It’s true. Our counsel informed us that we didn’t need to register. Counsel was wrong. Now we have new counsel :)
We’ve submitted all the paperwork and have worked closely with California. This all happened a long time ago.
I’m not sure what the right level of regulation is (it’s hard taking care of 50 states at once - one state registration was 2,277 pages and weighed 25 pounds https://twitter.com/austen/status/1153450365712388096?s=21), but it’s reasonable that it would be regulated somehow.
When the government makes you waste a a day filling out paperwork to prove that your dog food doesn’t contain human remains, don’t blame the regulators. Blame the guy before you who made a buck by vertically integrating his cannery and his morgue.
I used to work in compliance and the number of regulations that are punitive punishments for bad things that actually happened is just astounding.
SOX compliance is arduous but it only exists (and is as strict as it is) because some banks decided to destroy the global economy just to make a bit of money and couldn't understand why this was a bad thing.
Sox was passed in response to Enron. While that may have been a big failure, it had no effect on the wider economy. In fact Enrons scandal only came out after the 2001 recession ended... the economy grew during and after Enron’s failure.
What are you talking about. It was a massive drag on the California economy while they existed. They were literally shutting the power system for millions of people down to jack the price.
That was more a failure of the artificially constructed electricity market. It didn't allow longterm contracts.
Weirdly enough, cities that had their own power companies could have such contracts and didn't get rolling blackouts. I worked in Santa Clara at the time and lived in Sunnyvale. We never lost power at work but frequently found all the clocks flashing when I got home.
Which sort of suggests that centralization is the problem, not public versus private. We had a private company failing and public power companies unperturbed.
Yet some how the same regulated market didn’t experience the same problems after their bankruptcy? Come on, you’re really stretching here when there is an obvious answer.
You seem to be looking to blame centralization to fit a preconceived normative view of economics rather than just acknowledging maybe markets were not effective or efficient in this particular instance and in fact suffered a massive distortion specifically because a decentralized profit motive allowed one party to abuse market making mechanisms and hijack the price setting function so crucial to efficiency.
I think if you and I lived on the same street and everybody on our street decided to generate and distribute our own power, we would never create such dysfunctional rules.
And if we did, we would probably change it the day after it failed.
Centralization enables a lot of good thing but also some bad things. Lobbying thrives on centralization because it is easier for decision makers to scam people they don't know, more likely to happen with centralization.
Have you ever lived in a neighborhood with a home owners association? Any institution that is made up of more that a few people will come up with rules that seem stupid. Even in a small scale like that.
my knowledge comes entirely from the documentary, but iirc Enron both created the energy market, allowing energy futures to be daytraded for the first time, and manipulated the market with bidding.
the market itself was a massively cool idea, it's just that Enron had a massive conflict of interest and played both sides. they should have stuck to being a market maker and spun off their trading arm.
But that has nothing to do with SOX. If Enron didn't commit fraud, they could have continued being a drag on the CA economy for years longer.
The CA blackouts predates the Enron fraud and accounting scandal by at least 6 months. At no time during the blackouts was anyone aware of Enrons fraud.
SOX was regulation to prevent that fraud. Notice, it does and says absolutely nothing about the energy market. That's because SOX was not designed to address the cause of the CA blackouts.
This has changed for many large US companies when it comes to their 401k plans which are often the main vehicle for retirement savings (https://www.thestreet.com/story/13151412/1/how-your-retireme...). There are still many opportunities for a poorly balanced portfolio.
Should the government have waited for another half a dozen “Enrons” before acting? The whole point of regulation is to avoid such occurrences not as an “I told you so”
How much business was lost through the two summers of rotating brown-outs? Datacenter outages? Maybe Enron didn't impact America, but thanks to America's pro-business, anti-consumer laws, Enron really hurt California.
Sure, bad things happen. But there's a trade-off between regulatory burden and economic vibrancy and adaptability. We all know that taxi regulations sort of existed because a lot of tourists would get taken advantage of. But then, the taxi companies and politicians exploited it to promote local monopolies and enforced it with limited edition, expensive taxi medallions that prevented people from starting up legitimate cab companies to compete with the incumbents.
That sort of thing happens all the time and that opportunity cost is not often talked about.
Agreed. Though it's tough to square the fact that bad things happen sometimes with desire to do something. The Onion actually had a good video on this a few years ago:
Right sentiment; here's an editing tweak that lets you make the point more precisely:
SOX compliance is arduous but it only exists (and is as strict as it is) because some company built a $60 billion market cap in 2000 with financial-statement mischief that concealed a bankruptcy in the making.
Nah, blame the regulators too for thinking that filling out paperwork is likely to meaningfully dissuade someone from using human remains to make dog food. It was probably sufficient to explain to that one guy why that was bad.
Since we're talking about human remains in dog food, there's already likely a litany of felonies involved in turning a person into dog food. The regulators just like to regulate.
Theft is also forbidden by regulation, but thankfully I don't have to file daily reports yet to Theft-Prevention Agency listing all the things that I handled but not stolen today.
Theft is not forbidden by regulation, it's forbidden by laws.
What's the difference? Laws are written by legislators, i.e., the elected representatives. Regulations are written by agencies created and empowered by laws to oversee certain parts of the government/governmental functions.
