I feel like a lot of people don't read CIRRs actual spec word for word. CIRR doesn't require audited results before reporting. They required you to audit your reports once a year after they are submitted. I assume most people audit them before, but let's not throw the word "audit" out there like it's a gold standard. FTX was "audited" as well.
The CIRR spec also makes you promise to only use specific numbers in marketing, and those numbers are maneuvered to look in the best light possible, like the placement rate within 180 days of graduating. BloomTech has a 90% placement rate, but around a 50% graduation rate. One of those numbers is in giant letters all over the place - but it's manipulatable. (EDIT: BloomTech is not in CIRR, but I'm stating an analogous point based on their audited results. And it's not in giant letters, but it's in their main banner on their homepage.)
Codesmith u…
ISAs are not all bad! ISAs are highly unregulated and currently still just an independent contract between two parties. So a lot of how an ISA should be perceived is ultimately in how much you trust the people the program you are looking to work with,
We just went through a period of time where some companies with extremely high cash-compensation and low equity and performance bonus compensation (i.e. Amazon and Capital One) were hiring people left right and center if they had a pulse, no criminal record, and could solve Leetcode Medium problems under pressure.
Codesmith got a lot of credit for their 2021 outcomes on Reddit, based on how well they optimize the job hunting strategy for those companies above. And I suspect they will also be hit very hard in their outcomes with the 2nd half of 2022 and be overly blamed on Reddit as "Codesmith falling apart". It will be a whole year from now before we'll see those results though! which is far too long IMO.
As I learned at Facebook: when there is good press about you, things are never as good as people say, and when there is bad press things are never usually that bad. Codesmith as a sc…
\+1 to this. We're working on some form of outcomes reporting at Formation. It's so hard to try to communicate outcomes. Not just trying to showoff big numbers to win some imaginary contest, but to show numbers that help a prospective engineer figure out if the program is right for them or not, like outcomes by incoming engineer experience levels, and outcomes by location.
CIRR assumed everyone in a bootcamp would have no experience and so it doesn't differentiate people at different experience levels. And CIRR standards were last updated before COVID played out and a lot of jobs moved to remote.
This is really hard question to answer.
The majority of engineers I've seen grow form zero to N over their careers haven't grown linearly... they grow exponentially.
So what you perceive as mind bogglingly hard during a bootcamp, will come across as trivial later on. But what you perceive as mind bogglingly hard as a junior engineer, will come across as trivial when you are senior.
Now how you "feel" is a lot about you. The work ethic to succeed in a top bootcamp like Codesmith, HackReactor, Rithm, etc... is higher than most jobs, and even FAANG jobs would need to meet expectations.
If you want to coast as a junior engineer for a long time then you might even find the work "intellectually" easier.
If you want to always grow, learn, and improve, then you will always feel like everything is hard. Over time those things might shift to "people skills" rather than just raw coding skil…
CIRR has ways to be manipulated. For example, Codesmith hires back a small number of their students for a fixed 3-month contract and they have publicly stated that they push back the graduation date for those people but don't count them as placements. So what that does is it lets them hire back whatever number of people they want to push back those people's graduation dates and give them three more months of job hunting while they're doing this contract.
The less sketchy way that CIRR itself makes numbers look better than they are is that the only absolute numbers are the number of graduates included in the report, and then everything else is a percentage. So first the percentage of people that graduate on time, but without having the total number of people who enrolled. Then the percentage of people who graduated on time who got jobs within time frames. But the percentage of people who…
I'm not sure if this is still the case, but in the past you had to apply internally for this program and A LOT of people wanted to do it. It was not at all a guarantee that you would get selected.
There are a lot of companies hiring right now too. It does take a little more patience, networking, and a little luck in getting interviews but if your skills stand out from the rest, you will get a job even in this environment.
I would highly recommend not going to a bootcamp because you are only trying to make more money. In my opinion, you need a lot of drive and determination to do well in a bootcamp to begin with and I think you need that more than ever now. Those people will continue to get jobs. The people who joined a bootcamp last minute because they thought they could double their salaries might have a hard time, and likely had a hard time before as well.
