Hi, thanks for sharing your experience and I hope we can/are helping you find a great next job.
This is correct that we don't force you to take a job or not. If you accept a job, you can often continue with Formation (if you continue job hunting) but it's case by case and not contractually obligated so we can protect against anyone taking advantage of us.
All we want is to see you in a great job you love, and it's completely correct that you are paying us and we need to make sure you get a return on investment but we're also small and over time well hopefully get better at helping people who are else comfortable voicing what they want/need even if they are less naturally comfortable doing that.
Yeah I agree with you, you should feel supported unconditionally - and while that's a vague word, you should feel like your dedicated Formation team has your back and you feel good working with them. If you don't feel that way, please reach out to me on Mattermost and we can chat more about it!
Hi all, I don't want to step on the discussion (I'm the co-founder of Formation) but will share my thoughts too. I think it's very important and healthy to talk openly about the pros and cons of programs so people can figure out what works for them, so feel free to ask me questions and I'll give the most transparent answers I can!
I also post the feedback with the Formation team because there are a couple of points of feedback that we can make improvements on and thanks for sharing that!
My personal thoughts:
1. I wouldn't say you HAVE to be extroverted but you do have to interact with people and one of the selling points is face time in 3-6 person small group sessions, and 1-1 mock interviews with legit industry engineers to get their perspective. The amount of sessions and types of sessions can adapt to you, so introverted people can get by, IMO, but you should expect to interact wi…
Hi thanks for sharing this write up and +1 to a lot of the advice.
You mentioned several times that luck was a huge factor if not the main factor, in getting a job.
It also sounds like you "made your own luck" by putting yourself out there as much as you possibly could.
But that said, if luck was such a huge factor in this market, doesn't that mean choosing a bootcamp right now could be super risky? Like if I was employed in a stable job, not super happy, wanted to become a SWE, if I'm going to require a large amount of luck, it's pretty intimidating to quite my job and do a bootcamp in this market.
Hmm, if you apply to join Formation (which is free to apply but requires more information), you can definitely retake it but I don't believe you can right now via the public flow.
👋 Hi friends (specifically bootcamp grads), we just launched TIRA by Formation on Product Hunt and I wanted to share it here as a useful free tool and also to get your feedback. It's a dynamic 45 min benchmark to see how interview ready your DS&A skills that you hopefully find useful!
Hi all, I'm sure many of you know me already but I'm a long time group member who comments daily here and I've me a ton of what I would call friends along the way! I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I've done hundreds of DS&A interviews at Meta and a number of people on my team have as well. So we put our minds together and to come up with a solid tool to see how interview ready your DS&A skills are!
I would LOVE to discuss your experience in the comments here, and suggestions to improve the tool.
The benchmark takes 45 mins and is free, and it will tell you what areas you are strong and weak at, a…
Hi, DM me who! Our Fellowship recruiters are former FAANG recruiters and not really salespeople so it might be different from other programs. But no one should be a jerk to you and most people comment that the recruiters are helpful to talk to even if Formation isn't a good fit.
A weakness of our model though is that everyone is a industry engineer or recruiter and not a trained teacher or salesperson. You'd be surprised how many times a day we get session feedback where one person thought the mentor was the best ever and disliked them so much they requested to not have sessions with them again.
Pros and cons, you get to work with a ton of different people, but it takes some time to figure out who you get along with and who you don't.
But there is a bar for attitude where we would remove a mentor or an engineer.
Yeah I mean at Formation people pay us explicitly for interview prep mentorship so you can get resume reviews and mock interviews on demand (when you need them or ask for them), usually within a day, often same day, definitely same week, almost a 24/7 clock of availability across dozens of mentors across a dozen+ interview types. Occasionally people cancel mocks, or resume reviews take longer on rounds of feedback, but that's the bar for "career support" that people should expect if they are being promised career support.
The Codesmith career support is:
1. A handbook with a ton of very good resources, including the 'Codesmith Style Resume' and 'Codesmith Style Application' walkthroughs
2. 8 alumni you can book 1-1 sessions with who have varied schedules, some available in days, some in weeks, some never.
3. 2 alumni you can book for technical algo mock interviews who also have only…
One part of the polarization with Codesmith is that a handful of people do land FAANG jobs, even in 2023. Context matters. Someone got a job at Netflix, but it was a non-SWE job and it was in the field that the person had 8 YOE... which 100% CODESMITH HELPED THE PERSON, but this was not an outcome that anyone should EXPECT, it was a unique situation.
Someone got a job at LinkedIn recently, but the FAANG placements are really rare, because FAANG isn't interviewing bootcamp grads with no experience right now. If someone has experience then you might get a FAANG job.
\+1 to getting a good job at another company, they have a couple placements at Mavis Tire making in the mid six figures.
