A couple more things we do. Top level OP had several complaints about these, but according to our collective feedback the vast majority of these go very well and these mentors are often nominated as the 'most impactful mentor of the week' awards we do.
1. Everyone does at least one extensive resume review with a FAANG/ex-FAANG recruiter (and more on-demand as needed). Most have many many years of experience. The OP didn't have a good experience with their reviewer, but you can always work with different people if you are not on the same page with a recruiter. Even if you aren't on the same page with several, you can keep trying.
2. Everyone does at least one recruiter-call mock phone screen with a FAANG/ex-FAANG recruiter (as many as you need until you pass). Simulating a real mock phone screen. And unlimited more as needed.
3. Most people will do technical behavioral group sessions and…
It can be either, I wouldn't overthink it. It's usually a recruiters personal preference. I do agree with others that if it's an offer they will set a positive tone.
e.g.
"I have collected some amazing feedback from the team want want to chat about it"
"Can you hop on a call to talk about next steps?"
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If you can commit 20 hours a week you are eligible. It's a lot of work aimed at making you a stronger engineer in general, and this is not just a shortcut to interview at Netflix, so if you are on the same page with that then it's totally fine to be doing an internship at the same time!
I actually disagree Codesmith had quick placements beforehand. They have always had most people placed in the 3 to 6 month post graduation timeframe. After spending 3 months, 11 hours a day in a program, taking at least 3 more months of job hunting can feel like a long time.
As Triathlete said, the salaries are a lot lower as well and I think people are probably going off script and taking more junior or entry level roles.
I think the strategy of going for mid-level and senior roles when you have zero experience, in this market, is a terrible strategy. If Codesmith is still advocating this, I would be more concerned. That strategy is NOT going to work for the foreseeable future and probably why the placements are so low so far this year.
That said, if you have a lot of time, I always advocate for starting sooner and being better prepared when more jobs come back.
Hi there, I'm happy to give more info and my thoughts. Ultimately we want you in the right place and if that's not Formation, we're happy. I've responded a lot in other comments that might be useful as well and feel free to message me directly with more info about yourself if you want me to give more personal advice.
First off, we take every piece of feedback seriously, investigate and discuss it, so I don't want to come across as dismissive, but the majority of people have a great experience and recommend us to friends. Not a single person on this thread has responded to our team or reported anonymous/untraceable feedback despite open arms from everyone on the team. In terms of feedback, so far this evening there have been 7 pieces of explicit feedback (i.e. text feedback, supplemental to numerical ratings) given, 6 were glowing positive reviews about the impact the mentor(s) had, 1 wa…
It does not, but strong candidates have some kind of significant projects or internship experience in the past. If you haven't had the opportunity to do those you should still apply and talk a bit about your background in the Loom video.
That's fair, I respect both sides of it. I worked at Facebook for a very long time (2009 to 2017) and saw every kind of spam/marketing/trick in the book and I have some friends who work at Reddit as well who comment on similar things. It's just the downside that comes from the upside is that it's hard to trust anything you read on Reddit from new accounts without sources, or take it 100% seriously.
I feel strongly about using my real name in this subreddit because bootcamps are polarizing, and I've seen what happened at FB when you combine polarizing topics + anonymous people + bad intentions. I want to promote real, middle road pros-and-cons discussions about things openly and transparently.
It's a crazy tough job market right now and you can't invent jobs that don't exist.
Even with an optimized Codesmith resume, you are competing with multi-year ex-FAANG engineers and it's not enough anymore.
My team is working around the clock to figure out ways to get early career people opportunities and we've really had to be creative: house-built job hunting tool, sourcing jobs for people, having FAANG recruiters as mentors, direct referrals, resumes books, even a partnership with Netflix, and people are still getting frustrated with the job hunt and not getting many interviews. So I can only imagine what it's like being a bootcamp grad in this market where you are mostly job hunting on your own.
I'm fairly connected in the industry and 8 out of 36 in 4 months isn't bad, It will hopefully end up being 40% or so. We won't see the impact on CIRR until results come out in Sept 2023 t…
Yeah I just commented about the fact that all placements and hiring partnerships are only in India (according to comments by OP in another thread) and this was not mentioned at all. It's a bit suspicious. The OP is a relatively new account and has been posting frequently about Scalar all over this sub, but more subtly than others.
