1. This person was not in Formation, they did a different program , a Netflix program. They have a certificate from Netflix, signed by Netflix, showing this on their profile.
2. We don't hire Fellows as Teaching Assistants, we don't have Teaching Assistants at Formation and we don't have classes or lectures or courses or anything. Fellows is the name of engineers we work with to level up. It's a vague and ambiguous word so I understand the misunderstanding, but you also should be trying understand our language that we use consistently because this is a word that doesn't mean job universally and in our industry it's the standard word for our customer that places like Pathrise use as well. Like if you visit another country and insist on speaking English and being upset people don't understand you... it's your job to understand.
3. The industry standard is for students to put "pathways" p…
This is a good thing to mention too. This job doesn't seem early career, it's more mid career. Super entry level jobs that bootcamp grads go to directly are a little different analysis than bootcamps going for a mid career job 4 years later.
We have people who have been with us for a long time and our bar used to be any SWE work experience in 2019 to 2022, then was 1+ year 2023 -> and then 2+ years in 2024.
I was replying to a comment about the current state of Formation that someone was criticizing.
There can be edge case people people from a long time ago that place that have less experience and we also have a handful of people we accept now with less than 2+ years of experience.
You're right I shouldn't say "only take". We only market to and and only consider people with 2+ years since 2024 and reject others, and we have exceptions and edge case for one off reasons who come back and make a case or explain their circumstances on a call.
We also have partnerships with Netflix and Waymo where we prepare interns for their corresponding interviews. And those people are not paying $2500 a month, are not paying anything, and…
It's in the top 10 but not top 4, so it's a top school at some companies and not others.
But overall - yes. Great school for CS, beautiful CS building with lots of amazing CS professors doing great research with Microsoft and others.
UW grads generally get recruited heavily by Microsoft, Amazon and Meta in the Seattle area.
Bias: I was going to do my PhD there and dropped out to stay at Facebook :P
I would probably leave it off at this point. I don't think it's going to help you at all and it's not going to hurt to be missing.
having 4 years at one company and now being able to get some different big company perspective. sounds like a pretty good experience you want to highlight on your resume and put that front and center.
How do we benefit from the bootcamp industry being ruined exactly?
I've told you time and time again that people on LinkedIn are a small edge case group of people about formation and you have zero idea and it's completely confidential who actually goes there so it is impossible for you to know the demographic better than I do.
so unless you think I'm blatantly lying to you in public then I'm not too sure what the argument is that you're making.
What am I selling exactly as a solution to this problem?
This is a coding bootcamp subreddit and I'm a moderator who is trying to be a good moderator here.
I'm getting older now but back when I started out the best people stayed at one company and got promoted every year and accelerated their career that way and the companies supported this because they were trying to keep the best talent rather than lose it to other companies if the people job hopped.
so at the end of the day the best people were prevented from job hopping through rapid promotions, compensation adjustments, and discretionary equity.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads.
It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad.
The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system.
Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they…
Yeah it was a big signal, they wanted to see:
1. career progression at the same job
2. spending enough time somewhere to see more and else more specialization
It's not the end of the world but just a weakness on your resume you have to acknowledge and then work on. Play to your strengths and try to work around your weaknesses.
It's way better than getting rejected from 300 jobs and not knowing why and feeling like the world is against you like you see on Reddit a lot haha.
I agree with you and if everyone who was destined to be a great coder had an easier shot, the world would be better.
But the gatekeeping isn't elitism or power grabbing, it's just practical and rational based on the data... and that means biases and problems in the system aren't dealt with.
Our sub has a lot of astroturfing so I have to be careful and not make any assumptions or conclusions when evaluating things. I'm human, but the best I can.
They can reasonably well yeah. They do prioritize false positives but they should find all qualified candidates (and exceptional ones)
The problem is sourcing.
For every diamond in the rough there are people who look like they could be who are just quartz.
You can have to interview way more people and that is insanely costly in engineer time it doesn't work, especially if the hiring rate ends up lower = more interviews needed.
The practicalities and logistics are the reason why things are the way they are.
In a world where there were more efficient ways to pull the right diamonds out for the right companies, I think the companies would jump on more diverse candidates backgrounds.
Someone who generally didn't go to college in computer science who instead wants to do a 12 week super intense programming course to break into the industry and get the same job they would have gotten with years of school.
It sounds crazy but for thousands of people it has worked so if it's interesting to you would research more.
With this kind of get rich quick nature you can imagine all the scams that popped up and controversies that came with all of this.
It matters less and less the more work you do but the credentialism transfers to the companies you worked at and you get judged more for those names and career trajectories there.
It's real, the creator of the doc came forward and explained the doc and contacted me.
And yes, top tier startups have higher bars than FAANG!
My Meta friends are legends so they skip these processes. They are the S tier.
They can be but more complicated:
1. I highly doubt another 4 year undergrad makes sense. Maybe if you are still young and not attached to anything in life. OR if you are semi retired.
2. A Master's degree CAN POSSIBLY be good, but it has to be a full time "real" masters. A lot of schools have pay for play Masters programs or 3rd party continuing education programs that don't count. These are super hard to get into as well and the acceptance bar is part of the reason why they have that reputation.
