u/lawschoolredux wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Given this new info…. Would you recommend Codesmith today in this market for someone with a BS degree and $$$ in savings to last through the bootcamp/job search (1-2 years) If not Codesmith, then which boot camp would you recommend? I’m assuming things won’t get better until 1
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
My personally opinion, I currently actively recommend avoiding Codesmith no matter what your background for two reasons. First, because of their morals and ethics and this view has changed in the recent weeks. Second, because a few more long time staff left recently and the haven't delivered on most of their promises in February last time there were layoffs. So I don't take their word to mean anything both morally on a personal level and practically on a deliverables level.
I'm currently only recommending Launch School (but under the caveat that it's not for everyone and has to be a good fit).
Note: I have no affiliations with any bootcamps.
Hiring is back to the way it was back in 2008. Experienced engineers have options in big tech. The only entry level pipelines that are reliable are the top-tier CS school new grad and intern pipelines.
174 isn't haven't a huge impact with big tech. It impacts profit margins and they are already so profitable, it impacts margins on paper and earnings expectations more than anything practical. It might be impacting little tech a bit more, where that tax refund could be a a whole engineer, but I don't think that it's impacting bootcamp grad hiring at scale and is more of something you find when looking for it. I might be wrong, I'm not an expert in 174.
Interest rates dropping might help a bit, but I think they will just re-affirm the new normal described above and not open up hiring to bootcamp grads.
The path forward I'm seeing is in the world of AI adjacent jobs - the "Shopify Developer" job of 2025/2026. I think that people from different careers will be able to use software skills to level up in their old career (accountant who can write better macros in excel) as well as AI adjacent roles (accountant who writes prompts for an accounting product company).
These jobs won't be the "SWE" job that we all hold on a pedestal right now, but they will be very impactful and important roles for the growing world of AI.
The problem we have is that there are thousands of CURRENT AND RECENT bootcamp grads who came from the current world and don't know AI. And we're seeing bootcamps scramble to add AI related stuff to their curriculums.
This causes confusion for current students, alumni being upset, and most importantly: we have no idea what these AI jobs will be at scale, so all of these efforts are experimenting on people's lives.
So the best thing a bootcamp can do is almost pause, go into hibernation, have the founders keep making content and waiting it out a bit to see how the market goes, take on super small cohorts of people who know what they are getting into and are ok with failure.
I'm extremely concerned that Codesmith is pumping out marketing and advertising promoting great outcomes in a hard time... they might be accelerating off the cliff instead of slamming the breaks.