Codesmith is so polarizing it's incredible.
They say the truth often lies in between but with Codesmith it doesn't.
You drink the Koolaid, ignore the outside world, and just go all in. Or you think critical and ask tough questions and think it's a scam.
For years I have been searching for the in between and I've bumped into like 2 people who are genuinely in between. A lot of people who used to drink the Koolaid who stopped.
Only about 100 to 200.or so graduates of Codesmith out of 4000 went to canonical FAANG during the good times. And a number of people are in contract roles and don't stay there. A number of people also get there after a couple years at other companies too, not.inckided in these numbers.
It's a great accomplishment but it's extremely rare and wasn't typical in 2019 either.
Especially the people who lied on their resumes to get the jobs nowadays don't want anyone to know because they risk losing it if found out as it's almost impossible to get a SWE full time role with zero experience.
I'm not 100% sure - for this program, Netflix has to sign off on things, and then we have to do the paperwork. So all the steps have to happen before we can officially send out acceptance paperwork across different entities, so I can't 100% guarantee any timeframes.
I would just hang tight and not make assumptions yet!
I asked and was informed that no official acceptance paperwork has been sent out yet, so I'm not sure about those, but they definitely haven't ALL been sent out yet.
I'm not sure. But I am sure that some people likely will withdraw or might have made a mistake with the graduation date or something and there will be a waitist.
I'm not 100% sure but if not we would send them soon. It's also possible that if Netflix approved some people and they were notified that additional people would be notified later.
What people said summarized to:
\- grit and outwork 80% of your cohort
\- past STEM degree
\- past professional work experience, ideal related so soft skills transfer
\- natural affinity for programming and abstract thinking
\- your network, from school or otherwise
\- your location - big tech city
\- how much you are willing to lie on your resume at the end
Every bootcamp uses a different way to measure placement and even CIRR is falling apart.
But more importantly, placements rates have always been a marketing tool.
When it's high, yell it loud all over the place and publish it as early as possible. When it's bad, downplay, change the goal posts, delay.
Why haven't we seen audited 2022 results from CIRR and where are 2023 outcomes... they have never been delayed this long before as we now enter April.
The truth is that someone going into a bootcamp has a probability of success before even starting and it depends on YOU not the bootcamp.
Bootcamps with high placement rates had the highest entrance bars and that was the secret.
Now they take people the day before and haven't properly vetted the risk. More people leaving from top programs unable to use GitHub properly.
But if you will get a job or not should be based on you and your un…
This probably isn't the right place but leadership principles are a huge one. You need to have a concrete reel example from your past experience for each leadership principle and be ready to talk about it as every interview in the loop will touch on it.
Systems design is generally a leveling interview there so that will be what decides if you meant the SDE II bar.
Welcome to the Community! It's 2025 and AI is here to stay - this is the place to talk about career transitions into AI and AI upskilling.
AI is changing what it fundamentally means to be a software engineer, product manager, data scientist and more. While people flee coding bootcamps, AI bootcamps are popping up left and center.
At its' core, this community is a place to post about the journey of learning AI skills - whether you are coming from another field, or upskilling in tech.
Day to day, this is a place to talk specifically about programs, platforms, and learning strategies to obtain these skills and apply them towards getting a job.
Welcome again!
The program is motivated by trying to support people from diverse backgrounds, which is why not only the score matter, but the soft-skills, motivation, and demonstrating Netflix values.
It's subjective and I totally understand as a student and not having worked at Netflix that it's hard to self-evaluating those aspects either, but those are equally important - we've been doing this program for a few years now and we want to make sure we select/recommend people who **we see signal** of a path to getting hired there
1 year later. No audited 2022 results released, no 2023 results published, no changes at all to CIRR, other than increasing the number of reasons a bootcamp can use to exclude a student from data.
Words are words and actions are actions. I know CIRR has good intentions and it's not personal, but it's hope, optimism and good intentions should not mislead people about the state of the market for the past 2 years.
It's not putting the student first.
Not joking but I try to think of a problem I'm stuck on right before I go to sleep and I often wake up with new ideas on how to solve it. Been doing it for 15 years for the hardest problems!
I'm in your camp on this one. When I interview these people it's apparent in minutes what's going on.
There are two strategies:
1. Do this stuff to get the interview but tell the truth in the interview itself and hope the raw technical performance is good enough that they will give you a shot for "potential'. Like a smaller company.
2. Lie and hope to get away with it just one time even if the person typically gets caught. These people aren't getting jobs at good tech companies (it happens but very rarely, a fluke) so pulling one over at an agency in a non tech city where you might only be talking to an engineering manager who doesn't code.
