They now show a "86% Graduation rate" but don't show a placement rate anymore. In the past, this was the number one way bootcamps were misleading - by only showing one or the other. Programs touted a very high "graduation rate" and salaries, but didn't disclose that placement rates were very poor OR they touted extremely high placement rates because they made it so hard to graduation, only a small number of high performers did and they all got jobs.
BloomTech for example has a "90% placement" rate, but about a 50% graduation rate, but guess which one at the top of off their website :D
My hunch is Coding Temple used to show a 97% placement rate because they made it hard to "officially" graduate and in the current market, even that dropped quite low so they switched to now showing the graduation rate and salaries of people placed. I would ask them what the placement rate is!
If the gr…
A bootcamp probably doesn't make sense, I think the easiest thing to do would be to try to transition more into SWE at your current company. Try to meet SWE managers and see if you can get a shot at a lower level SWE role.
I would also look at "career accelerators": [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. These are intended to help you level up your career rather than carerr change entirely. If your gaps are too large for these programs, then I would CONSIDER a bootcamp, but really transitioning in your own company and being supported doing that, is ideal.
I think people can get anywhere from apprenticeship or higher at Amazon, which is why I would try to see if you are guaranteed an interview for a minimum role.
I don't know a ton about NSS but I know a little, little bit. Which AWS program is it? The Amazon-sponsored programs in the past have been an amazing way to get into Amazon and I would highly recommend IF YOU ARE ALREADY FEEL STRONG and you want to get a reliable pathway to Amazon. ⚠️ HOWEVER, the hiring market has changed and if you aren't guaranteed an Amazon entry level interview then I would be more iffy.
My personal opinion is to never go to any bootcamp expecting a job at the end. You might get a job and the bootcamp should be helping you, BUT you are paying a bootcamp to build a curriculum and to teach it (i.e. for education) and not for a job.
That's a bit philosophical, but I've found everyone has a different path and you might get a job, but you also might need more training, or internships, or you might go to ML or Data Science, etc... and should always go to a program where you think it's a fair price for the improvement of skills you will get by the end and for the job.
NOTE: Some of these are controversial, I'm mentioning them to fairly present the options but DO YOUR RESEARCH! I have absolutely no conscious bias or self-interest in these.
Bloomtech is self paced, and more interactive but it's a lot more salesy and has a long history of people not happy with it, including lawsuits :(. They have a free trial though without signing anything and you can try it, just don't fall for any marketing or salesperson that reaches out and judge it carefully for yourself.
Odin Project is self paced and free, but has little support.
A lot of people like Scrimba for frontend, which is a lot cheaper and not a full blown bootcamp.
100Devs is a fairly controversial free program. It's more or less a like a Udemy course with a community Discord to ask questions, and has a lot of people with a hustle mentality that don't finish it, but check it out too.
Good question:
1. Formation has a frontend track. I need to emphasize that it's not educational and people with no frontend experience find it not good for them. It's the equivalent of how if you can do LC Easy problems then these DS&A programs are good, but not if you haven't done any at all. Our frontend is good for people who know frontend and want practice, not for people with no frontend experience. It's JS/HTML/CS/React
2. Interview Kickstart has a similar view as Formation, where you can do a short amount of practice on frontend but the focus is still classic DS&A. Interview Kickstart also has a lot more modules you can do like Data Science and ML
3. Outco: I don't think they have frontend
4. Pathrise: no frontend
5. Coachable: no frontend
6. Scaler: has frontend and projects in their longer program
I can't speak to IK, but Formation basically covers 14ish interview types, so we…
Launch School Core might be good because it's self paced, but I believe it's more text reading and doesn't have a wide breadth of teaching mechanisms. I think you can try it for free though!
Rithm is kind of cool because they offer each lesson in different formats: powerpoint, PDF, doc, online, so you can kind of follow your preferred format. But it's definitely an intense bootcamp.
Hi, full disclosure, I'm the co-founder of Formation which is a competitor for Interview Kickstart, but I'm also a daily active member and contributor to the community and try to give good, fair, advice.
So first off, if you want to consider the "career accelerator" bucket of programs these are the competitors. Note that each one is very, very different but they all focus on the job hunt process rather than building new practical skills:
1. Formation: focuses on fundamental problem solving/DSA/SD/behaviorals, adaptive platform to move you through skills efficiently, small group sessions (2 - 8 people), dedicated support team, unlimited targeted mock interviews with senior top tier engineers as you start job hunting, senior/staff/principal FAANG-level mentors. Most 360 coverage program of the group.
2. Interview Kickstart: fixed curriculum/structured program with larger lectures and mor…
I would expect them in September. I'm ready to analyze when they are published.
The market is bad and outcomes should be lower so I'm going to be heavily on guard for people playing games (like hiring back students through a sibling company to avoid being shown as hiring back by school).
