledge you should have gained that week, and you must pass all of them to move on to the next level and graduate. So what if you don’t? You simply repeat the week in a new group until you’ve mastered the concept. Now every educator on planet earth knows that’s a superior way to learn, but it’s very expensive manage. We spend the money because we need to be able to confidently say, “Every Lambda grad can do all of these things” to every employer if we’re going to win long-term.
4. Very robust career services. Lambda School doesn’t stop once you graduate; in fact that’s probably the most important part to a student’s success. We have a program called “Lambda Next” that is still structured and rigorous, but helps you in writing code that signals what you now know, sourcing and applying for jobs, interviewing, and negotiating a salary/benefits package. We’ve had a remarkable number of students earn back the entire price they’ll pay Lambda in negotiation alone.
So these are just a few examples, but really it comes down to the fact that our DNA is structured differently than most code bootcamps as a result of our business model.
The change of business model drives the differences between coding boot camps. Because now the incentives with the students are aligned. Only if the students get a good job will Lambda school be paid.
I'm in the FSW program but we're past that now. I've watched how people move in and out of the cohort I'm in.
I went in knowing how to make a basic website, a bit of sqlm and a bit of a few other of the topics covered. This put me ahead of about 60-70% of the cohort.
I have noticed students getting very hung up on the particular stack. It does seem that a few are just copying and pasting code to get it to work.
This was also the case when I went to college though.
What I don't see people mentioning is the effort their putting into improving the curriculum. It's a living thing unlike most college classes I've been in. They no longer teach Bootstrap for example (which was probably causing most students more trouble than it was worth).
I'm on average doing something coding related 8-10 hours a day now. Occasionally I take days off and go play Minecraft or something. I make about one extra project every two weeks the latest being ( https://whatisthecolorofthesky.netlify.com/ )
The people I see being the most successful are the ones who probably could have succeeded without Lambda. However I think a sense of direction, a constant source of help, and a sense of community accelerates the pace.
I don't know if I'm going to regret spending 7 months (plus whatever the job search takes) of my life doing this but hey it beats what I was doing before.
If you're curious what the class content looks like it's in my Github which is linked in my profile.
I'd love to pursue this as the evening hours work great for a single mom, but the Saturday requirement for the PT program makes it not possible for me. :(
I've thought about applying quite a few times (I'm technical but self taught, so I've always felt like I'd benefit from a quick bootcamp to soften my jagged edges).
If the schedule were more friendly to European timezones I'd have signed up already. Hopefully that's coming soon?
Genuinely curious why you'd look at Lambda School instead of a local university which if you're in Switzerland (going by your user name) would cost you almost nothing. I always saw Lambda School and equivalents as a necessary alternative to the broken US university system, not as something that was needed in Europe.
They’re expanding to the U.K. in 2019. I believe other countries as well. Would you not consider the GA Tech M.Sc. Computer Science if you already have extensive work experience?
1. We're 3.5x the length, teach computer science fundamentals, employ world-class instructors and pay them a lot of money, and don't get paid until you get a job.
2. By making enough money we can control our own destiny.
I’ve been following Lambda, Holberton and 42. All three seem to have similar models: no upfront tuition, pay later out of your salary. The quality of education seems much higher than the typical “bootcamps”. I really like this.
I was a student of 42 for almost a year, before I switched to Holberton.
In my opinion 42 is a very good school for those who already have a lot of experience and want to learn a new skill set, without the need of any support. If you want to qualify for a free bed in their dorms, you have to complete very complicated projects in a very short amount of time, making it difficult for a beginner to succeed.
Holberton school does not only provide peer-to-peer learning, but also rely on the community local tech (and non-tech) community: mentors (SWE/SRE professionals), school alumni and students.
Even though there are no teachers, there is a constant support from the staff and the larger community to help you understand the concepts, build your career, especially for those who came with zero experience and completely different backgrounds.
As a student, you also have to work hard and have deadlines, but following any deadline, you get peer learning sessions and whiteboarding sessions to make sure everyone understands the concepts. We have to re-create the projects from scratch but on the whiteboard, explaining every single step and algorithms, asking and answering the questions of everyone. This way, they ensure that everyone can be successful.
