Not necessarily. They started with 2 companies and added 3 more recently. They could add more. Getting on that list means you meet a high level vetting process to be on the right page and qualified to make legit, real offers on each contract.
Right, think of it like the IRS put $118M into a special bank account, and that account can be used to "buy things" over 5 years. Each time they want to buy something, the 5 recipients can offer their product. Like if they want 100 cars, each of the 5 can pitch the car they offer and the IRS chooses one.
If there is money left in the bank at the end it goes back and the account is closed.
A BPA is a "blanket purchase agreement", which means the IRS budgeted/allocated $118M to a large umbrella of AI training/upskilling/hiring.
There are 5 companies that received this BPA.
When the IRS has a specific task/contract within this budget, e.g. "a 10 week AI bootcamp for 20 level 31 engineers" then they create a task with a price and the 5 companies can compete/propose solutions and one is chosen for that task.
I agree that the terms are completely transparent and very clear on this.
The problem I have is that people sign up thinking they have nothing to lose because of the "money back guarantee" when the vast majority of people who do not finish or place, don't get their money back because they don't finish.
Let's say 100 people start. 20 finish. 16 of those people get jobs and 4 get their money back. 80 people do not get their money back because they didn't finish within 1.5X of the time frame or whatever the terms say.
I didn't say Triple Ten's money back guarantee wasn't real. I said most people who don't place don't finish the program.
Is that not true since you also know a lot about them?
Money back guarantees aren't truly real.
They attract people who are less serious and feel like they have nothing to lose. Then they don't place. Then the program goes bankrupt.
It's a bad spiral but it's why all of the income share agreement providers have pulled out and disappeared.
A person who pays upfront is committed and more likely to succeed.
So the ones in operation have incredibly complex fine print that I haven't anecdotally heard from anyone who ACTUALLY got their money back.
For example at Triple Ten, most people who don't place, don't actually finish, and they blame themselves for not finishing. No money back guarantee in that case!
https://preview.redd.it/885r02mjul6h1.png?width=608&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed9668465cb918b06ec90cac1810aa9c8b179548
What part of this didn't apply to your post?
That sounds pretty extreme. I don't think anyone can make you work 100 hours a week legally, no? Are people organizing and complaining? Is Gauntlet doing anything about it?
I agree if those numbers are correct that it's shady, I think the problem is that people aren't spending any money to attend. I fully agree that "time is money" but legally I doubt Gauntlet will get the same scrutiny that Lambda did.
I think if that many people lost their jobs or didn't get one they would flood reviews to warn people and it will stop working?
What are the reasons people are getting fired?
E.g
\- they blame themselves or weren't good fits?
\- the company was bias and hired them to maintain the outcomes and fired people quickly after?
\- they weren't prepared for the job?
I agree, and there is major cost if people leave their jobs to do it and expect a job at the end. But it's definitely better in many respects to the previous model.
I think BloomTech shut down effectively, and Gauntlet has traction. It's entirely free and the jobs are very high paying. But it's not perfect either. The thing is when you have a problem and you pay $0, it's hard to have "damages", so their model absolutely lets them experiment and iterate at the pace Austen Allred wants but without having students as upset if they don't have a good experience.
I think it comes down alignment.
Codesmith has like no staff left and none of them have extensive AI experience. They hired random people on Upwork to manage this thing, from marketing to program management to working on the contracts. I don't see students in 2026. I don't see placements in 2026. The "CIRR Audited Outcomes" haven't been updated this year, and CIRR has not responded to why. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy. A 2024-2025 lawsuit said that their financials required six months of forensic accounting to assemble and could not be provided on demand. Codesmith's AI curriculum is minimal and created by recent alumni. I'm not an expert but I would guess they would have trouble with the most basic government audit.
Additionally, the AI "Lead Engineer" on the IRS stuff is a full time engineer at a top tier bank. I also suspect that's problematic to have them on c…
yeah, I really hate when boot camps say that they're alumni are "hiring partners".
like tech elevator had like dozens of legitimate real signed partnerships and when you read the marketing you can't tell the difference between that and a boot camp that has dozens of alumnus that they're calling hiring partners.
Ah ok so your opinion is they did mislead you when you signed, which wouldn't be cool yeah.
I mean GA has been pivoting to corporate training along with Galvanize.
I wouldn't be surprised if whatever remaining coding bootcamps exist close down.
Yeah the market is tough. It sounds like it wasn't an impulsive desition though at least.
