Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes | Hacker News Reader

Lambda School is a predatory bootcamp that lies about students outcomes

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191 pointstaytus127 comments

Colleges are predatory, putting kids deep into debt that they may never be able to repay and can't even remove with bankruptcy. And said debt has exploded in recent decades with no corresponding improvement in outcomes.

Whereas Lambda aligns their interests with the student. If their students don't get a job, Lambda doesn't get paid. Why is a better model being attacked like this?

> Colleges are predatory, putting kids deep into debt that they may never be able to repay and can't even remove with bankruptcy.

We're not talking about colleges. The fact other scams exist in the world has zero bearing on whether one specific company is scamming people.

> Whereas Lambda aligns their interests with the student.

They align themselves with their investors. That's their fiduciary duty. If you want to understand how their model doesn't necessary align with students, here's a good starting point: https://applieddivinitystudies.com/lambda-lies/

> If their students don't get a job, Lambda doesn't get paid.

When a student signs an ISA, Lambda School is immediately paid by reselling that debt to hedge funds.

We are implicitly comparing it to colleges and every other competitor. That's what relative words like the way "predatory" is used here mean. Predatory relative to the rest of the field. It doesn't really have an absolute meaning.

I haven't reviewed their numbers recently but the historical criticism is that you end up paying more money for Lambda yet their placement rate was lower compared to similar bootcamps.

Would you say Santa Clara University is a "predatory university" if the average tuition is higher than UC Berkeley, yet the starting salary of their grads is lower?

If ISAs don't pay out, then hedge funds will not be willing to pay as much to buy them. So at least on that point, the mere fact that they're sold off doesn't cause any misalignment.

_laughs in 2008 subprime mortgages_

I take your point, but also don't think that the repackaging of shitty loans into bundles that are somehow magically considered less shitty is happening at that scale anymore. And frankly, ISAs are a lot less shitty than home purchase loans to unemployed people who have near zero likelihood of paying it back unless that home goes up in value. Even if it was happening, there's no incentive towards an upwards price spiral in the code bootcamp space at the current demand levels (and the elasticity curve is very different in scalable bootcamps as compared to housing).

Had the dumb manipulations not happened, loans are actually quite straightforward to value, so I would be shocked if whoever was purchasing the ISAs didn't have at least a "much better than HN" view into what they should properly be worth.

> Colleges are predatory

I see this argument all the time when such predatory bootcamps are brought up. Firstly Universities, notwithstanding their shortcomings, have a long history going back to millennia. Their importance in human history is unparalleled. While some US American universities have turned into debt traps, it's not the same case universally. It is unfair to compare these predatory bootcamps with universities.

> Firstly Universities, notwithstanding their shortcomings, have a long history going back to millennia. Their importance in human history is unparalleled.

Capitalist academia is an essential part of empire. Although claimed as the opposite (“Die Luft der Freiheit weht”), capitalist academia often blocks the diffusion of innovation by commoditizing and monopolizing new advancements in science and technology, and working side by side with capitalist firms to help line up new intellectual laborers (members of the working class) to exploit.

"Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction.

Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime.

Seen in that light, tech’s recent development begins to look rather different. Far from launching a new era of global prosperity, it has facilitated the further concentration of wealth and power. By virtue of their position as digital middlemen, Silicon Valley companies are able to extract vast amounts of capital from all over the world. The most salient example is Apple: recently crowned the world’s most valuable company, Apple rakes in enormous quarterly profits even as the Chinese workers who actually assemble its products are driven to suicide." [1]

What I'm saying is that we can have innovation, technology and science, without today’s capitalist Intellectual Property system, and without the gatekeeping of capitalist academia.

As Wendy described above, we have a capitalist government that enables a small amount of capitalist firms to violently exclude and deprive others when they are given a monopoly on a piece of knowledge. Through the ’great man theory’ and the ‘lone genius myth’ [2] these capitalist governments then also enable Silicon Valley capitalist firms (and their grandiose CEO’s) to take credit for any new advancements, despite all of the innovation actually being made possible by government subsidies and government-funded research [3 - Mariana Mazzucato has done a fantastic job highlighting how all the tech breakthroughs in the iPhone were made possible by taxpayer]. In other words: Silicon Valley mythology is making us pay for technology two times. The first time through tax by the capitalist state, and the second time we are paying through economic rents/taxes levied by the capitalist state on behalf of capitalist firms [4].

Both Lambda school and capitalist universities are a part of this larger issue: the violent gatekeeping of knowledge that disinherits and exploits the working class, over and over again.

I'm not at all trying to downplay the toxicity of selling off student debt to Venture Capital firms, as is done by Lambda school. That is seriously messed up.

I'm saying that to make a better society we need a new system for the digital age that de-commoditizes knowledge and gives each child equal access to the sum total of all human knowledge. We’ve let dogmatic ideas lead to a system that criminalizes curiosity. That criminalizes the act of asking questions. I want us to end this plunder of the commons right now.