TLDR: If it's too easy to get into then it won't count for much.
The best people I know had "non traditional backgrounds" but if you are recruiting at scale, you have to follow the data and it's really COSTLY to find those people.
Instead they focus on reducing false positives and don't care about the opportunity cost of missing false negatives.
Yeah that's where biases come in because who the heck does that. I grew up in Canada and got into the hardest program in the entire country and had no chance of competing.
Then I met all these MIT CMU and Stanford students at Meta and they had more raw smarts than me. They worked just as a hard.
My views changed.
I was forced to find my strengths quickly and go all on them
But imagine if I went to Stanford and confronted that problem 4 years earlier and then spent 4 years under crazy pressure to squeeze out my strengths amongst legends.
I think about all of this a lot and I know enough that there isn't a simple answer or solution or Reddit comment to address it all. It's complicated.
Yeah, it's peak hiring season at Waterloo for summer co-ops! I ran a 48 hour hackathon at Waterloo for Meta, I didn't sleep, had my first alcoholic drink ever, and a student stole a Meta laptop, a witness saw it, and the employee hunted him down with the help of students to get it back.... ah the good old days.
Anyways:
1. I'm very serious about what I do and I'm extremely disciplined and rigorous. I've collected a lot of information from bootcamp grads over time (I work with a bunch of them later in their careers)
2. My partner ran a free in person bootcamp for 2 years and met a lot of bootcamp founders
3. I interviewed a lot of bootcamp grads at Meta when they were experimenting with bootcamp
4. I watch YouTube videos and Podcasts on Tech all day in the background and absord a ton of stuff
But the short answer is at Meta I felt like an outsider who didn't fit in and I found what I'm…
Once school requires this background going in: 1530 SAT score, leadership roles in national-level clubs, impactful research experience, and significant community service accomplishments.
The other this: 1210 SAT score, participation in school-level extracurricular activities such as sports or student government, and moderate academic recognition or local volunteer experience
There are lots of biases and problems with this, but for better or worse the typical Stanford student has a strong background that then gets nurtured over 4 years, further emphasizing those gaps.
If you have the Stanford background and go to to the mid tier school, you'll have a bit harder time getting interviews but I'm sure you'll do very well in your career.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
And this is he problem. Bootcamp's have been pushing people to put lipstick on a pig instead of actually preparing people better.
There's a bootcamp called Codesmith that previously had pretty good outcomes and most of their grads learn how to fake their experience. They are told their 3-4 week projects are equivalent of 4 months of experience for background checks (that their employee says they sign off on).
I reviewed these projects on GitHub and they were so full of noob problems that I flagged this and called them out on it.
Their response: double down and make no changes.
Good intentions but even the best bootcamps are failing people right now.
And Codesmith costs $22,500 for 14 weeks.
This was my source as I've been making the argument over the years but yeah it's getting old haha and I should redo my research to get newer ones.
[https://www.slate.com/blogs/business\_insider/2015/04/02/stanford\_graduates\_get\_fought\_over\_by\_tech\_companies\_like\_snapchat\_and\_have.html](https://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2015/04/02/stanford_graduates_get_fought_over_by_tech_companies_like_snapchat_and_have.html)
the top four are generally regarded: Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and CMU
after that it becomes more subjective and complicated because some schools have very strong COMPUTER SCIENCE but weaker engineering overall and others have excellent (but a little worse) COMPUTER SCIENCE but VERY STRONG ENGINEERING.
The Ivy Leagues tend to have good theoretical CS from their Math roots.
The large premier state schools tend to have more robust engineering UMich, UIUC, UT Austin, GA Tech
Elite tiny tiny schools come into play too: CalTech, Olin College.
So it's complex and I can't say.
Each company tends to find their people their own way and they land on the same 4 and the next are a venn diagram.
Yeah good question and I love you are asking for sourcing I push on sourcing a lot on Reddit :D.
It's me summarizing a bunch of high level studies over the years, but I think the biggest flaw is that the growth and leadership might be also related to them getting top tier positions earlier in their careers.
It's generally found in studies that Stanford and MIT grads start off higher and grow faster in salary etc...
In terms of this conversation specifically, I'm basing it off of who Meta recruited from and their rationale at the time. I would ease up on the "performing better" because it was really based on who was "still there" and the histogram of schools they came from and to survive there you had to perform well. This was back in 2009 to 2012 era and it might not be true today anymore. I'm aware that Stanford remains a top demand school with dedicated recruiters, events, wining…
Primary path, as in the vast majority of new Software Engineers come from CS degrees and the most reliable and battle tested path is going to a top tier CS school.
There are other paths.
Why do people lie?
1. Astroturfing: scheming to create ground up-appearing support for a product/service/cause but using a number of fake accounts posting all over the place and creating fake conversations to make something appear a way that it isn't.
2. Karma farming: accumulating karma to build credibility in your account and then using that credibility for something self serving or nefarious later on
I'm a moderator of the sub and we see a lot of #1 here and it's a problem.
You were sold a shovel during the gold rush and you found gold. If people didn't find gold during the gold rush then the gold rush wouldn't have happened.