There is often philosophical discussion amongst bootcamp founders about their pedagogies. Bootcamps exist that are aligned with your thinking! But along the lines of what you said, they tend to be very small and no one knows about them, because it's 1 to 3 experienced developer + educator backgrounds teaching tiny classes. You might want to talk to the Rithm School people as they are fairly aligned with the idea of have small classes taught by experienced educators and aren't that small either. I don't know enough about your background but I'm the founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) and you can checkout our mentor listing to see if you are qualified and interested in mentoring to see how we approach things. We're not a bootcamp or school and we don't teach anything! We run small sessions with 3 to 6 engineers and a mentor, solving a focused problem as a group (on one of man…
Yeah I should clarify that I’m the co-founder of a program for experienced engineers called Formation and not looking to attend a bootcamp. I worked at Facebook for 8 years as an E7 engineer and have interviewed hundreds of people and trained interviewers as well. I just keep a very close eye on many bootcamps because I work with a lot of people who did them in the past. I hang around here to try to give perspective when I can as most people
here have no industry experience.
Can you DM me any more details? I have been looking into their program lately and it seems like a ghost town with most sessions with 0 people attending and some with a handful.
But their CEO has been touting the success of their backend program, where the first cohort had all 22 people place at Amazon (The CEO says all 22 placed, insiders told me all at Amazon via special apprenticeship pipelines, and normal SWEI/SWEII interviews). But I guess if that's the size of the cohort you don't need 100+ staff :(
You currently have 31 people enrolled. Since you are promising class sizes of 25, does this mean you will have 2 classes and 2 instructors? Or will you exceed your promised class size of 25?
All of the scam casino ads and drug company profiles are still on your website forum so I really think you need to like stay up all night to solve that problem. That's what I would do if this my company.
Here's an example: [https://www.buildadev.com/profile/heltbettesc/profile](https://www.buildadev.com/profile/heltbettesc/profile)
and there are many many more, pages and pages
These profile pages get indexed by google and show up in google search results for drugs and casinos and they link to your domain.
That's a really weird answer to "your website is being taken over by spam and illegal offers"
My answer would be, thanks for the report our engineering team has been notified and we are working non stop to fix it. I will post an update when resolved. And then expect it to be fixed within an hour or two. That's what I would expect from two FAANG engineers as that's the bar I had at Facebook.
Finally, not a question, but a suggestion, your website is ~~hosted on wordpress~~ has a 3rd party forum plugin of some kind and looks like it has been exploited for some time to host casino, pharmaseuticals and unsavory content and offers via profile signups and is being linked to in other wordpress scams. This might get your domain name flagged by various systems as a scam.
Another question: what is your application process to accept people who you think will be successful? It seems like I can sign up by just paying $1000 without checking anything about who I am. What process do you do behind the scenes to check that students are a good fit, both skills and personality fits.
One thing that I asked in the past that was not answered is that you have class sizes of 25 people and 1 dedicated instructor, and the course is 365 days. Therefore, you are making $25K from those students for 1 year of training, and what are you paying the dedicated instructor. Something doesn't add up. If the instructor is a FAANG-level engineer they need to be paid about $150K to $300K a year base salary alone. If the instructor is part time, then they don't seem completely dedicated to the class.
Was doing a CIRR search on Reddit and missed this, but there are some false information and I want to set the record straight. Only using primary sources in this comment:
*• CIRR is NOT a company*
CIRR is registered in Delaware as a Corporation, type exempt, file number 6498656 so it's technically a company. See more information searching for the file here: [https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/ecorp/entitysearch/namesearch.aspx](https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/ecorp/entitysearch/namesearch.aspx)
*• CIRR does NOT have a CEO or any official employees*
I'm not sure who the current CEO is, but this is CIRR's former CEO and that was her title: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheree-speakman-433a1a1/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheree-speakman-433a1a1/)
*• CIRR is NOT the auditor. That is conducted by a peer reviewed CPA firm. (and details about auditing)*
Each program can use their own auditor…
AlgoExpert and Neetcode are two good resources, some people are Formation also like Structy.
People learn different ways so if you are going it alone, you should try to find one that resonates with you.
A lot of people I work with from Codesmith are DS&A focused and I imagine you'll find a sub community of people you can work with too on the side when you start.
For backend roles at non-top tier companies, DS&A isn't super important. It is used at large top tier companies as a way of consistently and fairly evaluating people and that's it.
