The person is indeed a senior swe at a big 2nd/3rd tier company and got the job out of Codesmith.
The company has incredibly high churn because people use it as a feeder to FAANG and it's known to pay higher salaries to try to keep people as a result. It's a great place to go out of a bootcamp but I wouldn't celebrate is an an endgame role unless it happens to be the environment for you. And this person can likely be making $500K at a FAANG company if they took the jump and approached it right.
This person also listed their OSP as 1 year 11 months of work experience, didn't specify it was open source or a project on their profile and their GitHub contributions were 44 commits over 4 weeks. I guess my math is bad but somehow that = 2 years???
If you are judging peope by how much money they make in as little time as possible, you are not setup to make 7 or 8 figures down the road in as little as a few years. You're going to be limiting yourself if you think you are truly better than most other people here for going to Codesmith an making $300K out of it and Codesmith is not equiped to help people like you get there.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
\+1 there is a common pattern of Codesmith comments that get 10 or more upvotes in < 30 mins. I had evidence shared with me of a senior leader asking people to comment on a thread, and it's really sad that it happens, and they blame declining enrollment on anything but their leadership and just have stern talks with admissions people and pay them extra money to fill cohorts.
Maybe professional atheletes using steroids is a good analogy. Like Codesmith has a really high bar to the average resident is quite strong already, and the lying is like doing steroids for that extra boost. Not everyone does it, but even some of the best do... and just like professional athletes, they do it because "everyone else is" and lose track of why we're all SWEs to begin with.
Hi, I highly recommend you settle into the job first and feel good for about six months and then talk to someone in our team about your next goals and see if it's a good fit. In this market, having 2+ YOE (like legit work) is ideal for opening up doors and starting six months before then would be ideal, but ultimately depends on your goals and the exact current job you have and happy to chat more to give more personal advice.
The documentation says not to lie, means that their guides and docs and presentations tell people not to lie. It's awkwardly one of the FIRST THINGS they tell people.
The background checks? So they have a sister charity called OSLabs Inc. A member of that charity (who also happens to be Codesmiths chief academic officer) will do background checks for your work with the charity.
The thing is the "charity work" is really the 3 week long OSP group project. However I have first hand direct video evidence of an employee saying that the charity will sign letters of reference for your entire time at Codesmith, and longer if you "keep working on the project". A lot of people claim on their resume they did this for 6 to 18 months (as they continue job hunting) but almost no one actually had any involvement after their 3 weeks.
NOTE: Part time people spend longer on their OSP's because it's pa…
Everyone doesn't do this because, as I said above, most people have higher ethical standards. Codesmith grads believe they have imposter syndrome so their resume reflects their 'true potential'
The documentation explicitly says to not lie, but they then also do background checks confirming months or years of experience for a 3 week OSP project. The staff remind people to not lie, but the career coaches help graduates fudge their resumes to lie.
It's really weird for sure.
I have numerous behind the scenes sources on this so I can't say that much without doxing people at this time, but it's something they are both aware of, but have created a narrative to justify it - so in their minds it's not lying.
I mean I talk to people that literally say "I will lie, chest and steal to get a job" and this post would be reassuring to them.
I also talk to people that think the Codesmith community is amazing but they never lie and they are hence conflicted. And some people go but are conscious of all of this and some people choose another program.
I mean their enrollment is struggling and they might be trying a new strategy because the puff pieces have not been working. so maybe they're trying to lock in the right people? I don't know. I still think that this is better than the previous stuff because even if it is planted, it aligns more with what I hear from lots of alumni who are successful too.
Whether this was encouraged by Codesmith or not, it's at least honest. I dont think a random person would read this and join Codesmith versus many of the other pro Codesmith fluffy posts about how amazing it is without any specifics.
We finally agreed on something. This is the take I tell people all the time both publicly and in 1-1, yet Codesmith thinks I'm trying to take down their program (I've been shared this repeatedly from employees) and troll them with "lies".
Thanks for sharing this! This is pretty much exactly what I tell people 1-1 and if you are ready for this, it's the ideal place for you (and a number of people go!)... maybe we even chatted before you went haha.
If you are looking at other bootcamps and see super high CIRR numbers then looking to how it works and if it will work for you then it's absolutely the right choice, but if it doesn't work for you then you're going to be making a very costly mistake.
I 100000% agree and I'm speaking out about one program in particular, Codesmith, that I don't think is being transparent about the reality of the market and a number of staff/former staff/alumni have privately messaged me asking me too.
Is there a reason you don't want to say where you went though? Every bootcamp and program is different.
If this was a solid top bootcamp, do you feel this bootcamp is representing this story fairly only so that others know what they are getting into? Or what's the motivation for this post otherwise?
Yeah, I have a few dozens former co-workers and/or friends that work there, from L3 to sepcial advisor to the CEO and everything in between.
I haven't worked there myself though and lack that perspective for sure.
