The ISA buyer doesn’t have any control of or influence over whether or how much someone works (nor how much they earn). If the ISA seller wants to spend their whole life relaxing on a beach, they can.
So, although you may not like ISAs, comparing it to slavery trivializes actual slavery.
Also, it seems like you’re being cynical without realizing it.
I have no first hand knowledge of Lambda and maybe they're the worst thing ever, but whenever I see a comment dripping with venom that doesn't even make any sense to me, I think what on earth do these people think of conventional rip-off for-profit schools that you pay up front?
Not the OP, nor am I a bear on Lambda School, but I'll articulate the bear case.
Lambda School is just another source of talent/human capital to a company. And companies suddenly aren't hiring and probably won't be for a while. And if they aren't hiring, Lambda School can't place students. And if they can't place students, then there are no ISAs, which is how Lambda makes its money. It's a straightforward funnel that's about to have a ton of supply and less demand, with Lambda bearing the financial burden to train/education the people. On top of that, if you have a bunch of people taking all this time to be trained under the pretense of getting a pretty good paying job and now that's not going to happen, well you're not going to be too thrilled with Lambda School (rightly or wrongly). So you've got, potentially, a double whammy: less revenue and your best marketing channel (word of mouth) going south. Not great.
It’s an empty, pointless prediction; easy and uncontroversial to make now when things look grim (for everyone), and zero cost to you if it turns out to be wrong.
I know little about the details of Lambda School’s business, but they seem like they’re in a good position to do well in an economic downturn and recovery, if they stay focused and prudent, which seems to be exactly what they’re trying to do now.
12 months is a bit arbitrary if taken literally, but I think the writing was already on the wall for bootcamps as an industry before the current economic crisis. Bootcamps that only get paid when their graduates get jobs are even worse off - if hiring falls for software engineers, its going to the be the bottom tier candidates that get hit hardest. Folks coming out of a short program with little to no other experience are going to be greatly disadvantaged when experienced folks with better education are getting laid off and competing for a reduced pool of jobs.
Which is more demoralizing? Doing layoffs or cutting everyone's pay?
Doing a round of layoffs - especially done respectfully - can soften the blow a little while requiring only senior leadership's buy in and some input from managers. Convincing everyone to take a 15% pay cut takes a ton of coordination across the entire company and probably drives the rumor mill fast and furious. And imagine being one of the people who says "no"!?
Further, with layoffs, you can choose who to cut. If people get demoralized as you're negotiating pay cuts, the top people can pack up and leave.
That's the conventional wisdom, but I'm not convinced that it applies in the current situation. Is anyone hiring, I mean other than more Amazon warehouse drones?
(sorry pickers for that rude language, you know that you are more important now than said top performers)
I work for a company that processes job applications for many other companies so I can say: yes, people are hiring, particularly in software, and it's actually up 3% from the glorious pre-covid days
On top of that, you have to cut gross salary by a much larger percentage than the percentage of the company that you have to layoff because fully loaded employee cost is much higher than salary alone.
The company I currently work for made across the board 10% pay cuts this past pay cycle. It has absolutely demolished morale among the rank and file.
It's definitely contextual to some extent. We're in an industry that's going to take a revenue hit, but the sustainability of the company isn't in question. Doesn't help that the company could afford nearly a billion dollars in stock buybacks in the last year, either.
I think one of the big takeaways for me is that it's burned any good will the company had with a lot of its employees. I expect pretty heavy turnover once hiring starts to thaw again and I'll likely be part of it.
The company I currently work for made across the board 10% pay cuts this past pay cycle. It has absolutely demolished morale among the rank and file.
Whenever I've been at a company when jobs are made redundant the same thing happens - everyone worries that their job will go if there's another round of cuts and morale plummets. That usually pushes more people to find new jobs, and it's ofter the people who are good because they can get new jobs more easily.
I hope they at least gave you notice so you could adjust and prepare instead of day-of/before "Hey, by the way!" Granted, a lot less people in tech are living paycheck to paycheck but it happens. Getting pinched there would be awful.
