Codesmith: My experience

I mean like I said, a lot of people like the vibe, and it was a whopping 11 hours a day and 6 days a week. It's not like it's extroverted activities for 11 hours a day straight. I saw a session recording once that someone described as an example of what they meant. It's a vibe that you are present and active. You acknowledge you are present with positive emoji reactions to every post. The more concerning example of toxic positively was if someone had a negative attitude there was a process for instructors and coordinators to correct it and go to phrases like "snuggle the struggle". Being negative was seen as a problem to correct versus a person to debug. The theories people have said are more around that the people doing the debugging have no SWE experience and just know the Codemsith way so they are going to these tools as all they know to try to help people. Someone sticking with it, graduating, and getting a job is validation to these people that this correction worked. People who have more skepticism seem to push back on being corrected and probably aren't good fits in the first place. It's not like this is brainwashing and causing harm, but it does cause this intense self reinforcing cycle that is disconnected from how industry SWEs might deal with a junior engineer who is struggling on the team. Maybe an overly analytical view of something that feels a lot more casual in practice but I'm trying to figure out where this polarization comes from!