I can’t comment specifically on the items mentioned in the blog post or video because I’m following legal advice.
What I can say is that anyone interested should review the original source material directly in its entirely (which I understand is a lot) to understand the context.
One of the comments referenced had its original context deleted, making it impossible to know what I was responding to.
The other referred to a discussion about the Future Code program, which is funded by the City of New York for residents earning under $50,000 a year with no computer science degree or prior developer experience. My intent was to highlight the importance of graduates accurately representing their backgrounds rather than presenting themselves as having prior work experience, as that was a critical, verified requirement of getting into the program.
Copied from below: "To clarify, I don't own this sub so that's not my choice, nor do I have any plans to be a mod again. I said "for now" as the opener because there is a lot going on in the moment and I have no idea what the world will look like down the road."
I can’t comment or join any calls right now, as there are legal considerations in play and I’ve been advised not to discuss anything related to the situation. I do believe both sides of the story should be heard, but for now, there’s a lot still up in the air.
My overall repeated opinion was that there is always bias and transparency is a better solution than trying to engineer a bias-less system. I also think reducing bias takes a tremendous about of work from a lot of people. In Germany, large company board of directors have worker representatives and corporate ones too. That helps improve some problems but it requires strong laws, governance, etc...
To clarify, I don't own this sub so that's not my choice, nor do I have any plans to be a mod again. I said "for now" as the opener because there is a lot going on in the moment and I have no idea what the world will look like down the road.
I explained this previously but we had a situation last year where accounts associated with the Reddit marketing network were manipulating discussions in the bootcamp space and I explained the moderation rules in the sticky. I was a mod queue 0 person and cleared out the queue daily but we defaulted to accepting the filtering unless there were very strong signals to warrant an override.
In that analogy and based on my previous arguments I would say being like the CEO of the Rolls Royce Airplane Jet Engines unit being the mod of a car sub.
I'm no longer going to be a moderator for now. My parting words of wisdom.
Hey everyone,
After a lot of thought, I am stepping down as moderator of this subreddit. I’ve been part of this community for about 3.5 years now, and became a moderator in February 2024.
I originally accepted the role to help keep discussions productive, balanced, and grounded in real experience. I’ve always valued the thoughtful, nuanced conversations that happen here. Ones that look at both the pros and cons of different paths into tech for different people. That’s what drew me to this subreddit in the first place, and what’s made it worth being part of for so long.
The coding bootcamp space has changed a lot over these past few years. The highs, the lows, and everything in between. Through it all, this subreddit has remained a place where people can help each other navigate big decisions, while still refle…
It was like four, five years ago that people actively worked on RecurCode and I wasn't working on that involved, I just don't know.
My argument about "open source" not meaning paid is that ALL open source is not unpaid. And the instructions given say to put it as open source without stating that. It's a minor detail I've pointed out but that's what I meant by that.
I want to restate using a different past example I've said before:
One of the things I spoke about was the git contributor graphs on all the open source projects being like spikes. There are no 'legit' open source projects that have these patterns. That makes Codesmith's open source projects very different from say Firefox or React or Angular, etc...
The same analogy applies here. How Formation people represent their resumes is completely different than how Codesmith people do fundamentally because the underlying goods are different.
I'm sure there are rogue Formation people and rogue Codesmith people that have out of date LinkedIns and who classified things wrong.
Even the fact that the boxes are under "experience" itself is irrelevant to my point.
There could be problems with A and not B, with A and B, with not A and not B, A and B need to be independent and not compared in my opi…
That argument should go both ways then for anything and my opinion is that blog post should have had comment from all sides.
I think it's a fantastic discussion to have respectfully and openly and that's all I've always wanted on here for all sides at the table.
I hear your feedback and it will be heard in thinking of names for future programs.
Like I said earlier, a small minority of people have even put Formation on their resume for the past 2-3 years (a lot of the people you find are not current active members of Formation) so it's not a high priority thing to change across the board that will have a lot of impact. That doesn't mean it's not heard, I disagree that it's a misleading word, but I hear you and it's noted because if potential customers are confused about the naming all the time that doesn't help us whatsoever and we have to listen to feedback.