School 42 is a great school, but was simply not the right choice for me and in my opinion, Holberton School is a much better choice. But as always, it depends on your background, challenge, context and motivation.
I never heard about Lambda, so I can’t comment. Seems like a great program too, but online.
I am a student at 42, and I have to correct you on one really important point : 42 does not have anything as "pay later out of salary". It is a tuition free school period. Also it is not remote, you need to go to the school everyday, and they provide free accommodation as long as you reach the targeted progress each month.
"pay a percentage of your final salary" is essentially what the student loans system in the UK boils down to. However I am expected to start paying back after earning over £21,000. Maybe a shift to a graduate tax on the higher end of earners would be a fairer way to structure it
Yes, the UK system is much closer to a good idea than that in the US (which is a complete train wreck). Australia’s model is relatively solid too.
There are, however, some major differences in how the UK structures student loans vs Lambda School:
1. If you attend Lambda School you don’t begin making payments until you’re making $50k+/yr in the field you study. In the UK it’s $24k (at current exchange rate) regardless of what you study.
At Lambda you pay a 17% of income for 2 yrs, capped at a maximum of $30k, so if you get a job for $50k you’ll only end up paying $17k. In the UK you pay a full tuition (generally around $50k + however much you borrow for living costs for four years).
In the UK you have a 3-7% interest rate, Lambda has no interest.
In the UK if you make payments for 30 years and still haven’t paid it off it’s forgiven. At Lambda that happens at year 5.
And perhaps this is the most important: In the UK if you default the University was paid a long time ago. The university gets paid day one and doesn’t have to care. At Lambda if you don’t get a job Lambda School never gets paid, so the incentives of the school are aligned with the incentives of the student, instead of the taxpayer writing a check to cover it.
Yeah but the U.K. student loans are written off when you retire if you haven’t paid them back already. Lambda writes it off after five years of you haven’t paid them their $30K.
Sat 9-12pm for PT makes it harder to sign up.Lots of kids related activities on Sat/Sun morning till late noon. Wondering if there is an option doing the Sat 9-12pm session over the weekend but at a different time slot?
Currently employed at a small company and I've been doing a mixture of side projects throughout the years as well. I don't picture myself leaving anytime soon but you never know what the future holds with startups.
I've considered doing something like this to fill in gaps of knowledge and really strengthen my programming ability in the event I need to shoot out some resumes but unsure how the tuition payback works if I finish the course but retain my current job?
It depends on what your current job is. We try to err on the side of caution when telling people they will or will not needn’t to pay if they stay in their current role.
Contractually the income share agreement says you’re required to pay if your job is in “software” or “data science.” Obviously it has to be broad, which could be problematic in edge cases, and I don’t want people to have to trust us.
What do you mean? Private companies can certainly make strategic investments in other private companies to commoditize complements, partner on technology, explore potential M&A and for other reasons too.
20k Upfront for international students. Another hint from the bubble inside the valley and the isolation from the real world that eventually will explode in some way.
We recognize that price point sucks internationally, but until we expand into each market with income verification and regulatory backing we can’t roll out our existing model. We’re working on the UK now, then will begin other countries. I’m really sorry it’s not an attractive offer outside the US yet; we’re only 18 months old and have relatively high costs because we pay expensive instructors a lot. We’ll get there.
[+] [-] tosh|7 years ago|reply
Many many have tried to tackle the challenges of education & its dynamics & how long-term all of it is and how short-term the typical strategic horizons and business models are.
Super excited about their journey ahead. This is one of these efforts that in this moment already have massive impact and down the road their impact can be difficult to even grasp and imagine when you think of it.
[+] [-] SilverSlash|7 years ago|reply
Whatever knowledge, if any, people will acquire at the end is almost certainly going to be extremely shallow. Perhaps no better than reading intro sections of Wikipedia articles yourself over say 4 months instead of 1.
[+] [-] cowabungamann|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Raed667|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhwang5|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fspacef|7 years ago|reply
I was always a self learned programmer who made projects in python for fun so I was really excited when I first got to college thinking that I'd be able to make the projects at scale that I wanted to.
