How do you feel about internships though? I agree that the school itself doesn't matter if someone has 3 FAANG internships, but it's a chicken and egg problem because you can't systematically get those internships without going to a top school - in your first year, the fact you even GOT INTO STANFORD is a signal the person is exceptional.
At Meta it wasn't about feelings, it was about data - people who came from certain top schools (and also not others!), performed better and progressed better and they focused on recruiting from those schools.
If bootcamps systematically produced people of that caliber they would have recruited from them too - the data showed the opposite and they stopped!
Don't get me wrong - some of the best people I worked with were self-taught or went to not-top schools! It's just the exception and not the norm and thinking it's scalable is survivorship bias and n…
Well have you been interviewing people at FAANGs I'm sure you've seen that the vast majority of CS grads come in with numerous FAANG internships and that's what really matters more than anything.
I know at Meta we were looking for three internships and the most recent one being at FAANG was the bar to even get an interview If I recall.
Someone who's done three internships basically has a year of experience under their belt and that's what really mattered.
which is why I'm a huge fan of apprenticeship programs because someone who does a boot camp who has the raw aptitude and the drive who does a year-long apprenticeship at a FAANG a might be able to catch up a little more or two those cs grads in much faster time overall.
But what I think is absolutely absurd, is just that bootcamp's brand and market themselves as preparing people better than CS degrees do and 12 weeks versus 4 yea…
If it's any consolation I hear this story often and you aren't alone.
Bootcamps and some Redditors are all too fast to celebrate the job a few months later but they don't talk about the job being the beginning and not the end. It's a local maxima and there are lower lows and higher highs to come that you need to be prepared for, no matter if you went to the best bootcamp or got a six figure job out of it.
And you hit the nail on the head. It is impossible for bootcamp grads to compete head to head with top university grads.
Imagine the best bootcamp grad had gone to Stanford CS instead of 12 week bootcamp, the Stanford person of the same person would win 100% of the time. The bootcamp version might be done a heck of a lot faster and spent a heck of a lot less, but they are going to take some time on the job, probably at worse jobs with less talented coworkers, to work their way up.…
I think this is controversial because top tier or tech focused companies hiring SWEs don't care about certs
Consulting companies, contracting companies, and SWE adjacent roles can sometimes care only about certs.
e.g. consulting company hiring engineer to work on some client's Oracle system might only care about an Oracle cert.
All of this stems from seeing the industry through different lenses and what your goals are.
The super high paying, flexible work, fun and creative SWE jobs don't care about certs.
If one person ran this and they were the equivalent of a top 1% engineer, they would be giving up a $1M a year compensation.
$1M a year = $83K a month = 332 people a month paying $250.
Assuming you work really hard, 12 hours a day for 7 days a week = 84 hours \* 4.5 = 378 hours in a month.
So even if you spent every working hour mentoring people 1-1 and offering career coaching, each person would get 1 hour of your time per month for $250 a month.
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This is the ultimately limiting factor with any kind of high-touch program.
So far the only options have been to scale super large with minimal hands on interaction, or you have like a $20K program for 16 people in a 12 week cohort that is very high touch.
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My company is the first company to change this by leveraging the work of top 1% ex-Meta performers who are so passionate about building this that the…
I have an email thread with all of their leaders, asked them twice about why the ghosting rate (number of included placements who did not report salaries) went from 15% in 2022 to 65% for 2023 data in their government report and while they responded to numerous other questions they completely ignored this question with no response.
I wouldn't say the entire data is a lie but I would agree with you it's 'fabricated' in the sense that it's manipulated, massaged data, that was selected to tell a story, rather than just tell you how things are.
Yeah talk to some Engineers that worked at these companies in the mid-2010s.
basically when you have Engineers being paid like $500,000 a year. doing an interview is very costly
The mentors and recruiters who are working with the boot camp would try to pick candidates who they think had the best shot but maybe they had a number of slots like 10 slots for interviews and they would try to choose the 10 people most likely to be qualified.
and then other Engineers would actually conduct the interviews, without really knowing much context or also would create bias.
but what happened was that the people did so poorly on the interviews there are complaints about where the candidates came from and complaints that they shouldn't have made it to the first round technical interview which looks really bad on the recruiters because the recruiters passed through some people who then wasted engi…
I don't disagree at all that some people from bootcamps had good outcomes but I also strongly believe this view is why in the past 3 years people ran to bootcamps as a magical path to get a $100K+ job in 12 weeks that was very much not the case.
