u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
Thanks for sharing your feedback and opinions about your experience. Regardless of the tougher job market making it harder to get interviews, making sure you feel supported is one of most important internal goals that we constantly monitor with a magnifying glass and I'm sorry that the support you aren't receiving isn't meeting your expectation.
I respect your opinions and won't comment on everything you mentioned that I might personally disagree with. For others reading, I'm going to add some responses to specific statements that I feel will be helpful to clarify.
1. We don't let in everyone who wants to join and we only accept a fraction of people who apply. Acceptance is based on three things: 1. a benchmarking assessment that gauges your starting skill level and has a complex evaluation model that is not akin to "passing a test". 2. your past experience. 3. your goals, timeline, and motivations for joining.
2. Not everyone who joins has the same goals and not everyone is at Formation for the same reasons.
3. Even though you have 7 days to withdraw for free, you can leave at any time and pay an amount per week that you actively trained. So while it's not free after 7 days, you can leave for a heavily discounted rate, without a placement, that is simply based on the number of weeks.
4. It's correct that we control your schedule and we set it up every week and you can't choose your own sessions. Fellows have the opportunity to request changes to get more, or less, sessions, tasks, etc... and can self-service add additional sessions if they match your needs and match your availability.
5. The tasks you are assigned and questions you get in a session, are computed based on a bunch of signals about your skill level, feedback, and progression and aren't just assigned to you in batches from a list, it's a officially patented and complex system we've created. We do indeed link to many resources for problems and solutions, in addition to in-house problems and solutions, and we feel the value add is in determining which problems to work on next and letting you know when you've gotten good enough on a topic.
6. The market is what it is and it's definitely harder to get interviews right now, but we have been investing in enhancing career support as a result to help people more and more by adding in current and ex-FAANG recruiters as coaches for reviews, advice, and strategizing and made it easier to book calls with them on demand. As the market remains tough, we will keep investing in career support, rather than weakening it, to be as valuable as possible in these times.
7. I understand your experience with the FAANG recruiters hasn't been what you want and want to deep dive more into this. I monitor all of our mentor feedback and these ex-FAANG recruiters are frequently nominated (dozens of times a week) by Fellows as their most impactful mentors of the week. So I think this model can work well and would love to figure out if there are ways to make it work for you, e.g. trying more sessions with different recruiters, what kind of questions or advice you are lacking that you expected, etc...
8. It sounds like you have had many mock interviews and you suggested comparing to [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io). [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io) charges $6999 for 10 1 hour long 1-1 sessions with a staff level ex-Facebook engineer and our interviews tend to be senior, staff, or principal level engineers at similar companies. So while [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io) might be a good option for some cases, I feel you are getting better value if you are paying $7500 (Interview Prep upfront price you are referring to) for dozens of group sessions, ongoing mock interviewers as you need them, dedicated support channel with 3 team members, unlimited access to FAANG-recruiters for job hunting advice and negotiation, and it all keeps going until you get a job, rather than with a fixed time limit. Even if some of those items didn't hit the mark for you personally or you don't need to use them as much, we feel the overall package is compelling and competitive.
Again, thank you for sharing your feedback and my door remains wide open if you want to reach out for more support so we can help you find a great job! No hard feelings and please reach out !