The definition of an engineer is a problem solver.
Story time.
When I graduated college they gave everyone an "iron ring". It was forged from the materials of a collapsed bridge, where the engineers were found liable for screwing up.
I didn't want to wear my ring because I felt like software was so fuzzy - how can I be responsible for people's lives.
I've changed my tune. Software engineers are just as responsible for their code as a civil engineer is for their bridge.
Now ask yourself. Is a 12 week bootcamp grad someone who you would trust to build a bridge for you.
Obviously not. I would barely/likely not trust a new grad engineer to do it.
Telling bootcamp grads they are mid level and senior engineers is not just offensive, misleading and irresponsible.... it's reckless.
Encouraging a bootcamp grad to build a bridge and telling them they are a super senior engineer because o…
There are a couple more nuances too that aren't on the website.
All of the details change a lot as we try to create a wide range of configurations to support more people, while being fair and rational about the options. So they are all in our contract and post application flow but not on the website.
1. We have a few bundles if you want to commit to 2 or 3 months at a discount
2. If you were eligible for unlimited and chose to do the month to month, there is a cap right now too, kind of around the average of what the unlimited package might cost.
All of that said,.there is an entrance bar to month to month because we have a fairly focused thing we do.... it's a super waste of money otherwise... we need to be effective and work more often than not to get positive word of mouth and support. So we strongly discourage anyone from doing month to month who isn't doing it for the right reaso…
Maybe look at how OpenAI hires engineers themselves.
They've hired 3 employees away from my company now and all three had 15 years of industry experience and no AI experience.
Building a really good product hasn't been automated yet. Debugging super complex production issues involving multiple systems hasn't been automated yet. The creativity and expression of a design system that represents the company's values hasn't been automated yet.
They need the world's experts in these areas to help build AI that remotely has a chance of progressing beyond spitting out code for solved problems.
Now bootcamp grads who did 12 weeks of standard materials... it's more arguable that AI agents are closer to those people skills wise. And the lack of experience means there is less extra value you can bring to the table as a SWE.
What bootcamp grads could do are jobs like AI trainer and Prompt Engine…
I can reply with my thoughts, thanks for sharing yours as well. We aren't a perfect program and because of the adaptive nature, no two people will have the same experience, so we rely on critical feedback to make improvements.
Overall, we move absurdly fast, we make changes very fast, and we try to incorporate feedback fast. We aim to fix bugs within minutes or hours. We aim to acknowledge feedback within minutes or hours. And we discuss a lot of feedback internally for how we can incorporate it.
1. I won't comment on the cost. Formation isn't cheap by any means, but the average placed Fellow increases their first year total compensation by an average $127K right now, so it's extremely worth it for them. If you struggle to get a job and on the job hunt much longer than expected - we don't go anywhere and we still by you, but I very much understand that the cost could be weighing on you…
Hey!
1. Most people do Formation part time, but you can do it with whatever workload you want. We adapt your sessions to your schedule.
2. Formation isn't currently for people without any real SWE work experience, even if you have a bachelor or masters in CS with adjacent experience. We are looking for 2+ years of real SWE work experience right now. You are paying us like a personal trainer to get in shape for interviews and for your job hunt and we aren't a short cut to a job that you can't get in any other way.
3. Unfortunately I don't have great advice for you. I would try to transition within your current company, but that's not a guaranteed path by any means.
If you work at a tech company with stock, there's normally a one year cliff on vesting and leaving before then is supicious.
I have a friend that left under a year and gave up what is today worth $10 million of stock.
So if you are leaving a good company under a year, you need to be ready to explain why to the next company.
+1 try to settle into the first job for AT LEAST 1 year, and try to get promoted as fast as possible (which is a whole other topic). And then start thinking about the next job.
I'm seeing some bootcamp grads not make it a year, and that first job is really just the beginning and not the end of the bootcamp experience.
My personally opinion, I currently actively recommend avoiding Codesmith no matter what your background for two reasons. First, because of their morals and ethics and this view has changed in the recent weeks. Second, because a few more long time staff left recently and the haven't delivered on most of their promises in February last time there were layoffs. So I don't take their word to mean anything both morally on a personal level and practically on a deliverables level.
I'm currently only recommending Launch School (but under the caveat that it's not for everyone and has to be a good fit).
Note: I have no affiliations with any bootcamps.
