If you are a Canadian or Mexican citizen, you can get a TN status instantly at the border, HOWEVER they usually require a related degree - or work experience - to enter under the programmer classification. So you have to look at roles and/or get help from a company (and a good lawyer) to help with that. Australia and Singapore both also have special visa pathways.
A good strategy is to work for a top tier company in your home country, if possible, and then transfer internally under the L1 visa after a year or two. For example, working at Uber in Europe, or Canva in Australia, or Amazon in Brazil, etc...
Oh yeah the average time is somewhere 6ish months from starting (?). And the range is anywhere from 1 month to 12 months. I never said it's fast and depends on a lot of factors. Another major one is part time vs full time. Some people spend 50 hours a week on Formation and some 10 hours a week. People can also usually pause depending on their life. It's really drastically different from a bootcamp and much more like a personal trainer analogy.
I don't think anyone here is an idiot, no.
Remember all those sports card price magazines and pokemon card price magazines and beanie baby price magazines, that are all gone... they only survive if the underlying thing survives, and many of them have been accused of inflating the value of the cards and of the beanie babies to keep the hype going.
According to Crunchbase (I can't disclose confidential non-public info): Rithm is backed by Slow Ventures and Codesmith is backed by a serial entrepreneur, film producer, and investor Chad Troutwine.
We publish some salary data of outcomes on our website and have for a while.
Happy to try to answer these questions, they are extremely reasonable questions:
“average percentage of students that finds a job within 3-6 months of program”
\- I'm not sure what this means. Of STARTING Formation or of when? Everyone starts Formation at a different…
First, SwitchUp's "data" intake form hasn't been updated since 2020 according to [archive.org](https://archive.org) ([https://web.archive.org/web/\*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review)) and still promises a chance to win a $500 / $100 gift card for submitting a review. Who got those and when and how do you have a chance to win them? The Additional Survey they rely on for data hasn't been updated since 2020/2021: [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK). Their latest major report is from 2018: [https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey](https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey)
I never once criticized the validity of the content on these sites. I'm saying the sites themselves are biased... you mention VC funding repeatedly... both of these sites…
Only the "Backend" track they currently offer is under this program. Their other tracks are not.
They have had one cohort finish and I think 22 people got placed, where Amazon hired 20 of them. Having just one person hiring the graduates is fairly risky to bet on in the future, but given that company is Amazon, might be be worth the risk, 🤷♂️
It's taught by BloomTech but the curriculum comes from Amazon: [https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/training-providers](https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/training-providers)
They have three current partners who offer the same thing. I'm sure they are free to teach the curriculum however they want though yeah.
"Amazon expects training partner organizations to produce and launch a backend Java development program based on the curriculum developed for Amazon Technical Academy. The core of this curriculum is the Amazon-defined knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to succeed as an Amazon Software Development Engineer (SDE)."
BloomTech is formerly Lambda School and changed names as a result of a trademark lawsuit. Their founder, Austen, is a natural marketer and grew the school way too fast. I have thoughts here but they are just opinions and not relevant. BloomTech in its current form is nothing like Lambda School so the past reviews and bad press are somewhat irrelevant.
CourseReport is a supporting member of CIRR and accepts payments from bootcamps to promote them. Switch Up makes money by referring people to specific bootcamps. Career Karma also pays fees to refer people to specific bootcamps. So all three are biased as their success depends on the bootcamp industries success and you have at their content through that lens.
CIRR is another irrelevant source nowadays because no one is in them. If a bootcamp takes part in CIRR you can trust the numbers they report to CIRR. But CIRR's most recent standard…
Formation isn’t a bootcamp with lessons and instructors. Our Fellows do 2 to 6 hours long sessions a week in groups of 3 to 6 people (or 1-1 mocks) and those are led my industry mentors who are mostly independent senior, staff, and principal engineers from top tier companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, over 100 mentors likes this. The sessions are scheduled every week just for you from scratch and on specific topics you need to work on, or 1-1 mock interviews run exactly like real interviews.
Our mentors are well respected engineers and most are doing it to help with our mission of helping people from non tradition and underrepresented backgrounds level up.
Their about page has a list of all employees. All engineering fellows are former students. All the full time, senior, and lead instructors went to Codesmith and never worked in industry. All the part time instructors are former students with full time jobs. They recently hired someone outside, who worked at Coding Dojo.