We (Formation) have formal and informal pipelines with FAANG companies and recruiters, and they are extremely picky about who they interview and I wish they would interview everyone, but they won't in this…
UX was hit hard on layoffs and hasn't bounced back yet. But I would try to do freelance or contract research work if you can. Like project based research, or extra hands on deck at big companies that haven't backfilled roles yet
But it's a fair point, not like it's a easy path by no means.
\+1 here. You got what you expected and going to Codesmith was probably the right call for you and has nothing to do with the 20% placement rate you observed. If you are looking at quitting your job and joining right now though, even if Codesmith will deliver the day to day that you expect, it's important to be real about the market and how long it will actually take to get a job.
Yeah there's two sides to every coin. I try to present a balanced view but it's notable to me how polarizing Codesmith is compared to other programs. Like people who feel this negatively towards BloomTech even don't talk about the 'behavioral techniques' that they observe at Codesmith.
I'm making this vague to not out the person but someone related to a Codesmith student who overheard their Zoom calls while working from home, was so concerned about this they contacted me. The person was trained in psychology and said they observed concerning techniques being used.
I'm not a psychologist, I don't know who this person is in real life, could all be made up, but they did convince me at that they overheard the sessions and lectures at least.
And I really have never had anything like this from other programs.
It's an unsolved problem I asked a lot of people on the inside about, because I g…
They claim to have between 3,500 (their recent info session info) to 5,000 (recent job posting as of 1/19/2024) alumni of the immersive program total.
Most people who work there as TAs put that under "CS Engineering" and not Codesmith.
But yeah the vast majority do not list.
However every resident does an OSP and you can get a list of students from their GitHub repos and most have LinkedIns checkin to the repos too.
I'm literally just saying a one liner their CEO said two weeks ago haha, "600 offers in 2023", and to be fair he said 500 a few weeks earlier, so this might just be a ballpark number from him. But I also have many questions about those offers and my data shows a much lower number.
[Layoffs.fyi](https://Layoffs.fyi) doesn't capture everything.
First SWEs versus non-SWE.
Second, layoffs for layoff reasons versus performance removals wrapped into layoffs. Performance removals were backfilled, real layoffs weren't
And third, big companies move slowly, so it's a rollercoaster ride.
For example, there was a small bump in Jan/Feb 2023 from layoff backfilling, for those performance based cuts within the layoffs.
People who are "laid off" don't generally know, or admit, when it was performance based so you get all kinds of narratives floating around.
Ask a manager or director (at a big tech SWE company) about layoffs and 100% will say that performance plays a factor in choosing who to layoff.
I think their director is a reasonable person trying to make CIRR better, but there are hardly any schools left and Codesmith is the elephant in the room.
I mean I expect they will have to show 3 month, 6 month AND 1 year placement rates, and hopefully it will be clear people are taking a lot longer to find jobs.
I'm not anti CIRR or anti bootcmap, I'm just a perosn who believes in the win-win-win - student wins by being in the right place, bootcamp wins by making money, company wins by hiring the right person for the right job.
This is correct, I say 2+ YOE myself but maybe it's the definition of "difficult".
It's absolutely more competitive. I know Formation is working with a number of CURRENT OR FORMER FAANG ENGINEERS who are rusty and want to give interviews their best to stand out.
I'm super bias so I would argue that any current engineers benefit from mentorship to various degrees, but I am seeing it more competitive to get the offer.
People doing a great job on interviews but getting rejected is more common than in the past.
But if you have 2+ YOE, eepecially at FAANG, you'll get interviews for sure and you shouldn't have that difficult of a time. If you are come talk to me about Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... because you might benefit from extra mentorship. If you worked at FAANG for 3-6 years, $5-$10K won't be a huge cost from your savings to save a ton of "difficulty" if that's w…
In both directions, Reddit threads don't capture reality.
Like Codesmith is a 11 hour a day crazy intense program (for full time) for 13 weeks and then you graduate and sit there in your room, day in day out, applying to jobs, month 1, month 2, month 3, month 4, month 5, month 6, month 7, month 8, month 9, month 10, month 11, month 12.
Like Month 12 is wildly different from month 6. Full time is wildly different from part time!
The feelings and emotional journey of of people in 2023 is really hard to capture in Reddit comments.
I make an effort to meet with groups of people in person in real life (which is hard because I'm fairly socially anxious), I'm meeting some people in Denver next week.
When you talk to people as humans face to face it's just a really different vibe and story than I what I see on Reddit
In good ways and bad ways, but to me that's "real".
There are dozens of people being placed who graduated in 2023, and you'll find a lot who did. You'll also find cohort to cohort variances in both directions.
Unless Codesmith publishes all of their data, or you do an analysis based on GitHub projects in OSLabs, or LinkedIn, or various lists and info Codesmith has shared, there isn't going to be one answer.