I didn't see those comments but let me see... yeah I can respond but I can only share things I've explained before already.
1. We tell people if they want to include it to put under professional development if they want to include it at all. When we had Recur people worked on the codebase for [Recurcode.com](http://Recurcode.com) \- a closed source project that was shut down - and I don't remember exactly but we I think we had guidance about how to frame that too.
2. What the word Fellowhip means, I had like an hour long debate with someone. I don't want to go over it all again, but I hear you that there are used of it that are paid too, and academic uses of it, and many uses. We chose it because 1. F. F. is easy to say, 2. Pathrise used the word Fellow first, an industry standard for consistency as they were our biggest competitor (which isn't a great reason but it's a reason), 3. I t…
I can repeat what I've already stated, that we have guidelines and above average Reddit controls turned on. That there was a wave of sketchy accounts in the middle-ish of 2024, many that are suspended now, and their content was some autoremoved, some still here, and some being removed when found. And finally that mods are humans and make mistakes, like misreading, misjudging, looking at the wrong profile when reviewing escalated claims, clicking the wrong buttons etc... Obviously mistakes should be absolutely minimal, but they happen and we correct them if notified.
The only content I personally have removed, as I've said before, is factually incorrect content that is provable. Like if someone says "X is actually owned by Y" and it's not, then it could be removed, typically challenged first but it's judgement.
Finally, when Reddit AI removes stuff it says "removed by moderator". Some…
Resume representation is nuanced argument that you probably understand but most people outside the industry wouldn't.
The vast majority of people are working engineers that don't even think about putting Formation on their resumes. Some people who have been with us a long time - like years - have it on. Some of those people aren't even at Formation and they abandoned the job hunt.
The representation is clear. I have never heard of a recruiter or company thinking that Formation was a job. I can't think of background check someone ever had for Formation as a job.
Codesmith, the vast majority of people put their projects down as a work experience directly adjacent to an Open Source Projects bucket, making it look more like work. The description buries the 'accelerated by OS Labs' in the footer collapsed - if it's there at all.
Part of the mental trick is that they tell you 'Don't lie ab…
1. I never contacted grads from specific class lists etc... I connected with people that showed up in my network with lots of mutuals, from all bootcamps.
2. I on specific occasions (a few times) make a spreadsheet of open source projects and the amount of time people committed to them.
3. I looked at open source projects and contacted people when there were security problems like leaked passwords, credentials, etc...
4. When I spoke to the CEO she didn't tell me anyone left the company or was thinking about leaving because of the Reddit content. If she told me that I would have talked more about it and trying to understand why.
5. I don't know who was DOX'd. I think DOX'ing is wrong and I want more context on that. I'm not going around DOX'ing people. Some people were public in their posts or they said a ton of info about themselves and if I looked them up on LinkedIn I wouldn't id…
1. The person 'exposed' is a person who put on his LinkedIn what he said he did and was doing that during that entire time window.
2. That person was at Formation 2021 and half the stuff he did doesn't exist anymore because we have a dynamic platform with a few thousand things and it changes every day.
I've removed my own posts before. If Codesmith triggers numerous Reddit AI they need to ask themselves why and fix the behavior. I can't tell entirely on my side but I gave them numerous suggestions over time. They keep falsely saying I'm deleting their posts.
Reddit AI removes and flags them -> I or another mod typically mass remove all flagged content. That's the standard in our community right now.
In 2022, Codesmith -> Formation was an adjacent decision that the time and I would say up to 10% of people could be at the top end of the Codesmith side or the bottom end of the Formation side, but that there was a best decision on one side or the other that required zooming in to see which side they fall on.
I'm arguing that 3 people I know of were right on the border and could have gone either way.
1. Our numbers only include full time SWE work experience and exclude contract roles, internships and non-SWE work.
2. In 2022 the average amount of experience was lower, but you can see that that the vast majority had work experience already even then. The people who didn't have work experience were mostly bootcamp GRADUATES who were job hunting for their first full time job and wanted to level up even more. We don't accept those people.