Hiring is back to the way it was back in 2008. Experienced engineers have options in big tech. The only entry level pipelines that are reliable are the top-tier CS school new grad and intern pipelines.
174 isn't haven't a huge impact with big te…
I think the confusion comes from the various ISA providers they had over time and how some Isaac were directly with Lambda School and some were financed by a 3rd party and almost had nothing to do with Lambda School. And both types can be offered by the same company :(
Quite a mess and the confusion doesn't help with rebuilding trust.
Hopefully you figure it out!
Awesome sounds really cool and I like the approach of trying to get people a foot in the door and it's definitely something most bootcamps are missing.
I'm happy to hear you don't want to grow super fast to keep the quality consistent.
Thanks for sharing open answers.
This sounds pretty cool!
1. Are most of the people CS grads? Bootcamp grads?
2. How many people don't work out? Like anecdotally, is it the ticket to success or is the goal to get some experience with a job as a nice to have outcome.
3. Do you teach stuff too or is primarily trying to connect you with companies?
4. If there is a teaching phase, how many people go from that phase to getting an internship first?
5. Do you plan on scaling it or are going to ensure you only take people for whom you think you can support getting internships?
6. The model sounds similar to Ada, but a bit different, but how would you compare yourself?
This is a quote directly from a leader's work email on March 4th, 2024: "I heard from the team that you’ve RSVP’d for tonight’s info session - looking forward to seeing you there, and please let me know if you ever want to connect on a call."
Like I acknowledge my relationship with them is complicated and it's why I try to acknowledge the nuance all the time when I talk about them, but Codesmith has not been characterizing me fairly and if it's damaging my reputation, that's really not cool.
Hey, I personally feel like the conflict, if any, would be that people who come here and appreciate my advice, do whatever they do (bootcamp, or CS degree or whatver), then think of Formation in a **few years** and consider it. I tried to pull up data on where people come from and Reddit as a whole is a fairly small source, and we don't have data more granular - but anecdotally a lot come from Leetcode sub where I give Meta interview advice. Now we're only 5 years old, so maybe in a couple years tons of people will come pouring in to Formation because of my involvement in this sub. It's also not a corporate strategy and I'm here personally... my team would prefer if I post more on LinkedIn.
But I'm very open to talking about this and I appreciate the challenge.
In 2024, we're not talking people without 2+ years of experience. If you don't believe me, try applying and see for yourself.…
That's fair, I agree with that. If it means anything their Senior Advisor Eric actually invited me to an in person Codesmith event and while.ir didn't work out, he was aware I was going to attend an online event with the camera on.
I don't disagree with the arguments you are making, but Codesmith's framing of my presence in events.
Your account is three days old and references understanding this sub for a long time and has posted numerous negative opinions of me without strong rationale.
Learn something from the dozen plus pro-Codesmith accounts that have done this and gotten suspended, including the official Team Codesmith account.
You might not like me, but I make reasonable critical arguments and people come at me with wild opinions stated as facts. If you don't like my arguments, counter them with strong arguments and not loud opinions, and accept discussion about them.
Significant Wing, no matter who they are, has been here consistently two years and whether you like what they say or not, has some history to judge who they are.
Accounts with no context coming out of nowhere with strong opinions deserve zero trust. Trust must be earned and has nothing to do with how much you like someone.
Well I think internships should be paid.
I just spent the weekend at Netflix offices in LA with 50 students working on attaining internships there and when I think "internship", I'm thinking about this. A highly paid, supported engineering role, working on the main code with a real manager and a real project.
Oof how the sausage is made is complicated and all three of those are different.
The short answer is that it's very hard and it takes specific connections, efforts, vision, hustle, and more.
The long answer is a 2 hour long AMA that I don't have time to do right now haha.
Yeah so regardless of what anyone says you are in a good position to try a bootcamp.
There is some opportunity cost of what else you could do with the time, but everything in life has some kind of risk and nothing is certain.
Hey, I know the sentiment on here is rough and I bet some people will suggest you cancel it. I don't disagree with much of the negative sentiment but I do think there are some clear circumstances when a part time bootcamp would make sense
1. If you don't get a job afterwards you won't consider the tuition a massive waste of money and the cost won't impact your day to life significantly.