Yeah edited I meant they don't publish a graduation rate.
For online remote self-paced programs, the graduation rate is much lower than a huge commitment immersive type program.
Bloomtech is a great example because they used to be more fixed and had like a 70% graduation rate and as they moved more self-paced online remote it dropped tol like 50%. Not a bad thing necessarily because the program changed. but I think it's important to know that if you sign up for a program, your odds of getting a great job or not 87% or 90%. they are like half of that at Bloomtech.
It's generally high because it's the easiest way to juice the outcomes. If people who are weaker leave, the best people graduate and placement rates are only based on people who graduate.
Bloomtech has a 50% or so graduation rate and a 90% placement rate of people who graduate.
TripleTen doesn't publish a placement rate but has a 87% placement rate.
Codesmith is one of the stronger programs that has like a 95% graduation rate and 80% placement rate.
It's important to factor both in because your odds of getting a job from day one are the odds of graduation times the placement rate and not the placement rate alone!
Georgia Tech undergrad yeah.
I can't speak to all companies but at Facebook once the first 100 engineers were hired through networking and people who self selected into wanting to be there, there ended up going to the schools that most top employees came from lol and I remember seeing a histogram of schools and it was like Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard (because of Zuck)
The U.S. News CS undergrad list is a good start for the top 10..
A pattern though pre COVID is proximity to the company mattered so much! UW is the primary school in Seattle that feeds to MSFT, AMZN. Stanford and Berkeley for all of SV. Ivy Leagues for NYC. Austin for the Texas hardware companies. I was flown out to FB in Palo Alto from Canada for two intern interviews!
Definitely not a scam. It's international and that's why it's not talked about as much here. The only sketchy thing about them is the placement rates are a little confusing to many at first read. The 87% rate is NUMBER OF PEOPLE PLACED IN SIX MONTHS / NUMBER OF PEOPLE PLACED, it's not the number of people that graduate. Self paced, online, remote programs tend to have worse completion rates than most programs - especially the cheaper they area, so I think that's an important number to know.
I know what I'm talking about yeah. I worked at FB for 8 years from 2009 to 2017, grew from 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers. Interviewed 400+ people, did dozen campus recruiting trips all over the place. Afterwards, I worked with early career, experienced, engineers to level and have seen hundreds of various levels, mostly with 1-3 YOE, but also from self taught, and bootcamp grads, navigate the market and place at companies big and small.
For FAANG-level companies - so the entry level headcount is being reserved for fall 2023 new grad hiring season. Because of recruiter layoffs, companies are being efficient by using the recruiters they have for tried and true new grad and intern pipelines at the top schools (Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley, UT Austin, UW, some ivy leagues) to fill their headcount. So I agree right now, trying to be a bootcamp grad and getting new grad jobs is almost im…
There are a ton of success stories! I love reading success stories to understand the positive impact of programming.
The problem is both success stories and doom and gloom stories could mislead people one way or the other about choosing a bootcamp. I've seen people say things like 'I got a job making $150K 2 months after X bootcamp' and then someone commenting 'OMG I'm signing up to start ASAP'. And I've seen negative posts like 'I went to X and didn't get a job after a year', and people commenting 'OMG this program has gone down hill.'
What it comes down to is this: software written by one person, anywhere in the world, with just a laptop, has the ability to impact BILLIONS of people. This means the $$$ value of a programmer can be anywhere from -$ (i.e. you cost more than you make for your company) to $$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Literally 1 MILLION TIMES another engineer). Because of this, it ma…
Yeah it would qualify! However, Waymo is looking for people that have done significant projects or past internships as engineers, so you might be less strong as a result if you have had less experience hands on coding.
Yeah this is the basis for my recent observation that a number of the alumni at top companies either 1. are working so hard to keep up, they move on from Codesmith and don't look back, 2. they aren't actually reviewing resumes and interviewing people themselves.
I reviewed thousands of resumes and did 400+ interviews at Facebook and it makes a HUGE difference on how you see things for sure!
The way Codesmith teaches LC I think is not correct and reinforces the LC-mentality.
Disclosure: I'm super biased here because I started a program to practice fundamental problem solving abilities and how to use that to solve LC problems and make you a better engineer. So I'm VERY OPINIONATED ON THIS!
But just doing hack hours where your friends tell you if a problem is right or not is missing the point entirely. If you learn how to solve DS&A problems the right way, then you can apply that to solving any interview-setting problem.
You hit the worst timing luck for sure :(. You joined Codesmith when people were still getting Amazon and C1 offers, you graduated right when the tides turned. Then you job hunt and get the suggested '5 or 6 interviews just for practice to get warmed up' out of the way in Jan/Feb when hiring picked up a tad, and then did real job hunting during the worst time period. Then by the time hiring picks up for real - people are demoralized and jaded.
