That would be violating the terms: "The Services are to be used solely for your non-exclusive, non-assignable, non-transferable, non-commercial and limited personal use in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement, and for no other purposes, and except as expressly authorized by Springboard herein and/or set forth in Additional Terms."
What are your thoughts on if those big companies would rather train their senior engineers in gen AI and give them time to explore VS hiring in zero experience people with some gen AI skills?
I'm not entirely convinced that zero experience and able to fine tune a model will be hireable if a senior product engineer can figure it out. But curious your views.
Thanks for sharing and hopefully it was also a learning experience good and bad.
A lot of bootcamps are in a similar situation unfortunately, some nicer than others.
When you say that they needed to pivot to ML and AI, was that officially planned and they couldn't pull it off?
I've seen Codesmith (adding on AI) and BloomTech (pivoting to AI) but it still feels like the days of Web3 and BlockChain bootcamps that popped up during the Bitcoin spike.
No one knew what Web3 skills companies wanted and companies didn't have systematic ways of hiring and accessing for Web3 skills so a bootcamp focused on Web3 didn't make sense.
Right now no one knows what AI skills companies want because the companies don't know.
We're in a 1-2 year phase where companies are exploring generative AI internally and we'll see what kinds of skills people need.
The existing senior engineers will have a lot of…
Imposter syndrome has been trivialized too much and the truth is in between.
This comment is my high level motivational advice, I have way more tactical 1-1 advice depending ones situation and goals, but his the mindset I advise bootcamp grads to be in.
You absolutely do not have as much experience as lot of people you are competing with. If you have no SWE work experience then you can't fake it with a bootcamp certificate or capstone project or whatever coding you have done.
That's not imposter syndrome, it's a genuine lack of skill and experience.... and it's OKAY!
Because while you don't have these things, look at the things you can control: work ethic, how much code you write every day, what projects you do, which networking events you go to.
You aren't an imposter in the industry and you deserve to show up like anyone else to and show you want to be there.
So my advice is to…
So I would argue that I'm investing in an team member to 'learn LLMs' is currently not a no trainer and depends highly on the team and their goals and that's why companies aren't trying to hire for these skills yet.
LLMs are powerful but generative AI is a specific type of AI that can be used to improve a lot of user facing product.
There is still a tremendous need for ML adjacent skills for non generative AI that is far more critical to current companies.
The advertising engines that run Google and Meta are not generative.
Google IO just talked about dozens of new generative AI products and features and didn't talk much about ads at all!
AI will help customers build better ads, faster and more interesting ads, more dynamic ads, etc... and the people that work on that are product people.
And those product people aren't going to be hired because they spent 6 months learning about R…
OP absolutely shouldn't negotiate if they don't owe anything according to the contract! 100%.
My company has offered contracts in the past that have a similar condition and some people do not pay anything as a result and that's how it should be!
No one here is a lawyer (as far as is public info), and I'm assuming no one has seen the contract (other than maybe OP) and there can be some very specific clauses that give the company the right to payment. If a representative of the company contradicted that in writing, then that's a good start to negotiate something.
For example if the contract says you owe the full ISA and an employee made a good faith, non-fraudulent, error in their communication, but that the communication resulted in the person making decisions they wouldn't have made without the communication, then that is grounds for a compromise and not necessarily a full cancellat…
I largely agree too, I think the master's is a good analogy. For that price, if you are just going to be learning and not handed a job, then doing a master's might be a better choice for a lot of people.
Yeah sorry to hear that. I'm not going to comment on the day to day but I've heard similar things from others now about those changes and it's perhaps why they removed the ability to apply from their website.
If the person who was telling you about AppBooster told you that over the phone and not in writing and doesn't work there anymore then I would tell Outco the date and time this person told you this with as much detail as possible (if it's in writing that's better) and tell them you are not paying anything until they investigate and respond to that claim.
The second strategy I would try is showing some willingness to pay a flat fee for the services you go that you think is fair. By offering something fair you are making a gesture that you want to work with them instead of a more adversarial approach. If you genuinely believe you should not pay a cent then don't offer something. But…
Have you tried talking to someone at Outco about the situation?
ISAa fell apart in the past two years and essentially don't exist anymore as they used to. All new ISAs are created as loans for the upfront cost of a program that you have to pay back regardless, however they can pause payments if you lose your job and the amount you pay is capped by your salary rather than a fixed amount.
