I’m Annie, Codesmith’s Director of Outcomes. AMA! on r/codesmith

I stay told to not comment on the AMA, but my questions weren't critical. they were just hard questions. They are looking at data intelligently and asking questions from it. I saw a Launch School AMA where all of the questions were like that and they were extremely strong supporters of the program that asked them. I was super concerned that the Codesmith poster also expressed concern that she feels like I'm ever present in her work and I have no idea where that came from and I've never seen her before until the call yesterday that they had where I was present camera on with my full name. Codesmith shares so much student and user information, code, content widely that if she is unaware of that I think that that's on them to figure out and not to blame on me. But now I see where this attitude comes from. If a leader feels like that, it tells me they have absolutely no clue whatsoever how messed up their operations are. They might be blindly assuming things are great because of their own narrative of how great Codesmith is. They have senior software engineers who should know how to build industry standard systems and I think that it's reasonable for them to answer for that. For starters, one of the more minor problems, it's reasonable for them to answer why their CEO uses his personal email address for sensitive work communications and information access. This might seem small but it's indicative of the attitude they have to information and systems. People need to hold them to their own bar and I think it's very reasonable that people are frustrated when members in the community ignore this stuff and only allow positivity. Codesmith does a number of things exceptionally well but you should have competently set up processes and computer systems. It's table stakes for a company that's claiming to be the best in the industry and producing engineering leaders. No one is perfect and people make mistakes but this is not that, it's systemic and it's possible no one there even knows what I'm talking about. I highly suggest they figure this out before defending. There is no counter argument to this, people can try to turn the tables on me. people can start questioning me and who I am, but it does not change the fact that these problems exist and all the alumni doing that need to hold Codesmith to a higher bar before doing that.