While this doesn't at all justify the cost or the quality issues, I would see it as a stepping stone to something.
I recommend people go back to their old jobs OR get any job possible at a good tech company.
See the bootcamp as potentially useful coding practice in a long term journey.
That doesn't justify $16K for sub-par experience but just my advice.
I worked on some of the most disturbing internal tools at Facebook you can imagine, the hardest of the hard, the infinite shades of grey.
It re-programmed my brain to separate feelings from objective, provable facts.
You are incapable of doing that.
The fundamental facts are fully on my side.
Whether you like me or not is a matter of taste and many brilliant people like me, and many don't.
It's irrelevant.
If you want to debate the facts, I'm down.
If you can't accept the facts you will only cause your own downfall.
NEWS: First wave of contracts totalling $4.4M under the $118M IRS BPA were awarded to Fedstack, Gauntlet AI, Fearless, and Sokat. Codesmith with no reported contracts.
Details below. Interesting to see Gauntlet AI take the 10-week training program.
# 1. Fedstack (Smoothstack): $1,623,840.00
* **Task Order ID:** `2032L226F00064`
* Fedstack secured the highest-value award to scale highly governed training pipelines that transition existing personnel into specialized AI engineering roles.
* [https://orangeslices.ai/fedstack-secures-department-of-the-treasury-artificial-intelligence-engineer-workforce-development-task/](https://orangeslices.ai/fedstack-secures-department-of-the-treasury-artificial-intelligence-engineer-workforce-development-task/)
# 2. Gauntlet AI (BloomTech): $1,420,654.80
* **Task Order ID:** `2032L226F00062`
* Gauntlet AI received funding to deploy intensive 10-week…
Someone in the other sub got it. It's a random street facing san bruno mountains.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/whereinsanfrancisco/comments/1u1nlns/comment/oqrv1y0](https://www.reddit.com/r/whereinsanfrancisco/comments/1u1nlns/comment/oqrv1y0)
I agree with comments, that this is Reddit drama and not "theory of Reddit". The blog post this was based on was already posted here like 8 months ago as well.
Anyways, people can share their opinions and I'm here to add in anothr other side of the same story that is missing in this "theory": [https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith)
This vaguely competes with my company so I should disclose that but you asked for feedback so before even trying the product:
Facebook and Google don't allow code execution in their normal DS&A rounds. Your targeted practice says they do. Someone who does this might be deer in the headlights if thet get a Google Doc in their real interview in instead of an IDE with code execution. This along would make me highly recommend people not use your product because practicing whiteboard interviews is different from live execution.
Second, don't say that it's "secure" "trusted" and "reliable" unless you actually mean that and you are confident you have no security issues.
Good intentions don't get people jobs. Deep expertise to navigate an extremely stressful and chaotic market do. So keep that in mind before focusing too much on making it look good on the surface.
Can you please put in writing that you are saying for a fact that I did those things and you did all reasonable research to confirm those facts in restarting them as facts?
That is a fake account, targeted attacked, and tabloid-level manipulation of information.
All of what you and that person said are false manipulations.
When I criticized other programs, their leaders reached out to me, we talked and sorted things out. We didn't become friends, but it mattered.
Codesmith never reached out for years and the first time a Codesmith leader reached out to me in 2024 he said "With regards to your posts re Codesmith, I generally don’t have any issue with them"
So WTF... that implies you do not have a problem with my Reddit activity.
Like I can't deal with reading between the lines, passive aggressive messaging, people saying things they don't mean to mean something else.
I have received numerous bug bounties for finding security vulnerabilities thank you very much and participated in organizing Red Team security drills.
The situation is complicated over 4 years and you jumped in at the "everything is burning to the ground" stage. I look really bad, Codesmith looks really bad. There are bad actors going after me left right and center. There are bad actors who went after Codesmith over the years.
And yes, if you were here for 4 years you would see all of the people I recommended go to Codesmith, because every bootcamp has flaws and if you are a good fit for Codesmith you should go to Codesmith and I tried to make that happen.
I'm very bad at communicating in general, but you are seeing a sliver of this thing.
Reddit shut down all the manipulation as you saw, and now the people went to X.
Reddit corrected them thank you very much and it's +2 now. It's blatant manipulation that Reddit has to keep fixing and some idiots keep doing over and over, burning and burning Codesmith's Reddit reputation.
Sarcasm and trolling, you haven't once actually tried to discuss the substance, not once. All of your posts are attacks, trolling, etc...
