| I completed Lambda's part-time web program about a year ago and while I did come out with more knowledge than when I entered, I do not think it was worth the time or the money I have invested. I was not the target Lambda student in that I already had web dev knowledge but wanted to delve deeper and felt like I was spinning my wheels on my own. The accountability created by the program is what I was after. The curriculum was adequate and, with one exception, the instructors were engaging and knowledgeable. While we did have some limited interaction with the instructors themselves, digging in to individual problems was the job of the team lead (a student further ahead in the program who went through an application process) and this is where things got grim. TLs changed frequently and their quality was all over the place. Some followed the meeting protocol, some let their group run the meetings, others missed meetings regularly. Multiple times my TLs were unable to help much because the curriculum had changed and we were learning something they hadn't been taught. At best, they made sure we all understood the lecture by being thorough during our 1 on 1 meetings. At worst, they were a hindrance. The final for the web dev curriculum is what they call "labs" and the TL for your labs group has expanded responsibilities. In theory, having gone through labs already, they are supposed to be kind of like lead devs - offering architecture suggestions, helping with deployment snags, shepherding us through merge conflicts, etc. My labs TL was, more than anything, an obstacle. Mostly they forwarded our questions to the section lead and they weren't a particularly efficient go-between, so after a few weeks of deflecting our follow-ups we started messaging with the SL directly and were receiving timely responses. Our TLs only contributions to our project were the initial heroku projects and an unfinished code climate integration. In the end, having projects and due dates was helpful for me but in no way do I feel it was worth the cost of tuition. Another Lambda alum here mentioned feeling like student wellbeing took a back seat to marketing and PR and nothing encapsulates this more perfectly than the photo at the top of their homepage of a student who dropped out after repeating one of the early sections once or twice. Who cares what became of them as long as it looks good on the website! |