Bloom Institute of Technology

Web development has always been the career I've wanted. So far it has been fun learning to code with BloomTech. Having a varying work schedule, being able to learn at my own pace is great. I can spend more time on material that takes more studying, and being able to use slack to communicate with instructors and see others who have completed is reassuring. I have been able to make it to Sprint 3 within the first month and cannot wait to learn as much as I can these next few months. My goal is to complete the course as soon as I can so that I can begin my career journey.

I was a student at Lambda School from February 2020 to February 2021. Since then, Lambda has changed a lot and I don't necessarily think for the best. One of the things I loved most about Lambda was how connected I felt to everyone. I made a lot of friends I still talk to today. We had daily 1 on 1's with our team lead who provided invaluable feedback on our projects. We had daily live lectures. It was one of the best experiences I've had in any school anywhere. 

Prior to Lambda, I was pursuing a bachelors degree in computer science, and before that I got an AAS in game design. My experience in traditional university was awful, and Lambda was a massive upgrade for me. In my last couple months at Lambda, they got rid of team leads, daily standups and daily 1 on 1's. It felt like everything I liked about Lambda was ripped out from under me and I was back in college, no help, no guidance. Just me. As far as I know, this is still the case, and lectures are now just amazon courses. 

On top of all of that, the ISA I signed now feels like such a scam. I am paying on pretax income with post-tax money. I'm struggling to get by because the ISA is very predatory. There is no consideration for cost of living. I live in Denver where cost of living is nearly $75k, but I have to start paying when making $50k or more. That's a $25k difference that I have to come up with somehow. 

Overall, as it stands today, I would not recommend Lambda school to anyway.

TLDR - the career services is worth the entire cost of your ISA (Income Sharing Agreement). So if you're deciding based on cost, it's no decision - Lambda School is worth it.  

Lambda School is constantly iterating on its offering so my experience isn't going to be exactly like you would experience right now.  But the big take aways will still be relevant.

I had a few months of self taught programing before entering Lambda School- $15 udemy courses.  No other experience in tech.  
I enrolled in the Data Science track full time program in July of 2020, I graduated in Feb-Mar 2021.  In Sept 2021 I received two offers for positions - One for Data Analyst at a national non-profit and one for Software Development at an s&p 500 company.  Take away: after the Lambda experience you will not be intimidated learning new tech.  You will be ready to work on a team.  And you will be ready to thrive in a remote environment.  

There is a lot of variance in the experience during the program.  My first 2 months were incredible, but extremely challenging.  I was not thrilled with months 3-4.  I finished with an excellent Labs experience.  Career Services (coaches) went above and beyond the call of duty to get me in the game.  

I'm convinced it took me 6 months post Lambda to land a job because I was picky about positions, I was not super aggressive and I needed to work during my job search.   Some others were able to find jobs before they even finished the program, but I believe the average was about 3 months after graduation.    

While in the program you will need lots of support from friends and family because the course load is challenging.  I can't stress this enough.  When I joined they provided pre-course work.  Take this very seriously!  It will save you heartache and headaches down the road.  

My personal path involved a lot of  up-skilling that went outside the curriculum.  But that's because I wanted a particular job.  I know some others who found jobs that matched the curriculum perfectly.  Tech is a broad ever changing industry no single curriculum can prepare you for every job.  Expect to do things outside the curriculum if you want the best outcome for yourself.  

Also my first job lead came from a Lambda Alum. There's a bunch of us out there now, so you have the potential to start with a valuable network.  

Since there's no other way I could have afforded to receive this educational experience, I can honestly say Lambda School changed my life.  

**I attended Lambda from early 2019 to early 2020. I didn't experience the recent changes**

My experience with Lambda School was an extremely positive one, I had some basic coding experience before I started but that didn't matter because they teach you things from the ground up and build you with projects and support. I had TL (Team Lead) who was always there for me and several other students, that helped a lot because I could ask him any question related to the course. 

The support, the curriculum, and the instructors were great. 

I failed like 5 times. I kept thinking it was me. I was putting in many extra hours and dropped to part timer so I could study more during the day. You only got access to an aid if you were the first one to approach them. Otherwise they would be caught up helping in student. Eventually the aids were one unit ahead of me. They changed ever four weeks. I wasted two years. And now I have to prove that my income is not tech related because they are charging me $6k. I work as a mover and a second job as a bartender. They want my offer letters or job description in company letterhead. I’m a MOVER and a BARTENDER. (Note: I have a college degree and graduated with a double major in Film and Philosophy with a cumulative 3.2- I’m not a bad student).

