In all fairness, Codesmith literally says in their info sessions "If you are admitted into Codesmith you are already employable as a junior engineer and Codesmith will turn you into a mid-level or senior engineer". If you know anyone there you yell at them with the same insults and tone as your comments here.
52 weeks in year / 19 weeks per cohort = 2.7.
$50K for cohort = $135K per year.
So that's reasonable, but you do need to gross up benefits and taxes, and it assumes continuous 19 week cohorts.
Hi, I appreciate you for being transparent and disclosing biases, it's really hard to know who is posting what on here and even though your post is obviously very positive, it helps having context and seeing your passion come out.
I'm not sure what comments or posts you are referring to, but I personally don't think being "the best" bootcamp in this market necessarily means you should go there in this market. (I'm NOT making an analogy between bootcamps and cigarettes in ANY way) But being the best cigarette company doesn't mean everyone should be smoking, but if you do, maybe you would buy them from that company. So people recommending not to do Tech Elevator (or any bootcamp) right now might not be attacks on TE itself.
Finally, I don't think there's any best or worst programs and the right program for the right person is key. Codesmith has super high outcomes but isn't the best prog…
Hi, sorry yeah, I hope I'm not misunderstood here. I comment general facts, experiences, observations, etc... with the goal of having productive discourse instead of anecdotal experiences expressed as universal facts. But 1-1 I switch hats and really try to figure out what's right for you.
Maybe send me a DM because I have more questions about location, timeframe etc... which I can't ask publicly on Reddit haha.
Generally speaking, I hear a lot of hit and miss VETEC programs because these programs get a lot of money and have to check off certain boxes to maintain good standing, but they don't really have the same incentives to train you well or place you that they do when you are paying a lot out of pocket.
It’s the nature of bootcamps that I think they could never offer the overall quality to compete with a good CS degrees education quality.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do a bootcamp, that they are all bad, or that there aren’t good specific instructors out there at bootcamps.
For example, one of the top bootcamps, their DS&A has a as a day or two on data structures just covering all topics at once and then a day or two on algorithms, just dumping it all on you. And the instructors have never worked in industry and graduated from the program.
Versus my degree where my first 16 week course was data structures and algorithms taught by one of the best teachers at the school who is an industry leading researcher and professor, and then did 20 more courses after that. including an entire other course on advanced data structures and complexity analysis.
I'm really biased here because my company's vision is that adaptive learning is the answer for learning efficiently. I find that everyone has different "aha" moments and everyone learns at their own pace and style.
We're very early so before we solve this for learning to code for everyone haha I recommend trying a bunch of free and cheap options of different styles and seeing what sticks. I also recommend doing the same topics over and over until they click instead of just doing ONE course.
- cheap well respected Udemy courses
- free or cheaper Coursera courses
- finding a YouTube teacher you like
- Odin Project
- FreeCodeCamp
- CS50
- Audit some Stanford CS courses online
- Work on large open source
- Build your own product and ship it to real people
- Codecademy
I was 13 years old and it was in the late 1990s.
I got a book called "Borland C++ Builder 4.0" from the discount bin of the bookstore and was trying to figure out what this was.
I thought I was coding in C++ but it was like an IDE (that I later found out was a "visual tool" to help in writing code).
I made some forms with buttons and text where you could click buttons and have numbers go up inside the form.
I remember double clicking on the button and snippets of code would popup to edit.
I had no clue what the heck was going on what I was doing.
But that was a seed and I later went on to do:
1. Lego Mindstorms (which was programming in disguise)
2. UNIX command line stuff for installing Windows from scratch on a really old computer
3. A week long Java enrichment course in high school
4. Programming in high school where I learned QBASIC (this is the first time I learned what code…
Hi!
1. What did you do as a self taught developer and for how long before getting the job?
2. What advice do you have to get interviews as a self taught developer with no experience and no degree?
3. What other jobs did you have before deciding to become a developer?
4. How has your performance and career trajectory been on the job and do you have advice for other self taught developers starting out on a job?