Reddit is a tough place because you have no idea the games and things people do with anonymous accounts. It's so bad that I only use my real account with my name on it and get frequently criticized and falsely accused of things because it's what people expect on here :(
I think one major con as you said in another post, that almost all instructors and TAs of are in India, about half of the cohort mates are in India, all the current job partnerships are in India, and every placement listed on their website testimonial was in India. The company itself is also based in India.This is not clear from their marketing and is fantastic if you are located in India but not as good of you are located elsewhere.
Comment from OP:
"Yes they are available in the US now(launched 7-8 months back iirc). Instructors are based in India. Some are American. Teaching assistants are all based in India. Hiring partnerships are mostly with Indian cos. Not sure about outside India. I am still in month 2 , so job portal is not yet open for me. It's a mix of American and Indian learners. Probably 60-40. My mentor is based out of India. He is an SDE2 at Adobe. Not sure if there are…
Hi, the application process is similar to the Formation interview process, with an additional requirement to submit a short video talking about yourself.
The benchmarking assessment is similar to normal Formation and is not meant so much as a test to rank people, but as a way to assess your starting point.
It's a combination of practical coding questions (which require little specific DS&A) and multiple choice debugging and knowledge questions which require much more advanced knowledge.
We are not looking for the strongest "leetcoders" at all, but you have to have a good starting point of DS&A and problem solving skills. The biggest advice I give about the benchmarking is to focus on speed, because it's a lot for the time aloted. The assessment is difficult to study for because it's trying to assess your general starting point and if you could cram for a few days and do meaningfully…
Hi, I wanted to comment directly since in reviewing the thread I realized your questions weren't answered.
1. I don't think OPs experience are growing pains, or at least not the way they were portrayed. Behind the scenes, our scheduling and matching algorithms actually get better and better the more people we have and create more opportunities for better session matches. We have chosen to grow much slower than we can, and investors want us to, to prioritize experience over growth and making sure everything is great in practice and not just in theory. I said this in another comment but it's not uncommon for 5 out of 6 people in a session to have great feedback and 1 to feel like it was a terrible session. We are fully aware that Fellows are paying a lot of money and expecting a lot, so one bad experience needs to be investigated and improved, but that one experience is also not represen…
Hi, I'm sorry to hear you both aren't finding value in the program. Can you surface specific feedback internally or message me on Reddit completely anonymously with specific feedback and examples so we can action it?
The majority of commenters on this thread are new and anonmyous accounts which makes it hard to get concrete feedback.
For example, IRobot, how do you know you are making better progress through other courses and what signals are telling you so? Like I said in another comment, we link to and suggest all kinds of free content, so I want some clarity on what this means. If you signed up to Formation as an alternative to Neetcode, you didn't sign up for the right reasons and I want to chat!
I can share my thoughts on these questions.
1. Everyone has a different experience at Formation by nature, and has different goals and starting points coming in. So if you already put in the work to apply and get signed up, you get 7 days with a full schedule before deciding if you want to stay so I would recommend doing that and judging for yourself. It might genuinely not be a good fit for you but you can make the most of that first week even if you are not a good fit.
2. One part of the "special sauce" is how we efficiently get you through topics and objectively evaluate how you are doing. So if you've already done 1000 LC problems and feel like you really understand the concepts, you might move through the topics very quickly and spend less time on them. Some people consider that poor value for your money, and some people consider saving your time valuable, depends on what you value…
Your post from two months ago that was auto-deleted: "all of those reviews online are from formation employees, this novati dude is a huge sleazeball"
Please stop following me and defaming the company with provably false statements.
We have really strong reviews because the majority of people have a great experience overall, get great placements, find a new job making significantly more in salary, and recommend us to their friends. A smaller number of people understandably do not. We are a fast moving startup but that doesn't mean the experience should be compromised and it's not an excuse, it's expensive, most people feel like they get good to great value for their experience and we want nothing less. If someone joins for the wrong reasons, doesn't have the experience they wanted and wants to leave, we want them to leave positively and feeling like they got value for their time. Every…
It sounds like you aren't on the same page about the value and reasons to do Formation, for example, we try to be very clear that we feel that there are hundreds of thousands of hours of content out there already that you can get for free and having original content is not a large value add - you shouldn't have joined for that reason. My offer remains open to personally and confidentially handle the refund on your ISA and remove you from the program to take responsibility for the misunderstandings that are ultimately our fault.
