I saw him do a lecture where he makes a mistake on purpose. I saw someone else do the same lecture. Both people acted like it was just a mistake they did by accident, and was EXTREMELY performative.
Comments to me have ranges from: 'he's rusty himself but he's good teacher' to 'he just one of the first codesmith grads and he can't code at all himself at this point but fakes it for lectures'
I worked at Facebook for a long time and know about fake news so I try really hard to look at things from different angles and present things fairly. I'm open about my personal opinions about two aspects of Codesmith that I think are wrong, but I also look at everything else impartially.
RE: that comment. It's true but it's like being a 5th grader playing soccer with 1st graders... that person is probably the best at soccer, but if you are a grown up, you probably shouldn't be judging your soccer skills against kids, you want to find adult games to play. i.e being one of the best of a lot of not-good options doesn't necessarily mean much, but it is true.
This is why I've been here for almost two years now trying to tell people HOW IT IS. A lot of people have gone there knowing this and done well and I've helped them decide to go there, but you need to know what you are signing up for or you feel scammed and that's why Codesmith is so polarizing.... it attracts people who have no idea what they are in for but are ambitious and want the best outcomes, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
I've heard far more complaints from staff members than students/alumni have complained. A lot of students/alumni have found him motivational because he's given them the confidence to lie on resume and feel entitled to do so and it all came from his lectures about OSLabs and imposter syndrome. Staff seeing those lectures feel very cringy now and it's one of the reasons there is so much churn in instruction yet no one feels capable of giving him that feedback.
Yeah good point, the angle I'm coming from is about people just understanding where they are at and not being misled into believing something that's not right.
I do have two personal opinions about Codesmith that are my opinions (and while backed by others I do personally state):
1. The majority of grads lie on their resumes about their OSP projects and Codesmith's sister non profit signs letters of reference to back that up. I think that harms people who don't lie.
2. They make people believe they are mid level and senior engineers by the end of Codesmith and I don't believe this is accurate at the top tier company bar. I don't deny people get 2nd level engineering roles and good salaries, but I think the portrayal as "mid level and senior" is the wrong narrative, and that people should be getting appropriate junior roles AT TOP COMPANIES with the right setup, support and structure to…
So there are a number of bootcamps well regarded:
Codesmith, Rithm, Launch School, are a few I know.
The problem is one thing: **you have to know HOW THEY WORK and which is the RIGHT ONE FOR YOU.** I know a number of people going into Codesmith who know what they are in for and know all the OPs points and that's what they want to do, and they get good jobs.
Codesmith is NOT the program for a random person finding this subreddit and seeing $120K and 👀👀👀 💰💰💰 sign me up type mentality.
While that's a bit of hyperbole, it's also not for people who are woo'd by the feel-good and welcoming aspect of the staff they work with pre-acceptance who don't really know how this thing works but have "good vibes". You need to know how it works regardless of how much you like the people.
It's heating up, the comment voting is wild. You can see when highly voted comments are ranked lower than others that there is intense downvoting going on. The OP's post is actually going DOWN.
The OP made accurate points that can't be refuted so I think the strategy is downvote and ignore because commenting things like "I went to Codesmith, it changed my life" can't refute these points about HOW it actually works, no one should be doubting their solid outcomes compared to other bootcamps. But commenting will just snowball the post and cause it garner more eyeballs.
+1. I know my main college classes were taught by legit professors but a lot of tutorials and stuff were TAs who were PhD students.
I think the difference is that at Codesmith even the lead instructors went to Codesmith and haven't been SWEs yet.
I mean alumni who are working in industry to the career support stuff. They just aren't super super senior engineers who have had strong trajectories and track records hiring and helping people grow, so their words are taken disproportionately.
Someone I know closely was told to "practice their buzzwords" by one of the mock interviewers.
I mean the way staff have framed this to me is that the leaders genuinely think Codesmith is the best and is a very special place (which I would also describe as a special place and one of the better bootcamps) but that has resulted in what some people perceive as arrogance. The wild success they've had and lack of outside investors, no growth mindset, and the fact that all their technical people went to Codesmith themselves results in decisions being made completely blindly to how most companies do things.
They have this Senior Advisor that the CEO can't stop racing about who I dug into and has some inconsistencies about his past company's claimed acquisition. Yet the CEO might be completely blind to what this stuff means because he doesn't have anyone around him that can advise on this.
This is an advantage when things go well and it will be a major disadvantage when they don't.
They have good unit economics so they'll just shrink instead of shutting down They already laid off 18% of staff and shutdown a cohort.
I'm super concerned about some upcoming stuff they have floated in 2024 though that might break those good unit economics if not done well.
I'm connected with thousands of ex-Meta members and most people in this bucket are intentionally waiting for their perfect oppotunities. 10 years at Meta === a wild adventure, and you get to be selective about what you want to do next.