Whoever went first in your family probably did an excellent job explaining it to the next person, and they entered with the right mindset. They showed everyone where the gold is and y'all went for it!
However, for countless other "gold-seekers", the story was much harsher. Many arrived on ships after a months-long journey risking their lives. Some facing extra discrimination and language barriers. These newcomers often had no local networks and no reliable guidance. Many had to pay high fees or faced outright exploitation from unscrupulous "claim jumpers" or camp owners. Disease, violence, physical overworking... a significant number died, gave up, or returned home with nothing.
It's not that they didn't try!
None of that diminishe…
If it said bonus points for white males it wouldn't change the analysis to me. I'm making legal arguments, not moral ones and I'm not saying anything about how I personally feel about this one side or the other.
Well one thing for sure is that big tech will rationally invest exactly where it gets most talent that delivers performance, so whatever the reasons are and regardless if they are at a local maximum and not a global one, they prefer a Stanford grad over a bootcamp grad.
I think big tech is actually super open minded to new sources. They supported bootcamps briefly and it didn't work out.
They search far and wide - tiny little Olin College is a GREAT SOURCE of PMs!
But if they knew of talent that would boost overall company performance, they would go there, anything else is a possibility of achieving a higher maximum but not proven.
You know the adage, in a gold rush, people only get rich selling shovels. In this industry, bootcamps were actually selling shovels during the gold rush but they thought they were King Midas minting gold everywhere.
It's because after 4 years of work experience, people who went to these schools tend to perform better at a lot of these top tech companies. It could be like promoting like, but that's where it lands at the FAANG-type companies.
Hi, I mean that if you want to change your career now, and are planning on spending 3 months preparing, 3 months at a bootcamp and 6 months finding a job, you can't create 4 years of experience from scratch.
Basically that this requirement almost immediately shuts off career changers from being considered for these kinds of top tech jobs.
There was a comment about the diversity angle and it's more complicated than that.
Hiring laws vary across states and even local cities, and everything is illegal somewhere.
So a lot rests on what has been tested in courts and is 'consistently' illegal, like making explicit hiring decisions based on protected classes.
What a lot of companies do is separate sourcing from hiring. Sourcing gets applications, but every application gets looked at "legally" by hiring without asking where it came from.
Sourcing people from different areas can still be illegal but it's less of a tested area.
Like if a recruiter sponsors a job post in a bunch of diverse community groups, and doesn't pay to sponsor it equally in all groups representing all people, is that illegal?
These instructions could just mean, all things equal (i.e. as a "bonus"), put your dollars into places that might have more diver…
My understanding is these requirements were for a top tier startup and experience at certain "slow" big companies can create behaviors that don't do well at startups. There are always exceptions and this is quite the generalization but that's why they are on the list. At startups you have to deal with ambiguities daily.
I'm curious how you dealt with bootcamps gads from specific programs that consistently lied.
Like this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
WGU isn't compared to these schools, it's like on par with Community College and, however, it's cheap, accessible, non-profit, and easy to get an accredited actual degree.
So it's both not a bad option but also not the golden ticket other.
It varies by company, at Meta they based their top school list off of the schools that top performing employees went to.
I'm sure it's changed but back then it was Stanford, MIT, Berkeley (specifically EECS), CMU, and then Harvard (a lot of early Meta people were Harvard), CalTech, University of Washington (after they expanded to Seattle but not early on) and Waterloo, Brown and Princeton.
They added UT Austin, UCLA, UCSD later.
I don't remember UIUC - it was in the mix but I don't remember when.
I can clarify that I'm speaking specifically for legit "SWE" roles (Software Engineer) titles and not speaking about any other jobs in IT or adjacent, including cybersecurity and others. I'm not saying they are or aren't the same and I just have no comment on those areas.
At Meta it was all data actually... they looked at who the top performers were and which schools they went to and they went and recruited at those schools.
Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley were at the top of the list.
If bootcamp grads joined Meta and performed just as well, Meta would have targeted bootcamps too, but bootcamp grads didn't and still don't perform as well.
I'll try to do a quick summary but it's a more complex answer than just this.
Bootcamps at a high level are trying to compress programming education into a short period of time. For example 12 hours days for 6 days a week for 12 weeks.
The idea is that unlike a lot of industries, you can get into the coding industry with no credentials and just your brain, so if people can accelerate their education, they might be able to accelerate their careers as coders.
What happened though was that bootcamps started being judged (and judging themselves) by the jobs people got immediately after. Like X% of people got jobs averaging $Y salary in three months post graduation.
Bootcamps are super expensive given their short time, like $1000+ a week in many cases, so they would justify the cost by demonstrating that like 80% of graduates get jobs paying $100K within three months of graduating.
This…
Definitely not over at all but no one can give those people advice on how to succeed in the industry. People can share examples, find mentors and role models, but you should see it all as motivation and not a direct path.
Cool, I think we're going to see more and more people with tech-enhanced non-programming roles. Not sure what these will look like but we've always seen coding-adjacent activities (like Excel skills) change jobs and AI is going to take that to the next level with enabling people to leverage code in different ways to change their jobs.