Posts that Michael (or Reddit moderators) have removed from live Reddit, preserved verbatim here from a third-party Reddit archive that snapshots posts at creation.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
So you have zero affiliation with Codesmith, staff, former staff, alumni, etc... and you are just a person that happens to comment a huge percentage of comments on Codesmith related content.
I covered that case, and you could be normal Redditor who happened upon here, and then is being used for manipulation.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
You realize all day long the counts jump +10 in minutes and then Reddit cleans it up later. I've had numerous notifications of comments on this post and I click through and the account is already banned and the comment is gone.
I will stay here with my one account, and let Codesmith destroy it's own reputation for not trying to stop this behavior.
I love how this gets 10 new views and -3 downvotes in minutes. This post is pure fact and if you think I'm wrong, explain what's wrong and I'll very quickly correct it! If you don't like the facts then I don't really know what to say, that's on you.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I don't want to share the raw link because there is A LOT Of stuff on there. Seems like he hires all his lawyers, interior designers, all the people for their IRS thing.... you can try to find it on your own, it's all public and not hard to find.
I don't really understand why the IRS would pay Codesmith a bunch of money if all these people are just Upwork contractors that ANYONE could hire for $40 an hour. Maybe that's how the government works, but we need more integrity and value creation and not people selling off the work of Upwork contractors with a huge markup to the government.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well the team isn't any more qualified than anyone else to do AI consulting so we'll see if they are successful at it. Will Sentance has never worked full time at a real company.
The IRS contract means nothing as there are 6 companies and counting in that contract and they have to compete on actual work and haven't seen any receipts yet for that.
It's possible they didn't want to shut down the Codesmith brand so this is just like a holding company, shell/home for the briend.
Will Sentance seems like he's completely moved on to physical AI, manufacturing plants in the mid-west, robot hackatons, Oxford Fellow, Stanford Fellow.
Amazing how quickly he moved on from Codesmith and abandoned everything after personally making millions of dollars (based on court filling estimations) off of Codesmith.
The sad problem is that out of the $50M Codesmith approximately/estimate made in pure stude…
The bot army is back to downvote me, 10 views, -10 votes... these people have no integrity and people are shocked Codesmith imploded and that a number of former staff think Will Sentance is a liar.
https://preview.redd.it/q7h2x48jrs5h1.png?width=802&format=png&auto=webp&s=3283c4be823016968e06be2987597b5cd4d945ff
The voting manipulation is back... from +4 to -6 with only 48 views, deeply nested comment... my parent comment above this has 250 videos.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Will Sentance has been unambiguous about this. He thought most bootcamps were driven by profit motivated investors who pushed for scale.
He maybe be right about that but his OWN COMPANY had PROFIT MOTIVATED INVESTORS that resulted in internal disputes, chaos and lawsuits, that impacted the business and took a lot of money off the table.
People need to know about this four-faced liar because he took advantage of people's distrust of bootcamps, thousands of people believed it, when he was no better off himself.
You are adamantly saying that anyone can switch careers right now into SWE by learning to program, in the learn to program subreddit, when no engineer will actually program by the end of this year and many remaining coding bootcamps will shutdown.
If I'm wrong I will happily eat my words on that remind me date as long as you would do the same.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about then take a break from Reddit and try to understand first.
At least research who you are talking to.
I'm stating unequivocally that most engineers will not be writing code by hand by the end of 2026 anymore.
If you don't believe that will be to your own loss.
You energy can be valid but the direction it's pointed in might not work out well for your career.
A small number of people can career change right now and you should help them, but you should be legally responsible for the trail of destruction left by making it feel like anyone who just tries hard enough can make the switch.
I'm friends with the executives of the top AI labs. Their engineers don't write code anymore. By the end of 2026, most top tier engineers won't write code anymore. I'm the number 1 output engineer from Meta through manual code wiring and I don't write code anymore.
I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I have authentic experience and relationships with the people that are building the future.
Of course it's fine to defame someone and rip them apart and then when proven wrong with 8000 word of evidence and I didn't even start with the text messages that show worse stuff, I'm harassing you.
NOTE: I was not a mod when this happened and people tying this to me doing this as a mod are factually incorrect. Stop.
Debunked: https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
Fake news, see: https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
I said this above but I exposed 39 fake Reddit accounts and I'm ready to expose more. Stop manipulating and be transparent.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well read this before you trust Lars Lofgren with anything... https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
I'm not a perfect human, but I'm fully transparent, honest, direct... wear my heart on my sleeve.
Lars has a black-hat mind and trying to pull me down to his level.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
u/Gullible_Mousse_4590 here is the debunking: https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
Either you didn't know about all of this stuff and you want to correct all of your misinformation or you did already know everything in here and all your posts calling me a liar are defamatory.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I proved this here and yes you are a proven Codesmith alt and shame on you for what you've said and done online, absolutely disgusting and no surprise Codesmith enrollment has tanked to zero with people like you sneaking around with those alts.
[https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith)
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah like if he even just asked me for comment I would have pointed out his OWN mistakes in his own evidence. Like he didn't realize a key screenshot trying to demonstrate how I poisoned LLMs has a quote of me defending the bootcamp (because it wasn't labelled). He mixed up the timeframe of two events 2 years apart and framed it as me being a 'stalker of leadership's kids'... people are calling me a 'p-word' in some of the social comments and it's absolutely unwarranted.
Lars has blocked me on every avenue and I have no way to contact him.
I submitted a request to pull my personal email address from his blog because people were signing me up for porn subscriptions and he seems to have done that but didn't not actually respond to me.
I care less here about being right and more about the irreparable damage caused by him not fact checking anything.
8000 words of all the shit he missed,…
It would make me happy if you actually read the post.
If you are going to keep harassing me across Reddit based on Lars' post I would appreciate you read the dismantling of Lars' arguments as well and then share that alongside your harassment campaign so people can see both sides of an argument.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it uses attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
It's up to you to decide if the lawsuit was relevant during this period of decline, but leaving it out of that blog post does not give you the information needed to do that.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Vote manipulation continues. I'm not saying who is doing it, but someone is.
Comment after 2 hours from commenting: +4 karma, 60 views
2 more hours later: -7 karma, 92 views
So the first 60 people that saw this had a 4 karma rating
Then the nex 32 people 11 of them voted negatively.
The participation rate in commenting went from 7% to 35% suddently, **but only one one comment**
Makes no sense and regardless of who is doing it, it makes Codesmith look bad.
Especially after Codesmith's CEO sent me evidence unintentionally of hiring a Reddit market who manipulates Reddit comments and has had dozens of accounts banned from Reddit.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want my opinions about the lawsuit, I have many, and I'm not sharing them.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
RE: "lying" I think (my opinion) Codesmith execs have some kind bubble around this, where they reinforce this idea to each other, like a Slack channel where they share things I post and pile on to me about it, but there really is another side and you can't see my DMs by definition to see it. I have 1-1 conversations, no coordinated groups, and many people (completely independently) thank me for 'telling the truth' because they didn't want to speak publicly about it at the time (although that could have changed since this blog post because I'm sure people are very fired up now at what they perceive as an 'injustice' against me, not sure since I can't discuss this with any of them anymore).