A said B cohort which graduated in C and had a D placement rate. And collecting those statements, with no single one-liner answer overall.
They are being hired at companies like Mavis Tire random agencies like I can go through the list of placements. There are edge case top tier placements like someone on LinkedIn last week who didn't seem to have any particular experience. Someone got a mid-level job at Octa. each of these better placements has a different reason, One important factor is how people present their past work experience and frame it as engineering adjacent or flutter engineering work
One person in a public talk recently said that they had no relevant experience before the program and got a job pretty quickly after and their LinkedIn said that they had 19 years of experience as a web developer/software engineer.
The solution is really hard because They have been advertising for 7 years that they create mid-level and senior engineers but they are like a grad school boot camp.
It's extremely hard in this market to actually place people with no or little experience in mid-level and senior roles, enough people did during the boom times that it carried the reputation of the program.
The ideal strategy right now is to place people in internships and apprenticeships and other entry level roles that are designed for people with no experience and will very quickly ramp them up into mid-level and Senior engineers. but if Codemsith doesn't drop that stance then there's not much they can do except what they've been doing.
Yeah there's also a graduate who said that they love the unlimited support and that they have a resume review scheduled for a month from now and I asked why and they said it was the first time that someone was available on their schedule.
They well but with the new CIRR guidelines. it won't be till January 2025 that we see the full picture cuz of the new 1-year window for the last graduate to get a chance to get placed
Yeah I'm sure you've seen my post about this and it really seems like people overstating their experience are almost table stakes for getting a job.
I know that a lot of these people think that by adding one line to their work experience that the experience was " partnership with OS Labs" absolve them of any claims of exaggeration but in my personal opinion that's not valid. More importantly, the time window is not backed by GitHub commit data.
Their curriculum is no different than anyone else. and it's almost always criticized as one of the weaknesses.
But It's actually somewhat intentional from what their CEO says publicly and there's a reason for it. The bar to get in is so high that people will generally have decent technical skills coming in and they actually have to work on the rest of their non-coding skills. so they're really focused on trying to get you to overcome imposter syndrome and communicate on a team and the language to use to describe engineering work and building open source projects to build your resume and those kinds of things. and I think that they do all of this in a very unique way. not necessarily unique good but just unique.
Yeah my feeling was they were just going off reported offers, which could be from anyone at any time via a Google Form. And past alumni sometimes go back for negotiation help.
Seems disingenuous for them to say that though if they know placement rates are lower and have shared all this other data and numbers except for those.
They have an internal 2023 report that the CEO leaked in one of his talks so I know THEY know the data internally at least haha.
I've been extremely middle road in trying to examine Codesmith outcomes for a while now (I know I have personal opinions about the framing of OSPs and mid level and senior projects but on the outcomes I try to follow the facts). I am often attacked here on different sides because this is a controversial topic, but please try to have a fact based discussion, no one off anecdotes.
I think it's important to get more data on placement rates because Codesmith is presenting marketing that everything is going great, and we only have anecdotal and napkin math estimates for placement rates.
This is what Codemsith has said so far about 2023 publicly:
1. They had 600 offers (CEO in public talk)
2. There were 68 offers between October 15th 2023 to November 30th
3. There.is a blog post showing average salaries dipped to $110K medium but have been going back up.
4. Last week, the most recent 10 offe…
I first starting dabbling in programming when I was 13. It took me 7-8 years before I realized it WAS for me.
So just because coding isn't for you now, it might be in the future and maybe it will take a journey before getting there.
Hi, I was enrolled to do my PhD in HCI and dropped out to stay at Facebook in 2009. It's a super valuable skillset to have.
My intiail advice would be to get a job as a UX researcher or prototyper (Google has these roles for HCI grads for example) and develop some of the programming skills on the job or while doing the job and then try to switch.
If you want to do more training then I would zoom in on:
\- what school did you get your masters from?
\- how much CS experience do you have in school?
\- do you have any other work experience?
\- did you have any internships?
\- what kind of company are you aiming for?
And then that would help narrow down ideas.
If you have a background in programming adjacent areas, like any kind of engineering, or math, and if you are really ambitious and value communication, then I would consider Codesmith strongly and look more into it. That said, it's still a huge commitment of time and doesn't work for a lot of people's lifestyle and circumstances.
The self-paced programs (Springboarrd/Triple Ten/BloomTech) tend to have no or a very low bar and high drop out rates. So they are great if you need a very flexible program and schedule to fit your lifestyle, but less great for building a strong tight network or for outcomes. You could probably do a free or cheaper course on your own, and what these programs add is some accountability to keep you moving along and some mentorship if you get stuck.
Feel free to DM me if you want to share more personal info about your background and goals.
Disclosure: I co-found…
FWIW they have been offering 20 to 25% discounts since the end of December directly on their website.
