
Twitter Thread: Experience at Lambda School for UX - mobileexpert
https://twitter.com/watsonwaswrite/status/1230900126627106816
======
austenallred
This story probably represents the single greatest failure of Lambda School
ever. There are times when the whole story isn’t being told, but this isn’t
one of them, Nicole is right. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with Nicole and
her cohort, have cancelled her ISA, and we are working on a full retrospective
for her cohort (UX6).

It started with misaligned expectations. We worked with a lot of hiring
partners to create a UX curriculum that would be easiest to jump into a first
UX career from, and it was clear in doing that research that a _research-
first_ perspective with less emphasis on design is what would get students
hired faster in a field that can be notoriously difficult to break into
(relative to software engineering). We hired experts in that aspect of UX
design, which can be terribly broad.

Partway through the data started to show that half of the class was pretty
happy and about half was not. Usually it’s not split like that - there’s
always an outlier student or two but not half totally happy and half
frustrated, so we started to dig in.

Two things happened:

1\. We realized half of the students were expecting a design-heavy experience,
and we hadn’t communicated well enough what to expect. There were pieces on
design, but you wouldn’t come out of this curriculum as a UI designer, and
students were expecting that.

2\. We decided to try and help those students who wanted the UI emphasis,
hired more folks, and started creating curriculum in a pretty rushed manner to
help them reach their goals. In retrospect that was a huge mistake; there
simply wasn’t enough time to build a full design-heavy curriculum in flight,
and the students who wanted design-heavy curriculum were very disappointed.

That cohort was (rightly) frustrated because we tried to do too much too late.
I recognized that was a risk going into those curriculum changes, but took on
the risk because the most important thing is making students successful and
happy. In retrospect it was the wrong call.

I wish like hell that I could go back and make everything perfect for that
cohort of students; there are about 20 of them and I’ve spent time one on one
with every one. We brought in more people to work with them one on one and
that curriculum is much better now, but understandably 5 or 6 students in that
cohort had lost their faith in our ability to deliver and opted to leave the
program. Of course, we cancelled their ISAs; we lost a ton of money training
these students and they don’t owe us anything, but that’s the right thing to
do. We promise an awesome experience and in this instance didn’t deliver. We
tried to do too much in too short a timeframe and missed the mark.

~~~
kingbirdy
Hi Austen, thanks for replying to this. But could you explain how attempting
to change curriculum mid-flight would lead to:

* being graded by a student 2 months ahead

* being taught by someone hiding under a sheet

* being paired with a student who hadn't been participating in the curriculum

It seems like there was more going wrong for this student than just a
curriculum change.

~~~
austenallred
* being graded by a student 2 months ahead

There’s also an instructor in every cohort, so your TA (we call them TLs) is
more of a first line of defense. We brought in the strongest design students
to be TAs which is why they weren’t very much further in the curriculum - in
fact they actually had a different curriculum. An exception to the rule caused
by curriculum change.

*being taught by someone under a sheet

We brought in contractors to help teach the new curriculum, and one hadn’t
adjusted the light in his room for video conferencing and couldn’t see the
screen for sunlight, so... improvised. Normally there are weeks of practice
lessons and training, so this also the result of a rush.

~~~
jfarmer
Is there no onboarding for contract instructors that guide them through
setting up their environment for effective online teaching? Someone who has
taught remotely would be very aware of how hard it is to get sound and light
right. They'd have a pre-flight checklist and spend 10-15 minutes beforehand
ensuring everything looked and sounded ok.

Someone who hasn't needs to be trained because it's not like a physical
classroom at all.

And of course, teachers need to improvise every day, but if they're not used
to doing it then they need coaching on that, too.

For example, whenever I teach remotely, I mail a good pair of wired,
directional-mic headphones to every student. I also send them PDFs outlining
how to position the light in their room.

I do that because they are unfamiliar with the subtleties of remote
interaction and it's going to ruin everyone's experience if students have
barriers to participation and feedback.

~~~
austenallred
There usually is if we’re not scrambling to do too much too late. Again, was a
huge miss.

