
Lambda School (YC S17) now pays eligible students $2k/month - austenallred
https://lambdaschool.com/stipend
======
austenallred
Hey, co-founder of Lambda School here.

We launched our online CS academy with no upfront tuition almost two years
ago.

Now with thousands of students enrolled and hundreds already employed and
paying back we wanted to take the next step and open up access to folks who
couldn’t afford to pay to survive while attending.

Of course, that introduces significant risk on our part, as students still
only pay us back if they get a job paying $50k/yr or more, but we’ve spent the
last two years perfecting our admissions and course to select hard-working
folks who are likely to have what it takes to get hired and do everything we
can to get them there.

For context, we have dozens of full-time interview sourcers and multiple
companies per day coming in to interview our students - incentive alignment is
powerful. Now that that’s working we can afford to take more risk.

We’re hoping we reach a point where anyone anywhere can move quickly to a high
paying job, and only pay back if it works!

~~~
westpfelia
Are you thinking of expanding into programs outside of web development?

As a cyber security engineer I think that this is something that would really
help get more people into the industry. And there just isnt enough
universities that have programs. My Alma Mater is going to be starting one
soon but... Looking at the class list I cant help but feel like the 4 years
are wasted and a more concentrated program would yield better results.

~~~
austenallred
Yes, cyber security will be our next track. We also have a UX design track, as
well as data science, iOS development and android development.

~~~
westpfelia
Thats really cool to hear! I'd be interested in what you guys end up commiting
to teaching for it.

------
patio11
This is a far, far better deal than the one that I got for university (CS at a
major US research institution, class of 2004), which involved a sticker price
of about $140k, a work study assignment unjamming printers to justify ~$2k of
wages per semester to cover (barely) the meal plan, and ~$X0k of non-
dischargeable debt which started ticking the day I graduated, despite the fact
that I was earning salaryman wages (~$30k) for the first 6 years of my career.

Lambda School is quite possibly the most impressive startup I'm presently
aware of. They are going to hit tertiary education like a freight train.

~~~
zachruss92
I couldn’t agree more. The traditional education system is broken for training
software engineers in my opinion. I thankfully dropped out my freshman year,
but some of my classmates were literally not capable of using Git (branching &
resolving merge conflicts) for their senior capstone projects. Given almost
every company uses Git all day every day how is a $250k education helping
prepare them for working in the real world?

I love that programs like Udacity (and likely Lambda School as well) teaches
Git(hub) as a 101 level course and use traditional workflows to submit,
critique, and grade code.

I do, however, still think traditional universities still have a place,
especially when it comes to research. I’m referring to things like AI/ML.

~~~
kasey_junk
Under no circumstances would I be happy if my degree program taught me how to
use git.

I can’t think of a single skill more stupid to learn in university.

My degree came a lot cheaper than the modern ones but if I got a similar
experience now as then I wouldn’t feel cheated.

My undergraduate provided opportunities to program lisps & assembly & write
published articles on data structures & I literally went to the local state
school.

~~~
mikekchar
Just because I like telling this story: My university taught me every sorting
algorithm known to man (or at least it felt like it at the time). After
graduating, I traveled for a bit in the UK and got a job at a travel tour
company doing odd jobs. One day the finance department asked me to sort a room
full of records. Normally it took them 2 weeks to do the work.

"Right! If there is one thing I know how to do, it's sorting", I though.

Finished the job in half a day (shell sort -- which sadly was the only one I
could actually remember...) They thought I was a freaking genius :-) Who says
you'll never use this stuff?

~~~
austenallred
That is a great story.

How many times have you told it? :)

~~~
mikekchar
At least 3 times on HN :-)

------
raidicy
I'm a current student at Lambda School going part time. So this is pretty
biased:

I've been enrolled for about 6 months. I've had previous programming
experience so I feel I've had a leg up. But had no idea how to use the skills
or build anything. I've never felt this confident with what I've learned in my
life. Period. Everyone I've interacted with is genuine, welcoming, and gives
me the impression they want me to succeed. I'm truly grateful to be able to be
enrolled and I look forward to working to be able to pay back the school the
value they've imparted in me.