Take Codesmith for example, which in 2021 had a median $130K salary or something. Out of thousands of graduates ever, something like 100 placed at the canonical FAANG companies. Almost all of the Meta placements were contractors who left within a year.
So historically what happened was this (I was there and this is what Is saw):
1. Big tech wants to source more broadly to have more diverse candidates than just MIT and Stanford grads
2. Big tech looked at local bootcamps in Silicon Valley - Hack Reactor, App Academy, and Hackbright are three big ones.
3. Big tech made relationships, sending engineers as mentors and paying to get first crack a…
I agree Goodnight. A SWE bootcamp/immersive program makes no sense with this much experience.
I would recommend testing the market, doing some interviews and see how it goes.
If the person struggles to get interviews at all, then they can pursue career coaching.
If the person is failing behavioral interviews, career coaching.
Technical interviews: practice more and get interview prep coaching if needed.
System design: start with free resources and books and if you fail interviews, get interview prep coaching.
If the person really values their time they can skip straight to coaching, but I would encourage them to test the market first by applying and interviewing and seeing how they feel.
Given that experience and trajectory I don't think this person will need personal projects at all if they want to work at big tech companies.
What's not true about it? I didn't say people didn't get jobs, I said they were the lowest ranked in priority and still are, so if there is more demand for engineers - bootcampers get jobs and less demand - they don't make the cut.
On an individual basis you are you and you might get a job no problem, maybe in 1 month.
We don't need more bootcamp weight loss commercials "I lost 50 lbs in 8 week" type things - I'm speaking to the entire top tier tech market and they bootcamp grads were the bottom of the list of priority, even self taught people that made it past the first rounds were above them.
Of the four million software engineers, a single fraction of a percent came from bootcamps, probably 100K out of 4M
100% there's going to be a ton of people who need upskilling in a lot of ways with AI.
1. a large amount of that won't be for software engineers, though it will be for people in adjacent roles who need to get better at their old jobs, not people who want to become software engineers.
2. another large amount of it will be demand for software engineers who need to build all of the tools that all those non-engineers are using.
An evolution of the bootcamp model can help with 1.
The problem with two is that we don't know if Junior Engineers with little experience will be the people who are fulfilling that demand or if senior Engineers are going to be multiplied by AI such that there isn't a huge demand for junior Engineers. we might see upskilling within the job of for Engineers themselves be more important than creating new Engineers. or it could be that there's just so much demand that…
I can't tell if you are trolling, not understanding, or just have such a fixed mindset you aren't trying to understand.
How does that work exactly if someone is paying for a month subscription and someone else is paying for an unlimited membership with the goal of getting a job in 12 months.
What would either of those people get from an average placement time?
If someone has a three month subscription, what clock do we use for placement, 12 months from the end of that? What if they have a bundle and pay to extend a month and then get placed? Isn't that worse than if they got placed in the 3 month bundle they were hoping for even though they had a great job.
I believe most of our Fellows have full time day jobs, many do a couple sessions a week and have a long term timeframe and take a long time to place.
On the other hand a bunch of people were engineers who were laid off who are p…
Our full year report has been on our blog since December.
I think I wrote tens of thousands of words explaining our outcomes and there is no question I will not answer honestly.
Our main goals are salary increase and top tier placements because that's what people pay us to achieve.
We don't have a concept of a placement rate because it doesn't make sense for an interview prep program with a month to month membership that allows ramping up and ramping down week to week. It's not useful.
I've explained this to people on your team repeatedly and I struggle to believe you don't comprehend what I'm saying. If you have specific questions I try to elucidate or if you disagree and think we are bootcamp that can publish these things then explain why and I can respond or clarify misconceptions.
Better yet talk to your alumni that have done Formation and find A SINGLE PERSON who thinks Format…
I also agree 110k salaries are great roles!
The part I'm pushing Codesmith on is the trend and the marketing message.
If you tell people they are mid level and senior engineers and the salaries have dropped 130k -> 120k -> 110k, it just doesn't add up.
It's not true and it's misleading.
For example, at Formation, you can see in our 2024 report from December, we had a $110K INCREASE in first year total comp (see the exact calculation mechanism on our blog), increase from 50% top tier in 2023 -> 76% top tier in 2024, and people are getting ACTUAL mid-level and senior top tier roles.
**So the market improved a ton in 2024 from our point of view.**
Codesmith is blaming a bad 2024 market for worse results than 2023, but it's a bad market for **entry level software engineers** not a bad market for all.