Regardless of how these things - layoffs, pay cuts, whatever - go down, doing it with respect is key. After all, these are the people we've worked with, helped each other, and probably had a drink or two with. We're not family but we are human and it's a small world.
I kind of think it is conventional wisdom that you can't have major, albeit temporary pay cuts. But my immediate reaction is, sure, that is strictly better than laying people off in a crisis, and my only caveat morale-wise would be that any top level people paid in stock ought to entirely forgo cash salary instead of saying "look, we're taking a 30% pay cut".
But if you lay people off, then the people left will be worried about further layoffs, and will be applying elsewhere. The top performers will find new jobs most quickly, and since these are new jobs, those jobs will pay better.
Studies have shown that cooperative enterprises (and probably capitalist ones with strong unions) choose the latter strategy while more typical capitalist enterprises tend to lay people off.
One reason might be that economic recessions are an excuse for a manager to, from their perspective, permanently "increase efficiency", i.e. make remaining employees do more work, while for cooperative and strong union organizations, the focus is to preserve their social bonds and help each other.
They added 125 in 2019, and there were 40 at some unknown time during 2018. That would mean at least 165. There's a photo which was taken sometime in 2019 while the 125 were being added, which may not include everyone. They may have also hired more in the first couple months of 2020. It seems they had somewhere between 165 and 250 employees. This would mean the 19 employees are between 7.5% and 11.5% of their workforce.
Why is education affected negatively by COVID? It is the last sector I would expect. I'm sure many are doing fine but IIRC Ryan Florence had to lay off his React teachers as well.
Because many schools aren't teaching via the web, they're closing for the year. Many (but not all) kids, without the threat of a failing grade, just aren't that interested in furthering their education.
Right. The assumption being that with schools being shut down they would see increased business as a result. However, that appears to not be the case. Combine that with an increasing number of their adult students having cash flow problems right now, their business outlook doesn't look great.
I need any amount of citation for that. For K-12, the 30-40 districts I'm affiliated with have gone to paper packets or online for those with access. The 40-50 colleges I work with regularly have gone all online for at least this semester and summer.
I'm going to need you to cite something to back that up. It is opposite of everything I've seen so far.
Just search on "schools shutting down for the rest of the year" and you'll find a bunch of sources. Of course it varies by state/district here in the U.S., but many are opting to shut down completely rather than attempting online instruction.
New grads are now competing with a bunch of laid off engineers with experience for open roles. I would imagine it would be much harder now to find a role than before, and Lambda doesn’t get paid since it runs off the ISA model.
If Lambda tries to sell their ISAs, which they admit they sometimes do, the buyer is going to request a much steeper discount now than before if they are willing to buy the loans at all.
I remember interviewing candidates in 2008. Experience can be bad, experience can be irrelevant and employers can tell the difference between interest and desperation. I talked to more than one ex-Director/VP/CXO for entry level help desk roles. Some experienced candidates will do well but a non-trivial number of them will find themselves unemployed now and unemployed later.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make... yes you need to pay for the education they give you.
It's capped and time limited - so you know the max you'll pay and how long you may be paying up front. Not sure why you're mentioning unemployment benefits? Why would that be their job to do that for you?
The problem is we have no proof that they are better than no education (autodidactism) or even some other education, to begin with.
And in crisis times they signal their courses give no edge over the job market by.. laying off their own people.
> The problem is we have no proof that they are better than no education (autodidactism) or even some other education, to begin with.
Not really sure what you want here.
They don't offer proof? When you buy a book do you demand 'proof' from the author that you'll learn something from it? What proof do universities offer? It's a service offered. If you want it, buy it. If you don't, don't.
> And in crisis times they signal their courses give no edge over the job market by.. laying off their own people.
These are employees, not students of their course, aren't they? And you having to lay people off due to reduced revenue doesn't say anything about the quality of their education anyway.
I think you're just throwing random snide comments around that don't really make any sense.
The book is a very cheap genuine option: it does not share your upside and has very limited downside (you pay limited price and can throw it out of the window at any time).
