No not at all, even non profits in this space have tuition, but you want to make sure it's transaprent. Like nothing in life is free so if something offers a money back guarantee for example - that sounds too good for you. Do 5 months of free classes! Like someone has to pay the bills and if that's the case, the success cases have to pay enough to cover all of the failure ones and are overpaying.
There are also "VC funded programs" where the program raised outside funding from venture capitalists and loses a ton of money per student in an attempt to grow larger and eventually make a profit.
These ones might be the best deal because you are actually getting a deal and the program is losing money.
The flip side is that the programs have pressure to grow so they might cut corners too soon as well.
Everything has pros and cons and transparency is key so you know what those are.
I haven't heard of them but step 1 for me is to always look into where they get their funding from and how they make money so you know how the business works.
OP is specially suited for this: [https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/1296230207698571/](https://www.metacareers.com/jobs/1296230207698571/)
Not general product manager
Top 1% of bootcamp isn't quite what you would think it means. Two types of people:
1. People who drink the koolaid and have no experience, fake their resumes to present whatever they need to get interviews, and then use their brilliance to make it through the interviews and pass.
2. People who didn't need to go to the bootcamp at all and just wasted their money.
You sound like you would be in bucket 2 to me haha.
Two ideas:
1. Be an engineering manager first, learn on the job and maybe switch to IC later on
2. Try to get a down-leveled IC roles as a super special case, likely on a specific team that knows your strengths and weaknesses and thinks they can support you. Like some kind of 'tech lead' role. Maybe "Technical Product Manager" at FAANG is a good fit.
I would just dabble with free or cheap online courses to get up to speed with modern programming and not do a whole bootcamps. Bootcamp will be $20K for 12 weeks and based on your history, it sounds like you can learn the same stuff yourself - and probably MORE - for free.
TRANSLATION
> Beware of bootcamps that promise work in 6 months. My experience with TripleTen.
I'm a corporate banking executive and I took the TripleTen bootcamp looking for a career change. Not out of financial need, but for mental health reasons: the pressure of goals in banking, even if well-paid, can wear you down.
I was convinced by their promise of employment in 6 months or a refund. I finished the program, followed all the steps, participated in simulations, CV workshops, mock interviews, etc.
The 6 months passed **and I didn't get a job**.
Since then, a battle of evasions began. They never tell me directly that **they won't refund me**, but they don't approve it either. They just put me off: calls to "continue supporting me in my search," and via email or chat **generic responses** like "we're reviewing your case." I've been like this for over a month.
The worst thing is t…
Apprenticeships are the IDEAL way still in my opinion but a lot of them were operating under DEI budgets.
Like from a recruiting point of view, the amount of money spent on these programs didn't make sense.
So many got budget allocated from DEI buckets (e.g. corporate branding, initiatives to increase diversity at the company).
With major DEI budget cuts as a result of government changes, programs have becomes a lot smaller (operating under recruiting) or shutdown.
Launch School is good because Core is relatively cheap and self-paced so by the time you're considering the Capstone, you'll know you're a highlight because of ting or not. and if it's not for you, you wear in that much faster and cheaper.
I don't know anything about YellowTail tech
That's awesome! Like I love these stories and just remember it's a long journey ahead.
I'm guessing you are an E4 and my main tip at Meta: make sure to do weekly 1-1s and ask about actionable ways you can improve and follow up next week about whether you improved or not.
Second tip is as an E4, play to your strengths and do the work that's needed from you. Don't explore too much or intentionally work on things you know nothing about. Do that stuff after you a year and after a good performance review.
That's awesome! Like I love these stories and just remember it's a long journey ahead.
I'm guessing you are an E4 and my main tip at Meta: make sure to do weekly 1-1s and ask about actionable ways you can improve and follow up next week about whether you improved or not.
Second tip is as an E4, play to your strengths and do the work that's needed from you. Don't explore too much or intentionally work on things you know nothing about. Do that stuff after you a year and after a good performance review.
There have been placements, but they keep shedding staff so it could be another thing falling through the cracks.
There certainly aren't a lot of placements.
And a couple placements I've seen and really embellished and made up LinkedIns it's almost like an insult or a joke.
One started working at Codesmith as a TA prior to starting Codesmith as a resident.
One claimed their 3 weeks of commits on their OSP were 1 year 8 months of experience and got a job recently.
I flagged both of these cases to them.
Like I believe one person there is trying to fix things but it's just not really fixable.