If you didn't get a job and you attended all of the sessions and mock interviews and such then you should pay something for their time.
BUT, the contract applies to them too, and if they didn't live up to part of their side then you should talk to them about a reduced exit fee that takes into account both sides of the story.
Disclosure, my company competes with Outco. They stopped taking new people on their site and one or more of the founders are doing something else now, so I don't call them a compe…
I was the one who said CS grads have an advantage with internships. If you don't have internships then you have no advantage and it's good you are taking initiative to help get a job.
I've studied Launch School grads and Codesmith grads side by side here because both do these group projects called "capstone projects" (Launch School) or "OSP" (Codesmith) that are open source, have websites, blog posts, and all kinds of scaffolding around them to brand them as super legit projects.
I did this write up last year of [Codesmith](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I haven't done one for Launch School because they are much smaller and it's easier to find students yourself and look it up.
There are three completely separate issues here:
1. Representation of project as Software Engineer job. Codesmith students often list the project as "Software Engineer". They occasionally add "Open Source" to the title or description and occasionally add "Developed under OSLabs" in the description - both of which don't m…
Yeah disclosure my company runs an interview prep and mentorship platform to help people get ready for interviews. We don't solve these problems I'm talking about but we help people on the ground who are in the process of changing jobs. So some overlap, I disclose if I was directly promoting my company to someone :P
Teaching AI or using AI?
BloomTech has a B2B $5000 'using AI' course that's 5 months or something fairly detailed.
Codesmith is working on an AI add on package and had the first session this week and someone who went didn't find it very useful yet. (It's early stage)
Most of the companies I talk to don't really need any AI skills yet and want senior product engineers who will figure out AI. Because it's changing so fast there isn't a way for these companies to consistently and fairly test people for AI so it's not really meaningful yet in hiring decisions.
It might matte…
1. Yeah we'll see, I hope that's what happens too and it's what's broadly expected. A number of bootcamps that are not doing so well though are banking on this happening to avoid further layoffs or shutdowns. If I'm planning ahead for multiple outcomes I would bias towards your view here, but I wouldn't bank the survival of my company on it.
2. Agree to disagree, I don't think my view is the only view here and it does depend on a bunch of personal factors. Agree there are startups that can be fantastic to go to as well.
3. Yeah it's old and it's Galvanize so I assume it's bias. I have a bunch of friends leaving Climate Tech to go to AI companies, so my personal view is bias and I tried to find other resources and couldn't find any showing that Climate Tech will dominate hiring this year.
RE: CODESMITH - long story. But the triggering point is that they are an advanced bootcamp that t…
Lots of interesting back and forth here, just wanted to chime in. I'm not sure who you are but these are Codesmith's talking points so apologies if I sound like a broken record - I strongly disagree with Codesmith's narrative about "the modern software engineer" and I think it's being made up to highlight non-SWE and non-tech placements as the future instead of because the people can't get entry level SWE jobs in this market.
1. It's really not a given that interest rates will drop and they won't drop THAT much. Like going from 5.25% to 5% isn't going to trigger all this dry powder to get dumped.
2. This is why you want a really good top tier tech job from day 1 if you can get it, improving a button is shortsighted and not thinking about your 30 year career: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1cz4pal/comment/l5e8600/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1cz4…
Thanks for sharing, this is a good raw write up and helpful. This is what I thought they were too and I actually like this idea. It's like a group project but with more "real requirements" instead of toy ones and getting feedback from a real person and not a grader/instructor only.
Rithm school is vaguely similar with it's internships, except the projects a little more real.
The downside to real projects is each one is unique and hard to turn into a consistent learning experience, and second - the external mentors are busy and might not be the best teachers.
All of that said - execution matters, and I'm not commenting on Triple Ten or Rithm but just the theoretical models.
Eek sorry, I was explicitly not trying to have a binary opinion on this, but instead of just saying everything is case by case, I want to try to dissect each option as to people might choose that option and why it might work or not for them.
Sorry if that didn't come across.
Oh trust me... I AM CODING!!! [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati)
Yeah agree she didn't say enrollment was down. Codesmith cut their offerings from 4 cohorts to 1 so I was assuming that as fact since she works at Codesmith and I agree that I shouldn't assume she knows that in making that statement, it's likely but not assumable.
