From my perspective there are a lot ton of jobs available all over the spectrum. There are certainly fewer jobs that last year, specifically at large, brand-name companies. But there are some great opportunities are mid/late stage startups.
The problem we have right now is that bootcamps generally don't teach you much or support you as an individual with unique experience and passions. Instead many teach you how to play the resume game and all of the graduates look the same on paper as a result, very little individual passion comes out in resumes that I've seen and you end up with 500 people applying for a job. I've been on the other side and when that many similar resumes come in, you just ignore them because you don't have time to process them.
I've said this several times , but this year will be the end of a bunch of bootcamps. The ones that survive will have to adapt. Codesmith for…
Interesting, like no bar at all!? Yeah people should consider that almost like a different program/school then and not think they are getting the traditional Hack Reactor program.
If there's no bar at all, it's actually proving my point even more about the entry bar mattering. There are going to be a lot of unhappy people about this program who won't get jobs but expected them because of the 12 week program's reputation.
My other common argument on this is that people should be paying for the education experience and not the job and judging by that. The two can get mixed up in reviews as "not getting a job" can make people look cynically at the educational experience. A CS degree isn't cheap either and isn't perfect, so the expectation shouldn't be perfection, but people should have some idea of the day to day education they expected and if the program met that or not, regardless of ge…
The job market right now is putting "the best" to the test.
Many bootcamps have long been pretty poor education experiences that use a high entrance bar to let in people that would succeed without the program but need a little more guidance. In a good job market where you get a six figure job, that "little more guidance" was easily worth any amount of money. In a tough job market people are pulling out the magnifying glass to see exactly what they are paying for, because they aren't getting jobs anymore.
I've seen Hack Reactor and Codesmith's curriculum, and I don't see how people can learn React in a day (literally at Codesmith, it's 1-2 days as of Jan 2023). I worked at Facebook for 8 years, and after leaving it took me months to get really good at React and I'm still not amazing.
I don't think it's fair to entirely blame the programs though because they largely haven't changed in t…
OSLabs, Inc. is a standalone charity registered in Delaware and in California, whose registration doesn't mention anything about Codesmith. The communications manager at Codesmith is on the OSLabs board, and I have a few letters of reference signed by "Philip Troutman, Board Member" but don't see any documentation that he is actually on the board of the new charity. I have also seen on LinkedIn, Codesmith's "senior board advisor" advertising for the executive director role at OSLabs and asking candidates to reach out to him.
Yeah three things interesting on the website are:
1. The "accelerator program" which sounds like, if free/volunteer, takes the best part of Codesmith and makes it free.
2. The "mentors" being paid $100 an hour for up to 8 hours a week. If those mentors are mentoring Codesmith students working on OSPs that could be illegal/violation of charity laws
3. If they allow…
If you go to Codesmith they just did something pretty interesting here. They created a charity in June 2022, that was authorized in Dec 2022, for their open source projects so people can say they did work for this charity and the charity writes letters of reference for people. I'm assuming they made all the legalities of this work and vetted it with silicon valley lawyers because I can only imagine the IP headaches this would cause and the conflict of interest of having a charity take in tax-free dollars to pay to mentor people in a for profit program that people pay for. Considering Codesmith and OSLabs have been around for years and this charity was formed 8 months ago, I'm not sure what this says about all the people who graduated before then and got letters of reference from "OSLabs" signed by a Codesmith executive. But assuming it's all on the up and up, it's an interesting solution…
Hi! Sorry, I had answered in other threads but not here and happy to provide more context.We do referrals but they are more limited than before because companies are hiring less and have more rigid criteria (which tends to disadvantage people with less experience). In the very limited scenarios where we do refer people, they remain high hit and effective. We constantly change the website as the market changes.
We are far from perfect, but I think some of the negativity in this thread stems from the market changing suddenly in Fall 2022. A small number of people joined during the hot market when many people they spoke with who did Formation at the time were referred to the canonical FAANG and they expected to follow the same path. They trained hard, got their skill level up and then things changed suddenly and all those pipelines shut off. They are understandably frustrated, which I symp…
u/swiggityswooty9 If you have answers to the questions above, can you explain more how they calculate the numbers on their website? Lambda School was sued yesterday for fraud because of misleading numbers on their website and something doesn't add up with Coachable's numbers as they are right now.
If you don't feel comfortable sharing the answers, can you say whether you think the numbers are representing the outcomes properly?