Seriously, who do capitalists think they are, commoditizing knowledge like this? They are building a tiny sandcastle of privatized knowledge on a snowy mountain that is immeasurable inheritance left behind by our ancestors, not to mention that all of the actual work is being done by intellectual laborers who are part of the working class, and who are therefore not the owners of the this proprietary technology themselves, and who are only paid a wage (while being kept docile by ‘company perks’).

By and large the general public still believes in our patent system due to a further set of myths. They are told IP laws are justified because they give inventors time to commercialize.

If only this were still true. It isn’t. And it hasn't been for the last few decades. Capitalist firms now predominantly use trade secret laws to commoditize and monopolize knowledge:

“Patents are typically viewed as a cornerstone of intellectual property licensing. The licensing landscape, however, has been changing. In recent years, trade secrets have become “the crown jewels of corporations” and “workhorse[s] of technology transfer.” Recent court decisions on trade secret misappropriation exhibit damage awards that are in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, indicating how valuable trade secrets are to companies.

Trade secrets cover 90% of all new technology; “over 80% of all license and technology transfer agreements cover proprietary know-how (trade secrets) or are hybrid agreements covering both patents and trade secrets.” Therefore, it is virtually impossible to license a patent without also transferring applicable proprietary knowledge and information. As there is always more to every invention, and certain information inevitably escapes a patent application, some commentators asserted that “a patent [is a] little more than an advertisement for the sale of accompanying know-how.”” [5]

This an example of Tesla and their purchase of the trade secrets of Maxwell Technologies’ dry electrode batteries:

“In 2014, Elon Musk made Tesla’s patents available for anyone to use for free, stating that “technology leadership is not defined by patents.

But do patents stifle progress, and will releasing patents really have this result?

[…] Patents are a trade with a government. The inventor agrees to disclose the invention to the public in exchange for a limited exclusive right to the invention. […] It is exceedingly rare that an inventor comes up with something completely new. Virtually all inventions are the result of combining existing elements and adding something new.

[…] Tesla recently acquired battery manufacturer Maxwell Technologies’ company for $218 million to learn its trade secrets for dry electrode batteries. Obviously, Musk values trade secrets, and he must believe that they do not stifle progress, or he would have released them to the public as well. However, trade secrets do not promote the progress of innovation. Trade secrets stifle progress. […] [W]hen an invention could be patented, keeping it as a trade secret denies the public knowledge of how the invention works, which in turn denies the public the ability to improve, combine, or invent around the invention.

[...] Trade secrets have become the preferred invention protection choice of many tech multinationals. […] Hiding inventions as trade secrets acts to protect these huge multinational corporations […]. This is the reason that huge multinationals lobby so hard for strong trade secret laws and weak patent laws. This is clearly shown in Musk’s low valuation of his patents and high valuation of trade secrets.

Trade secret protection for inventions that could otherwise be patented is bad public policy because it stifles the progress of innovation and it consolidates money, markets and power into a few huge corporations […]” [6]

[1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-end...

[3] https://nintil.com/mazzucato-and-the-iphone-i/

[4] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-08-03/book-day-corru...

[5] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2334060

[6] https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2019/02/19/dont-fooled-patent-pur...

> In other words: Silicon Valley mythology is making us pay for technology two times. The first time through tax by the capitalist state, and the second time we are paying through economic rents/taxes levied by the capitalist state on behalf of capitalist firms [4].

to be clearer, it should be:

In other words: Silicon Valley mythology is making us pay for technology two times. The first time through taxpayer money going to the funding of universities as well as being used as grants and low interest loans to promising young startup companies, and the second time we are paying through economic rents/taxes levied by the capitalist state on behalf of capitalist firms [4] (through IP laws).*

also i meant another link for [3], it should be: https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-entrepreneurial-state

that is the* immeasurable inheritance left behind by our ancestors

There are significant differences between what is labeled 'university' now and a hundred years ago. We shouldn't let ourselves be blinded by what was accomplished under this label in the past to what it applies to now.

Can Lambda School still sell the debt to hedge funds without the student getting a job ?

We sell it to an SPV that we own, and have to pay back the amount that is received.

>When a student signs an ISA, Lambda School is immediately paid by reselling that debt to hedge funds.

Hedge funds are not stupid. They'll be taking repayment rates by students in to consideration with regard to what they'll pay. So it still stands that bootcamp students getting good jobs is the outcome both Lambda and the student wants.

Factoring is a standard, entirely benign activity done by businesses in a wide range of industries. Pretty much any growing company with long term payment terms is going to be doing it. Companies offering net 30, let alone Lambda's 730.

Whole selling to hedge funds angle is fluff.

That isn't how any of this works.