I agree with the rest of what you said too regarding higher costs, lower outcomes, less appealing and maybe impossible for people financially is a good argument too that's unrelated to the outcomes.
I don't have all the answers but just my opinion... but this is my advice for a perfect world:
1. Find the right first job... many people don't have a choice in this market and I see posts about people taking support roles as a foot in the door, but that first role (or two) are really important to meet certain criteria: a) a tech company, b) a stable and large/established one, c) an entry level role (preferring under levelled vs over levelled) d) entry level + stable tech company = consistent support and mentorship. At Meta for example, a manager's performance is based on getting their people promoted through a very calibrated process... so if you don't genuinely grow and you put in the work, your manager failed.
2. Play the game a bit. Don't worry so much about exploring and learning new skills. Do what you need to do to be promoted on paper. Again, if you chose the right company, do…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hi, where in the post did you see the quote: "People becoming SWEs today are aware of tough market, but persevere because they're truly passionate about coding"?
I read "People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job"
I agree with Kim's comment that a far smaller number of people are considering bootcamps now BUT they are far more passionate and committed and know what they are getting themselves into.
I thank that to places like Reddit helping people be informed about bootcamps so they can join for the right reasons and I'm glad she's seeing that trend too.
I disagree with OP's characterization that people are "persevering" despite the market.
I have a couple of friends who graduated from Codesmith in early 2024 and while it's far too early t…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I mean it's very optimistic about ML creating more jobs and I share that optimism.
But at the same time, in the past year, Rithm has had layoffs, Launch Academy, Turing School, Hack Reactor, Tech Elevator, and even Codesmith has laid off almost half the staff. CodeUp shut down. Epicodus shut down.
Like I don't want to be a big rain cloud hovering over the parade, but there are legitimate concerns for a typical student looking to join a bootcamp right now that didn't exist 2+ years ago. And to not acknowledge them is irresponsible.
Acknowledging them doesn't have to be doom and gloom though.
Living in an imperfect world and trying to be bring positivity to it, doesn't have to mean you ignore anything negative.
+1 don't draw any conclusions from one off anecdotes whether positive stories or negative stories, they are all one offs.
I do think it's fair to look at the market trends and recent layoffs at Rithm, Turing, Launch Academy, Hack Reactor, Tech Elevators, and Codesmith as signs that the market is the dominant factor right now, anecdotal stories aside.
The ones at Stanford, MIT, and CMU are haha.
I'm from Canada originally my program was 100% engineering courses other than three electives my entire four years. When I did an internship down here, I was housed with a bunch of Carnegie Mellon students and they stayed up till 2 AM every night just talking about different rhythms and technological approaches and debating the pros and cons and stuff like that. It was like a magically eye-opening experience that made me regret commuting from home.
Obviously, that's not the norm, but if you're someone like Codesmith who is comparing themselves to ivy league grad schools then that's I'm holding them to.
If you want to talk about like a decent state school compared to a Bootcamp, then I would expect graduates to also have a hard time finding jobs if they don't have a lot of internships and didn't spend most of their time engufled in software.…
Yeah I was a bit long haha. I don't think a CS degree is inherently better but I do think these two things need to be addresed:
>A) Internships = Work Experience. B) 4 years spent engulfed in software. Both of these CANNOT BE REPLACED with a bootcamp.
While they can't be replaced with a bootcamp, they CAN be replaced by other things.
1. Apprenticeships
2. Self studying for a couple years (and building personal projectS)
3. Freelancing and contract projects
4. Volunteering (e.g. Hack4LA)
5. Doing a bootcamp as one of the pieces
6. Moving to SF and going to tech events and parties and engulfing yourself in the tech scene
7. Doing a part time online CS masters degree or post-bacc
Sorry to hear this and it's an unfortunate reality of the industry.
**!!! A 12 to 16 BOOTCAMP CANNOT PREPARE YOU TO BE EQUAL TO SOMEONE WITH MORE EXPERIENCE !!! EVEN CODESMITH DESPITE WHAT THEY TELL YOU (**Actually read the following notes on why everyone!)