I don't know anyone who has gone through the entire program and got a job, but I highly recommend asking them for people who have who are not on their website to have a quick async chat, or call with.
What happens if you have an onsite at Google in three weeks. Then you leave Coachable in two weeks, don't pay anything because you don't have a job paying $100K, and then pass the Google onsite and get an offer?
I run a program where a number of people change their minds about their job hunt, change their goals, or all kinds of things, and we've seen everything and we're still small, so presumably Coachable has seen all kinds of people trying to take advantage of their guarantee and protected against it.
Sorry another good question to ask is to clarify the payment policy. Like what does a $100K job mean on paper, and what happens if you just give up and leave halfway though? Do you have to pay anything? Don't make assumptions and get official answers.
Sorry this happened :(. Palantir has a really high bar and you clearly passed it, so stay positive because you just have to find the right place for you!
Yeah a couple people who went through their program and my partner at Formation spoke to their founder a few years ago.
You should absolutely not trust me though about anything! It might be a great fit for you. Just for any program or coaching you look into you want to know how it works and not just be convinced by the big numbers on a website, even for my own program.
Some things to ask:
1. Ask them to explain outcomes in more detail. Where were the last 10, 20, 30 placements? How do they calculate the numbers on the website? The numbers on their website are clearly inconsistent and you need a more practical picture of the outcomes.
2. What is a typical day or week look like?
3. What kinds of strategies help a Coachable student do better than a random new grad?
4. Ask to talk to alumni who have a similar background as yourself and ask them about their day to day and what is good and…
I agree with you with the vast majority of bootcamps but look seriously at [https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees](https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees)
It's real! The "catch" is that it's INSANELY competitive to get into and you are competing against accountants and lawyers as well, and it's a huge grind, but it's legit!
I'm familiar with Coachable but full disclosure, I co-founded a program for experienced engineers called Formation that partially competes with Coachable (we work mostly with experienced engineers and are not a good fit for most new grads).
So there are no shortcuts or secret pathways to jobs right now. You are paying to have a coach work with you to improve you odds and to leverage their experience.
1. Coachable is run by someone who has a few years at Google and has a dozen coaches or so who went through Coachable and came back as coaches. Their approach is very aggressive: exaggerate your resume, aggressively message recruiters with messages they help write, and hope that something lands. Some people find this approach of exaggerating a little sketchy, some find it a means to an ends. Ultimately it's up to you but the key here is to ask for HOW it works instead of just looking at th…
If you work in the position for long enough and perform well, you can apply for a super competitive internal program where Amazon will pay to put you through a bootcamp-like experience, that has a guaranteed internship, and interview to convert. It was extremely competitive and hard to get into.
One of my co-workers spouse worked on this program and a Fellow at Formation went through this program.
You can read more about it here: [https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees](https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees)
Proposal for Mods: require minimum karma to post and comment in this sub. Thoughts?
Hi friends, our sub is starting to get overrun by spammers who tend to get deleted and blocked in other subs, but not here.
Examples of self promoters who use new accounts and tend to quickly get banned in other subs except this one
4 hours ago [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11sfnkh/best\_sites\_for\_learning\_data\_science/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11sfnkh/best_sites_for_learning_data_science/)
4 hours ago [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11sfy2k/best\_books\_on\_algorithms\_and\_data\_structures/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11sfy2k/best_books_on_algorithms_and_data_structures/)
17 hours ago
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11ruh82/learn\_to\_build\_an\_ecommerce\_site\_with\_react\_data/](https://ww…
I think a larger problem is that a small number of people joined during the hot market when a lot of people they spoke with at Formation were referred to FAANG and saw no reason why they wouldn't follow that path. They were in Formation long enough to get their skills up during the hot market and are in job hunting mode. Then things changed very suddenly, they currently have no path to FAANG (and few do), and they are frustrated, which I totally understand and sympathize with and a lot of people in this bucket are working with us productively to strategize about what to do.
There are two things in my opinion about the website though that people who are not at Formation have been referring to:
1. We have adjusted our website over months to the market. The overall structure hasn't changed at all, but it used to have one statement about 'high hit rate referrals' and another about 'getting…
I'm trying to avoid commenting on threads mostly with new accounts that troll and ignore replies from myself or others... been advised by Reddit employees don't feed the trolls. I love to have respectful discourse with established accounts.