3. This data is from 3 years ago around when I started participating in the sub. Things changes and you should read our newest report for H1 2025, or even 2024 annual. The reported in that article cherry picked 2024 and 2025 data so you should use the same.
4. You can have non-computer science background and still have worked for 3 years as a SWE.
5. Not everyone wants to be a Senior Engineer at FAANG, but the intention of those people was largely t…
I personally agree with this. I don't have many friends. I'm not really likeable. I'm not here for that. I'm here to try to promote reasonable and fair discussion in navigating the bootcamp industry.
What's fair to one person might seem unfair to another. Mods have to make judgement calls. Modes are biased. You can respectfully call me out and talk about it and I'll listen and respond.
I support reasonable and respectful, fact-based discussion about if I should be a mod or not so that the discussion is transparent. My opinion is that anonymous mods with power are more dangerous than transparent ones because we all have biases.
I have email chains explaining the following to Codesmith leadership from Spring 2024 explaining all of this as well. Codesmith has yet to explain directly why they disagree with this framing, but continue to call my company a competitor.
This is my stance on my biases:
1. For the record. Formation is not a coding bootcamp and it doesn't compete for coding bootcamp students. We work with experienced engineers later on in their careers, about 1/3 of which were bootcamp grads in the past. The average work experience now is about 4-5 years of SWE work experience.
With regards to Codesmith, I'm aware of 3 people who were deciding between Codesm…
You should talk to your cousin because he'll confirm that I'm on the ground. extremely responsive. almost 24/7 to pretty much everything that's happening at formation that I'm I'm writing a s*** ton of code and that no one talks about codesmith or really cares about it whatsoever internally. and he'll probably be like absolutely shocked that there's you in this situation going on.
Sophie founded Buildschool in 2017. it was a sole proprietorship.
I co-founded Fomation with her in 2019 which subsumed her IP in the sole proprietorship as a new entity.
Both are correct.
I mean I don't know what to call my relationship with them. from my point of view in my head it's like a interest. I have a small number of things on my radar on the side. that's not related to my primary day-to-day in any way and I pay attention to those things and collect information and some things. I drop some things I add, merge whatever it's like. not a single word to describe this, I would call it an interest.
I mean I think it's a gray area. I was very transparent that I believe that my relationship to bootcamps is that it's in my interest for people to go to my company in the future. so if I'm very helpful in choosing the right bootcamp and it was the right choice and the person goes there then they are more likely to come to my company in the future. so if the right boot camp for you is Codesmith and I direct you there you remember that and then you come back to my company in the future.
I personally don't think that's a conflict of interest, but it's a bias to disclose. That I guess there is some self-interest in being really helpful to people at the bootcamp stage.
But it's ridiculous to state that I'm running a direct competitor to bootcamps and trying to funnel people to it.
That article states that Codesmith lost $9 million because of Reddit or something to that effect approximately…
I've done several investigations into companies and rule number one is you have to document everything from day one because even if you make a statement that happens to be true. If you didn't have evidence of it and stated it as a fact then that's a problem. there's some wiggle room for good faith and you can misinterpret something or make a human error. More like how Reddit reset their chat in like January 2023 and all past chats were permanently erased so there could have been content in there that in good faith doesn't exist anymore.
One of the reasons that I've been so open is that I've also been protecting my ass since day one very carefully. The problem being that a lot of the documentation is private messages or documents that contain a ton of personal information that were shared publicly in public places and are fair game, but it's not fair game to dox people regardless.
I co…
When I interviewed Codesmith grads and they flat out lied about their projects being work. One said his manager was "Phil Troutman" who was the lead instructor at the time. I've never seen this before and when it happened a second time I got interested and Googled and found this https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/
The polarization was notable.
So then I started digging.
I started looking up the GitHubs for the companies I was seeing on the people's resumes who were applying to get into Formation.
The GitHub projects all had these very odd spiky kit patterns where there are these spikes for 3 weeks and then absolute emptiness. I started clicking through the various projects and they all had these same very weird patterns.
Then I look up the outcomes and I see that people are making over $100,000 a year salaries.