Regulators work largely by requiring reports because most agencies don't have criminal enforcement powers, and thus can act only on the basis of what is (or isn't) reported...
The real difference is that theft is punishable under natural law regardless of what any regulators or legislators might say. There can be no consistent system which would permit theft while prohibiting a proportional punishment for it. If theft is permitted then enforced restitution (recovery of the stolen property) and punishment (fines) must also be permitted, because these are ultimately the same action.
Laws and regulations which are not merely codification of natural law ultimately come down to attempting to create rules which apply to some people and not others. Unfortunately, legislators and regulators get away with this all to often through a combination of good propaganda and willingness to employ unjustified force to achieve their goals.
Our design engineers had to fill out government paperwork (many pages) that provided an estimate for how long the rest of the government paperwork would take.
Instead of making everyone sign a stack of papers stating that their dog food doesn't contain human remains, the legislature could simply pass a law stating that you pay fines and/or go to jail if your dog food contains human remains. That way you avoid punishing people who act in good faith for the misdeeds of those who didn't.
Right, because there is no other option than to have the government get in everyone's business. Why should the government impose on my business because some asshole did something he shouldn't have? It's oppressive and we should fight it.
This “imposition” is a cost of doing business. If you don’t like it choose another line of business. For as long as there is a legitimate demand for the product/service in question someone will provide supply at a price point which is sustainable. The process of getting to that point may involve some companies trying and failing before others try and succeed. This is capitalism.
As someone who does a lot of work for state-level regulatory compliance for a winery, let me assure you that the proportion of effort devoted to establishing that we sell a safe product is exactly 0%. It's all about making sure we pay excise taxes and our labels don't violate some modern-day censor's notions of good taste.
The real fun ones are where we have to submit the curriculum for approval every time we make a change (considering we make small tweaks to curriculum every day - they did not plan for that use case).
Good thing there are APIs for printing and mailing changes to a diff :)
The first draft they send highlighted grammar errors with a red pencil. After that I'm sure it's just stacking up somewhere. It's a waste for sure, but changing the system is a long process.
What I've learned is to always include a few token spelling and grammar errors in the first draft of anything so reviewers feel like they have done their job. /s
I used to run a pizzaria and the health inspector would stick around for ages, because he couldn't find anything to site me for. I combed through the specs and found something to keep him happy. It turns out to be a minor NY health code violation to store clothing on the same storage unit as food. So I attached a coat rack to the shelf that held sealed canned good. Problem solved.
I've been following Lambda School and yourself on Twitter for a while now, and even looked at some resumes for our company.
I have to say, thank you for your thoughtful comments here and on Twitter, and your dedication to students. As a former teacher myself, I know the work is hard.
I only wish there was a Lambda School here in Philadelphia so I could teach here. :)
I mean, is a university education not a sort of scam? They are giving people degrees that cost far too much to justify the kind of job you'll get coming out.
> I mean, is a university education not a sort of scam?
Whether or not "college education" in general is "a scam" can be debated for sure.
But we aren't talking about "college education" - imagine paying for "college education" but it's a scam so you end up with less money and no education.
It might be - especially in the US, where you have to pay for it (or go into debt); but it could be worse, and likely worse scams were run in the past until they were stamped out by regulation.
You need a happy medium here. You don't want to allow scammers of course, but also don't want to overly protect the incumbents so no one else can disrupt the space.
The happy medium is the have enforcement mechanisms of the tends of thousands of existing regulations that would put a scam business out of existence if a DA choose to.
The fact of the matter is that to protect people... you need to have a system where ordinary people can complain, and companies get taken to task.
99% of preventative/reporting regulation is just cronyism.
Have you ever tried to draft regulation? Even tried to capture everything that could possibly go wrong or be harmful, even unexpectedly and inadvertently? All while knowing that everything you forget will be a “loophole” for the thousands or millions of people coming under the regulations you drafted in the future. And worse if you leave loopholes people will be hurt and then blame the very government trying to create protections in the first place? It’s easy to throw stones at the work of someone else, but this completely emerges to withstand a barrage of stones being thrown.
At what point did I say that? I merely said it’s hard to craft legislation that gets the balance right.
There will always be a regulatory state, the question is what is the authority that imposes the regulation; is it a democratic government, a private company that institutes policy and terms of service, a gang that rules by force and violence. No society I know of has existed without a code of rules and obligations, and America is actually really amazingly effective.
With scams like trump university out there are we really complaining about some paperwork? If a school isn't capable of handling that paperwork, perhaps they shouldn't be school.
I live in a place where the city council has all sorts of leeway on how to apply restaurant regulations when a new business wants to open. And just as you might expect, those who don't have city connections get a lot stricter enforcement of those regulations. Maybe if the US was more Nordic in its government corruption, I'd be more pro-regulation, but I see them abused all the time to keep the insiders rich and the outsiders poor, and the public unprotected.
Are you seeing any positive side-effects from doing the regulatory paperwork? For example from establishing management/quality processes that you did not have from before, but where actually beneficial?
So much for "states-as-laboratories" [1]. There may be some usefulness in that concept, but without eventually harmonization of best practices, it can also be incredibly wasteful and create harmful barriers to entry.