**Sorry, this is rambling - but my consistent point for 2-3 years now has been that…
People can count as placements if they ghost and don't report salaries but have a job listed on LinkedIn. So it's a subset of placements that reported salaries, not just placements.
In their CA 2023 corrected report, 65% of people in the report did NOT report salaries in 2023 but were considered placements.
I agree that zero to placement doesn't make any rational sense anymore without having corporate support and potential jobs lined up.
By "you guys" I'm assuming you mean Formation, and Formation doesn't teach any vocational skills, so yes, you have to have employable programming skills coming in and our job is to help you level up to more impactful roles and pass interviews in a competitive market. So our entry bar will always change on paper as it's philosophically "already has hirable programming skills"
I mean do the math... $110K average salary, $55K increase, means that people make on average $65K coming in.
Now $65K isn't a 6'10 high school kid, but it's the median outcome of a lot of OTHER BOOTCAMPS.
I'm not sure if they include $0 in there or if they exclude them - again - no methodology is problematic and legally risky for them - but if they don't then it could be that half the people have no job because they quit and went all in, and half the people make $120K.
This is all speculation and exactly why publishing data is can of worms. You have to public reliable data or it means nothing except for marketing tricks and without disclaimers - legally playing with fire.
Well I'll try discussing lol.
A lot of people say the 'STEM people had an easier time' but I actually think the quality of your undergrad matters. From Codesmith's data, only a tiny number of people didn't have a degree. I think the ranking of undergrad school matters.
For example, if you have an ivy league undergrad majoring in law or music, you probably have a lot of friends in tech, are very bright, and have a lot of soft skills to succeed.
Yeah all great points. It's a good stat but it needs explanation, and this is like many things at Codesmith and why I push so hard, it's excellent intentions - executed poorly - and they fight back and brand it as if it's great and disparage people who hold them to a high bar for questioning them.
Salary increase over previous job is a good metric to use in general because it's demonstrating the value the career change had.
It's not a CIRR metric, it's not audited, it has no rules or guidelines, but it's a good metrics. The problem we have here is presenting that along side audited data can make it seem like all of the data is equally valid. I don't see ANY KIND OF DISCLAIMER EXPLAINING HOW IT'S CALCULATED (which is the non-lawyer legal advice I would give them)
I don't know anything about your program :S, did I attack it? And where so I can check?
Zooming out though the point is that if you pay people on Upwork to post on Reddit and make fake accounts to upvote and like your LinkedIn posts, it's not good behavior and it catches up to you over time and has nothing to do with me, I'm not forcing you to do that.
The Codesmith CEO could have emailed me 2 years ago and said 'hey, our team really doesn't like your tone on Reddit, can we chat so we can learn more about each others perspectives'. Someone from Codesmith did reach out to me and never replied after I insisted that we have to agree that I'm not competing with them to continue conversations.
If a whole team of leaders are making up their own story about me and don't even try to acknowledge my point of view, I can't really control that.
I think you reached out to me too and while I don't…
I dunno, I think it's totally fine and good for Codesmith to make a case for themselves, but I completely agree their response is more defensive and out of touch than making a legit case.
Making a case for themselves would be something like:
1. Codesmith staff work really hard to help people change careers successfully
2. For the right people, they feel confident in placing you, but for the wrong people, it's not working out anymore and there are no more shortcuts
3. Codesmith is focused on finding the right people, and if you want to see if that's you - apply and work with them on that.
4. Here are ANECDOTAL (not systematic) examples of what that looks like for people that it works for, and here are their backgrounds, LinkedIns, and strategies employeed to get jobs, and if you think you align with those, it might be a good fit for you too.
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Instead the defensive responses…
If you map out Codesmith's outcomes from 2021 -> 2024 with public data, you see 6 month placement rates dropping from like 90 -> 80 -> 70 -> 40%, you see salaries dropping like $125K -> $130K -> $120K -> $117K -> $110K
The trend doesn't look good.
BUT some people are getting jobs! The jobs do exist.
However I think it's going to take small bespoke programs working with the right people to get to the right place, and no program will systematically produce results.
These outcomes are the nail in the coffin to to speak because we've flipped from 'more likely than not' getting a job to not getting a job (when comparing apples to apples) so even the 'best bootcamp' can't more likely than not place someone in 6 months.
If you know me, I'm more than happy to write paragraphs of explanation. Using fake accounts to manipulate discussion is a pattern that Reddit is onto, banning dozens of Codesmith affiliated accounts, including two of their "official" ones.