There has been a constant allegation that Lambda School sells its ISAs and therefore no longer has incentives that are aligned with students. The assertion is that, in “Big Short” style, we sell off all the risk of our students being placed to someone else and don’t have to care about outcomes.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When Lambda School finances ISAs here’s how it works:

We get together with investors and say, “Based on past performance, we predict this ISA will be worth $x.” We can then receive an advance of $x, minus interest and a possible margin of error.

Importantly:

1. That amount needs to be paid back, plus interest. 2. If the value of the ISAs ends up being less than predicted, either we have to reimburse investors for the loss, or we won’t be able to continue borrowing in the future.

This is not a unique or predatory structure in any way.

If a student drops out, doesn’t get hired, or doesn’t pay back, Lambda School makes less money. If a student does great, gets hired, and pays back quickly, Lambda School makes more money.

This is not a scandal, and holds true to incentive alignment in any way. Lambda School remains entirely aligned with its students.

After Lambda School completely removed code review, grading, attendance, TLs when I was enrolled... I just couldn't see how the incentives were aligned anymore. There was no one looking at my assignments, my assessments, my projects and telling me what I got wrong and how I could do better.

Those choices made by Lambda only hurt students' learning and therefore chances to get a job. And when students complained, the school addressed the complaints but barely made a change.

Pair programming is the best way to learn so that's unfortunate.

I wish people would stop saying things like this. Nothing against you, but no, pair programming is not the best way to learn. There are various learning styles and people fall in diverse ways to learn best. I hate visual and social learning. Just doesn't work for me. Youtube videos and pair programming is just the worst thing you can do for me if you want me to retain any information. While some say there is 8, others 4, others 6, (mainly some divide some items in 2 vs 1), people are different and learn in different ways. Heck, just the amount of teaching styles/methods should be a good hint that there is no size fits all when it comes to learning.

Source: Childhood education degree + years of researching the topic.

We learn from our peers. Sure a teacher helps but most learning is peer based.

Lets assume that is true, it doesn't mean you need or should use pair programming to learn from your peers. Depending on your style of learning, pair programming may work, a visual presentation may work better, or just typed docs for other people.

Pair programming may have originated in the 70's (depending on source), but there are hundreds of years of research on learning, please don't make the mistake of taking something as gospel.

(and in case you would like to point to apprenticeships in the past, they look nothing like pair programming, as it was mostly a subordinate relationship between master and student)

I don't see as much benefit from pair programming if it involves two students and replaces being taught by an instructor.

Very much blind leading the blind leading the blind from my experience at the school

The original poster said, "If their students don't get a job, Lambda doesn't get paid." Absolutely nothing in your reply changes the fact Lambda is paid before the student gets a job.

You're trying to change the topic to something you can wiggle through, and I refuse to engage. You were caught on tape lying about this, and I have no reason to believe you've stopped lying. https://soundcloud.com/vwoo/interview-with-austen-allred

Thank you! Allred constantly lies through his teeth and it makes me fucking rage.

He spouts the same bullshit over and over. Lambda isnt free for the students, they pay, and here's Mr Disingenuous to claim he needs to get money to train students 'from somewhere'

And not to mention he uses students to teach students! He can't even keep 'teachers' on board!

Edit- males->makes.

We have nearly 200 full-time employees including many, many instructors (not to mention contractors). This is just not true.

As opposed to how many students? This is very much true, you are a known, proven liar, and your 'bootcamp' is beyond predatory.

You lie about placements, you lie about your number of instructors, I will take the word of every one of your students over the PR speak you spout repeatedly.

About 2,000 concurrent students.

We are not profitable, so if it’s a scam it’s not a very good one.

Nothing about Lambda School is predatory and I have never lied.

> Nothing about Lambda School is predatory

I think the PR vs actual results of Lambda is a big problem when a lot of complains on higher education are about the gap between the dream vision of what a degree does for you, vs reality. But fine. The complains about ISA are mostly unfair

> I have never lied

That's probably one of the things you should never say ever. People will find moments you were either not telling what turned out to be the truth, or were not accurate, and will paint you as totally dishonest.

So you just pretend to not understand that getting a loan with the expectation of future payment as collateral is not the same thing as 'getting paid'? Sure, in your shoes I'd refuse to engage as well. I mean, how in the world could you explain this stance?

I’m responding to the assertion generally. The format of ISA financing has become more sophisticated over time, but the fact that our interests are entirely aligned with our students has never changed.

If I take out a car loan for $20,000 I have not been paid $20,000.

I have never lied about this. Not once. My words are taken out of context to try to make it seem like I lied, but I did not.

I highly recommend reading Vincent Woo's piece about Lambda to understand the criticism better with actual evidence. https://vincentwoo.com/2020/05/19/on-lambda-school/

It's also arguably not an equivalent comparison. Many people attending these bootcamps have already graduated college and tend to forgo work to attend - there is a huge opportunity cost even if they don't directly lose money. I have no reason to believe the model wouldn't work, but there's ample evidence that the implementation of the model via Lambda is flawed.