This is actually a good case for the concept as some states will improve their processes to better work with educators like Lambda and the learnings will spread to many of the other states over time. The only way for their to have been a unified process for paperwork, previously, would have been to require too much and to implement a process to prevent states from proactively updating their process quickly enough to be helpful.
There's really not much pressure for states to adopt best practices. I work at a tax policy think tank, and a lot of the most populous and richest states also have some of the most poorly constructed tax code (e.g., CA's Prop 13). They can get away with it because people want to live and work there regardless. The network effects of established urban areas--especially with specialized industries like Silicon Valley has--are difficult to overcome.
I certainly don’t dispute your assessment there, as an IL resident. In quieter areas where regulators have more ability to make changes without making newspaper headlines, and a larger portion of a department’s scope can be covered at a specialized conference, don’t better practices spread a little more quickly?
I’d love to see some lightweight analysis of the different regulatory burdens you’ve dealt with in each of the states you’ve registered in. How many places have you had to liaise with? How deep does it go? Just state level, or do you have to interact with Educational Service Districts etc?
I think it would be interesting to know how much you feel this process has influenced the actual curriculum and delivery methods. The last thing we need right now is a regulatory approval process creating some kind of pedagogical monoculture that doesn't allow us to explore new ways of educating folks young and old. There are certainly risks involved with deviating from the norm, but there are undoubtedly rewards waiting to be uncovered as well.
I think the main thing regulation should do is help manage how much risk the students are exposed to. They can filter out low effort scams while allowing experimental programs that can rationalize their approach a wide latitude to innovate and even fail. Based on my cursory assessment of Lambda's model, they would likely survive this type of scrutiny.
Retrofit in reporting or delivery? That’s precisely the effect I’m interested in. Even if it doesn’t impact what you deliver to students there is still a chilling effect and possible blockers to developing novel approaches.
The juice may still be worth the squeeze for larger/funded ventures. Your efforts to translate what you do to what regulators want to see is probably worth it. However, smaller outfits might be inclined to avoid that work by following the regulatory ruts and deliver exactly what they are looking for to avoid these costs/complexities/risks.
For example, we use mastery-based progression, where students don't move on to the next unit until they've demonstrated mastery in the unit they're currently in, even if it takes longer. It's super expensive to do, but incredibly, incredibly effective.
When a student repeats a week we call that a "flex."
Regulators ask us how long a course is and what exactly the curriculum is for every week. As you can imagine, building in mastery-based progression into the program wasn't on anyone's mind when they created all the regulations.
Interesting, glad you are able to still operate how you like.
My wife is an instructional coach in a public district in Ohio that went from traditional curriculum to a personalized, mastery-based approach. The mastery model has taken a few years to get traction but seems to be catching its stride. One of the challenges is the loss of nuance in a binary grading system, another is the tendency to fall into retry loops with assessments and wasting lots of educator/student time.
The personalized learning is just starting and this past year their data in standardized testing took a hit across the board. My guess is that the teachers are just overwhelmed and its going to take a bit of time and possibly some technology to really dig deep into personalized learning.
The regs you are describing seem far too prescriptive. If you can define measurable goals it seems like they should back off one step in the regulation and try to find a way to just pin you to your promises.
Not sure if you’re in Ohio yet but it might be worth a look.
Legal advise can be tricky, specially when trying to do something new. I have seen a few situations where this scenario played out
Out of curiosity, was the paperwork cumbersome, or did the old counsel just not know?
note: I considered rewording the "not know" bit since regulations can be tricky, there can be other reasons why they might've felt that the need to register wasn't there. Most of which I feel, for counsels, falls into the didn't know, didn't look category.
That amount of paperwork sounds for a lack of a better word – insane. I can't see it being easy for any side of this quantity of paperwork being able to get it right easily.
Perhaps there is an opportunity for some start-up to help solve this.
--
On a different note, I love what you folks are doing and keep pitching lambda to folks who're stuck in long uber/lyft rides with me.
If your "new thing" entrenches the status quo and generally benefits those on the top of society the law will be interpreted as in your favor as it can possibly be.
If your "new thing" threatens the status quo or makes the poor more able to annoy those on the top of society the legal system will go through whatever contortions it must to throw up roadblock after roadblock.
If your "new thing" is somewhere in between or if most people are indifferent but there's small vocal minorities who feel strongly for/against your thing that's where it gets interesting.
At Metis, state and federal regulation (we're accredited) is a big burden - but something I as an instructor feel is in the best interest of my students.
Big firm. We should have been using an education-specific boutique for this specific thing, but this started happened when we were tiny and still figuring a lot.
I can attest to having a similar issue in a startup that got large, we used one of the big firms for 100% of the work and should have been doing 10% of it with a specialized firm. It's not really startup advice you get, but it can be very costly later. Glad you got it sorted out.
For what it’s worth, $75k and whatever time you spend on this doesn’t seem like a massive amount. I feel like you took a risk when you had many other things to do and the risk was calculated and overall worth it — even if you got unlucky.
It could be worse. I’ve never lost any sleep because of it. Regulators have the best of intentions in California so far as I can tell, so just a few hoops to jump through.
Glad you got that sorted out. Lambda school does seem to be "one of the good guys" out there in this market, so I'm glad to see you're taking the steps to keep that reputation.