Don’t make assumptions and also don’t just trust what I say. Look through the employee list and look at their LinkedIns…
I think they are generally similar yeah in that the materials are similar and they move at similar paces, and you should look at the day to day. Codesmith has a very tight community of awesome people as it's a bit smaller than HR. HR has a fantastic alumni network as well and it's much larger than Codesmith's but I feel like Codesmith alumni really "stay in the family".... just look at how many alumni come back in some capacity to teach or help out... almost every instructor at Codesmith WENT to Codesmith. People aside, Codesmith has really figured out the resume/job hunt process that works and has scaled to like 150-200 simultaneous students or so. Launch School's Capstone is in my opinion stronger but they take like 30 people at a time.
When it comes to HR vs Codesmith I often ask people's timeframes and their goals because both are solid options. Codesmith is slightly better if you…
What are you using to judge that Codesmith is the clear #1? Have you looked into smaller programs like Rithm and Launch School Capstone. Rithm has very small class sizes directly taught by seasoned instructors. Launch School Captone projects are very similarly designed but blow Codesmith OSP out of the water in terms of time spent.
Depending on what you are looking for Codesmith is likely a contender for the top choice, but curious what "consensus" you are basing that statement off of. Reddit is full of anonymous people who come and go. Codesmith currently has 50+ previous students on staff as Fellows and many more as instructors, and how do you know a bunch of "alumni" on here aren't also on payroll and leave that out?
Starting a real open source project is honestly really hard. Almost all of the biggest ones were either made by large corporations, or have employees of large corporations as the primary contributors. It's vastly different from what it looks like at first glance.
Otherwise, the people who start new projects are generally very experienced engineers and they have a reason to do so, and they are doing them under a company name.
For example Apollo, Dagster... even Material UI for React. So the Material spec is a DESIGN spec from Google. Material UI is a React library implementing that spec inside React. 1. It's a for-profit company. 2. The founding team is experience engineers.
A real open source project is in many ways HARDER than building software for a company, because you have to have clearer code architecture built from the beginning with the intention of people working on top of thi…
I don't know the scope of the project, but work on something you are already passionate about. Here are some past examples I've seen:
1. A former wine buyer for a restaurant built a cellar tracking app for restaurants
2. A former professional musician built a machine learning sheet music generator
3. A college student built an iOS game like guitar hero but novel in a few weeks having never know iOS before
Some of the projects I built when self-teaching web development:
1. An "auto-voter" website for a reality TV show competition
2. An itinerary generator for Walt Disney World that told you which rides to go to when based on your group, intensity, ride characteristics and wait times, etc...
3. An internship review website
4. An app for assisting you to draft a minor league hockey team (I'm from Canada, this was common lol)
I also think Codesmith and Launch Schools projects of making a…
Formation hasn't worked with or talked to any Launch School Capstone grads because so I can't compare. They have very small cohorts and are less frequent.
Launch Schools projects though are way more in depth than the Codesmith OSPs (anyone from Codesmith check them out and don't trust me!) but mostly because they spend a long time on them.
\-This is an example: [https://tailslide-io.github.io/#landing](https://tailslide-io.github.io/#landing)
\-Note the pages and pages of proper documentation
\-An entire GitHub company for the project with 10 repos.
\-An extremely thorough case study with pages and pages of well organized write up!
I agree with your response that people make their own resumes and each person does what they want to do. But there are many projects that don't disclose this that are brand new. The more mature a project gets, the more obvious it seems to get and I think this is the students decision, not Codesmith telling them to do it.
Out of the newest \~8 projects, these alone don't say a thing about open source affiliation to Codesmith directly (10/17/202 9:18am PST)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/devdux-extension/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/devdux-extension/)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/jesterapp/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/jesterapp/)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/zurau-kafka/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/zurau-kafka/)
This one says "Product developed under tech accelerator OSLabs" which again, you can Google OSLabs, but it sounds like it's a real "product":
[…
Hi, the ISA is based on eligibility to work yeah so I don't know if/when that would change, but our mission is to have training that works for everyone just no timeframe I can give.
We don't rely on special relationships necessarily for jobs. We help you find the best path we can for companies to meet your goals. Sometimes that is referrals and sometimes we just help people apply to the right places. But we don't have specific pipelines that you automatically get placed in with specific companies. Referrals also don't guarantee interviews always, and referrals come in many shapes and sizes as well. Targeting most companies in Canada that have a presence or connections to the USA (which is a lot of the top companies) is reasonable. We are less connected with Canadian specific companies.
There are a lot of hiring freezes but there are also a lot of companies hiring. So do t give up and keep chugging. Feel free to ping me if you want a quick two second advice on some companies to apply to
Sorry that was an EXAMPLE, I pulled up Full Stack Academy's latest report from 2019 and it was 85% but a lot has changed in the past 3 years and I would ask for the current rate.
