Why doesn’t codesmith show up as a top bootcamp?

A lot of lists are paid for/sponsored posts. Codesmith is 100% one of the top bootcamps they just don't pay to show up in lists, which is a good thing, in my opinion! Codesmith doesn't do much marketing and focuses on getting you to show up to free sessions to get you into the funnel and to get you to keep coming back for more and more commitment, until you sign up for the immersive. They do sponsor Course Report and Switchup and you'll see them there in "featured lists". Codesmith is also relatively smaller than the other programs and while it has investors, they are not owned by any large company and their founders don't come from a traditional "education" background. Finally, Codesmith has a "cult-like" (not my words) following that feels like a family. Almost all of the instructors, lead instructors, fellows, TAs, etc... went to Codesmith itself, and alumni are extremely protective of the program and culture. But on the other hand this super intense community is insanely supportive of their own, and almost everyone I talk to values this tremendously.

I definitely see all kinds of sketchy behavior on Reddit. I have several friends, and Formation alumni, who work at Reddit and hear about things. This subreddit has no minimum thresholds for posting so it's particularly susceptible to bad actors and a lot of the more controversial stuff you'll see is brand new accounts with almost no comment history at all making bold claims out of nowhere, making it impossible to validate. So I tend to read people's histories carefully when I encounter someone new making strong statements. All of that said, I don't think it's astroturfing and I don't think Codesmith every tells anyone to post on Reddit at scale and most of the anecdotal stories on here are genuine, especially from well established accounts. This subreddit is a small, nice corner of the world and part of the heavy Codesmith presence is a snowball effect. Lots of Codesmith alumni here, who are genuinely friendly and nice people, make a good impression, then more people want to go to Codesmith, and then they come back and pay it forward.