u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I think they have far too much price to drop tuition. I expect them to raise it again in January like they did this year despite tanking placements and outcomes.
If anything they will start to give out "scholarships" to effectively lower the cost but maintain a high sticker price.
Following the ivy League model. Stanford is $60K a year but most people (who don't come from rich families) pay much less or nothing.
So taking a step back....
Codesmith, like Launch School, is for a certain person. There aren't magically more of those people in the world who just aren't going because of the cost. If it's the right program, the cost is irrelevant because the long term impact will be so much more than anything.
So lowering the cost won't do anything at all.
If they relied on anyone with a pulse paying them whatever spare change they have, then lowering the price would result in more people going.
Launch School solved this problem by having 3 cohorts a year and having much fewer staff to run them, so that they can operate in a steady state.
Codesmith has far too many directors and managers and employees and cohorts.
What they really need to do to survive is fire half the company. Run one cohort at a time, the CEO teaching most of the classes and relying on alumni mentors to do some grunt work. Remove 3 of 4 outcomes people, all HR people, half the admissions people.
If the CEO just doesn't want to reach (numerous alumni told me they feel like he always appears busy and barely acknowledged students, spending 2 hours on a rambling public talk every week but spending one hour with an entire cohort (alumnus words, not mine) then they will probably shut down before that happens.
Codesmith's ideal situation is the market recovers enough, alumni who currently are extremely disgruntled and offended all get jobs, and start spreading good word of mouth again. But even that would take 8 months for the point the market turns and they might not make it that long. If it happens today, it would take until April 2024 for all the negativity to turn in my opinion.
Codesmith has been trying to appease alumni. The CEO did a talk with alumni about the System Design of Codesmith's website. I heard it was one of the most embarrassing talks ever, that the architecture looked like a big OSP project (not surprising since it was developed mostly by alumni with no industry experience) and that the CEO didn't seem to understand Codesmith's architecture. It made at least one person think Codesmith is a giant scam (which is a little extreme, but a couple of former instructors have echoed that sentiment).
Sorry rambling in the middle of the ocean on a Sunday night, but hopefully some useful stuff in here.
Reading this over it feels so negative and I feel bad about that. I'm trying to represent the voices I hear who don't feel able to speak themselves and maybe I'm biased from hearing so many complaints recently. Even if you really hate me, please DM me if you disagree. I haven't had a single person DM me and tell me my commentary is wrong.