I do mean this completely naively, as I was not even aware that "exchanging knowledge for money" required a license before this, but why do you feel this way?
I'm so shocked that this isn't simply about certification (aka, you can't give out some sort of officially accepted slip of paper without a license, which I would at least be able to come up with arguments for), that I am really curious as to how this is an issue.
In particular:
1. It seems you can exchange knowledge for money as long as you don't have a physical presence in the state. Do you think this is an unfortunate loophole that in an ideal world would be "fixed"? If I create a new framework or technology and live in Bolivia, do you believe that ideally before I can offer a course on it online that accepts payments I should first be licensed in the state of the person taking the course? Should random people who happen to live in the state have a leg up on me teaching the technology I invented simply since they live there already and it is probably easier/in-their-means to get registered?
2. It doesn't seem to have anything in particular to do with "bad knowledge", as there are plenty of people willing to teach bad things for free (you can define bad however you want here). And separately, as far as I can tell, no one is really checking the courses are good or anything. Using the example above, would California have the capability to know that my React course is up to snuff?
So what is the registration for? Why is the sale of knowledge different than the sale of t-shirts?
1. Is the only goal to have these places on file for easier class-action lawsuits later? That might make sense?
2. Is it because tuition is particularly expensive, so it is known to attract more scams? So, merely a consequential result and not anything inherent to knowledge itself.
3. Is it because this sort of "institution" qualifies for government assisted funding/scholarships? In that case I could certainly understand it.
Any of those reasons could make sense, but none lead me to the feeling that the sale of knowledge, of all things, should of course necessarily be licensed/registered outside any other variables.
Training is different from Knowledge. My understanding is that what is regulated is an institution making promises that they will give you marketable skills against a substantial amount of money. This is regulated because a lot of people get abused in similar situations.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic and I think we're in agreement. I think it's pretty sad that the OP suggested it should be regulated (but I also suspect they only said that because they run a business and can't really say anything political). It's clear from the replies however that many people agree with what he said though.
I work for a DC-based non-profit. As we solicit donations in all 50 states, we have to register in all 50 states and meet their varied paperwork requirements. A small industry has sprung up around non-profit state registrations, and we are happy to outsource to it; we'd never manage it otherwise.
Not directing this at you, but to all - this is a concrete example of why you shouldn’t blindly trust legal (or medical, or spiritual) advice. Ask questions, make sure you understand, and think critically. No one is infallible.
TL;DR, A widely respected CFO makes a suggestion regarding stock and being competitive as far as employee compensation. CFO says that they have done the same thing at numerous companies. The CEO is not very knowledgeable and asks the general council (who unlike a lot of places at the time reports directly to the CEO, not the CFO) to weigh in. General council says don't do it, so they don't. 2 years later, CFO goes to jail, CEO and everyone else stays out of jail because of a good decision.
I would extend your lesson and say to be sure you are asking a lawyer who has knowledge / experience in the area of law you're asking about.
Yes, but it also affirms what the parent was saying: if something doesn't smell right, get a second opinion. In this case, Horowitz got advice that said "do this thing that gives free money, even though no one else does it". That seemed too good to be true, and that's what triggered his insistence that the general counsel look at it.
A bunch of companies did it simply because they thought it was best practice, not for specifically immoral means. The majority of people who did it accidentally and could prove it with a paper trail of trying to follow auditors best practices got off with fines / warnings, which seems appropriate.
Back dating stock options (i'm still assuming that is what the situation was, I do not know) certainly was commonplace, I don't know how many people really knew the law.
I DO think there is something that should set off someone's spidy sense that "Wait, we're changing the dates on these options that already exist?" or "We're lying about the dates / price these options were really granted at?".
To me at least that raises a lot of questions just changing the date on something financal to say it happened in the past like magic. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be very nervous about that.
I think this is a concrete example of why to blindly trust legal advice.
There are some laws explicitly written to say that ignorance of the law is an excuse. "knowing an willing violation" (I don't know if this is one of them though)
Taking that to the logical extreme of having a legal opinion with every email puts you in a very privileged situation with the state
It exponentially increases the cost of the state to investigate. The state now knows you have a lawyer already, but doesn't know the contents of the advice and doesn't get to use things under attorney-client privilege even if a judge approved a fishing expedition that exposed your digital artifacts. And in the meantime it lowers your compliance burden if the advice says you don't have to comply, depending on how you compensate your lawyer your costs were super low.
If there is potentially criminal liability, but the burden of proof is a knowing and willful violation, then you're practically exempt because of the lawyer on payroll.
So in this case they negotiated the fine and get to improve operations.
Costs of investigating and prosecuting aside, the state likes to see a rationale for compliance. The lawyer also provides that, which you would prefer to have some case law to support it. This doesn't result in sanctioning the lawyer, its just not worth it to the state.
Knowingly and willingly usually refers to the level level of awareness that is required to be held culpable for a crime or violation. If the Lambda school was unaware that they were committing the conduct proscribed by law then they would have a defense (assuming knowingly and willingly was the standard required). However they do not need to be aware that the conduct was proscribed by law, just of the the conduct itself.
Lawyers are liable for professional malpractice; whether particular bad advice is malpractice and whether the other party chooses to pursue it even if it might be are issues which affects whether they are liable for bad advice.
