How would you rate Codesmith in terms of career outcomes?

Codesmith's outcomes are absolutely legit and it's one of the best programs out there. There are some caveats but their outcomes are very strong on paper, 100%. Notes about outcomes "under the hood": 1. The distribution of outcomes is more spiky than most programs, meaning there is a spike at < $120K and > $140K. People who make more, TEND to have experience already or success in another professional field prior. People who make under $120K TEND to be people who have zero experience and almost no technical experience. Now making $90K for someone in this demographic is an amazing outcome, but you shouldn't come in expecting $150K if you did community college as an x-ray technician, did that for a year, then did CSX for 3 months and think you'll make $130K after Codesmith..... you might, but it's less likely. 2. The outcomes are the median salaries of people who graduate, get a job in 180 days, and report their salary. In the recent report of 301 people, roughly 240 got jobs to include and 225 reported salaries. The median of those 225 is $127,500. But roughly 301 people started and a whopping 25% of people either didn't get a job or didn't report a salary and are not included. If those people $0 then the median of someone who STARTS Codesmith would be much lower. All of this said, Codesmith has great graduation rates and pretty good placements rates, but it's something to consider.

My hunch is the outcomes are stronger than reported because people who go missing don't tell cohort mates anything, but might report to Codesmith and they can only be higher than anecdotal reports. But how much higher? I still think 50% is reasonable and hopefully around 60%. I'm going to make a call now and you can tell me if I was right in 6 months. I think we're going to see a fairly high placement rate on the next CIRR report, like 60% maybe even 70%, but we're going to see an increase in "% of people not looking for employment" and in "% of people not reporting salaries". One of the CIRR loopholes is that employment can be verified via LinkedIn if a person goes missing, but their salary will be excluded. So if someone gets a job in a completely unrelated field, but is "employed" on their LinkedIn, then they count a placement in the percentage placed. I think they will work a lot harder to investigate missing people to find a way to count them as a placement and if we see a spike in "% of people not reporting salaries" that's a big sign this is happening.

\[EDIT: commenter explained the original comment was not about bootcamp grads but master's grads, and I re-worded/removed things that are also now out of context, and sorry for misunderstanding the context!\] Most people from bootcamps aren't making $200K in their first year. I've seen a Harvard Math grad have a path like this for example, or a UT Austin Civil Eng grad, but these people have some kind of natural abilities and work ethic that made it happen. A very small number of people will, and those people will probably be making $1M a year in 5 to 10 years, like maybe yourself /u/Evening_Message5556 (which I would say based on my interactions with you :) ) That said at Bloomberg and Amazon, you can make $200K TC (e.g. $160K base + $40K+ bonus) by crushing mostly DS&A interviews and passing behavioral interviews. One of the key pieces is the behavioral interview and you coming across "generally super competent" to a hiring manager. I agree that grinding DS&A and practicing super intensely can get you past the first part, but it's the "generally super competent" part that you can't grind your way through and you have to have some kind of natural click there. As people progress in their careers, this will be the dealbreaker for senior -> staff and larger advancement.

Sorry, yeah I think wires got crossed there, but that makes a lot more sense. I think you personally are an amazing engineer btw and appreciate all you do! I apologize for the empathy comment, that was also meant more broadly to posts that come across as "I made $200K you can too if you try" and I apologize for messing up how I phrased it.