------
pembrook
To be honest, part of the problem is the field of UX design itself. Unlike
“coding” (which is standardized and easier to quantify, ie. Does the program
update the database or not?) user experience is a vague, lumpy, subjective
mess of buzzwords with no linear pathway to proficiency.

We all know UX is extremely important to the success of any startup, but
quantifying it is a different story. Designers can’t even agree on their own
responsibilities and what to call _themselves,_ with job titles and
responsibilities I’ve seen at many companies having 0 correlation to the next.

Any great UX/product/service/interaction/blah blah designer I’ve worked with
is a former graphic designer with great taste, who over the years learned how
to build usable software by working on tons of software products and spending
tons of time with users.

It’s not exactly something that lends itself to the bootcamp model. It makes
much more sense in an apprentice model.

If it makes her feel any better, I’m certain 90% of schools teaching multi-
year “UX” design programs would not have done a better job. At least she
doesn’t have to go into debt this way.

~~~
jdhn
>Designers can’t even agree on their own responsibilities and what to call
themselves, with job titles and responsibilities I’ve seen at many companies
having 0 correlation to the next.

I agree 100%. I've been in the UX field for about 6 years, and if there's one
thing I've noticed, it's intense fragmentation when it comes to that actual
job title. What's the difference between them? I couldn't tell you as at each
job my responsibilities were basically the same.

Also, one of the biggest issues that I have with UX bootcamps is that there's
a lot of emphasis placed on making the portfolio look visually appealing, but
when you get into it there's not always a lot of substance. Same goes for a
lot of work on Dribbble that's tagged as "UX" or "UX/UI".

~~~
austenallred
This is actually the crux of the problem here. We focused the curriculum on UX
research-y fundamentals, and the students who wanted to come out as UI
designers were disappointed.

We tried to build in design-heavy curriculum partway through when we realized
how misaligned those expectations were, but couldn’t do an effective job in
such a short time frame, so those students just got more frustrated.

It’s totally fair, we should have done a better job communicating and
shouldn’t have tried to call an audible at the last minute to fix everything.

~~~
claudeganon
Why are you telling your students that they shouldn’t discuss problems with
the school outside of channels monitored by Lambda?

[https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1213711252175740928](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1213711252175740928)

You say that no “professional environment” would encourage this, but it’s
actually a legally protected right in every workplace:

[https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/EO_Posters/Employee...](https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/EO_Posters/EmployeeRightsPoster11x17_2019Final.pdf)

~~~
nicesnowoman
They pull this BS all the time to students - it's terrible:
[https://twitter.com/nwilliams030/status/1219687148972056578](https://twitter.com/nwilliams030/status/1219687148972056578)

I cannot believe how _often_ Austen flat out lies on things so easily
disproven.

~~~
austenallred
That addition to the student guide was to clarify that students can’t harass
other students and have it be Ok even _off_ of Lambda School’s platform. Has
nothing whatsoever to do with stopping students from complaining.

~~~
detaro
Somehow it neglects to mention that, but instead uses a vague term of "Impacts
the mission", which very much sounds like corporation-speak for "negative
public attention" and similar things.

Luckily, that's easy to fix by adding a sentence or two to this section.

~~~
austenallred
Which I believe we did. I’d have to look back and see but students asked for
that clarification and it’s either done or someone is working on that.

------
heymijo
I can't read this account and say anything other than Lambda School is an
ineffective educational program.

You can set aside the issue of ISAs or anything about this woman.

This poor of a product from Lambda is indefensible. A consumer or enterprise
software startup can get away beginning with an ineffective MVP and iterating.
A school offering an educational opportunity has a much higher floor to
responsibly operate. This person shows that Lambda is operating well below
that floor.

Even if the students will never activate the repayment clauses of their ISAs
Lambda has failed them. Silicon Valley seems to think that what it can't
measure doesn't matter. But Lambda School, by pitching itself as a way for
anyone to be a part of the tech boom gets up a person's hopes and then
completely and utterly fails to deliver on its promise. That is on top of the
opportunity cost of attending a school that fails to deliver anything close to
the education advertised.