You'd be surprised how much I also defended or played devil's advocate to people who said some pretty negative examples about leader's behavior and I was always trying to explore why or look at from ot…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
1. The blog post was not based on fact, it was based on his opinions as a blogger. A reasonable person can see that he is a marketer/blogger and that was a blog post. It was not fact checked, the methodology is not specified, journalism ethics were not followed. **I have a direct email from Codesmith's CEO telling me that she doesn't consider my company a competitor.** But somehow that was left out of the "leaked emails" and only ones that make me look bad out of context were shared. I mentioned above but I can only discuss public info because of legal matters, so I can't comment more on this blog.
2. As I pointed out above, your sub has 6 moderators, 4 of which are banned accounts, and all of those accounts display patterns of inauthentic behaviors (such as phishing for karma in r/AskReddit and other large subs, etc..) and biased commentary.
They say they are doing a 'startup' or 'freelance' on their LinkedIn to try to appear to ahve experience, and then the bootcamp counts it as a placement.
You can check them yourself, it's fucked up imo that the bootcamps count these and then say they have "audited results" where the auditor thinks that that is a placement too.
It's a tangent and I don't want to talk about it much because bringing attention to this gets me harassment, threats, and people going after me.
Some people believe in manifesting positivity to build confidence. I actually think it helps a lot if the market is good and you need to stand out. Right now it's irrational to do a bootcamp.
I've been evaluating things rationally for 3 years now, pushing numerous bootcamps on what I perceive as 'reality' vs what they are 'marketing'.
Very costly for my personal reputation to do this with zero benefit.
Be careful not to cross the wrong people in this industry.
I’ve been thinking about why some people (neurodivergent or not) seem particularly effective at cutting through appearances and emotional reactions to things and focusing on what’s "real". These people often have a knack for separating emotion or social expectations from facts and outcomes, which allows them to respond more directly to challenges rather than getting lost in how things feel or being impacted by the emotional state of others around you (like your team). When that clarity and focus are paired with ambition and creativity, it can be a powerful advantage in building products or companies.
As a founder myself, I know how emotionally intense the journey can be. Even people like Zuckerberg or Bezos (not implying anything about their neurotypical states, and disclosure: I'm friends with Zuck) have had their ups and downs. The ability to stay grounded and not get swept away by th…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can’t comment on any of this at the moment due to legal reasons. I’ve been advised not to make any further statements about Codesmith or its programs while this matter is active.
Anyone who wants context can look at what I’ve previously said directly and review the public sources I cited at the time. I can’t add or restate anything beyond that right now.
My overall repeated opinion was that there is always bias and transparency is a better solution than trying to engineer a bias-less system. I also think reducing bias takes a tremendous about of work from a lot of people. In Germany, large company board of directors have worker representatives and corporate ones too. That helps improve some problems but it requires strong laws, governance, etc...
In that analogy and based on my previous arguments I would say being like the CEO of the Rolls Royce Airplane Jet Engines unit being the mod of a car sub.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith gives away all of their CSX content in a single JSON file so you can turn it into anything with AI trivially.
The fact that they haven't updated it when I can grab this and improve it with AI in minutes is major incompetence.
Other places have open source content you can grab too.
But that fact is also why you won't get anywhere doing it yourself either.
It just goes to show you why bootcamps are failing and not even doing anything about it.
Icing on the cake is Codesmith is producing all these high production value marketing videos and patting everyone on the back for them and entirely missing the point....
Yeah, rumors of a 2 person cohort at HR. And Codesmith is publishing marketing videos with former actors that are like aime at 5 year olds "chugga-chugga-choo-choo, here comes the Expresss.js train!!!!"
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can't disclose exact things nor do I proactively reach out to people about it. From what people told me the numbers aren't good.
They removed all their highest paid employees and pay very low now. They fired the most expensive people and hired people in their place and paid them a lot less for the same job.
Codesmith is $22,500 so if you have 10 people every 8 weeks, thats $225,000 or about $100,000 a month.
Their staff right now:
1 instructor: $10,000 (they are paid a lot less now)
3 mentors/combined fellow: $30,000 (fellow is multiple people part time)
1 coordinator: $6,000
1 admissions: $6,000
1 outcomes: $6,000
Marketing/Career Support: $6,000
Overhead = 20% $13,000
Total: is like $80,000 or so?
I think this is why they are clinging to life, they convince loyal alumni to work for a fraction of what they should be paid... like those MLMs that run off of the labor…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith's problems are a leadership skill issue, not a student or alumni issue.
I criticized for years while simultaneously recommending specific people go there.
For a handful of people it's the right place. For statistically the vast majority of people reading this it is not.
But that was before the 20ish day outage and counting.
Leadership skill gap caught up with them and took down the company and there are zero people that should go there right now.
This is Codesmith 3 years ago when I started sounding the alarms on this stuff.
https://preview.redd.it/wyv9hard7igf1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0e0ce6521b45ff7f17fa24ddd5167ff5467fee0
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh so it's Meta then. Yeah Meta doesn't take bullshit, and maybe that's why I'm equally firm about calling out bullshit.
Meta is particularly sensitive about levelling and people who are mis levelled are generally laid off instead of adjusted or supported.
Also most of the people were contractors via 3rd party and those are throwaway at Meta and not a path to full time work.
I wrote a letter to Codesmith about this because one student lied (he apparently APPARENTLY STARTED WORKING AT CODESMITH BEFORE HE EVEN WENT TO CODESMITH on his LinkedIn) and I suspected this was to meet the YOE requirement at Meta.
Codesmith defended it and wrote a blog about him.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Let's start with looking at an AMA I did 3 months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama\_im\_michael\_exmeta\_principal\_engineer\_1\_code/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama_im_michael_exmeta_principal_engineer_1_code/)
Normal comments, normal replies.
Now let's look at a Codesmith AMA from 3 months ago:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im\_ayleen\_a\_software\_engineer\_and\_current/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im_ayleen_a_software_engineer_and_current/)
Notice how **EVERY SINGLE COMMENT IS DELETED OR COLLAPSED BY REDDIT** except for the OP's comments and ONE question.
Most of their other AMAs - similar thing.
I'm not saying it's a fact that Codesmith is responsible, but like something they are doing on Reddit is very sketchy.
I have reems of similar documentation of this kind of…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I dunno, you seem to now want to be collaborative and that's on you. You never mentioned anything about stating that we do this to make money and I hope that's your opinion and you aren't starting that as a fact because it's provably untrue on our side and I can't see how you have facts to prove that yourself. So if you had this opinion the whole time, you are debating disingenuously.
I started the conversation with 'I'll talk to you if you accept the facts' because the facts are important.
The average person we work with has 5 years of industry work experience as a SWE. Why would they put a mentorship community Fellowship on their LinkedIn as a job or resume when they currently work at Google or Amazon?
It makes no sense whatsoever and why would they not do Formation if the name changed?
Like the facts are abundantly clear that very few percentage of people put Formation publicly…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I'll share your feedback with our team to consider it, that's what I mean about gaslighting, like I'm not saying you are crazy and I see where you are coming from and I'm arguing that I don't agree and I don't think it's a problem and why I think that.
Like it's a good debate and if a lot of people feel that way we might change it so your feedback is important to share and note so we can pay attention to it.