Thank you Austen and everyone from Lambda School!

------
dtrailin
While I think what Lambda School does seems pretty great I have to wonder what
will happen when the next recession hits. If their new grads aren't getting
hired, they can't afford to pay for their current class. It feels like
something that is only possible right now because of bubble economics and
cheap VC capital.

~~~
austenallred
We have to prepare pretty seriously for a recession - recessions are when
school enrollment explodes because job opportunities dry up.

I can’t go into all the details publicly, but it’s something we have to take
serious consideration to prepare for.

------
pl0x
@austenallred What's the catch? Lambda School has always struck me as scam
like with a very vocal CEO and over promises.

What happens when regulators start cracking down on these practices and what
makes you think Lambda will be successful when most bootcamps have failed or
been acquired.

~~~
japhyr
I agree that Lambda School sounds too good to be true, but once you start
looking they've got real answers for just about everything. I'm a high school
teacher, and after watching students struggle with decisions about what to do
after high school, I love what I'm seeing with Lambda School.

What do you think regulators need to address at Lambda School?

~~~
austenallred
I guess “seems too good to be true” is an OK marketing problem for us to have.

If you’d like you can attend classes on a trial basis and check it out!

~~~
bbg215
What exactly is your admissions criteria for someone to get accepted to LS?

How big of a problem is that for your student-to-job conversion rate when the
criteria has to become less stringent to scale?

~~~
austenallred
We look mostly at how well they do on our pre course work, how hard they work
and how quickly they can climb steep programming learning curves.

We’re seeing over 1,000 applications/week. Top of funnel is not our issue.

~~~
rizwank
What are your issues then?

~~~
austenallred
We don't have any "issues" in the sense of things that will kill us
immediately, with the possible exception of an out of the blue regulation, so
I try to spend time on Capitol Hill from time to time to make sure they know
the good we're doing.

But really it's just that things take time. Two years ago we didn't exist. Now
we have over 1,000 concurrent students, 60+ full-time employees, and 120+
contract technical mentors. And mostly we think about product and how to make
everything better as quickly as we can.

We want to continue improving everything as we 10x the number of students and
open up opportunities to more people, all while improving our outcomes
([https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes](https://lambdaschool.com/outcomes)). It's
just hard to do.

------
hiei
RE: Those interviewing at Lambda (rejected)

Luck of the draw with who decides to interview you, I had a guy from the
admissions team with zero enthusiasm essentially just reading off of a list of
questions. I tried to answer well but giving off good energy from a dead duck
is hard. I also was more practical with my answers of wanting to get into
coding, jump in profession, curious, experience as a BA, writing technical
docs and general data analysis. Each response by the interview was simply:
"hmmm ok." Rejected around ten minutes after my TEN minute call. PS tell them
you love coding, live and breathe it, etc.

~~~
t0mmycollison
Hey there -- this isn't right, and I'd love to know more about what happened.
Do you mind emailing me with more details? I'm tommy@lambdaschool.com

~~~
alkibiades
huh, didn't know there was another collison brother. you guys are like the
weasleys.

~~~
austenallred
Yes, the third brother isn’t quite as successful as the other two, who are
brilliant. He works at a payments company in San Francisco.

------
hkdobrev
While this program could be useful to many students, it's a loan program.

> Upon completion of the program, students will pay 10% of their salary for a
> five year period once they're making at least $50,000 per year. The max
> possible payment is capped at $50,000.

~~~
austenallred
It’s an income share agreement, which is quite different than a loan, and you
only repay if you get hired making $50k 94 more. And it’s also a school that’s
run quite differently than other schools out there. We have to do everything
differently from first principles to make this work.

If your point is “the $2,000 isn’t free” then yes you’re 100% correct.

