u/BudgetSense8077 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m going to be 100% honest with you. If you are “a professional dev of 4 years”
There’s nothing in a bootcamp that should be “intense” for you. JavaScript, React, React components, how asynchronous functions work with each other…… literally none of that should be “complicated”
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I can say that I had nothing to do with this post, nor did anyone at Formation, have no idea who the OP is and haven't talked to them on Reddit before, but what they say is pretty detailed and aligns with how the day to day is.
The OP didn't say Formation works on those things you mention.... we don't teach anything... we do pretty much as the OP said 'peer and group problem solving sessions'.
The bootcamp market has produced hundreds of thousands of engineers who - firehose style in 10 to 20 weeks - learned basic programming concepts and then have been learning practical skills on the job for a couple years and many hit a wall when trying to level up to top tech jobs because of being rusty, or never properly learning, more fundamental CS concepts.
There are thousands and thousands of people who feel this way and it's not unbelievable or something to shame someone about.
u/BudgetSense8077 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yea, Im never a person who is mean or confrontational in real life. But I just don't really believe this Michael.
I was at the top of my Hack Reactor class and I will 100% guarantee half of my graduating class will never get jobs as a developer. Ever.
Yea, I'm never a pe
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I definitely agree partially here. We are not selling false hope to new bootcamp grads who are struggling to get jobs and we don't work with them very often in this market. In a good market we've had pretty good success helping bootcampers in the middle of the pack fill in gaps... but it's crazy expensive to do back to back with a bootcamp and I don't recommend that.
If we accepting all of these people we would be a giant company right now, we unfortunately turn them down so we can try to have experiences like the OP instead.
But I firmly believe the evidence shows that there is a target audience we genuinely help for.
u/Laserfros1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
They strictly teach data structures and algorithms in 20 weeks time
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I think that's a different program. We don't have any fixed length whatsoever and you have no syllabus or guaranteed curriculum you'll work on.
The topics individual people cover will vary based on their gaps, but post people cover:
\- Problem Solving (via DS&A, from basic concepts to graphs and DP)
\- System Design
\- Technical Behavioral/Hiring Manager preparation
\- Resume/Recruiter call preparation
\- Job Hunt tracking tools and job sourcing (up to 5 matching jobs a day sent to you)
\- Dedicated support team of 3 team members to make adjustments and respond to your needs (it's highly dynamic)
u/Droidger wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Except those things aren’t what interviews at big tech test for. I’ve seen people with 10 YoE at good companies struggle on a LC medium like “number of islands”. Formation seems to be like a Princeton Review-style test prep program for this kind of interviews.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I've heard people outside of Formation who think we 'gamify the interview process' but I don't know where that comes from and I think it's a weakness in our public content and website if people feel that way.
The core approach to DS&A follows this method: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
And all of the practice is in applying that and getting feedback and practicing it in 1-1 mocks.
That link is free \^\^\^\^ so clearly it's not as easy as it sounds to apply it if people pay us a lot of money, and some people - even some new Fellows who signed up - have an instinct to fallback to memorization or trying to game the system - and for them the hard part is re-learning how to solve easy problems!
If you try to game the system and go into interviews, it's highly risky - you'll either crush it or fail miserably. That's why we focus on a problem solving method that makes you a better engineering thinker - from scratch, because you can pass way more interviews and all kinds of new questions and curveballs by being a good engineering thinker and being able to demonstrate that under pressure.
u/CodedCoder wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I respect Michael heavily and have had plenty of conversations with him. I think he is an honorable guy from the convos we have had, I would not "complain" if they let more people in, my point is when you are very picky, it skews the numbers compared to any other type of program.
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I do think it's a fair question/comment yeah. It's also one of the reasons we don't publish "CIRR-like" outcomes.
I see day in - day out on here how people just programs strictly by outcomes and the fundamental problem is that a randomly selected person doesn't just get accepted into program X and it's a free ride to $Y salary.
Formation is VERY hard work, so it's not about selecting great people, they get great jobs and we get the credit. But it is both ways. If we select people who we know Formation is more likely to work effectively for, then we're more likely to have more amazing experiences, which might attract more people who it might not work for. I think that's fine if we are honest with individuals when they apply if we think Formation is good or not and that people trust that assessment.
Believe it or not, Formation is NOT good for people who have done all the LC Hard problems and just can't find a job and think Formation will give them the job.
We are genuinely ideal for people that have some basic foundation but notable gaps to fill, and we get those gaps filled consistently, efficiently, and at whatever pace works for you.
We had a Netflix program over the summer and I hope we'll have more to share about that after the people interview soon. It's a great example of showing how the people selected by Netflix were not only the highest scoring people, but people who had notable gaps to fill and all of the soft-traits they were looking for. And we successfully filled all those gaps in most of the people in the program!
u/Droidger wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Didn’t say Formation games the system, any more than the Princeton Review or Kaplan helps students game the SAT :)
u/michaelnovatireplied·
That's fair, how about substituting "teaching to the test" for "game the system" :D
u/Real-Set-1210 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Can you fail out of the program?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
The contract is that we keep doing our part you until you get a job as long as you keep showing up to sessions, generally doing the stuff we give you, communicating with your team, and intend on job hunting.
We have only removed a small number of people and they fall under the second part:
\- People no-showing too many sessions/'disappearing' without trying to reschedule or notifying anyone after repeated warnings
\- People who are too busy in their day jobs or in their lives and they aren't doing anything on their weekly schedule. We try to work with people to adjust their schedules but if they just can't make the minimum 10 hours work then we'll have to remove you if we can't find a way to make it work.
\- People who aren't a good fit. This is really rare, but this is a bucket of people that do not want to follow the way we do things (i.e. they want to memorize instead of learning, etc....) but also don't choose to leave voluntarily upon discussing this and want to stay, but over time the situation doesn't change.