There are several agencies at the state level and the federal level (everything from education to consumer protection to lawmakers - federal Senate) looking at how ISAs should be regulated or what rules they should have in different scopes (they are not just used for schools but all kinds of things). There haven't been any firm decisions made. Right now they are private contracts between two people and not a financial object. So they are likely avoiding using ISAs because of some concerns or interactions with some agency that made them deem it not worth the effort to work on at this time.
Have you been trying to self study since and have you been trying to do more scripting and stuff on the job? I would start with that and you might not even need a bootcamp. Seen one or two similar people who started off by writing more and more scripts on the job and eventually transitioned internally at the company.
Hi, two notes
1. Not sure where those numbers are coming from to get more context, but a "software engineer" is the most general job title for all engineers. Full stack engineer is also fairly general and usually implies that you are not a front end only or backend only engineer and that you can put do work on the entity stack.
2. In terms of the how much money are you making question. One flaw with all outcomes, including CIRR, is the numbers are only for people who graduated and got jobs. So it's not like the average or the median person signing up makes $100K at the end, but the average or the median person who graduates and then finds a job and reports their salary makes that much. So you should NOT see it as a "if I sign up for this and do average I will make $100K". You have to look at how many people graduate, because 50% of people might not even graduate to be included in the sta…
Yeah for all those who criticize my comments about Codesmith, I'm honest to god just capturing this sentiment from many alumni who feel this way too but don't talk about it often because of the fear of being ostracized from the Codesmith network. And if you see how some people attack my (in my intention) neutral pros and cons comments about this, you can see why those people feel that way.
I agree with most of what you are saying about how your skill and impact drive your trajectory once you get a job (and also the strong Codesmith alumni network who stay involved) - and I also add that many people can accelerate their careers by seeking outside training to increase that skill.
One key thing I disagree on, which is that the blatant exaggeration harms those with similar experience who don't exaggerate. I gave the example before, but I did a four month long entire semester college thesis project that involved hours and hours of running around Toronto doing scientifically correct user research, building a prototype, repeating, launching a product, hundreds of pages of writing. If I don't create a facade to make this look like this was a company and work experience to boost my resume, I'm being harmed by those people that are doing that for less significant projects.
At the…
Yeah so my understanding is that Phil confirms the information you provide him about the specifics of what you told the company, and doesn't openly add additional context about Codesmith and what it is etc... or correct the dates/role you claimed.
When I do reference calls for Fellows, which is rare, I always explain what Formation is and people find a lot of value in me comparing someone to the hundreds and thousands of people I've worked with across my career and they don't care at all if the person has a specific number of years of work experience.
Like if a Formation Fellow was like "Michael, I told ABC that I did this OSP for 3 months from Jan to March and I was the lead", and the person worked on this OSP for 6 weeks but I confirmed that... it would be unethical to me and I would never do that. Even if the information was correct, I would feel a duty to check the information firs…
Good question, this is what I'm talking about discussing sources and quality of information in questioning conclusions so that the overall body of knowledge gets better and better.
I can't give more info about the sources without DOXing (which as someone pointed out, is against Reddit ToS and also against my personal ethics), which limits the credibility... like an article based on off-the-record sources only.
The information provided was that at some point in time Phil did/does reference calls for people and confirms the information you provide him when giving a heads up that you need a reference call (there is a process for requesting a reference call that I also don't want to go into in case it would DOX people involved). What I don't know is if anyone checks that self-provided information's accuracy or not.
I don't have any idea whatsoever what the people say on these calls, and I…
I think it depends on your goals, timeframe first. Most of these programs are good for people aiming to get a job in 1 to 6 months. Then it depends on how much programming you did in your role, if any, even if it was like "no-code" experience. And finally, it depends on your affinity to understanding the fundamentals, e.g. DS&A.
For most people with no professional experience or no CS degree / past bootcamp, doing a bootcamp is probably a better way to go. But if you are exploring options it can't hurt to explore both and see which one seems right for you.
This is not me \^\^. I only post from my real account with my name on it. I have access to Formation's account for ads, and I have one throwaway account to follow people who troll me and then block me (hence I can't see their posts) so I can identify patterns in their posts but I don't post from it. I've also said this many times and if you were around here for long enough you would believe me.
I've seen at Facebook what happens when people jump to conclusions and yell loudly about their unsubstantiated beliefs as if they are facts and it was not great around the last elections and with COVID misinformation (which was after I left but was the same patterns).
