Codesmith.io: Like the best of alcoholic family dysfunction, online for your entertainment pleasure.

I constantly point out the pros and cons of Codesmith but I have to say that all the grads I've encountered in reality - with names and faces - are extremely professional, polite, hard working, ambitious. Skill wise, most also have a lot of gaps to fill to getting to be truly mid level and senior engineers but they are truly solid entry level engineers and competitive with strong computer science graduates. I think a lot comes down to the personality and drive of the person.

I think about this every time I get attacked. These are my THEORIES (no strong evidence): 1. A lot of accounts have no history and are new, so I wonder who the people actually are 2. I know many people privately have problems with specific leadership at Codesmith ("sketchy", "sleezy", "used car salesman", "lied to me", "obsessed with Codesmith's image"). Apparently there are unofficial ways people talk where they discuss their issues with the leaders. Now we haven't seen a leader once use their real identity and respond to things, so I suspect there could be leaders with fake accounts replying sometimes and displaying the behavior of the words above. 3. Codesmith currently has about 100 former students on staff (full time and part time and contracting) listed on their website.And this list rotates constantly. So I suspect 25% of all students end up working for Codesmith in some capacity at some point in time. So there are a lot of people that have crazy biases they never disclose. I actually know a lot of people on here for real who are anonymous and they worked at Codesmith in some way. 10% alone are hired as fellows. 4. I don't know if you've seen the self reported spreadsheets but there's a little "bro" vibe on some of them. Like here's my salary and then others commenting things like 'bringing in da benjamins'. So some people who get a $150K offer and have no experience show off a bit - and you see those on Reddit too, like people who casually drop they were one of the success stories but really they are humble bragging about themselves. I have more thoughts around the cult-like vie too. E.g. they have "family dinners" every week, encouraging you to bring a friend, and other things I see in cult documentaries, but I have ZERO evidence that these elements are intentionally created and they could very well be just from extremely close culture and natural.