Legal counsel is about risk mitigation: do we fire this person?
The question isn’t whether it’s moral or ethical. It’s what the risk exposure? What are the likely outcomes? Do we have our bases covered?
Fire them! (Or, we can’t, it overexposes us, create a new department, assign them and then dissolve the department some time later and declare them redundant).
The law has a few concrete, definitive truths but a huge volume of interpreted and subjective (and contradictory) statutes as well. Otherwise we wouldn't need lawyers in the first place
Exactly this! If the outcome for every case could be known in advance algorithmically or something we wouldn't have lawyers. Since the law is written by people and interpreted by people, it remains blurry when you zoom in close enough to specific unsettled cases.
> When counsel tell you something is legal, and it isn't, there's little subjectivity.
Stating that a thing is or is not legal is making a claim about the opinion other humans in positions of authority (whose specific identity is unknown) will have on a similar question in the future.
There is always subjectivity in it, since you are literally predicting someone else's subjective opinion. The objectivity of law is a conceit, not a reality.
But that’s not entirely a bad thing. It allows for things to change over time. It allows for example for states to crack down on vaccine exemptions and allows for taxation and regulation of interstate commerce, etc.
Given all the dodgy looking "English School" signs and graffiti I've seen in several Indian cities, I'd guess there's a lot less regulation. That might of course differ for a large foreign company, so I would still be interested in hearing from the OP on this :)
In the past, I've asked for a 100% refund of fees before filing a complaint with the association and have received back 50%. You may want to go that route.
Literally just one fax. They want to avoid any complaints on their record, especially valid ones.
Put the info in a shoebox and weight the statute of limitations. I've seen a start-up sue its lawyers and sadly that was the main way they generated revenue that quarter.
May not be that simple. Attorneys understand the "send a threat letter and hopefully they will settle" model well. Also, their current attorney will probably charge just to send that letter.
> Also, their current attorney will probably charge just to send that letter.
Surely not $75,000 for a letter. A few hundred, yes.
Recouping even $5,000 (in a "f u, go away please" payment) would be a big win for a scrappy startup, no?
Their old law firm probably would prefer not to be drug around town making it known they gave very wrong, and very costly advice. They'd prefer the matter just went away. Those conditions are ripe for a quick settlement.
Doesn't shock me one bit. I worked for General Assembly ~5 years ago, and they were really serious about getting and staying on top of all the state guidelines. I got the sense that we were the only school taking that seriously at the time. The only thing that shocks me is that we haven't seen such earlier.
I don't have a strong opinion about if such things should be regulated or not, but I do know that there's a lot of people who have just slapped together programs to ride a money wave, and offer relatively little in exchange and it's hard to vet the places by yourself.
I'm not quite sure where I stand on the regulation vs. lack thereof when it comes to these types of operations either, but between working in a hiring capacity, serving as a mock-interviewer, being courted as a potential instructor, and being friends with both instructors and unsuccessful graduates (across ~5 years) from my local, now defunct code camp - there are a lot of folks who go into these programs, often going into non-trivial debt, and coming out with nothing to show for it.
I will never forget watching a grown man cry in a mock interview because he could not solve FizzBuzz. I made sure they understood the relevant operators, the problem, inputs and expected output, gave ample time, kept things very casual and relaxed, and told them to ask any questions they needed. This was practice, after all.
I suppose I would cry too, if I wasted months and ~20,000, likely banking on a great new life as a programmer.
At the same time I've worked with great entry-level developers who used the code camps to jump from "bad" positions, e.g. young dead-ended professionals, folks with complimentary degrees but no job prospects in that industry, etc. The common thread with these folks is either prior background programming, a personal support network of programmers, or both.
What kind of regulation would help for this? Mandated entrance exams with a hard-cutoff?
If you've spent months and $20k, now "wasted", in a school environment then I have serious questions about the school's feedback and gating systems. Why wasn't this individual given unambiguous signals about their progress (i.e. insufficient)? Even hard stops because they "failed a required class" or similar?
Oh wow, I could talk for hours about this. From what I've heard at a lot of schools, the teachers would like to "fail" people or have higher standards for entry - but management and sales (I mean, admissions) push back hard. A student leaving is money lost. A student just not doing well afterward is something that they can write off as some glitch. They'd rather have the latter. Or they want the instructors to do superhero efforts to get the student to pass.
The teachers know within a week or two who is going to have real problems with the material. The schools do not want them to put assessments in place that would have them leave, because they want money.
From what I understand, the system I saw had originally started with good standards. The first few small classes came out of the program fine, got internships and Junior positions at a variety of local firms.
Then had grew bigger groups, lowered the bar for students, increased prices, reduced scholarships, more focus on financing via loans, and then changed the curriculum in response to the requests of local industry.
On paper they all have reasonable explanations.
Bigger groups? Well we just have so many more people applying! After all, they evangelized the hell out of the program, getting both graduates and local well-known business leaders to speak about the wonders of the program.
Lowering the bar and offering loans? Well they're just opening it up to folks from non-traditional and more varied backgrounds. Don't want to be classist or whatever the hell else -ist! I'm self-taught, I sure didn't want to be one to pull the gate up behind me, and what's more I saw folks from non-traditional backgrounds do well. There is some validity to this.
