Codesmith is down and they can't access their AWS because of incompetence. I've had enough of their claims to go from "zero to mid/level senior engineers" when they repeatedly demonstrate lack of engineering competence (this isn't the first incident)

I'll give you the straight up facts on this if you are willing to accept them. I can prove every one of these statements. Formation has flaws and this isn't one of them. FORMATION: 1. A small fraction of Fellows at Formation put it on their LinkedIn. 2. No one says it's paid anywhere. Of the ones that do it's abundantly clear that it's a mentorship program for high performance and not a job. 3. We have not received a single request for a background check for anyone that I'm aware of in the past 5 years for anyone claiming they were employed by Formation. 3. The people who say 2-3+ years have genuinely been at Formation that time and actively participating. Maybe it's terrible they didn't get a job yet, but the timeframe is correct from what I'm aware of. CODESMITH: 1. In my [reporting end of 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/) 48 out of 52 recent placements put down their OSP projects under work experience. 2. It was for an average of 11 months, when they contributed on average 3-4 weeks to the GitHub reports for those projects. 3. Codesmith setup an entire charity to run their projects that pretends to be independent. Their director told me she is "on leave indefinitely" and Codesmith told her to keep her email address and stay on the website anyways (for appearances?). 4. I have a letter of reference from this charity for someone's background check saying they were involved there as a "software engineer" for 4 months. Another person told me he got a letter of reference for a background check for a year and he submitted bogus dates just to see if they checked. I have evidence of 2 other people who were freaking out because they needed W2s and employement verification for their OSP projects and didn't know what to do because they didn't really work there. In one case, it was reported to me that Codesmith staff acknowledged the post and the person seems to be hired. 5. The former/on leave director of OSLabs claims to know nothing about the letters and said that Codesmith manages it all. FORMATION VS CODESMITH: 1. Formation has nothing to do with Codesmith and has worked with dozens of Codesmith grads later in their careers. Some unsuccessfully, many **very** successfully. I would love nothing more than to woo over Codesmith grads to come to Formation and all my commentary burns bridges with them honestly. 2. Formation isn't better or worse. Formation has it's own problems. For example, because of our dynamic mentorship and scheduling, we have about 10% of sessions get rescheduled or cancelled whereas a 'formal course' would have minimal. Pros and cons and we think the benefits outweigh, but it's a negative thing about Formation. 3. Formation is a tech company. We have built out entire systems that get better and better. This is why dozens of people have paid to come back to Formation a second and third time. Like 5 people this week are people who are coming back and paying again and a couple noted how much has changed since last time.