Claiming slavish tax is the same, like Lambda does, is simply a fraud.
> you pay limited price and can throw it out of the window at any time
Lambda School is also limited price as well. And you can 'throw your education out of the window' metaphorically, after you've paid the fee, any time you like. You also can't throw a book out of the window until you've paid the whole price of it.
> Claiming slavish tax is the same, like Lambda does, is simply a fraud.
It's just a fee for a service. It's not a tax. And there's no deception so it isn't fraud.
It's not true that one needs to pay for a reasonable computer-science education. One can learn wholly online for the cost of Internet connectivity.
The problem is that Lambda are vampires. Their model is completely superfluous. They do not add any value over self-assigned MIT lectures on Youtube. From what I have gathered, Lambda is the kind of setting where folks like me are supposed to show up and supplement the "teacher" and their lack of knowledge; normally, when I do that, I expect to be paid six figures per year.
Oh my. If you cannot read your own comments, then we aren't going to be able to have a conversation. You clearly implied in your earlier comment that education isn't free and that Lambda earns their keep. But is that the case?
In formal jargon, which might not sound much better, Lambda is a rent-seeker [0]; they want to complicate an existing system (people teach themselves for free using freely-available materials and time) in order to extract money from the system. Quoting from [0]:
> The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free.
From one of many deep looks at Lambda [1]:
> Lambda’s educational model hinges on student-contractors called Team Leads (TLs) — students who, two months into their education, defer another two months in order to become teaching assistants tasked with taking attendance, checking in with other students, and answering questions. These student-contractors are paid roughly $13 an hour and have only just learned the material they are then tasked with explaining to the next batch of students. One student told me he was given no training on how to be a TL and spent many hours on devising curriculum and exercises to help other students. Another student, Erica Thompson, told me that TLs “are hired on a Friday and start on Monday.” TLs are roughly analogous to graduate-student instructors at universities, but with far less experience with the material.
I am not exaggerating: I am not interested in paying money, or promising away future money, or getting less than a $15/hr wage, for the privilege of regurgitating material to my fellow students. It sounds like a massive waste of everybody's time and money. Why do you defend these practices so ardently? Were you victimized by Lambda or something?
> Oh my. If you cannot read your own comments, then we aren't going to be able to have a conversation. You clearly implied in your earlier comment that education isn't free and that Lambda earns their keep.
I said this education product isn't free. That's just a fact. I didn't say it was not possible to get other education for free. I got my CS education for free, for example.
> is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land
I think you're confused about what rent seeking is. The feudal lord in this example installs a chain across a river. He stops people using the river who could have done free otherwise. That's the essential bit that makes it rent seeking.
But Lambda School don't damage anyone's access to education. They add their own product on top and take nothing away. They don't stop anyone from using using any other resource. It's a net benefit to society. Even if you think it's a useless course, it's a net zero to society in that case, which isn't something to get annoyed about as long as they're minding their own business.
> I am not interested in paying money, or promising away future money, or getting less than a $15/hr wage, for the privilege of regurgitating material to my fellow students.
Well... then don't! Nobody's making you, or even suggesting you do.
> Why do you defend these practices so ardently?
Always good to step in to defend someone who's being subjected to an unjust attack!
Ah, so now the "attacks" are "unjust". Feel free to bring evidence to this discussion; as far as I can tell, your position is that because you haven't been hurt, therefore nobody is getting hurt.
Lambda damages the folks that they sucker into being students. Since they have a non-zero number of students, there are some folks who have been damaged. [0] is a writeup of some of their stories.
Lambda is not a net benefit to society. Even if such utilitarian thinking were valid, then no, by the broken window fallacy [1], Lambda is still slurping time out of the hands of folks who could have spent it on other things.
Finally, while I'm loathe to call you a liar, you claim that you got your CS education for free. Does that include your PhD [2] and associated academic career? Congratulations if so, but it is not the typical experience of PhD candidates to get their education for free.
