\+1 to past background being incredibly important, and there are a wide range of things that can be helpful there.
Being an engineer isn't like an official badge you have or don't have and people's past experiences are critically important to their individual journeys
Yeah agree with a lot of this too.
Given that you were successful in a rough market, do you mind sharing:
1. Your background before the bootcamp?
2. How many others are getting offers on that timeframe / if you feel like an edge case, or if you feel like the common outcome that anyone should expect.
3. How did you get interviews in this climate? Did you have to embellish your resume to get through resume screens or did you rely on your past experience?
Oh yeah 100% agree on the practices. I also watch a lot of cult documentaries and in my opinion, there are some similarities in the tools cults use and the tools boot camps use (obviously not saying they intentionally use these and might just be accidentally doing them because they work at creating close communities) but in completely my opinion, I see some similarities when I watch some of these documentaries.
I was making a legal argument and I stand by that legally it would be hard to say anything is an MLM.
In my opinion, WeWork is a good analogy for many bootcamps. It's like a crazy strong internal culture, cultivated external brands, companies not run super well internally, and a business model that doesn't work so well.
I asked ChatGPT for you and this was the response:
>After a quick search, here's what I found.
I found several companies that meet your criteria of being remote-first, hiring bootcamp grads, and not focusing on Leetcode-style questions in interviews.
Companies Not Focusing on Leetcode-Style Questions:
Slack
Stripe
Lyft's Mobile Team
Glassdoor
DuckDuckGo
Samsara
Segment
Airtable
Buffer
Dollar Shave Club
Garmin
Gemini
Loom
Lob
Mozilla
PagerDuty
Sourcegraph
Zapier
Zenefits (UI Team)
Webflow
These companies are known for their alternative interview processes that emphasize practical coding skills, real-world problem-solving, and technical discussions rather than algorithmic puzzles typical of Leetcode.
Companies Hiring Bootcamp Grads:
Access Development
Granicus
Progressive Insurance
Eventbrite
Cisco
Sony Pictures
The Honest Co…
Hi, thanks for sharing thoughts. I have a few questions if you don't mind sharing, or if you don't know that's fine, but some members of the community were curious about. I've talked to people there and have some more insight but I'm asking these questions based on questions that have floated my way, and not trying to get answers myself.
First off though I think the flexibility is a great trait for both Triple Ten and Springboard, but the downside of programs that publish graduation rates is that the rates are much lower as a result of the flexibility.
**1.Do you have a sense of how many people you started with have dropped out so far, or how many people end up graduating? There isn't a good or bad number here, it's just useful to know.**
Second, a number of people I've talked to who are based in North America have talked about all of the mentors and support being overseas, and having…
Why this being downvoted so much?
I just asked ChatGPT and it gave almost the exact same answer, same tone, same content.
Kind of makes me feel like I should just use ChatGPT more lol
I completely agree that looking both completion rate AND placement rates is super critical. The odds of getting a job are the odds of graduating X the placement rate, and not JUST the placement rate.
Some more data:
Springboard is another self-paced program and has similar reported results in their [main SWE program](https://ddf46429.springboard.com/uploads/resources/1698344646_Performance_Fact_Sheet_SEC_10.2023.pdf) and their [Career Track program](https://ddf46429.springboard.com/uploads/resources/1698344418_Performance_Fact_Sheet_SEC_prep_10.2023.pdf)
About 7 to 15% "on time" completion rates in 2021.
Their completed within 150% is better at 25 to 55% or so, which is still like flipping a coin that you will finish the program within 150% of the published time.
On the other hand if you are one of the lucky people to graduate quickly, there IS a high chance of getting a job reporte…
I agree they are just one tool and each person will use them differently. But they are also an expensive tool that tie their legitimacy to their job outcomes.
I am super strong proponent that a bootcamp should be judged by the quality of the education and experience that it provides and in the provable skill gains it produces, rather than job outcomes.
If someone wants to pay $20K to level up as a stepping stone, and then spend up to 12 months finding a job, and are satisfied, that's great. A very large number of people I talk to expect a job out of a bootcamp, and I think in 2023 people started realizing that they shouldn't be expecting that anymore - but the bootcamps that are hanging on continue to publish job outcomes reports to validate themselves.