Changing the curriculum in response to your local board of industry advisors? Great idea! The students will be even more likely to land roles afterwards because those doing the hiring are telling us what their actual needs are. Well what it turned into was a tale of too many cooks. You have an already small time frame with which to teach core material further reduced to satisfy an advisor. Teaching Java and Spring? Why not throw in some Android! Well we'd be in remiss to not touch on Scala, oh and Clojure too! Because they need exposure to other languages!
So now you have a three-month camp for someone that needs to learn Java basics of Spring, basics of their build tool, Gradle, so throw in some Grovvy, oh and basics of Hibernate... which means basics of databases. Oh, don't forget this is all being run on their shiny new MBPs so there's the whole systems administration jackassery. So why not then throw in a week of Android, another week of Scala and Clojure, when they barely understand syntax as a concept to further confuse them. So that's 12 weeks minus 4 weeks for the capstone gives you 8 weeks for all that I just listed, only 6 weeks for the core material.
As I write this out, I'm even more amazed at the folks who came out of that and landed anything. Thankfully for a few of my friends and colleagues the front-end courses were a bit more focused and seemed to produce more working candidates.
Sometimes a shyster comes along and hoodwinks people, sometimes you have incompetence, sometimes both. Either way it's the students left holding bag.
Students pay $0 unless they get hired in a software role making $50k/yr or more.
So it’s not in our best interest to string someone along who can’t write fizzbuzz.
We use mastery-based progression so realistically that person wouldn’t progress past the first week or two, then would repeat until he or she had mastered the content.
> I do know that there's a lot of people who have just slapped together programs to ride a money wave, and offer relatively little in exchange
It's not clear if you're intending to criticize Lambda School in particular here, but given the context that's how it comes across. If that wasn't your intention, it might be worth clarifying your comment; otherwise it might be worth providing some supporting evidence. I'm not associated with Lambda School, but am a fan precisely because they have always struck me as a really sincere organization that works hard to maximize value for their students.
This definitely isn't a slap at Lambda School. From what I've heard they are fine, and their response on this thread shows they care and are working on things. At this point I'm far less familiar with the market than I was several years ago. I remember dozens of places popping up nearly overnight and hearing horror stories from students - Lambda wasn't one of those.
Yet General Assembly costs a lot and doesn't seem to help any more or less than the other schools, in my experience. It's also hard to vet because of the marketing. Makes me question said guidelines in the first place.
Agreed entirely. The guidelines help add some transparency, but still are far from perfect. I do believe without them many of these organizations would be far less transparent on their own, or the numbers would be even harder to compare.
I can't remember the last time I recommended anyone attend one of these schools; perhaps never honestly. I've seen them be really useful for some people, but also really unhelpful for many more.
They are a short cut, and leave people with a large amount of technical debt starting out in the form of a knowledge gap. Sometimes you need that, but I'd still recommend (if they can) someone do Course 6 at MIT any day over a 12-week course. Even without it being MIT, there's no way to fit 4 years of knowledge and experience into 12 weeks; none.
This isn't the first time that the CA regulator (BPPE) has surprised code schools with cease-and-desist letters :)
That said, we (App Academy) found that the BPPE was a mostly accommodating regulator that worked with us to come into compliance. We did face a couple challenges that will likely still exist today:
1) BPPE won't give approval to operate until the whole application process is completed. This means that Lambda School is likely operating without approval and will continue to do so for 6-12 months at a minimum. Contracts are unenforceable during this period, the school could be forced to shut down CA operations overnight, etc.
2) BPPE doesn't have a formal policy for Income Share Agreements (ISAs). We were able to get our ISA approved in 2015, but it took some doing and was not nearly as straightforward as getting a normal tuition contract approved. Several other ISA programs that applied a year or two after us were not approved.
Seems likely. I think they have wrapped their mind around code bootcamps a tiny bit now. They still haven't fully wrapped their minds around the ISA yet, but that's doable too.
After reading this thread and considering it, the regulations seem fine, but lack of consistency between states seems to be a large pain-pont.
I realize California isn't just "any" state but needing to seek unique approval from up to all 50 states just to run an online school seems like a really high (and expensive) bar.
It would be nice if more states cooperated on things like this. Then you seek approval from the collective, rather than at an individual level.
California had a rough spot a few decades back with a lot of scammy junk-tier "trade schools". This led to the creation of fairly strong regulatory system in the area.
It looks like the regulation only applies if you have a physical building in California. Since Lambda school is based in California, they have to abide by the law.
You don't need all 50 states approval to run an online school, but you will need the approval of the state that you are actually in.
Until another state passes a law saying you need to follow their regulations regardless of whether you have a building in the state as long as you're operating there.
This needs to be higher up. HN reserves skepticism for so many bootcamps but throw all their judgement out the window when it comes with Lambda School.
Their only penalty was $75,000? Sounds like "ask for forgiveness not permission" worked out pretty well for them here.
I assume they also have to come into compliance to avoid further fines, but given that they provide a legit educational service, that shouldn't be too hard for them.
To be clear, we were never trying to ask for forgiveness, we were told we didn’t need to ask for permission :)
We’re lucky to be big and VC-backed and growing fast. $75k would be near deadly to a lot of smaller schools, so I’m sure the BPPE sized the fees accordingly.