It has nothing to do with me - it's just plain bad behavior.
Currently we require 2+ years of SWE work experience or we will decline working with you, so no brand new CS or bootcamp grads.
But in theory yes, and we have informal connections to many bootcamps who recommend Formation to alumni in their future job hunts and we have positive relationships - even though I'm equally hard on them about their outcomes and many have closed or paused/
I've been on contact with Codesmith and they haven't offered a call.
I'm still trying to get answers for harder questions, like why the ghosting rate went from 15% to about 65% in their CA government report and what caused that.
They have been evading the hard questions but I have a channel of communication open.
I feel like this post from Annie is trying to change the goal posts now from CIRR placement rates and salaries to overall offer count and salary increases. These new metrics might make sense but they are changing the goal posts to try to frame the numbers better instead of being transparent.
They know preliminary H1 2024 6 months placement rates for example and haven't shared them - which would be extremely relevant given their past data, and instead made up new metrics, just like the bootcamps they criticized who failed during Codesmith's rise to success.
Top level comments:
1. How many of the 102 offers were people job hunting over 1 year who would not be included in any reporting
2. 102 offers is a significant decline of offers per day from past reporting and a further decline deterioration of outcomes. can you clarify if this is that the job market is even worse in the end of 2024 or if this is because of significantly lower enrollment at Codesmith?
3. Similarly, $110,000 is possibly the lowest salary you've reported in 5 years or something. inflation has been running rampant and entry-level salaries have increased as well during that time. so can you give more explanation into this number? are people taking worse jobs or are they taking adjacent jobs that pay less that aren't software engineer jobs? or maybe just more insights into that number.
4. Why not publish preliminary H1 6-month placement rates now that 6 months have fully pas…
Formation is an interview prep mentorship program that doesn't teach anything and everyone has a different experience. Our main competitor is Pathrise and with some overlap with Interviewing io and Hello Interview. The key is that engineers who come to us need to be already trained in the practical skills and we help them prepare for interviews and land the job.
Codesmith is a bootcamp primarily focused on people without SWE work experience changing careers, or otherwise with no SWE work experience. Codesmith is training underlying technical skills required by the job based on a fixed curriculum that all students do.
There is a small overlap for atypical cases. We take some people with no SWE full time work experience who have the circumstances where we think we can help. Codesmith takes some people with work experience who don't have underlying employable skills or project experience.
Checkout Harvey. They think that AI is going to reduce the number of junior lawyers needed, and they want senior lawyers to be training it, but it will shift the role of a Lawyer.
I've explained this numerous times. We aren't a bootcamp and what we do doesn't fit into bootcamp reporting standards. We have subscriptions, we have people with interviews line up, as have people with super long job hunt timeframes, we have people with 1 year of experience and we have people with 20+ years of experience.
There is no single report format that will properly capture this data in a way that a new person could use to estimate anything, and it might do more harm than good if the person thinks they will get a job in 3 months and it ends up taking 6 for example.
We have 1-1 conversations with people about their goals and we try to advise on reasonable outcomes for them.
This takes more time and effort but it's essential given the nature of what we do.
Additionally:
You also made a mistake posting with an alt account that got instantly suspended by Reddit and then reposting…
Sorry, that was advice for a lot of people reading it who are in similar situations and that's why it's so long.
I have zero right to backfill your history and I don't know you at all and apologize for making you feel that way.
My point stands that I see a lot of bootcamp grads get laid off in their first few years and it's important to understand why. Not everyone wants to be a top performer but it doesn't change the fact that top performers don't get laid off the vast majority of the time. Not being a top performer doesn't mean you are a low performer either.
I would have to know WAY MORE about you to make conclusions about your personally.
Oh definitely not, changing jobs once is fine in that period but more than once raises some flags that need explanation.
I thought you had more jobs because you said a 'stint at Microsoft' that I interpreted as a short thing and that you had more jobs.
Re: layoffs, the hard truth is that unless more than 15% of the company was laid off, it was performance related in some capacity.
If you were running a company and you had to mass layoff and cut departments, you would take all the best engineers from those areas and move them before laying off the team. It would be irrational not to do that after putting so much effort into finding and nurturing the best engineers.
Now let's say you had to lay off 20% of staff across the whole company, and you tell each manager to remove 20% of people... do you think they would remove anyone but the lowest performers on their team?