And there isn't a huge opportunity cost attending colleges?

People also forgo work to attend college so that equivalency argument works perfectly, except that college isn’t free so the expense is higher.

I agree, the model is good. However, Lambda school itself is crap and worse than a regular Bootcamp.

Then great, you'll be interested in a salary sharing agreement with me.

I promise to impart wisdom upon you that will help you get a job over 100k, and ONLY if you get such a job, ONLY then do you have to give me 30% of your earnings for ONLY 2 years. Do we have a deal?

Also, this offer is extended to ANYONE reading. I'm that generous.

* * *

Breaking character now. If there is any volatility in peoples lifetime earnings, agreements such as these will generate revenue even if the school provides nothing. It may very well be that the most profitable state of the school is to contribute precisely nothing to peoples careers, because that requires the lowest financial investment from the wisdom provider.

Factor in most of America makes less than 50,000 a year. If you go out to a small town and pitch this offer you would have no shortage of people ready to sign up.

Surely you are conflating student loan institutions with colleges?

College is more about learning how to communicate with other adults, and building a solid social circle. There's a very real stratification between people who finish college, and people who don't. For example you're far likely to meet a quality partner attending, or being someone who previously attended college.

I'd always tell people to go to the absolute cheapest college they can if they can't get a scholarship, but you still need to go. Given the American educational system, your average high school graduate can barely read and write. I recall once I was talking to an international student who was ashamed he needed to take remedial English at college, I then let him know I knew at least one person who as a native English speaker needed to take the same class.

Exceptions do exist, I have noticed those from upper middle class backgrounds often can skip college altogether as they already carry with them a sort of status. But for someone who grew up poor like me college was a requirement

Peter Schiff said it best “these kids are graduating with a mortgage and no house”.

Peter Schiff is a hero.

The average student loan debt at graduation is $30k [1]. That's very nice car money, not house money.

[1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...

College debt will be forgiven in this administration, so you have to be really dumb to pay for Lambda school, which isn't backed by the government and isn't going to be forgiven.

Lambda preys on the dumbest of the dumb, only dumb people are paying for school with their own money.

Here's another dumb thing: believing politicians that tell you what you want to hear.

I'm extremely skeptical of politicians. I give it a high probability chance of being forgiven, although I agree it's not a 100%. If it isn't, it will be inflated away through dollar devaluation and inflation. So, why would someone pay for their school and go to Lambda or have a high probability of school debt being forgiven going the traditional route? This isn't rocket science here. And your comment is quite insulting to assume that a commenter on HN would just 'believe' politicians or that I would want college debt forgiveness. I'm a libertarian. I don't want any bailouts, but I understand human nature and incentives so I know the bailout of college debt is coming.

As someone who used to work in this industry, I'm kind of torn on Lambda School.

It's clear that Austen lied in the past about outcomes and the company perhaps preferred growth over customer experience early on. However college education is so broken in the US that any alternative can look good in comparison.

Long term I'm bullish on Lambda, they're in a rapidly growing market, signing good partnerships like this, and I think they can continue to work on their training quality.

Just don't trust the marketing. ;)

> Long term I'm bullish on Lambda

How long is your long term? I’m bullish on Lambda’s current business model in the short term because in the long term it’s not fair for job-seekers to sell a chunk of their future just so they can make it through the present and arrive at the future. Wealthy people don’t have to do that. And the impoverished can’t afford to spend the time to attend Lambda school.

Education should be as accessible as possible and I’m optimistic that it will be on the long term. Lambda school is progress but it’s not the end game.

Why is college education broken in the US? If one is doing a STEM degree then they can earn enough salary to pay for their loans and live happily ever after.

Isn't the issue when either international students come and invest thousands of dollars in university fees and are then unceremoniously kicked out of the country or students which study some field which has no high employability?

> However college education is so broken in the US that any alternative can look good in comparison.

How exactly?

I absolutely never lied about outcomes. The author of the story conflated multiple numbers (one graduation -> placement, one enrollment -> placement) and pointed out that they’re different. He was looking at different points in the funnel, as our audited outcomes reports show.

A few Twitter bots brought this submission to attention. If you don't have much background, here are some good starting points:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-co...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25415017

I think your tweet is in bad faith. Whatever the CEO thinks of Amazon warehouse workers' salary and working conditions has no bearing on the quality and outcomes of the lambda school curriculum. This Twitter style argument of "Look at this person having awful opinions" really does not contribute to anything.

If you find lambda school to be predatory, then it's better to just provide evidence for that.

> If you find lambda school to be predatory, then it's better to just provide evidence for that.

I literally just cited three links full of examples.

They said it's better to just provide evidence for that, which you didn't. You mixed personal political opinion with the factual question of whether the school's practices are predatory, which makes it more difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt that the claim was made in good faith.

