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Lambda School - sanantone - 01-12-2019

What do you think about income-sharing programs? Some of their contracts verge on being predatory, but Lambda School seems a little better. They offer online coding bootcamps that last 6+ months. You have two options. You can either pay $20k upfront or 17% of your annual salary for two years after landing a job that pays at least $50k. The max you'll pay is $30k in total. If you choose not to pay upfront and never get a job that pays more than $50k per year, then you don't pay anything. 

I'm iffy about this one. Seventeen percent of a paycheck is a lot, and $30k is a lot for a program that is only 6-8 months. I'm also not sure if spending $30k just to make $50k is a good investment. One can get a whole bachelor's degree for that amount. I'm sure they have some graduates making more than $75k, but it's a risk. Also, one review I read said that you can't work full-time while in the program. 

https://lambdaschool.com/about/


RE: Lambda School - Ideas - 01-12-2019

I saw some other program like this, and I believe they did a lot to help graduates afterwards. If they help with job placement, it makes more sense to me. However, I think that the one I saw was a little pushy in that you agreed to do the interviews they set up. I may have multiple programs mixed up.

If you attend part-time, Lamba takes 54 weeks. It seems like they cover a lot.


RE: Lambda School - dfrecore - 01-13-2019

I'm not a fan of income sharing - and it sounds a bit onerous here. Let's say you get a job making $50k. 15% of that is $8,500 per year for 2 years (so $17k total). Sounds ok - except that $700/mo may be a lot of money if you're making $50k and paying roughly 25% in taxes, so $37,500 a year for the first 2 years. It works out to be about 22% of your net pay for 2 years. Yikes, that's a lot. It might not leave enough to pay rent and buy food and electricity and gas for a couple of years.


RE: Lambda School - MNomadic - 01-13-2019

I've looked into a lot of the coding boot camps and they are mostly all WAY overpriced. I have no doubt that they offer quality education and training, but there's no way someone should pay $15k+ for a 3-9 month program that isn't even accredited or regulated. Sure they offer help with job placement, but there's no way in hell I'd pay such a premium price for that! Once you have the skills/training/credentials that are in demand, networking and finding work isn't that hard when you consider LinkedIn, free job placement services, and recruiting firms that are paid to find YOU(this is all dependant on location and economic factors at that given time and location).

Some alternatives to paying exorbitant amounts of money:

-Cheaper courses at a community college or university.

-The plethora of MOOCs from edx, Udacity, Coursera, udemy, etc. Some of those programs are actually created by the industry to help them hire qualified people.

App Academy, which has a very good reputation among coding schools offers their entire curriculum online for free: https://open.appacademy.io/#mentorship

The coding school that I've had my eye on as being a good value is Bottega because their part-time remote program costs $7500 and has accreditation, ACE recommendation and a pathway to a full bachelor's degree with some partner schools.
https://bottega.tech

The concept of income sharing could be good if the price was reasonable, though.


RE: Lambda School - sanantone - 01-13-2019

I often tell people that there are free and low-cost learning resources that aid self-teaching, but I think a lot of people struggle without structure and instructional guidance. For those interested in web development, I know that Free Code Camp offers a structured program. It does not have human instruction, but it does have a forum where fellow students ask and answer questions.

I think some of the first income-sharing programs were alternative teacher certification programs. You pay a few hundred dollars upfront, and you pay less than $5,000 in monthly installments after you start teaching. That seems a lot more doable than trying to pay down $30k in two years.


RE: Lambda School - dfrecore - 01-13-2019

(01-13-2019, 08:06 PM)sanantone Wrote: I think some of the first income-sharing programs were alternative teacher certification programs. You pay a few hundred dollars upfront, and you pay less than $5,000 in monthly installments after you start teaching. That seems a lot more doable than trying to pay down $30k in two years.

$5000 over 2-3 years is somewhere between $138-$208/mo - totally doable).  $20,000 over 2 years is $833/mo - a LOT of money.  That's a mortgage payment for a lot of people.