NuCamp gets some flak for publishing satisfaction reports instead of job reports but I actually agree with this in spirit. I'm not j…
I've spent some time digging into a few MLMs (NuSkin, Vorwerk, Herbalife, LuLaRue, J.Hilburn) and have MLM documentaries on rotation along with many other types of content haha.
This is my personal opinion -
This isn't an MLM for these reasons:
1. People are paying for a service, receive that service, and assuming the service is legit, you are receiving some kind of valuable education for the cost.
2. Students aren't joining with the main goal of being promoted up the chain or receiving commissions themselves in the future after there training. They are joining to hopefully leave immediately after graduating.
3. No instructor above them is getting a commission from the people they brought into the system.
4. Instructor compensation isn't directly tied to the individual performance of people they brought in.
5. In the vast majority of cases, successful instructors want to leave the sy…
Sorry, my words were directed at everyone reading this and not entirely at you personally and I should ahve been clearer about that.
You can read this multi paragraph, multi post thread about someone accusing me of disingenuously trying to TAKE DOWN Codesmith: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18ivago/comment/kdio4ob/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18ivago/comment/kdio4ob/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
This is just one example, but I'm getting the heat from both sides.
cc /u/InTheDarkDancing
Hmm this link: [https://practicum-content.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/usa-main/Outcomes\_Report\_2022.pdf](https://practicum-content.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/usa-main/Outcomes_Report_2022.pdf) seems to work.
Hi, thanks for sharing too, I didn't talk about this in the post, but I expect more people to want to do part time programs and slower paced programs. Because of the market, it's very hard to quit your job and spend 3 months 12 hours a day at a bootcamp with job prospects that change day to day and seem unpredictable.
That said, part time programs (like Springboard and TripleTen) have much lower completion rates of people who start (Springboard 2021 report, TripleTen dropout rates anecdotally reported to me but not officially confirmed), because of changing life circumstances, interests, goals, and all kinds of reasons that are often not the program itself's fault (and sometimes are too...)
So I see the trend of what people are asking for shifting to more part time and more self paced but there is also a need for intense immersion.
Anyways, these are random thoughts, and I don't have…
Every single person I've worked with on DS&A has different struggles and paths to get to the "aha" moments when everything clicks, so there isn't just one way to learn or practice DS&A that works for everyone, therefore I have a few things you can consider:
1. Look at Structy, a lot of people find it useful for practicing on their own
2. Find a YouTuber that whose style and content you like
3. Do a free online course like CS50 or a Stanford DS&A course
Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of a company that does mentorship, practice, and benchmarking for DS&A, System Design and other areas. It's very expensive and it's not a program for people when starting out with DS&A and I'm therefore not recommending it - the recommendations above are my person suggestions, I have no affiliation with them.
Did you read the post? I have basically being harassed on both sides. When I saw something good about Codesmith, people accuse me of being paid off and a shill. When I say something bad about them, I'm accused of secretly trying to take them down.
I'm not intimidated by bullies and facts are facts and the truth is the truth, but if all that's left here are trolls, there might not be much point in trying to share my perspective.
Hmm, I don't know much about that specific interview, that's new since I left. But I would still checkout videos here: [https://atscaleconference.com/?s=machine+learning](https://atscaleconference.com/?s=machine+learning) as supplemental.
(I realize this comment might attract all kinds of haters from all sides but please understand that I'm trying to give this person good advice for them and it's in my opinion a neutral comment, with no ulterior motives. I've been getting harassed with downvote campaigns and trolls for the past two weeks after posting about Codesmith's recent placements, so please read the content and evaluate it fairly before downvoting this or making a snarky comment)
Codesmith indeed is a lot of work to get into but if you are already working in a stable job, then putting in that work will definitely be worth it if Codesmith is the right program for you. It will be a waste of time if it's not. So the question I think you should answer first is is Codesmith the right program for you, and if it is, put in the work, and if it isn't, I would encourage choosing another program.