I know this can be…
How about all of the times I said specific people should go to Codesmith in the past? Your read my 2000+ comments on Reddit?
Summary: I temporarily removed that recommendation in Feb 2024 when they laid off about half the staff and shrunk 2/3 in offerings. And then permanently maintained that when most of the promised changes in Feb 2024 never materialized the way I hoped they would, and outcomes tanked.
That's rational no?
If a program has an 80% placement rate that tanks to 40% (with the majority of the 40% ghosting and non responsive according to their report - whereas when it was 80% the majority were engaged) and keeps telling you everything is fine and changes the goal posts they are measured by, isn't that an insane red flag to reconsider? Or no?
Clearly SOME people are getting placed and it's very much possible that this person will get placed too... but I would argue this pe…
This is a common outcome I hear too, people get jobs but the people who gets jobs at levels above what they should be tend to have a lot of trouble year 2 to 5.
It doesn't discount how much impact Codesmith has on their initial transition and it's not a dis whatsoever, it's just one of the things you don't hear about on Reddit and a downside of the "go for mid level and senior jobs" strategy.
I talk to a lot of successful grads and they are here, they just don't advise anyone to go to Codesmith right now. Most messages I get are "I got a job from Codesmith but let me tell you, no one else did and a, b, c, d,..."
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can give my thoughts knowing a lot of Codesmith grads and what they've been saying recently:
1. Is it worth it for someone who literally has a Computer Science degree? (I tend to struggle a lot with building projects of my own due to demotivation or lack of people that want to build things with me)
Placements are hovering somewhere below 50% six months after finishing Codesmith, so you are looking at ANOTHER YEAR before you get a job and maybe 2 more years, even going through Codesmith. Their most recent data shared showed something like 15% of people having CS degrees. I suspect that has increased in the current tough market for CS grads. I also believe people with CS and adjacent degrees have faired better than those without (anecdotal).
1. What did you build, what were teammates like?
I used to review a lot of the OSP group projects because people asked me to and they didn't get…
I would look at the ML specialization at Georgia Tech OMSCS
No bootcamps offer ML because it's a specialization that takes a very long time to learn unless you are already part way there or you work somewhere and have the company supporting you in learning ML and transitioning within the company.
Some bootcamps are offering Gen AI programs which from the curriculum I've seen, you are better offer watching YouTube videos form world experts than paying $5000 to have some recent alumni cover the same things at a bootcamp.
Codesmith did and still does: [https://wellfound.com/company/codesmith](https://wellfound.com/company/codesmith)
"Codesmith is a team dedicated to democratizing elite education for a new era - the outcomes of an elite grad school but online and for 1/10th of the cost."
Done updating the numbers, I would like some clarity on the California students numbers because something isn't adding up with my math.
I can't really comment on the 12 month placements rates, I estimated in other comments a 50 to 60% 12 month placement rate using CIRR rules and regulations but we don't have those on previous analogous reports to compare to.
Thanks for clarifying I'm working on updating post at the very top based on this response with the updated numbers in the next 5 to 10 minutes and feel free comment if you fee those numbers are not correct.
I'm extremely loud about Codesmith in here and I have never once said that their CIRR results were fake. I argued with well documented evidence that graduates were exaggerating their experience, on average.
Why are you trying to polarize things? The world exists in shades of grey and things aren't just one way or the other.
Codesmith has a lot of good things about it and bad things about, as does pretty much everything.
Where do you see that?
1. Reports must encompass all locations and programs, not just California
2. The numbers are consistent with Codesmith's overall enrollment numbers
Where do you see that?
1. Reports must encompass all locations and programs, not just California
2. The numbers are consistent with Codesmith's overall enrollment numbers
Hi, a lot of people that go into Codesmith have non-technical degrees from pretty good schools and doing a CS masters can be an option. This is the best all around for brand, quality, cost: [https://omscs.gatech.edu/](https://omscs.gatech.edu/)
To clarify though there are two aspects to this post:
1. Codesmith hasn't degraded or gotten worse in the educational experience, it's the same it's always been + 5 new AI lectures. So comparing Codesmith to other bootcamps, it might still be one of the better ones. **BUT best of bad options doesn't mean you should choose it, it just means you probably shouldn't choose another bootcamp instead if Codesmith was the one for you.**
2. The lack of integrity (my opinion) / "carefully selected marketing" (fact) on their side (both in how they didn't tell anyone about this in Feb 2024 - when half of their students already hit the 6 month post grad ma…