I've been studying this for years and at first why mind boggled too.
The entry level market is so insane and bootcamp grads look the same on paper so people are doing this just to get noticed.
The people who do this aren't bad engineering faking…
The new grad jobs are going to former interns and some new grads right out of school. So given you are 6 months out I would recommend two opposite spectrum ideas:
\- Masters degree and try to do internships in the summer that could convert
\- Look for contract jobs, potentially lower paying that could be a foot in the door, check out startups in Toronto, to try to get a foot in the door.
\- Extension of past one, look for remote contract jobs with startups in the US. It's very easy to hire people legitimate through Deel/Rippling/Remote etc... so it's become easier for startups to hire (and cheaper because salaries are lower in Canada)
Big tech will be hard because of my first sentence, and with the tariff situation, I don't think big non-tech companies will be on a hiring spree for a while.
If you get a weak no hire, they MIGHT do a second screen, but that's usually for MISSING SIGNAL (I can go more what this means, but it usually means something happened and the interview isn't confident in their assessment) not for just borderline performance.
Yeah it's hard to tell, if you didn't have any kind of remotely close code for the 2nd problem I would say it would be a no. So saying it looks good, is a sign that you are in the running, but ultimately the cleanliness of both the code and your communication will make the difference.
You don't have to dry run it no, that's not a hard requirement, so I wouldn't sweat that. Full dry runs can actually eat a lot of time, so I actually discourage just automatically doing them. The reason you can't compile your code at Meta is they want to see you explain your thinking process of walking through your code. If you do that extremely well…
I'm extremely well calibrated here. Conducted 400+ interviews at Meta.
You are likely borderline. For an initial screen, it depends a bit on the difficulty of the question and how clean your code was and how well you communicated your thinking process.
The 5 mins of Q&A cutoff is standard pacing and doesn't indicate anything one way or the other.
I advise people all day long about preparing for Meta interviews and my advice here if you make it to the onsite: manage the time better yourself - if you acknowledge there might be something better than O log (n), you can say "Given the time, I feel confident about writing out a clean O log (n) solution" and then write it super cleanly. You might not get a "strong hire" on the interview but you are more likely to get a "weak hire" and a "weak no hire". You can also discuss verbally the O(n) if you finish everything early and get some partial…
Went through and couldn't find any links in the sub (I might have missed it) that had those UTM params, including links shared by Codesmith staff.
I found variations of your own links directly to specific problems that YOU SHARED that still have the same UTM params.
It's not adding up still and this looks like evidence of astroturfing.
I was looking out my window at the Bay Bridge in SF/Oakland and how they had to replace half of it after [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989\_Loma\_Prieta\_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake)
My thoughts and wishes are with all people impacted suddenly by natural disasters and that wasn't referring to the recent earthquake in Myanmar.
I apologize to anyone impacted by a natural disaster who was offended by my comment.
You aren't accounting for bootcamp grads that hide their certs and portray their projects as years of work experience in order to sneak into interviews.
Although I guess anyone can do that without going to a bootcamp.
I've only seen recent data from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps were ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've only seen recent days from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps we're ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
It depends on you. The bootcamp isn't going to get you a job in 2025, but being very "creative" about your experience will so that you can appear like you have years of SWE experience and get interviews.
I've seen a handful of mechanical engineers. If you search on LinkedIn for "oslabs mechanical engineer" you'll find a bunch of bootcamp grads who got jobs in 2020 to 2022.
I don't see that many getting jobs anymore though, so even these strategies don't seem to work anymore.
You can look through the examples and see some patterns:
1. Call the work "Engineer", "Project Engineer", "Automation Engineer", "Engineering Lead", "Engineering Manager", "Solutions Engineer". And even if that was your real title as a Mech, change the description to focus on all ambiguous work that sounds like it was software-related.
2. List your 3-4 week bootcamp capstone project as Software Engineer work for…
Ah ok, if you've at least increased the scope of work in some way that would could more too if you can communicate that on your resume clearly, and help land interviews.
Working remotely from Canada usually works but Canada is under a lot of stress right now with the tariffs and no idea where the job market will be in a year.
If you have 5 years at one company and had 1+ promotions, then I think you'll be completely fine.
The "limitations" you have are that you haven't been around a culture of the "DS&A", system design interviews, probably haven't conducted them yourself at the FAANG bar, etc...
If you can get to that bar then all you have to do is land an interview and I see people with 5 years of SWE experience landing interviews very easily right now. 2 to 5 years is sufficient, but not as easy. Under 2 years is tough.
