Job Market

I don't have any universal data so I should make it clear that Codesmith claims 100% of alumni get promoted within 5 years (it's based on 120 grads who decided to reply to the survey and from a long time ago, vs the 3000 grads they claim they have, so I don't entirely believe this - and know counter examples that were probably not in the 120 people, but that's the most zoomed out data we have). Anecdotally, four buckets: 1. People who get by but change companies within a year or around that time, or they get a contract job they don't do super well on and just don't get the contract extended and then switch to a similar or slightly better company after a year, and then do this a few times. And soon enough they have the 2-3+ YOE for real to make a bigger jump to a top tier company. Worked with a few of these people at Formation. So they kind of show up, give it a huge amount of hustle but have a lot of gaps, but before their performance is truly evaluated before they make a job, or they make up for their gaps long with hustle long enough to voluntarily find their next job. 2. People who get solid six figure "mid level" jobs at not very strong or non-tech companies and do pretty well - hustle and work ethic are most important and challenge and scale of the work is pretty small. People might work on teams of 5 people, might be the only engineer, might not have frequent code review, might be building things for clients or other small things that aren't being build for hundreds of millions of users. The people might stay here for a while and they think their job is too easy and boring and they then work on a level up jump in 3 years. I think this is probably one of the more common buckets and these salary are the bread and butter "$120K mid level job". I really think bucket 3 is waaaaaay better to me in every way, but this bucket is the one that keeps the lights on at Codesmith and also the job I actually think Codesmith prepares people best for. 3. People get entry level jobs at good tech companies (e.g. Google, PayPal, like legit tech companies) and stay there for years (because they are appropriately leveled). Many are still at those companies today! And I would say that a number of these people are also the ones who are hired back as instructors and stay heavily involved. Codesmith calls their jobs "mid level" or "senior" because of the high compensation, but these are entry level jobs with great ramp up support. A few people do get non-entry level top tier jobs but that's a huge 4. People who don't make it. I've seen a number of people get laid off within a year. Typically it's the result of being overlevelled and hiding it, so they are not getting the support. A common anecdote from Capital One: 'I'm a senior engineer with no experience and we hired a mid level with 3 years of real experience and I feel like they are years ahead of me so I'm going to plan to get fired in the back of my mind'. People do make it, like bucket 1, 2, but a number of people don't. Some will switch companies before being laid off and use the months/1 year at this job to help get interviews for the next one, before being laid off.