CIRR verified outcomes are for people who did the program 1.5 YEARS ago now. Many programs have changed, modified or merged cohorts, had layoffs, mergers, sales.
Tech Elevator was merged away under the hood since the student in it's latest public CIRR report even did it, so I would caution people from using those to justify going there.
I'm not implying bootcamps are all sinking, but it's like telling people to board the Titanic after it hit the iceberg because the latest official reports said that it's unsinkable.
Thanks! Also just to clarify, I wasn't questioning the validity, I just firmly stand behind using primary evidence where possible because if you turn on the TV, you see how messy things are.
I can go into more details, but if you pay via loan or ISA the program has complex agreements with the loan providers to receive portions of the loan/ISA upfront themselves. But all of this is contingent on how those providers are predicting outcomes and the math for how much interest they'll make all said and done. If those providers start seeing worse outcomes then they expected they might pull financing or change it in a way where the bootcamp won't get enough money upfront to be able to run the program anymore. They would have to choose between other forms of debt, in hopes that the outcomes are better than expected, or give up and take the loss.
It's a lot more complicated than it seems though.
Yeah everyone is struggling. Both Rithm and Codesmith have been reducing the number of future cohorts too. And Codemsith has almost 20% layoffs so it's not really handling the climate amazingly and people are nervous, but it's surviving.
Does that mean that the expectation is that if someone wasn't following CIRR standards, they will have to pass a consistent audit in order to be posted?
FOR REFERENCE OF WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT:
I mean they published [this](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/codesmiths-commitment-to-cirr-transparent-reporting-frequently-asked-questions) and stated:
>Who is included in the “hired by school” statistic?
Codesmith deeply values team members who grow their careers from the ground up and have a first-hand understanding of the mission behind the work that we do. For this reason, we appreciate instructors who have completed the immersive program themselves and understand the student experience. When you see the percentage hired by school on a Codesmith CIRR report, these are a very small handful of graduates that have moved on to work full time as instructors or Software Engineers for the compan…
I added a correction to my comment above. So Codesmith has been telling prospective students and staff their CIRR report will come out any day now. Given that this is changing and it will now come out in January is there anything stopping them from self publishing an official report themselves without the CIRR designation?
This was answered above. They are changing the rules with the 6 month time period to a longer time period because placements are way down in this market, so there won't be any reports until January
Follow up question: is any specific member school contributing additional funding to support these changes or new initiatives? Based on the member fees specified and number of members, this seems like an ambitious expansion cost-wise.
\+1 to showing more data, and having like 4 time periods.
Opinion: In the "what you can say in marketing" clauses, I think it should stay at the six month as this "transition" happens. My fear would be bootcamp websites showing side by side 2021, 2022, numbers and the 2022 look the same but are 12 month windows and the 2021s are 6 month. Based on the info sessions I've been to and marketing I've seen, I would expect companies (which is totally what they should do) to present the best numbers they are allowed to present.
Opinion: In higher education people spend 4 years doing a degree and then spending 1 year to get a job is much different then people spending 2-3 months to get a certificate and spending 1 year to get a job.
I know AMAs are a lot so I'm going to hold off commenting until a bit later and there's some breathing room but I wanted to comment on just this timeframe change right away so it gets read by more people:
* Opinion: from my anecdotal conversations with bootcamp leaders, the H2 2022 and H1 2023 outcomes are significantly lower than in the past. I'm concerned delaying the timeframes will cover up the bad market in 2022 instead of acknowledging it transparently so that people can make informed decisions about such a bit live decision of changing careers.
* Opinion: in anticipation of increasing the "hired by" range to 12 months from 6 months. Most bootcamps are 10 to 20 weeks long, which is about 2 to 4 months. If someone is changing their careers and going all in on a full time bootcamp for 2 to 4 months, and it takes an additional 12 months to get a job, there is A LOT that happens in th…
Thanks! Again, very open to debate, but every bootcamp I've talked to anecdotally has struggled this year with enrollment and has noted longer placement times and lower salaries on average. Since the market is improving at least temporarily, I think delaying the results from the tough market until January could be harmful to students who want to know what's been going on recently and make more informed decisions about the timing of going to a bootcamp.