Someone had commented a good answer but I think they deleted:
`From what I have heard they do referrals but its more limited than before because companies are hiring less and being more selective. The companies may also want a certain type of candidate, n yrs of experience, college degree, etc.`
To reinforce: people should not have and should not join Formation only to get referrals, we are not a pay for play referral service and if you think your skills are amazing and you want to buy your way into FAANG, it's not the program for you. We work with people that want an efficient way to get you skills to the top tier bar and gain confidence in your s…
Hi, yeah it depends a lot on you and what you need to work on! Some things to keep in mind if you are targeting a larger top tier company
1. Practice a problem solving method instead of practicing just LC problems. A problem solving method will help you get through interviews when you haven't seen the problem before, and removes the need to solve hundreds of LC problems.
2. \+1 to practicing out loud for real - one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they know how to solve problems because they passed on LC while doing it silently by themselves and that they don't truly understand. As you said, [pramp.com](https://pramp.com) is an option. A wider range of options (cost and effectiveness-wise) are finding peers in a Discord server, [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io), or a more intense career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), Interview Kickstart,…
I definitely see all kinds of sketchy behavior on Reddit. I have several friends, and Formation alumni, who work at Reddit and hear about things. This subreddit has no minimum thresholds for posting so it's particularly susceptible to bad actors and a lot of the more controversial stuff you'll see is brand new accounts with almost no comment history at all making bold claims out of nowhere, making it impossible to validate. So I tend to read people's histories carefully when I encounter someone new making strong statements.
All of that said, I don't think it's astroturfing and I don't think Codesmith every tells anyone to post on Reddit at scale and most of the anecdotal stories on here are genuine, especially from well established accounts.
This subreddit is a small, nice corner of the world and part of the heavy Codesmith presence is a snowball effect. Lots of Codesmith alumni here,…
A lot of lists are paid for/sponsored posts. Codesmith is 100% one of the top bootcamps they just don't pay to show up in lists, which is a good thing, in my opinion! Codesmith doesn't do much marketing and focuses on getting you to show up to free sessions to get you into the funnel and to get you to keep coming back for more and more commitment, until you sign up for the immersive. They do sponsor Course Report and Switchup and you'll see them there in "featured lists".
Codesmith is also relatively smaller than the other programs and while it has investors, they are not owned by any large company and their founders don't come from a traditional "education" background.
Finally, Codesmith has a "cult-like" (not my words) following that feels like a family. Almost all of the instructors, lead instructors, fellows, TAs, etc... went to Codesmith itself, and alumni are extremely protective…
Very possible as second job! I work with a lot of people in this bucket. In this market it's significantly harder to get into FAANG+ period, regardless of your background, because they aren't hiring at all, but in a normal hiring market, you'll have the same chances as anyone else with a year experience at getting interviews.
Two missing pieces for bootcamp grads and FAANG+ jobs that I've seen:
1. Lack of Computer Science fundamentals. Bootcamp focused on practical skills + superficial DS&A and your first job was probably a lot simpler than you expected. CS grads that get FAANG jobs often had FAANG internships, spent years hearing from friends about their jobs at FAANG, and have a slightly better idea of what to expect, whereas for bootcamp grads a FAANG interview might be your first time with that kind of pressure and something you aren't ready for. Bootcamp grads tend to turn to…
Assuming we are talking about Formation here, have you reported your feedback to your FM team about wanting to leave and what did they say? If you haven't can you do so! If Formation isn't the right fit we are more than happy to support you leaving.
Similar to DS&A, we are practice based training with assessment and feedback rather than teaching frontend, so I want to launch an investigation into what you expected, what you received, what worked and what didn't work for frontend so we can both make improvements and also make sure people come in on the same page of what we can do and can't do.
Sorry to hear about that. Can you DM me anonymously here? Report it anonymously on the platform? Or have you given the feedback to you FM team, in weekly feedback forms, or on the session itself?
I see you are a new account posting about Formation in several places and ignoring me. We would love to help and support you if you are not in a great place, and help you exit on a positive note if Formation is not right for you, but we can't do that if you only comment anonymously on Reddit and refuse to talk to us.
There was an incident reported along these lines a few months ago and we did an hour-long call with the mentor to investigate what happened and resolved it and the person has since has strong positive feedback. If this is still happening we want to know!
u/TheeKingInTheNorth: I've seen all sides of this and it's not binary. People's views depend on two things: 1. where they are in the program/what point in time, 2. the person's background and their personal resume.