Not sure why you're repeating what I just plainly said like it's some kind of gotcha you've dug up... yeah I think they're unjust that's why I mentioned it.
> Feel free to bring evidence to this discussion
I don't really understand which point you want evidence of? Do you want evidence that they're an educational provider? Or did you want evidence of what rent seeking means if you're still confused about that? Or evidence that Lambda School isn't forcing anyone to do anything and isn't taking away access to free education?
You're making up a lot of arguments that I didn't say - like that you can't get an education for free, or that they want you to work for free. Sorry I can't give any evidence for those because I don't think them!
> Does that include your PhD [2] and associated academic career?
Yes. That's typical.
> it is not the typical experience of PhD candidates to get their education for free.
Really not sure what you're talking about here - almost nobody pays for their PhD education in a STEM field. In fact you typically get paid to do it. That's not just special scholarships it's just the way it works. I don't know how you think a STEM PhD works?
FWIW, if you've been burned by them: either through paying for substandard education or otherwise mislead it would likely be of interest to people here to hear the specifics. Vague attacks on them ungrounded in facts just make it difficult for anyone to see your perspective.
I know people burned by bootcamps in the sense that they should have been told up front that they didn't have a strong enough foundation for the bootcamp to be worthwhile. This was before the days of salary reimbursements, so they just paid outright (installment plans). I also know people who had their instructors go missing for weeks of the program replaced by unqualified recent grads. Finally every bootcamp lies about their placement rates it seems.
All that being said I work with a few bootcamp grads and they are very talented and productive developers.
The bootcamp model doesn’t seem like it would work well in a recession since new grads end up competing for any open positions with laid off people with more experience. I can’t imagine that Lambda would be able to place as many students now as they did before all else being equal and if they tried to sell their ISAs to a financing firm of course they are going to account for the new reality and request a much steeper discount than they did before.
If you’re thinking of Lambda as a student then even if you don’t have to pay tuition you still have all your living costs to think about. Probably does not make sense do Lambda if you would otherwise be leaving a job and dig into savings and then enter a questionable job market.
The conventional wisdom used to be that many people would go back to school during a recession. I certainly did that in after getting laid off in the tail end of the dotcom bust. The timing of getting a degree during a normal recession cycle might work out simply because 1 or 2 years after you start school, you might be graduating when there's no longer a recession and hiring has picked up again. If you go to a 3 month bootcamp during a recession, you're likely to face a recession when finishing the program.
An interesting implication of this line of thought is that a lot of the value of getting a degree during a recession is not so much the degree as having something respectable to say you were doing with your time.
I never thought of it that way, are you sure? I think people just thought the degree would be there forever, but instead they are just paying it off forever - in the states.
1. In the hot market, you can spend multiple years getting a degree, or you can spend a few months at a bootcamp. At the conclusion of either process, you get a job. By hypothesis, the bootcamp provides as much value in terms of knowledge as the degree does. (Just go with it.)
The bootcamp is much better, because you waste less time not having a job. It's cheaper in cash outflow, but it's even more cheaper in opportunity cost.
2. In the depressed market, you can spend multiple years getting a degree, or you can spend a few months at a bootcamp. After a couple of years, the market is no longer depressed, and you get a job.
By happy coincidence, if you got the degree, you go on the market at this time, and you look employable. If you did the bootcamp, it's still just as good, but you've been unemployed for a couple of years, and you look unemployable. The bootcamp had a higher opportunity cost than the degree. (Still lower cash outflow.)
In this case, the only reason you'd want the degree is so that, when you interview for a job that chooses to hire you for unrelated reasons having to do with the overall health of the economy, you don't have to admit to having been unemployed. If the cash price of bootcamp is 20% of the cash price of the degree, then this respectability concern is at least 80% of the value of the degree. More, if you assume it's generally nicer to be unemployed than to be studying for a degree.
In some ways, the ISA bootcamps would be in the most demand during a recession. Because you don't pay for tuition outright, you're only paying with your time/opportunity cost. For someone who's laid off, that just became free. And if you don't get hired for a year because the economy is frozen/thawing, then you don't have to pay anything during that period.