Every day people hit me up with their personal experiences there and their engineering system seems like a giant scam now and I'm super annoyed.
Like TAs and instructors who migrated libraries from one React library to another in 20 places and then put down 1 year of SWE experience as a senior…
I was highly recommending Codesmith back in the day, and encourage a bunch of people to go there in 2021-2022. Sadly the market is falling apart and not a single person is still on their full time instruction team since then, literally about 20 instructors left and the longest serving one joined at the very end of 2022. And a number more joined since then and left. There are only 2 lead instructors AFAIK right now. Nevermind a number of directors (4 I count) who left and haven't been replaced.
Every day I get their LinkedIn posts touting 'you could be next', 'now's the time', and all these conferences their CEO is going off to and speaking at and it's really making me sad.
Then there are all these sketchy accounts on Reddit promoting them. Like I caught this account pretending to be a student who was sharing promotional links all over Reddit for CSX with UTM tracking params to trace th…
RE: "mixed reviews". If you are seeing like POLARIZED REVIEWS, like every review is either really good or really bad, that's a major red flag.
If you see a lot of reviews that are detailed and realistic pros and cons, that's a better sign that it's legit, even if the overall seems mixed or just 'good'.
Why? because bootcamps push for reviews and they game the system to bias reviews you read to more likely be super positive ones, and then the 1 star ones are disgruntled people.
So if you see a 50/50 mix of both you are seeing a mix of too many disgruntled people and the 'happy' people are like planted there in a sense.
If you see all the reviews being like 'it was okay, decent' and details for why, that's actually a GOOD sign haha.
Oh wow that's super interesting. It's absurdly hard to find people who actually got jobs from Triple Ten and they seem to have like a very low completion rate.
What kinds of jobs were the people getting who went there?
Also were they giving out discount codes? This bootcamp stands out because I have not seen a single person talking about it without offering one and that is absurdly bizarre compared to every other program.
Yeah agreed on that. I put a lot of pressure on bootcamps to market to these outcomes and I'm also extremely suspicious when bootcamps market FAANG outcomes as the norm or as a something to expect/hope for.
If you think creating accounts just to say one or two things is weird, then you'll think that Codesmith's entire subreddit and AMAs are scams where the only people interacting with them are newish accounts that only comment on a couple of AMAs and that's it.
They care at FAANG at at top tier startups.
If it's not obvious that a CS grad with 3 to 6 FAANG internships and 4 years of CS courses is more qualified than a bootcamp grad with no CS courses and a 12 week bootcamp, then I'm happy to go into extensive detail why.
Passing the interview is one thing and bootcamps focus too much on that as the end game. It's just the FIRST STEP not the last, and bootcamp grads are very far behind on the job.
Ask yourself why top tier tech companies - after giving bootcamp grads a shot - prioritize recruiting from Stanford and MIT and don't recruit systematically from any bootcamps, even the best ones.
I might be interpreting your post wrong if it's asking about college grads who go to bootcamps after or college grads OR bootcamp grads.
The bootcamp industry fell apart and schools are closing left right and center so you want a bunch of one anecdotes for what purpose?
As a moderator I want the information in this sub to reflect reality. When it was the good times, this sub was absurdly positive. But it's not right now and it's irresponsible to try to spread positivity that doesn't acknowledge reality, so that's why the tone is so negative here unfortunately.
I always love to read and hear individual success stories on a personal level, because I love to hear about awesome people's journeys.
That is a personal thing I like.
So why do you want to hear about all these stories and if you clarify what you are looking for on the post it might help you get replies you are looking for.
Sure.
Remote roles are fewer than they used to be and return to office is a real thing.
What I'm seeing is a lot of hybrid roles though. They might even be posted as in person roles but where the manager or team works remote most of the time.
It's complicated because you have to be ready to work in person and meet the requirements, but many companies seem to give people who are performing well some leeway to stretch that a bit.
There are still 100% fully remote roles that are good companies though and they are competitive yeah, but not necessarily a higher bar to get the job, just a higher bar to get through the resume and recruiter screens because of supply and demand.
I know a number of people that were senior FAANG by age 20 to 23 yeah.
Some just accelerate super fast after college, some dropped out of college, some never went to college at all.
It's possible, but it's more about raw talent than experience for these people.
Look at this: [https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/palantir-launches-recruiting-campaign-saying-skip-college/490002](https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/palantir-launches-recruiting-campaign-saying-skip-college/490002)
If a bootcamp wants to maintain that reputation for it's great run, has to shut down on a positive note, like places like Code Fellows did.
