Codesmith marketing campaign: "you’re not late to tech". Unfortunately you likely are, and this kind of thing is tone deaf and misleading. Instead of making changes in their program structure they are marketing a 10 year old program structure as if it still works and please don't fall for it.

They are 100% online already, and they pay their instructors approximately market rate as engineers because if they don't pay them what they claim they would make as engineers in the industry they are admitting the people aren't ready to be engineers. E.g. if they claim an instructor is qualified to be an engineer making $150K they have to pay them $150K or their entire product is a scam. The CEO puts pressure on the team to improve things but they aren't qualified to so very few changes have been made over the years. The CEO claims the pedagogy is based on Oxford's teaching methods and has nothing to do with any specific skills or topics - "learn how to learn" so he uses that to justify the fact that nothing has substantially changed in the past number of years. The CEO training materials for instructors are very performative. Like how to ask people questions to engage them, how to handle things you don't know while making it seem like you do (turn the question into a question back on the asker) I've seen some info sessions/recordings where two diferent instructors fake their way through the exact same session and make the same "mistakes" "accidentally" and it's like they are performing. Codesmith has two actors on staff and an actor turned engineer helped build the first training programs. Lots of acting and not a lot of substance. This is why they don't have outside people come in because when they've hired back former students who worked in industry as instructors those people haven't had a good time and end up as 'problem cases' to deal with - they don't just follow along and they question things and gets them into trouble... at Codesmith you have to follow the Codesmith way or get out. Employers don't care if people can do the jobs. But what employers don't realize is grads who have crazy work ethics and hustle will fake their way through the job. I know an employer who was aware of all this and didn't care if the people can do the job and one of the Codesmith grads they hired was amazing - and two years later the person is on a 'career break to take some time away from engineering'.... maybe they burned out? not sure.