If I were looking at bootcamps, I would put ISA-based ones at the top of my list. But I'd expect them to get more selective since they'll need to adjust their payback calculus given the economic uncertainty.
I would come down to who has more experience in their resume. A lot of boot camp grads, unfortunately, cannot participate in internships because it's a continuation of classes (no breaks), but I don't think CS grads have a significant advantage assuming both prepared well and could get interviews.
> Today is a sad day, and people will react in different ways. However you react, those emotions are real, and they matter. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
It's unfortunate when CEOs neglect to mention the difficulties of those they fired — instead focusing on the the difficulties they faced in doing the firing
Yeah honestly very gross and distasteful to shift the difficulties away from the employees laid off to the person who still has the job. I don't care how guilty they might feel, they still have a job and the people who are laid off don't, and at a very scary time of their lives. No way I will pity this CEO in any capacity
> However you react, those emotions are real, and they matter. This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
> I want to publicly say thank you to everyone who has worked at Lambda for what you’ve contributed. I know you’ve given parts of who you are to Lambda, and to our students. You are part of our journey. You are the reason we are here. Thank you.
He mentioned the difficulties of those who were fired by acknowledging that their emotions are real, and that they matter. And that this was an unfortunate decision he had to make. He also thanked them for all they have contributed .
His quote was rather crass: "Today is a sad day, and people will react in different ways. However you react, those emotions are real, and they matter"
There's a difference between "you feel sad you're fired" and "you'll miss your mortgage next month, because no one is hiring, and your kids may be kicked out of their school district as a result."
No. I'd like him to acknowledge that this will put employees in a genuinely difficult position, rather than just "I'm sorry people will feel bad." I brought up specific difficulties to point out how the non-specific platitudes downplayed them. You can be non-specific, while acknowledging the seriousness of a decision like this one.
This decision will cause many of those we lay off to endure hardship. I apologize and accept responsibility for that. While I've struggled making this decision, that doesn't compare to the struggle of suddenly being out of work.
To recognize these difficulties, we've offered a month of severance pay for every year people have worked here, and extended the expiry of their vested options to three years.
I have a slightly different perspective. If I've bought into the team and believe in the mission, only to be let go by the team at some point, I want to know that it was a hard choice.
Maybe it's just ego or maybe it's the desire for meaningful human connection, but the idea of losing my job and it meaning nothing to the person in charge just adds insult to injury.
I like that he briefly addressed how hard the choice was, because it reinforces the message that each of these people matter.
I wonder how these mass layoffs are going to affect junior level hiring. Obviously, they're going to have an effect across all hiring, but the particular dynamic is interesting to me.
I have friends who worked in investment banking in 2008, and several of them have talked about how the industry (or at least their perception of it) became more "diamond-shaped." By this they meant that past the initial hiring freezes, entry-level hiring eventually picked up as normal, but that senior level promotions took a while to pick back up. There was a glut of experienced VPs (more of a mid-level role in IB than in engineering) who were making lateral moves between banks—not competing for entry level roles—but none of them were moving up to higher positions.
Ive already heard personally about internships getting cancelled from multiple sources, so there might be second-order effects as well where the junior engineers coming right out of college are less prepared.
Little off topic but do you reckon that IB offers high compensation and better job stability on aggregate vs tech? Especially longevity wise. I'm sure not every associate becomes a MD but neither does every L3 a L8.
80 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadSo, although you may not like ISAs, comparing it to slavery trivializes actual slavery.
Also, it seems like you’re being cynical without realizing it.
Lambda School is just another source of talent/human capital to a company. And companies suddenly aren't hiring and probably won't be for a while. And if they aren't hiring, Lambda School can't place students. And if they can't place students, then there are no ISAs, which is how Lambda makes its money. It's a straightforward funnel that's about to have a ton of supply and less demand, with Lambda bearing the financial burden to train/education the people. On top of that, if you have a bunch of people taking all this time to be trained under the pretense of getting a pretty good paying job and now that's not going to happen, well you're not going to be too thrilled with Lambda School (rightly or wrongly). So you've got, potentially, a double whammy: less revenue and your best marketing channel (word of mouth) going south. Not great.