I hope I'm not making it sounds like Google is the best, there are lots of companies I find have a higher bar and very talented teams as well.
I would agree that I'm presenting a more philosophical view, and that when you scale anything up there are ways to get advantage, but I do see people regularly who prioritize "the thinking" first for all companies, and then pass Google, whereas people who obsess/only focus on Google tend to not do as well. There's one exception to that case where the person prepared full time (40 hours a week) for 6 months to get into Google and did.
Hi, commented in this thread to OP too, it might be that OP needs to unlearn some tricks. Amazon is a place that's a little more hire fast - fire fast and I tend to see more people go there with tricks or gaming the prep for interviews. Google is a place that wants to hire exceptional people and keep them, and the process is quite hard to game - they are evaluating you on multiple dimensions and not just the raw code being correct/optimal. Of all comoanies, Google is one of the ones that's looking for strong engineering thinking over just code, and you can't game your thinking without being a becoming an actual better thinker haha.
I actually think that perspective might be limitting you and instead of thinking about just passing the interviews, you are actually passing them becasue you are thinking more clearly, in an organized way, and methodically.
We have someone go to Google who did "only" 150 LC problems and was complemented by interviewers on the problem solving approach (this is also something graded by the interviewers).
I'm extremely biased because I'm the co-founder of Formation, but I would consider coaching (not necessarily at Formation but somewhere). It's possible that you're over focused on just passing LC DSA questions and lost track of the whole point of these interviews.
This is the problem solving approach we follow and if you don't have a clean, systematic approach to problems, that could be why you aren't passing, so check this out:
https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/
Can you elaborate more on what toxic positivity means to you there? I hear it a lot and have numerous examples myself but I'm curious what examples you see that way.
Like I've seen both dismissive and ignoring of criticism but also covering it up by asking people to remove posts or tracking people down who have NDAs or gag agreements and asking them to remove stuff.
Yeah I agree that people shouldn't be contacting people off of Reddit unless that person brought it up, or the person literally asked on Reddit to be contacted, or asked for help or something.
Definitely not all, some do, and I have no idea if it's more or less than CS grads or the general pop, but these are the four buckets I've identified IMO and they apply to a lot of bootcamps. I just tend to see wayyyyyy more Codesmith people who come to me in their first job and ask for advice because they are struggling to keep up and don't want the company to know they have no experience because they stretched it a bit during interviews. But 100% anecdotal and not can't any meaningful statistics from that, jusy my 2 cents from my position.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/173usbz/job\_market/k46xcya/?context=3
Not a reply, but a commentary - IMO this is a good answer - acknowledging the tough market, acknowledging trying to find a way to support team but not being able to, but at the end of the day, striving to maintain the student experience. I can't judge that student experience because I haven't gone there or talked to anyone who went there or worked there, but the intention is clearly spelled out from the person that runs it, and it's open for people who agree/disagree to comment.
I'm representing the view of the current and former employees of many bootcamps and dozens of prospective students and alumni from conversations in the past month. I don't really care myself and don't have skin in the game either way.
100% it doesn't mean the program or company is bad, but it also doesn't mean you can keep on using old CIRR results to justify going to one today and you can blame companies for advertising 2022 or earlier placement rates not being open and transparent about decreasing placements rates when they have them internally and have goals around increasing them.
Can you elaborate on what went downhill in your opinion? I haven't heard as much about the quality getting worse but rather the outcomes being worse because of the market. The quality was never super amazing, it's fairly rushed and the projects were always not that great.
1. They aren't just looking for raw coding skills, but communication, collaboration, improvement, etc....
2. The fact that you care so much means you probably prepared a lot more for the 2nd one and are/will show great improvement.
3. If you get anxious or freeze up, take a deep breathe and focus on clear communication.
4. If you get nervous, or are worried about panicking in the interview, PRACTICE A PROBLEM SOLVING METHOD and stick to it. BIAS, THIS IS MY COMPANY: this problem solving method can be used to solve any problem, helps people pass Google interviews without doing my LeetCode. It's more complicated than it seems to get good at this under pressure, but check it out: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
5. Most of the interviews are friendly and collaborative, but don't be TOO friendly, you want to balance dem…
\+1 this, Codesmiths placement rate isn't great right now. They published some SALARY numbers for 2023 on their blog but conveniently left out placement rates. Fortunately I know a bunch of people who work and worked there and they share these things internally - the numbers are down, they know it, they aren't telling anyone and people have a right to not be happy about that and to demand numbers. If Codesmith info sessions and their website tout an 80% placement rate when their internal presentations show a lower number - that's not cool.
They laid off almost 20% of people, who are under gag agreements, but there are numerous people considering leaving or who left who are not. They have reduced cohorts, they are moving around resources for the Future Code program, there's so much going on that people should not be judging Codesmith by CIRR right now even if they did publish 2022 results. Everyone has to be so positive on camera and behind the scenes I bet Codesmith has no clue who the people who are most upset are.
