Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC.
But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing.
Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience.
From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win.
There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself.
Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218…
This is a question you should ask Tech Elevator and expect a candid and transparent response, good or bad, because you won't get a better answer from anyone else.
Depends on the bootcamp and the payment method and there isnt a pattern.
The loan providers and banks will definitely pursue you because they are more traditional financial institutions.
The bootcamps have more flexibility and depends on the refund policy, when you ghost, the terms of the loan, etc...
Yeah good points. So IT/HR I'm factoring into the 2X multiple.
Curriculum dev is R&D. If a bootcamp was failing it could fire the entirely team and keep functioning because of the unit economics of a cohort.
Marketing and CAC for Codesmith is different than others, but they basically just have an Admissions person and they run about 10 to 20 public sessions a week (often with leaders or instructors running them, so the cost is mostly salaries accounting for in the unit economics above).
Bootcamps closing up shop entirely should be pretty rare even if they don't do well.
First off - unit economics.
Anyone can do the math. Let's take Codesmith, because I know their structure super well, their salaries, and they have a very consistent experience.
THIS IS AN ESTIMATE FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES BASED ON MY OPINIONS AND PUBLIC JOB POSTINGS AND REPORTED SALARIES, DO NOT QUOTE THIS AS FACT
ONE COHORT: 13 weeks (cohorts overlap for 6 weeks)
1x Lead Instructor - $170K -> $20K for 6 weeks
1x Instructor - $130K -> $15K
1x Mentor - $100K -> $11.5K
3X Fellows -3X 40 hours @ $25/hour -> $18K
Admissions person - $60K -> $7K
Operations person - $70K -> $8K
Outcomes person - $70K -> $8K
Career support at $25/hour, 2 per week \* 6 weeks \* 35 students = $11K
Management (COGS only) (spread across 4 timezones, lead intstructors, director of program management, etc...): $2M ->…
Yeah I agree with a lot of that and why for a number of people 1-1 I recommend Codemsith for their situation. There's a lot of good things for the right people with the right expectations.
I don't think they are being open and transparent with candidates though. Having seen a number of info sessions and/or people who go and message me quotes or questions.
And I see people in the audience get hyped up by statements that are borderline.
Like imagine an alumni said straight up, I have no experience and I got a 120K job, you can do it by following the Codesmith way.
Then you look up the LinkedIn and see 19 years of web developer experience listed.
Then you look up the LinkedIn of the person who asked the question. Some have gold backgrounds for Codemsith, but some do not, yet they still things along the lines that he speaker and say how their reply gives them hope and they feel so much…
Two reasons.
1. Setting proper expectations
The reason I think it's important is that I've seen info sessions where employees straight up tell people that you don't need a degree or any relevant experience to get a job, followed by reading out 10 offers ranging from 80K to 170K, making it feel like anyone on Reddit reading reviews from these people can also get the same outcome.
I'm showing my observations that there's a lot more to it than just a line cook at Applebees who was good at math becoming a senior SWE in 4 months making $150K.
That people who are successful might not be aware of how background and their representation of their background massively impacts the outcomes, as the people exaggerating the most present live on camera that they aren't exaggerating or aren't benefit from their backgrounds.
The unique thing about Codesmith is that the grads who this works for, do…
I posted an update here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Probably not much new to you but if you are curious.
# UPDATE JAN 9, 2024
This is a recent follow up with non-anonymous grads that further perpetuates the observations in the original post.
Codesmith recently posted this video of recent alumni who got jobs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw)
All 3 were asked if their past experience helped them get a job. Without doxing anyone (you can watch the video), these were the response versus LinkedIn
**ENGINEER 1: Senior Software Engineer**
Response: "the company that I'm currently working for there's a lot of overlap in what my previous company was doing", "I understood their business a little bit better um so that aspect really helped me", "but yeah for from a technical standpoint I'd say Codemmith will will get your back"
**LinkedIn: 10 years+ at robotics company, 7+ years as "director of implementation" using the skills: " Py…
If you are in school do internships! If you can't get a paid internship try unpaid. If you can't find anything, volunteer with a professor or lab on campus. If you can't volunteer anywhere, try to do a "startup" or project with classmates that you launch publicly and work on daily.
How far along are you? One of my questions I haven't got answers to is how many people graduate and I think you should come back when you do and can more appropriate bring others into the program, rather than based on your first few weeks.
I'm not criticizing them here, just that without knowing the graduating rates there is logical hole in the effectiveness.
Springboard, BloomTech, and other self paced programs gave much lower graduation rates than full time bootcamps according to their outcomes data on their website that's available now.
