Honesty about CodeSmith / AMA

I comment on many of those threads and get notified for every post in this sub, and it sounds like you are super bias already at the start. I don't see many people selling other bootcamps on Codesmith posts or steering people away from it. I see a few one off comments, but it's not the core content on most posts. In fact a very large number of alumni from Codesmith who do videos for them, are active here, and write reviews online with their names on them, actually WORK/WORKED AT CODESMITH AND ARE/WERE ON THE WEBSITE AS EMPLOYEES. Reddit is anonymous by default but it's not that anonymous when people give out a lot of information that identify who they are. I have a following of hundreds of people now - many of whom respect my extremely thorough and balanced view of Codesmith - and many of whom end up going there because of my recommendation after talking to them - and I criticize certain aspects about Codesmith frequently, I talk about the good ones frequently, and I talk about Formation frequently. I can't give out sources, but people affiliated with Codesmith in many ways - not just students - send me stuff and corroborate my views - I'm not making stuff up and am simply summarizing sources. For example, only a few people know about the letters of references signed off by "OSLabs" that people were "software engineer working on X" for months. When I ask about that to students and alumni and fellows they just say it's above their pay grade. It's still a boogeyman. So if you don't know the boogeyman exists that I have actually documents and evidence exists, don't say it doesn't exist. And even though this happens, it's not a reason to NOT go there. It's just a part of the reason to understand how their placements work and how people get great jobs.

Rule one of an AMA is to prove your identity with a photo so people can know who they are talking to and interpret their answers in context. Source: I worked with Reddit to do a Reddit wide AMA and received their official materials about AMAs

I totally respect where you are coming from here, I probably jumped too quickly on the "boogeymen of CodeSmith are, because they don't exist" as a common thing I hear from students who didn't work in the Codesmith inner circle of employees and I want to make sure that people here the truth here. But I very much respect you sharing your personal points of view on Codesmith and thanks for doing the AMA.

In retrospect I think my comment is a bit too stern. I think people should give a thorough background, what they were expecting and why they went in, and then what their outcome was in the main post for an AMA. So people can evaluate in as much context as possible.

This is a bit sarcastic but I agree you could easily to this on your own. You could pay a Codesmith alumni to mentor you and sign off on each thing too.