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is b…
Good question, I was one of the people who helped get the product architecture interview going.
At their core they are similar, they are both system design interviews.
"Systems Design" is infra-focused, more back of the envelop math, more focused on performance and scaling. This is really for infrastructure, systems, production engineers.
"Product Architecture" is like a full stack system design interviews. You need to be able to make a box diagram of the entire system, but a little more focus on the APIs between the boxes, and a little more focused on how "real world use cases" will impact the entire system end to end.
For example, "design instagram". You probably start with a similar box diagram. The system one will go more into scaling photo storage, the feed infrastructure. The product one might go more in the Feed API and pagination. You might be asked to think of use cases tha…
I mean trying to prepare as more of an art than a science. You never know if you're going to get that one interviewer who is rogue and thinks that everyone needs to know DP. Meta has a multi-tiered calibration process so like if you got a week no on a interview that was like super hard and inappropriately hard. then the directors and vice presidents and managers reviewing will make a call that that question was too hard and it might still give you an offer if that was your only week no.
At the end of the day Facebook is not trying to measure for academic understanding of algorithms for they are trying to find people who are 1. really good problem solvers and thinkers about problems, 2. can write clean code, that's elegant. and demonstrates that you have a clear understanding in your mind of what's happening.
The biggest things people failed on in my interviews were number two. People…
Yeah sorry, I didn't want to even talk about it because I wanted to focus on giving very relevant, objective, advice for this question and not talk about my day job haha
I heard they use CoderPad now? In the past they used CollabEdit. They also have an in-house platform too.
So even if you use Coderpad , you should practice NOT relying on syntax auto-complete and NOT relying on running code to see if it works.
They will accept syntax errors and minor/trivial mistakes, if you explain the code clearly and what you are trying to do.
Even if you could run/compile. They want to see you understand the code enough to explain how a test case will work, rather than just run the code and see.
I would walk through the exploration. You might say something like "I think I have a good instinct on where to go in this problem but let me walk through first".
And then do a typical:
1. confirm you understand
2. identify a few approaches (even though you know the one you want to go with)
3. then start coding
This is my company's approach that you could follow, but highly recommend following a structure problem solving method even if you know the solution: https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/
- The two questions are usually medium level, they occasionally will ask a hard question but expect it to take the whole time and likely expect you to solve with brute force first and then work through optimizations, and not expecting you to get the perfect solution but showing a good problem solving process
- So because they ask medium questions, they also generally want you to solve all the problems with at least a brute force solution that's flawlessly clean and ideally a better solution that's very clean. Focus on clean code and clear communication. If you crush all the interviews but miss one question in one but we're close, you'll probably get an offer too.
So they don't ask super hard questions that can only be solved with DP. Like coin change and knapsack. They fall in the bucket of problems.that is like "recursion with memoization" and someone who has never heard of DP would be able to solve brute force and then add in memoization with some hints. If people figured this stuff out without using the word DP, it was impressive because they solved the problem on the spot.
Graphs are similar. You need to know BFS and DFS and how to track visited nodes, but you don't need to know any complex off the shelf graph algorithms.
I worked at Meta for 8 years and did 400 and something interviews. What do you want to know?
Notes
- two more algo interviews very similar to the tech screen, no harder
- system design - gauging your level st Meta based on the scope of systems you've worked on, testing your understand and communication around very complex systems.
- behavioral with engineer - gauging the scope of past responsibility and looking for red flags.
For the algos
- no small talk, and don't try to be friends with the interviewer, just write good code
- practice whiteboard style / non compiling code without the aid of editors
- be ready for followups and twists so don't rush your code if you know the problem, make sure you understand what every line of code is doing because you might get asked interesting questions to test for that
- communicate continuously
- write "clean code"
I could write a novel here so a…
OP can speak more to Dropbox's bonus structure and exactly what's possible.
At Meta if you are a top 5% performer, your bonus would be 3X, your equity refresher would be 3X and you might get additional equity grants.
If your base is $130K and you bonus targt is $19.5K and your equit y refresher target is $50K (over 4 years), then with this performance you would get a $58.5K cash bonus and $150K (over 4 years extra equity but that would be IN FUTURE YEARS), and initial grant of $40K a year = $228.5K TC in first year plus maybe a $15K signing bonus is $243.5K
This is Facebook from 5 years ago. The starting bases are now around $150K so all of this would go up by 15%.
People tend to miscalculate their TCs yeah, like TC !== W2. FB stock went up just over 100X while I was there and the W2 does not match the TC at the time of grant.
RE: COMPENSATION
$240K could be possible if the person got a very high performance rating or was promoted after a year to IC2: [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/dropbox/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ic1](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/dropbox/salaries/software-engineer/levels/ic1)
FAANG companies have stock compensation and bonuses that can multiple up to 10X so that's not actually that impossible, but it would be like a top 5% performer situation, or a top 20% who got promoted in a year.