But as freshman year ended I realized the department at my school for the most part was stagnant and focused excessively on the theoretical side of CS. Forget learning new frameworks we were still talking about Java at the end of the second year. This was really frustrating as I felt I had lost lot of my creative energy and started to hate coding itself. Thanks to the strength of my prior work and some connections I managed to get interviews for dev internships at some really good startups. I completely crashed and burned. I was not prepared to code under pressure or walk through my solutions with someone watching. I was really disheartened from the experience and contemplated switching majors and giving up on tech as a whole.
7 weeks into Lambda now I can create a pretty sophisticated iOS app, use custom APIs and manage sync with a database backend. I've managed to learn Swift and become decent at reading ObjC which I'm sure I can get better at with time. Most importantly though I feel like I can learn anything or at least logically approach any technical problem and I'm so ready to hit up the interviewers whom I feel I disappointed for a second chance.
Doing this program is no joke, and definitely not for everyone. I find myself coding, reading docs, watching videos for 10 hours everyday and at least 4-5 hours on weekends. From the get go I realized what you put in is what you get out. However the instructors do such a good job of keeping the feedback loop small for what you learn in class to the projects you build that it keeps you motivated to implement the next feature and keeps you hungry to learn more.
[+] [-] rifung|7 years ago|reply
Personally I don't think people should be learning frameworks in school except for elective classes. CS is so vast that there is more than enough foundational knowledge to learn without going into specific tooling.
Learning Java in your second year seems like a problem though unless you mean the class used Java but was focused on teaching other topics like data structures/algorithms/garbage collection.
[+] [-] bashmydotfiles|7 years ago|reply
As others have pointed out below, programming is becoming more of a blue-collar field - so maybe lambda is headed in the right direction. That being said, I really liked the academic side of CS! I feel like nobody ever wants to talk about CS theory, ever. Even teachyourselfcs[1], with it's focus on teaching computer science, has no recommendations for a theory book at all. I loved reading Sisper, Automata Theory was my favorite course in college.
I also feel like having a CS education is valuable because you get a chance to learn about low level things that you'll probably never touch in your career, but it's useful to know. I liked learning about logic gates, how a computer is built, how a compiler / interpreter works, the theory behind a computer, etc. I feel like once you know the low-level side of things, you can move past blue-collar type of coding and really create interesting projects. It just sucks that no employer really cares if you know about that stuff. They only really care about projects you've made yourself outside of class (preferably using a framework). None of my classes taught me to do that, and it's hard to do a side project when you're focusing on doing homework.
I apologize for the rant. I'm really happy for you fspacef. I thought about quitting my degree several times. I never got CS on the first try, it took me until 2nd semester of my sophomore year to really "get" programming. I barley passed calculus and I had to retake my algorithms class. I'm happy that you were able to find another solution when college didn't work out. I guess... I'm just jealous - haha.
[1]: https://teachyourselfcs.com/
[+] [-] paraschopra|7 years ago|reply
I do wonder though that with MOOCs becoming cheap, and that motivated students are able to get a lot of value from them, would Lambda School slowly transform into another credentialing/ signaling system for hiring? If that happens, I guess we will come around to a full circle of disruption in education.
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
How much you make per student * how many students = revenue.
How much you make per student is a factor of how much they’re getting paid.
If we help a student get hired for $90k they’ll pay us back $30k. So if we place 3,333 students/yr at that price point over the long run we’ll do $100m/yr in revenue. Of course, that’s a lot of students, but that’s also a lot of revenue, yet a tiny fraction of the total market of up-and-coming software engineers.
Cost of capital is very real, and it’s one thing to say that and another thing to do it, but we don’t have to replace the university wholesale for that to work, we just have to be the best trade school there is.
MOOCs are great, but are hardly the be-all-end-all of education. Content is everywhere, ability to actually learn from it is more difficult, and expert help, structured end-to-end curriculum, a community of learners on the same pace, etc. just make for a better learning experience. Sometimes it feels like if I made a nickel for every time I heard, “I learned more in 3 weeks of Lambda School than a year of self study” I could fund the whole company.