I can't give an answer but I normally suggest looking into the breadth of teaching styles to make sure you are considering a broad set.
Super intense bootcamp style: Hack Reactor and Codesmith
9 to 6 with personal teaching from experienced instructors: Rithm
Self paced mastery based: Launch School Core and then Capstone
Focusing on specific demographics: Ada Academy
In each of those buckets there are more options but you want to cover your bases instead of looking for objective goodness.
Big tip is try to talk to people with similar backgrounds as yourself to hear how they found a program target than higher level metrics or reviews (use those to initially filter your list instead)
Yeah I'm pretty sure after 2023, FAANG as a term is going to end and we'll see something else arise from the turbulence. There will always be some hot place to work that has tremendously interesting and impactful work, and compensates at the top of market.
That said, even now, at Formation, we see many people chose companies over traditional FAANG on a weekly basis. We tend to call all these companies "top-tier companies" and the bar is very high, and often higher, for some of these other companies.
Not to sound too condescending but it's a lot of the "not knowing what you don't know" coming into play. Like a typical person in America who dreams of going to Hollywood, probably thinks of blockbuster movies and household-name actors. But the reality is that it's a complex industry where being in a leading role in a blockbuster movie might not be the best outcome for you. Maybe you are…
From the ones I've worked with it's pretty good for a bootcamp, and pretty good overall, just not consistently at the FAANG bar. Like maybe 5% chance of passing FAANG onsite by getting all the stars aligning and the right recruiter, right questions, right hiring manager. Which is pretty good. To consistently prepare for FAANG you need a long period of dedicated learning and practice of fundamentals and no 12, 16, 19 weeks bootcamps just are built around a super compressed curriculum in fixed time and does not work at all for properly mastering any topic.
From what I've observed it's the following reasons, some good, some bad, and not in any order:
- Recent grads just went through the curriculum and might relate more to the struggles you went through. It's additionally good practice for those grads to reinforce their learnings.
- Some programs count people who are hired by the program as "placed" to boost their placements stats. Codesmith is bootcamp that hires back a lot of grads, currently about 50 to 60 of the 150 or so staff are former grads but they explicitly do not count these people as placed. They do however not consider them graduated either so they don't count at all on the CIRR stats until their 3 months contract is done. Most other bootcamps hire people back indefinitely while they are job hunting, which might result in them leaving suddenly and is a bad experience.
- If there are too many former students teaching, you do…
Hi, someone tagged me as I'm the co-founder of Formation, which is a program for experienced engineers to help them work on fundamentals and prepare for interviews.
So the topics you mentioned, we cover System Design in general, which is high level architecture and API design, and several of our competitors, like Interview Kickstart, also cover this topic. We don't go into specific hands on practice in specific tools because typically experienced engineers will learn that on the job in some way, and the more important things to learn is fundamental abstract thinking around these systems. Most companies have such complex internal frameworks that knowing specific tools is less useful for experienced engineers.
I'm not sure if Formation is right for you or not, but I'm fairly sure a bootcamp isn't. Some bootcamps will flash those words around, like Codesmith for example, but the depth is…
It's more important that the team is good and you will learn a lot from them. Things like having code review from strong engineers, being in a tech-driven environment where engineering work matters (rather than being seen as just like a builder in a cave writing code for business people). Being exposed to large scale and complex infrastructure. Having an interesting and complex problem to build. Running well run user studies and experimentation.
You can get that at a top-tier, well funded, experienced-founder startup. And you can get that at top tier companies.
You can also have bad experiences at both startups and at large companies.
EdX was founded by MIT and Stanford and a lot of feelings soured after 2U bought them, e.g. [https://eliterate.us/the-edx-aftermath/](https://eliterate.us/the-edx-aftermath/)
Trilogy is merging their backend with EdX so that they can rebrand under EdX and hopefully update their content with EdX's content. There was a fairly negative article in the Harvard Crimson from a few weeks ago that I read: [https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/27/2u-financial-struggles/](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/27/2u-financial-struggles/)
So for now I would treat it like Trilogy and I would re-evaluate after this merger of content keeps progressing.
In my typical pros and cons fashion.
