Codesmith: My experience

META COMMENTS: There's been a lot of suspicious posts regarding Codesmith over the past few days (all over the spectrum, good and bad, and from a lot of brand new accounts, people have gotten banned) This post is from a brand new account that seems created to write about Codesmith, which is a bit suspicious too. That said, the factual content about the logistics of Codesmith all reads accurate. I don't work there and haven't gone there, so maybe I shouldn't be the judge of that, but I've seen the entire curriculum, and have private been told of certain little details around "family dinners", the clapping stuff, etc... that either someone is training a on all my public commentary about Codesmith, or this person - if not actually a resident - is pretty close to Codesmith. OVERALL: It sounds like you probably shouldn't have chose to go into Codesmith to begin with because your style doesn't seem to fit. I'm in the camp that feels some things are a little over the top for me perosnally, but there are a lot of people who feel like these things 'brought them out of their shells' and 'changed their lives'. Good for them, but you should go to Codesmith if the vibe is right for you. COMMENTS ON THE POST: 1. So there isn't too much new stuff in here, a lot of this is straight up logistics for how things work, which is actually good to share, Codesmith shares a little if you go to sessions, or get their syllabus, but this is a pretty good summary, almost like a Chat GPT summary haha but removing the opinion statements, I think it's a good overview of what happens. 2. Admissions: I don't have a wide enough lens to comment on all of admissions. What I can say is one person told me that during the boom times they had added OOP and Recursion to some people's admissions requirements to 'raise the bar' because demand was so high. Now that demand has lowered, there are people who have been trying for months and months and months and never made it in, getting in through attitude and effort primarily. I would keep an eye on how some of those people do because if they weren't actually ready yet, or they struggle getting jobs, they might turn from super fans to super not-fans. 3. OSP Code Quality: agree this is weak, the comments almost echo what I say often, almost suspiciously closely, but yeah lots of good ideas, lots of good explanations, lots of effort in the code, and the code is decent for a 4 week project, but it's not mid-level or senior engineer work. It COULD be, but it's at 80% of the way there, and the last 20% is 80% of the work - non linear and spending another 4 weeks working on it doesn't fill that, spending maybe 6 months with the right mentorship could get in the ballpark. I'm really torn on this because compared to bootcamps I would be singing PRAISES for the projects. Compared to mid-level and senior engineers they are embarrassing :( and Codesmith branding is very very entrenched in that mid-level and senior narrative. 4. +1 on the Imposter Syndrome comments. It's not binary. It's not an assumption you have all the skills and it's just you believe it or you don't. You genuinely can't possibly fill in ALL your gaps in 12/13 weeks, but you can fill in SOME. Rather than focus on understanding imposter syndrome through the lens of: look you have new abilities A, B, C! Double down on those, but acknowledge you don't have D, E, F, G, H, I. Instead it's you have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and you never realized it this whole time, it's a miracle - run with it! And it just confuses graduates when they have to find their bearings on the job and then make the next career move. It might just be a pedagogy disagreement I have so it is what it is, but that's where I stand. 5. Finally, +1 on go to learn. I would debate how/what/when you learn/etc.... but don't go to Codesmith to get a job, go there to learn. If you are on the fence and you are promised a $150K offer because of your 'unique' background, don't go. If you are on the fence, but you just love the community and want to be around the people, go. Just don't plan your life around getting a job. CHANGES: Codesmith has made a ton of changes last week. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the instructors were laid off, as well as numerous other staff. Others have resigned on their own. A bunch of exciting new changes were announced but that haven't been implemented yet (i.e. there's no coworking spaces in NYC and SF available just yet, but they are 'coming soon') so my overall recommendation is a pause and wait and see. I feel bad saying that because I'm very much aware enrollment is way down and I don't know how much they have in the bank to buy time to make these changes, and encouraging people to wait for the changes is a bit of a chicken and egg. They need money to make the changes and they need students to bring in the money. I'm not their CFO, so they can figure it out, but for students, I have to recommend to wait and see. Like there could be increased thrash as instructors shuffle around with cohorts ending, there could be more people who leave voluntarily for new opportunities. Like Codesmith 6 months ago was stable, consistent and you'll get +/-5% of what you thought you would get. Right now it's more like it could be +/-20% of what you think you'll get.