Hi! I would highly recommend going through a program that supports felons (others have shared some links) that has connections with companies and jobs. Many big tech companies that you might apply to on your own will rescind offers if you have a felony surface on a background check and they won't ask questions about what you've done to improve your circumstances and avoid crime) to avoid getting sued.
I would also recommend doing counseling and volunteering if you aren't already as the longer the better for making a case that you will be a responsible and law abiding employee.
Derek has a unique sense of humor and the post is sarcastic. His program is also really good if you have a good vibe with him and probably not good if you don't.
For super serious engineers who are in it for the long haul and have a day job to pay the bills, it's a fantastic time to continue working on your skills at places with longer term training philosophies, like PE.
We're seeing a surge at Formation from people that don't have any kind of fixed timeframe - since Formation training is perpetual (haha intentional pun, Derek will get it) until you get a job you don't have to game the timing and all you have to do is show up and do your part. People don't want to wait until the market warms to **start** practicing, they want to be ready to pounce on great opportunities that arise.
It's possible but I highly doubt CIRR would shutdown and go offline without any notice. They would probably keep the website running with the standards documents so that others in the future could continue their work.
I also think the bootcamps remaining in CIRR are the ones most serious about the process and would probably want to continue publishing data even if it's bad. If everyone's data is bad and yours is better, it looks less bad for the best ones... even if overall fewer people go to bootcamps because of the results, the ones that do will be more likely to go to the best ones.
Based on anecdotal evidence from \~10 people at HR and Codesmith, results will indeed tank for H2 2022, but H1 2022 might not be that terrible.
So it might help Codesmith to have H1 2022 published and people might mistakenly think the market is still good. And when H2 2022 comes out and the results are…
How much coding experience do you have and what kind of experience is it?
If your practical experience on your current job is sufficient to get an entry level job, you might be better off with a career accelerator that helps fill in more fundamental gaps and helps you practice for SWE interviews.
I'm the co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), and other options are Interview Kickstart, [Outco.io](https://Outco.io), Pathrise, and Scalar.
It's worth looking into them and if you aren't quite far enough along, consider a bootcamp for sure.
Hi, nice to meet you, lots of questions I'll try to address.
RE: Formation fit. Yes, 1+ years of real SWE experience, even if it was in the past, and teaching experience is a good fit. We've worked with a number of people that have taken multi year career breaks, and it's a very good fit not just for the technical aspects, but for building confidence in your behavioral narratives. For FAANG companies, you don't need to so much worry about updating your practical skills to the newest frameworks as much as building confidence in the fundamental skills and story, and building confidence happens day by day as you practice and get feedback that you are improving.
RE: Timing. It's not the best time for classic FAANG, but it's still a decent time for FAANG-level companies. Depending on how much experience you have, you could be aiming for mid-level roles. One of the nice things about Formatio…
So there's a not so secret secret that bootcamps don't really effectively teach much in 12 weeks. They are intense environments for ambitious people to accelerate their progress from a year or more of self teaching down to 3 months, and to build confidence. People who are successful tend to have at least a few years of "experience" coming in, taking the form of a combination of self teaching; STEM degree; vaguely related work experience.
So for the right person, doing a bootcamp instead of college can work, but it's an edge case and likely someone who has been programming since they are 10 years old and maybe has done a bunch of open source contributions as a teenager. Or they are gifted in algorithms and won programming contests.
Quite honestly the best people I know in the industry didn't go to college or dropped out, but they are in the in the edge case bucket of humans.
Are board members not responsible for the companies they run... they sure are when it's Facebook, or Exxon, or companies people hate, no? If they are on the board to put their face on a website and to get the marketing benefits of being on the board of CIRR, they also have to take responsibility for competently running the company...
If they can't renew a domain name (or at least resolve the issue immediately when it expires), are their taxes being filed? Is their governance up to date? Are their finances and credit cards in order?
Yeah Launch School's Captone projects are definitely better than Codesmith's. I would say they are similar but the attention to detail and legitimacy is higher on the Capstone.
RE: Formation, we aren't a self paced program, it's actually the opposite, you do no work in deciding what to do, and every week we tell you what to work on! And what you get adapts based on how you do.
We are working on predicting time frames better based on other people who did Formation but right now, it's too hard for a human to estimate precisely given how unique each person's experience is and we need to do more complex predictions. It works best when you have a job and do Formation part time so there is less financial pressure.