Hi Rachel, I have a bunch of questions! I very openly have numerous criticisms of the CIRR standards but I also appreciate the vision of having standardized outcomes. My goal is to ask fair questions with no shades of opinions and hope to have constructive discourse.
1. Why are the results delayed for Q2 2022 compared to the Q2 2021 timeframe for release?
2. Why did the domain name expire earlier this year and no one renewed it for about 10 days afterwards during the domain recovery period?
3. What are the annual fees for being a "member school"?
4. Why is CIRR a 501c6 business league instead of a 501c3 non-profit?
5. What's the process for making changes to the standards and how to members contribute to that? (this might be a very long answer but just a high level overview)
6. What is the role of a board member of CIRR and what does the board do?
7. Why are outcomes reported as percent…
I can't recommend any specific ones because it really depends on you and your goals, timeframe, personality, etc... Feel free to DM me more info and I can give you a couple to look at if I feel like I have some good matches for you in mind.
You might be underestimating. Codesmith is arguably the top bootcamp in the world and every single instructor has no industry work experience and only went to Codesmith itself.
I think this reply characterizes the controversy as I see it as it represents the attitude that Codesmith itself has about things.
I went to an info session once where the one of the speakers 'We're ready, ask us the hard questions' followed with a bunch of thumbs up emojis. So I asked passive agressively (anonymously) 'How did you get your current job 8 months ago' (because their LinkedIn showed they were employed as a Software Engineer at their OSP - no "OSP" - the company didn't say "Open Source" in a single place, or OSLabs. NO RESPONSE. No emojis, no acknowledge, like it wasn't even asked.
Like you can't say give me all the hard questions and then only answer the hard questions you want.
This attitude is pervasive at Codesmith and in this subreddit.
Nice, yeah we are far from perfect and it's not the right program for everyone, but we have a great team of people (6 full time team members have 10+ year FAANG experience each many more in the 5 year range) working very very hard to help people prepare for interviews and have a great experience. I would ready some of the "spotlights" on the blog too because people talk pretty openly about their backgrounds and the specific ways we helped the most.
Right now maybe 95% of people have actual paid SWE (or related job with significant programming) experience and it's strict.
Experience for being accepted can be anything like: contracts, self employed, open source, 2+ years self taught, freelancing, internships, legit volunteer coding (with documented hours in lieu of pay), etc... but you do need to have something.
The main reason is we don't actually teach any marketable practical skills…
I'm pretty tough on Codesmith in this regard and I haven't seen evidence yet that people are paid to write reviews, I have seen potential symptoms of that but I personally can't draw that conclusion.
I think that people who love Codesmith might be mislead into posting and commenting without realizing that it was strategic on behalf of the company.
I don't know if you've been to any Codesmith events, but a number of people there are like crazy crazy crazy friendly, positive, and emoji reaction to everything-type vibe and I can easily see how "an instructor saying everyone: we need to tell the world how awesome this is!" can turn into Reddit comments and posts, and the instructor said that because the program manager said that enrollment is down and they need to try to boost enrollment and the instructor too in on their own accord to ask people to do that.
Like I don't think it's like b…
Good outcomes + marketing.
1. Codesmith has the highest outcomes on paper and about a quarter of people who go there found them on Reddit (internal second hand number)... so people find it on Reddit and then come back to where they found it to talk about it.
2. Rithm is a very tiny program, but is also good and word spreads. But give it's size and much smaller alumni size I don't expect as many students to hang around.
3. Launch School Unique mastery model and "slow approach" so it gets discussed a lot and the Capstone rivals Codesmith for outcomes.
4. Turing. The only accredited bootcamp that became a school, other than Make School that shut down.
5. Hack Reactor. One of the oldest programs, consistently with pretty good outcomes. Has a lot of alumni over the years hanging around.
It's called Formation, but just to be clear, it's not super relevant for this sub (it's meant for people who have been working as a SWE already for 1+ years and generally more) and I'm here to try to give helpful advice because I have both extensive industry (including 8 years at FB as it grew from 750 employees to like 20K) experience and have worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads later on from all kinds of bootcamps (and helped my partner run her own free in person bootcamp for 2 years), and synthesizing these, I feel gives me a unique point of view to share.
