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Comment by gexla | Hacker News Reader

Once you're in, why not forget about the quality and problems and just follow the program?

I have only ever gone to low level state schools, but one of my instructors told me that he wasn't there to teach me. He was there to guide me through the curriculum. That stuck.

Stick to the program, sweat out the X months. You'll come out as close to a programmer / designer / X as you would from any other path aside from some sort of paid internship where you can teach yourself on the job.

You could teach yourself. Many do. But most will not.

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If you're self motivated enough to follow a curriculum on your own, you're probably much better off using online resources from MIT/Stanford/Harvard which are not only free but much better quality.

The learning environment described in the linked thread (200 students per teacher, plus blind leading the blind with volunteer mentors) sounds terrible at any price including $0.00. Many MOOCs have community boards, TA's, interactive assignments and cost little or nothing. If their plan is to just bundle that same experience with a job placement sales team and a private slack, then they'll just be yet another for-profit credential mill

Not really relevant but I'm basically the only person I know that thinks it's the coolest thing in the world that I can open up my computer and watch a lecture from MIT/Stanford/Harvard etc. in almost any thing I want. Such a great time to be alive for self-motivated people that like learning stuff!

Couldn't agree more. In fact, most students will look for outside resources because Lambda's resources are poor. In fact, one of my instructors shares a PDF of Grokking Algorithms to his students because the school's CS content is lacking.

Of course you could teach yourself, but why pay 30 k for the pleasure of doing that?

Couldn't you make this same argument for any school in the US?

Maybe We're getting vague here (my fault.) What do we actually mean by "teach yourself?" Nobody is spoon-feeding you knowledge. You get a curriculum to follow.

It seems to me that if you get through the program and then land a job from it, then you got some value from the program. Maybe you could have done that on your own. But if you're looking at a bootcamp to learn in the first place, then you probably weren't going to learn on your own anyways.

Well, a normal university provides much more support than Lambda school seems to do, lectures, graded homework, labs, exams etc, so my point was that if Lambda doesn't provide that and is only really a way to teach yourself, then 30k is too much.

University of course also provides a lot of things not directly related to the teaching, the student experience, a network, for some people the first experience of living on their own etc.

Let's say you have two programs to select from. One program has a 60% placement rate, but has horrible quality. The other has a 30% placement rate, but high quality. Let's say that an independent 3rd party does the quality assessment from invites to participate and from student feedback. This same body also finds that the employers and starting salaries for each program is roughly equal. Would you care about quality? I would select the first option. The higher placement rate has the greater value due to the greater probability of landing a job. It's like playing a pocket pair of Aces vs a pocket pair of Jacks in Texas Hold'em. I would consider the possibility of placing myself with a job as coming in with a pocket pair of 7's.

What else matters? I guarantee that you'll learn something through an intensive effort of pacing along with the curriculum. I'm also sure that it's not going to be enough to feel comfortable that first day of the job.

What's the placement rate? If that rate has plummeted or has always been horrible, then that's all I need to hear.

Maybe what they are really teaching is the process of getting yourself into a self-learning mode of work. I have to learn new things every day. I would bet my day looks similar to those in Lambda. Maybe it's a "wax on, wax off" sort of thing which looks like BS but actually works if you don't get hung up on things outside of the end-goal. As long as the employer placement numbers are good (and maybe they aren't,) then I'm a believer.

I personally studied theoretical physics and abstract geometry, plus a few years of classical languages so I think our priorities are pretty different...

My original point was simply that teach yourself-programs are well and good, that’s how I learned to program and I now work for a FAANG, but then you shouldn’t have to pay 30 k.

You're probably right, we speak different languages.

I feel 30K is meaningless if we're not talking about an ROI on that investment. Many software developers spend that on education at a university along with 4 years of their time. That education may get you started, then your experience takes over as the most important item on your future job searches. That first gig may have a huge effect on your future options (getting lucky with a high impact position with Google vs low impact at no name.) The more impressive your education, the better leverage you have to land that good first gig. In this case, spending far more than 30K on your education likely pays off huge. You didn't need to spend that, but you made a bet which increased your chances.

Spending 30K on a bootcamp may not have the same dramatic impact on your chances, but if it pushes you to focus on knocking out a curriculum and ends with multiple offers, then you could quickly recoup that money versus the alternative route. That alternative might be that you have less focus, requiring longer to gain the same skills and you need more time for a job search. That job search might end with a lesser paying job than Lambda may have lined up for you.

And paying for courses is a thing. Amy Hoy's 30 x 500 is $2000. I ran into an interesting copywriting course the other day which costs the same. Tiago Forte of Building a Second Brain has bundles which run in that range. It's reasonable that a program which runs 6+ months could cost 30K. You don't need any of these courses to learn the content, but I don't think that's the correct mindset. What will be the return on these courses? Will they help you speed up your alternative timeline? Will they help push you accomplish something you would otherwise flounder on? How long would most people take to create and follow a full time curriculum for landing that first programming gig? I bet most would give up before finishing. If the program gives you a better chance at finishing, then that's worth a lot.

All that said, I'm sure I would change my mind if I were to dish out 30K for a 6 month program and then the next week turned into a dumpster fire of courses. It's one thing to write about how you should stick to the program. It's quite another to pull out your card to pay 30K and then get hit with a feeling of heavy disappointment with the course material.

I paid for the accountability, feedback, and support (which, was provided before I was financially committed). Why would I pay 30k to just teach myself when I can do that with YouTube, Udemy, and documentation?

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