\+1 yeah teaching others is a great way to help others, reinforce skills, definitely agree. Yeah the people that convert full time I think get paid more like $120K (no equity, since Codesmith is an LLC and not a corporation)
I heard that from one other person now but I thought it was a mistake, that seems low no? People have said it's a very intense full time job and only for the top students. But top alumni are making over $120K salaries, so saying: "you're one of the top students and should be making at least $120K but instead you should do this for $52K a year". I'm probably missing something or factually incorrect about something, so listening for some people that have done it to explain.
EDIT: One theory I had was that I could see it being a great thing to do while job hunting and better than doing nothing, but someone said that they are so busy they don't job hunt (could just be that person 🤷♂️), and it's clear they are expected to do a three month contract and not leave early (which I've heard a few times in various ways but that like any at will, W-2 employment, you can leave early, and fellows h…
Yeah there are a small number of people who get FAANG jobs out of Codesmith and I would strive for that over a higher title, or even higher base salary.
We're splitting hairs because both paths are better than a lot of other paths haha.
The benefits of FAANG-level over other companies:
1. Generally higher talent bar and experience level of coworkers, so you learn from stronger engineers.
2. More structured ramp-up. A lot of FAANG level companies have bootcamps/onboarding/very structured rampup, so you learn more faster.
3. Exposure to some leading edge infrastructure and industry leading ways of solving and scaling that you might not see at smaller companies.
4. Generally more users and larger scale products. You can't learn how to build product for a billion people without having a billion people using something.
5. Engineers have more influence over decisions. It's just more fun wh…
With my FAANG-hat on, If you don't have any experience you should be aiming for entry level roles for truly top tier companies. The Facebook/Google/Dropbox/Apple/Netflix/Microsoft/etc.... bar has multiple levels of cross-company calibration going on to make sure your level is based on your work experience and scope of responsibility and not on your raw skill level. If you are very skilled you will get very good performance reviews and bonuses at your level and take on more responsibility quickly to get promoted faster. But levels at FAANG are based on scope of responsibility.
To answer the question, at Codesmith there are are combination of different things going in the "non-entry level" statement:
1. Somewhere between 10% and "a third" (different people have said different things) have some experience before Codesmith. Those people might be able to get "FAANG-level" mid-level roles de…
Hi! I'm combining my take on things into a top level comment. I started working at Facebook in 2009, right during the end of the great recession. I started interviewing and doing university recruiting in 2010, shortly after the great recession. I know some some people might have also lived through that time, but I can share my view working in tech during that time. I also have hundreds of colleagues and former colleagues who worked through both that recession and the dot-com crash of 2000. I also work with a lot of experienced engineers now, helping them get jobs at top tier companies and am very familiar with the market, and know people at almost all the top companies.
I know a lot of people have opinions in the other comments, I'm just presenting my perspective for a different point of view for anyone reading.
1. Tech is not going away. The efficiency improvements to all aspects of l…
This got downvoted and I'm not sure why. But I ran some numbers this evening as we are trying to figure out how to explain our numbers and one stat stood out showing the differences more: 25% of placed Formation Fellows accepted jobs at LITERALLY the five FAANG companies - Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Google (this doesn't include Microsoft, which is another chunk, and doesn't include some additional people who got FAANG offers and turned them down, or all the people at top-tier/FAANG-level companies as well).
Just for anyone else reading this because my first stab might not have hit the mark on the difference in audience.
Two questions for general broader advice:
1. Did you get any feedback about what to improve each time?
2. What did you do on your own to improve each time?
Hi, we worked with someone that had a similar background at Formation (CogSci -> dropout -> HackReactor -> back to school -> Formation -> Job) and you can try reaching out them about their experience as a cog sci breaking into the industry. [https://formation.dev/blog/fellow-spotlight-carlitos-willis/](https://formation.dev/blog/fellow-spotlight-carlitos-willis/)
It really depends on you. Since you have a degree and took some CS courses, you can get a foot in the door without a bootcamp. But if your skill gap is really large then a bootcamp could be good.
If you get a six figure job at a top tier company the relative cost of different programs might not matter. The time variance it will take to get a job is so unpredictable that the lost/gained revenue between 1-3 months at a top tier company, would be the cost of a five figure program.
My advice would be to reach out to people from a…
One quick clarification, but an OAuth access token will have the expiry date in it, and it will be signed by the server when the token is CREATED to approve that expiry date. From that point forward, if you can verify the "signature" on the token, you can trust the expiry date, without asking a server!