We improve through feedback and accept it.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
Here is what AI says to the question: "Is Formation Fellowship a paid job"
"No — Formation is not a paid job, nor does it offer employment. It’s a paid fellowship/training program (focused on interview prep and career coaching), not a salaried position."
Here is what it thinks about Codesmith: "are oslabs engineers paid?"
"Yes - OSLabs does pay engineers in at least one of its key programs"
Like I don't think you'll find anything anywhere that would make a reasonable person think Formation Fellows are paid roles - but acknowledge that edge case people might be confused because of the multiple definitions.
But in Codesmith's case like everything is blatantly twisted to appear that way.
This discrepancy is one of the 3 primary reasons I've been going after Codesmith.
Dictionary definitions aside, what the leaders of these companies do and stand for and their integrity matte…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The official on the record answer - we used the word Fellow because our industry doesn't have many competitors: Interview Kickstart and Pathrise. Pathris used the word Fellows so we copied them and used the word Fellow. So that our customers could compare the two familiarly.
I'm not trying to gaslight you but I Googled Fellow and this is the dictionary definition it presented and not any of them say anything about being paid.
The definition for "Fellowship" has two meanings, none of them saying anything about being paid either (I can only attached one screenshot, but pasted:)
1. friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests."they valued fun and good fellowship as the cement of the community"
2. the status of a fellow of a college or society."she held the Faulkner fellowship"
Formation is not affiliated with education/schools/universities and no where in our…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I'll give you the straight up facts on this if you are willing to accept them. I can prove every one of these statements.
Formation has flaws and this isn't one of them.
FORMATION:
1. A small fraction of Fellows at Formation put it on their LinkedIn.
2. No one says it's paid anywhere. Of the ones that do it's abundantly clear that it's a mentorship program for high performance and not a job.
3. We have not received a single request for a background check for anyone that I'm aware of in the past 5 years for anyone claiming they were employed by Formation.
3. The people who say 2-3+ years have genuinely been at Formation that time and actively participating. Maybe it's terrible they didn't get a job yet, but the timeframe is correct from what I'm aware of.
CODESMITH:
1. In my [reporting end of 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recen…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Google wasn't down because the team has incompetent engineering practices.
CIRR also has incompetent processes and deserves equal criticism.
In my opinion Codesmith is full of liars and exaggerators. For god's sake the founding advisor's own sign had a LinkedIn and resume full of lies and exaggerations.
I meant that this was the last straw about engineering practices because I had been privately telling them all kinds of problems for a while now and they keep telling me how great their engineers are.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I suspect you'll get messages from Codesmith people telling you I'm crazy, all you have to do is ask how many people were placed in 2025. They were very upfront about that number in 2024 and they currently list 102 offers between August 2024 and January 2025. Ask them how many offers that have reported in 2025 and if they won't give you a number, don't give them your dollars.
Just look at their own data carefully, look at the "percentage of people not reporting salaries" spiking on their reports. Look at the dropping salaries.
By all objective measures the data is falling off a cliff - and this data is trailing reality.
They know very well what's going on internally and it's offensive to me that they gaslight the public to the contrary in my opinion by still quoting old data combined "recent placements at Amazon and Meta" (yes, like 4 people... and most had tangential experience). Don…
\#CancelCodesmith - I have to call out bull shit like that ad more loudly, in my opinion, it's a lot of bull shit that's scamming people and reeks of desperate flailing to survive in my opinion. Sadly the more I call this out, the louder and crazier their claims seem to get in my opinion. So I will keep making my opinions heard loud and clear.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Shame on you OP - according to Codesmith's website, you work there on staff and didn't disclose that anywhere in your post or comments.
This is an ad for Codesmith and it's really not cool to manipulate people like this. Everyone reading this, please don't fall for this kind of fake-organic advertising.
# ⚠️ SCAMMER ALERT
This thread is full of Codesmith planted questions that are not disclosed.
Including someone who did their own Codesmith AMA yesterday.
Stay safe everyone and don't give your money to these kinds of scams.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
# ⚠️ SCAMMER ALERT
This thread is full of Codesmith planted questions that are not disclosed.
**Your LinkedIn is full of lies - you apparently already have 3 years of "software engineering experience".** So you are lying there or you are lying here.
Sounds like you are just like the majority of Codesmith grads who lie cheat and steal your way to a SWE job.
Check out all the recent alumni who get jobs, open each of their LinkedIns and see how many months or years of experience are listed for their 3-4 week long project.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I used deep research and deep research sources some reddit threads but I feel like "serious allegations of unethical practices" is a bit extreme, the content was:
1. discussing outcomes
2. discussing resume practices and applying for jobs for people
I'll update the screenshot - I honestly only looked at the IK column and didn't read the others, including Formation hahaha, I'll give it a look and update in a few mins
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh ok yeah for sure, people can also get temporary jobs too, I'm just seeing right now people who don't go all in on SWE for the entire job search time having a harder time - it's such a difficult job search that people are just going back to their old jobs.
Talking Codesmith again since I know them so well, they had a huge spike in placements that 'ghosted' and their placement was verified by their LinkedIn instead of officially.
This is a sign of people giving up and going back to their old job or a tangential old job and giving up and not reporting it back as a placement because it's not a full blown SWE job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hopeless but not impossible yeah.
So look at Codesmith's stats since we're talking about them and they release numbers.
2021 grads: about 90% of grads placed within 6 months
2022 grads: about 80% of grads placed within 6 months
2023 grads: about 40% of grads placed within 6 months (and very notable that there was a huge double digit percentage increase in people who ghosted Codesmith and got counted as a placement because of LinkedIn
2024 grads: no data yet, but based on Codesmith's little bits of data there have been about 250 offers in h2 2024 -> h1 2025, which covers some 2022 grads, 2023 grads, 2024 grads, and then 2024 grads.
Now enrollment has declined because they cutback from 4+1 to 1+1 cohorts in Feb 2024 so it's hard to tell what the placement rates are but they definitely aren't good.
Codesmith also should have plenty of information about 2024 grads now that i's 6 mon…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I agree with this point as of June 2025.
We (speaking for Formation now) use a ton of AI for helping people practice and off the shelf ChatGPT is not perfect for learning right now. We have a lot of unique product applications of AI specifically tuned for helping people have effective practice and feedback and fortunately there's enough judgement and taste and nuance in that that it justifies our existing right now haha.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The leaders that have left are the ones that stopped believing or were laid off. I wouldn't be surprised if Annie also left and moved on.
I spoke to Alina and she's a much more reasonable person and open to criticism, but she's in a very tough place with Codesmith imploding and trying to pivot to AI - which many programs have struggled with.
Alina: if Will, Annie and Eric all left the company I would definitely be open to talking, but with them there there is too much baggage of low standards and lack of diligence.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I haven't made a penny of salary for the past 8 years and i'm not selling anything. I'm pointing out how poorly positioned Codesmith's AI program is and how they need to seriously watch out for growing it through milking alumni - who are paying for something that they were promised for free for life.
I've spoken to a number of companies on the B2B side floated different ideas around. The answer - we want our fleet of 100 ML engineers to teach this internally.
Codesmith's AI program is maintained and lead by someone with I think about 2-3 years of industry experience, ZERO prior to Codesmith, has not done AI professionally.
