This isn't that surprising for someone that has a lot of experience in something like project management or academia and/or is very good at negotiating.

For instance the place I work just hired as a senior engineer a former math professor with a math PhD that hasn't written a line of production code in their life. If this person decided to go through a 9 month bootcamp before applying the outcome would have been the same.

He was a recent college dropout and bodybuilder, but yeah it’s not an absolutely absurd result.

I have to be honest, it sounds absolutely absurd. What kind of definition must a company be using for "senior" if they're willing to hire someone into that title with no prior professional experience? It's almost certainly title inflation.

Note this is not a comment about the quality of Lambda School. I've heard good things about it. But it's almost tautological that someone shouldn't be eligible for a "senior software engineer" title after they've graduated Lambda School, just as they shouldn't be eligible for it after they've graduated university. Such training is necessary but insufficient for being able to meet the level of responsibility you're given at that title.

That company has hired 20+ Lambda School grads, two hired as senior.

I believe you. But there is also significant title inflation at that specific company. There is no reasonable definition for "senior software engineer" which has qualifications that can be met from scratch in nine months. What are their "junior" engineers like? Do they have a title between junior and senior?

Like I said, this isn't a comment on the Lambda School. It's a comment on the idea that this occurrence isn't absurd, regardless of whether or not it's rare.

Different companies have different titles for similar roles, and share titles for people of vastly different quality and experience.

Senior Engineer is a relative title. It means more senior than the other engineers at that firm not other engineers at different firms. A senior engineer on the google android team is way more knowledgeable than the senior architect at a local coding shop where the average dev makes 40k/year and has a year of experience.

It is most likely that company simple has a HR policy regarding pay and positions. If you Senior if you earn > $X.

The "Senior" hires may have significant outside industry experience, even if they only have 9 months of programming experience.

The title is a paygrade in this case, not a level of experience.

It is ridiculous. At Uber they hired so many “seniors” that at some point they made two levels of “senior” and arbitrarily moved some folks to the “real” senior level.

You can imagine how well this went over.

Ya I don’t disagree that there’s title inflation, but yes they do in this instance differentiate.

Bodybuilder sounds like an odd thing to mention.

It’s rare that that happens. That particular student is now leading a team of 40, so he was well suited, but we tell most students to be at “try to go senior quickly” level (with regard to ability not necessarily title).

Impressive.

As someone a bit later in their career (4 years in), I'm a bit jealous of this opportunity. I'd be very curious in some kind of midlevel->senior program like this. Something like Bradfield but more widely available geographically. The content is more difficult at that level, but the salaries are substantially higher as well.

Coming soon.