You are the source of one of the articles citing the many things that Lambda School grads should know for a basic interview that we don’t teach.

In the past I have offered a bounty for you to point out even a single one of those things and you have never been able to do so.

Austen unblock me on twitter. We can have an OTR chat about the current state of lambda. I promise none of it will be published if you don't want it to be.

Sorry, you’ve lied too many times and misconstrued too many things. I don’t trust you and don’t believe you’re operating in good faith.

I really haven't, maybe we can work out this misunderstanding. I think you really do need to hear a sincere perspective from the other side and I am happy to provide this for you privately. Reach out anytime!

Yes, I was involved in 223 words of a 1,645 word article. I don't want to take full credit for those words; I showed your students' homework to two other senior iOS developers before commenting, to make sure I wasn't off base. They reached the same conclusions.

You're welcome ignore my sound bite, and focus on the other 87% of the article which shows a pattern of unethical behavior. For example, the screenshot where you publicly claimed a 100% hire rate in the UX program, knowing full well that only one student graduated.

As for your bounty, well, you blocked me before issuing it. You even quote tweeted me while I was blocked. Maybe that's why you didn't see me explain that student homework is publicly available on GitHub.

Rather than play games with bounties, why not let the results speak for themselves? Just void all the non-disclosure agreements you've pressured students into signing.

Part of what our students do is visible on GitHub; until graduation some of it is not. Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified. You had no idea. Then students, who are qualified and battling with intense imposter syndrome, come to me terrified and doubting themselves because someone who has literally never seen the full curriculum is making stuff up about it on the record. Don’t you understand the harm you’re doing? Then you just ask me to ignore that fact? No, I will not. If you’re making stuff up out of whole cloth on the record once, why would you stop?

I did say the hiring rate of a cohort of one student was 100%. And in the same tweet I said, in all caps BUT VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Odd how that doesn’t make the article, don’t you think?

So far in two anecdotes we have two incredibly misleading things pulled out to paint a picture of unethical behavior, and you cite as evidence for unethical behavior that very article. Doesn’t that give you pause?

Do you ever question your prior assumptions, especially after realizing you were wrong, or is it all pitchforks all the time?

> I did say the hiring rate of a cohort of one student was 100%. And in the same tweet I said, in all caps BUT VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Odd how that doesn’t make the article, don’t you think?

It's in the article. Twice.

> Yet you went on the record stating that Lambda School doesn’t include very basic things in the curriculum and students aren’t qualified.

I said, "Students are going to struggle with very basic questions you’ll get on first phone screens." I have never blamed the student. I feel terrible for them, and I'm impressed by students who succeed in spite of the program.

> You had no idea.

I read the whole curriculum. I even sped through the videos. How else would I know about the two Block Chain lectures?

You asked for evidence. I can't think of better evidence than student projects that should have failed, but you rubber stamped through anyway.

As mentioned in the article, I had found ten student projects. Is that too little? Is it ok to just review one, as long as I say "VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE"?

> Then students, who are qualified and battling with intense imposter syndrome, come to me terrified and doubting themselves because someone who has literally never seen the full curriculum is making stuff up about it on the record.

I know plenty about the suffering of your students. When things are clearly broken in the program, they seek out help, and they're fed a bunch of garbage about it just being imposter syndrome.

Or that time you cut the staff who grades homework, and told everyone this had nothing to do with money. Later you admitted it was all about money.

These students thank me for speaking out, because they're afraid of retaliation. They feel lied-to and manipulated. They feel trapped.

And in this vulnerable state, you leverage the power dynamics to pressure them into signing NDAs.

Do you ever question what you're doing?

Would love to see your response to Sandofsky here.

When they mix criticism with politics I don’t trust the author. It makes it seem tribal. Like attack the enemy for their politics.

Agreed. Austen Allred is notoriously terrible on Twitter, too. Constant snark, immediately blocking people who point out the predatory business model, and shamelessly holding himself up like some gift to could-be coders.

Dude’s just a thief. Even the way they handle their comms internally is hilariously bad to read about. Gives me the same vibes as the chick from AWAY that finally was forced to step down.

My friend is doing course in Lambda School.. occasionally asks for my help with some of the course work. Almost all of the Lambda school's sample code is terrible. They proudly claim that their bootcamp enables people from other trades (plumbers, janitors, etc) to become programmers. And their example data to teach the concept of array/index would look something like array=[1,2,3,4,5], index of 1 is 0, and index of 2 is 1. The concept of an index starting at zero is so native to regular programmers, but for someone who has done their first helloworld in their life, imagine the confusion caused by the above example code.

I get furious when looking at each of their examples. At some point, I advised my friend to dropout of course, but Lambda School has penalty of around $20k-$30 if she drops out in middle of course. I wish they either update their course to be beginner friendly, or just get banned for ruining the fun of learning programming.