We need a world where people give sources, evidence, and actual examples so that other people can then discuss the interpretation of the sources if they disagree with the statements, instead of pointless back and forth yelling pers…
Hi! It depends a lot on your experience and two paths:
One option is the career accelerator bucket of programs. Like Formation, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation. At Formation, most people we work with have work experience but have some people with CS degrees (or are graduating soon) who are DS&A heavy and aiming for new grad FAANG roles, and I think it's a good fit for that. Although you should be starting to apply and interview very soon because it's the new grad hiring cycle right now! Formation doesn't have any veteran benefits so it might not be a good fit, but check out these programs.
If you don't have any internships and are not aiming for a FAANG/top-tier company that is CS-fundamentals heavy then I would recommend looking at a bootcamp. A lot of bootcamps start from scratch, so veteran benefits or not, I would consider a program…
We are not a bootcamp or school and we have ZERO reviews on any bootcamp and school website, correct. Course Report and Switchup are for-profit companies and you have to build a relationship with them to be included. Buildschool - Sophie's former free bootcamp that was a bootcamp is on Course Report, but no longer exists.
We have averages on our website, not-audited. We are at capacity right now and we need to prioritize our time, if not having more thorough outcomes reports is an issue, we will prioritize it. Startups have to prioritize!
An account can be suspended for: "My account was suspended for violating Reddit’s Content Policy" or for "My account was suspended or locked due to suspicious activity"
At Facebook, people try to log in and hack people's accounts when they don't like them. Someone could have tried logging into this person's account like 100 times in a way that caused…
I already offered to do a call with you, and suggested you do real research about Formation before defaming me and the company. Instead you are making up things you believe to be true with no evidence whatsoever and yelling more and more loudly about them to make them feel more and more true. Just like this subreddit is a bubble around bootcamps, thought bubbles exist and no one is immune, not me, not you.
What evidence do you have the user was banned from Reddit?
I have a spreadsheet and documentation of 200 alumns and it's pretty clear. Whether they are told to lie or not is seperate, but the raw data is clear. I suggest you do the same exercise before refuting this point.
RE: FAANG I agree there is a problem with inclusivity and that's why Formation's mission is to fix that. FAANG prioritize consistency and calibration. So they are pattern matching you against others to make sure…
Every Codesmith alumni I've worked with at Formation (15+) has been a really fantastic person. Hard working, professional, well rounded, collaborative.
I've spoken to a lot of people and only a handful of loud people on here believe the mid-level senior level thing. They all understand that there is a difference between like mid-level Google vs mid-level Capital One (I think a senior at Capital One is an entry level at Google, and a "Master Engineer" is senior at Google).
They are running through a playbook of "how you create an OSP project", which templates you use for Medium, website, slack posts... everyone knows the "Sponsored talks from Single Sprout" are kind of a joke, but they do what they are supposed to do because they see it work for previous alumni.
Some of the loud people on here are actually just trolls or employees, there are also a small number of people with multiple…
Big thread in CSC sub with range of opinions on framing your bootcamp as "experience" on resumes. CSC is a lot angrier than this sub in tone, but I think it's good to read all sides of this. (Link in body)
While this calls out Codesmith, this discussion is more broadly about people's views on what "lying" means on your resume, as well as comparing CS degrees to bootcamp grads. I think it will shed some light from people in industry on why it's so hard for some bootcamp grads to even get interviews.
Just try to be patient with the tone, some people have pretty aggressive statements on both sides.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/y1klt4/experience/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/y1klt4/experience/)
This is from a few weeks ago at this timestamp: [https://youtu.be/SkWYanfkfCY?t=1975](https://youtu.be/SkWYanfkfCY?t=1975)
"beyond the technical part that that was really important and probably sets them stands them apart from from maybe their competitors and there's one input this one guy in particular his name is eric kirsten and this guy has a silver tongue and he will teach you how to say anything like you know you tell him hey this is my background how do i present it to an employer to where it doesn't look like i just decided to switch careers because you want to avoid that stigma and he will give you a great way to say it you know and and so him by himself"
I've heard a few sides of this now and my understanding is they are very clear in the resume lecture. Then when you talk to Eric 1-1, things change a bit as he helps "wordsmith" (excuse the pun) your resume.
So PERSONALLY I don't recommend people do this as a strategy... I always work with people to double down on their unique story and experience. But I also don't judge people who do exaggerate their experience in general, you do you and you live with yourself. I do judge against flat out lying vs embellishing your projects and do not support people lying.
I think it's very unethical on the side of the executive that does them though. The students might not know better and might be just trying to make a better life for themselves, but the executive does know what they are doing.