It's possible that if you say, blocked the user from a service, and they tried to use the token, the service would do additional checks beyond verifying the token (this depends on your specific application)
Cool that's a good compromise. I'm curious to see if the staff end up going back in person. From the company side, remote work has really changed a lot of things with people's work-lives so will be interesting to see (not just Codesmith but all bootcamps that return in person)
Lots going on here! There are a few things that if you really go deep on, you'll spend hours/days trying to figure out, and authentication from scratch is one of those. It's a very complex area with many different approaches. I think I spend 10 hours figuring out how Amazon Cognito User Pools vs Identity Pools worked, and people confused them often online so I had to really go to the API docs in detail.
At a zoomed out view what you have is correct, but there are a lot of variations under the hood that might be confusing you.
I am time-boxing my answers here to a minute, but will try to give some directional tips:
1. Whatever is handling authentication requests doesn't have to be "the server", you should think about the specific sequence of actions that need to happen to securely generate and store tokens and not so much who is doing what where. There are dozens of protocols for doin…
Smaller companies sometimes don't do DS&A questions and have their own, more hands-on process. They interview fewer people, and hiring mistakes are more costly.
Rule #1. Always ask the recruiter/hiring manager what the format of the interviews will be. And keep asking more questions until it's really clear. Recruiters want to help.
Not related to the programs, but the two roles are fairly different. Data Scientists often have PhD backgrounds or spent several years doing analysis before become full blown "Data Scientists". Data Analysts run queries, produce reports, answer business-related questions. My brother is a principal data analyst at a top game company (formerly at Riot, now at Epic), so there are parallel career trajectories for both. But data scientist is often a slightly more prestigious position.
Data Science is more of an academic pursuit of discovering/deriving innovative results from data. You might be helping with prepare data for machine learning, you might be running scientific experiments (or supporting others doing experiments and making sure they are done using a scientific process), you might be using data to figure out what problems to even solve.
I'm not sure if these programs map to the i…
Just to clarify for other people reading this. Codesmith vs Formation is not a choice for most people. The vast majority of people are Formation are working as engineers and doing it part time, or have worked for 1 - 3 years and taking a pause). We have one person I currently know of that felt Formation was a better fit than Codesmith, and 10+ Codesmith alumni at various points in their careers. Most of these alumni come in at a middle of the road junior DS&A skill bar, slightly above the minimum we are confident working with but still clearly in the middle junior bucket and that is our lowest experience bucket. So the vast majority of people before Codesmith aren't choosing between the two. I recommend Codesmith to a lot of people who have no experience a couple times a week in DMs.
I do believe there are a very small number of people at Codesmith (I heard recently one or two in each c…
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I understand and acknowledge that there's a reason/"agenda" for me to be active on this sub. My life's mission is to help software engineers from non-traditional and underrepresented engineering backgrounds break into the top tier impactful roles. I was at Facebook for 8 years, from 2009 to 2017 and saw such hard working people were building products for billions of people but lacking a more diverse set of voices in doing so. This is an industry wide issue. Sophie first created a free bootcamp called Buildschool to help people get their first jobs. In getting to know bootcamps and meeting their founders, she realized that the broader bootcamp industry has already helped tens of thousands of brand new engineers, from diverse backgrounds, get started in their careers with their first jobs, but most lacked fundamentals, rigorous practice, and interaction with t…
Always reach out to people who did the program and ask for specific details of day to day and specific anecdotal outcomes for people with a similar background to you.
Humans are humans and the adjectives we use to describe things are relative to our experiences. So rather than just "this was amazing" you want to know examples of why it's amazing.
Programing is not magic and an array is an array. So what makes one program better. Why are Codesmith's CIRR outcomes actually better? with examples. Not just "we teach people depth and how to think". Like what is it objectively that makes those outcomes happen. For example, this is more specific ''We test and oberseve what job hunt strategies work for alumni to get jobs and we double down on them and adapt, so we are always teaching people the job hunting strategies that are working and guide students on how to implement fhem'
Sorry for t…
I know two people there that I think left. But yeah don't go there until they sort out their fraud stuff. New articles keep coming out that look bad, so let it settle and see what it looks like then.
Are you a writing software, or doing data science? Brother was Indy and works at top gaming company doing data analysis and it data analysis seemed like a good fit.
Hey, the applications go into a tracking tool, and a team member will reach it out probably sometime this week if you just applied. Depending on your background and how well you did on the assessment they will either give advice to improve and try again later, or do a call to see if you are a good fit for the program.