I know little about the details of Lambda School’s business, but they seem like they’re in a good position to do well in an economic downturn and recovery, if they stay focused and prudent, which seems to be exactly what they’re trying to do now.
Sure, favourable macro trends help, but the ones that succeed do so because they best figure out how to adapt to changing conditions.
Lambda School has complete freedom to change everything they do to survive and thrive in the new environment.
Let's see what they do.
Doing a round of layoffs - especially done respectfully - can soften the blow a little while requiring only senior leadership's buy in and some input from managers. Convincing everyone to take a 15% pay cut takes a ton of coordination across the entire company and probably drives the rumor mill fast and furious. And imagine being one of the people who says "no"!?
Further, with layoffs, you can choose who to cut. If people get demoralized as you're negotiating pay cuts, the top people can pack up and leave.
I don't like any of it but it makes sense.
(sorry pickers for that rude language, you know that you are more important now than said top performers)
I worked at a place that went through hard times and the employees that stuck around were 'untouchable' in the owners eyes, for better or for worse.
It's definitely contextual to some extent. We're in an industry that's going to take a revenue hit, but the sustainability of the company isn't in question. Doesn't help that the company could afford nearly a billion dollars in stock buybacks in the last year, either.
I think one of the big takeaways for me is that it's burned any good will the company had with a lot of its employees. I expect pretty heavy turnover once hiring starts to thaw again and I'll likely be part of it.
Priority number 1 is surviving.
Whenever I've been at a company when jobs are made redundant the same thing happens - everyone worries that their job will go if there's another round of cuts and morale plummets. That usually pushes more people to find new jobs, and it's ofter the people who are good because they can get new jobs more easily.
There is no winning strategy for cutting costs.
But there are better and worse ones. Cut once and cut deep is close to as good as it’s going to get.
I hope they at least gave you notice so you could adjust and prepare instead of day-of/before "Hey, by the way!" Granted, a lot less people in tech are living paycheck to paycheck but it happens. Getting pinched there would be awful.
Regardless of how these things - layoffs, pay cuts, whatever - go down, doing it with respect is key. After all, these are the people we've worked with, helped each other, and probably had a drink or two with. We're not family but we are human and it's a small world.
One reason might be that economic recessions are an excuse for a manager to, from their perspective, permanently "increase efficiency", i.e. make remaining employees do more work, while for cooperative and strong union organizations, the focus is to preserve their social bonds and help each other.
They added 125 in 2019, and there were 40 at some unknown time during 2018. That would mean at least 165. There's a photo which was taken sometime in 2019 while the 125 were being added, which may not include everyone. They may have also hired more in the first couple months of 2020. It seems they had somewhere between 165 and 250 employees. This would mean the 19 employees are between 7.5% and 11.5% of their workforce.
I'm going to need you to cite something to back that up. It is opposite of everything I've seen so far.
Just search on "schools shutting down for the rest of the year" and you'll find a bunch of sources. Of course it varies by state/district here in the U.S., but many are opting to shut down completely rather than attempting online instruction.
If hiring slows down, which it has, then these schools don't have anywhere to place students.
If Lambda tries to sell their ISAs, which they admit they sometimes do, the buyer is going to request a much steeper discount now than before if they are willing to buy the loans at all.
It's capped and time limited - so you know the max you'll pay and how long you may be paying up front. Not sure why you're mentioning unemployment benefits? Why would that be their job to do that for you?
What's the problem?
Not really sure what you want here.
They don't offer proof? When you buy a book do you demand 'proof' from the author that you'll learn something from it? What proof do universities offer? It's a service offered. If you want it, buy it. If you don't, don't.
> And in crisis times they signal their courses give no edge over the job market by.. laying off their own people.
These are employees, not students of their course, aren't they? And you having to lay people off due to reduced revenue doesn't say anything about the quality of their education anyway.