The pros side would see this as bringing EdX's "MIT and Stanford quality lectures" to the Trilogy community. Trilogy was a fairly business focused company that didn't have a great tech reputation and agg…
\+1 to everyone else. If you have a legit CS degree then you probably don't need a bootcamp. You'll be much more advanced then everyone else, and mainly benefit from networking, and the confidence boost that you'll get from basically unofficially teaching all your peers.
Codesmith is the most prominent bootcamp that attracts people some people with degrees and experience and I hear the above \^\^\^ as the primary issue. But some people are so lost in the job hunt post graduation that having a network and community might be extremely valuable and worth the cost, it's a personal call.
Also look at career accelerators. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev (we tend to work with people with 1+ years professional experience, so might not be a good fit, but look into it!) as well as Outco.io, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, and Scalar. These programs might be way more inline wit…
Yeah tough subject because Asians (from all parts) are minorities in the USA and face many challenges other minorities face day to day, but in the "big tech" industry they are far over-represented compared to the population.
Big tech's view is that their employee base should have diverse views representing all of their users - which is the entire world for many of them - and hence having broader representation is important. And this is why there is more emphasis on attracting groups that are "historically underrepresented" in tech.
One SUPER interesting thing is that many bootcamps are NOT diverse broadly speaking. A 12 week 12 hour a day program is not very accessible to people with multiple jobs, or primary caregivers, or who don't have savings to live off of, and they hence attract a narrow set of people.
For example, BloomTech has 17% of students who identify as a woman compared t…
Even in recessions, there are companies that do better than they would have otherwise and are hiring. Who those companies are will change overnight in a recession and we're already seeing that right now with FAANG no longer being FAANG and the top companies hiring being supplanted.
That said, it's always been hard for bootcamp grads to get jobs and if you are making a huge change to go to one, or have a personal financial runway, I recommend doubling it. So if you expected to do a bootcamp, and get a job all within 1 year, I would setup your life to support 2 years until you get a job.
Depends on your goals and target companies. The vast majority of companies skip over bootcamp grads because there are just too many applying for their open jobs and they will interview people with experience first. Some bootcamps actually steer people towards reducing or removing the bootcamp, and framing it more like work to get around this.
I've seen self-learning work when you have been doing it for years and you have something to show for it. So self-learning and building an app/website over 1+ years that is used by people and almost like a potential business is very impressive. Also self-learning and contributing to the largest and most prominent open source projects, like React, or various projects under Apache and Mozilla, is also perceived very positively.
Thanks for charing your views, but want to elaborate with looking at some of these things from both sides as it's very one-sided and over-generalizing.
* I agree you can't cram knowledge into people's heads and this is one of the biggest flaws of bootcamps. The best bootcamps with the best outcomes select for smart and self-learning people at the entrance interviews, who still complain that they can't keep up, but because of there pre-existing abilities, making it through and succeed more than others. It one of the "dirty secrets" of hyper-compressed fixed programs. The teaching-styles do matter as well, but the make it or break it factor is the bar to entry and not the training.
* Never rely on referrals for a job. There's no magic, cigar smoking, backroom meetings where people are shuffled around to companies under the table. Referrals are just ways to get your resume in front of peop…
I've worked with a very small number of people with no college degree and no experience at Formation who are very talented. They are still job hunting but at the same skill level now as other entry level top tier engineers. Can't go into personal details but I'm confident they will get very good jobs at the same pace as no experience college grads.... which has been slower than experienced people in this market but it happens!
It's a challenge, but true raw skills at the end of the day cannot be denied. The challenges tend to be confidence related about not having a degree.
I think Launch School Capstone by itself is the only thing you can compare to a bootcamp head to head. The actual "capstone" projects blow Codesmith OSPs out of the water. I think they are what the Codesmith OSPs aspire to be. A big difference is the documentation... Launch School Capstone projects are documented like open source projects SHOULD be. They are fantastic though in part because of such tiny cohort size that has been growing, so will keep an eye on the next waves of them. And they also want you to do Core first, so it's hard to recommend to someone who is already chosen Codesmith. You should probably be choosing Launch School Core before you even start CSX months ago if you want to do Capstone.
Launch School Core is pretty hard to compare to anything. It's maybe more comparable to Nu Camp. Both are fairly async. Nu Camp also doesn't have outcomes because self-service, lower…
I believe they include that same information in their enrollment agreement as well and a few people have pointed that out to me, that it seems much worse than CIRR and that the it forces them to show salary buckets under $100K and that they go pretty low below $100K whereas in CIRR "under $100K" comes across as a higher amount.