Not to step too much on your toes but Springboard pays to sponsor Course Report (which is a conflict of interest, but nonetheless) and if you sign up via Course Report you save $1000.
[https://www.coursereport.com/schools/springboard](https://www.coursereport.com/schools/springboard) (scholarships tab)
I think the bigger point here is the auditing doesn't matter. I don't know where "audited" became synonymous with integrity. The CIRR process auditors just make sure humans input data correctly, and they don't do much investigating to dig into if that data is correct. For example, if a human put Susan's salary as $50,000. They will ask Susan, "was your salary $50,000?" and if she says yes, they are done. The CIRR spec doesn't say much about what auditing means, which is one of the flaws... they just throw the label on their to make it sound more legit... and it doesn't hurt, but it's a flaw. They don't even say clearly how salaries are verified! All they say is that start dates need to be pulled from an offer letter, but they say nothing about salary, so it can be entirely reported by a student incorrectly.
All of this to me is much more important that slapping "audited" on there and ca…
You should look into loans from Climb, and Ascent as well. So all of these will run a credit check but you might be able to find something you are eligible for.
Some programs with ISAs will accept you even with poor credit, the thing is if you have poor credit, they won't be able to get loans using the ISA behind the scenes so they can pay for your training before you get a job, so in the current climate not a lot of places want to take that risk.
I want to clarify that I don't have an axe to grind here with CIRR or with Codesmith and please don't try to add drama to a non-dramatic situation.
I worked at Facebook for 8 years and saw how misinformation spreads and this subreddit is a misinformation breeding ground. Every day, I see leading questions, one person answer confirming the question, and then the OP being like "I knew it!". This is straight out of the misinformation 101 textbook. No one here has bad intentions, it happens because people make generalized conclusions from one off data and when many people you see in your online community support your ideas. Just because 1 person says something and 5 people back it up it means absolutely nothing, but people take that point, spread it to others, and before you know it, everyone thinks something that is not based on anything valid.
If you hear "trust the process" too many tim…
Yeah! It happens for a lot of reasons! Google uses Mark Monitor I think to protect their trademarks and domains, so there are different reasons for large companies versus small ones. That's why most registrars give you some time to fix things if it expires and your site goes down and most people would fix this ASAP... we're at 3 days and counting here
I do at a high level and manage ISAs from the other side.
Each ISA has a set of credit criteria to pass, and it's not at all just based on score. Each ISA is different but all the ones I see consider a minimum score as one of many criteria. You can have a great score but have too high of a debt load based on your current income, or have too many educational loans, or have other current ISAs, or have gone bankrupt in the past (which would probably ding your score), or have defaulted on loans before, and many many more.
So I wouldn't overthink it but those factors you mentiones might impact your ISA even if your score is at the minmum.
That said, even if you don't pass the credit bar, a program might still offer you an ISA, they are not regulated financial instruments with a bunch of hard rules.
I don't think I questioned the integrity of the results in my post. When you have been calling CIRR the "gold standard" if you meant the specification itself or the auditing process was industry leading you are extremely mistaken and every bootcamp leader I've talked to agrees. And I take all of their words over a Codesmith alumni who has no context there.
I have read the CIRR standards doc (which I can't link anymore because the site is still down) many times and there are many problems due to lack of attention to detail. And they have similar problems attention to detail in managing their domain name.
The reason I mentioned Codesmith, is that if you are telling your students "studies show that Codesmith is better than Harvard and MIT" (this is a quote a few people shared with me), and in your own description calling yourself competitive to "elite grad schools", then the bar is high a…
CIRR's domain expired 2 days ago, no one renewed it, and the website is now offline
CIRR's website (cirr.org) is completely down for 2 days and counting because they didn't renew their domain name. Their registrar, Google Domains, has put an auto-renew on it, to give them up to 45 days to pay up and renew before it goes to auction.
The reason I'm posting this is that I repeatedly caution those against using CIRR as the "gold standard" (as several people have quoted here). Codesmith touts CIRR in all of their public sessions and has doubled down on it in their marketing.
I understand their positive motivations of trying to help consumers weed out "bad bootcamps", and that something is better than nothing. But the amount of personal insults and attacks I've taken for suggesting that CIRR is just one source of information amongst a sea of information and opinions, is just unwarranted.
I…
GRAD is a specification written by Galvanize and CIRR is a specification written by CIRR board members (which represent four different bootcamps).
Neither of them do auditing themselves but both require results to be audited after the fact.
You read through both of those specifications to see how their numbers are computed and they're not exactly the same but they're fairly similar.
