I was a student and was affected by the changes. I'll clarify here for anyone that wants the details...
Prior to the changes, small groups of students in every cohort was led by a TL. This TL was a student further ahead in the program, probably in part-time if they were a TL for full-time.
The TL had many responsibilities. They would attend lecture with their group of students, conduct 1:1 everyday with each of their students for 15 minutes, grading their work and giving them feedback. They would lead a stand-up at the end of the day with their group, reviewing whatever was relevant, and every morning before lecture they would meet with the instructor and acted as an intermediary to the instructor, relaying important information such as how well the students were doing, what they were struggling on, etc. TLs also supposedly acted as project leaders in build weeks, but I did not get to experience that.
Everyday, our assignments were graded by a TL on a 3-star scale. Our "sprint challenge" at the end of the week was also graded by the TL, which would force a student to retake the challenge if they got at least one question wrong.
Fast forward to when Lambda announced they were removing TLs, adding student mentorship, self-assessment, and groups called "track teams". The school also reduced from 9 months to 6 months (probably to pump us out quicker. From what I've witnessed, the shortened curriculum has done students no favors).
Most students were upset at the assembly announcing these changes, and pointed out the myriad of obvious flaws to the student mentorship program. Lambda claimed that the change was to improve "consistency" in the program, but students kept publicly speculating whether this was a financial move (Lambda admitted 3 months later that is WAS motivated by costs, after ignoring student speculation).
Track-teams, which replaced stand-ups, were now student-led, with the "leader" position rotated every week. The groups were now made of students of different cohorts, and the prompts we had to awkwardly read over during the meeting were mostly soft-skills. Very few people enjoyed this, and because Lambda was not taking attendance, most people did not go. This negatively affected build-weeks, though, since your track team is your build team. Build-weeks were supposed to give students experience with working in groups. But because Lambda was not keeping its students accountable, I ended up working with just one other person in both build-weeks, when it should have been 4 or 5.
Now the grading was the sketchiest part about all this. Lambda had just switched to using Google Canvas. The canvas was broken. The school had obviously not either tested or fully realized it, but it should not have been deployed. Students were now submitting all assignments and sprint challenges through canvas, and the only grade we got was whether we turned it in or not... So there was a period of confusion (at least in my cohort) where we kept asking around HOW and WHEN our work would be looked at and graded... Nobody really knew, this includes staff and "student-success". Then it became obvious that nobody was looking at or grading our work. We now "self-assessed" ourselves and determined whether or not we thought we were ready for the next unit. Heck, I couldn't even get the answer bank to the sprint challenges. I asked the Data Science program director myself at the time, and he just said "stay-tuned for updates on feedback".
There was even a week where I tested whether or not Lambda cared if I was submitting anything at all by NOT submitting anything. And... crickets. No more accountability.
There were even form submissions where a student could select "I want to be contacted by student-success or an instructor". Those form submissions didn't work, I tried them every week, and I sent feedback and personally DMed people complaining about this. Lambda School said the changes were to give students more 1:1 time with instructors... but there was no (working) process implemented to have this come true.
I can’t help but think this is related to chasing venture returns. College needs to be “disrupted”, but there’s not necessarily a way to do this that creates the type of leverage of a SaaS company. I recall seeing Austen on here once boasting about how he’d raised upwards of $70m, and my first thought was that I hope this doesn’t destroy them... now they’re at $122m
Please tell
> It sounds like the quality has really degraded since then (this was 2018).
I'm skeptical of bootcamps. Lambda has "student TAs" that are basically three months ahead of the students they coach. Contrast this to a real school where your TAs are, at worse, undergrads who completed the course and were personally selected by the professor in charge.
That and, from what I've seen, a lot of bootcamps are light on theory and are more focused on rote. A lot of "graduates" will have a "portfolio" but if you go peek at the code from multiple students of the same batch you'll see that it's basically the same project 30+ students did. Same structure, same lines. What I would expect out of a first year CS lab assignment.
> College needs to be “disrupted”, but there’s not necessarily a way to do this that creates the type of leverage of a SaaS company.
It's a policy issue. Having easy access to (non defaultable) students loans created an amenities arm race.
I don't see bootcamp experience as being useful for a hiring metric. You can get the same exact results by independently studying yourself, and save yourself the stress and money. You're better off finding peers/mentors to talk to through programming meetups/conferences.
I really leveled up my JavaScript and coding skills in general and ended up dramatically increasing my earning power. I was hired about a week after graduating and just the signing bonus paid most my tuition.
If I ever see a similar kind of school for the next skill I want to build, I'll probably enroll.
That said, I've heard some of the Lambda School claims and don't believe they're honest. Vincent Woo did some solid reporting on Lambda.
You can accomplish the same thing by following courses/books online, making a handful of projects on github to show interviewers, and networking at conferences/meetups. That's how I landed my first part-time job with programming, and then my first full-time job.
I went to Turing a few years ago. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm happy to claim that a Turing grad will be able to be competitive with most CS grads in a a junior position. In a lot of ways they will be more prepared.
I also disagree that you can get the same education on your own. Good bootcamps have an incredibly short feedback loop, and there are actual professionals in the loop. You simply won't get daily feedback about best practices, code reviews, git training, etc. from an experienced professional if all you do is watch youtube and read books.
I started coding in the 90s and learned solely from books, friends, web sites. I was lucky to get a job without a degree or anything on paper to show that I could do what I was doing.
I did some certifications and doubled my salary in a year. It was funny to me that they didn’t teach that much to make me 2x productive, but it fit into my org’s salary band structure because now I had some certs.
I think the challenge is that it sucks for people who need more help and actual experience. Now that so many people are taking them, the signaling is less useful.
It very much felt like a bait-and-switch.
The experience prior to the changes was what I paid for.
The experience after the changes wasn’t what I paid for.
Lambda School’s pivot in this instance was way too big, way too fast, and way too poorly planned/executed.
My experience went from having excellent Team Leaders(TLs) who graded my work, compulsory attendance, excellent Build Week TL and team members to an involuntary Mentor who ghosted me, a Track Team that never attended meetings, a Build Week with zero support, no attendance verification, no grading, and no response from Lambda School after consistent and repeated requests for support.
It was a shocking difference in experience before/after.
I get that Lambda School isn’t a bank, insurance company, hospital, or traditional school/university where massive risk results in massive risk aversion.
But it’s no longer a “move fast, break things” MVP either.
I went from being a strong vocal advocate for Lambda School to seriously questioning its business model.
I do sincerely hope Lambda School’s program evolves in a positive direction for student outcomes.
But in my experience and opinion, the Lambda School value proposition has taken a significant hit.
I’m currently awaiting refund.
I don't disagree that Lambda School may have problems but they're still young and have a lot to improve. Just from my personal anecdote but I've worked with people from bootcamps (notably Hack Reactor), and they've been fantastic so I believe that they're (bootcamps) definitely capable of educating people for success.