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith but I know a lot about them and have done a deep dive into 200 alumni profiles. I posted a similar comment in the coding bootcamp sub reddit recently and am reposting here.
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and started coaching and training (potential bias disclosure: this is paid training) to help people from non-traditional backgrounds... so I work with a lot of bootcamp grads and learned a lot about how the top bootcamps work.
**Codesmith:** I do know a little more than most programs.... fun sto…
There is or was someone at Codemsith at a very high level that does background check calls to back up people's experience and a process for doing these checks.
Source: someone inside Codesmith
EDIT BASED ON FEEDBACK: "to back up people's experience" does not mean to confirm lies or anything specific. I'm unaware of what happens in the calls and can't comment either way. My comment is that there is a process for doing background checks where someone backups the information you provide them. From my discussions, IN GENERAL people don't disclose it's not work, unless asked, but will never say that it WAS work. So presumably a background check call would not involve confirming it was "real work" but rather it was some other relationship. Ultimately, I don't know, but I want to make sure it doesn't come across that I was implying that the former.
I think if a business creates intrinsic value in the world the the creators can choose to capture some of that value. If businesses grow in ways that stop creating intrinsic value then the impact is limited.
For example, Leon is creating instrinsic value and choosing not to capture any right now but it doesn't mean Leon's imaginary twin doing the same thing and charging $1 per student is purely evil.
You can use revenue to hire talented employees, create jobs. If you are genuinely creating more value for someone than they are paying you, I think this can be a model that works should you choose it and should a customer choose to pay.
So I don't know all of the bootcamps situations but you can ask. Ascent and Earnest are two that support this in theory. So behind the scenes, instead of the bootcamp getting 100% of the upfront cost when you get the loan. The bootcamp gets say 75% of the upfront cost and Ascent can withhold the 25% in case you disappear before triggering repayment as a contingency. If the bootcamp wants to delay the deferral all way until "starts new job" I imagine one of these loan companies would accept that, but want a much higher backup percentage because its higher risk you'll never repay. Which turns into the ISA problem except with a fixed total payment instead of a variable payment total payment based on income.
BloomTech's Ascent loan does this: [https://www.bloomtech.com/tuition/deferred-tuition](https://www.bloomtech.com/tuition/deferred-tuition)
The downside is unlike an ISA where the diff…
I wouldn't say that's guaranteed but I bet there's a correlation between bootcamps with ISAs in California and good outcomes haha.
So the reason they don't work is this.
1. If people don't get good jobs, they won't pay you back for a very very long time if ever, but the company has to pay a lot to train you upfront. Whether you believe they are spending that efficiently or not is a different story, but they are spending a lot of money to train people regardless and if they get paid back years later it doesn't work so well.
2. Borrowing against ISAs. Most bootcamps (or any program offering ISAs) will borrow money "against an ISA". Meaning they might get $5000 upfront from the ISA administrator to cover those costs, and then pay some kind of interest on that, like a loan, when the person eventually gets a job. Again, if the people don't get good jobs, the ISA administrator doesn't want t…
Some places do offer ISAs. The regulatory landscape is complex but most bootcamps have stopped offering them because it's a really bad financial model FOR THE BOOTCAMP if their outcomes are not strong enough.
Rithm for example looks like they might have an ISA option.
Finding a place to write code at your current company is a great path! I'm not sure I have advice on other programs to look at, other than maybe start with more free resources like Odin Project that focus on more practical skills.
In general a lot of people complain about Trilogy because they have a very low bar for entry and a lot of people drop out.
Hi, welcome!
What are your goals after the bootcamp? (i.e. what kind of job are you aiming for)
What are your requirements for a bootcamp? I never tell people what bootcamps are for them, only help them evaluate against their own criteria, so if you list some I can help suggest some other options.
It shouldn't hurt, no, it might limit some opportunities. I would target smaller companies that are less likely to auto-filter you and won't have HR processes to care. After you have some real work experience then no one will care.
One important tip is not make it look like you have a degree on your resume, or make it ambiguous. If they think you might have a degree and they do a background check, it will get flagged and it could be a problem.
I added two more concrete points about CIRR reports here that are more detailed than the governance side: https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/xzngch/outcomes\_after\_completing\_codesmith/irpcaza/?context=3
1. Highest entrance bar of any major bootcamp
2. Optimized how to turn bootcamp work into an appealing resume
3. Strong and loyal "family-like" network of alumni who help people get their foot in the door
Yeah totally agree too. I think the bootcamp => job => up level => job => another job => up level => job, is the future and totally recommend for a bunch of people who that aligns with. For most people, you do not need a CS degree to progress.