I'm also curious why the website is down but it's probably a lack of maintenance because CIRR had their entire board change and are extremely non-responsive. people complain there are so few boot camps in them but they don't even respond to new people who try to outreach.
RE: Formation's growth. I might have explained too many details about the growth. From the Fellow point of view you would only perceive more support and improved tasks and sessions. The goal here isn't to automate away but to enhance what humans are capable of doing. The number of live mentor sessions we don't expect to change much as they are some of the most important practice opportunities.
RE: Code reviews. Yes, from experienced engineers on bugs, tasks, and take home assignments we assign you. No, on code review for personal projects (officially, but possibly case by case).
RE: beyond DS&A. We have FAANG recruiters and managers around as well to answer questions and mock interviews and sessions in the job hunt phase (once your skills are deemed at the bar), Formation is far from just technical training alone.
We have hired back two Fellows as full time SWEs. We have 5 senior (l…
Hi!
RE: Update. Things seemed to get worse in October/November, and have since gotten a bit better. Seeing more people getting FAANG interviews again - with generally longer time frames (e.g. scheduling onsites for over a month from now). We've seen mid-level and senior engineers (based on FAANG standards, not Codesmith standards) get hired and get interview more easily. Zero experience people definitely have a harder time with FAANG. We've seen people go to Palantir, Amazon, Bloomberg, but in general having some kind of genuine connection to the company is key. Something about your background that aligns so much better than most other people, that by trying every angle from referrals, to recruiter pings, to networking events, something works to get that interview. Google specifically has hired a few experienced engineers at the L4 level and has slowly resumed some entry level interview…
I don't know anyone's ages and the resumes tend to exclude all past experience and education unless it's relevant to programming. So the entire resume is often just Codesmith projects, tech talks, and skills and it's very hard to tell. I would estimate amongst the people that I work with that most have 3 to 10 years of experience post college in another field.
Hi, sure, happy to respond with thoughts.
RE: Formation. It is absolutely harder to get FAANG interviews right now than in the past. The goal of Formation is to increase the chances of passing these interviews and to help you get these interview. When the companies are hiring, it's easier for us to send over some profiles to a recruiter and get you in the pipeline. When recruiter jobs themselves are at risk it's harder to do that. But we help you find the right path to companies given the market, and occasional one offs happen and occasionally a recruiter will respond to you.
RE: OSP. Honestly the projects are not good and everyone knows it. They are open source and anyone can look at the code! Non functional, commented out code, reviewed and mentored by someone who just graduated Codesmith and has no experience. I know the vision of the projects is much greater, but in reality they ar…
I'm extremely biased, but I would recommend looking at Career Accelerators, which focus more on practicing than teaching. Some to look into are: [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (I'm the co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar, Coachable, and then also [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io) for one off interview-practice.
I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev which obviously I would recommended looking at. About 1/3 of people we work with have no full time SWE experience, and of those 1/3 are self taught. We work on filling in a lot of fundamental CS knowledge that's missing and get it up to a top tier bar.
Anyways, I don't want to promote Formation too much here, but look at those options above to at least consider this kind of approach because it might be a better fit.
It depends a lot on your location, the position, the company. And things like bonuses, stock, benefits, etc...
But it's definitely possible and likely if you get a legit software engineering job anywhere.
Positions where you won't make that much are typically developer, analyst, and not full blown software engineer roles.
I want to repeat, it's not just your credit score alone! And it's important for everyone reading this thread to not be misinformsted about how ISAs work.
I see people constantly who have sufficient credit scores and get initially rejected for ISAs because of past school loan defaults, too high of a debt load given your current salary, other ISAs that you already have, past bankruptcies, and more.
I could write you a paragraph about how each of the factors above could get you denied for an ISA regardless of your credit score but based on how you are treating me why would I.
I've seen first hand how misinformation spreads and I want to caution everyone against the "I found one person who has the same experience at me so this must be true"
Hi! Yeah happy to explain more or answer questions over DM that pertain to your specific circumstances.
What you wrote summarizes exactly my overall stance on Codesmith and also what Formation is trying to do so I'm happy you pieced that together from your experience and from my posts.
I really admire Codesmith leadership for scaling the program that they have, they just don't have the experience needed in the tech industry to really solve the right problems that the industry needs, and if they did, maybe they would be more on the right track instead of the rabbit hole they've gone down focusing on going through the motions to put things like a "tech talk" (which are big jokes among students) on your resume.
