u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
Short answer yes. But long answer - Launch School still publishes detailed reports exactly 6 months after the cohort finishes and Codesmith published garbage reports to cover up their collapsing results.
I would put Codesmith worse than the ones that don't publish reports because it's been misleading the public in my opinion and that is worse than if they didn't say anything at all. They keep saying how "transparent" they are and it's a giant performance and bull shit from people with no integrity.
I spoke directly to one of their leaders on a phone call and I really just don't think they understand how messed up their own data is, or they won't admit it publicly because their company is collapsing and this is the nail in the coffin for them.
More details on what that why I feel this way.... I'm a very centrist person and I have been centrist with Codesmith for 3 years. I used to recommend them to people but as things have fallen off a cliff... FIVE ROUNDS OF LAYOFFS (my count) and down to a skeleton crew of staff members.
**AND THEY CONTINUE TO TELL YOU HOW AMAZING THEY ARE DOING!** I got 3 emails in the past two weeks saying how amazing they are doing.
They keep laying off the most long standing, loyal, and beloved staff members and throwing them to the streets while their founder DOES NOT TEACH CLASSES HIMSELF. The Founder can't even write real code anymore and has **at most a few months of paid professional software engineer.** All the engineering-looking things in his past are not real in my research (IceComm was his Hack Reactor student project, Gem is possibly a real job, but it appears possibly while he was at Hack Reactor as a student so I'm not sure how real it is, and Ownly was a startup he was trying to do in school that went no where). His GitHub is empty. He is a giant phony.
And instead of trying to save his company and save the 2+ year long instructors who went all in on Codesmith and drank the Koolaid, they are laid off with no warning.
Shame on them for running this scam (in my opinion, not a fact) for so long.
Anyways, clearly I'm very upset over this now and I lost my cool about it because I feel so so so so terrible for the people they laying off (even though those people don't like me so much).
\-----
Fact-wise if you think I'm being too emotional:
In April 2025 (two months ago) Codesmith published their 2023 CIRR Report (2023 grads who job hunted for 12 months after they graduated).
This report showed a 6 month placement rate dropping from 70% in 2022 to 42%. in 2023. And the 70% almost everyone reported their outcome to Codesmith and in 2023 only like 30% did and a bunch of placements were "verified using LinkedIn".
Now the thing that makes me ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS is that this is 12 months after graduation... which means they knew the 6 months placements rates in **JULY 2024** and they knew 12 months placements rates for the H1 2023 grads then.
They knew that 2023 outcomes were much worse and they **told the public repeatedly that outcomes were great. I have a bunch of their notes about how 'strong' and 'incredible' and 'impressive' the outcomes were, etc... etc...**