Yeah those were reasons I've been told.
My personal opinion is that since every single instructor has only worked at Codesmith (a fact they are open about) from fellows (TAs), to instructors, to lead instructors to senior engineers, people don't have industry experience to fallback on and they perpetuate a unified consistent message.
But one hole in this reasoning is why alumni later on, don't come back and try to change the narratives. "Career Support Engineers" who review resumes tend to do it part time while working in industry. I hear anecdotally that are told more 'how it is in reality' during 1-1 chats, but these people still uphold the Codesmith guidance. I'm curios why they don't question the presentation of the OSPs and presumably encourage it - because Codesmith's official guidance is very clear to not lie.
Unfortunately, I can't give one recommendation for everyone because everyone has a different background, life circumstances, personality, goals, and learning style.
I usually recommend you start narrowing down your list objectively: which programs have good outcomes, which ones have good reviews, etc...
Then try to do free programs at each of them, many have some kind of free community or free activities. Keep in mind that these are marketing events in disguise, but at least try to get a sense for what the day to day would be like!
And then focus super hard on which one is right for you by asking questions:
1. What is the day to day schedule and workload like?
2. What is the teaching style (e.g. lectures, self teaching, projects, etc...)
3. How much instructor access do you have?
4. Do you want in person or remote?
5. What cities are people getting jobs in?
6. What kind of background…
People are struggling right now on the job market and it's tough - especially if you did a remote bootcamp and poured your heart and soul into doing what they told you to do and then can't get a job :(
I don't know if posting on Reddit is the best way to go about it. Like if you are talking to four recruiters at major companies that's good! You can look at that positively as networking! Even if nothing is going anywhere.
Full disclosure I work with a number of Codesmith alumni later on in their careers with thier 2nd, 3rd, 4th jobs and support people 1-1 to tell their best narrative. And it's highly personal how people portray themselves.
The reasons I've been given are, in no particular order - pretty much all the reasons:
\- Unawareness: a specific leader told me that my 3 weeks was equivalent to months of mid level industry experience because the 11 hours days and the difficulty of the projects.
\- Fake it til you make it: hustler mentality, no regrets
\- Ends justify the means: if people get jobs and do well on those jobs, does it matter how they go them?
\- I tried being very correct and didn't get any interviews and saw friends get interviews were using this style of resume so I tried it
\- Slippery slope: as I didn't get interviews, I adjusted my resume every week or two and each time was a…
Sorry "trick" might be the wrong word, it's conscious but it's not bad intentioned, and people are repeatedly told not to lie. They are told so many times in so many places not to lie it makes you ask - why do they need to tell people this so much lol.
Anyways, look at Codesmith project for example this one (I chose one randomly, I'm not calling our or identifying any individual people here): [https://www.linkedin.com/company/grpseek-app/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/grpseek-app/)
And look at how people who work on it present themselves on their LinkedIns. All of those people are recent Codesmith grads and gRPSeek was a 3 week long project.
Most people present:
1. the project as 3-4 months of experience at a company
2. have their 3 other projects under "open source projects" to misdirect that the highlighted one is NOT an open source project - or else why wouldn't it also be un…
This is true for big companies but it's not new. Most big companies do not hire directly out of bootcamps and I can tell you why from my experience 8 years at FB as a principal engineer!
So first off, where do these applications go:
1. Apprenticeships! Big companies often have apprenticeships/emergent talent/etc... programs for bootcamp grads who come from diverse backgrounds.
2. During the boom times, Amazon would interview anyone with an online assessment and passing that would usually get you an interview. So people with very little SWE experience but who had good professional experience to talk about in a behavioral interview, could pass. Google briefly was talking to bootcamp grads via a number of contractor recruiters at Randstad but you had to get connected through them directly.
Second, why don't big companies want to hire bootcamp grads. Unfortunately they DID in the past. B…
Well I'm a big fan of apprenticeships for bootcamp grads and I think that's a good path! The traditional internship -> new grad pipelines are really deeply engrained in top companies because they work so reliably and making new apprenticeship pipelines as long "longer internships with the intention of converting immediately" is 💯 to me!
FWIW I know people who work at 2U and they did try to replace Trilogy's content with edX content and it's not JUST a rebranding.
That said, I largely agree that this is a for-profit public company that is clearly trying to leverage university brands for it's programs - that aren't really connected to the university - and edX people were really not happy about the sale/purchase to 2U. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/27/2u-financial-struggles/
I can't comment a ton on this because of a conflict of interest with one of their university programs.
this is correct. it's very hard to find alumni but because of the tremendous structure that Codesmith has in its resume guidance it is absolutely possible to find people.
