Current Codesmith residents/recent alumni: how has Codesmith delivered on promised improvements announced earlier this year?

It's not a pyramid scheme because you are paying for services and people are aiming to get jobs outside of the pyramid. People don't go to Codesmith aspiring to move up the pyramid and get to lead instructor, they aspire to get out and get a job. The pyramid shape is more about control. One thing Codesmith did well that no one else did was keep fairly consistent as they scaled like 5X in a year (now they are smaller than before they scaled but because of the market). The consistency came from having this unprecedented control over this instruction hierarchy. Almost all instructors worked as SWE outside and so they followed what the people above them told them. The handful that went to work on the outside and came back didn't last too long because they brought new perspectives on things. They realized that 'correction sessions' to fix someone's bad attitude and turn it positive, were maybe a bit weird and not something SWEs do other places, but had to tow the line to progress up the hierarchy.