AND IS DOING IT PART TIME WHILE HE WORKS AT MICROSOFT.
There's no way in heck this program can be good. No way.
I'm telling you I will work 16 hours a day to build a much better AI program applying my experience as the number one code committer at Meta and showing…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I didn't say anything about you. I was responding to that person about the typical grad behavior for why many Codesmith grads defend this behavior.
I had a rant that I deleted because it was not coherent. But time will tell and the truth is catching up with them.
Most people have already figured it out and apparently many remaining staff are one foot out the door.
Maybe the CEO steps down and Alina takes over and maybe brings in some funding to buy out the company for cheap and they try to build something new and sell it off for a profit later on in a consolidation of remaining bootcamp brands?
Kind of like what happened at App Academy. The founder finally left, the new CEO replaced everything with he own AI platform. They stopped doing SWE and kind of floating around as a completely different version of the program before.
Codesmith will probably follow that path and they really sh…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A good question is to ask why I'm like this.
Seek first to understand, then be understood is what Codesmith told their staff, and they should action it.
I offered to help Codesmith and some ideas to work with them. Their leaders didn't want to.
Alina confirmed to me that Codesmith paid some guy to post on Reddit and I gave her evidence that the same guy lied and tried to get me banned and that the mysterious missing founder of the Codesmith subreddit was involved with this scheme.
I offered to apologize publicly for any individual person who felt attacked by my commentary if they publicly apologizing for making shit up about me and sending it out to their community.
They declined to apologize.
Then I open up LinkedIn and see all kinds of fake made up stories that seem to rewrite history and promote Codesmith.
I hear about more and more layoffs even as of a month ago.
I hear about…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A number of alumni are brainwashed and don't even realize they are lying. And then they get upset or defensive when you call them out because Codesmith "changed their life".
A number of these people come around eventually and it's one of the reasons there is zero Codesmith activity anymore on here.
After people get out of the bubble they see the truth and they don't go back and Codesmith alumni network is also dying.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I commented on a similar comment but the person deleted their comment so here is my thoughts:
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Please keep demonstrating more incompetent use of AI and defending it... it looks terrible for the program you are the lead of shows why no one should go to it... the person in that video is the Lead Instructor for the FTRI and it's not taken down.
Seems like you know nothing about the IP situation.
Review the internal Microsoft procedures for conflict and review and submit this for review through the internal tools. Don't ask your manager. You aren't contributing to education, you are are the primary person responsible for a for profit private companies AI product. What the f... you are playing with fire here.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
No, I've had enough of this condescending bull shit response and I'm not having it. The smug attitude with the tone of arrogance is disgusting and I'm not playing nice.
If you don't know about the layoffs a month ago in a 20 person company then I don't know what to say... go figure it out before gaslighting me.
I'm not going anywhere until you are all healed accountability for this bullshit and publicly apologize for this behavior.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
To give you an idea of how things have changed - if you went to Codesmith and graduated in 2022.
95% of people who started graduated, 70% of the graduates got jobs within 6 months of graduating (and 90% of them reported their placement to Codesmith) = 63% "self reported placement"
If you graduated in 2023:
95% of people who started graduated, 43.6% got jobs within 6 months of graduating (only 60% reported their placement to Codesmith - **A MAJOR DECLINE =** 26% "self reported placement rate"
\----------
Codesmith hasn't given any 2024 placement data even though **ALMOST ALL 2024 GRADS HAVE HAD 6 MONTHS POST PLACEMENT AND THEY INTERNALLY KNOW THE DATA**
The reason I'm so enraged here is that in 2024 when they internally knew about that major decline, they told the public that even in a tough market, Codesmith was crushing it. They conveniently pulled all these blog posts from thei…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I don't care either way, but if a program is publishing how amazing their outcomes are when they are good and goes RADIO SILENT when they are bad it pisses me off.
Codesmith's CIRR results tanked so they started publishing random time windows of absolute number of placements and then then even stopped doing that because in the past six months it's like fifty or something and a number of them have been looking for over a year.
I criticize them LEGITIMATELY and they come back with garbage data.
I bet their response to this is 'Michael is an asshole our placements are amazing, we had an average increase in salary over previous work of $70K so far this year! who cares if there aren't as many placements it's take people longer that's fine, it's all about average increase.'
My point is that changing the goal posts and each time telling everyone how "transparent" you are is garbage behavio…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I'm extremely pissed off at your bullshit response Codesmith. It's now 10 months later and things are worse then even and everything I said was correct. Everything you wrote (your post was removed by Reddit) was false bull shit you made up to manipulate people when you knew how bad things were.
Things did not get better. The 2025 "recruitment rush" never happened. Another 50% of your staff was laid off and you have hardly anyone left.
Your unethical behavior and marketing is catching up with you and I hope everyone sees it.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Here's some feedback for Codesmith you can relay. BE HONEST AND STOP LYING TO THE PUBLIC. Will: you very well know about continuing layoffs that keep happening over and over and over and you straight up lied above that there haven't been any 'restructurings'.
I'm absolutely not backing down and going to keep applying pressure until you are honest and tell the truth and stop manipulating the public.
Students deserve better. Your alumni deserve better. The former staff members who are treated like garbage deserve better. It's so sad that such dedicated team members who are laid off suddenly are so insignificant to you that you don't even acknowledge any 'restructuring' happening.
Absolutely garbage behavior and I'm enraged.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I really hope Will isn't actually the lead instructor for this program for long because this is one of the worst uses of AI I've seen and thank you for proving my point that he is not qualified to be leading with curriculum development and teaching of this course. I don't want to discourage people from learning AI and I wouldn't be remotely hard on Will if this was a student learning AI, not someone branded as an industry leader in AI leading teaching a $4600 for 4 week course.
This is a completely defensive comment about one of five points and it doesn't even address the point whatsoever... it defends the legitimacy of the music band - which I never disputed - and instead I was attacking Will for posting like a dozen promotional comments for the band that didn't disclose he actually was in the band at the time. Your comment is defending that behavior - defending manipulating Reddit wit…
I would guess half of bootcamps shut down already or paused their programs and suspect by the end of this year there will be only a handful of founder-led ones left that aren't aiming to scale.
I think the larger companies are going to be completing their pivot to AI related stuff
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
All programs have seen much lower enrollment in 2024/2025. The only solid numbers I have are Launch School - which publishes cohort by cohort data and their cohorts dropped below 20 people at the end of last year.
Codesmith has been downsizing for 2 years now. They mega expanded during the end of COVID to almost 50 cohorts a year because everyone Google 'best bootcamp' and chose the first one.
Now that's not the case and they are down to like 10 or maybe less cohorts a year - which is still shockingly high.
People might be dabbling with code but they aren't paying $22.5K for likely nothing.
And as of late Codesmith is seeing fewer and fewer show up to those free learn to code sessions.
So as others said, SWE bootcamps really ended in 2024 and this is the tail end.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Other instructors feel exploited. So In your case - you do this program for 1 month and say have 30 people = $130,000 of revenue for Codesmith. What are they paying you? $100 an hour? And you are doing like 10-20 hours a week?
So you are responsible for making the curriculum, teaching it all, and you get paid like $10,000 a month and Codesmith made $130,000.