This is a great point but also needs to be applied the other direction too. If someone says 'wow Codesmith is incredible and I got an amazing job in the hot market', you don't see as many people saying 'keep in mind, it's a hot market, not Codesmith' (except me hahahaha)
Thanks for sharing openly how you feel. I receive a lot of similar messages from people who don't have the courage to post (they are typically in the program or more recent grads and concerned about retaliation or being shunned)
Opinion words aside like "not very skilled" and "scam" the factual statements you make are extremely consistent with what I hear and I try really hard to present on here in my comments as fact-based and transparent as possible.
I get attacked, I'm sure this comment will get attacked too, but all I'm doing is repeating the very clear patterns I'm being told/sent/shown/seeing with my own eyes.
+1 bootcamps don't change fast enough. Like Codemsith hired a few more career support engineers (part time alumni who do zoom calls) and advertise that as massive changes to the market conditions. Bootcamps have such rigid structure and the good ones have scaled that structure well and they don't know what massive change overnight really means.
Changes at HR to add part time and beginner courses were business driven, what changes could they make to increase enrollment and not increase outcomes.
There's not much you can do in a market that doesn't want to hire bootcamp grads with no experience, other than teach people to stretch the truth and make their resumes look experienced to try to squeeze your way into jobs you aren't qualified for. I'm speaking about systematically approaching the market. I actually feel INDIVIDUALS with no experience can find creative ways of leveraging past ex…
Thanks for sharing.
Why did you choose this bootcamp of all bootcamps?
Interesting that a successful AMA didn't 100 upvotes and dozens of comments on the first day.
We don't have those ISAs anymore but yeah pretty much but usually these are a few years apart. If someone is laid off we will consider the circumstances and where the person is at that point time.
Nothing's perfect but an audit and having independent eyes on something can't hurt. I just think it's super important that everything is interpreted with critical thinking instead of "it's audited so it's must be good"
At Formation (we aren't a bootcamp or school and CIRR doesn't work for us) but we have a 95%ish completion on our rigid success form because we work with people intensely until they get a job.
The fact that it's so hard to gather outcomes from people is a sign that the longer and longer time goes by post-bootcamp, the less and less the bootcamp has anything to do with the outcome. And the fact that the more time goes by the harder and harder that gets, is also notable for this.
My 2 cents against using the 12 month window for placements, but that's a whole other discussion haha.
Thanks! Yeah I think beefing up the spec around how salary and jobs are verified would help... I think it's really reasonable that programs try everything to report outcomes from people who ghost, but I think students would find it interesting to know the tactics used. Like having instructors message ghosted people and offer them things or leverage their friendships to try to get any kind of placement info to use for CIRR.
Maybe CIRR could make the reporting form a single official document that all students need to submit for the information to count and bootcamps are required to use this form. Instead of casual texts with a buddy you mentored who graduated and gathering their salary that way.
Codesmith students often put their group project as a company and some people don't label that as unpaid work. I have asked dozens of recruiters I asked who mistook these for real companies (and only a handful who didn't!)
Would these projects get picked up as companies by an auditor for LinkedIn verification? The auditors presumably have even less context than industry recruiters, unless they aren't really independent and get more context from Codesmith, no?
Anyways, I'm not sure how much you personally look at audits and maybe this is more of a question for Codesmith directly.
Sad but the end of the year is approaching. Companies are looking at 2024 budgets and realizing they aren't going to make it to 2025 without changes.
I appreciate how difficult layoffs are for those impacted by them, but they are typically a last resort to prevent the other 75+% of people from being laid off and it might be the only option.
That sounds like you had a solid interview experience where they took the time to get to know you and your code, and that's not what people typically do. Phil at Codesmith repeatedly tells residents that "no one looks at your code" in a way to justify the exaggerations.
But I'm specifically talking about SWE work experience and canonical top tier tech roles. There could be tech jobs where you leverage former backgrounds to get a better offer or better fit, **if you have zero SWE experience you are a junior engineer no matter what your title is and recognizing that is important for your career growth and trajectory.**
More importantly, I'm speaking about trends at the level of dozens/hundreds/low thousands of people AND over one's entire career, and not individuals at a point in time. There are always exceptions and one offs and everyone's journey is unique.
Me personally, I can't compete in any interview requiring understanding of specific algorithms at that level. If you are preparing for these companies you need to prepare for all of these topics as the TABLESTAKES, and then you need to also learn how to interview well using those skills. If you fail to do that, you won't pass no matter how much you know.
1. Analytical problem solving
2. Technical communication
3. Engineering approach
4. Non-technical communication
5. JavaScript and programming experience
Hi, it's confusing because both are true. Going forward and long term, we're going to need more and more engineers. For example, law firms will start hiring engineers to build tools and AI instead of hiring paralegals.
But in the current market, engineers with 2+ YOE are getting interviews and great jobs, and people with no experience are having a much harder time.