Number 4 below is most important (and the rest is for reference), because a lot of people don't know that step is happening. If you asked those people "how did Codesmith verify your OSP work or provide you with a reference?" I bet most of them will say, I don't know, they didn't need it. Some of them will say, oh I just filled out a Google form - don't really know. And then others will think the references are totally fine and not even mention that it's something controversial.
This is all either secondary (second hand from a primary source), or first hand sources shared with me.
1. They strongly and firmly tell people in lecture to not lie on their resumes.
2. They also s…
We don't force you to take any job and if you want to work at FAANG, **no one is kicking you out and I challenge you to leave Formation and find another path to FAANG right now.** We never promised how long it would take, and we work with people as long as they want as long as they do their part and keep intending to job hunt.
We've had a jump in placements in the past three weeks and people gave very high satisfaction ratings despite more people choosing to take non-FAANG jobs, like Chegg, Citibank, and others. For example, one person chose to change their target away from FAANG companies and was thrilled with how Formation supported them doing that and thrilled with the job they received.
I think this is very fair and is a top reason people come to Formation. If you really want to work at FAANG, you can come to Formation, don't expect to get a job on any timeframe (which I believe we…
I would encourage everyone to spend time and fully read the 54 comments (of which 1/4 or so are my comments) and judge for themselves how I responded to their feedback.
We have some people with no experience, you found one who had several internships but no full SWE experience, and that proves nothing. The other comment thread you shared has a person who loud and clear says they have 7+ years experience, and another person saying that most of the Fellows they work with have experience. And for the fourth time, you have our official data as the primary source proving this. **Yelling loudly doesn't make false statements true**, that's how fake news spreads, like in the 2016 election, which I saw first hand at Facebook.
There are people with tons of experience who are weaker at DS&A and people with no experience who are strong at DS&A, and that's why everyone at Formation gets a u…
You should be super honest on the background check forms, even if they don't align with your resume and I've seen this a few times with Codesmith alumni. They have a semi-sketchy process for getting verified and they will verify your entire time in the program as experience on the OSP, even though it was 4 weeks and the evidence they give you in writing fooled several people I tested with who thought it was a verification letter for a SWE role.
Assuming the hiring company is using a large common company like HireRight or Checkr, they are checking for two things:
1. Do you have any red flags: e.g. a criminal record that might be relevant to the job?
2. Can they verify the information you put on the background check?
The report they send back isn't a pass/fail, but it's more like "able to verify"/"not able to verify". Sometimes a totally legit job can't be verified because the company r…
If this is about Formation, please reach out so I can help give you advice since you don't seem happy right now. If it's not about Formation, also feel free to reach out and I can try to help you give you advice as well, sounds like you are in a tough spot.
Or if the person leaves, they are discounted (depending on number of active and valued weeks) and have 12 months to find a job or not pay us either. It's different though.
This is not correct about Formation. The ISA gets forgiven if you leave and don't get a job for 1 year. Otherwise we work with you for however long it takes until you get a job, even if it's a very long time.
I commented above, but whatever program this is, did you talk to them about your situation, feelings, and what options you have and what was their response?
I would highly suggest that as a first step for anyone in a similar situation.
I think anecdotal stories of recent success or positive experiences might boost your mood, but people need to make carefully considered decisions and not use one off anecdotes as justification to go to one or reinforce your decisions.
Thanks for sharing. I give a warning often that one person's trajectory shouldn't be generalized. I know several Codesmith alumni with similar trajectories and several without. I've also seen similar trajectories from many bootcamp grads in general.
Some things that would be good to share are how Codesmith helped you with those new jobs in terms of finding them, preparing for them, and negotiating.
Correct. We have a partnership with Netflix that is (but is limited to 2024 grads and applications closed recently) and over time we may focus on more options, but it's currently not intended for current students. We do accept them on a case by case basis but it depends highly on your goals and timeline, because we really want to avoid taking on people that are not there for the right reasons. We put our heart and sole into our work but if it's not a good alignment with the current program it won't work well no matter how hard we try.
Thanks for the context, I'll absolutely edit ASAP and make this very clear and please let me know if you feel it still isn't clear. I have zero intention to make Tech Elevator look good or bad just want to talk the market the way it is.
To be quite blunt these are numerous reasons why CIRR is flawed. I know something is better than nothing, but at the same time, every program is different and unique, and you can't capture all of this context in a CIRR report.