Some context that it sounds…
/u/CI-AI I talked to one of the final two employees at Fanzter who told me all of the details. I don't want to type it out in public right now because I have to spent more time than I have putting clear references in place, but feel free to DM me to chat informally. The TLDR is that Disney had no interest in Fanzter Inc. or their flagship app Coolspotters but Disney did purchase some IP from Fanzter Inc with the intention of 'repaying their investors' as the company was shutting down and they wanted to hire the final CEO and another engineer. The person didn't know who Eric was and had to look him up because he left long before any of this and from this person's point of view, wasn't involved in the acquisition.
Yeah Codesmith is a place where people intentionally delay their job hunt start date to teach and many of those people find that time both challenging and useful.
\- They are paid about $50K a year, which is much lower than the $120K job expected at Codesmith, but people see it as continued learning and don't mind the "lower" pay.
\- The time windows for CIRR get bumped until the end of the TA-ship
\- A handful of these people get hired as full time mentors, paid $80K to $100K and have a pathway to becoming an instructor paid at $120Kish if an opportunity arrises.
So this is a very unique pathway but one that Codesmith has gotten working like a machine and it's been critical, in my opinion, to helping them scale very well.
They (Harvard and MIT) are trying to reboot a new version of EdX again as a non profit: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/3/31/axim-nonprofit-harvard-mit/
Do you know if they actually had 50K grads over 10 years or students sign up? From anecdotal (no data) comments, a couple people expressed that they felt like a large percentage of the cohort dropped out before graduating.
It's based on the experience level and how much work we think you need based on your benchmark. The longer you are at Formation, the more money we spend mentoring you, so if you need more work, the fee is higher.
I need to reiterate emphatically that Formation is not a "program" and what you do will be different from what everyone else does (like the same topics and skills, but completely different pacing and focus areas).
So we want the fees to be based on how much delta we think you have to getting to the top-tier bar and to pay a fair amount based on what others with similar background and starting point are paying.
Generally speaking if you have several years of SWE work experience, maybe an interview or two on the horizon, you'll be on the lower side and less than a year of contract/internship/freelancing on the higher side - most people in the middle. We only take people with un…
Hi, I can share what I've seen on this. I've worked with a lot of people who have worked at their bootcamps, other bootcamps, both immediately after, and part time later on while they start their job.
Everyone has their own reasons but these are the patterns I've seen, anecdotal and I don't have meaningful raw data:
1. To make money while job hunting. If you are expecting a long job hunt anyways why not make some extra money along the way.
2. Re-review the materials and solidify them. Most people feel like the bootcamp is a whirlwind and they like being able to re-review (in order to teach) the materials again.
3. Get resume experience. Yes it might be framed as "software engineer" work and that's probably what you are referring to, but others will frame it as an instructor or mentoring role and anything on the resume helps.
4. Because they like teaching. Some people like to teach and…
I commented below with my response about this commenter repeatedly trolling me for almost two years now about me and my intentions, I've warned the person against misrepresenting me several times so I'm happy to clear up their claims about me.
Facts are facts and you should follow provable facts and check their sources instead of random people on Reddit that you don't know.
There are a lot of scam things in this subreddit but this looks fairly legit and the person's LinkedIn is legit and sharing a consistent message.
I'm not endorsing or not endorsing, just pointing out that this doesn't seem to be one of the scam posts.
Good luck!
I don't work at Le Wagon whatsoever, but I care about sourcing data.
I worked at FB during the fake news era and I see a lot of potential problems in this sub with the way information is reported and then believed.
I always assume good intention, just like at FB fake news, most people have good intention (not all, but most), but I just ask for sources and warn people from making decisions from one person's story.
Since you are sharing something that is fairly negative it would be good to source it better or at least acknowledge that the authenticity isn't confirmed.
I would do Atlassian because it's real SWE internship that will either result in a return offer, or be helpful in getting an internship next summer.
From my experience, if you do Google STEP and don't get a return offer (I have no idea how common that is or not or if it's possible) that just having Google STEP on your resume won't look quite as solid as Atlassian SWE
But that said, you're in a good spot to have this choice and if you put your heart into either one I'm sure you'll do great next summer too.
Can you comment if you think my edit is clearer what I said? I never intended to make any judgement calls and just want to present things reasonably.