If you DM me personal information I can also double check on the backend that everything is moving along smoothly.
Early stage startups are a bit tough. If you want to explore some options look at Hatchways.
I normally have three rules to evaluation startups:
1. Look at the funding and the stage. Stage B, C, D+ is probably better for a first job out of school. A and Seed is a bit early and case by case and fit is important.
2. Investors. Looking for top tier recognizable investors. There isn't a universal list, but like people consistently on top 10 lists. e.g. Sequoia, A16z, Greylock, Benchmark
3. Founders. As an engineer you want to see at least one founder with a very strong 5+ year FAANG-level background and very strong career trajectory.
\#1 tip if you want a job out of school (rather than academia) is do internships during school.
If you are one of the strongest candidates out of school, e.g. a top ranked Waterloo grad with 6 top tier coops, the companies I would target in Toronto would be: Stripe, Google, Meta, 1Password, Snap, Twitter, Uber, possibly Amazon (I know some of these aren't hiring right now). Faire is up and coming too in Waterloo. Airbnb for remote.
But I would probably suggest you try to go to SF or NYC on TN status and get a little more ingrained in the tech culture.
If you don't have any/many internships and didn't go to one of the top CS/eng programs in the country, I would still target the above, but you might find these just a little more approachable (but still hard and good companies!): Microsoft, Shopify, Autodesk, AMD, IBM, Hubspot.
Then if those are out of reach, the telcos and banks!
From what people have told me there is a paid one (that is 75% off for alumni) and there is a like self service guide an alumni made (which I've read). There is A LOT of content, guides, opinions out there (some paid, some free) to get ready for DS&A interviews and these are honestly are fairly similar on par.
Obviously I'm bias, but we (Formation) have people who live and breathe 24/7 how to train people on DS&A, SD, etc..., thousands of tasks, hundreds of assessments, dozens of mock interviews with senior+ engineers people who have done hundreds of interviews, all the stuff is living and breathing and changing daily. So I have a high bar for DS&A courses because we are creating something magical here.... but we're very expensive and it takes everyone a different amount of time. Most of these courses above are a few weeks and static.
I left out the community support in my post below/above, I also hear that often about Codesmith. So most bootcamps have alumni slack/discord/etc... where people talk about jobs, referrals, etc... But Codesmith alumni are really bonded with the bootcamp and come back to do mock interviews and give advice. Like I heard about several attempts at creating advanced DS&A courses for alumni that were driven by alumni just wanting to help out and contribute.
So there are paths for bootcamp grads, like top-tier apprenticeships (Dropbox, Asana, Twilio, etc...) but it is hard. The top bootcamps after widdling down people who actually graduate, have 70 to 90% placement within six more months.
I don't know about the outcomes of a short degree from WGU. Having a legitimate degree can help your resume get past screens. But a few years down the road, I'm not sure.
If you have a natural propensity for coding, are super ambitious and hard working, I think a bootcamp can accelerate things.
I wish there was a simple answer to this because I get asked a lot.
It really depends on you. How do you learn (e.g. by reading, by doing, with people, alone)? What are your starting skills and how much programming have you done? What kind of job do you want? Where do you want to work?
For a high school student who has the opportunity to go to a top 10/20 CS/engineering schools, I would almost always recommend going the college route and doing top tier internships each summer. 1. you get to try working at different places and find the BEST job for you and not just A job. 2. you meet a lot of other people who will go one to other top companies and in other areas as well.
If you are going to go to a less well respected college just to get a degree on paper, I don't know if it's always worth it over other things, like bootcamps. This is where it becomes more personal. Codesmith is 9am to…
Yeah totally, when I bring this up people think I'm like calling them out and I'm really very much in the middle. Their work is a lot better than what a lot of bootcamps do. Their alumni are relatively successful. So I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making a judgment call for everyonI'm just trying to answer the question from my perspective as someone with a ton of industry experience who works with a lot of people who went to bootcamps in the past.
Codesmith is really focused on efficiently doing things to build up a resume that appears really good on the surface. They also do a good job teaching, but I just mean the priority is to make it all look good to help people get jobs, i.e. getting resumes past screens.
One thing is the open source projects that a lot of people ambiguously label as Software Engineer jobs at companies. The projects have websites and all the Codesmith people like and promote each other's projects to build momentum. Not bad stuff, just very focused on making it look good. The actual projects don't have outside people working on them and are like really really good college class group projects that got portrayed a little more like company like engineering work. And there is a playbook for every project that is the same flow. The Codesmith way.
