AMA: Graduated Codesmith (parttime) last month

If it means anything, I've been chatting with this person for almost a whole year and they've been pretty legit the whole time. I'm not supporting or defending Codesmith here, just adding that fact The part time program seems to reach a fairly different demographic and have a different vibe than the full time program. It has the highest rate of people ghosting post graduation and more people delaying/deferring/leaving early, etc... and a lot of people I know are encouraged to join the full time one.

I don't run a bootcamp (Formation is meant for people with existing professional SWE experience) and a Codesmith leader has called me a 'dark and disturbed individual who spends all on day on Reddit with the sole purpose of taking down all the great work Codesmith has done' so I wouldn't say I'm positive about bootcamps. I feel like I grill them pretty fairly, I'm surprised no one is asking any tough questions on here! I agree that it does sound a bit like leadership may have directly or indirectly promoted this person to post, or discussed it with employees (which OP is currently) but I also think they disclose the bias which is a good step.

Hello friend, you asked for tough questions, so I'll throw out some of the tough ones since you are an employee, I expect you might not be able to answer them but you've repeatedly asked for tough questions so I'll try! EDIT: just want to make sure that I disclose that I'm the co-founder of mentorship and training program (that is not a bootcamp or direct competitor to Codesmith, but we tend to work with a number of people who graduated from borocamps at some point in the past) to be transparent about biases. Hard Questions: 1. How does Codesmith staff handle when a resident gets called out for OSPs not being real work, e.g. in the offer process or during interviews? Or phrased differently, is there a stance internally on how to handle students that have issues with their OSPs during interviews? 2. How do background checks work for OSP projects and how does Philip Troutman get away with signing letters of reference for OSLabs for background checks when people never actually worked there for 3 months? 3. What's the rationale behind the staff's stance that junior roles should be rejected, even if people have no other options? Less Hard Questions: 4. The way you track your time and owned the learning journey is impressive. Do you feel that the successful alumni have similar traits? Or what other traits amongst alumni are common amongst those who succeed? 5. Are you concerned about your contract job not converting and what is plan B? 6. What would you have done if you didn't do Codesmith? 7. How many people do you feel exaggerate their OSPs on their resumes vs are completely truthful about it?

I just asked some tough questions!

I think their representation on CIRR doesn't jeopardize the reliability of their data, but rather it's a conflict of interest because the specification itself is written by the people who have a vested interest in their data looking the best possible. And the issues with CIRR lie in the lack of clarity in the spec and reporting requirements that mask things (i.e. reporting percentages vs absolute numbers, lack of clarity on gathering salary data). I think the bigger conflict of interest is with OSLabs - which is a legit-donation-accepting charity that offers letters of reference for students that make it look like they were involved with a separate entity without disclosing that the student was PAYING to do said work for CODESMITH's immersive program.