You can look up more about Formation.dev and ask me questions. It's a unique type of approach that not a single other program is doing and we're working on updating our website to try to explain better what it is haha, but definitely ask questions.
This isn't super common but an idea might be to get a job TEACHING AT A BOOTCAMP, trying to absorb as much as possible from the projects, or helping review projects. And then after a year or two try to transition to a teaching-engineering type role at a big tech company (they do have these but they are unique company to company) and then within that company try transitioning to SWE after settling in.
Just random ideas I thought of by giving my 2 cents candid reaction.
/u/InTheDarkDancing you are a by the books and audit-appreciating person who disagrees a ton with me about most things, so what are your thoughts on this?
Am I wrong in asking this "violation" (i.e. inconsistency with CIRR standards) be disclosed by the auditors in the report because it's not for Codesmith to decide what rules they choose to follow and not disclose in the official paperwork, or do you think this rule breaking is so obviously okay that we shouldn't question it?
I'm fine either way as long as it's consistent. Like we all follow the rules and disclose meticulously when we don't and feel justified, or we get aways with fudging the rules when we feel like it and hope that everyone agrees but it should discredit the trustworthiness (just a little bit.... not entirely obviously) of the outcomes.
The voting on these comments suggests people are in a different camp: 'Whatever…
Hiring is picking up for mid level engineers. Disclosure: I'm co-founder of a mentorship platform for SWEs with 1+ YOE under their belt. We have seen 4 or so Meta offers in the past few weeks and many more interviewing. It's definitely not easy but if you have a legit 2+ YOE (like full time SWE job, not projects, not open source, etc...) then you should be getting interviews in a reasonable timeframe in this market. There are many more challenges in passing the interviews and with headcount, but the gears are turning.
That's not at all the case for new comp sci grads and new bootcamp grads (including Codesmith and Launch School and other programs that have these kind of "open source work experience" projects) and the market remains incredibly hard just to get interviews without lying about that experience. The exception being CS grads from top tier CS school - they have a lot of choice…
One thing to think about. Doing your day job for a while and doing more practice and projects part time on the side. I would recommend trying to apply as much programming as you can do your job, and trying to find ways to get partial experience that way. Maybe even find a pathway to SWE at your current job.
But yeah happy to chat more if you want to share your actual background and what not for more specific advice.
This makes me sad :(. I think each individual has a different path. You might not be cutout for SWE, but just because Codesmith didn't work, it doesn't mean SWE isn't for you, it's just ONE way to do it.
Feel free to chat with me if you want to talk about your experience and get my 2 cents on other things to try.
I've been working with someone for well over a year now, almost two, who just signed a FAANG this week after a log of ups and downs, it's truly different for everyone and I think you have the right attitude of continuing to learn and develop and grow and get stronger and stronger. You never know when the next opportunity will arrive or how.
I fully agree and support this, just make sure to consider the OSP projects at Codesmith projects and not number 2 or 3.
A number of people have like X to present, it might look like they have a job but that was just their project.
Speaking from experience and trying to help navigate your search.
Yeah that's fine!
I think I haven't reached out because I'm introverted and shy lol. I prefer talking to people async online and make up for shyness with extreme responsiveness. So almost all the leaders I've talked to have been long and slow online conversations first.
I don't know if I would immediately jump on a call, but I would appreciate having a direct and open channel to be like 'hey, someone sent me a screenshot, is this a thing' and where he can be like 'hey I feel that comment is misleading can you adjust it because of Y', and then hopefully being more understanding over time, even if we're not best friends lol.
Thank you, I appreciate the feedback and comments and will take it to heart. I agree with you and I don't want Codesmith peopled judging me without talking with me either, so I truly appreciate it.
That's awesome and congrats! I'm really happy for you as a person and you sound like you have a superstar trajectory. My FAANG comment was not meant to be a comparison, just that there is +/- six figure negotiations at that level so I was genuinely curious how he helped navigate that!