2. If you want to learn the materials rapidly more than getting a job. The job will be whipped cream on the sundae but it will be a sundae nonetheless. Put another way, you may or may not get a job at the end, but you strategically see this is a step of many that will eventually get you a job in data science/analytics.
Hey, I know the sentiment on here is rough and I bet some people will suggest you cancel it. I don't disagree with much of the negative sentiment but I do think there are some clear circumstances when a part time bootcamp would make sense
1. If you don't get a job afterwards you won't consider the tuition a massive waste of money and the cost won't impact your day to life significantly.
2. If you want to learn the materials rapidly more than getting a job. The job will be whipped cream on the sundae but it will be a sundae nonetheless. Put another way, you may or may not get a job at the end, but you strategically see this is a step of many that will eventually get you a job in data science/analytics.
CIRR as an organization seems to be falling apart so I wouldn't consider it the gold standard... of the remaining 3 people reporting, one has shrunk to 1/3 of its size since it's last report, one had like 20 people in it, and the last hasn't properly reported full year results and is in a different country.
But anyways haha, I agree with you.
What you are describing is the apprenticeship/train to hire model that I also agree with might be the best pathway for SWE bootcamps.
The problem is that companies aren't lining up to hire these interns and there aren't enough slots to go around.
It works but other sources of entry level talent work better (i.em top 10 CS school grads).
I think they are confusing other people's behavior with mine. I don't think I disrupted any events intentionally and the one time they didn't like my comment I was banned and left.
Repeated disruptions? I think that's not accurate. If you think that because Codesmith told you that and you have a negative impression of me, then those comments could be defamatory.
Depending on your job and what you mean by instructor, you need to check with your company first to see if you are allowed to take another job. The time commitment is less relevant than the IP concerns.
I would start with lightweight mentorship through bootcamps. Where you independently advise people through a bootcamp in a more casual and less committal way.
That said, bootcamps aren't doing super great right now and I wouldn't expect a lot of pay or to be paid at all.
People are giving you a lot of flack because of the adjacent experience. do you want to elaborate on if it was programming or just an adjacent experience or how relevant it was?
+1 If you have like a ton of potential, the advice should be to get an entry level role at a company where you'll have a very fast career trajectory and get promoted as soon as possible.
We don't explicitly support engineering managers. Interview Kickstart has a dedicated manager track.
We do have some people who are managers for a few years and looking to improve their technicals and just get a couple of practice interviews with mentors who are qualified to give feedback for managers. But it's not an official track that we support and we only guarantee the technical side.
The titles are irrelevant, the problem happens when people are entering roles that the company expects you to have experience for and the lack of experience causes performance issues against those expectations.
Whether the candidate misrepresented themselves or the company took a chance on you because of potential, it's absolutely absurd that Codesmith suggests people with no experience aim for senior roles. They should present it as an option, but not an expectation that you should be getting a role requiring experience.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah there seems to be a lot of off advice here. Both going for frontend roles if you have backend experience and telling people to go to senior roles they are not qualified for.
The latter I've talked about for a while, they are sending lemmings off a cliff with that advice and I believe it's impacted their enrollment and morale.
Trying to fill in a gap, was your job a senior job and did you exaggerate your resume to get it? and then got laid off because you didn't perform at that bar?
Or was the layoff unrelated and just bad luck/timing?
You might not like my style but critical thinking is important for engineers. Others apply it was well and those are good discussions, but if people are coming here with holes in their arguments (which everyone including myself will have) and they respond defensively or with even worse rebuttals then those responses won't stand up.
Is it not possible that everything I'm writing about Codesmith is strong arguments and there just aren't strong counter arguments? I've heard of a number of staff who left/leaving/plan on leaving this week (4).
It might be sad and come across doom and gloom, but I don't have a goal with, I just want us to have really nuanced and detailed critical arguments.
When confronted with a strong argument, like data backed analysis of the resumes of most grads show an average of 11 months of experience on their 3 week long projects, and the response is "well what ab…
So I think both mods are actually fairly active and around, they just don't take action as often. I'm very active so I'm around to cover the day to day more.
This sub hasn't had much structure, or community management. Which has pros and cons.
I'm human and not perfect, but I didn't just show up and become a mod. I've been here for a long time, contributing consistent information. Demonstrated a strong ability for critical thinking.
