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Comment by LMYahooTFY | Hacker News Reader

> I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats!

I'm constantly amazed how badly people respond. This is blatantly false, they're explicitly noted in the outcomes reporting.

Furthermore, they don't "help with teaching", they're basically paid tutors.

You're taking the weakest interpretation to strawman Lambda with, and I'd argue you're mostly just arguing against falsehoods.

Yes I went to Lambda, and yes I'm employed as a Software Engineer.

"Bootcamps"/Vocational schools, or whatever you want to call them, are the market's response to the college system falling apart at the edges. IMO the weakest universities are as bad as the worst bootcamps.

Edit: Also just curious, have you compared placements rates for Lambda or any other "bootcamps" to any universities?

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> Furthermore, they don't "help with teaching", they're basically paid tutors.

So they teach the class or just help the teacher (hence helping with teaching)?

> Yes I went to Lambda, and yes I'm employed as a Software Engineer.

Ahh, so there's an incentive to defend the brand here.

> So they teach the class or just help the teacher (hence helping with teaching)?

They don't teach any part of the class, an instructor gives a live lecture practically identical to any other traditional pedagogy. Some students tutor others, also not a new idea. What do you think is wrong with this idea?

> Ahh, so there's an incentive to defend the brand here.

Wow that was a full disclaimer and you're...leaning on it, with no elaboration? Do you think my question wasn't worth addressing?

You mentioned algorithmic complexity in another reply, and presumably you don't realize that Lambda actually does teach computation complexity.

But if you're going to just lean on my disclaimer and be dismissive in discussion, I suppose that's that.

> Some students tutor others, also not a new idea. What do you think is wrong with this idea?

In college it's frequent to have TAs, students who completed the course and did well in it and help with grading assignments, labs and so on. But they aren't just a few weeks ahead of the students they teach.

> Wow that was a full disclaimer and you're...leaning on it, with no elaboration?

Honestly, every time Lambda is mentioned there's a flow of new accounts who "graduated" from these bootcamps and companies that are "extremely satisfied" with these hires... but never is a company actually named! That's strange, to say the least.

>But they aren't just a few weeks ahead of the students they teach.

Sure, and I find trying to teach something extremely useful for retention. I found it useful to have students who had just finished the content attempt to explain it.

> Honestly, every time Lambda is mentioned there's a flow of new accounts who "graduated" from these bootcamps and companies that are "extremely satisfied" with these hires... but never is a company actually named! That's strange, to say the least.

Agreed, although it's not obvious to me that it's orchestrated or automatically invalid which seems to be in a background implication here.

I saw a discussion about Lambda where upvoted comments were stating clearly false things, and I felt compelled to engage and I'd have made an account to do it. That also looks like astro-turfing/brigading/dislike-attacks/whatever you want to call it. It also looks like individuals voicing their opinions.

Having an 'incentive to defend the brand' goes without saying IMO, and is the whole purpose of a disclaimer.

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