Another thing is these tech talks that people do. They prepare…
Hey, it's Formation.dev We do mentorship and training for people from non traditional and underrepresented backgrounds with experience to help them level up to top tier roles. Strong bootcamps grads are the most junior starting point to work with us and most people have 1 - 3 years of experience already. But we have a lot of people who have done bootcamps in the past and I know a decent amount about some of the top ones.
I haven't done Codesmith but can answer the question from working with Codesmith alumni.
With Codesmith you get lifelong support in their community. After you officially graduate, you get continued check-ins, practice, access to the community for support and referrals, and ongoing lectures for interviewing and negotiation. While normal Codesmith is 9am to 8pm every day, this phase is way more hands off and on your own.
I cant answer when it ends. Around 90% of people get a job within 6 months of graduating. The 10% that don't, someone else can hopefully answer.
From what I've observed, most Codesmith people are ambitious and hard working and a lot of people find jobs. At Formation we've worked with a range of alumni from those who need extra help to find any job to those who are really solid but need extra support to achieve top tier jobs.
One downside of the job hunt support is…
I joined in 2009, but close enough haha. Yeah I was there when it was cool, and left shortly after the 2016 election when the sentiment towards FB turned negative. Yeah my stock 100X'd so I have to say it worked out quite well. There is lot more inequality here compared to Canada and what "money" means has changed a lot in my mind. More so than the comp though, it was really a magical experience where my what I was good at was a great fit for Facebook at the time. I learned so much, contributed a lot, and made a lot of lifelong friends.
u/question_23 u/AHighFifth Welcome! let me know if you have any questions or feedback as you ramp up and ping me on Mattermost if we haven't chatted already, or let your Fellow Managers know if you need anything! (I have no idea who you all are on Reddit haha).
For anyone else reading this, the "GUI" referred to is our "platform". Our engineers (including myself) build everything from the ground up and that's why the experience is so unique. Some really interesting stuff we've built to support Fellows, our team members, and our Mentors, and so much cool stuff behind the scenes too ;)
Yeah my understanding has been that the salaries are significantly lower in Canada. Like Amazon's new grad salary is something like 110-120K CAD (\~93K USD) and in the USA it's around 130Kish USD... which is a massive difference. and the market and ranges are also pretty crazy right now in the USA (some new grads are getting up to 150K USD).
It depends on your nationality. Canadians, Mexicans, Australians, and Singaporeans have some easier pathways (TN/E3/H1B1). If you are British then you should start off in the UK office, work with the company to apply for H1-B until you get it, or consider an L1 temporary transfer after some time to work in the USA temporarily. These are the typical paths. If you get a degree in the USA, then you can get an OPT status to work for up to 3 years immediately while trying for your H1B in the USA.
This is run by Trilogy right? They have a reputation of accepting too low of a bar and pushing people along that might not be ready.
Imposter syndrome is a complex topic. Feeling uncomfortable constantly can be a sign of constant growth. At the same time, people learn at different paces. A lot of people graduate college shorter longer and not on the exact four year to the day timeline. Bootcamps have a hyper compressed timeline where you’ll spend like a day sometimes on a topic or two days and it’s the exact opposite of learning on your pace. So people tend to feel imposter syndrome at bootcamps as a result. The best bootcamps right now have a high bar of entry so that people are pre-vetted to be able to follow the pace of the bootcamp so they are more successful at that.
So the short answer is you probably are a bit behind but it also doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to make it…
Hi!
Short answer: no.
Long answer: we accept iOS Fellows on a case by case basis. If you have several years of experience, we can focus on data structures and algorithms and system design, but not iOS specific expertise. You can use Swift for most of your practice, and Javascript/Python in group sessions. Finally, we have we have a few very senior mentors who are iOS engineers (Uber, Square, etc...) who can do one-off sessions to practice iOS system design interviews. Our most recent iOS Fellow received 5 to 10 (lost track) offers from top-tier FAANG companies, but I think having more iOS training would still help.
cc: u/Yak_Overflow as well, RE: ISAs.
I can give my perspective on ISAs in general (they aren't unique to coding bootcamps), this might be a bit long and boring but it's a very interesting topic and a lot of ISAs are full of problems.
TRANSPARENT DISCLOSURE: I am the co-founder of a non-bootcamp training and mentoring program that successfully offers ISAs.