Making assumptions or conclusions because of biases is dismissive of what someone can do as an individual and I hope my actions demonstrate that I can wear many hats well to justify my positions.
I completely see the point though, and I hope we can work on positive discourse (not necessarily positive sentiment, but good discussion that gets into nuances without assumptions and without listening to each other).
To clarify, I'm concerned about any program that is trying to TEACH Gen AI stuff right now. I did a survey of top tech engineers and around 90% of people said they don't look for Gen AI skills in engineers. So I'm not sure how you can invest in a curriculum yet, or know what to teach. What I'm seeing is that anyone with broad engineering skills is expected to learn how to use Gen AI without the need for explicit training.
Formation doesn't offer any kind of mentorship, practice with Gen AI at this time. We will add it when companies interview for it.
We USE AI to build our platform, make mentorship better AND more efficient. We use AI to help you figure out what to practice next, and to schedule hundreds of dynamic sessions every week. Very different!
This is a good SD resource that's entirely free to get started https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction
For prepping coding, I would do some mock interviews if you can. It's hard to prepare without practicing, imo.
Codesmith has since lost most of the staff they had back then with a number of departures this week. They are pivoting to an untested AI immersive hybrid.
I would value Vic's opinions and they are super reasonable. Just do your homework and decide if Codesmith of today is right for you.
That commenter has a pretty fair read on things imo. Things can be good and bad and don't have to be only or the other.
Bootcamps serve a slice of the population and if you are one of those people I hope you read critically and rationally and figure out a good path.
Most people aren't and those people.
Wow there is a lot of just like blatantly wrong facts there.
There are a few people who don't like Codesmith and maybe that's them but you should make sure you have evidence of what you are saying because if you don't you are defaming me with facts that are wrong.
1. I have a written statement from the person in that blog post that another prospective Codemsith student told him about Formation, not a team member.
2. 2 year fixation on Codesmith, yes that's true.
3. I mention Codemsith a lot because there are these extremely long threads of back and forth with these anonymous Codesmith people who are mostly suspended from Reddit now. My proactive commentary leans Codesmith but is much broader.
4. I never hired a private investigator or anyone to look into Codesmith. That is weird and not me.
5. I have two main spreadsheets that I created. One for OSP tracking, one for Alumni. I hav…
I'm not deleting or auto collapsing your posts. You have an extremely negative karma score (which is computed by Reddit, not moderators) and everyone with that negative of a score is treated the same by Crowd Control. Not overriding these filters does not mean we are deleting stuff.
I explained that you can increase your score by engaging positively and not doing vote manipulation.
Are you requesting to be treated unfairly? You are asking to override all of the stuff we have in place for everyone else that is in the same boat (which is a lot of people every day).
If you don't accept that, I'm happy to hop on a call and walk you through it all to prove that to you. If you keep pushing back and ignoring my statements and insisting I'm lying, that's on you do take responsibility for.
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PERSONAL COMMENTS:
1. That link to that video has ONE SLIDE on predictive analysi…
You have to do that :D. I would look into all of them with a skeptical eye (don't fall for marketing) and try to se if any would really work for you day to day.
Hey, I'm very familiar with this part of the market, and this journey is relatively common.
My advise depends more specifically on these jobs and the scope of work you've been doing.
But based on what you've said I see two phases:
1. Get your resume/pitch in shape. The trajectory sounds a bit jumpy and getting interviews might be a challenge with your resume. Test the market and see what interviews you get to know how much to put into this, and if you get interviews you aren't ready for, just push out the timeframe of those. If you struggle to even get interviews, then you'll have to work on this part before doing Leetcode. If you struggle, you might want to find a lower level permanent role, push hard to get promoted as fast as possible, and then focus on your next job hunt.
2. Interview prep. It depends on what you are applying for. Big tech = Leetcode practice (this is my bread an…
It really depends on your goals.
The common thing making you less suitable is if your goal is to make money and you don't have a passion for programming or engineering or problem solving. This is the easiest one. If someone says they are considering nursing or engineering for the money, then I say to watch out. If they say they want to do cyber because they heard the money is there, I say to watch out.
The market is selecting not just people that hustle, but also have an inclination to programming.
If your goal is to just learn in an accelerated way, not necessarily get a job, not learn EVERYTHING but get a structured intense push with accountability. Then a bootcamp might be something to consider (and not the only thing).