I'm a person that d…
FWIW I talked to Codesmith's CEO earlier this year in a call and told her about it. She also agreed this stuff was crazy but since everyone left Codesmith she couldn't figure out who was responsible or why. So the defense is 'likely rogue former employee or contractor, sorry'. Then two weeks ago, fake LinkedIn account puffing up all their founder's comments against me. Account deleted and removed. No one takes responsibility. Not Codesmith, no idea.
If Codesmith doesn't know anything I need to find the truth.
No, not right now, I've always been about the truth and getting to the bottom of things and I dig to understand not to destroy.
I'm a moderator here to push respectful public discourse, to push for accountability in an industry full of scams and lawsuits for fake marketing and that's my goal. I give credit where credit is due, and supported many people going to Codesmith over the years. But I hold people accountable, which is ironic for the position I've been blindsided with this week. Codesmith takes about this stuff too but I hear two polarizing stories and I've been digging to figure it out. Codesmith is uncomfortable with for a reason and I want to push them to do better, not to shutdown.
People don't seem interested in discussions like this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1f0rrjf/navigating\_the\_debate\_bootcamps\_criticism\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codin…
Yeah their fake pro-Codesmith LinkedIn account was removed as well after escalating that too I have the full documentations.
And yes, it's a lose lose situation.
By the way I applied my detective work to identify that entire network of accounts and produced a nice report and it's gone now. The same rigor I applied to Codesmith and there is a reason for that.
My question is where did that money go then? It didn't go to Formation sure as hell. It didn't go to defunct Rithm. Didn't go to Launch School. Didn't go to Hack Reactor with it's single digit cohorts. Didn't go to EdX that shutdown its bootcamps. Didn't go to App Academy or BloomTech or Launch Academy that paused indefinitely. Epicodus maybe? Shut down. Code Up? Shut down.
Answer: it went no where because the industry collapsed.
This is the plain and simple answer that the author didn't look into and that it's absurd for Codesmith to claim and severely damages my reputation with what any reasonable person in the industry would know makes no sense.
Maybe it was taken out of context by the author. 40% decline of a smaller number maybe? Codesmith leaders have been celebrating the article so I assume it's correct.
The little popup log shows just todays approval at 5pm. We had a major problem with fake accounts - particularly pro Codesmith ones - that we're comments all over the place. You might also notice that those "top SEO posts" mentioned are not MY POSTS, but deleted accounts and also very odd posts.
These three posts show the aftermath of cleanup outside of this sub:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1iduu2d/im\_jehovany\_i\_graduated\_codesmith\_in\_2020\_and\_now/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1iduu2d/im_jehovany_i_graduated_codesmith_in_2020_and_now/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im\_ayleen\_a\_software\_engineer\_and\_current/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im_ayleen_a_software_engineer_and_current/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1i8yr3f/im\_principal\_associate\_software\_engineer\_at/](https://…
Makes me kind of sad though too reminding me of Top Measurement and the dozen of other now-suspended pro-Codesmith accounts that created these spiraling comment chains.
My comments are too boring to write an article about. This is the type of commentary I had for 2.5 years until the market collapsed and Codesmith hired this Reddit guy that completely screwed up their Reddit presence and left me very personally upset.
The good old days were much better.
I wish that guy would tell a fair story from both sides.
I approved it but I think the problem could be that most of the comments are suspended accounts arguing with each other, which is super suspicious, but the post itself seems fine.
Do you have a link to the post? I don't know if I was a mod back then but I can look at it and reactivate it if doesn't violate any standards and your account is in good standing.
1. We compete on new AI stuff programs for existing engineers, that came out a month or two ago for us, I acknowledged that, and it hasn't impacted any of the 3-4 year long drama going on, but it could impact future stuff. This sub has minimal discussion about AI programs as it's focused on coding bootcamps. I will continue to be transparent about biases.
2. Formation used to help people do portfolio building projects and stopped many years ago. The author called though out too. It's not completely irrelevant, but it's not at all what Codesmith was doing. When we accepted people right out of bootcamps back then, Codesmith grads came to Formation directly and saw it as a complementary continuation of their journey. For a couple of years now though we don't accept those people and work mostly with 5+ year engineers so naturally the need for portfolio projects is almost zero. The platform…