I am so excited to share that I have been accepted into Lamda School’s full-time iOS program and will be starting in February of next year! Originally, I planned on just going the self taught route, as I consider myself very good at learning on my own. However, after thoroughly investigating Lambda, as well as many other bootcamp options, I decided that Lambda was the best option for me at this stage in my life.
The number one reason I chose Lambda School is that I want to accelerate my career transition. Their program is nine months long, and forces me to commit 40+ hours a week to study. If I were to stay at my current pace of 12-16 hours a week while working a day job, the transition would take much longer. The faster I can get into a position doing what I want, the faster I can pay off debt and get us into a position where we can support starting a family.
Lambda School has one factor that really separated them from other schools when I was researching. They invest in and take a risk on YOU, not the other way around. Traditionally, with college or other bootcamps you pay upfront (or get a loan) for the schooling, and then no matter how good or bad they do at teaching you, it’s on you to get a job in that field. If you don’t manage to land said job, you are still out your investment.
With Lambda School, that process is reversed. They collect nothing upfront. Only after you complete the program, land a job using the skills that they taught, and start making $50,000+ do you pay them. Then you simply pay 17% of your income for two years (up to a max of $30,000) through something called an income share agreement. The way I see it, Lambda is taking the risk on me by teaching me for nine months before I ever pay them a dime. And in my case, I can’t afford to pay any school upfront without taking out a loan, which I am not willing to do.
One of the other major factors for wanting to join Lambda School is the collaboration and community factor. Though I can’t speak from experience, I know that there is a big difference between programming on your own, and working in a team environment in a company setting. Lambda will help prepare me for that as I will be working with other students to pair program, collaborate on builds, and even spend two whole months in something called Lambda Labs where we will build a real-world project in a small team!
Lambda also includes an eight-week section covering something that most other bootcamps don’t: computer science. I can only imagine that this will help me become a much better rounded developer. It will also expose me to other languages since they use Python and C for this portion of the program. I am excited for this part of the program as I find algorithms very interesting, and I know it will be a challenge as well.
Finally, I think that Lambda will help me improve my soft skills, such as communication, interviewing, and networking. Those are areas that if I tried to learn on my own, I believe would end up neglected. I will be communicating with fellow students and teachers, practicing interview questions, and networking during my time at Lambda. Though Lambda school isn’t in person, they make use of technologies like Slack and Zoom to effectively bring the students and teachers together.
Overall, I am super excited to start at Lambda in just under three months! If you are interested pursuing a career in development, I encourage you to check out the courses they offer, do some research, and see if they are a good fit for you. If you decide to apply, here’s my advice; really focus on nailing the pre-course work. Work on it daily for at least a couple hours, do any and all stretch goals, and overall, try to go above and beyond to prove that you deserve a spot. If you do apply and get in, let me know! I’d love to hear from you.