Someone reached out who attended this talk and I now actively encourage no one to go to Codesmith...
Any alumni who attended - this doesn't seem like a system design talk but rather Will trying to learn about a system he doesn't understand well.
Did he talk about pros and cons of different approaches?
Did he talk about the decision process for each piece?
Was the system large scale and in need of complex decision making?
Are the APIs between components discussed in great detail?
Are the schemas and data model decisions discussed in great detail?
Was there any discussion of a technically challenging problem solved and how they overcame it?
Did the system make sense and were good decisions made? Like if someone reviewed it and thought it would just be one service instead that would be a no hire or fire.
I'm surprised your big tech company is allowing you to reach as a W2 part time employee of a bootcamp. I would run that by the conflict of interest team first.If you are a contractor with that much influence over the curriculum, I would double check the contractor / employee relationship in your state and the state the bootcamp is in to make sure it's not being violated.
Not paranoia but serious. Like if you work at FAANG and you are doing to teach people under any kind of IP agreement with the bootcamp, you have a conflict not to reveal any IP of the company and unintentionally transfer that IP to the bootcamp. You also might unintentionally transfer that IP to students who go and work at competitors in the future.
Sounds crazy but you can get insta fired at some companies so be careful and make sure your relationship with the bootcamp is clear.
Codesmith was telling everyone their o…
I didn't want to share but I found that too and was like what Stealh Startup is public on GitHub and called "Stealth Startup" haha.
Do you have evidence the person was fired from a real startup?
I think it's reasonable for people to not make it for all kinds of reasons, even if they lied about their background and couldn't make it at the level they were expected.
But I think it's offensive and absurd to portray those situations as successed to be celebrated. I've seen potential students who don't know any better asking a "senior engineer" representing Codesmith at an official event questions about hiring and management, that the person was NOT QUALIFIED to answer but answered anyways with bull shit answers... and the potential students were impressed and appreciative. It does such harm to those people to keep the charade going.
It catches up to you and that's what we're seeing now. A…
I think that model can work. The key being that these consultancies end up in a full time job. If you think you will hustle and do whatever to hold a job, prove it under this model. Just watch out for programs that take advantage of you by severely underpaying you, making you move, and not supporting you well.
It's run by a third party so I'm not sure yet. They seem to have CMU staff doing some classes
But keep in mind. For profit is for profit. That's fine but figure out how they make money.
In the bootcamp space you can have win wins and it all works in the end but as programs scale and build out a team people can locally optimize and lose sight of the overall impact
I'm currently recommending Launch School but only for the right people and you should do their free stuff to see if they are the right school.
The other best ones I'm no longer recommending for various reasons. Codesmith I'm suggested to not go to. App Academy, Hack Reactor, I'm more neutral on. Tech Elevator was amazing when they had in person partnerships but those have been dwindling.
These are just my opinions. There isn't a correct answer for everyone though. Happy to talk through based on your own background.
I mean this is why bootcamps are shutting down or pausing indefinitely left right and center.
They can control their educational quality and produce capable graduates, but they can't change the job market.
I know people University bootcamps have helped but I'm generally skeptical.
Why? Because the bootcamp is paying the University to use it's name on the program.
Who is paying for that? Ultimately it's YOU.
Like thousands of dollars of your Tuition is going straight to the school so the bootcamp can use their name.
Now to be fair, other programs with zero name recognition might just pocket that as extra profit. Others might pay way more in ads to get you in. So that doesn't mean it's inherently worse than others.
But to me for University bootcamps it's a fixed overhead cost that limits what they can do with the rest of your tuition, whereas some amazing tiny program has the flexibility IN THEORY to use more of your tuition to teach you.
I made that comment about opportunity cost. It was illustrative to show that opportunity cost is valuable and not everything free is free. I agree that saying it costs $25K in opportunity cost isn't exact.
My Reddit username is my real name. I'm also a moderator of this sub. Who the fudge are you and can you try to be a bit nicer? I'm happy to talk about whatever point you are trying to make in a nicer way.
Here are my LinkedIns and GitHub:
[https://github.com/mnovati:](https://github.com/mnovati:) "5,826 contributions in the last year"
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/)
People can judge for themselves. What are your qualifications for calling me a "reddit loser who lie" and what is your rationale?
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Not publicly no, it's ethically wrong. I have been permanently banned from the Codesmith community for comments I made during a live session so I don't have avenues to responsibly report them.
If you have some connections DM me. I need to discuss this stuff under an agreement because it's quite bad and they might have to legally notify all their people about one or more of these issues and I do not want to be involved and would rather not say anything at all honestly.
My personal opinion is that I would not apply to anything at Codesmith with personally identifiable information.
No not at all. It's much more complicated than that.
