Coding Bootcamps Still Worth It?

Codesmith is fantastic for the right people! It has a very unique culture and that's why it's controversial on Reddit. I'm an under the hood type of person and try to look at how things work and Codesmith isn't super transparent about how it actually produces really good results. So how it works: 1. High bar. Their process looks for numerous characteristics of successful grads and is an objective measure or raw programming skill. You need to be good AND have good communication and the right attitude. 2. You don't really learn much... topics are rushed through, you are told to snuggle the struggle, and all but one teacher came from Codesmith students themselves. BUT you are building strong bonds with friends and you are being supported infinitely from those instructors. You might have an hour long convo about your imposter syndrome that helps boost your confidence and do better. 3. Exaggerating resumes. I've seen countless Codesmith resumes now and they are all very similar. 12 weeks of Codemsith turns into a 500 word full page resume. Overlapping time-frames on projects to triple count your time at Codemsith. A number of people dropping month labels to portray 3 week projects as over a year of experience. This works. I see Codesmith grads with no experience getting interviews before people with actual experience and worse resume structure and in every case I've personally observed it was this factor. If you are down and ready to do that, it works. I've looked at dozens of OSP projects now and not a single one is senior or mid level FAANG code and I've elaborated on that before. They are amazing junior level projects that would make you stand out as an entry level engineer but no not deserve months of resume experience. OSLabs signs off on 4 month letters of reference for that time so Codemsith is explicitly endorsing this strategy. 4. Incredibly supportive culture. Like you make a comment and get emojis to the moon. It's a culture when you go in without confidence in your engineering ability and leave feeling confident to take on any job and this is the magic that they are able to accomplish in 12 weeks, consistently, over top of anything else. Edit for 3. I know some instructors at Codesmith disagree and have called me out before but I seriously challenge you to show your project's code to a random engineer with 10 years of FAANG experience and review the code line by line and then say if it is senior level work. Not a random tweet or random comment, like a through code review of a randomly selected OSLabs project and an examination of the PRs and code history and not just the current state. It's not imposter syndrome and a number of students realize this and contact me more and more the more that is reinforced in response to my comments. Not trying to be mean, just realistic and I'm happy to support anyone that messages me.