Otherwise if you don't want to leave and want to make the best of it, you have Daniel, Danielle, Selena, Sophie, ALL of the FMs, all with open arms wanting to talk to you and support you and help you keep chugging along in this challenging job market until you get a job - we all genuinely care.
Like I said, no hard feelings and no judgement if you want to turn t…
The market is really tough right now and taking a tole on a lot of people who don't have jobs. There are a number of people who have been in the program for longer than they wanted and they can get frustrated at the job hunt and ongoing practice when they are ready to run. In the personal trainer analogy, it's different when you are training to shed the weight/build muscle vs when you're just maintaining your weight. Some people leave and give up job hunting even though their skills are at the bar.
We feel our never-ending training until you get a job is a huge value add in this market, and it costs us more and more money to train people as a result of the market.
But we can't create headcount that doesn't exist and if someone joined expecting a job handed to them, they joined for the wrong reasons, and we're happy to have you leave on very generous terms to take responsibility for the…
You sound extremely frustrated in your job hunt and with Formation, but taking it out on the team and portraying us a money hungry individuals repeatedly is offensive. Sophie and I have not made a penny from Formation and pay ourselves $0 from day 1. Sophie has pledged any profit from Formation's stock to reinvest into others in the future and to not benefit personally from.
What makes you think we are money hungry and preying on the weak? When people pay upfront we have cash flow, and when people pay with ISAs we generally get paid far in the future, and it's a lot better for people to pay upfront for a small company like us even if we get paid more on an ISA down the road. So I think you have a big misunderstanding about ISAs. If Formation was 100% upfront only, it would be tremendously better as a business model. We offter ISAs to support people that don't have thousands of dollars l…
You have several comments and deleted comments that are fairly offensive or negative about Formation's intentions that have been hurtful to the team and it makes me feel like you just don't want to be here.
If you do want to be here, we need to get back on track and be on the same side for this to work.
If you don't want to be here, please message me privately on MM and we'll remove you and figure out a cost that is appropriate to the value you think you got from Formation and we'll be more than fair to make sure you feel good about that cost. No hard feelings and no judgement... it's a stressful time for early career job hunters and we'll be happy to have you back in the future if there is better alignment and we are on the same side.
This doesn't sound like a good situation for anybody so we should talk more about it and if you are open, ping me on MM. Daniel would love to meet with you to talk about the sessions and you can ping him directly if you are more comfortable.
We obviously don't want you sitting through useless sessions and then rating them a 7!! That makes no sense.
And we absolutely do not want you showing up to sessions that waste your time out of a fear of being cut or removed and having to pay.
This is absolutely off track and there might be some communication issues to sort out about this that I really want to get to the bottom of.
We move fast, so it would be really awesome to share as much feedback as you can and give us a chance to action it.
Thanks, this is invaluable feedback and I'm going to share it with the team! This is the kind of productive thing that we cherish, so thank you!
We do have an completely anonymous flow (that is legitimately no technical way to know who submitted feedback) that we could maybe link to on that form and I'm going to set that up ASAP right now!
Thanks for the feedback, this is on the radar and we might be experimenting with one person soon doing this!
Additionally, we have several sessions around the "technical behavioral" (a 3 person group one and a 1-1) that are with fairly senior engineers and managers, directors. If you've had these and find them more useful than phone screen prep, let me know!
Hi! The Netflix Program is only for people authorized to work in the United States, or Canadians and Mexicans eligible for TN status. I'm not sure about F-1 OPT status but you can apply if you want and I'll flag for the team to look into.
That session sounds unacceptable and I believe that surfaced in feedback and was addressed and is being monitored if it's what I'm thinking of regarding mic-off.
Have you been reporting this internally on the session feedback forms, your weekly feedback forms, your daily standups, FM check-ins, your private channel, or with the anonymous feedback flow? We constantly ask for feedback and love it so please send more feedback our way so
If you have more suggestions on how to contribute feedback itself, let me know as well, please!
We want nothing more than every session to be perfect for every person. But things happen, for example a session this week had very good, thorough feedback from all the Fellows but one, one have very clear feedback about why they didn't like the session. If that person comes and complains that their sessions are terrible and the mentor was terrible, that's true…
100% agree that great engineers are not always great mentors, couldn't agree more! This is one of the reasons I personally don't do sessions, and focus on writing code, but that Daniel, Sophie, and others do sessions.