I think you're just throwing random snide comments around that don't really make any sense.
Claiming slavish tax is the same, like Lambda does, is simply a fraud.
Lambda School is also limited price as well. And you can 'throw your education out of the window' metaphorically, after you've paid the fee, any time you like. You also can't throw a book out of the window until you've paid the whole price of it.
> Claiming slavish tax is the same, like Lambda does, is simply a fraud.
It's just a fee for a service. It's not a tax. And there's no deception so it isn't fraud.
The problem is that Lambda are vampires. Their model is completely superfluous. They do not add any value over self-assigned MIT lectures on Youtube. From what I have gathered, Lambda is the kind of setting where folks like me are supposed to show up and supplement the "teacher" and their lack of knowledge; normally, when I do that, I expect to be paid six figures per year.
Where on earth do you think I said that?
> The problem is that Lambda are vampires.
You're just resorting to abuse now.
In formal jargon, which might not sound much better, Lambda is a rent-seeker [0]; they want to complicate an existing system (people teach themselves for free using freely-available materials and time) in order to extract money from the system. Quoting from [0]:
> The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free.
From one of many deep looks at Lambda [1]:
> Lambda’s educational model hinges on student-contractors called Team Leads (TLs) — students who, two months into their education, defer another two months in order to become teaching assistants tasked with taking attendance, checking in with other students, and answering questions. These student-contractors are paid roughly $13 an hour and have only just learned the material they are then tasked with explaining to the next batch of students. One student told me he was given no training on how to be a TL and spent many hours on devising curriculum and exercises to help other students. Another student, Erica Thompson, told me that TLs “are hired on a Friday and start on Monday.” TLs are roughly analogous to graduate-student instructors at universities, but with far less experience with the material.
I am not exaggerating: I am not interested in paying money, or promising away future money, or getting less than a $15/hr wage, for the privilege of regurgitating material to my fellow students. It sounds like a massive waste of everybody's time and money. Why do you defend these practices so ardently? Were you victimized by Lambda or something?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...
I said this education product isn't free. That's just a fact. I didn't say it was not possible to get other education for free. I got my CS education for free, for example.
> is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land
I think you're confused about what rent seeking is. The feudal lord in this example installs a chain across a river. He stops people using the river who could have done free otherwise. That's the essential bit that makes it rent seeking.
But Lambda School don't damage anyone's access to education. They add their own product on top and take nothing away. They don't stop anyone from using using any other resource. It's a net benefit to society. Even if you think it's a useless course, it's a net zero to society in that case, which isn't something to get annoyed about as long as they're minding their own business.
> I am not interested in paying money, or promising away future money, or getting less than a $15/hr wage, for the privilege of regurgitating material to my fellow students.
Well... then don't! Nobody's making you, or even suggesting you do.
> Why do you defend these practices so ardently?
Always good to step in to defend someone who's being subjected to an unjust attack!
Lambda damages the folks that they sucker into being students. Since they have a non-zero number of students, there are some folks who have been damaged. [0] is a writeup of some of their stories.
Lambda is not a net benefit to society. Even if such utilitarian thinking were valid, then no, by the broken window fallacy [1], Lambda is still slurping time out of the hands of folks who could have spent it on other things.
Finally, while I'm loathe to call you a liar, you claim that you got your CS education for free. Does that include your PhD [2] and associated academic career? Congratulations if so, but it is not the typical experience of PhD candidates to get their education for free.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-co...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
[2] https://chrisseaton.com/phd/
Not sure why you're repeating what I just plainly said like it's some kind of gotcha you've dug up... yeah I think they're unjust that's why I mentioned it.
> Feel free to bring evidence to this discussion
I don't really understand which point you want evidence of? Do you want evidence that they're an educational provider? Or did you want evidence of what rent seeking means if you're still confused about that? Or evidence that Lambda School isn't forcing anyone to do anything and isn't taking away access to free education?
You're making up a lot of arguments that I didn't say - like that you can't get an education for free, or that they want you to work for free. Sorry I can't give any evidence for those because I don't think them!