~~~
Nasrudith
That brings to mind the literal classical lawyer joke/logic exercise Paradox
of the Court.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_the_Court](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_the_Court)
Paradox of the Court.

I suspect the $2k could suffer from a free-rider problem from those who never
intend to acquire such a job - especially in low cost of living areas with few
jobs but unwilling or unable to relocate. Ideally it wouldn't make sense to do
so.

------
WestCoastJustin
Just a heads up. Your site website navbar header is pretty hard to read
(desktop, chrome, on mac). Here's a screenshot of what it looks like for me.
The links are blending into the background.

[https://imgur.com/Gil5L9c](https://imgur.com/Gil5L9c)

~~~
austenallred
Thanks, you’re 100% correct. Currently working on a redesign.

~~~
reustle
Maybe worth doing a quick hotfix until the redesign is pushed?

~~~
austenallred
Ya the hacky way is to use a new image with a dark background, will have it up
soon.

~~~
austenallred
Fix pushed, will deploy momentarily

~~~
myroon5
I love how responsive members of this community are

~~~
hiei
I mean the cofounder himself made the post, this is essentially a targeted
post on HN

~~~
MarkMc
Good response time nonetheless. Sam Altman recently did an interview where
Tyler Cowan asked, "How quickly should someone answer your email to count as
quick and decisive?"

Sam's answer: "You know, years ago I wrote a little program to look at this,
like how quickly our best founders — the founders that run billion-plus
companies — answer my emails versus our bad founders. I don’t remember the
exact data, but it was mind-blowingly different. It was a difference of
minutes versus days on average response times."

------
duxup
It is an interesting system.

I did a "full time" 3 month long more "traditional" structured boot camp. I
really wish it had been longer and that they.... filtered .... students as it
went.

~~~
MarkMc
Do you mean the teacher's effectiveness would be improved if slow learners
were cut from the class?

~~~
tdfx
I wouldn't say slow learners are typically the problem. From my experience in
teaching it's the students with lazy habits that tend to break down the
professors' effectiveness. People that refuse to "learn how to learn" and
expect everything to be googled for them can be difficult to filter for during
the interview process and really cause a drag on the class as a whole.

~~~
duxup
> teaching it's the students with lazy habits

I think that's very much a thing. I do think that some folks ... just can't
beyond that, but I agree lazy habits are the worst and frustrating.

I put in a TON of time outside class when I went to a bootcamp. I'd make
progress and come back with a quick question for the instructor, and there
would be a series of people with the same questions waiting to talk to the
instructor who clearly did nothing since the last time they talked to the
instructor and were asking the same question as the day before who are mildly
perturbed the instructor doesn't just give them the answer...

A lot of the time I just gave up trying to talk to the instructor.

------
pmoriarty
_" Upon completion of the nine month program students will be required to pay
10% of their salary for 5 years."_

~~~
austenallred
Yes, that covers the price of tuition and repayment of the $18,000 Lambda
School gives out in stipends, as well as cost of capital and risk (you only
pay back if you’re making more than $50k/yr, otherwise you pay $0).

~~~
tylerhou
If I make $50,001, would I have to pay back the full 10%? Or is there some
sort of gradient?

~~~
austenallred
Yes, you’d pay $5k/yr.

In fact you might just want to ask for a raise to $55k and be net ahead
because that’s not a great software engineering salary.

~~~
laurencerowe
Being net ahead at $55K suggests the repayment is tax deductible. Is that the
case?

~~~
austenallred
No, that’s an oversimplification on my part to not complicate things, you’re
right it would need to net higher.

------
immichaelwang
How does taxes factor in with Lambda school? Are they taking pre or post tax
income?

~~~
austenallred
You pay on a percentage of pre-tax income.

~~~
notyourday
Wowza. People are gambling on tax rates of every level?!

~~~
jedberg
You _may_ be able to deduct the payments as either an education expense or an
unreimbursed job expense, but I haven't dug into the tax code to find out for
sure. I'll be the LS people know though. :)

~~~
CapnCrunchie
Unfortunately you can't deduct the payments. There is some potential
legislation around that, but it hasn't been pushed through yet.