The most consistent way is to look for their open source project announcements which are blasted pretty much everywhere and then you can collect a list of people's LinkedIns.
Your question is probably better for CSX Slack because there are a lot of alumni there. The downside is that it's mostly successful alumni who continue to participate in the community and people who failed out of Codesmith tend to disappear quietly and they don't complain because they put the blame on themselves and I found anecdotally that those people are more often people who don't have any kind of professional experience, even outside of engineering.
I'm intimately familiar with month to month and week to week trends and how many Codesmith people graduate each month and when their 6 month clock starts and ends and then even account for fellows, whose clocks are delayed for 3 months (or however long their fellow contract ends up being)
I know for a fact that outcomes for CIRR H2 2022 are significantly worse than H1 2022, about 15 to 20% worse, being generous.
July through August 2022 saw strong hiring at Amazon and Capital One, whom were filling out remaining headcount.
The market was terrible in November and December as headcount ran out, freezes continued, and people decided to wait until next year.
Because of the cadence, which you understand as well, that means only one or two cohorts from each coast were impacted super bad and had terrible placement rates that were somewhat cancelled out by the stronger earlier ones.
Januar…
1. results are released prior to audit and updated once audited with a statement from the auditors. Codesmiths H1 outcomes changed after the audited version came out, and then changed back with a correction from the auditors that they made a mistake.
2. I completely agree they shouldn't change their cadence and I said they should just inform people based on preliminary CIRR results that I know they have, that outcomes are as good, but in info sessions right now they are telling people everything is totally fine and that people are going to smaller companies. unfortunately the raw data is inconsistent with that so either the speakers don't have access to the raw data but somehow I do, or they are not being transparent.
Yeah I mean if they were truly transparent, they would be telling people now with their preliminary CIRR H2022 numbers that placements were down and proceed with caution about entering the industry right now.
They are worse! It depends a lot on the program.
One of the best things to read is this from /u/cglee [https://medium.com/launch-school/evolving-landscape-for-software-career-transitioners-a-three-year-review-of-capstone-data-dbab52b6550c](https://medium.com/launch-school/evolving-landscape-for-software-career-transitioners-a-three-year-review-of-capstone-data-dbab52b6550c) . Launch School Capstone is a top tier program with high entrance bar, small program, but it at least shows the trends.
Ada for example essentially paused entirely because their model was based on internship partners - who all backed out and hence they have no internships for people.
Codesmith's enrollment pace has slowed (they used to be booked for months and are now interviewing days/weeks before new cohorts) but they are fortunately keeping a high bar and their outcomes remain strong (although my information…
Sorry yeah I was aggregating. The 6 weeks is 4 weeks of super fixed concentrated lectures and another 2-ish weeks sprinkled across the other stuff.
You might be the first person to say I've oversold Codesmith!! I always get yelled at for downplaying them and that Eric Kirsten told them Formation is a scam that offers everything Codesmith does for free for a lifetime... although that has subsided a bit since the market has tanked and I've worked with dozens of Codesmith alumni - and the vast majority at best love us (we have several "spotlights" written for people who wanted to talk about their story post-Codesmith) and at worst think it was maybe break even-ish, and not a single person I know of has said we offer what Codesmith offers haha.
Yeah the reason I say that often is because I have a public presence and I'm loosely in the space myself, so I want to try to present facts and let the informed consumer to the rest of the work and figure out their opinion based on that. For example, in the TripleTen source they are fairly clear over and over that only people placed are included in their stats and it's not as sketchy as it could be, so I don't want to be the judge of that, and the informed consumer can state their opinion of if they think that's clear or not haha.
I commented below but I strongly disagree that outcomes are a justification for cost without knowing where the dollars actually go and why. The biggest problem in the botocamp industry, that might even take it down this year, is that people are paying for a curriculum and instruction but think they are paying for the outcome. If you think this way, please, please, please do not go to a bootcamp before understanding what you are actually paying for and if you think that's the right thing for you.
The outcome is a symptom of something the program is doing and you are actually paying for the "something" - figure out what the "something" is that you are paying for and why it's more expensive at some programs than others.
This is a good question... and you should ask THEM that haha because it's different for each of those 3 that you mention - and different for many of the "not best" ones as well.
For example, my company's (not bootcamp but sharing as example of what to ask) philosophy is you are giving us money you could spend on mentorship elsewhere and our job is to spend that money effectively so that you don't waste money on things you don't need. For example, college has super fixed schedules and curriculums, and you don't realize that every class you go to you are effectively spending money, and every class you go to that is generic and not adaptive to your progress is an inefficient use of that money. This could be a class moving so slow you are just wasting your time and money, or a class moving so fast you aren't keeping up and absorbing material as intended.
We work to this philosophy (and dif…