Is Formation.dev bootcamp giving referrals or interviews right now?

I'm trying to avoid commenting on threads mostly with new accounts that troll and ignore replies from myself or others... been advised by Reddit employees don't feed the trolls. I love to have respectful discourse with established accounts. Someone had commented a good answer but I think they deleted: `From what I have heard they do referrals but its more limited than before because companies are hiring less and being more selective. The companies may also want a certain type of candidate, n yrs of experience, college degree, etc.` To reinforce: people should not have and should not join Formation only to get referrals, we are not a pay for play referral service and if you think your skills are amazing and you want to buy your way into FAANG, it's not the program for you. We work with people that want an efficient way to get you skills to the top tier bar and gain confidence in your skills and in interviewing. Referrals come in many sources but we can't refer you to jobs that don't exist and we never promised that: 1. The mentors you work with mostly work as senior+ engineers at top tier and FAANG companies and in a better market an a great source of strong referrals 2. We have been working on training to help people leverage their networks better for peer referrals 3. We have hundreds of years of FAANG experience on staff and though mentors, so we have a pulse on FAANG hiring from people who work there and are hiring (or not) that don't talk on Blind, etc... 4. We are talking to companies about longer time formal partnerships in all kinds of ways that might not be direct referrals, but open doors.

I think a larger problem is that a small number of people joined during the hot market when a lot of people they spoke with at Formation were referred to FAANG and saw no reason why they wouldn't follow that path. They were in Formation long enough to get their skills up during the hot market and are in job hunting mode. Then things changed very suddenly, they currently have no path to FAANG (and few do), and they are frustrated, which I totally understand and sympathize with and a lot of people in this bucket are working with us productively to strategize about what to do. There are two things in my opinion about the website though that people who are not at Formation have been referring to: 1. We have adjusted our website over months to the market. The overall structure hasn't changed at all, but it used to have one statement about 'high hit rate referrals' and another about 'getting referred directly to FAANG'. All of the statements are true - we focus on quality referrals and we have a deep AND wide network to make those and a track record of making those when they exist. But not all referrals are guaranteed interviews and not all Fellows even know their names were passed along. We have an opt-in resume book of people that is sent to recruiters. So we have reworded these sections to try be clearer. 2. Our "Network" tab has many people placed in FAANG who had referrals, and many people with zero experience who placed in FAANG who had referrals. These were indeed referrals that people might not have gotten easily elsewhere and people might want to follow the exact same path as somewhere there. It's important to note that people always talk to an ex-FAANG recruiter 1-1 before joining, have ample room to ask questions, and have time to withdraw if they start, get access to the entire set of reference materials at Formation, and feel misaligned. Internally, our largest focus is thinking about how to make sure the wrong people DON'T join and aren't trying to get people to join for referrals - as some have characterized doesn't make sense. If someone joins on an ISA and takes forever to place we lose so much money it makes absolutely zero sense - we're exploring removing ISAs entirely as an option because they make it so hard to operate a growing business.