What's so bad about selling the debt to hedge funds? It's a way for Lambda to reduce temporal risk by paying a risk premium as compensation to the hedge fund.

Lambda School seems questionable for a few reasons I was already aware of as a semi-habitual hirer of bootcampers: trying to scale too fast & degrading the product, possibly disaligned incentives if ISAs are sold off immediately, etc. If I weren't aware of these issues, this tweet/thread would not have taught me about them.

However -- "Naturally they're partnered with Amazon"...to get people jobs as programmers at Amazon(who are evil I guess?? The unspoken assumption?) does not seem like a problem.

It is difficult for me to imagine thinking an entry-level FAANG(even Amazon dot com, the lowliest FAANG where few HN posters would deign to work) programming job is not a golden ticket 99th percentile outcome for any bootcamper.

The twootist subsequently implies Austen is out of touch for thinking there are towns where an Amazon FC job @$15/hr + healthcare is a "holy shit amazing" job. This is true tons of places. It's double minimum wage! Affordable healthcare!

If Amazon FC isn't a good job, and Amazon Programmer isn't a good job, what is? Are there bootcamps putting people directly into Netflix, Stripe, Jane Street, etc?

I find it surprising that they sell their ISAs (it seems to be true based on a quick look at this https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/12/21135134/lambda-school-st...). Doesn't this look bad to prospective students? It implies that they don't think that they'll pay off. Is there a good faith explanation for this?

I think the charitable explanation is that they needed the funds now versus after the student gets their job.

So they're incentivized to inflate their graduation rates to sell off the ISAs to investors who don't know better, since they need the cash now. Investors are left with a bill of goods: ISAs that will never pay out. Add in some securitization and tranches and baby, you've got a 2008 financial crisis goin'!

At this particular point in time, I suggest this is a vote of confidence.

This is a new asset class, investors are going to dig deep and understand it. They will certainly have access to more data and analysis than the average student.

However, if the government were to start to guarantee the loans and the volume hit an impossible level, and people got used to minimal defaults for 20 years then that would lay the groundwork for the type of disaster you suggest.

(I am not affiliated with labda or any of its investors)

Supposedly they want to be teachers and not risk managers, though the whole thing smells fishy.

The cash to train students needs to come from somewhere. So in Lambda School's case that's either VCs or some other investors.

Instead of running the entire school on venture capital, which wouldn't make sense (VCs need a huge return per dollar), we use an advance from investors based on the future value of an ISA to offset the cost.

If we work with investors to say that an ISA will be worth $x, we can borrow $x minus interest the same way you would be able to for any other asset.

Of course, that amount needs to be repaid. So it's still completely risk-aligned.

The cash to train students needs to come from somewhere. So in Lambda School's case that's either VCs or some other investors.

This makes sense for liquidity, but ultimately the ISAs are what has to provide the funding (or it's not a viable business).

As the investment terms improve, the portion of the ISA payout spent on training has to go down.

You are correct that the ISAs need to pay out to be an interesting investment, but if you are pricing the ISA to what the investment market will pay instead of what the training costs, it's not exactly a better deal for the students.

You’re forgetting the student in all of this. At the end of the day the decision maker is the student who decides if it’s a good deal.

The financing is all cashflow management behind the scenes that doesn’t really matter.

Sure, they can decide if the think the deal is worth it to them or not, but they probably aren't the one with the most information about the training spend and value of the ISA.

It doesn’t really matter. As a purchaser of x it doesn’t matter to me what it costs to make x so long as I know clearly what x is.

A Stanford grad doesn’t know what the marginal cost of their enrollment is.

It doesn't matter particularly to the student, but there is some utility, even from the outside, in estimating how much direct value a school provides and how much of a matchmaking service it provides. Your whole premise is that universities mostly provide matchmaking!

You seem to be implying that you’re borrowing against the ISAs whereas the article claims you’re selling them.

It’s only a “sale” in the sense that it’s sold to a special purpose vehicle that we own 100% of.

The article is wrong in many different ways, this is only one of them.

Doesn't that incentivize you to graduate as many students as possible, even poor quality ones, so that you can recoup the costs of as many past ISAs as possible and sell them off quickly?

Otherwise, how does a student that doesn't land a job and whose ISA will never repay fit into this model?

If every student were free yes, but that would incur further “debt.”

Also every student is quite expensive. We gain nothing and lose a lot by enrolling students who don’t get hired.

Wow, thanks for the answer Austen! Very cool to see that you're around to answer questions.

In theory they need to provide value in the long-term if they want to be able to continue selling ISAs.

> an Amazon FC job @$15/hr + healthcare is a "holy shit amazing" job. This is true tons of places. It's double minimum wage! Affordable healthcare!

I don't disbelieve you, but the fact that this "holy shit amazing" job in a highly-skilled and in-demand field pays less than I was earning at McDonald's when I was 14 makes me extremely concerned about what Americans have been convinced is normal.