So I would suspect TripleTen also has a fairly low graduation rate.
The reason this is important is if it's really really low then they have an incentive to make your experience the best possible until you pass financial milestones where you can't get a refund anymore and then if you ghost or disappear, or just never end up graduating, you'll pay m…
A lot of job offers have language for this - and it goes both way (i.e. you can just rescind the offer and disappear too):
This is an example excerpt:
>Your employment with the Company will be “at will,” meaning
that either you or the Company may terminate your employment at any time
and for any reason, with or without cause. Any contrary representations that
may have been made to you are superseded by this letter agreement. This is
the full and complete agreement between you and the Company on this term.
I take that as feedback because your take on my comments is not at all what was intended. I'll clarify here some things just for the record, but happy to discuss more.
1. I don't endorse or support Codesmith. Their leaders don't like and bad mouth me constantly as "the Reddit Troll" to their staff and students. Current students have messaged me telling me this.
2. I don't think Codesmith is better or worse than Tech Elevator and completely agree, different things for different people.
3. I don't have ANYTHING against TE and I recommend them often, I think my choice of language was offensive to people and I talked to the CEO (who left yesterday) briefly about this to open the door for a more amicable relationship.
4. TE moved a couple of in person cohots online in 2023 and that's what I was referring to. The magic of TE and the reason I recommend it - is their in person program and comp…
I would start with like Structy and Neet Code videos for very simple problems, not expecting to understand anything but to get your feet wet.
Then I would do a free online DS&A course from Stanford, MIT or Harvard to get a more solid theoretical explanation of how things work.
Then go back to Structy and the practice. Then go back to more courses.
BloomTech's CEO offered to finish their training for free: [https://x.com/Austen/status/1742379582064582948?s=20](https://x.com/Austen/status/1742379582064582948?s=20)
I'm not recommending that, but just sharing that. I question him if the fact that many people were on VET TEC if that impacts things.
There's this old saying: there was a business that handed every customer a $20 bill just for stopping by. They went bankrupt but EVERYONE LOVED THEM.
Nothing personal about the founders or the staff, but the business also has to work.
The Tech Elevator CEO stepped down this morning: [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7148698580101337088/](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7148698580101337088/)
I was just chatting with him last week about this comment \^\^\^ and was going to connect with someone on his team about it, so I it doesn't seem to me like this was expected.
Anyways, I stand by my commentary and Galvanize's press release that TE has become/is becoming one operational unit combined with Galvanize and Hack Reactor and the CEO stepping down is one step of that process.
Source here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anthonykehughes_today-marks-my-final-day-as-ceo-of-tech-elevator-activity-7148698580101337088-L3Kn
I was just chatting with him last week too about how TE employees weren't happy about some comments I made on Reddit about the consolidation with Hack Reactor and Galvanize and maybe more was going on being the scenes.
Anyways, he built a solid program and wish him the best.
Getting placed means getting any job, and getting a SWE job is getting a legit software engineering job that you thought you would be getting going in.
For example, if you went back to your old job as an IT technician you might count as a placement.
They removed central time as part of cutbacks (officially paused indefinitely).
Each timezones has cohorts starting every 6 or 7 weeks because the seniors mentor the juniors and it has to be in sync But between timezones they tend to stagger them but not as meticulously.
The changing narrative around becoming an engineer in 2024, an argument for taking a longer and slower journey to becoming a SWE instead of a 12-16 week bootcamp.
Before beginning I want to disclose that these are my personal opinions (I know I post here like all the time and you probably know this, but I have to disclose!) but that I'm the co-founder of mentorship platform that while isn't a bootcamp, does work with a lot of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job transitions. In some ways that might bias me want more people to go to bootcamps and this post talks about taking your time instead, but this post is my personal views on the topic.
This is a mini essay I threw together to outline some new thoughts I had. Curious to hear your thoughts. I'm not going anywhere and this is not an anti-bootcamp post. I might post something else making the case for traditional bootcamps too. Th…
Thanks for sharing your views, largely agree.
Regarding the second set of points:
1. Agree for bootcamps local can help and it's one of the reasons that Tech Elevator is on the radar despite the raw salaries being lower than say Codesmith. They have stronger in person connections in some smaller-big non-tech cities that can be a good way to get your first job.
2. \-
3. Networking is harder than it sounds and takes time. Start early. Don't just network and ask for referrals from everyone you meet. Make genuinely connections on genuine topics of interest.