"Scam" is a strong word, but most bootcamps that offered ISAs have stopped offering them because they are absolutely terrible for the company, especially when a lot of bootcamps don't have great placement rates. Lambda School (BloomTech) used to be a pioneer of ISAs and recently stopped offering them. About 50% of people who start BloomTech get a job within 6 months of graduating, so 8 months + 6 months = 14 months for HALF of the people that started to even START paying for their education. Meanwhile BloomTech has to pay its staff…
Have you tried contacting admissions for Codesmith and Rithm and asking if they have any room left? People do change their minds or change cohorts. I wouldn't compromise on quality because 2 months now might save 4 months in the job hunt.
Yeah Colt Steele is great, he contribute content to Springboard and is close with the Rithm founder as well, so it's a good bridge to a bootcamp: [https://www.udemy.com/user/coltsteele/](https://www.udemy.com/user/coltsteele/)
100%, we are all impacted by our surroundings. Sometimes I feel like all my peers are better than me and I don't deserved to be here. At least that feeling doesn't really go away the more you progress in your career. But over time, you build confidence in the things you are good at!
My goal is for all the people I work with to surpass me years down the road and would love nothing more :D
I love reading other people's perspectives and I hope I don't portray my perspectives as "the source of truth", I want them to be a point of view to help people.
Yeah in my opinon, Nucamp is a good alternative/competitor to Udacity and alternative to a weaker bootcamp (especially for the cost), where M-F are self-taught and Saturdays you do a multi hour live session with an instructor to fill in gaps and get feedback.
If you know nothing about coding, get started with a good Udemy course, like a Colt Steele intro series. Don't worry about absorbing everything but just follow along to see if you even like programming and if you like React/frontend or if you like data engineer, etc...
Then after a few months, I would consider if quitting your job makes sense and which program is right for you. If you advanced quickly you might be a candidate for some of the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, Rithm, HackReactor, etc... which require a very basic level of understanding to join, or if you want to Nucamp first while you work, to re-evaluate bootcamps a…
Hi, you're definitely a little wide reaching there and definitely should focus, assuming this is your first job.
You said you want to be a frontend dev so I'll focus on that starting point.
1. For frontend roles, Facebook, Google, really FAANG companies will still ask DS&A questions. Sometimes on the medium side rather than the hard, but still some DS&A. If you are not targeting FAANG there are some top tier companies that have frontend roles that don't do DS&A, like Atlassian, so it depends on your goals. I would highly recommend avoiding the 'memorize leetcode' strategy and you should lean towards the fundamental techniques and problem solving PROCESS for hard DS&A problems, rather than having a solution to a hard problem on leetcode accepted and celebrating.
2. Being good at IMPLEMENTING FIGMA MOCKS will be helpful for frontend roles. That's a reasonable challenge you might get: 'he…
Thanks for this candid feedback! I appreciate it a lot.
Lot of stuff I will reflect on and try to incorporate into my responses. I got feedback I didn't disclose Formation so maybe I went too far haha.
I'm extremely thankful you gave that example of the two quotes because I didn't realize that came across that way.
Yeah I don't know what to say but I'm here to help people. I joined Facebook in 2009 and my stock 100x'd so I originally semi-retired a few years ago. The lack of diversity and people from nontraditional backgrounds in tech is such a huge factor contributing to the problems that big tech is facing today, so I came back with Sophie to give 150% on helping solve this problem. I have made $0 from Formation (no salary) and while I'm a partial owner, we lose money every month right now.
I want to help more people get into the industry and find the right path for them. This is…
Sorry you feel that way, and I appreciate the candid feedback. I'm genuinely here to help people and give advice.
Having worked with hundreds of people, maybe half or so(?) who have done bootcamps (of all kinds) years ago (and some recently) I do feel like I have a perspective that is useful for people.
Being the engineer at Facebook with the most raw output in the entire company, and being at the principal E7 level (highest leveled 1.5% of engineers at the company) I have a perspective that might be useful for people.
I spend all my time on Formation and certainly have biases, but I also do feel my perspective can be valuable and I'm here with my real name, for open and candid discussions, and I genuinely appreciate pushback and discussion.
I haven't been to any bootcamps myself, that's where I also appreciate hearing other people's perspectives and hopefully together there is a lot…
No, Formation is not a bootcamp, we have a handful of people with no experience and 80-90% of people have worked for one to many years. That is an example. I've been criticized for not disclosing Formation, if you feel this is promotional, that's good feedback, I guess I can't make everyone happy, but I can try. I edited to give an example of what I mean, it's a little off topic now but 🤷♂️