~~~
nicesnowoman
This, 100%. I'm a student and, while ISAs make Lambda interesting, am mostly
disappointed due to the terrible educational quality (and staff's refusal to
admit that the quality is pretty low across the board).

Still, though, I've noticed the ISAs create some nuanced perverse things
happening that _are_ specific to Lambda - students attracted to the value prop
are often much lower income (Lambda cited $22K average starting salary amongst
their students) than the average bootcamp student. If Lambda fails them, these
students may leave in worse financial prospects than they started with no
safety net.

The ISA also kicks in at 40% when you're only 4 weeks into a 40 week
curriculum. After that point, it's very hard to leave due to sunk cost
fallacy, and you are roped along wasting time, hoping for them to get their
stuff together. I wish I and others left well before.

~~~
the_watcher
The last part seems like it could easily be improved by simply tying it to the
portion of the curriculum covered.

~~~
austenallred
That is exactly how it happens. It’s 10% per week for the first 10 weeks,
except you don’t owe anything at all until week 4. So it’s fully locked in at
10 weeks but is gradual until then.

~~~
wpietri
That is definitely not proportional. For 40 weeks, proportional would not be
10% per week, but 2.5% per week.

~~~
austenallred
0 0 0 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

~~~
the_watcher
The pushback here is that this isn't proportional to the duration of the
program. While you're right that this is proportional for 10 weeks, it's not
proportional to program duration. If your position is that it's fair to charge
100% tuition for a 40 week program after 10 weeks, make that argument. Don't
try to argue that 10% per week for 10 weeks is somehow proportional to 40
weeks.

I'm a big fan of Lambda and am a pretty vocal defender, but this is simply
misleading.

~~~
austenallred
We're clearly talking past each other.

Yes, I think it's fair to owe full tuition once you're past 10 weeks in Lambda
School, especially given a generous 4-week dropout period during which you owe
nothing.

~~~
the_watcher
I think that's a perfectly reasonable position to take and is more generous
than the alternative (as someone who dropped out of a degree program, I can
attest that I wasn't able to return any of my student loans 6 weeks into the
semester. I checked).

I wasn't trying to talk past you. My original comment was that a specific
complaint about the amount owed being 40% after 4 weeks, despite 4 weeks not
representing 40% of the program, could be addressed by tying payment directly
to portion of curriculum covered. You responded that this is how it works, but
you redefined the denominator in the proportion from the original complaint.

I don't think you're doing this in bad faith, I'm legitimately just trying to
point out a response something that is clearly a frustration isn't translating
how you intended.

~~~
codingdave
The other point being glossed over here is that higher education tuition is
typically applied per term, not for an entire program. You don't get billed
for four years tuition when you leave after one year - you have drop-out
windows every term, and only pay for terms in which you attended.

So if LS has organized their cirriculum into "sprints", and wants to follow
the standard in higher education, there would be a brief dropout window at the
start of each sprint, with no ISA applied for sprints that were never started.

~~~
wpietri
Exactly. If you quit a CS program 50% of the way through, you only pay 50% of
the cost. And just as important, you get credit for that 50%, and can go
somewhere else. At Lambda School, quitting at 50% because of a bad education
means you pay 100% of the cost and get 0 in credits.

------
wpietri
I really had a lot of hope for bootcamps in general and ISAs in specific. I
thought the alignment of incentives might make for radically more effective
education.

I was very wrong. The ISA incentive appears to be nothing to the VC/startup
incentive to Show! Massive! Growth! as you chase ever-larger chunks of money.
Somehow we've gone from "move fast and break things" (which is not a terrible
slogan to encourage experimentation on non-consequential things) to "move fast
and break people" (which horrifies me).

~~~
ergocoder
A capped ISA seems superior than student loan. I wish gov would implement that
instead of a non-bankruptable loan.

I hope this doesn't make people discard the ISA idea altogether because of a
bad implementation that is unrelated to the ISA itself.

