To be honest Lambda School is nicer once you heard about it than once you are experiencing it. It will make itself sound organized, and fully focused. It will beef up it’s potential by shouting business plans that never go into action. In reality, it’s like any other online class, but much less savvy. The owner sent all of the students that replied here via Slack just to leave a (good) “review.” In fact, it seems like when he finds a bad review, they’ll send students over in their defense via Slack. Soo unprofessional.

They are just now getting barely enough staff to handle the load they have given themselves, it has gotten significantly better, but it still is very very understaffed. The staff they do have, have no clue how to prepare most lessons. I can count on 1 finger how many times my pull requests were reviewed for an assignment and I am almost finished with school. The classes are too big and without proper guidelines. Students post anecdotes, curse words, bad taste and everything else in the same chat in which you interact with your teachers. You can hardly find useful information due to the thousands of messages a day about stupid things. Information overload. One student got kicked out for saying sexist things about women. The school has no tact in managing its environment. Most of the staff have never taught in a school or a course so they have no idea how to mitigate away from a harmful environment. They keep changing around their business plans. Once we were told that capstone projects could be paid internships w/ hiring partners. Then they told us that we shouldn’t take jobs before graduation. Then they say we can get an internship after graduation only. Then we are told that capstones are replaced with a forced labor month that could make them and “us” money once published. Then we are told we can find and internship on our own and not from hiring partners instead of the forced labour capstone. No continuity in their claims.

Is Lambda School’s material worth the potential $30,000? Of course not. It’s just videos and github repos (that almost never get checked). Are the teachers the top of the line, most talented, most knowledgeable? Not even close, one instructor told us that he learns what he has to teach us the night or minutes before the lesson (even though he debugs the more rather than teaches). Is the school innovative in their business model? In terms of other bootcamps, definitely. What makes Lambda School worth it? No up front cost, the community of friends/connections you could make with students/teachers, the convenience of being remote, they are hip to new tech, potential hiring partners etc. Being able to learn how to code from home with guided lectures and all that jazz is great don’t get me wrong, but do I think I would go through this all over again? Definitely not. I am glad that I attend Lambda School, I am their number one fan honestly, I’ve made great friends and now know a hell of a lot more about code. But I don’t think it’s worth its cap of $30,000… Not even half of half of half of that. I would recommend anyone with the time and resources to learn through other tutorials, books, and documentation then join the numerous chat platforms to get help from developers.