Is this 25% discount in addition to the normal discount?
Maybe to clarify, are you looking for something that is like 3 hours every evening for 9 months? Like Codesmith part time
or something is completely self-paced where you can do whatever amount you want to contribute every week whenever you're available until you graduate? like springboard and triple ten and bloomtech?
Hi, did you have any internships during school? If so I wouldn't do a bootcamp and would do a career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (bias disclosure, my company) Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable, etc... (all different but worth looking into)
If you have a CS degree from a top tier university and are aiming for top tier companies, you need to be good at DS&A, and all of those options above help get interview ready with that, and a bootcamp won't help.
If you don't have any experience or projects of note then I would consider a bootcamp and aim for a non-top tier role. Codesmith is a pretty good option for this bucket for CS grads to get a six figure non-top tier tech role. Rithm, Launch School are other options of good bootcamps that you can research and compare to Flatiron.
Happy to answer more, I'm tight on time and can't right now, but feel free to D…
I think they are way more project focused with the externships so I don't know if the actual language is matter that much.
The biggest thing I'd be considered about is to try to figure out their graduation rate. The placement rate seems great according to their data of people who graduate, but I couldn't find anywhere whatsoever about how many people actually graduate. from the data from boot camps that have shown their numbers in 2023, they have not been great for graduation and a lot of people have dropped out or ghosted at other programs. so I wouldn't expect them to be flawless, but it'd be good to know. Their business model is based on getting people to stay in long enough to trigger their full tuition due point for example.
given that they don't have a fixed program, I also don't expect them to have just a single graduation number. but if they can't explain it transparently in wo…
Thanks, +1, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn I think we have a lot of alignment and I'm curious what your company is (and if it's in this space)
1. Do you have thoughts on bootcamp grads exaggerating their projects? e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/
2. Do you think someone can become a "mid level and senior engineer" in 13 weeks? Codesmith claims this, I disagree but I understand their argument too and want to hear your thoughts
The "passive track" is people who graduated and hung around but didn't apply to an average of 10 jobs a week. The detailed stats don't bread down across those lines but their top level "success rate" does.
Also it doesn't look like 80% are still looking. It looks like up to 33% of people got are still looking or ghosting, but on the flip side, 40% of enrollees got full time jobs in field, so there are a chunk of people with out of field, temporary, or dropped out too.
Please note, these are personal opinions, I'm not recommending or not recommending any specific program in these comments and just looking at numbers.
(This is a bit messy, just dumped some scratch notes)
\[IN PROGRAM EDITING, moe coming\]
​
SOME NOTES: "Intermediate Full-time Coding Bootcamp", Page 8
I'm considering this only because it's the bread and butter program in my opinion. It's competitive to the other top programs.
Enrolled Students 363
143 (124 + 19) had full time jobs in field afterwards (full time + apprenticeship/internship)
**Which is a 40% placement rate of full time job in field of all people who started.**
Now the market is bad, and Hack Reactor 12 week full time immersive didn't change much (the 19 week did in 2023).
[So compare to H1 2022](https://www.galvanize.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/20221-GRAD-Report-Final.pdf) \-
236 + 23 + 93 + 132 = 48…
It's worth checking out Codesmith then, it fits that vibe and there is one person I'm 100% positive they would connect you with that took that path. Stanford MBA -> Codesmith -> CEO.
It's super intense and it's an all in-world so it's ultimately up to you to figure out if it's the right use of time.
I might also consider something like https://www.beondeck.com/ .
Anyways feel free to connect with me LI, my partner technically did YC and can't hurt to connect to see where your company goes!
Yeah I love reading about people's stories, and the twists and turns along the way and it's a pretty detailed overview. He's certainly moved around a lot and jumping between film/tv and tech (and jumping from product to marketing and back).
I like the shift in narrative in general with Codesmith in 2024, Profiles In Tech and focusing on people having impactful jobs and stories, rather than just "we are the best", I think it connects more with people.
At the end of the day though, it's tough to run a 13 week 11 hour a day bootcamp in this market and I'm seeing a lot of "wordsmithing" with the marketing around placement times that demonstrates to me some concern that cohorts aren't filling up and they don't want people to delay or get cold feet because of the market.
So hopefully the market turns around or they make bigger changes to adjust.
P.S. I still diagree on the framing of the p…
I would also say +1 to this argument.
You'll also need to learn how to manage people, run a company, do HR, register in states, learn about contracts, paperwork, sales, partnerships, operations, legal, legal, more legal, terms of service and all this stuff.
I wouldn't only focus on the technology side and you need to build a team than covers all your bases at the exceptional level/bar.
I've seen hundreds of YC companies that are more like MVPs built by people with a couple of areas of strength but the companies that make it beyond that have to cover all their bases at a truly exceptional level.
You can't get to that level as a technologist in a 3 month bootcamp.