Even if they have a couple of other helpers (both technical and operations) and the total cost is $20,000. There are no other costs here, no career program, no alumni support, etc...
This means that Codesmith is exploiting your generosity to make $110,000 a month off of you, which is absurd.
Now imagine you ran a program entirely by yourself and started your own company, think of how much money you would make... you are effectively paying Codesmith $100,000 a month for the opportunity to 'pay them back for all they did for you'…
You sound like so many Codesmith people before hand, ping me in two years, it's like a cult-like same old same old from you all.
This is what I do all day thank you very much: [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati)
1. Why isn't he teaching classes and why do students in the immersive complain to me they never see him?
2. Ok so Will, Eric and Annie? I'm talking Phil, Shandra, Kyle, Alanna, Demi, Cassandra, Elizabeth, Kinsley, Jared, Laura, Jamaica, James, and more...
You didn't notice these people leaving??
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well my understanding is the only people left are Annie and Eric (and Will isn't involved with Codesmith much) and that all the other leaders left and keep leaving. My understanding is all the instructors and engineers left and the two leads become instructors right out of Codesmith about a year ago.
All of the staff who were dedicated to Future Code are no longer on their website and I believe are looking for work.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well I hear partial info about some changes going on and a number of staff departed again.... they are really done to not many people left. They also dropped their approval status in New York which was a contractual requirement to have based on the contract for this program. The contractual requirements for the teachers also isn't met if their current staff ran the program. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on and if it's still happening but they downsized it or if it's not happening, or if it's running but with delays to manage the restructuring.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took.
Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards.
It's just a pile of garbage.
I go with the Bill Gates answer to that - I've never been tested, don't want to be tested, and function totally fine day to day, but if I grew up today with the social challenges I had in elementary school I think there's a chance I would have been put on the spectrum.
Yeah :S. There are people it's still for, but it's a small number and there's no systematic program to do it.
My friend said something like 'The top 1% of people who go to college don't need college. College is for the 99%'.
A similar thing applies here. Bootcamps are structured and generic AND the top 1% of people who want to become SWEs don't need them either.
If the 99% did well enough to justify the existence, then maybe they keep going - dreams of recruiting the 1% to build reputation so that the 99% go and get generic outcomes.
But the 99% is basically not going.
So a school could exist as a special place for the 1%, but that kind of place is like a founder and a couple staff, not something marketing on LinkedIn.
That's awesome! Like I love these stories and just remember it's a long journey ahead.
I'm guessing you are an E4 and my main tip at Meta: make sure to do weekly 1-1s and ask about actionable ways you can improve and follow up next week about whether you improved or not.
Second tip is as an E4, play to your strengths and do the work that's needed from you. Don't explore too much or intentionally work on things you know nothing about. Do that stuff after you a year and after a good performance review.
I might be interpreting your post wrong if it's asking about college grads who go to bootcamps after or college grads OR bootcamp grads.
The bootcamp industry fell apart and schools are closing left right and center so you want a bunch of one anecdotes for what purpose?
As a moderator I want the information in this sub to reflect reality. When it was the good times, this sub was absurdly positive. But it's not right now and it's irresponsible to try to spread positivity that doesn't acknowledge reality, so that's why the tone is so negative here unfortunately.
I always love to read and hear individual success stories on a personal level, because I love to hear about awesome people's journeys.
That is a personal thing I like.
So why do you want to hear about all these stories and if you clarify what you are looking for on the post it might help you get replies you are looking for.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh I mean I have no idea how serious it was or how often it was said. Or more details on why. And it might be Princeton, not Yale, I have to check my notes and I was on an airplane with terrible wifi. There are ivy league grads who go to Codesmith and do extremely well so I actually don't think that would be an absurd consideration to do it after graduation if you changed your mind about CS.
The link is about senior engineer titles which is a completely different topic, but falls under the marketing bluster, but has nothing to do with choosing Codesmith over an ivy league education.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
One of their advisors said in info session(s) that his son who went to Yale was considering Codesmith or wished he did Codesmith or something, so I don't think it's all bluster.
Look at this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9\_hxujtFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9_hxujtFQ)
1. Mid level "contractor" at Microsoft, not full time employee - called Senior Engineer
2. Codesmith instructor turned CS educator - called Senior Engineer
3. "Tech Entrepreneur"
4. Staff level manager - legit
It's continuous bluster!
They are indeed, but they are comparing themselves to "elite grad schools at a fraction of the cost" so that's what I compared them to. If they said "Pay two years of state school tuition to get a better job in 12 weeks" I wouldn't be so hard on them.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I seriously think your a troll and I try really hard to treat everyone without assumptions, but like Reddit keeps flagging like ALL of you comments as 'may be from a spammer or someone likely to break rules'
I've repeatedly directly answers to you about what Formation is and what we do and why we don't have a concept of a placement rate so I can only assume you are a troll at this point.
CA 180 day was 42% or so and this is 43% or so, so they align really well.
AI is hard and it changes every week.
I myself was very slow to adopt it. and is still very slow on the rollouts.
One of the challenges with AI is that the models are not that cheap - especially the good ones. And if someone is paying $20 a month like 10 queries can cost $2 and that's a significant portion of that cost that was not there for AI.
If you want to give a query tons of context or run multiple queries to do a council of experts approach to reduce hallucinations or use more expensive models that do the stuff, then it gets even more expensive.
The models get better everyday though and they're so competitive that it's pushing on the pricing so I would give them a chance to improve.
but at the same time building AI product is hard. so it's good that you're giving them feedback so that they can learn as well
ultimately no one is going to have the magic product that solves…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith people don't put Codesmith on their resume. They list their 3 week project as a year of work experience.
I like the idea though and if you actually did do this basically a fake resume that looks like you have 1 to 2 years of work experience. I bet you you will actually get a couple of callbacks and the strategy grads are relying on to get interviews.
I asked and was informed that no official acceptance paperwork has been sent out yet, so I'm not sure about those, but they definitely haven't ALL been sent out yet.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've only seen recent days from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps we're ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads.
It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad.
The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system.
Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
And this is he problem. Bootcamp's have been pushing people to put lipstick on a pig instead of actually preparing people better.
There's a bootcamp called Codesmith that previously had pretty good outcomes and most of their grads learn how to fake their experience. They are told their 3-4 week projects are equivalent of 4 months of experience for background checks (that their employee says they sign off on).
I reviewed these projects on GitHub and they were so full of noob problems that I flagged this and called them out on it.
Their response: double down and make no changes.
Good intentions but even the best bootcamps are failing people right now.
And Codesmith costs $22,500 for 14 weeks.
Oh ok so you are a 2022 grad for CIRR purposes even though you job hunted in 2023.
Yeah your placement rates in CIRR were 70% in 6 months and 80% in 12 months so those are pretty consistent yeah.
I was talking about people who STARTED in the years above. The placement rates for people STARTING in 2023 and job hunting 2023 -> 2024 was 42% in their CA data with 65% of people ghosting.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I have a list of LinkedIns for Future Code people and a bunch are doing the same old experience exaggeration that students do.
I thought you couldn't have any experience or a CS degree going into Future Code and now I'm seeing these people retroactively having adjacent experience and computer science degrees in progress or computer science minors.