4. \+1
Thanks, yeah curious how other cohorts are fairing. We're going to have to wait until early 2025 to know how 2023 people did and by then no one will care, so any information you are allowed to share is appreciated!
Can you elaborate more on the 20%? I'm following Codesmith placements and been hearing 40 to 70% estimates from people but 20% is the lowest I've heard.
I would be surprised because that was probably the worst time to graduate.
My advice is to think of the bootcamp as a fixed cost regardless of getting a job or not. You are paying for their time, effort, curriculum, and guidance and you should make a call if that is worth it or not.
You could pay me $1M to be your full time tutor for a year and I wouldn't be able to guarantee you a job.
I've heard anecotally 50% to 70%, and since we have no official numbers, it's hard to tell and just anecdotal.
I know you saw [my post](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/), and I think how those placement happens is also important.
Zooming out, I don't think 12 months is a reasonable timeframe to look at. If you go to a 12 week bootcamp for 700 hours and then spend 9 months part time 20-30 hours a week of DS&A and projects, you'll end up spending more time on materials completely unrelated to the bootcamp and the outcomes are less meaningful... but still important to know.
If you are going to pay a bootcamp 20K for 12 weeks - and maybe pay other people more after that - and to get a job in over a year, the comparisons to CS degrees, post-bacc, and community college become more relevant.
Agree with most of this too, but one note is that in late 2023 early stage (seed) startup funding INCREASED because it was the only place VCs could put money to hit target returns - as late stage valuations were tanking and IPO outcomes were not good.
So very early stage startups are actually a good place to look right now.
I'm not doubting your specific situation, but in general I think it's really hard for most people to say which path is better, since they can only experience one, the other, or both in one order.
The software industry people can make 10 to 100X more if they are exceptional, so people making say $200K after 10 years, might have made millions of dollars through a different route - most wouldn't but I know a number of people as friends and acquaintances that made 7, 8, 9, 10+ (i.e. billionaires) figures and I'm friends with a couple of billionaires too, and if there is any pattern it's that they all got extremely lucky in choosing amongst opportunities made available to them because of their CS programs at Stanford, Harvard, CMU, MIT.
Again, the right call for you is not the right call for everyone, and I'm glad the bootcamp worked out for you, but there is a lot more to the decision than…
\+10000% thanks for sharing your story here. It's just one anecdote, but it aligns with my observation as an industry veteran that the first job is just the BEGINNING. Celebrating a $120K first job and luring in more people eager to make six figures overnight is very counter productive.
The most important things you need to ask yourself when considering a bootcamp are:
1. if you are in it for the right reasons, i.e. you love problem solving
2. you see your first job as a baby step towards a lifelong journey where you will judge your own success in 10 years and not based on your first job out of the bootcamp.
3. you find the right program that will work for your style of learning and growth
I use my real name and identity here and have been here for almost 2 years and have seen so many people come and go. New accounts popup and are super active for months, then get deleted and disappear, and new ones come up.
I've seen disgruntled throwaway accounts. I've seen people super excited about their job placement get fired and disappear. I've seen people super excited BEFORE a bootcamps, only to complain after finally going through it. I've seen a lot, and I wish more people were reliable sources of information.
I'm not a gatekeeper, but objectively, one story does not prove anything in either direction, whether a good or bad outcome. If 100 people complain about outcomes, and 1 person got a job, that doesn't meant the "gatekeepers" are wrong and if you follow that logic you are setting yourself up failure.
The truth is often in the details, and Codesmith is a good example of 80% placement within 6 months turning into 70% within 12 months, is a good example of that detail. It's really not as binary as people make it seem in this sub.
An important thing to note is not so much if you will get a job but when you'll get it.
Codesmith had an 80% placement within 6 months of graduating for H1 2022 grads. And the reported, unofficial, numbers people are reporting are around 60 to 70% within 12 months for 2023 grads.
That might still be a very solid number compared to a lot of programs, and a strong reason to go there, but people in 2023 unexpectedly spent A LOT longer job hunting, and fewer people still got jobs... and the ones that did appear to be severely [exaggerating their LinkedIns](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I agree with the commenter that the top programs are still the top programs, offering the best experience , but regardless of which programs you are looking at, only sign up if you have a significantly longer time horizon for getting a…
A lot has changed since then indeed. They do still have a 110% job guarantee and they have ISAs [(that cost A LOT more than other financing options)](https://www.bloomtech.com/tuition/income-share-agreements)
First off, the market
\- The market is a lot worse right now, and it's a lot harder to find a job. You have to read the fine print about the job guarantee because while it seems too good to be true for you (and it some ways it is), the program itself can't survive if none of it's students ever pay them and in 2023 we saw every program offering ISAs move to modern ISLs because ISAs just don't work in this market.