At Formation, we think we need to get the most experienced people in the industry who are passionate about mentoring to answer the question of what it means to be a truly great…
Funny, I personally approved a few ISAs today with low credit scores below the standard bar for people. Not all ISAs are the same.
Some meta-advice, if by default you assume people are against you, you'll have a harder time in this industry. Most people I know are super supportive and helpful and it might be an easier road by not pushing people away when you meet them.
Good question!
For people who have no or little experience we give them tasks and bugs to fix in a forked production codebase. You get assigned tickets, fix issues, send PRs, get code review from industry engineers, complete your tasks, etc... This is important for helping people ramp up in an unfamiliar codebase, follow a real engineering process. The goal of this work is to help you hit the ground running on your job and NOT to build a portfolio. Sometimes Fellows will list their contributions here as project work on their resume and use it for examples in interviews, but it's not something you can put on a website and show off.
You obviously also do all the fundamentals (e.g. DS&A), resume, behavioral, job hunting practice that is the bread and butter of all engineers.
We've gotten feedback that people think the above task and bug fix practice should actually be supported more for…
This is my LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/)
I was also the number #1 code committer at Facebook when I left of all time (which was almost 6 years ago and I have been surpassed and I'm something like 15th now regardless).
We might not be a good match personality wise but don't be so hard to judge! I have a lot of genuine experience in a lot of things.
I offer ISAs, have talked to all the ISA providers, approve, reject, process applications, what more do you want to know?!
You can take advice from random anonymous people on Reddit who are making guesses if you want, but I think I have something to say here!
I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have about them or feel free to DM me if you want more specific advice about your situation and an ISA!
I noticed a bunch of people just launched their OSP projects this week. There are example after example of this behavior continuing... every single person that lists their OSP on their LinkedIn as work for a company "Oct 2022 to Present" ... **every.... single... person.** One person said 'I spent several works working on this project' , shared their LinkedIn below and their LinkedIn says they "worked" at this project for FOUR MONTHS. They all started CODESMITH in October 2022, not the project, and then they double list all of their GitHub projects overlapping with this, and some list Codesmith as well.
I genuinely believe Codesmith tells you not lie loud and clear, but can you explain why this behavior happens over and over again?
That's probably good enough. You can get an ISA with low credit scores, but it will prevent the program from getting financing for the ISA (i.e. getting loans for day to day operations using the ISA as evidence of reliable future income to justify a loan).
The programs also don't look only at your score... the cutoff is probably in the 500s... but they are looking for qualitative flags, like bankruptcies, student loan problems, debt loan, etc... that might also disqualify you.
Don't overthink it and just wait for to hear back!
To clarify I'm middle of the road in my stance on most issues. Financially I have had $0 of salary for the past 5 years but I consider myself very wealthy from being at Facebook so early yes.
Yeah Codesmith is a solid choice and should always be a contender when considering the top bootcamps.
I help run a coaching and training service aimed at experienced engineers from non traditional and underrepresented backgrounds to level up to top tier companies (many have bootcamps on their resumes) and prior to that was at FB from 200 engineers to 10,000 and did hundreds of interviews, resume reviews etc...So yeah I really have a pretty unique view on the market from both of these experiences.
This is very subtle but not many bootcamp projects have numbers.
No one uses them, these writeups happen right after launch, they are 3 to 5 week projects!
I think when people stretch here is where the exaggeration comes out.
e.g increased the number of users by 300%... from 1 to 3, and they were my friends.
I'm not saying this is wrong, I just want people to acknowledge it's happening. Especially before complaining about the ever increasing YOE requirements in entry level jobs.
I hear you and appreciate your ongoing pushback, it's why I keep such a close eye on this.
I understand your position is both similar and different from others. I've heard from people that agree with you and people who haven't, who have sent over anecdotes of talking to Eric. Or anecdotes of talking to a career support engineer to make their resume qualify for certain jobs
I don't have all the answers but Triathlete I assure you two things: 1. I have shown OSP resume snippets to industry friends who think the way OSP are portrayed, even when disclosed on fine print, is lying. 2. we have done recruiter training at Formation to identify Codesmith resumes because they were repeatedly flagged as industry experienced engineers at application time because of the OSP portrayal as a work experience, repeatedly.
I understand pushback on second hand accounts when you have first hand experience…
I have not. I grew up middle class in Canada and my summer internships paid for my public education. I consider not having student debt a great priveledge for sure.