I replied before you started commenting and before I had the whole story. :) I wrongly assumed you were acting like most other startups and just figured "we'll sort it out later".
Their founder mentioned elsewhere in this thread that they are working with the state to get into compliance as soon as they got this notice. Looks like they weren't even trying to skirt the law, they just got bad advice.
Looking at the text of the fine, you can't charge money to teach people things ("offer education" in their parlence) in a physical location without state approval.
Could that be any more broad? Education is often just verbal and written communication between people. Seems like a first amendment violation.
> Looking at the text of the fine, you can't charge money to teach people things ("offer education" in their parlence) in a physical location without state approval.
It looks like you ignored a lot of the text of the order, such as the citation of exemptions, and the limiting qualifier “postsecondsry” before education.
> Could that be any more broad?
Well, no, it would be harder for it to be more broad than your mischaracterization.
> Seems like a first amendment violation.
Probably not even if it was as broad as you mischaracterize it. The first amendment does not prevent the State from general regulation of commerce, even if what is being traded is speech.
Ah you're right that I missed postsecondary. It should be:
>Looking at the text of the fine, you can't charge money to teach adults things in a cirriculum ("offer education" in their parlence) in a physical location without state approval.
It's an important distinction, but I don't think that huge game changer. Still looks clearly unconstitutional.
I could literally rent a storefront and recite audio books and that would be illegal. How is that a constitutional law? Note: educational books often have a curriculum built in. The difference between a book and a class is just the medium it's presented.
Limiting the spread of information is what dictatorships do. There is a reason it's the very first amendment.
You're so called 'limiting qualifier' describes literally everyone who has graduated high school. If I got on the bad side of the government and they wanted to throw the book at me I could be fined for giving guitar lessons to my neighbor.
> You're so called 'limiting qualifier' describes literally everyone who has graduated high school. If I got on the bad side of the government and they wanted to throw the book at me I could be fined for giving guitar lessons to my neighbor.
No, the applicable legal definition of “postsecondary education” is not as broad as you are painting it: I've directly quoted it, with citation to the Education Code, in another subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20559878
"Commercial speech" refers to advertising, or more precisely, speech that "proposes a commercial transaction". It does not refer to speech that is charged for. Newspapers and books are fully protected by the First Amendment even though people pay for them.
> "Commercial speech" refers to advertising, or more precisely, speech that "proposes a commercial transaction". It does not refer to speech that is charged for.
Unfortunately, there is a received "professional speech" semi-exception to the First Amendment, explaining things like how there can be laws against charging money for legal advice (pure speech) without a state license. I assume that's what California is thinking here.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It clearly distinguishes the press as different from speech, but teaching someone certainly seems like it would fall under normal speech.
This isn't a regulation of commercial speech but a regulation of commerce where part of what is traded might be speech. Of course, the government can do that fairly broadly, too.
The government can often regulate selling things in ways that it could not Constitutionally regulate the thing being sold outside of commerce.
> So would private tutoring be technically illegal in CA?
No, the law at issue (as stated in the document mischaracterized upthread) restricts only “private postsecondary education”.
The applicable definition of “postsecondary education” is at Cal.Ed.Code §
94857:
“Postsecondary education” means a formal institutional educational program whose curriculum is designed primarily for students who have completed or terminated their secondary education or are beyond the compulsory age of secondary education, including programs whose purpose is academic, vocational, or continuing professional education.
Private tutoring is not within it's scope (private tutoring at the elementary/secondary level that is used as an alternative to mandatory schooling or parent howmschooling is regulated in CA by a different law, but that's only when it is taking the place of mandatory schooling, not supplementing it or serving unrelated functions.)
I think it means a physical location for the business, ie. a brick and mortar store location - such as those "A+ Tutoring" or similar tutoring businesses common in major shopping centers.
If you're a sole proprietor who comes to students' homes, you're going to pass every legal test of "physical presence in California".
Note that Lambda School's lawyer interpreted the law the same way you'd like to -- Lambda School doesn't have a physical presence in California because it doesn't operate any classrooms. But the state felt differently.
And the state is pretty unambiguously correct on this point -- Lambda School is apparently incorporated in California as Lambda Inc. with a business address of 921 Crescent Court, San Ramon, CA 94582.
> Lambda, Inc. of California, doing business as Lambda School, operates as a school. The School offers course such as computer science, software engineering, machine learning, web developing, and java script learning programs. Lambda School serves clients in the State of California.
> SUB-INDUSTRY
> Educational Services
> WEBSITE
> www.lambdaschool.com
So far so good.
The address does appear to be wrong, judging by the entry for "LAMBDA INC. WHICH WILL DO BUSINESS IN CALIFORNIA AS LAMBDA SCHOOL" at https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/
But,
> Entity Address:
> 5820 STONERIDGE MALL RD STE 212 PLEASANTON CA 94588
sure seems to suggest that you've got a physical presence in California.
I was under the impression that extant businesses have some value purely for their history of being extant businesses, and are sometimes bought and sold for that reason, so it didn't seem impossible that Lambda School was technically the reimagining of some now-dead shell corporation founded in 1983.
