Thanks for your response. I’ll take your word that the mistakes are not due to too much ambition and are not originated by biting more than what you can chew or a “land grab” market strategy. I have no primary knowledge on Lambda School to do otherwise.

But it is worth paying more attention to the frustrated students feedback. The OP one is about lack of team leaders and having “mentors” that are qualified just by having two more months of online classes than them. And it is not the first time a similar issue arises. Lambda School seems to always be justifying mistakes after some disgruntled student testimonial gets some traction.

My personal unsolicited advice: listen more to your students ahead of time and not employers. Employers are full of bullshit. They have a huge list of qualities that they want to see in a candidate, then go on to hire someone that is not at all like that, but the hiring manager liked (for whatever subjective reasons). It seems to be a wrong step to follow employers gospel and go against students expectations. You say that you know more about what students want and need than themselves. I doubt that. Give what students want: confidence that they learned something useful and, moreover, confidence that they can continue to learn about UX/software development through their career. That confidence in their knowledge will earn them jobs, not employers with no skin in the game telling you want they ideally want.

Don’t patronize your students. When you do, it feels from the outside that you are taking shortcuts to people’s education in favor of short term market share growth.