I see day in and day out people from bootcamps, people who are self taught, CS grads, all in later stages of their careers, these are my notes:
1. Everyone is unique. Any person's unique journey cannot represent a bootcamp, a background, a city, or whatever aspects you are trying to generalize about the person.
2. Grit, hustle and effort can get you very far in this industry. If you are less experienced than a new grad and outwork them you likely will have better initial traction on your job. You might get accolades and a promotion. If you are a CS grad who has grid and hustle, it will be really hard for a bootcamp grad to outpace…
I post about this often and I get ripped apart, but Codesmith grads are not fairing as well as Codesmith says they do in talks and blog posts.
Many ARE! don't get me wrong! But some people who exaggerated to get that first job during better times are hitting a ceiling. Their hustle and grit got them 1-3 years of time on the job, but they struggle to continue growing - as the company expected them to when hiring the high-intensity under-qualified person. I've seen people who are really lost. They don't know what to do. They don't know if they should apply for "senior jobs" or go back to entry level (1-2 years is still entry level) and the next step might feel like a step back in order to get back on a good career trajectory. This impacts other bootcamps grads who had a similar story as well.
It's very personal and very tough and I know grads who are crushing it and doing awesome. But th…
Two years ago was 2021-2022 = the boom times, so I could see that. People the top bootcamps were pretty easily getting jobs within six months of graduating.
Out of curiosity, how many other people have dropped out and/or have you talked to other students about it? One of the things I'm very curious about TripleTen is how many people finish the program. Earlier this year their internal goal (from primary source but not officially representing the company) was to get people to stay long enough (past a certain sprint) so they owe most of their tuition so I there is more incentive to convince you to stay just long enough, rather than have you finish and place. In some sense if you "graduate" and they become more hands off - you might slip up and not be eligible for refund anymore, at which point they have no financial incentive to help you - other than if their outcomes are bad, no one will join to begin with.
That's great and you are both lucky and probably have the other skills and situation that are more correlated with getting a job.
The Launch Academy argument is that in this market No bootcamp can guarantee or consistently get people jobs, so they think it's not responsible to admit people and take their money. that doesn't mean that no one will get jobs. In fact in some places anecdotally, it's a couple of people but it can be as high as 30 to 50% of the cohort right now.
But that's really important to understand what kinds of jobs and how. in the past there was a little bit more consistency and common practices. Right now it's kind of a free-for-all with people getting all kinds of jobs all over the market and at all kinds of companies. The most ambitious people are going to find a way through to a job, but there isn't a consistent and reproducible method that a bootcamp can teach ri…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
According to Codesmith data, only under 1/4 of students had CS degrees before Codesmith, and a good number of those were people who graduated a long time ago and never did SWE, or recently graduated and couldn't get a job.
So while I'm not saying to go there or not to go there with experience, but I will point out that the vast majority of people there, do not have SWE experience and the ones that do are there for more specific reasons than mentioned above.
How do you know you couldn't have gotten that outcome anywhere else?
One of the interesting patterns I've observed is Codesmith students who have low self confidence + high ambition, work ethic and are naturally smart and Codesmith re-programs you to get over "importer syndrome" by building your self confidence.
I think it's incredibly amazing if a program can systematically build self confidence in people - that's like probably worth more money than any bootcamp.
But when I see people who will irrationally fight for Codesmith because it changed their lives, it feels like it's from the above \^\^\^.
The thing to watch out for is that the job is step one. Getting the right first job has a major impact on your career. Codesmith gets many people great first jobs, but more than other bootcamps, I've seen great alumni go to the wrong jobs. They posted on Reddit FERVANTLY, attacked me FERV…
I mean reading between the lines from everyone, things aren't going great and the top bootcamps aren't filling cohorts or are filling them last minute.
If there isn't demand to fill a cohort, a school has to decide - lower the bar? increase marketing costs (which can kill the company if they don't work because it's expensive)? give successful alumni free stuff to post reviews (like Codesmith is doing haha)?
Or you can accept the fact that it's not great for bootcamps and turtle up, shrink to the minimal size to survive. Don't make many changes, and try to ride out the market.
Sure, sorry, should have linked: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/)
Same as.whar everyone else said. No bootcamp can reproducibly place people right now. Launch Academy explained this straight up and paused indefinitely.
Even the best bootcamps, which are placing pepe still, have lower placement rates and it's a struggle.