FC is fulfillment centre, as in warehouse worker. Amazon programmers get paid better than that. Even in Ireland SDE1s make €82,000 a year, very roughly €40 an hour. In the US it is no doubt much higher.

https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Dublin-Ire...

> the fact that this "holy shit amazing" job in a highly-skilled and in-demand field pays less than I was earning at McDonald's when I was 14 makes me extremely concerned about what Americans have been convinced is normal.

“Amazon Can Only Claim Their Jobs Are Decent Because American Work Has Gotten So Miserable

Amazon maims its workers and drives wages down, yet the company still attracts job applicants and claims to provide “good jobs.” Those claims were strong enough to play a role in the defeat of a union effort in Bessemer, Alabama — but that says less about Amazon than it does about the miserable state of the labor market.“

Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/amazon-bessemer-alabama-u...

thanks for that link. "More than 53 million people— 44 percent of all workers ages 18–64 in the United States— earn low hourly wages", which is defined as earning 2/3 of the median male worker. The median hourly wage for those 53 million people is $10.22. One might argue about semantics but these stats are devastating nonetheless.

Forty four percent of the workforce earns less than two thirds of the median male wage is devastating? There are hundreds of millions of people who live on less than $2 a day. The US has the highest average household consumption in the world by a very large margin. If you think US living standards are inadequate the rest of the world is much, much worse.

if the US starts to orient itself after third world countries, then you're correct: It's really going good. It's all relative. I thought the US would rather compare itself to Europe, Japan, etc. but okay.

To be clear, when using something like household consumption expenditure, Japan and the subset of European countries that match up end up looking quite “poor” and have been for some time, with the gap IIRC increasing.

That e.g. personal health costs are included in there obviously, uh, muddies things.

A quick search tells me that the median is 35k per year, the mean time off is 10 days and there are 13 national holidays.

So that would put it at roughly $15 * 48 hours * 48 weeks. For 35k. I agree, that's devastating.

I don't know if you are in the US:

US national holidays mean nothing in the context of employment. The US does not require private employers to close, pay extra, or provide paid time off for those holidays.

Nope, I'm not. Fair enough: 46.6 hours per week at 50 weeks then, not 48 hours at 48 weeks.

What a weird stat. I've never seen anyone take a fraction of a median like that. I can't think of any reason to create such a strange figure besides being dishonest.

There’s nothing to believe, he’s saying that when you live in an area with $8/hr jobs getting a $15/hr one is a boon. Thus it’s clearly not a reference to the area you lived in?

Amazon's secret recipe for FCs is that they managed to remove almost all onboarding costs. Training literally takes an hour. So they don't care about turnover; all they need is to keep attracting enough folks that they can run at full capacity.

I guess the 15$/h figure is the equilibrium point for that. It's probably a little bit below the costs to completely automate these jobs.

I would love to meet a bootcamp grad with no programming experience that got into Jane Street. They would have to be truly exceptional, given the onus they put on CS fundamentals (for example they sponsor OPLSS).

Few things I can't figure out from a tweet.

1 - Is Lambda going to train engineers already hired at Amazon and is just going to provide an onboarding bootcamp for new hires? Doesn't sound like a bad idea considering Amazon's scale and the amount of internal tooling they must have.

2 - Is Lambda going to supply bootcamp-grads programmers to Amazon?

3 - What do they mean by "Back-End"? Is it Software Engineering roles or back-end customer service/SRE they are training them for?

I'm not sure. From Lambda's website it looks like they are just releasing a program co-developed by Amazon. It's modeled off of an internal training program Amazon has. I didn't see any statements about interviewing or working at Amazon. I think Lambda would brag about a program that was designed to get students jobs at Amazon. I don't think there's any guarantee of a job or interview.

https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/lambda-school-launches-... https://lambdaschool.com/courses/backend-development

> they are just releasing a program co-developed by Amazon

Ahh, so getting devs familiar with Amazon's product offerings.

It’s 2. Amazon needs to hire more backend developers. Though students aren’t guaranteed a job at Amazon, and can work any number of places with that skill set.

I had a family member do lambda school recently, they got an “apprentice software engineer” job immediately after graduation, and this is someone who probably would NOT have done well going to college. YMMV

A tweet with no explanation, just random accusations. Not sure why this is even being shared.

The author posted some more details on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26803218

So they are charging Oxford level tuition fees but it's it worth those prices? Do you get a similar recognition with your Lambda School paper/diploma? Assuming you need to pay the international Oxford fees.

Personally, I am not convinced it's worth it

I’ve had experience with both Lambda and Amazon.

Everyone working as an Associate in an Amazon distribution/fulfilment Center from 20 or more years ago would have accrued well over $5m in stock options and units today.

That’s for unskilled entry level work, at a much lower than current hourly wage, and assuming the stock wasn’t sold early(which it almost always was from my perspective).