Everyone's Favorite time of the half-year! H1 2022 CIRR Reports are starting to roll out! TechElevator, CodeUp and LaunchAcademy are live, Codesmith not live yet. First look at 2021 vs 2022 hiring climate stats and things don't look good :S
(will update as more results released)
IMPORTANT EDIT. See Tech Elevators comment below about an error on their CIRR worksheet that resulted in lower placement percentages. They claimed the percentages are actually very similar from 2021 to 2022 and the CIRR report has now been updated officially. I've stated numerous times about flaws with CIRR, for example that results are not audited before posting, or that auditors make mistakes.
**OVERALL: After Tech Elevators data correction, placement rates for H1 2022 are holding up and didn't crash that much yet! I expect H2 2022 to be much more impacted and we'll see in October.**
Notable changes Tech El…
Found their comment from a thread yesterday, 25% in 4 months post graduation (i.e. 9 out of 36)
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/11aigfa/comment/j9vvqtz/
>formation
/u/No-Leopard-1563
Hi, yeah I'm the co-founder and lead engineer at Formation, ex-FB (intern -> principal, over 8 years).
Formation's model isn't to have a dedicated 1-1 mentor. Instead you'll work with dozens of senior/staff/principal/managers/directors at top tier companies in dozens of small group (3-6 people), or 1-1 mock interview, sessions. You might work with some people more than others, but the goal isn't to have a long term dedicated mentor and rather get a larger volume of feedback from a wide range of people. If you do investments, it's kind of like buying into index funds versus putting all your money into one stock/crypto/etc... Any individual stocks in the portfolio might do better or worse, but over a long period of time, you get reliable return on investment.
It is also a large commitment with the current Fellowship we have. If you do it part time p…
More thoughts and random points /u/Independent-Tear3960, also /u/BudgetSense8077 and /u/InTheDarkDancing as I commented some of this on your thread and then deleted to move here. **I think point 4 is most important to the OPs questions**
1. The hiring market is partially to blame because it changed so quickly. One week Amazon was hiring, the next week they were laying off. People started bootcamps in a great environment and the carpet was pulled out underneath them.
2. I'm also not seeing bootcamps meaningfully adapt their program and strategies fast enough. Codesmith still tells people "taking a junior job is the worst thing you can do for your career". Now this is super bias, but I believe the way bootcamps are structured make it very hard to change everything overnight. At Formation, we are feeling the market pressure as well, we have much fewer opportunities to refer people to top t…
Arbitration clauses aren't a sign of a scam. Almost every top tier company employment contract has arbitration clauses in them.
Job placement claims are absolutely an easy stat to manipulate. There are always caveats in how the number was measured and when. If they can't provide the source of data or explain the methodology that's suspicious. CIRR and GRAD are two standards, flawed as they may be, that at least explain the methodology so you interpret.
I have a lot more thoughts but not enough time so I might come back later with more.
Yeah, people do it all the time, they just aren't as strong as a true referral. Input someone into a talent tracking system or give a referral link. Recruiters still look at your profile and will filter it out if you are not strong enough on paper.
Direct referrals made to a recruiter with a strong, honest, recommendation message go a lot farther.
Need more context. You can do a sha256 hash and then can compare against it but can't "decrypt" back to the original link. If it's possible for someone to intercept the URL and it's super sensitive then you can salt it too (Google that, lots of things here to learn about). If you want to actually encrypt it and decrypt it then you need a secure way of storing the decryption keys or decide when and where and who decrypts it.
Lots of stuff to talk about here. Maybe receive your use case more?
Codesmith's placement rates from people who have graduated recently seem to hover around 50% (some lower, some higher) within 6 months versus their prior 85%.
It's the market though and nothing changed about Codesmith that I know of.
It doesn't sound like they are adapting much to the market or making changes, so hopefully things turn around soon, because I strongly believe the strategy of aiming for mid level and senior roles in this market is not going to work
Maybe ask in CSMajors. I agree that internships are important for CS grads because you are competing with other grads that have them. But I would make sure the work is good.
For example, if you can keep doing your current job and do a lower paid part time work for a tech startup, that might end up being more useful than just any tech job.
Finally, read the fine print about the 1 year contract part. It's not right if you have to pay for training while being paid, companies should pay to train you themselves. If you are paying and leave before 1 year, do you have to pay the entire training fee?