I work with many people who are severely not privileged, support them, cry with them, and celebrate with them, and it is absolutely brutal sometimes which is why I try to portray both sides of this.
Being middle of the road doesn't mean being neutral. There are two loud camps on both sides and after working at Facebook especially I saw how silencing people who disagree with you only makes things worse.
I do what I do to change lives and to change the world by enabling people from non traditional backgrounds to change the world. Period. And will always fight for people who are fighting for themselves.
1. The reports are audited annually after the fact
2. The CPA who signed the last audited report said "Direct request of confirmation from Graduates regarding Employment outcomes andobservation of LinkedIn profiles" [Link](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20Angeles%20Full-Stack%20Software%20Development%20Audited-AUP%20H2%202020.pdf)
So sure it's audited but it's also self reported by people and uses LinkedIn as a source to see if people have jobs or not. The auditing is to make sure humans put the right numbers in the right boxes, not to audit that people's salaries are what they say they are.
Read through the entire [CIRR Standard](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/aa1e118858a548ec9484b7b714e694c6/1/CIRR%20Standards%202021%20%28rev%202020-07-07%29.pdf) and it's extreme…
Yeah I feel like Codesmith is the same from what people tell me and from the documentation I've seen. People don't even realize what they are doing is perceived as wrong by a number of people because it's so right on the line (e.g. 'construct your sentences about your OSP by using these templates' without realizing that they are leading you to exaggerate your OSP experience). I'm sure I'll be grilled on here by people saying "Codesmith says not to lie!", but the definition of "lying" is subjective and a slippery slope where people land on different places on the spectrum.
On the one hand, if you fake it til you make it and perform well on the job, does it matter? On the other hand, if you fake it and get caught, companies get pissed off, raise the YOE requirements so you can't get through without definitively lying, and it does a disservice to the industry.
Before people attack my comm…
Can you elaborate on lying on a resume? That majority of Codesmith resumes I've looked at overstate the OSP project at a minimum of overstating the amount of time worked on it, and at a maximum, making it appear as a real SWE job. I consistently get comments that "Codesmith doesn't tell you do this" but a pattern is a pattern and they should go over the top to tell people to stop, because in a 200 person sample, over 70% did this.
But there is a difference between careful wording and blatant lying so it would be helpful to explain more your specific experience with that at HR!
Hi, we do run credit checks but look beyond just the score alone for ISAs, so having just a low score only won't necessarily disqualify you from an ISA. Since our coaching and training is ongoing until you get a really good job - people are generally able to pay the ISA even if their prior credit had some minor issues and this model works really well in this case.
There are other payment options you can discuss after applying yeah depending on your circumstances. And we will continue to try to provide more options so people can choose what works for them!
Hack Reactor is a relatively good program that has scaled pretty well post-acquisition where a lot of other programs that scale have lost some of their steam. I think their size and parent company growth pressures have resulted in them have a lower entry bar than Codesmith in order to take on more people, but they keep a reasonably high bar and the result of a lower graduation percentage (\~75%) and they have kept the outcomes for graduates strong.
The people I've worked with from Hack Reactor and Codesmith are all fairly ambitious, hard working, driven people where ultimately any of the top programs might have good enough for them.
If you look 3 to 5+ years down the road, there are many many Hack Reactor alumni at top tier and FAANG companies in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th jobs. I think this is a result of them being San Francisco focused pre-COVID where once you get your first job in person…
If someone asks "Anyone have experience selling apples?" and someone says "All fruit is a waste of time, no one can sell fruit successfully" and you know of an extremely successful orange seller... is it weird to say "I know a very successful orange seller that's a counter example to that statement"
When making a logical argument and stating "all", you need one counter example to disprove. And if you are choosing a counter example, why not choose the best one?
A lot of the online best bootcamps resources sadly are sponsored to various degrees.
CourseReport is one that has several tiers of sponsorship package and they do videos and blog posts for sponsorship that is not disclosed. But Codesmith sponsors them so they show up there. Similarly Switch up gets paid if you join sponsored bootcamps through their website.
A lot of blog posts you read are sponsored as well.
Codesmith doesn't do much traditional marketing other than CourseReport, and Career Karma sponsorship. They invest their marketing dollars in the above and in developing public content that will get people to show up to a live session as the goal. There's a good podcast with Will Sentance where he talks about Codesmith's growth and marketing strategy (which is pretty interesting because the extremely strong word of mouth is the goal of their marketing and it clearly works) that y…