So most of our mentors are industry engineers who first go through light training (reading materials and videos) and then go through a shadowing and reverse shadowing process to be approved to run sessions.
For 1-1 mock interviews they are instructed to run them as industry mock interviews, and they complete a structured feedback form at the end with dozens of data points.
For group sessions, it's a little more complicated. We have a few dozen session types and people need to get shadowed and reverse shadowed for each type. Each session has very clear instructions on how to run that session - both technically and regarding the overall flow. Every single session technical…
Hi, we severely limit the number of people with zero experience (hence waitlists or rejections) and you can see in our recent placement data that about 1/3 of people had no full time experience and that was equally split amongst: bootcamp grads, CS grads, self taught/other degree: [https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/](https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/)
I would argue that CS grads have fundamentals, some bootcamp grads do if they self studied post bootcamp, and self taught is the real wildcard where we would only admit people who meet the bar and just happened to do it themselves - typically over many years.
RE: Sessions. People get dynamically scheduled for sessions based on the skills and difficulties they are working on right now, so generally speaking, you should be in sessions with people around your level. We have a lot of improv…
Yeah the job market is very hard right now. Formation Fellows are still getting jobs at good companies, like Bloomberg and Cisco in the past few weeks, but there's no magic path that you can just pay for to get a job at FAANG, and people should NOT join Formation if that's what they are looking for. People with no professional experience are having a particularly hard time getting interviews and we are like a coach in the corner by your side, but we can't create entry level headcount that doesn't exist. We're trying! We have a deal with Netflix we just announced to hopefully get 20 entry level CS grads into Netflix this year!
You should join Formation if you want to build solid fundamental CS and problem solving skills that you might be lacking from a non-traditional path, and get personal-trainer-like practice and ongoing support until you get a job.
Hi! Thanks for sharing your feedback as well. I have some comments:
1. For you specifically, you demonstrated your DS&A are at the bar in only 3 weeks and got to move on and for someone else it might take 3 months. In other programs you get a fixed list of questions or a fixed schedule of classes. I totally accept the argument that another alternative is to not do Formation at all, but for people who are committed to doing a program, I think our model works really well at efficiently getting people to that bar and adding confidence that you are legitimately there.
2. Our mission is to support people from non traditional and underrepresented backgrounds and not all people (in fact, very few) come into Formation having interview-ready level Graphs and DP like you did. We actually get the feedback that Formation is harder than expected much more often than easier. That said, we want to ad…
Thanks for sharing your feedback and opinions about your experience. Regardless of the tougher job market making it harder to get interviews, making sure you feel supported is one of most important internal goals that we constantly monitor with a magnifying glass and I'm sorry that the support you aren't receiving isn't meeting your expectation.
I respect your opinions and won't comment on everything you mentioned that I might personally disagree with. For others reading, I'm going to add some responses to specific statements that I feel will be helpful to clarify.
1. We don't let in everyone who wants to join and we only accept a fraction of people who apply. Acceptance is based on three things: 1. a benchmarking assessment that gauges your starting skill level and has a complex evaluation model that is not akin to "passing a test". 2. your past experience. 3. your goals, timeline,…
Hi, I haven't read the entire post yet! We collect feedback on every interaction you have at Formation, as you know, annoyingly so, and I'm really heartbroken that you have been feeling negatively for a while and this hasn't been surfaced, or if it has been and you don't feel it was actioned, I apologize and want to make it right.
Who did you talk to about a refund or adjustment if you want to leave early and can you message me about that? I don't think I saw this ever reach my inbox and want to launch an investigation of what happened.
We can't control the job market and referral opportunities obviously, but we have been investing in adding FAANG/ex-FAANG recruiters as career coaches to try to level up our career support in these hardder times (and this was intended to be a benefit), but I'm happy to jump into your private channel and help advise if you are open to that!
Anyone is welcome to apply! Those terms are used for explaining the motivations for making the program in the first place, which is to support people from under represented backgrounds in tech. The vast majority of people in the USA, and probably reading this post, fall into those buckets above so I don't see how that would be that limiting.
