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Comment by andyjsong | Hacker News Reader

Lambda School is 6 months vs. 9 weeks with Juno.

Wait, so people actually pay 17% of their income over two years for a 9 week course? What on earth is the upside of this over picking up a few books/online courses and attending a couple of networking events?

> What on earth is the upside

For the attendants or for Juno? ;)

One possible upside: Not all jobs are advertised and maybe Juno/Lambda have worked up agreements with recruiters.

Also,think about it from a recruiter point of view: Would you as recruiter rather pore through hundreds of resumes from people who have picked up courses online (and risk getting beat up by interviewers when a few of these don't perform well) or have a pre-screened/evaluated candidates? Worst case: you pass the buck on to Juno/Lambda. There is some incentive for a recruiter to look at Juno/Lambda candidates,no?

I get what you're saying but from an employee and personal development point of view, even the most intense 9 week course sounds guaranteed to lack the necessary substance and depth I'd want for a career start / change (which is what they're marketing this for, right?). The same argument would make me just as wary from a hiring standpoint, don't see much of a difference of qualification between 9 weeks of bootcamp versus a selection of relevant online courses there tbh. Worst case in my mind would be a $startupcollege candidate that was just trained on passing through interview processes, that's not sustainable for recruiter/employer relationship in the long term either.

That being said, my experience with letting recruiters filter candidates haven't been the best in the past and my exposure to bootcamp grads is limited since that's just not much of a thing in the German market overall (I guess because there's no real need since traditional university/apprenticeship education paths are far more affordable around here). Is hiring these candidates common in the US outside of the usual startup circles?

> Is hiring these candidates common in the US outside of the usual startup circles?

I’m afraid I don’t know :-). I’m from India this isn’t common here. Yet.

Is this the bootcamp version of the famous Dropbox HN quote?

I only partially agree with you. I also prefer learning with books and online courses but that's not everybody's case.

Some people benefit much more from a structured process where they can ask questions easily, be tested much more often and gauge their progress over time.

The example of online courses was merely because I can't think of another equivalent to this crash course approach to education.

While that might be in Dropbox territory as well, I don't see anything other than monetary reasons for why somebody would prefer a 9 week course. Availability/geography can't be it for purely US based programs. Traditional university offerings have not only as much structure as you'd like but also give you knowledge in depth if you choose a good set of courses. All the while providing a pretty customisable, and mostly sane, pace through programs that gives you as many challenges or as much freedom to explore as you want. Not to say that universities shouldn't improve but I'm just quite bazzled as to why the market seems to think these bootcamps are such a great idea.

I think it was Make school who said they did 12 weeks and that wasn't enough so they expanded to a 2-4 year bachelor program

for my kids’ university I’m assuming 8+ years...and that’s if they don’t follow Mom’s path through multiple PhDs!

All so they can program the robot caregivers that will swaddle me someday.

I'm almost going to graduate in HS and hopefully can either get picked up by YC or theil instead of going to college. Given the high chance I do go to college, I'll just be doing whatever I'd be doing at YC anyways.

I also thought about doing academia for a long time, but realized its just a sticker mark on your resume. Given that I graduate from undergrad, I'll hopefully get a good sticker doing masters.

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