I think it's very likely that with interest rates as they are and the fundraising environment as it is, that the top companies will continue to hire experienced engineers. However, engineers moving up the food-chain might make some openings for more junior engineers at the companies those people are coming from, and competition is tough.
It makes a lot of sense people aren't giving up decent jobs to change careers right now. I think it makes sense to go to a bootcamp as a just a part of a long journey to becoming an engin…
Yeah I think bootcamps in Canada face an uphill battle because of cheaper college tuition and strong community colleges as alternatives.
I'm from Canada originally and left college debt free from a top school by just doing summer internships.
Well this is unfortunate, but at least the CEO explained it more clearly than the last cuts they had in that leaked Zoom call.
I'm a bit disappointed they portrayed everything as fine during that call when it clearly wasn't fine.
1. The company is Fanzter not Coolspotters (this is an app they built under their company Fanzter)
2 The cofounder went back to ESPN at the end of 2012 well before they were "acquired"
3. Court records show they were sued in earlier 2014 for copyright infringement
4. Then they liquidated and shut down
5. Pitchbook (the paid more legit crunchbase says they shut down from bankruotcy/liquidation)
I asked people who worked at ESPN at the time that I know and didn't receive a comment.
What I think happened is the founder was acquired back by ESPN (from where he left, and a branch of Disney was the main investor in the new company) and the company failed and was either acquired to shut it down or it was a acquihire.
/u/CI-AI, happy to provide court records
We haven't had a Canadian FAANG placement for a while but the most recent one this year was about 2 to 3 YOE.
In the US 2YOE is the magic number right now for FAANG interviews but the gears are turning for them.
I don't have a pulse on in Canada FAANG jobs but the usual suspects aren't doing a ton of hiring right now unfortunately.
I suggest people approach the traditional remote companies that have a presence in Canada, like Okta, Gitlab, 1Password as a starting point. But things change all the time!
We don't have that many Canadians but they are definitely all over the place and typically lower than in the US.
Some points:
1. The market in Canada is MUCH LOWER COMPENSATION than in the USA, the salaries are maybe 30 ro 40% lower and don't increase as rapidly as you get promoted.
2. We're see a combination of people getting FAANG-level jobs in Canada, working for startups in Canada, and doing remote jobs in the USA, but I don't see any clear patterns or trends (too few people overall), and I don't think anyone can come in expecting any specific outcome.
3. My typical stance is that you should come to Formation and pay to be able to **confidently** walk into a Google interview and feel good about your performance (in DS&A, System Design, Behaviorals) and I feel comfortable saying that in ANY MARKET we as-close-to-guarantee-that-as-legally-possible that if you meet our entry bar, we c…
Yeah their founder did Hack Reactor and their other founding partner claims to have a company acquired by Disney that didn't quite check out from my investigation (the domain is now a porn website which I can't imagine Disney would have allowed haha from my interactions with them.
Formation isn't a bootcamp but rather a mentorship platform for experienced people looking to level up their careers and prepare for interviews.
We do accept Canadians actually but I don't know if anything equivalent that is Canada based (or really anywhere, it's a fairly unique thing)
The program is Codesmith. They have a high bar but most people have zero work experience and get mid level roles. The typical grad does so by lying about the length of their experience and the program itself has a non profit sister company sign off on letters of reference to confirm them.
I agree it's impossible and all of my coworkers agree, but was curious about your opinion too.
+1 to the job is just the beginning. How do you feel about bootcamps claiming to help grads get mid level and senior roles in this market and claiming that the people do so well at them that 100% of grads get raises.
I only talked to one person and I think they alternated once or twice but don't know. Just like any job interview though, ask the admissions person before - they get bonuses if they fill the cohort so they have an incentive to help you!
\+1 to this, I tell this story all the time but I get pushback often.
Bootcamp grads have been exaggerating experience on paper to get through the funnels or get trained that they have "imposter syndrome" that's blocking them from getting a job, but once you start the job you are **lacking fundamentals** and you can't get those in 12 weeks and you can't hustle your way to make up for it.
If you are the cream of the crop bootcamp grad, you might be able to get by on your job through hustle, but you will eventually be limited by lacking the fundamentals - unless you learn them on your own on the job or on the side.
They want to see your collaboration and communication. Be a good partner and not a good individual.
My hunch is they might have had some concerns about your communications Either you didn't talk enough or you talked too much and weren't getting social cues or something.
Codesmith fit is really critical. They are selecting for people who have 5 traits and then steering them towards high paying jobs but you have to have those traits to start with or you won't be one of those 120K people.
I argue this often but all the Stanford CS grads I know have 10 offers and red carpet treatment during the CURRENT new grad hiring season RIGHT NOW.
So if you are calling yourself the "best bootcamp", as numerous Codesmith leaders and staff unabashfully do - both internally and externally, then you have to compare yourself to the best.
If Stanford were to compare itself to all the for-profit online schools, it would be apples to oranges.
And comparing Codesmith to programs with no or lower entrance bars is also apples to oranges.