[+] [-] codingdave|7 years ago|reply
There are arguments for and against this mechanism. I'm against it, clearly they are for it -- everyone should make up their own mind. Wikipedia has a high-level write up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_Share_Agreement
[+] [-] mattcantstop|7 years ago|reply
This school is solving a very real problem and giving hope to so many people who feel trapped in their current situation. I am really excited they are getting this funding and looking forward to see what the school, and its graduates, accomplish.
Great work team!
[+] [-] karterk|7 years ago|reply
I've a question: how is Lambda School different from the other many other coding bootcamp programs (apart from the unique model of paying the fee only upon finding a job with adequate salary)?
[+] [-] shubhamjain|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keeptrying|7 years ago|reply
Bootcams can focus on what’s “hot” right now without regard to job placement though the good ones do.
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
The reality is the alignment of incentives causes everything else to be different. There are a few concrete examples, but it really flows through everything we do.
1. Length: your average code school needs to pump you in and out of the same physical location and still have margins on what they charge upfront, so the standard is 12 weeks. That’s generally 8 weeks of “instruction” time and 4 weeks of “project” time. The fact that they can get anyone at all to semi-employable with 8 weeks of instruction is a miracle, but most employers agree it’s not enough, and frankly most bootcamp grads look pretty weak. Lambda School is 30 weeks full-time plus 4 weeks of required precourse work, so our instruction time is at least 3x that of most code schools. That, of course, lets us cheat relative to most other schools.
2, Curriculum. What you’ll usually hear separates us are that we teach CS fundamentals, write code in Python and C not just JS, and that kind of thing. But what is harder to explain is how much time and effort we put into instructional design. We’re entirely online and free upfront, so if we suck you close your laptop in week 3 and walk away, and we’re required by contract to forgive the entire income share agreement. We have some of the best instructional designers in the world on staff, and if an instructor isn’t performing they’re sadly let go. It’s that simple.
3. Mastery-based progression, and Bloom’s 2 sigma problem (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem). Perhaps the most remarkable study in the history of pedagogy was Bloom’s 2 Sigma Problem. I’m not the instructional designer so I’ll let you read about it yourselves, but basically we practice small group and one-on-one instruction with a mastery component. Specifically, every student is placed in a group of 8 students with one PM (what we call our TAs), and at the end of every week we have what we call a “sprint challenge.” That tests all of the cumulative knowledge you should have gained that week, and you must pass all of them to move on to the next level and graduate. So what if you don’t? You simply repeat the week in a new group until you’ve mastered the concept. Now every educator on planet earth knows that’s a superior way to learn, but it’s very expensive manage. We spend the money because we need to be able to confidently say, “Every Lambda grad can do all of these things” to every employer if we’re going to win long-term.
4. Very robust career services. Lambda School doesn’t stop once you graduate; in fact that’s probably the most important part to a student’s success. We have a program called “Lambda Next” that is still structured and rigorous, but helps you in writing code that signals what you now know, sourcing and applying for jobs, interviewing, and negotiating a salary/benefits package. We’ve had a remarkable number of students earn back the entire price they’ll pay Lambda in negotiation alone.
So these are just a few examples, but really it comes down to the fact that our DNA is structured differently than most code bootcamps as a result of our business model.
[+] [-] snorberhuis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LaikaF|7 years ago|reply
I'm in the FSW program but we're past that now. I've watched how people move in and out of the cohort I'm in.
I went in knowing how to make a basic website, a bit of sqlm and a bit of a few other of the topics covered. This put me ahead of about 60-70% of the cohort.
I have noticed students getting very hung up on the particular stack. It does seem that a few are just copying and pasting code to get it to work.
This was also the case when I went to college though.
What I don't see people mentioning is the effort their putting into improving the curriculum. It's a living thing unlike most college classes I've been in. They no longer teach Bootstrap for example (which was probably causing most students more trouble than it was worth).
I'm on average doing something coding related 8-10 hours a day now. Occasionally I take days off and go play Minecraft or something. I make about one extra project every two weeks the latest being ( https://whatisthecolorofthesky.netlify.com/ )
The people I see being the most successful are the ones who probably could have succeeded without Lambda. However I think a sense of direction, a constant source of help, and a sense of community accelerates the pace.
I don't know if I'm going to regret spending 7 months (plus whatever the job search takes) of my life doing this but hey it beats what I was doing before.