Future Code students - if you are reading this - don't lie on your resumes and don't believe Codesmith if they tell you aren't lying but just representing your "real capacities" and making your "perceived capacities" align with the real ones.
It might help you get a job but the industry looks down on this and if you get a job this why and OSLabs signs off on your background check, you'll have to live with the fact that you cheated your way into the industry and the consequences will catch up with you someday.
I've worked with a couple of Fu…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
CIRR is dead and deserves scrutiny because Codesmith's marketing of it has mislead hundreds of people to pay them $21,500 in 2024, it is indeed worthy of scrutiny.
When Codesmith had like 12ish cohorts in 2024 and 2-3 of them say that they only know about 1 person placed in 6 months, that's not a fact by any means but it raises flags and warrants questions.
Codesmith's response has been to entirely evade the question.
They clearly have 2024 data of some kind that they are publishing, but they aren't publishing H1 2024 placement rates - which they obviously have preliminary versions of or they can't publish the offer data they have.
Even if they don't have or want to publish placements rates they can say "warning, placement rates are down, we want to double down on finding and supporting the RIGHT people for Codesmith so if you want to become a SWE, work with us and we'll be honest wi…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I was informed today that Codesmith is still signing letters of reference and background checks on behalf of OS Labs to confirm fake work experience.
I care less that people are lying on their resumes and care more the Codesmith has been participating in these lies for years and years.
Codesmith alumni, spread the word - 3 weeks of commits on a project isn't 7 months of unpaid work experience at OS Labs. Tell Codesmith this is unethical and let them know loud and clear.
People are sending me evidence of this stuff because maybe they are afraid to lose their jobs for being found out and it's sad.
If you feel guilty about this and don't want to be public - my DMs are open. I won't stand for this garbage behavior from people with no integrity.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
33 is a pretty big cohort too for 2024. If this is true, I really wish people would do their fricken research and stop believing their bullshit marketing and leader.
I used to have way more pros and cons about Codesmith and things have degraded to much over 2024 starting when they laid off everyone and promised amazing changes that never happened.
You can follow my history. I'm pissed off now but back then I very rationally paused my endorsement of Codesmith in February when those layoffs happened and then a few months later when things continued to decline I actively recommended not going there.
Now the leader is writing a book and barely involved, grads are less and less prepared and alumni complain to me more and more about grads who are faking their resumes but not accompanying if with the grit and hustle needed to fake it til you make it.
Codesmith CEO: here's a thought experime…
I commented on this separately, I see four cases, and one of them is indeed living in fear and feeling like you are underperforming lower level colleagues.
App Academy certainly is no saint here, but at least paused their SWE program entirely recently given these issues instead of pretending everything is amazing and telling career changers that "you can be next".
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Don't get me started on this because I've been hounding them for literally years on this and it's been happening since 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/
Every time I significantly push back you'll see like a blog post about someone who got a senior job right out of Codesmith, and they just adamantly adamantly believe this to the bitter end.
So I don't think they are lying but instead are delusional.
No leader there has a STEM degree, and no leader has been an engineer ever either in industry.
Enough people for $130K jobs in the past they made them believe they and the secret formula to creating mid level and senior engineers out of s bootcamp that it became their identity.
When your identity is attacked, you often defend completely irrationally.
There are a handful of people that have gotten those jobs. and then when you zo…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've been a massive fan of apprenticeships (some are better than others though so you have to watch out).
You need 10000 hours to develop the taste needed to be a valuable engineer and a bootcamp gives you 1000. Doing apprenticeships for 2 years can get you almost there.
You can rush it and you have to put in the time.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
It's not that at all.
They are gaslighting critics of Codesmith hahaha by countering facts with cherry picked numbers and then telling the critics they are wrong.
But the students are genuinely rewiring their thinking to believe they are mid level and senior engineers.
It takes 12 weeks and lots of tactics:
- if you are ever negative you do correction meetings to readjust your mindset to be positive
- You have to emoji like every post and an instructor apparently complained they didn't get enough emoji reactions for example.
- you are told you have imposter syndrome and the solution is to follow Codesmith's resume advice to fix it and to trust them because you have imposter syndrome and aren't thinking properly about your work so you have to trust Codesmith's way as the "reality"
This stuff actually works though! Like people systematically come out thinking this way and when Codesmit…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The way this has been framed to me:
1. the top couple of students usually get jobs quickly. they aren't on Reddit and they often aren't very engaged because they are in and out. others wonder why these people did Codesmith in the first place. when I've talked them I get a mix of responses: they were misled to believe Codesmith was more senior and they were way to advanced and we're advising the teachers, they needed some kind of structure and peers because doing it alone was emotionally challenging, and some people just wanted to do projects to refresh their skills and were misled that the codesmith projects were like work experience.
I hear people here saying that it wasn't really with it but that they enjoyed the community and didn't think it was a scam or entire waste of money, just probably wouldn't have done it in retrospect.
2. the 2nd tier of students get hired by Codesmith. T…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Apparently someone said there are no support engineers available for March for resume and mock interviews?
It's sad if Codesmith worked for you back in the day but it's imploding right now they don't deserve people's money right now.
I can't believe one of their leaders texted an alumni who was considering Formation and told them 'it's a waste of money and Codesmith will give them all they need for life'
Sure.... 'all they need'.... we have hundreds of mock interview slots available for the next week.
If one person ran this and they were the equivalent of a top 1% engineer, they would be giving up a $1M a year compensation.
$1M a year = $83K a month = 332 people a month paying $250.
Assuming you work really hard, 12 hours a day for 7 days a week = 84 hours \* 4.5 = 378 hours in a month.
So even if you spent every working hour mentoring people 1-1 and offering career coaching, each person would get 1 hour of your time per month for $250 a month.
\---------------
This is the ultimately limiting factor with any kind of high-touch program.
So far the only options have been to scale super large with minimal hands on interaction, or you have like a $20K program for 16 people in a 12 week cohort that is very high touch.
\---------------
My company is the first company to change this by leveraging the work of top 1% ex-Meta performers who are so passionate about building this that the…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can give my thoughts knowing a lot of Codesmith grads and what they've been saying recently:
1. Is it worth it for someone who literally has a Computer Science degree? (I tend to struggle a lot with building projects of my own due to demotivation or lack of people that want to build things with me)
Placements are hovering somewhere below 50% six months after finishing Codesmith, so you are looking at ANOTHER YEAR before you get a job and maybe 2 more years, even going through Codesmith. Their most recent data shared showed something like 15% of people having CS degrees. I suspect that has increased in the current tough market for CS grads. I also believe people with CS and adjacent degrees have faired better than those without (anecdotal).
1. What did you build, what were teammates like?
I used to review a lot of the OSP group projects because people asked me to and they didn't get…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I replied with direct numbers to backup my claims from CIRR reports and I don't appreciate you trying to gaslight me in public and ignoring that data.
While a lot of what I state is a personal opinion, I clearly labelled my CIRR analysis as fact and if I made a mistake in my analysis, it was unintentional and I'm open to correcting, but I feel like those facts are clear that H2 2022 outcomes tanked from H1 2022.