> Does that include your PhD [2] and associated academic career?
Yes. That's typical.
> it is not the typical experience of PhD candidates to get their education for free.
Really not sure what you're talking about here - almost nobody pays for their PhD education in a STEM field. In fact you typically get paid to do it. That's not just special scholarships it's just the way it works. I don't know how you think a STEM PhD works?
I know people burned by bootcamps in the sense that they should have been told up front that they didn't have a strong enough foundation for the bootcamp to be worthwhile. This was before the days of salary reimbursements, so they just paid outright (installment plans). I also know people who had their instructors go missing for weeks of the program replaced by unqualified recent grads. Finally every bootcamp lies about their placement rates it seems.
All that being said I work with a few bootcamp grads and they are very talented and productive developers.
If you’re thinking of Lambda as a student then even if you don’t have to pay tuition you still have all your living costs to think about. Probably does not make sense do Lambda if you would otherwise be leaving a job and dig into savings and then enter a questionable job market.
1. In the hot market, you can spend multiple years getting a degree, or you can spend a few months at a bootcamp. At the conclusion of either process, you get a job. By hypothesis, the bootcamp provides as much value in terms of knowledge as the degree does. (Just go with it.)
The bootcamp is much better, because you waste less time not having a job. It's cheaper in cash outflow, but it's even more cheaper in opportunity cost.
2. In the depressed market, you can spend multiple years getting a degree, or you can spend a few months at a bootcamp. After a couple of years, the market is no longer depressed, and you get a job.
By happy coincidence, if you got the degree, you go on the market at this time, and you look employable. If you did the bootcamp, it's still just as good, but you've been unemployed for a couple of years, and you look unemployable. The bootcamp had a higher opportunity cost than the degree. (Still lower cash outflow.)
In this case, the only reason you'd want the degree is so that, when you interview for a job that chooses to hire you for unrelated reasons having to do with the overall health of the economy, you don't have to admit to having been unemployed. If the cash price of bootcamp is 20% of the cash price of the degree, then this respectability concern is at least 80% of the value of the degree. More, if you assume it's generally nicer to be unemployed than to be studying for a degree.
If I were looking at bootcamps, I would put ISA-based ones at the top of my list. But I'd expect them to get more selective since they'll need to adjust their payback calculus given the economic uncertainty.
It's unfortunate when CEOs neglect to mention the difficulties of those they fired — instead focusing on the the difficulties they faced in doing the firing
https://lambdaschool.com/careers#jobs
> I want to publicly say thank you to everyone who has worked at Lambda for what you’ve contributed. I know you’ve given parts of who you are to Lambda, and to our students. You are part of our journey. You are the reason we are here. Thank you.
He mentioned the difficulties of those who were fired by acknowledging that their emotions are real, and that they matter. And that this was an unfortunate decision he had to make. He also thanked them for all they have contributed .
What else should he have said ?
There's a difference between "you feel sad you're fired" and "you'll miss your mortgage next month, because no one is hiring, and your kids may be kicked out of their school district as a result."
This decision will cause many of those we lay off to endure hardship. I apologize and accept responsibility for that. While I've struggled making this decision, that doesn't compare to the struggle of suddenly being out of work.
To recognize these difficulties, we've offered a month of severance pay for every year people have worked here, and extended the expiry of their vested options to three years.
Maybe it's just ego or maybe it's the desire for meaningful human connection, but the idea of losing my job and it meaning nothing to the person in charge just adds insult to injury.
I like that he briefly addressed how hard the choice was, because it reinforces the message that each of these people matter.
I have friends who worked in investment banking in 2008, and several of them have talked about how the industry (or at least their perception of it) became more "diamond-shaped." By this they meant that past the initial hiring freezes, entry-level hiring eventually picked up as normal, but that senior level promotions took a while to pick back up. There was a glut of experienced VPs (more of a mid-level role in IB than in engineering) who were making lateral moves between banks—not competing for entry level roles—but none of them were moving up to higher positions.