So my understanding is that this is a result of different standards. I constantly say this and constantly get attacked by throwaway accounts, but CIRR HAS FLAWS. It's setup by bootcamp insiders to have a common and clear standard, but it's also setup with little small nuances to make the top level reported numbers look the best possible and in the best light.
The regulatory information probably has stricter guidelines because people can be heavily fined for not complying, but it might not tell the full story behind the numbers either. For example, they regulato…
Good question and the short answer is that it depends on the company and the person. I have worked with a number of recent bootcamp grads for example and might suggest THREE different resumes to someone.
If applying to a new grad job that accepts non-traditional programs, then I suggest putting the bootcamp loud and clear as Education, and listed course work and any grades in there. And then putting your projects and projects, or Open Source Contributions section for larger OSPs.
If you are applying to a job requiring genuinely 2+ years work experience that does not appear to be a new grad job and could potentially be intended for an experienced engineer then I would try to highlight more work experience. For example, if your past career involved technical stuff in some way, working on highlighting that. If you have no relevant experience at all then you might not be qualified for the…
It's interesting how that's a similar ratio to Codesmith but there are so many Codesmith students and alumni on here that talk like Codesmith is in a league of it's own.
Consider your options everyone and figure out which programs are the right ones for you because finding the right program will yield the best personal result, rather than choosing the program that you think is objectively the best.
I understand this is why we have CIRR and audited results and what not. Hack Reactor is larger and let's in people at a lower bar, who have lower outcomes, but for the right people it works really well too. And unfortunately non of the outcomes reporting schemes take into account background before starting.
You can try negotiating with them. Don't offer zero but offer something reasonable for their time and take some responsibility for choosing to sign originally.
The salary stats are also only people who report their salaries. People who are verified as employed on LinkedIn count as placed, even though they didn't report their salary.
And yeah their salaries seem low to me, but their graduation and placements rates are really high, so I believe they have more lower-paying apprenticeship-type partnerships.
Watch out for reported placement rates, especially with CIRR.
Placement rates are often quote "of the people who graduate..... which percent get hired in X timeframe". But how many people graduate and are job hunting is very important.
BloomTech just reported a 90% placement rate for 2021, however about 30-something percent of people were excluded because they were not job hunting, and 50-something percent of people actually graduated... so it's something like 50-something percent of people who signed on the dotted line, were looking for a job, graduated and got a job within six months.
With CIRR the placement rates are of people who graduated in the designated time window. So if 90% of people graduate and 80% get jobs, that's like a 70% sign on dotted line -> job within six months rate.
Market goes up and down but it's the same market for everybody, so I wouldn't try to time things. If you just keep chugging, sometimes you'll win, sometimes you'll lose. The main thing I think you need to consider is your personal financial situation and if you can make things work with a longer expected timeframe to get a job.
All ISA's I know of are like this but there might be some smaller ISAs that aren't on a smaller scale. There are programs that had conditions like this when they were small, but it's hard to scale quickly this way unless you choose to build your own ISA servicing team. The main reason why is that it's very subjective what is a "programming job". It sounds like it shouldn't be but it is. It's not controversial about what Software Engineer titles mean. But it's is in the "Business Analyst" or "Software Analyst" or "Technical Analyst" or internships, contract jobs, or lets say you get a "Project Manager" or "Product Designer" job? or a "Date Engineer" or "Network Engineer" or "Support Engineer" job and you don't want to pay. Or you take a Support Engineer job and at first are thrilled, but realize you don't write a lot of code and are unhappy after two months and think you were scammed.
An…
Do you have options to do backend at your current job? Maybe just ask or start asking around. You might get more out of it than any bootcamp I know of.
With four solid years of experience you'll find yourself more qualified than most instructors and you should be able to pick up a new framework more on your own.
That looks like a different company called Prehired. Pathrise has solid venture funding but I haven't talked to anyone there in a while and don't know how they are doing now.
I'm glad that someone stepped up if those claims are true about Prehired though... it really hurts the industry and people with good intentions when people mislead knowingly by making it harder for everyone else.