If you're curious what the class content looks like it's in my Github which is linked in my profile.
[+] [-] cuppy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajacombinator|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] louisswiss|7 years ago|reply
I've thought about applying quite a few times (I'm technical but self taught, so I've always felt like I'd benefit from a quick bootcamp to soften my jagged edges).
If the schedule were more friendly to European timezones I'd have signed up already. Hopefully that's coming soon?
[+] [-] noelwelsh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barry-cotter|7 years ago|reply
https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/comments/9ly1z2/thank_you_all...
It used to be ~$7K, not sure what it is now. Lambda school is $20K if you pay upfront, $30K if you do an income share where you only pay afterwards.
[+] [-] pl0x|7 years ago|reply
1.How are you different from General Assembly and Flat Iron School?
2.Both General Assembly and Flat Iron were acquired. How does Lambda expect to survive when their biggest competitors couldn't?
This concerns me since many of these bootcamps are going the route of itt technical institute.
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
2. By making enough money we can control our own destiny.
[+] [-] zapita|7 years ago|reply
Has anyone compared those three schools?
[+] [-] ElenaSilver|7 years ago|reply
In my opinion 42 is a very good school for those who already have a lot of experience and want to learn a new skill set, without the need of any support. If you want to qualify for a free bed in their dorms, you have to complete very complicated projects in a very short amount of time, making it difficult for a beginner to succeed.
Holberton school does not only provide peer-to-peer learning, but also rely on the community local tech (and non-tech) community: mentors (SWE/SRE professionals), school alumni and students. Even though there are no teachers, there is a constant support from the staff and the larger community to help you understand the concepts, build your career, especially for those who came with zero experience and completely different backgrounds. As a student, you also have to work hard and have deadlines, but following any deadline, you get peer learning sessions and whiteboarding sessions to make sure everyone understands the concepts. We have to re-create the projects from scratch but on the whiteboard, explaining every single step and algorithms, asking and answering the questions of everyone. This way, they ensure that everyone can be successful.
School 42 is a great school, but was simply not the right choice for me and in my opinion, Holberton School is a much better choice. But as always, it depends on your background, challenge, context and motivation.
I never heard about Lambda, so I can’t comment. Seems like a great program too, but online.
[+] [-] jnaddef|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] portal_narlish|7 years ago|reply
Clicked hoping to see a functional programming oriented bootcamp. We need one of those.
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
Turns out the market for that is much smaller.
I'm really happy someone asked that question; we used to get it every day, but we don't get it anymore.
[+] [-] Kataphract|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
There are, however, some major differences in how the UK structures student loans vs Lambda School:
1. If you attend Lambda School you don’t begin making payments until you’re making $50k+/yr in the field you study. In the UK it’s $24k (at current exchange rate) regardless of what you study.
At Lambda you pay a 17% of income for 2 yrs, capped at a maximum of $30k, so if you get a job for $50k you’ll only end up paying $17k. In the UK you pay a full tuition (generally around $50k + however much you borrow for living costs for four years).
In the UK you have a 3-7% interest rate, Lambda has no interest.
In the UK if you make payments for 30 years and still haven’t paid it off it’s forgiven. At Lambda that happens at year 5.
And perhaps this is the most important: In the UK if you default the University was paid a long time ago. The university gets paid day one and doesn’t have to care. At Lambda if you don’t get a job Lambda School never gets paid, so the incentives of the school are aligned with the incentives of the student, instead of the taxpayer writing a check to cover it.
[+] [-] barry-cotter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indioinmurica|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SnowingXIV|7 years ago|reply
I've considered doing something like this to fill in gaps of knowledge and really strengthen my programming ability in the event I need to shoot out some resumes but unsure how the tuition payback works if I finish the course but retain my current job?
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
Contractually the income share agreement says you’re required to pay if your job is in “software” or “data science.” Obviously it has to be broad, which could be problematic in edge cases, and I don’t want people to have to trust us.
[+] [-] leesalminen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yroc92|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kornish|7 years ago|reply
See: Coinbase Ventures, Slack's fund, etc.
[+] [-] mathattack|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hummel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austenallred|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whb07|7 years ago|reply