If you still disagree I'm happy to adjust again.
Thanks for sharing. I think the honest and 'telling-how-it-is' tone is refreshing to see and I personally appreciate you for taking this approach in explaining the outcomes. I think it helps people understand the program better and if it's a good fit for them.
I believe the program is free/paid for by the city of NY
[https://www.codesmith.io/new-program](https://www.codesmith.io/new-program)
The name "Future Code" was used offline in a public session, which seems to be this: [https://www.nyc.gov/site/sbs/careers/tech-training.page](https://www.nyc.gov/site/sbs/careers/tech-training.page)
I'm using FAANG to mean "top tier leading technology companies" as opposed to like a companies in other industries that hire engineers.
Does that change anything?
I agree FAANG is not the measure of success, and not is money made.
I was under the impression that people could still go in if they wanted for a while but that stopped this or year. Not a huge deal but happy to correct if you feel this is wrong.
Look at how much you judge me because of who I am and how much information you have about me to judge me, and how little information you have about anonymous accounts.
Yet I've observed (correct me if I'm wrong) that you judge brand new accounts that criticize Codesmith - as take it with a grain of salt, who knows it is. Brand new accounts that promote Codesmith - they have to do this so they don't get DOX'd and criticzed.
You have every right to decide how you want to judge people and for what behaviors and traits you want. But you aren't making those judgements based on transparent information and might be getting manipulated as a result. You know I am me. You don't know that one of those new accounts that said they got a job after a rought job hunt and have no prior experience actually had 13 years of part time web developer experience on their resume (someone who self-doxed in thei…
You should read my post!!! Of the 52 people who reported offers over that period of time, 92% of them looked like they had relevant experience and the average reported was just under 12 months of experience for their 3 week long projects.
Their CEO said this week in an info session: 'The longer people take in the job hunt the higher their salaries, not because they get more experience but they get more practice and better at telling their story' .
So those entries on their resumes accumulate and people then get interviewed for roles that require more experience.
Codesmith is a place that has a high bar and requires a certain type of person to be accepted. The graduates are extremely ambitious, hard working, and well spoken and professional.
"FAANG canonical levels" are just the leveling system that the majority of TECH industry currently adopts. So if you want to be an engineer in the tech industry, you should be familiar those levels or you'll have trouble navigating the industry, even if you use other names yourself. Other industry use other words, like in the banking industry you can be a "Vice President Engineer" which is a tech industry "senior". But if want to be in the tech industry and you insist on a vice president title you'll struggle to navigate (from what I've seen for exactly the Vice President case while I was at Facebook)
My advice has been extremely consistently to get a an appropriate job for your experience and skills and then over-perform and have steady career growth from there. The levels don't matter, it just so happens that no bootcamp gives you the experience needed to go beyond entry level. If yo…
Their website says $127,500 from their H1 2022 CIRR report, and they have a blog post showing that 2023 salaries in the $110K to $125K average range, so I'm quoting the numbers that are fairly well backed by evidence.
You can read my post in my comment for how those outcomes happen because there's more to it than just that one number.
I don't have any affiliation with Codesmith but used them for two specific examples because I did a little deep dive recently here: [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/)
Can you elaborate more what you mean by disingenuous?
I'm certainly bias, as are we all, and hope to disclose biases and wish everyone else did too, but I'm more than happy to clarify what you think is disingenous about the post.
In full transparency I was concerned that this post would look self-promoting for my company, because we're building a scalable platform that solves a lot of the scaling problems of bootcamps and even though we are absolutely not a bootcamp alternative (and have no plans to be anytime soon) but years down the road we co…
Hi, I would recommend doing things where you can meet other people, like open source, in person networking events or groups, hackathons, continuing group projects and ideally launching them publicly and getting users.
The job hunt is hardest for those that apply to 500 jobs from their bedroom by themselves while doing LeetCode all day alone.
Oh shoot, I wrote this before that was announced this week and meant to add a sentence into number 3, but it falls in line with the mid level prediction and just added more confidence that that will stabilize and rebound over a longer portion of 2024.