\- BloomTech placed 30-something people with Amazon in it's inaugural backend program. The Amazon Technical Academy has had some struggles and the recruiting team there was laid off, anecdotally, they even tried to place people from the Amazon Technical Academy at OTHER C…
Well the data does show that 2023 was a rough year and there's no way to sugarcoat it and there's no silver lining - it was tough because companies have been cutting back, e.g. laying off their DEI teams, and they went back to basics for entry level hiring - i.e. sending recruiters to top tier Computer Science schools.
That said, some people get jobs!
I'm still seeing about 1 offer a day at Codesmith. Those people had an average of 11.7 months listed as "experience" from their 3-4 week long group projects though - [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
Those people haven't been posting here as much because why would you if you got your job through exaggerations. If you claimed you had 2 YOE in your resume and you…
I think there is another option, which is start faster and expect to learn over your lifetime.
I co-founded a platform that helps people in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, job transitions so I want to disclose bias and I'm not mentioning this to advertise.
If people can get a foot in the door job quickly, say about 1 year of prep/bootcamp/community college, then there is a viable path to keep leveling up over your career not through just learning on the job, but through paid, focused mentorship and training that you you return too throughout your career.
We work with a number of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, job transitions, and they absolutely have fundamental gaps in general, but we very consistently help people fill in some of those gaps in 3 to 8 months so that they can level up their jobs.
We have competitors but not many, and it's early days for where this type of thinking might…
RE: hard truths:
1. I semi-agree. I can share my personal story. I started programming at age 12 and didn't decide to be an software engineer until 10 years later. It took years before programming started to make sense and the first few attempts to learn didn't click. But at the same time I got really good grades across the board, was studious, went to the one of the hardest university programs in the world to get into, so presumably I have the "technical aptitude" but it did still take a lot of attempts of many years before programming itself clicked.
2. I see this a lot, people at less strong companies who want to go to FAANG, people at FAANG who want to go to smaller more up and coming companies, people at startups who want to go to any stable big less strong big company. There's both tremendous freedom in a lot of SWE jobs, but also tremendous responsibility, accountability. In addi…
Without coming across one side or the other, this is a terrible attitude that makes the problem worse.
You absolutely don't need these courses to get a job, but if you mock these courses as useless experiences then you have a major blind spot about computer science that will hold you back.
Getting a $150K job out of Codesmith doesn't make you better than all those CS grads who struggle to get $65K jobs.
Circumstances matter.
While you all polarize the debate, I'm going to be working on the understanding the nuances and hopefully moving the industry forward.
In Canada, community colleges are one of the best ways to get great jobs. Disney Animation has a partnership with Sheridan College that has resulted in dozens of placements. It's faster, practical, and people get jobs via apprenticeships and internships.
At the same time, the top academic people go to universities and are steered more towards academia than industry. Most end up in industry anyways, but I was pushed super hard to do my PhD and going to industry was considered a second best outcome.
Different things for different people and just like bootcamps, you want to go on the right path for the right reasons.
This is awesome! This kind of experience would be extremely impressive for those top tier roles but you'll still have to do the LC interviews. That said, I've only seen this kind of thing a handful of times when I was at Meta and it does make an impression and the recruiters will work extra hard to help you navigate the process.
For others reading this though. The internship experience at top tier companies helps in building a successful product like this and it's why those internships are so convetted. It's also why the top tier companies what to see internships on resumes - not for gatekeeping but because this a proxy signal for people that can do this kind of thing.
I have a general engineering degree and was mostly self taught in terms of web development. I did do dozens of computer science fundamental "academic" courses though, and I did internships in schools.
I don't represent all CS grads, nor do I represent bootcamp grads, but just by 2 cents opinion...
When you spend 4 years doing a few dozens computer science courses, internships, compete tooth and nail for top tier tech jobs out of college, etc... it feels unbelievable that someone with no programming experience can get the same job, or as Codesmith claims "mid level and senior" jobs, after 12 to 16 weeks of bootcamp.
And it's not unfounded. It's just impossible to cover the same breadth a top tier CS degree does and if you have some internships under your belt that's even more of a gap. My peers find it super offensive a bootcamp grad with zero experience wants them to refer them as a "…
Codesmith doesn't want you to lie or tell you lie, but there are patterns: https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/
Can you DM me more about this? I had some Twitter back and forths with Austen asking about the Amazon program and what it's status is and he skirted around talking about it.