When talking about student debt forgiveness, I think it's too extremely. We
can make it milder like forgiving interest or converting it to some sort of a
capped ISA. This is a much less controversial idea than forgiving the whole
debt that I'm not sure I agree with.

~~~
alexhutcheson
> We can make it milder like forgiving interest or converting it to some sort
> of a capped ISA.

That exists: [https://studentaid.gov/manage-
loans/repayment/plans/income-d...](https://studentaid.gov/manage-
loans/repayment/plans/income-driven)

~~~
ergocoder
Wait, so why are there many complaints about student debt loop?

A capped ISA (like what Lambda offers) would be livable and capped.

Why does everyone not get onto this program?

~~~
alexhutcheson
There are significant differences:

\- With the Lambda ISA, your remaining balance is forgiven after 2 years of
payments, while the federal income-driven repayment plans require 20-25 years
of payments.

\- Lambda ISA has a fixed dollar "cap" (currently $30k), but the "cap" for
income-driven repayment plans is however much you borrowed + interest that
accrues over the life of the loan.

\- Most importantly, the Lambda ISA is for a much smaller amount of money.
Very few of the news articles about student debt profile students with a
balance of only $30k. The horror stories tend to be students who borrowed
>$100k, often for graduate study.

------
jfarmer
What's craziest to me is that someone thought you could put together two
groups of students in a high stakes situation without first socializing the
interaction.

Half the point of school is to get students to first fail in a low-stakes way.

Groups need time to develop. Any change in a group will cause it to storm
before re-norming.

The higher the stakes the more critical it is to navigate storming
effectively. You "learn by doing", i.e., by getting students to storm 50 times
before the the stakes are high.

Students should not have to pay the price for someone else's crash course in
learning design.

------
waterside81
For anyone else wondering ... an ISA is an Income Share Agreement. Lots of
comments here mentioning this but I didn’t know what it stood for

~~~
nsx147
Thx

------
tchaffee
Can someone confirm or correct my suspicion? That the founders are interested
in education finance reform and not so much education? Are any of them former
teachers? What's their background in pedagogy? It's cool to hack code,
systems, and to hack together a software product. This feels like they are
hacking people's lives and futures and if you're going to do that, maybe some
credentials are called for. Happy to be corrected if the founders have a long
history of involvement in education.

------
djeikyb
Kim Crayton has done great analysis of this type of code school on her
podcast, including interviews with students:

[https://hashtagcauseascene.com/podcast/?s=bootcamp](https://hashtagcauseascene.com/podcast/?s=bootcamp)

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fhashtagcausea...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fhashtagcauseascene.com+bootcamp)

------
Antoninus
Obligatory:
[https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069?lang=en)

and Lambda School fits into many of the described.

------
jsjddbbwj
She opens the thread by stating that she is a black woman from the Bronx. Then
there's nothing in the thread that says she's been treated differently for
being black, for being a woman, or for being from the Bronx.

~~~
matz1
Merely stating that she is a black woman from the Bronx means she has been
treated differently ?

~~~
jsjddbbwj
Why open the thread with that, if it's of no relevance to the story? When I
see that in the first post, I think the story will be full of racism, sexism
and classism. But nope. Nothing.

~~~
matz1
Because she think its important, she can write however she want.

~~~
jsjddbbwj
And I can criticise it. :-)

------
minimaxir
This thread touches on the point the other discussions about ISAs don’t: these
aren’t _free_ bootcamps because there’s opportunity cost, and that can be
unexpectedly expensive.

~~~
prostheticvamp
I don’t think there’s a single discussion about boot camps that doesn’t
discuss the immense cost of having to take months away from your money-earning
life.

Why do you feel that this is an under appreciated topic?

~~~
heymijo
If it is as you say, an immense cost, can it really be an under appreciated
topic?

~~~
prostheticvamp
Yes.

Did you mean to say “can it be over-appreciated”?

It can be that, too. It ain’t slavery.

~~~
heymijo
Yes, that is what I meant.

Your last line jumps the shark.