Otherwise thousands of lives changed loses a huge amount of that credit overnight.
I'm in the camp where bootcamps aren't scams, and we should acknowledge the lives changed.
But it's also really sad to see some of the remaining ones just grasping on a little too long.
The UC system has rules to transfer between them that make it significantly easier but I don't know the latest because the people I know who did it was 10 years ago.
But if you aren't aware of it, I would look into it and see.
You do need a very high GPA
Consider going to UC Irvine and then getting a really good GPA and following the transfer rules to transfer to UC Berkeley or UCSD.
Look into that and see what you think.
Maryland is a good CS program for sure too if that doesn't work.
I know one of the founders of Palantir and have been following them for 10 years and I also have hired a ton of interns and new grads from Stanford at Facebook.
If you want to stay in Silicon Valley and at top tier elite tech your whole career then I would consider it, or consider deferring for a year to see if you get converted full time.
I have a couple of friends that dropped out and have had fantastic careers, made many many millions of dollars, and everything worked out fine. They had very high test scores and probably would have met the requirements for this thing.
I also know several Thiel Fellows and they are doing well in the Silicon Valley ecosystem still but they didn't have the same meteoric success yet and I would recommend going to big tech if you drop out.
Who is the influencer? I'm one of the moderations of the Coding Bootcamp sub and I'm also extremely hard on bootcamps right now because it's like an insane time for bootcamps and they are shutting down left right and center.
I'll look into it and challenge them straight on.
Well for Formation, the average placement **increases** their first year total comp by over $100K (see our website for how that's calculated).
Now granted most people are non-FAANG ->FAANG and FAANG -> FAANG is different.
But if you are a little lost or struggling on your interviews, then paying like roughly $10K to be handholded through the preparation process and then handholded through negotiations to increase your offer by more than $10K typically can be mathematically sensical.
The reason we don't charge $100K is because it's impossible to know what the same people would do on their own and presumably they can get prepared for free or cheap too, so how much of that is attributed to Formation? I don't know, that's up to you, but if they typical increase is THAT much and the negotiation support pays for it, it's definitely not a scam or insane to do it.
It's more a personal choice…
L4 to L5 at Amazon? and if so yeah I can talk to them just to give them advice, I wouldn't pay for something until you have strong believe it will be worth the cost.
My company might be a good fit if it's technical preparation that's blocking the person, but I'm happy to chat with the person async on LinkedIn just to get an idea of what's going on more and give my personal advice. You can give them my LinkedIninfo, same name there.
Right off the bat I would ask if they got promoted and if their resume demonstrates this promotion well, because that's a sign to check off the boxes for E4/L4/SDE II mid level roles.
If someone is at a FAANG and stuck at midlevel then I would focus on getting to senior THERE. I have worked with people that try to transition to title bump and it doesn't often work out that way within FAANG. People tend to get senior titles but at smaller companies and they don't get senior at other FAANGs.
Even if your current FAANG isn't "the one", the other FAANGs want to see that you can get to senior at any of them (except Google wh…
Oh wow that comment went from like +1 to +12 suddenly, jeez... didn't realize everyone pays for the super expensive plan + deep research, OpenAI must be making bank at $200 a month.
Hi, thanks for sharing details. The L4 -> 5 promotion in 2 years is good trajectory that should be helping you in job hunting.
1. Yeah, I feel like the life of the engineer for your entire career is just not knowing stuff and figuring it out haha. I theorize that engineers sometimes are so opinionated about odd things because it's what they know - and they shy away from things they don't know, but acknowledging you don't know a lot of stuff is better for you than trying to pretend you do or putting pressure on yourself to.
2. I'm surprised and first tip is to show your career progression on your resume instead of bundling all of Amazon into one item. That progression is the checkbox for FAANG "mid level"/Meta E4 bar. Amazon does have some negative signal some places right now and I haven't dug into why, but it might just be a flood of people looking for jobs from RTO - but I'm not sure…
I live in SF and I can give my thoughts:
- A number of the original bootcamps started in person in San Francisco
- two things happened simultaneously, rents became extremely high for the businesses, but they also became very high for people so only people making like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in Tech lived in SF. so the customers for the boot camps weren't even there and had to commute for hours just to go to somewhere in SF
- then simultaneously the areas of the city with the most office space for sublease started getting more dangerous and lots of crime so that compounded the fact that people didn't really want to go there. like my partner's phone was stolen right out of her hand and she was pushed over like right in front of our old office downtown, and it happened to our other friend like the week before this happened.
