u/No_Bottle7859 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
For years codesmith grads were consistently getting mid-level roles and yes even some senior ones. I know for a fact 3 of my cohort of 35ish got solid senior roles. They were also by far the best in the cohort, but it's possible. The difference between junior and mid-level is a b
u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
Those placements were accidents and people exaggerating on their resumes.
There isn't a single person with zero relevant experience who had an honest resume who got a senior role.
Did people get "senior" titled roles at Capital One (which map to entry level FAANG) by lying about their SWE experience and getting referred by other Codesmith grads and get coached on questions in a special Capital One channel? Yes.
Did people leverage past experience that maybe wasn't SWE work but had a lot of similar behavioral skills and call it "engineering" experience on their resume to squeeze into mid level roles? Yes.
Did most people put their 3 week long project as 8+ months of work experience? Yes.
Did people who were hourly TAs at Codesmith put down months of work experience as a Software Engineer at "CS Engineering" that Codesmith provided background checks for? Yes.
People who got these jobs are:
1. Naturally talented
2. Have tons of grit and ambition
3. Stretched the truth on their resumes to get a foot in the door.
If this is ethical, it's up to you to decide - some people think it is and some don't.
But it wasn't Codesmith that helped people get these job.
If you got a job at Amazon or Capital One by working with previous alumni on referrals and getting coached on how to lie to lie to them that's not something to celebrate as the "Codesmith method" that no one else has figured out.
If the secret sauce it "develop a program that selects for naturally talented people with a lot of grit and give them fake resume experience so they can sneak into good jobs and take them away from honest people" then they exploited a short term market anomaly that does not exist anymore, they haven't changed to adapt, and their program is irrelevant now.