So take Meta for example. In the early days, they found graduates from Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, Waterloo, UW, Brown, etc... who tended to perform best a couple years later, so they focused on hiring from those schools. Those graduates tended to set hiring requirements that people from those schools would then meet, kind of like a cycle.
DEI hiring is about casting a wider net from the sources you typically have been considering, to get more diverse backgrounds. I'm not talking about protected classes or minorities, just diverse from what the company was used to hiring.
A company should be able to hire anyone they legally want to hire, and DEI efforts are about challenge historical hiring norms so bring in people that might take the company to a higher maximum instead of s local maximum.
Hey! Thanks for the update.
Do you have more comments about the group of people? One of my concerns is people who used to make a lot of money, like someone was a Medical Doctor, but who left their jobs, would be considered a low income student. Any insights on the backgrounds of other people?
Also do you feel like people truly have no programming experience and are starting at similar places?
So if you graduated from Stanford, the market seems great. If you are considering senior top tier tech companies, the market seems pretty good.
It's not going to improve for bootcamp grads unfortunately until we see what happens with AI.
The market right now is looking for top 50% engineers (illustrative number, not a fact), like good CS grads and experienced engineers who have done pretty good on the job.
AI is going to create a lot of jobs but unclear yet what they will be.
I'm very nervous about bootcamps like BloomTech, Codesmith, and others focusing so much on generative AI skills. These are skills that we see in headlines, but talk to hiring managers at top tech companies and no one knows what AI-skills they will be looking for. These companies have super consistent and careful hiring processes and they will over a couple years operationalize for AI and the skills they look fo…
I mean you should be looking into bootcamps too, just be extremely thorough in finding the right one for you. Don't listen to any marketing or any stats, and dig deep, find the place that feels authentic and you trust that they will be fighting alongside you to get a job, and not just talking a good talk.
This thread spiralled but question: how many bootcamp grads are you hiring for those entry level roles that you mention hiring for vs CS grads? Like the ratio between them.
This thread spiralled but question: how many bootcamp grads are you hiring for those entry level roles that you mention hiring for vs CS grads? Like the ratio between them.
What credible employment reports are you going off of?
The only recent one I know of is Launch School, which while still has a 75% placement rate it has dropped from 100%. So clearly things are not the same anymore there.
Codesmith has a CIRR for people that graduated 1.5 to 2.5 years ago which is useless. The six month placement rates I'm seeing for 2023 abysmal. Codesmith won't let us know the official numbers until March 2025 and we won't see 2024 numbers until March 2026. So people who graduated 6 months ago in Jan 2024, even though Codesmith knows their 6 months placement rate and could give a great heads up to people about the changing market, they won't say even one hint of it until March 2026, almost two years from now.
That's absolutely garbage and they need to do better if people like you are relying on these reports to judge the market.
I think the post COVID boom was a good rush. Zero interest and everything moving online. Mavis Tires had to get digital fast!
But these businesses realized that paying people like $150K people who came from a bootcamp and didn't have much work experience, let a trail of destruction behind them and didn't produce real dollar value.
I don't think they will return to that state in the future.
Instead, the Googles and Facebooks are taking over and the big are getting bigger, and building AI assisted tools for local companies to use to get way more done than hiring someone from a bootcamp for $150K.
It's not that simple and even if all of this was how things remain, DEI would be a reason for these big companies to run apprenticeships and non-traditional internships But even those avenues are being attacked.
Happy to revisit in three years when AI settles. It's going to create a ton of n…
Yeah I feel the gatekeeping one a lot. I've been called a gatekeeper for highlighting the facts I hear from top companies all the time. Individual bootcamp grads can still make it if they are an exception, but the typical bootcamp grad first - doesn't meet the hiring bar as often, and second - needs so much more handholding and nurturing to end up where a Stanford CS grad is, it's just not work it economically - the company will pay more to recruiter and woo over Stanford CS grads instead.
I'm not qualified to answer but you can read a a bit about the changing tides here: [https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2024/03/courts-issue-three-significant-dei-decisions](https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2024/03/courts-issue-three-significant-dei-decisions)
If you have some kind of programming-adjacent experience then a bootcamp could possibly work. Feel free to DM more personal details like your location, what kind of job you are looking for, your work history and experience and how much technology you've done, if your current job has any pathway to switch to programming or a more programming related role, etc...
I generally agree. To make things worse in general Im seeing bootcamp grads from a few years ago getting laid off and having a hard time getting new jobs as well and compounding the negative sentiment.
Bootcamps can work for some people but successes are non-reproducible edge cases and not something you can look forward to as a typical person reading this. Any bootcamp promising generally good outcomes to any person walking off the street should be avoided.
Also agree it's not going to change any time soon. Interest rates dropping a tiny bit isn't going to open the floodgates.
We're seeing big tech rewarded to efficiency and hitting all time highs. Efficiency means hiring seasoned senior engineers, period.
