| | Devin | Software Engineer and Former Lambda Student on "Is Lambda Worth It"

This will be a bit long-winded I apologize beforehand. But I have strong opinions and feel they should be fully explained.
I attended Lambda for 4 months as a student and 4 months as a TL before dropping out of lambda completely. I started with virtually no experience and did lambda full-time. With no job. And now I am a Salary Software-Engineer employee.
The first 4 months of lambda was "ok" at best. I found the Lectures to be decent but the materials were pretty much all free projects that could be found anywhere on the internet. The curriculum itself was pretty weak and also contained nothing you couldn't find with a simple google search. It is really aimed to try and give you a high-level web dev skill to React without giving much of a foundation at all in the actual language it uses (JS). By month 3 all students could make some simple React UI App but virtually no one could write a for loop from scratch. I found this to be one of Lambda's greatest shortcomings. They focus more on teaching you one specific library that is always apt to change instead of really teaching you the language everything is built off of. At month 4 I felt like I had somehow skated by. I mean I passed everything but really didn't understand anything at a low level. At this point, I decided to apply for a TL position. I did it because I was wanting a second pass on all the materials since I felt lambda hadn't really taught me anything. Most of us were in this boat. Lambda claims you can flex whenever but I did not find this to be the case at all. There was immense pressure to not flex and lambda loves to blame their bad teaching on "imposter syndrome". Whenever students would express they felt left behind lambda staff would just always say it's just imposter syndrome.
My second Four months as a TL Is what really gave me my career. I say this for 2 reasons.
First, after becoming a TL I had more time and I started taking Udemy courses on JS and react and also took front-end masters courses. I learned far more from these courses than the lambda curriculum. It wasn't even close and by the end, I was really upset thinking about what if I had been using these resources the whole time instead of lambda's materials.
Second, helping other students solve problems and fix code all day when their approaches are all very different helped me to be a much better problem solver and really build my skills in pattern recognition. This was where I felt myself grow the most and start really gaining the confidence to be more hands-on.
Why I dropped out?
After seeing how much their curriculum had failed me and how much more I learned through other resources I could not constitute staying. Even if I had to pay my ISA the real goal here was getting a job. I knew I could do that better with other resources than what lambda was giving me. But I did want a big showcase Project for my portfolio. I considered staying for labs but seeing how much of a shit storm my original cohort went through while I was a TL really made me decide against it. After 2 months full time, most groups had nothing better than any regular build week project. Most groups complained about constant requirement changes and lambda changing the list of acceptable technologies and forcing groups to restart their projects if they weren't compliant. Lambda shows these labs videos with these great projects and stories but anyone who went through it has a very different story. I find this to be a lot of things at lambda. They advertise things one way and then act surprised when the students are so upset with changes.
3 weeks after dropping out I was hired as a contractor and since then the company has hired me full time. So if it worked for me where do I stand on if a new student should apply to lambda ??
I would say absolutely not. This school's interests are not aligned with you. It's like any cooperation built completely on venture capital. They will keep growing as fast as they can. They will keep making insane policy changes that hurt the student but help their bottom line. For Example, the only positive thing I really said here about lambda is the TL program in which I felt really helped me become a Programmer. Well that TL program has since been ended. Projects don't even get graded anymore. Why in the world would they do this? Is it because it Will help more people get hired? Of course not! It's because they are a business, and their interests, for the most part, are self-aligned. Now they don't have to Pay the TL 13 bucks an hour, who cares if that immensely helped facilitate learning. A lot of people believe lambda doesn't get paid unless a student gets hired. This is just completely untrue. Almost all their money at this point has come from VC funding, and they sell the ISA's in bulk before the student even finds a job.
I will say regardless of anything I just said I don't believe in finding problems without offering solutions. So what should you do in lou of lambda?
Front end masters and Udemy. For a fraction of the cost, you can learn React JS and Node in a way far deeper way than you will get from lambda. With loads more hours of resources. These programs can actually help you master these technologies. While lambda will just generally expose you. I don't feel lambda is worth the time let alone the money. |