~~~
austenallred
This is accurate.

------
jacobajit
Can you compare your model to Modern Labor, which also received a lot of
attention for a similar premise recently?

[https://modernlabor.com](https://modernlabor.com)

~~~
austenallred
Modern Labor’s founder used to be a finance partner of ours, and decided to do
something similar to what we had been working on. Modern Labor is (and this is
my biased opinion) focused on the finance part and on bringing cost down, less
on building “the school.” We are mostly focused on building the best school
there’s ever been, and finance is a necessary piece for us but not necessarily
the driver.

Just different models!

------
_JasonE
Hey Lambda team. Congratulations on the ISA program and living stipend! I'm
sorry for having so many questions. We have an ISA program as well and I found
these to be the most important questions people have about coding bootcamp
ISAs:

1\. Do the payments begin if the new job is not in-field (not related to
Software Engineering)?

2\. Is there a grace period or deadline (depending on your point of view)
before the payments begin? If so, how is the monthly payment amount
calculated?

2\. Is there a grace period in the event they stop working after the payments
begin?

3\. Do the ISA payments kick in if it's not a new job? In other words, if they
continue working in a job that makes >=$50K/yr?

4\. Are the requirements for participating in your ISA program similar to
obtaining a loan? Good credit, no defaults, etc..

Sorry if I missed any of these answers in the announcement or terms. We have
been offering an ISA program at our Houston and Atlanta based bootcamp for
just over 6 months now and recently adjusted it based off feedback so that
payments only kick in when the new job is in-field, includes a grace period,
and must be a new job. However, we couldn't do much for the credit history
requirements. An ISA is essentially a delayed loan and requires the same (if
not stricter) credit history requirements. It's a good alternative to taking
out a loan for some, but it's usually not a fallback if you can't get one.

Thanks Lambda team!

~~~
t0mmycollison
1\. The language around what counts as in-field is in our ISA. It's more
dependent on what skills you use in your job as opposed to your title. You can
see a sample ISA we use at
[https://lambdaschool.com/faq/](https://lambdaschool.com/faq/).

2\. You pay nothing between when you finish the technical portion of the class
and when you get a job, and after you start your job, there's a 30-day grace
period.

2\. The payments stop if you stop working. You can think of them as being 24
monthly repayments that will pause if you lose your job.

3\. It does, but only after they finish the technical portion of the class,
and they're using the skills they learned. We do look at things on a case-by-
case basis.

4\. Nope! We don't care about your credit score or your debt load. Things get
tricky if you have a fraud conviction, but anything short of that won't impact
our decision.

Hope this helps!

~~~
bbg215
Wait, does #3 imply you enroll students who don't want to work as a programmer
after graduating? i.e. a online marketer who wants to learn coding as a skill
set.

I would assume these types would be filtered out during the admissions
process.

------
titanomachy
Austen: does your admissions process give any weight to outside referrals? I
have a friend who would be an incredible fit for your program. I'm an engineer
at a top company and I'm sure he could reach my level with some guidance, I
just don't have time to give him that support myself.

~~~
austenallred
It should.

Email me the details and I’ll pass on to the admissions team.
austen@lambdaschool.com.

------
sharcerer
Austen, I was wondering if you would consider some online version of Lambda
for regions where Lambda isn't there. I don't mean the academic part, but the
hiring part. Sort of an evaluation of a student's skills to see if they are on
par with those educated by Lambda Faculty. On the basis of those
evaluations/tests/ projects , you can use your network to get those people
jobs/ internships. For eg: I am from India. Currently in a 2nd tier college.
Learning ML,NN, Data science and am doing Kaggle currently. But, college CGPA
and college name is a major hindrance while getting internships. Am thinking
of dropping out after 2nd year, because it's a huge waste of time.

~~~
austenallred
Lambda School is entirely online; we don't have the infrastructure just just
yet to go into India, but hopefully in coming months we'll open up.

