Comment by awwstn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by awwstn | Hacker News Reader

I love Lambda's concept. I think aligning the interests of the school with the interests of the student are a fantastic evolution, and committing to only charge students for payback in the case that they have a positive outcome is great too.

That said, the "only pay us back if you get a good job" commitment seems like lip service as long as the cutoff is $50K (for software dev at least). Lambda school's team is super vocal on Twitter and regularly shares stories of students who walk away making 3-4x what they made previously...if the program genuinely believes it can consistently graduate students who can earn $80-$150K in the market, then it should align its business model to that.

The median salary for a software engineer in the US is $100K. The current Lambda promise is "you only have to pay us back if you earn half the nationwide median salary in the 5 years following our program"...this does not strike me as a very bold commitment to the quality of the program.

To be very clear: I've seen successes of Lambda students and I believe that they have created a model that graduates students who are competitive in this job market. So, I'm not saying that Lambda is bad. On the contrary: I'm saying Lambda is excellent and they should be bolstered by that excellence to take a stance with a less conservative income share agreement.

From their site:

> Instead of paying tuition, students can agree to pay a percentage of their income after they're employed, and only if they're making more than $50k per year.

Most of our students are in rural areas where $50k is actually really good money (though this is changing). There’s not really an existing legal framework to say “if you make x in this kind of city or y in this kind of city.”

Certainly, in San Francisco, $50k isn’t a win. Luckily our median salary there is well into the six figures.

Lambda School’s income share agreement is also (to my knowledge) the only in the industry that is industry-specific. If you end up as a bartender making $60k we make $0.

Most 3 month schools are 15% for 3 yrs with a $40k min. Lambda School is 9 months, 17% for 2 yrs with a $50k min and a cap.

So our agreement is actually very aggressive as is, and will become more aggressive over time.

Consider using a base amount modified by cost of living, esp locational, with a formula that adapts when it changes. Buffer does this for their transparent salary calculations:

https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/

Btw, love what you're doing. It might have helped me back when I was in a rural area. We didn't have Internet, though. So, would've been whatever I could do at libraries during narrow windows of computer use. These days it's McDonalds' Wifi for lots of folks. Do factor that into your offerings somehow if you don't already.

Good luck LS! Looks like awesome stuff you all are doing.

Employees shouldn't be rewarded for moving to the most expensive cities. Buffer et al should pay whatever they're willing to pay, and if some of their employees want to waste it on rent, so be it.

> that is industry-specific

Don't you mean role/responsibilities specific? What happens if one of your students takes a web app developer role at, let's say, an auto parts manufacturer?

Then yes, we’d say they’re still working in the “software” industry

Neat way to redefine "industry"...

Sure, there might be a different word than "industry" that describes it better

> The median salary for a software engineer in the US is $100K

I don't think this is a fair comparison because it includes people with 10 years experience, and people with a 4-year computer science education. It would be better to look at the median income of developers with no more than 5 years experience and no more than 1 year engineering education.

Also the problem with increasing the minimum salary in the ISA is that it gives Lambda an incentive to reject applicants who are less likely to achieve that minimum. Personally I think Lambda should increase their $30k cap in order to align incentives for maximising the graduates income.

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