Bloomberg's phone number for Lambda School appears to be right, or at least appears to be a phone number once controlled by an Austen Allred in his capacity as executive officer of a company in Utah. Now I'm pretty curious where the Bloomberg information comes from.
Lambda employees always do PR damage on HN. Had commented about a poor experience of mine and was told to reach out via email, no response ever. They're all talk.
Can someone tell me what a Lambda school is? From the comments here it appears its a specific class of school. From their site it just looks like a regular online learning company.
It's a 9-month (full-time) programming + computer science school where you only pay if you get hired making $50k+/yr in the field you studied. If you don't you pay $0.
If you do, you pay 17% of income for 2 years, capped at $30k total.
I think their main differentiator is that they offer the education free up front, with an income share agreement (ISA) if you get a job in the field they trained you for.
Online learning company with a founder good at growth hacking attention on Twitter, as well as one of the more outspoken advocates for Income Share Agreements in media.
It's a scammy, for-profit, private school that charges $30k+ for online classes.
Edit: 20k up front, versus 30k if taken out of your salary over 2 years. That's around 20% interest. They mention that payments are 17% of your income, but this is calculated pre-tax and paid after taxes.
That seems exceptionally unfair. They’re very up front about what they charge, how they charge it, and whether or not you even pay anything at all. I got a lot out of my overall college experience and so I probably wouldn’t opt for it, but if one of my kids was only interested in software development, I would suggest they attend Lambda School with no reservations whatsoever.
People who don't like the idea of capitalism in general tend to not be huge fans of Lambda School.
But we only get paid $30k in the case where you get a software engineering job after Lambda School that pays $85k+. Everyone else pays less, and absolutely no one pays more than $30k.
Our upfront tuition for the nine-month, full-time course is $20k if paid upfront.
I don't read his comment as intended to be demeaning, but more a statement of fact. And it reads true to me. I have no skin in the game, but I follow a lot of the bootcamp-related discussions online, and what he said sounds exactly right to me. There are a ton of people who hear the idea of an ISA and say "so we're bringing back slavery?? thanks SV geniuses!!", and they seem to disproportionately come from the late stage capitalism crowd.
There are likely many people down voting based on the content of your comments here. Specifically, calling a school "scammy" and being generally negative about it, without providing much reason. For context, 30k is about 1/4 what I paid for my B.S., and mine did not come with a guarantee of employment. Is there some other reason you consider Lambda School to be a scam?
I can't speak for Lambda, but this is also how AppAcademy in NYC operates. I used to work for a consulting company that hired multiple AppAcademy graduates and paid them $90-100k starting salary. Before that, they were making half that money, and we never would have hired them without the skills they learned at AppAcademy. The skills they acquired were worth vastly more than the tuition. They didn't have to go into debt to get the education. And had they failed to score a higher-paying job with a company like ours, they wouldn't have had to pay anything. This is a win across the board for them, and it's a pretty typical result.
> From the comments here it appears its a specific class of school. From their site it just looks like a regular online learning company.
It is not a class of school, it is indeed a company. A scam/cult masquerading as a startup. It's hyped, it's batshit insane. A thread from yesterday https://twitter.com/KeziyahL/status/1155154616281178114 but of course there is more. To me, it was obvious there is something wrong because PaulG often raved about it and nothing good comes out of that. You can't growth hack education. Humans don't work like that. I started a (very small, very unprofitable) school in a far away country and also happen to have a teacher's degree and oh boy.
As for scam, just look at their website.
> "Pay $0 tuition until you land a high-paying job
Lambda covers your tuition costs until you're making at least $50,000 a year. "
How is $50 000 a high paying job? According to the SSA, the average wage in 2017 was $48,251.57. Also, the 17% is calculated from before tax but paid after tax. So if you earn 50K, take home 40K then Lambda doesn't take 6800, no they will take 8500.
> "You can choose to pay $20k upfront for Lambda tuition ... You'll never pay more than $30k ..."
Wait, you are charging 50% interest? Possibly over two years?
> > "You can choose to pay $20k upfront for Lambda tuition ... You'll never pay more than $30k ..."
> Wait, you are charging 50% interest? Possibly over two years?
that's not how interest works. on a variety of levels. for starters, "50% over two years" would be 22% annualized, which is the only way anyone talks about interest. admittedly, that would be a high interest rate.
except it isn't interest. what you pay is a function of how much you earn. try borrowing money from the bank for 6%, and see if they'll let you just stop paying if you don't make any money.
> I started a (very small, very unprofitable) school in a far away country and also happen to have a teacher's degree
what were you teaching that didn't require simple arithmetic, or reading comprehension?
I am very open to the idea that Lambda school sucks, or is overhyped. Many SV things are.
However, literally nothing in that linked twitter thread, or the one it in turn links to, do a single thing to demonstrate that at all. The people who posted both have no first hand experience at all and there's no data or details or facts to support their arguments. It’s just someone reading the website and posting reaction gifs.
We’ve submitted all the paperwork and have worked closely with California. This all happened a long time ago.
I’m not sure what the right level of regulation is (it’s hard taking care of 50 states at once - one state registration was 2,277 pages and weighed 25 pounds https://twitter.com/austen/status/1153450365712388096?s=21), but it’s reasonable that it would be regulated somehow.