~~~
sharcerer
Cool. Thanks. For me, the study materials , curriculum is not the hindrance.
Being among like minded individuals, getting internships is the problem. If
you think about it every education institution which develops into a brand has
1 key thing. Great, ambitious students and matching support. That's what I
want. To be part of respectable group of individuals. Now, I know this might
not fit the DNA of Lambda School, but, i think a new service where students
submitted an application along with their work, projects and the site listed
these students ( with very strict vetting to identify unique students, with
their unique skillset mentioned) and partnered with companies for internships
ONLY (no jobs )in the beginning. As the validation of the students skillset
would start to take place in 1-2 years, the brand would gain recognition like
Lambda. A small upfront application fee would be charged.

------
jedberg
So if I'm reading this right, the normal LS program costs 17% of your salary,
but this program pays you $2K/mo while you attend and then only charges 10%
after? Of is it 10% on top of the 17%?

Either way, good on you guys for trying to do something that helps people that
are disadvantaged. You guys should start a charity arm that people can donate
to so that more people can get the stipend!

~~~
austenallred
There is no 17% if you’re taking a living stipend.

It’s either:

1\. No stipend, 17% for 2 yrs

2\. Stipend, 10% for 5 yrs

They’re mutually exclusive.

And we do have a charity arm! [https://lambdapaf.org](https://lambdapaf.org)

~~~
jedberg
Excellent! Sounds like a fair deal.

Didn't know about the charity -- that's great! Is it a 503(c)? The website
doesn't seem to have too much info about where the donation goes.

~~~
austenallred
We have a fiscal sponsor if you want to send large donations, which would go
to a 501c3 and be tax deductible.

The fund itself is a small nonprofit waiting on 501c3 approval.

------
joshvm
Syllabuses are here, fyi:
[https://learn.lambdaschool.com](https://learn.lambdaschool.com)

------
absorber
In the FAQ ([https://lambdaschool.com/faq/](https://lambdaschool.com/faq/)) it
says:

> We offer part time courses for some of our tracks. Part-time course hours
> are Monday-Thursday 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 12 noon Pacific.

Are these times also for EU students?

------
crb002
Best would be a company that just takes on apprentices for $20/h. No debt.

------
meowface
Looks amazing. Just recommended it to a few of my friends who are considering
moving into a career in technology. I hope this becomes a new model for
education, both tech and non-tech.

------
morningmoon
Fantastic work. You and the other founders should be very proud of what you’re
doing.

This is exactly what the world needs more of. I recommend this to anyone
looking to switch careers.

------
fovc
Do you guys make any money on the recruiting end?

~~~
austenallred
Not yet

------
deilline
I'm an experienced developer looking to dabble in some of the tracks you
offer.

What's the best way to determine if this is a fit for me?

~~~
austenallred
Email admissions@lambdaschool.com.

Admittedly we're mostly built for folks trying to break into tech right now,
but will be modularizing and offering different segments in the near future.

~~~
shinryuu
I’d be really interested in filling in some gaps that I have.

I’m self-taught, but I definitely have some gaps in the algorithm side of
things.

------
rb808
Can I ask how many students have a degree already? I'm not sure if its a
University alternative or a capstone course.

~~~
austenallred
It’s more a university alternative. About half have a degree of some kind,
very few in CS.

------
cm2012
I really hope you guys succeed. College is a dead model - this is life
changing. At scale, it's world changing.

------
notthisagain666
This is a great initiative! Thank you Lambda School. Will be following your
progress closely.

------
nickchuck
Dang. This really is like a no brainier now. Keep rocking it!

------
jotm
This is fantastic work, I wish you guys all the best!

------
willart4food
That's an interesting business model

------
haywirez
This is US-only, I presume?

~~~
barry-cotter
[https://lambdaschool.com/eu/](https://lambdaschool.com/eu/)

And the EU and U.K. Other countries coming soon, Canada in ~two weeks.