That said, since some people are being placed if you can find a path that could work for you based on your background, experience, goals, personality, and just day to day, then you might have a shot... just count on it taking much longer and don't go to a bootcamp without knowing how it works.
We're not a school though, don't have a curriculum, don't teach classes, so again, the whole discussion doesn't make sense and it's grasping at straws to connect it.
If you can't accurately explain how Formation works then we shouldn't talk anymore about this until you do.
CSX seems to let anyone see anyone else's progress and profiles so presumably one could check.
I asked Codesmith and some people chatted with me who interviewed and it sounds like you can have many years of programming experience as long as it's not PAID and they'll accept you.
It's just such an odd thing to ask no like clearly with all this back and forth and me genuinely trying to explain, it doesn't really make sense.
It's like if you went to college and instead of covering how the more common day to day works, you are really focused on what happens if someone if someone doesn't show up to class for a semester and doesn't take the exam and whether they fail the class, or the school cancels and lets the student take an extra other class instead.
Unless they are on vacation on a pre-arranged pause, if they don't do anything for a week they are automatically flagged and paused and then we schedule a check in or contact their emergency contact and find them.
So someone can't just do nothing for 12 months. They can pause though for a month and come back later and that's not considered a failure case, it's very common for people to pause while launching a big project at work and then ramping up afterwards, or moving slower until they get promoted and then ramping up to change companies.
Every person has a team of 4 team members monitoring them and working with them, separate from technical mentorship.
We do NOT have lifetime membership. If people come back in the future they have to pay again to do Formation again. Formation ends when you get a job by definition (or otherwise withdraw)
It's strictly impossible for someone to join…
How does "no new job" happen I think is the point that needs clarification.
There's no end to Formation so everyone who continues to intend on job hunting keeps going until they get a job.
So the only way you do not get a job is if you change your mind and don't want one anymore, or you don't think Formation is effective for you anymore and you choose to leave early.
I don't really know who is "responsible" for you leaving early. If people want to be here then we work with you until you get a job and there isn't a failure case. But I think the answer is that it's the Fellow's responsibility if they do not get a job.
It's our responsibility to get you ready for a job as efficiently as possible, and if show up and do stuff but you progress too slowly then that is our responsibility.
Ok I'll try to answer!
"If a student does **not** do the work you ask them to do" => then nothing really happens. They'll be given other things to do or perhaps asked to do those things again, we'll try to get them to do it later.
People can still apply for and get jobs because it's not binary. They might be 75% ready for an interview and not do a task and it's 74% ready and it doesn't matter, they can still get the job.
We work with people on interviewing for specific companies when they are ready for that company. So you might do a task to get ready for Google, and not do it because you have a Meta interview you don't need that task for and get a job at Meta.
If people fail an interview then we look at how they prepared. They might have failed practice interviews and chose to do the real one for personal reasons. There might have been factors outside their control. They might hav…
It depends!
The vast majority of people we work with are currently working, so the most common reason for rescheduling and changing roadmaps is last minute work situations and that's totally fine, not a failure.
There are 20 different reasons people can miss sessions. If someone doesn't have a good reason we automatically have a multi stage process of determining why, generally around making changes to the person's load and pace.
If people are bad actors and don't show up our product handles that by taking that into account when determining sessions.
It's a complex patented system we built, hard to explain, Forbes recently interviewed us and there is a write up there about it.
We don't tend to remove people and I don't know. The handful of people we have removed are people that paused for person life circumstances and then never came back. People ramp up or down and go at their own pace, so it really depends on the pace the person wants to work at and our system supports whatever.
If Formation isn't a good fit and people are not progressing towards their own goals and we don't think Formation was effective that we have talked to case by case to leave and be partially refunded based on the activity the person did but this is also a single digit percentage non-generalizable case.
We don't have a generalized way of removing people.
That's why we have people with us for months and for years and it's impossible to provided high level aggregated data and stats that mean anything.
I think the mental framework of a school doesn't work at all for Formation and I don't feel like I can answer that.
Anyone who shows up is guaranteed to get to the bar, it might just take years for one person and weeks for another.
If someone doesn't show up and doesn't want to get to that bar, they will voluntarily leave, or we'll work with them to adjust to their news goals, if their new goals don't work, we'll remove someone.