This post just has these requirements because they want the recruiter to bring in people likely to pass the interview process and these traits tend to have more people that pass.
I would be you you can get big tech interviews if your 5 years is legit SWE work.
Correct, that's all talking about Capstone, but part of the reason their outcomes are so high is there is no guarantee you can just do Capstone - you have to be a good fit and demonstrate in Core that you will likely succeed
You sound like a smart and hard working person who did it right. But there are people worked hard and cobbled together a job, only to get laid off 2 years later and be lost in what to do, unable to compete with FAANG layoffs and having a really hard time.
I can't speak to how many gold finders are in each of the two buckets I hope most would be in the success bucket, but it's certainly not an edge case to end up in the other.
Winning the lottery is one thing, keeping your winnings is another.
I don't know how many 4 year success story videos and posts I read that involve someone being laid off, and while they bounced back and made it, it's not just like you get the gold and game over!
Yeah I've been following it and I went from coin toss to "I think this can work by selecting for high IQ people who work insanely hard".
I think it's ultimately limited by the number of high IQ people who work really hard but there are probably enough of those people who want a path to jump into AI that this can work at least to some scale yeah.
I'm a big fan of Launch School overall for these reasons:
1. They are open and honest about the market and how it impacts them.
2. Their team has been extremely creative with the 2023 entry level downturn, by adding supported work on Firefox (Open Source) and trying to setup internships for people. You can see in their 2023 six month placement rates that this stuff is working to combat the market prolbems
3. BUT a word of caution because they are not immune from the market and their placements rates have still fallen from 2022 so it's not the golden ticket.
4. Launch School has a slow ramp with Core (which is paid and not free) so by the time you commit to the Capstone bootcamp portion you know (and they know) who is most likely to succeed in the more expensive Captone.
5. Their projects are the most legit projects I've looked at coming out of a bootcamp. I've looked at the open sou…
I would +1 Ada. They had some struggles after COVID and had to reset a bit, but they took a thoughtful pause, regrouped and are still around. Their model is focused on a bootcamp + REAL PAID internship at a real, solid company after (not sure if it's changed, but in the past it was expected everyone has an internship).
Nothing is perfect and there are many ways Ada can improve, but this model is really the best thing you can have in a transition. If it doesn't work out for you, you still have this internship under your belt and gave it a real shot and it's a better sign that SWE isn't for you, more so than you just couldn't get a foot in the door.
I would just double check they still expect everyone to have internships because that is the key thing that makes it special.
Yeah TechSpring is a 3rd party that CMU put their name on and potentially supports in some ways by partnering with them.
I don't know all the details so I would recommend researching carefully.
I edited to add Launch School. Believe it or not, I respect that Codesmith at least tries to publish consistent data on a consistent cadence and I didn't want to put it side by side with Launch School which makes Codesmith's placement rates look way worse.
The problem this is Launch School has every single graduate accounted for and a ghosting grad isn't included. Codesmith includes LinkedIn verified ghosters in their data.
What would you recommend I do, just only publish Launch School's in this case?
I'm from Canada and I was always interested in programming from a young age, like 10. I saved up paper delivery money to buy a half broken laptop and people thought my interest in tech was a novelty or 'cute'. My parents literally refused to drive me to the store to buy it because they thought it was a waste of money. I tried to start like 5 "businesses" in my early teens, all around tech stuff, and people also thought it was 'cute' and patted me on the back.
I worked really hard in school, had really good grades, was #1 in high school, got into the hardest program in the country to get into (the Engineering Science sub-program within Engineering at UofT), I was #9 in college.
Then I show up at Facebook for my summer internship.
I was roomed with 4 CMU students. I talk fast and they all talked faster. They were just sitting around talking about algorithms and the most efficient ways t…
Yeah, I would say anyone at FAANG, heavily involved in hiring entry level talent, during the early 2010s would have a similar view for those eras.
The 2020s I think I have a bit more of a unique perspective by working with bootcamps from tons of bootcamps (specifically: Hack Reactor, FullStack Academy, Codesmith, Launch School, General Assembly, Flatiron School, Lambda School) I have a lens into a bunch of different programs and the strengths and weaknesses of people from bootcamps compared to degrees. As well as a unique view to compare bootcamp grads later in their careers VS cs grads.
Well it depends on your location, savings, situation, etc...
1. I think the best thing you can do is try to land a role at a company that pays for a party time masters and get it slowly.
2. You can try to do coding on the job, why not learn your own company's code and learn while also having some kind of impact!!
I would try to do both, but #2 might be enough if you can really get into the code as a manager