Yeah possibly, if you are failing FAANG-level technical interviews and getting by easier ones, but your goal is a top tier company, we should be able to get you to that bar and confirm it through a combination of benchmarking, mentor feedback, and passing mock interviews.
Formation is not time-based, meaning you keep going week to week for as long as it takes to get a job, and you keep training the whole time, so as long as you do your part, you'll get to that bar in whatever time it takes you.
The market is not great right now for new grads to be blunt. We have a program with Netflix you might want to check out that is aimed at helping new grads. We don't have any magical powers to create jobs that don't exist, but you get our unconditional support and best efforts through the ups and downs if you show up and do your part.
I'm obviously biased! But seriously, it really depends on you, your current skill level, and your goals. It is objectively good? How can you tell haha? I think we operate with integrity, we listen to feedback, we try to be fair, me and my co-founder have not made a penny of salary from Formation in the past 4 years, and we genuinely care about what we do.
If you want to give more info about your background and goals, I can say if I would suggest it or suggest something else instead.
Formation's mission is based on helping people from all kinds of non traditional backgrounds get a seat at the table, which includes bootcamp grads. We work with many bootcamp grads in our normal programs with many great success stories and that motivates us to do more and more to help you in your careers.
They aren't a complete illegal-type scam at least, I know the founder has been doing coaching for a few years now but Coachable is pretty much him, a few other people, and then some former Coachable graduates - with legit FAANG jobs now - who are now "coaches". So it is pretty small for sure.
The 91% success rate, paying "165K" a year I want to know more about because just a few months ago they said the average compensation was $140K, but they don't give any details how this number is calculated.
And the other commenter is correct that if you leave something without a job, you usually have to pay something. Without reading fine print, there is a giant loophole here that if you leave a few weeks before you get a $100K job, then do you still have to pay? Is it 100K base salary or including bonuses and stock? How do they value private company stock in this guarantee? How do they value va…
You do not get paid, no, but if you were to train with Formation on your own, you normally have to pay up to $24K (15% of your first year base salary). So if you are selected for this program, Netflix is paying all the fees for you, essentially, so you don't pay anything.
It's limited to 20 spots, that's correct, because this is the launch/first instance of the Netflix specific program.
This program is looking to support people from underrepresented backgrounds in tech, so it's not meant to be a special leg up for Stanford and MIT grads.
Both Netflix and Formation are focused on opening more doors for people that have a harder time finding those doors right now.
Yeah that's why I a posted it even though I totally undestand u/Competitive-Feed-359 that many people won't be eligible and feel bad about that honestly.
I know a large enough number of CS grads right now in this market are looking to bootcamps and there are number of people that might benefit from this here.
Hi, I believe it does if you are taking a number of computer science courses (like data structures and algorithms, and databases, and such) so it depends on the degree and what you did.
Hi, nice to meet you! Yeah again, cool engineering work. If, you don't collect PII, how can you possibly prevent spam and abuse and maintain the integrity of the salary data? (like even IP addresses for example)
PSA: Netflix Formation Program applications opened today! (2024 CS grads in the USA). Sadly, this is not open to bootcamp grads this time around, but any CS students who are considering a bootcamp before graduation might benefit from this program)
Hi friends, Netflix [announced](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heyjoshuag_formation-activity-7033558750359683072-hGi9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) the launch of the Netflix Formation Program, a **free program (paid for by Netflix)** for 2024 grads to get rigorous CS fundamentals training and potential interviews with Netflix for entry level SWE roles. This is intense program and is extremely competitive to get into, but if you qualify, check it out!
Now many of you know me well in this community and I champion helping bootcamp grads get great first, second, third jobs. This time around, unfortunately this program is only open…
PSA: Netflix Formation Program applications opened today! (2024 CS grads in the USA)
Hi all, Netflix [announced](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heyjoshuag_formation-activity-7033558750359683072-hGi9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) the launch of the Netflix Formation Program and applications are open now through March 5th, 2023. This is a free program (paid for by Netflix) for 2024 grads to get rigorous CS fundamentals training and potential interviews with Netflix for entry level SWE roles. It's an intense program and is extremely competitive to get into, but I wanted to share it with the community so that people interested can check it out!
From the post:
>Netflix has teamed up with Formation to bring rising seniors personalized training and world-class mentorship from the best engineers in the tech industry. This is a **free** **program**, and participants who demonstra…