Entry level hiring will pick up when mid-level supply starts running out and companies become more willing to hire to near people and invest in their mentorship, so it will come maybe in the second half of the year?
I agree with this. My arguments about the business nature of bootcamps is that they can't actually scale because of the business models we've seen so far. If something works for 100 people you can't just multiple every job by 10 to get to 1000 people but you can multiple it by 4 to get to 400.
The closest thing we saw was BloomTech hitting 2 to 3K students in a given year at peaks and maybe Edx/Trilogy. Both have had very hard problems because of this. And both have shrunk since peaking. I don't think we'll see any bootcamp hit five figure annual students in the current forms/business models.
Thanks for clarifying, I'll edit that word. I was speaking to the company operations, not the program, but I agree that especially given the audience that this is not the right phrasing. As in it went from a separate subsidiary to effectively one of several brands on top of a common core with many fewer staff on the surface doing all the unique things that make the brand special, like the maintaining those signed and office 900 hiring partnerships that are unique to Tech Elevator.
2024 Bootcamp Predictions Mega Post. Revisiting my 2023 prediction post and exploring what I see ahead for 2024. 2023 was a rough year for bootcamps and the future doesn't look great for traditional programs - 2024 will be a year of caution, but I'm optimistically excited to see what happens!
Hi all 👋 for those that don't know me, I'm Michael, daily commenter here for about two years. Congratulations to the sub on hitting 40K members today! It was around 10K when I first joined!
**Background**
I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform and work with a large number of bootcamp grads later on in their careers in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, job transitions. Before this I worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2017 as it grew from 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and leveled up from an intern to an E7 principal engineer in about 5-6 years. I did over 450 interviews of everything from interns to dire…
I agree a lot with this point, but I think there is value of all sides and often say reality is usually somewhere in between.
The most important thing is to have well sourced and correct information, otherwise people can't make good calls. If you have something from two people, say it's from two people. If you have a complete data set, say it's a complete data set, and have integrity in what you put out there.
The challenge with the bootcamp market is that bootcamps (which as for profit businesses they have every right to) are in the other camp, where they make things sound the best possible and it's good to see more sides of things.
For example, CIRR decided to remove all their reports on their website and delayed publishing of 2022 reports so they can publish longer placement windows. You can argue this is a good decision for transparency, but in the mean time, Codesmith had their…
This is correct, the OP didn't properly quote the price. Formation's unlimited packages are currently $**7500 to $13500 flat fee**s and you receive continuous technical mentorship and support until you get a job, which might be months or over a year, and it's significantly cheaper than many bootcamps for the amount of time for most people.
Formation is not me doing mentorship. We have a team of two dozen people who are building a platform and product that supports dynamic mentorship by giving you practice, benchmarks, and 3-5 person or 1-1 sessions with over 200 industry mentors (who are individual engineers and recruiters, many of whom are seniors plus engineers).
We have thousands of tasks you can do, hundreds of sessions across dozens of types, over a dozen mock interview types.
I'm not involved in the actual technical skill side nor do I run sessions, I build the platform and I help people that typically have senior or staff FAANG interviews with advice on preparation and helping navigate the job hunt process.
This reply is mostly for other people reading it to clarify what Formation is and that it has very little to do with me. Sophie is the founder who steers the direction of the company, she's just not on Reddit…
Hi, I wrote a more through reply about Formation on the thread but didn't answer these questions yet, so I'll do my best here:
\- How many paying customers ever? I don't want to give the exact amount for competitive reasons, nor do I have it right now, but it's the high 3 figures / low end of 4 figures of people who have been accepted and joined
\- It takes people about 6 to 8 months (it's gotten longer in the weaker 2023 market) on average to find a job, but the range is very large because of these factors:
1. We work with people who usually have 1+ years of SWE work experience but it varies from 0 to 20+ and people with 0 come in with no interviews in sight and the people with 2+ or more come with with interviews lined up.
2. People do Formation part time on their own schedule and put in whatever time they can, so it takes people variable amounts of time to find a job based on thei…
Yeah for the "infra" interview really focus on scaling infra, like how newsfeed scales, how photo storage scales, site integrity stuff, etc...
If anyone else sees this, look at the product stuff for the product interview