I have seen his videos, and notes of his advice and I think it's on point and solid, but it's also inline with the advice that industry career coaches and negotiation coaches give. So it's fantastic that this is included in Codesmith and for life, like [Levels.FYI](https://Levels.FYI) charges like $2500 to help with negotiations per time! But I also think people who he's helped often portray him a flawless person who truly knows everything and has all the answers, and quite honestly, he literally said the above, that he knows "everything about the industry" because he's friends with "the CTO of Disney" (bt…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
100% I literally recommended OP consider Codesmith and was discussing in private 30 mins ago.
The ignore strategy is because I mean this: I've talked to the founders of numerous other programs on here and have professional open conversations with them, and not a single leader at Codesmith has contacted me for 1.8 years now of me being the same old person on here every day.
Instead, the CEO has badmouthed me in internal all hands, the outcomes advisor has texted someone telling them Formation's a scam and he'll give them all he needs. An alumni made very inappropriate comments about me in an alumni Slack that were screenshotted to me. And all this kind of BS in private and the public response isn't "he is dark depraved person whose sole mission in life is to take down the great thing \[we\] have built" (this was quoted to me by a student but I don't know if they quoted it or paraphrased…
I'm someone who posts a lot of criticism of CIRR, the most out of anyone, do you think my comments are misinformation or are you talking about other comments. My comments are critical but sourced directly from the CIRR standards, worksheets, the website, and talking to one of the founders of CIRR, and not made up.
Most Codesmith students I talk to get their information about CIRR from Codesmith posts.
Some people do state misinformation about it on here but that doesn't mean that all criticism is misinformation either.
For starters, Codesmith openly doesn't follow CIRR's standard for graduation date as it considers PAID FELLOWS to not have graduated until the fellowship contract is complete and does not count them as placements, even though the CIRR rules are clear than any job after someone meets the consistently applied graduation requirements is a placement and graduation dates ar…
Thanks for sharing more details! Yeah that's what I've heard from the people in the "Eric is awesome camp". What I've found though is that while his advice is solid, he's overconfident in his understanding of the market. He said 'I'm friends with the CTO of Disney so I know the better than anyone on Reddit or TikTok', and 'I've done 4 startups and 3 of them were acquired' and like I said, public documentation raises a lot of questions about that.
But I guess my question is, while he has been helpful, how do you know he's given you good advice and how do you know you wouldn't be able to be more successful with other advice?
A senior engineeeing manager, M7, at FAANG, with a trajectory of being promoted every year would be making about $800K to $1M a year. It's analogous to E7 - [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e7](https://www.levels.fyi/compan…
Yeah me too and I appreciate you engaging because I know my direct and transparent tone is not interpreted how I intend it inside Codesmith, where the response has been 'badmouth me private, ignore in public and respond with positivity'.
But yeah I had notifications on for the entire post and got one 1 hour ago for different comment, and then came back 20 mins later for this comment. None of the other comments on the post had any engagement changes at (no comment/no change in votes) and this comment had 11 upvotes within 10 minutes.
I wish this place would be more welcoming easy to have professional discussions, but none of this behavior makes it approachable.
Can you elaborate more on why you found Eric K "awesome" and "inspiring"? There is some controversy around other team members but Eric K is by far the most controversial - people who work there love him or people hate him and no one is in between haha.
I do have two sources of confirmation that he has a group of alumni that he asks to comment and post on Reddit and that raised eyebrows for me. But again, I keep an open mind until I have clear patterns, and sources are super polarizing on him.
I did a deep dive into his resume (looked up press releases, articles, etc... and poked around) and found some questions about his background that appeared different or portrayed differently in his personal pitch, but I've never met him or talked to him personally to clarify those things.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
/u/InTheDarkDancing, enough time has passed now so one of the examples of things I'm going to be talking about more is their "culture management" and how Codesmith strategically manages the culture (e.g. not just the slogans but internal processes to identify and manager any signs of negativity). It's not just a goal but it's someone's actually paid job to do.
I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too.
Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue.
They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good.
These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up.
1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including Lin…