I really enjoyed my time at Lambda School. The community is full of caring people that really want to see their students succeed in making their dreams come true. Be prepared to work hard and work overtime on many occasions. But if you have the desire and are willing to put in the effort you will make it happen. Overall, the curriculum is thorough, but can use some improvements in some area. With that said, Lambda is always looking to improve their curriculum. At the time of me writing this, I  received and accepted an job offer as a ML engineer at one of the biggest companies is in the US. So I am happy. I will always be thankful to the Lambda community for their care, effort and determination. Really life changing. 

I am a recent graduate of Lambda Schools Full Stack Web Development Course. As of two days ago, I had two job offers almost a year from the date of starting my course, and my life is forever changed. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has the determination to change their stars.

Let me explain, I was a computer science major for about 2.5 years before dropping out. I had to pay for some additional expenses and life got away from me. I was never hurting for money and despite my unfinished degree, I had been a General Manager and eventually Director of Operations at a water park making $30 per hour and after that, I had been an API support engineer making $67500 per year at a tech start-up. When COVID hit, I was laid off along with most of the company's workforce and I had to start from 0 at a new company. I was so beholden to my employers since they knew my value but I couldn't transfer that to others and getting laid off was essentially starting from scratch with a new employer. I was soon to turn 30 and was wondering what path to take and I got the advice to take this time to invest in my skills. I wondered if I should take out loans and go back to school to start over my degree but I was intrigued by the invitation from Lambda. I read plenty of reviews both positive and negative and applied at a few different boot camps but in the end, Lambda's Income Share plan was hard to pass up. I knew it would cost more than other boot camps in the end, BUT unlike college, I wasn't left holding the bag. They backed up their instruction with their own money knowing if they can't teach me the skills of the trade AND the skills to actually land a high-paying job, they were the ones bearing financial responsibility and not me. 

With this confidence, I enrolled in the course and dove into the prep work. I am not going to cover all of the aspects of teaching but here is a basic pros and cons list of what I went through:

Pros:

• They update their curriculum regularly BUT made sure to teach older concepts that were still widely used to make sure we were still able to work at the broadest amount of companies. 
• The courses were built for remote learning and don't feel like they are a bad port of a classroom lecture
• They have a rigorous Computer science course that covered almost everything I did in 2.5 years of college courses and actually does a better job at retaining them. 
• Your tests are actually mock interviews and are built from the beginning to prepare you to get a job
• You get to work on projects for real companies
• If you are struggling, you can just repeat the month. It doesn't cost you any extra. It allows you to take more time if you need it. 
• They keep in contact with you after graduation to coach you through the job search and they set realistic expectations
• They have recordings of previous lectures if you forget something or fall behind. 

Cons

• You can fall behind. 
  • It is a fast-paced course that builds on the material every day and missing even a single day can be costly since you won't understand what is going on tomorrow. Every day missed almost counts as two since you need to understand your missed day before you can comprehend anything going forward. If you get behind, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and catch up, no one is going to do it for you. 
  • This was tough, but I can't fault the school for this, I definitely had to catch up a few times and it was hours of extra work, but it's nobody's fault but mine if I can't reach out to a classmate for help. 
• Group projects can suffer from different levels of mastery and dedication. 
  • If you have a team member who decides to repeat a month during a project, all of their responsibilities have to be accounted for. This happens regularly so you have to be ready and willing to adapt or ask for help to fill in missing team members. 
  • This one is tough and Lambda does try to fill in gaps with teachers to fill in codebases, but there are projects that I wouldn't put on my portfolio when I had completed my responsibility but our backend member fell behind or our front end team never finished
• They are always improving/adapting
  • This can be hard when halfway through a unit they need to change a topic or switch the way teams are set up. 
  • This can be jarring but the alternative is taking too long to change. If given the choice I would prefer this 

I hope it is clear that I don't have blinders on. They aren't going to guarantee you a job or do all of the work for you. After graduating, I was in the job search for nearly 6 months. However, this is not a fault of Lambdas as much as it was my goal of not just taking an easy Jr position. With what they trained me, and my previous experience, I knew that I had the chops to land a Mid to Sr level position if I work on my interviewing skills. I coded 6 hours per day and through hours into Leet code as well as practiced technical interviews on dozens of jobs I didn't want or was underqualified for and have now landed a job that pays 120k as a Software Engineer. 

In short, I know the school isn't perfect. They didn't guarantee me a job and there are a few things that they are still working on improving, but I can't give them anything less than 5 out of 5 stars. It was the first time in my 3 decades of life that I felt like a school was in my corner. 

To put this in perspective, my old job offered me my position to come work for them before. I remembered feeling so beholden to them since they knew my value but now, I felt liberated since I was currently interviewing for companies that paid more and could see value in the skills I had gained from my time at Lambda. 

If you are looking at boot camps and you have the drive to succeed, ask yourself a question: Do you want to invest in them, or do you want them to invest in you? I promise, if you have the dedication and diligence, you are more than worth the investment and Lambda can change your stars.