- so when covid hit all of the boot camp who wer…
If that's not the case then maybe bootcamps shouldn't put hiring stats in their prime hero spots.
I just just checked and Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Tripe Ten, Tech Elevator, General Assembly, all have placement or salary info in the hero banner on the homepage.
Fullstack doesn't.
I was in the camp of people need to think about this as paying for school and not paying for a job. When the market crashed and many programs had layoffs and staff reduction it became absolutely absurd to pay $20K for this stuff.
Like at Codesmith now after their cut backs, you pay $22.5K and your cohort has 1 lead instructor with no/little experience, 1-3 mentors who are former graduates of Codesmith with no experience who were TAs that stayed full time as mentors, and then a bunch of fellows/TAs etc... who are part time recent graduates who haven't placed yet or recent graduates who mentor here and there.…
I think it worked pretty well. The key was have an IQ test at the beginning to only allow extremely smart people. Then run them through a 12 week insane hours program to see who also has the work ethic.
It's an interesting idea but it doesn't work by definition because it's selecting for a small group of high IQ people that is limited by definition.
Do you think your current company would pay for a part time master's degree and then allow you to interview as a SWE after?
Bootcamps aren't in a good spot right now.
Hi,
1. Master's is the most stable path but it's not guarantee either.
2. If you are truly self-taught and have gotten to an employable skill level on your own, I might consider doing some freelance work and trying to land FAANG contractor roles and taking about 3 to 5 years to land a permanent role.
3. Working and transitioning - I've seen it in two ways, but it's not common because these companies are so high performance there isn't a lot of time to explore.
\- Leveraging internal support - i.e. doing part time masters, or internal classes and then interviewing for lower tier or entry level roles that are the same company with the safety of staying in your role. Amazon had an internal apprenticeship to do just this, but it shut down.
\- Doing your job and doing a part time masters paid for by the company and then potentially changing companies once it's done and not counting on t…
My 2 cents - if Jeff could have ended this right he would have, so whatever is happening is so disruptive and so insane that it warranted this action. Which puts many other "top bootcamps" on notice for having similar problems.
My stance is in those days was that bootcamps worked for extremely ambitious young professionals with lots of savings. People that were successful in life already in various ways (ivy league, other career, naturally brilliant and doing well but had tough circumstances holding them back) and wanted to transition to SWE.
This is not a perfect analogy but I visited slums in Mumbai expecting the people there to be really struggling to get by without any jobs and such.
Instead I found out that the slums are like mini factories and people in the 'top tier slums' are actually extremely ambitious people - generally the 'breadwinner' of the family coming from all over India and staying there temporarily to make money. The work they did was like melting plastic and toxic stuff that is definitely bad for people's health, but they were there hopefully as a stepping stone to better jobs by saving e…
I don't think predatory, but on the "delusional" aspect, it's probably too mean of a word.
Like I think Turing had arguments for believing they could finish out 2025, and the changes in the economy made that not possible.
Should they have known that a President who has said the word "tariffs" over and over for about 40 years might introduce tariffs? Yes.
Do they have a crystal ball to tell the future? No.
My centrist stance on this is that bootcamps have to be absurdly transparent right now into what is going on.
I'm absurdly hard on Codesmith more than Turing because they live in an alternate reality on this stuff and don't acknowledge anything publicly. Like if all your instructors turned over except for 1 in less than a year, something is absolutely, fundamentally, stop the presses wrong and you need to pause immediately and just rebuild or reset and come back in the future. But…
Thanks for sharing. Yeah I'll +1 that March was particularly strong for Formation in the mid-late career stages, FAANG offers of every logo color of the rainbow.
And I got really nervous that if bootcamps saw similar bumps in entry level, they would promote stronger March without any acknowledgment of what's going on in the market.
I'm absolutely shocked that CIRR can't even keep their website up while they transition it to a new page and comes back without even explaining what is going on.
When the economy changed in the other directly and was super hot, it wasn't "the economy's fault" that Codesmith and others had such amazing placements right? It was the school's pedagogy and curriculum and community and network. Times are shit, 'not my fault, can't do anything about it'.
It's indeed a good lesson for all these leaders. The bootcamps are not going to make it but whatever they do…