There's no room to hire a bootcamp grad and nurture them for 3 years to maybe get to the same spot.
Finally, DEI is one of the big reasons companies even cared about bootcamps. Th…
Highly depends on the person. I recommend Launch School if it works for you, so I recommend trying out the free starter and potentially a month of Core to explore that. If it doesn't work for you then I would consider as Post BACC, Masters, or degree, depending on your exact background, location, current job, and other factors.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Someone sent me this: [https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595](https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595)
Did they discuss all of the fundamental architecture flaws with the Codesmith website and why they chose to make those decisions?
Seriously disappointing.
I'm not sure how you feel about this, but I talk to a range of alumni for various reasons and contexts, and people are not appreciating these minimal efforts being portrayed as 'all you need to succeed'-vibes.
It's creating distrust, like people believed that when they went to Codesmith 2 years ago and got a job, but now they see it for what it is and it breaks trust.
I know I'm bias because my company helps people specifically with system design, and it's offensive to me when Codesmith tells people it's SD is all you need, when it's absolutely not all you need. It's not even an overview of all you might need.
Anyways here's a great free resource from a semi-competitor to us that is 10X better than the Codesmith materials I've seen on SD: [https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction](https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduct…
That's disappointing, but at least they told you that straight up instead of dancing around it.
I do think it's going to be extraordinarily hard to get a job with a resume that shows zero experience. I'm going to be watching these resumes like a hawk for embellishment.... no one doing Future Code should have any professional programming experience whatsoever and if their resumes present that.
So I'm not sure what I would even suggest for the grads. I think each person would need a big amount of individual strategizing on how to leverage their backgrounds and networks to find any kind of tech-adjacent role to get started post program.
My 2 cents as someone who knows a lot about Codesmith.
I wouldn't not go because of shady practices. It's a fake it til you make it and if you subscribe to that philosophy it might be a good thing.
I wouldn't go because they have demonstrated an inability to adapt to the market. They have been hit with layoffs and lower enrollment and don't seem to have to budget needed to invest in all of the changes they want to, or to that quickly enough. They promised a bunch of improvements 5 months ago, and we haven't seen most of them, or some people who perceive ones they might have done on paper as underwhelming.
In this market you need someone fighting for you. Launch School's Founder in that recent video said that he has personally had to refer and vouch for students way more than ever else to help them get jobs. We're also seeing Turing's Founder pushing hard for individual people.
Codes…
I think there might be having some instruction turnover and other instructors might leave so that might not be an add.
Is the new person a past alumni too?
Yeah I was excited to see the changes proposed and I made a post about it. Then I got flack from alumni for temporarily pausing my recommendation to go to Codesmith to see how those things play out and make sure that they get implemented.
So now I'm giving them a chance to show that they've implemented all these things in a very long amount of time to do it so that I would even consider restoring my recommendation. but if they haven't actually done anything other than add 5 lectures on AI, then I'm not going to. I might even actively discourage people from going there now sadly if that's the case and the concern about layoffs and cutbacks not giving them enough horsepower to make the positive changes people need to succeed in this market came to be.
Like I went from recommendation to a neutral no recommendation and now I might tell people to not go there actively and I've given a comp…
It's hard. But imagine doing a degree over 4 years where you do about 20 classes like that.
Then imagine going to a bootcamp for 12 weeks.
Explains why bootcamp grads from.the best bootcamps can't compete with CS grads from good schools.
Not capacities, and I usually say quality over quantity.
But quality AND quantity wins.
Do you have any options at your company or a similar company to transition? Amazon had a program for logistics workers to become SWEs! They've been ramping it down a bit during the downturn but they might have new options.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I'm sorry to hear but this is what people have been telling me and it's causing tremendous distrust because in the middle of that window Codesmith updated marketing to explain how 53 offers were accepted in April-May, appearing to cover up that 6 months placement rates could be in the 15 to 20% range, in your case maybe lower.
If the wheels are falling off the bus and the driver is blasting Taylor Swift music and singing along distracted and not acknowledging wheels, people want to get the heck off the bus... If the driver knows the wheels are falling off the bus and intentionally distracting away from the situation to fill up the bus, people will shout at you to stay the heck off the bus.
It's not a pyramid scheme because you are paying for services and people are aiming to get jobs outside of the pyramid. People don't go to Codesmith aspiring to move up the pyramid and get to lead instructor, they aspire to get out and get a job.
The pyramid shape is more about control.
One thing Codesmith did well that no one else did was keep fairly consistent as they scaled like 5X in a year (now they are smaller than before they scaled but because of the market). The consistency came from having this unprecedented control over this instruction hierarchy. Almost all instructors worked as SWE outside and so they followed what the people above them told them. The handful that went to work on the outside and came back didn't last too long because they brought new perspectives on things. They realized that 'correction sessions' to fix someone's bad attitude and turn it positive, were ma…