Everyone attending Lambda has an opportunity to learn and up skill, but it is extremely rough and messy, much like Amazon’s early days.

Turnover/attrition for both Amazon and Lambda would be quite high.

So the dream is real, but the reality is considerable challenge.

Amazon’s full-time headcount growth is still extremely high(1.3m compared to 575k just 2 years ago).

Lambda has had a few students get hired by Amazon, so it’s in their best interest to link their brand to big tech brands.

People like sausages, but watching how sausages get made can be distasteful for some or many.

Oh no I actually thought it was a really good idea to give people a chance to work hard and get a better life.

I still dont completely write it off as a bad idea.

I mentioned it to my son but he was sceptical.

I think it could be a good idea, if it were run by an existing organization that was already financially successful and didn't need to optimize for growth or cash flow, such as a university or one of the existing MOOC providers.

I deleted this comment but it seems to be lingering?

How is it predatory if they don't charge any money upfront?

Some students pay up front.

But if you want to focus on the ISA, the terms are for five years. If the program delivers no value, you only get out ahead if you decide to give up programming until it expires.

Imagine the program failing you, you decide to pursue an associate's degree, and still owing them money.

Imagine a degree failing you and owing money plus interest literally no matter what happens

Again, you're trying to change the topic. We are not talking about colleges. We're talking about whether ISAs can fail, and they can.

But to answer your question, I have two relatives that successfully discharged their student debt due to financial hardships. ISAs have no similar process, short of hiring a lawyer and hoping for the best.

We have a hardship process as well. If there were a way to design a perfect financial instrument we would - we get as close as we possibly can.

You have to construct a chain of what-ifs to generate a scenario as bad as what is the default everywhere else (and it’s still better), yet you are constantly yelling about how evil we are. Perhaps just re-examine your priors?

Let's talk about some concrete evils, then.

How many students have you pressured into signing NDAs as part of your "hardship process"?

Thanks

I’m not sure who this works is or why his seemingly shallow tweets are important to pay attention to. Can someone explain? Surely criticizing Lambda is far less useful than criticizing the university system, which provides far worse outcomes for far more money?

> Surely criticizing Lambda is far less useful than criticizing the university system, which provides far worse outcomes for far more money?

You have to compare apples to apples. The university system encompasses far more than Lambda school. I think a fair comparison would be how well does the average person with a degree in CS or Software Engineering from a university do (or even maybe a community college so the timespan is closer to a boot camp)? In my experience the answer is very well.

and how do the people who drop out of a university with student loans but no degree do? If you drop out of lambda school, or even if you graduate but don’t make 50k / year in a tech job, you pay nothing.

Obviously, not well. We would have to do statistical analysis on the outcomes of everyone who did lambda school and everyone who did traditional CS at community colleges to reach any kind of meaningful conclusion. My main point is that comparing to the whole university system is pointless. Also, if we narrowed our focus to community colleges, they're typically very inexpensive and free for low-income students.

HN constantly attacks Tesla and Elon so you shouldn't be surprised. In fact, I've associated negative attacks from HN as an indicator that the company/person being attacked is probably doing something good.

It's fascinating to me how much crabs-in-the-bucket syndrome this place has acquired over the past few years. It's hard to think of successful people HN doesn't hate.

I am not that quick on hating successful people. There are more of us on HN. I find it interesting to read the other side.

HN is divided on divisive issues. It's that simple.

People overgeneralize about that because of cognitive bias: the bad (what you don't like) stands out more than the good (what you agree with). What's negative (to you) is what you're more likely to notice: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... That's why people with the opposite tastes make the opposite generalizations.

For every comment like yours ("constantly attacks Tesla and Elon") there's one of these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26506294 ("Musk fanboys and Tesla apologists").

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26803359.

We're not allowed to criticize HN? I'm not sure which rules I was breaking? I simply gave my opinion on a pattern I've noticed on HN. You're censoring me because you disagree?

I think part of the problem is the funnel. They don't charge students until a month in. They start off with a large number of student who they anticipate will drop before the ISA kicks in, then they prorate the ISA, although not evenly. The count should probably start once the ISA kicks in, even if the student doesn't get through the entire program. Fair enough right? Otherwise do not charge students unless they graduate. I think they aren't transparent about how the count/ outcomes are measured.

My biggest concern with the program, however, is the instruction and the lack of one on one feedback with qualified people.

The other concern is will their desire to fill diversity quotas. Perhaps this is coming from the market, demanding certain races in hiring, but in my personal experience, highly qualified people who can easily pass the entry exam were denied the female scholarship and given to racially diverse woman who couldn't pass the entry exam. Also, the founder tweeted out that over 50% of their students surveyed were LGBTQ like that was a goal of some kind.

I think Lambda is more concerned with racial quotas than training software engineers. So if you want a token hire look towards Lambda.

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