For example, I had a private conversation with someone about what's a reasonable timeframe and rollout plan to rollout a new website and am I being too hard on them or am I not being hard enough. Both sides. Good discussion. That helps be understand where people are at.
Your commments insults and trolling and your +20 fake bullshit comment has been Reddit correct back to +2.
👏👏👏 stop spreading fake news.
https://preview.redd.it/146p6q4yg56h1.png?width=1636&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f8b5e85e691fbe1c2956a5bd1f72e1c23051f00
Again, what's with these trolling attacks that don't actually address what I say and why do these people only come out on Codesmith posts.
I never have these discussion when I criticize other programs. The CEO's usually reach out, we talk and everything is good.
Codesmith community is so weird. "Powerclap" and "smile" camera on in every session. If you display negatively you get a 1-1 'attitude correction' with an instruction.
But on the outside, if you say anything bad about Codesmith, the wrath of all-mighty power shall be thrust upon you to shut you up.
All false. Stop making Reddit a place of untrustworthy garbage and focus on the truth.
By the way, I guess you aren't an engineer or didn't have a solid computer science education, but monitoring sitemaps is a common thing. Any AI tool can even do in on a schedule without any code or any service.
You sound just like those dozens of accounts that got banned from Reddit.
You are experiencing what I've experienced for four years: I don't understand why people downvote the truth. I can guess ideas, but just like I don't want to people to make assumptions about me, I try to not make assumptions about other people. If I do based on the evidence in front of me, I will correct and change it if new evidence comes to light.
Like people might not like you calling out an obvious contradiction: someone calling themselves a Karpathy-like AI researcher when they have never actually published any research. They might not like you rubbing salt in a wound that Will Sentance said he was publishing a book last year that doesn't seem to have ever come out.
Like calling out someone who repeatedly warps the truth, with public sources, former staff, and dozens of examples, might be mean.
But if you are Will Sentance, a public figure, who signs his DM's '1,000,000 students…
I'll try to summarize then, I do agree that I haven't clearly articulated all of it publicly:
1. I interviewed Codesmith grads who were lying through their teeth and I got fascinated by it
2. When I started poking around people were cult-like devoted to Codesmith, which got me more interested
3. By asking questions a number of former staff and alumni reached out with telling me all kinds of crazy stuff going on there, which got me MORE interested
NOTE that through this time I was very supportive of them overall. The grads were solid, the outcomes were good. I recommended people go there. I recommended they ear the sausage. I was curious how the sausage was made.
NOTE also that people on the Codesmith side thought I was a competitor trying to steal business and I also spent some energy explaining the differences and clarifying.
4. I started piecing together how the sausage was made,…
No, it's totally fine to call out my behavior, if you also discuss the substance and give me a chance to explain where I'm coming from.
For example this post alone I have what like 30 comments. That doesn't mean that I commented about Codesmith "every day for a month". But some people judged me based on Lars's fake conclusions.
Or are saying it does? This post is evidence that I talked about Codesmith "every day for a whole month" according to the Lars Lofgren methodology.
I have been very much on top of Codesmith, and for good reason, and you can think I'm too on top of them and that I'm correct.
But calling me obsessive and therefore I'm wrong is an idiotic argument.
I have ways of monitoring and now you are at 0, with hardly any more views.
If you don't want to pay attention good for you. I am and I'm speaking the truth and you are gaslighting me as a crazy person.
I'm a single-account non-anonymous profile dealing with four years of dozens of fake, then Reddit-wide banned accounts going after me for talking about Codesmith.
I've explicitly stated that I'm calling them out. I supported Codesmith for years, and I've been commenting on the reality of their decline, and they turned that into publicly blaming me for causing $9M in declines. So my only goal is for people to get the facts straight.
You can see here [https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith) how I provided a list of 39 pro-Codesmith accounts that were Reddit-wide banned and have been dealing with this for years.
The problem is I have one account, one real name and you can see my content. It's not easy to add up the cumulative behavior of all those banned accounts.
I saw your other comment that you aren't familiar with the coding bootcamp industry or the sub, so I would recommend doing some research on all sides
[https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith)
You see how it's back down to 3 now... that's called Reddit manipulation fixing. Unless it went from 1 to 12 with 12 views and then 12 to 3 with 40 more views. Which is statistically extremely unlikely given that all the other comments on this branch fluctuated +/-1 .
You are an idiot if you think this isn't weird or you are just harassing me with gaslighting.