And I have strong evidence tying someone named "Will S." to paying for someone on Upwork to comment on Reddit who said negative things about me/my company on Reddit under the same account name. I would call those facts too, other than proving "Will S." is Will Sentance the Codesmith CEO and not another Will S, and I do not have evidence of who "Will S." is on Upwork.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I see 78.6% placed in 180 days in H1 2022 (301 grads) and 70.1% in FY 2022 (732 graduates). So that means that about a 62% placement rate in H2 2022.
79% -> 62% is a tanking placement rate. And that was a relatively better 2022 grads.
Anecdotally and based on numbers I can find - which are not official and not necessarily accurate, show 2023 grads 180 day placements with something below 50%. And since this number should have been known internally since June 2024 (with at least an estimate) they are free to clear this up for the record. Even if they don't have all the data in yet because they are delayed, if they even have 50% in 180 days already they can let us know that.
I really won't listen to any marketing spins on this that make it sound good and anyone trying to do that needs an integrity check.
Codesmith can go to town saying how they are doing better than OTHER BOOTCAMPS but…
I also get reached out to a ton about this stuff (and also people offering humans who are experts in AI to consult for us).
The problem right now is the stuff is so new that if you build something using Gen AI tools or you claim to be an expert in Gen AI.... it hasn't been around long enough that I can't just do what you did or learn what you did.
I was the number one code committer at Meta when I left in the entire company and my specialty is volume. I cranked out an AI tool in literally 20 mins on Friday that will REDUCE the need for additional help by making something 5X faster.
I also know the limitations of AI tools and the key problem to solve is how to have humans work in tandem with AI tools to deliver a solid experience and not how to replace humans with AI tools (whether for efficiency or for a better product than humans alone).
My point being that it's kind of the wild wes…
20 people did too until over 10 minutes the vote count dropped to 0... Codesmith (or their Marketing team) hasn't gotten the message after dozens of accounts have been suspended to stop paying people to manipulate Reddit... Reddit is on to you.
Awesome sounds really cool and I like the approach of trying to get people a foot in the door and it's definitely something most bootcamps are missing.
I'm happy to hear you don't want to grow super fast to keep the quality consistent.
Thanks for sharing open answers.
Hey, I know the sentiment on here is rough and I bet some people will suggest you cancel it. I don't disagree with much of the negative sentiment but I do think there are some clear circumstances when a part time bootcamp would make sense
1. If you don't get a job afterwards you won't consider the tuition a massive waste of money and the cost won't impact your day to life significantly.
2. If you want to learn the materials rapidly more than getting a job. The job will be whipped cream on the sundae but it will be a sundae nonetheless. Put another way, you may or may not get a job at the end, but you strategically see this is a step of many that will eventually get you a job in data science/analytics.
Depending on your job and what you mean by instructor, you need to check with your company first to see if you are allowed to take another job. The time commitment is less relevant than the IP concerns.
I would start with lightweight mentorship through bootcamps. Where you independently advise people through a bootcamp in a more casual and less committal way.
That said, bootcamps aren't doing super great right now and I wouldn't expect a lot of pay or to be paid at all.
People are giving you a lot of flack because of the adjacent experience. do you want to elaborate on if it was programming or just an adjacent experience or how relevant it was?
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah there seems to be a lot of off advice here. Both going for frontend roles if you have backend experience and telling people to go to senior roles they are not qualified for.
The latter I've talked about for a while, they are sending lemmings off a cliff with that advice and I believe it's impacted their enrollment and morale.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
This is a quote from one of their leaders from November 2023 in a public talk: "we don't ever ever ever endorse lying, exaggerating, there is nothing other than pure authenticity when you come out of codesmith in terms of applying to jobs what you'll say in interviews what's on your resume everything will be 100% truthful, alright, so stuff you read other people say, it's a weird thing"
Do you feel like the botocamps misled you when you joined about the state of the job market, or is it that the job market changed while you were there?
I have some recordings in my possession of a bootcamp leader telling people in November 2023 that the market was improving, that it was a normal up and down, the worst was behind them, and expecting to see outcomes back to their previous highs in six months. I don't have context from the recording itself to know if this was deception or just an overreaction to a brief set of good data at the time
The market has been terrible in 2024 for bootcamp grads and I would be extremely cautious about any bootcamp rooting a recover.
If you are promised a recovery, wait six months to see if it's real or not.
What's the rush? Why join now? If you feel pressured to join now, red flag. Do free and cheap self paced learning in the mean time.
Oh I have one!!!!
The dozen of accounts that show up out of nowhere and attack me and calling Formation a Codesmith competitor are all the same person... and it's actually my wife trying create fake publicity for Formation
(For lawyers and reddit admins - this is a joke following the jokes above)
They are indeed completely different program types that aren't at all the same and the fact that after many attempts to explain this to them, they still think this is really shocking, they have no integrity and their failure is on them and not me.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Not publicly no, it's ethically wrong. I have been permanently banned from the Codesmith community for comments I made during a live session so I don't have avenues to responsibly report them.
If you have some connections DM me. I need to discuss this stuff under an agreement because it's quite bad and they might have to legally notify all their people about one or more of these issues and I do not want to be involved and would rather not say anything at all honestly.
My personal opinion is that I would not apply to anything at Codesmith with personally identifiable information.
This thread spiralled but question: how many bootcamp grads are you hiring for those entry level roles that you mention hiring for vs CS grads? Like the ratio between them.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Someone sent me this: [https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595](https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595)
Did they discuss all of the fundamental architecture flaws with the Codesmith website and why they chose to make those decisions?
Seriously disappointing.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I'm sorry to hear but this is what people have been telling me and it's causing tremendous distrust because in the middle of that window Codesmith updated marketing to explain how 53 offers were accepted in April-May, appearing to cover up that 6 months placement rates could be in the 15 to 20% range, in your case maybe lower.
If the wheels are falling off the bus and the driver is blasting Taylor Swift music and singing along distracted and not acknowledging wheels, people want to get the heck off the bus... If the driver knows the wheels are falling off the bus and intentionally distracting away from the situation to fill up the bus, people will shout at you to stay the heck off the bus.
I'm also going to hold off on my comments for now and add later. I have a a view of: bootcamp operations, loan provider operations, job market, economics.
My answer would be a novel or feature length documentary so even if I was going to share now I wouldn't have the time or space to write out with proper sources.
I do stand by my statement that the only programs that can survive this year are:
1. giant corporations with a lot of funding that streamline backoffice and make up for losses in other areas
2. tiny programs that are founder run with like 5 staff and 15 students at a time.
Moderator note: Codesmith, Alumni, and others - if you share a link and ask for voting, responses, or a "let's fix this" response, that violates Reddit's ToS and you are risking having your accounts not only banned from the sub but banned from Reddit.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hi, where in the post did you see the quote: "People becoming SWEs today are aware of tough market, but persevere because they're truly passionate about coding"?
I read "People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job"
I agree with Kim's comment that a far smaller number of people are considering bootcamps now BUT they are far more passionate and committed and know what they are getting themselves into.
I thank that to places like Reddit helping people be informed about bootcamps so they can join for the right reasons and I'm glad she's seeing that trend too.
I disagree with OP's characterization that people are "persevering" despite the market.
I have a couple of friends who graduated from Codesmith in early 2024 and while it's far too early t…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I mean it's very optimistic about ML creating more jobs and I share that optimism.
But at the same time, in the past year, Rithm has had layoffs, Launch Academy, Turing School, Hack Reactor, Tech Elevator, and even Codesmith has laid off almost half the staff. CodeUp shut down. Epicodus shut down.
Like I don't want to be a big rain cloud hovering over the parade, but there are legitimate concerns for a typical student looking to join a bootcamp right now that didn't exist 2+ years ago. And to not acknowledge them is irresponsible.
Acknowledging them doesn't have to be doom and gloom though.
Living in an imperfect world and trying to be bring positivity to it, doesn't have to mean you ignore anything negative.
Two years ago was 2021-2022 = the boom times, so I could see that. People the top bootcamps were pretty easily getting jobs within six months of graduating.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
According to Codesmith data, only under 1/4 of students had CS degrees before Codesmith, and a good number of those were people who graduated a long time ago and never did SWE, or recently graduated and couldn't get a job.
So while I'm not saying to go there or not to go there with experience, but I will point out that the vast majority of people there, do not have SWE experience and the ones that do are there for more specific reasons than mentioned above.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Similar to other feedback, this person graduated Codesmith in 2017, and has had 3 jobs since then and her trajectory and path don't reflect what a person going to Codesmith today will experience.
I love reading profiles about people and their trajectories and I loved reading this post, I'm just giving feedback that Codesmith needs to deal with the market today more directly and not the market they want to have. And appeal to people who they think will succeed in this market through Codesmith.
I would love to read a profile about someone who is struggling on the job market and doesn't have a job yet and how much they love Codesmith anyways and how Codesmith is helping them the best they can. That is representative of the common grad right now unlike when the person above graduated and started their career.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Prior experience as a SWE or prior experience in tech? Those are two completely different things. Prior experience as a legit SWE, do not do Codesmith. Prior experience as SWE-adjacent or other tech role, consider Codesmith.
Since you are answering this "Official AMA" representing Codesmith, be careful misrepresenting the company.
The vast majority of alumni according to your own data had no prior SWE experience and it's not even super correlated to Codesmith outcomes (it is a bit, but not really).
If you haven't seen your own data ask for it before trusting other Codesmith staff.
The one off single anecdote about a PayPal manage graduated Codesmith SIX YEARS AGO and took THREE YEARS to become a manager.
+1 to the market being so different now that no matter what worked for alumni when they got a job, it's not the same today. I'm not saying that you need a degree or don't need one, but not acknowledge the changes in the market is detrimental and we're seeing bootcamps drop like flies as a result.
I reloaded this a couple time and the voting went from +3 to -1 to 1... these are critically important questions for a bootcamp and downvoting for whatever reason doesn't change that fact even if you hate my guts.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Unlike normal Codesmith, it's a government requirement that people have "Limited or no prior experience with the basics of coding" so that is somewhat limiting for Codesmith's community I think.
Like Codesmith clearly advertises that CSX is all you need for a junior engineering job and that Codesmith is for midlevel and senior jobs.
So anyone who has done CSX likely has too much coding experience to join this program.
This poll is small but matches my observations as well. That about 85% of people interested in Codesmith are looking to break into their first full time software engineering role.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why)
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term.
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our number…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary"
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead.
RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…
Q: Why didn't schools publish H2 2022 outcomes like normal 6 months ago, followed by "new" 2022 full year outcomes six months later?
I'm working on a quick analysis of some of the 2022 year outcomes because one can reverse engineer H2 2022 given H1 2022 and full year 2022, and H2 shows some very concerning trends that are masked by 2022 full year outcomes.
Followup: Given these trends why not make schools publish H2 2022 outcomes as we transition to this new standard?
I have pretty strong opinion on this being on the other side of the table, interviewing hundreds of people and establishing the interview processes.
I'll tell you why Meta does it the way they do and then I'll give advice for how to think about these things.
WHY DS&A:
1. There are hundreds of frameworks and thousands of stacks you could learn and DS&A normalize these things to a level playing field that anyone can practice in any framework or language.
2. Meta has tends of thousands of engineers and wants to keep a very high bar. So DS&A interviews allow for extreme calibration, consistency, and comparisons between candidates. Obviously this isn't perfect, but it's much better than if each team hired their own way with their own process like at Apple say.
3. All of that said, there is a bit of an academic lens because most of the engineers came from top computer science schools. So…
Why this being downvoted so much?
I just asked ChatGPT and it gave almost the exact same answer, same tone, same content.
Kind of makes me feel like I should just use ChatGPT more lol
I don't work at Le Wagon whatsoever, but I care about sourcing data.
I worked at FB during the fake news era and I see a lot of potential problems in this sub with the way information is reported and then believed.
I always assume good intention, just like at FB fake news, most people have good intention (not all, but most), but I just ask for sources and warn people from making decisions from one person's story.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I wrote a long comment on the top level post, but all of this is correct. We don't disclose much information about our membership base and because of the flexibility of Formation, it's hard to come up with useful numbers that you can use. I usually suggest to find people with a similar background and goals to yourself that did Formation or are here now and find out more about their experience. There are people who get jobs in 2 weeks, people who struggle to get a job in 2+ years, and everything in between, and the experience those people have are wildly different - mostly resulting from different backgrounds and goals.
We aren't a school or bootcamps and we have a dynamic program so everyone's experience is unique, we also don't ask people to write reviews. But we have a lot of strengths and weaknesses that I'm happy to elaborate on.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
New info:
\- One of the final employees at Fanzter who was involved in the deal didn't know who Eric was and had to look him up.
\- This employee said that Disney had no interest in purchasing Fanzter or Coolspotters and that the purpose of the deal was to pay back the investors in Fanzter as a guesture as the talent was being hired by ESPN to work there and Fanzter was shutting down.
Whatever you call that, it's not something I would show off as the way I introduce myself.
How did they reply to your questions directly so quickly? Can you ask them why they won't self publish their H2 2022 CIRR report ready to go and let me know, because I can't get an answer.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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 mean I feel like I was being very open and transparent. Like I sent over my other post to Reddit for vote manipulation and now the votes have tripled.
I could just send this over too and see what happens and not say anything, but I think people can be professional, open, and transparent and it makes the community better to have that discourse.
Good to be critical but these are 99% not the same people. The other poster u/HorrorEquivalent3261 blocked me because they didn't want employees of any programs commenting on their posts about Codesmith. this OP has happily engaged with me on this thread.
Anyone reading this for posterity. Build A Dev cancelled the cohort after two months and the instructor was not showing up for sessions and many people dropped out.
I'm posting this because Reddit is Reddit and people can say whatever they want with whatever tone they want and no matter how confident someone is it doesn't mean they are right.
Check your sources and think critically about everything you read, including my posts.
P.S. If something is free and you are going to change your life and make plans around it, please be careful and figure out what the catch is.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I randomly stumbled on this because of a random comment talking about something I was looking for.
Four days ago you yelled at someone for talking about H1 2022 results because you said they didn't apply anymore but 16 days ago you were touting cherry picked results from H1 2022 to promote Codesmith.
Source https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/14341x7/comment/jna31yd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I'm flagging just so others can see this in the future when evaluating sources.