Whats happening in the Tech Industry and Salary trends, by codesmith

I have many thoughts but am super busy right now to write them up, will go beyond my 60 second normal timebox for Reddit comments. However, I would look at this report for something more comprehensive: [https://carta.com/blog/startup-compensation-h1-2023](https://carta.com/blog/startup-compensation-h1-2023) My number one biggest concern that **needs to be called out because it wasn't called out in the report:** **The report is based on "date of offer" and not placement date.** So this doesn't tell us anything about placements. This isn't a criticism or comment about the numbers themselves, just the methodology. \- These salaries could be mostly people job hunting for a year. so they were job hunting for a year AND got lower paying jobs than the people who used to job hunt for 6 months and get higher paying jobs. We don't know because it's not mentioned at all. The opportunity cost of losing a salary for a month is a ton of money! \- This only includes people who got jobs! So say in 2022, 600 people got jobs with $125K median, and in 2023 300 people go jobs with $110K median, it's kind of irrelevant what the median is OF PEOPLE WHO GOT JOBS because there are hundreds of more people without a job entirely. Again, timeboxed so I might edit this in the future if it doesn't make sense but it's a really important point. In the extreme, if 5 people got a jobs in 2023 making $115K and 1000 got jobs in 2022 making $125K median, it's somewhat irrelevant to say "the median dropped $10K but is improving!". \- Someone posted a few weeks ago saying that Codesmith told them 70+ people were placed in 'July 2023 and the first week or two of August\`. The data I had contradicted that but this person was adamant. Well this report says about 300 people were included in 2023 up to September, which is about 30 people a month, or 1 a day, and is similar to my data.

I don't think they lie. I think they have absurdly consistent marketing stances. Everyone from fellows to admissions coordinators to outcomes people, all have extremely consistent talking points and deliver them well. The talking points aren't lies but just carefully thought out messaging, and I wouldn't expect any less, that's how businesses work!

Oh wow! I mean if you have some kind of source/evidence of those untrue/false numbers let me know! Like I definitely know their enrollment is down so I assume they are pushing the limits a little more on this but if they intentionally lie that's not good :(

Salaries didn't fall that much. What has changed for Codesmith is people are taking worse jobs because those higher paying jobs are more competitive and the Codesmith strategy no longer works. People are getting entry level legit engineering jobs now.

Yeah I've done deep dives on MLMs in the past and deep dives on Codesmith's info sessions. Codesmith is absolutely not an MLM by any definition, people pay for lectures and education, and they get those. Alumni and students don't get bonuses or paid based on how many other people they convince to join. The Codesmith vibe has the isolation aspect - everyone starts at zero and is trained using MLM - like techniques of consistency and status to "brainwash" (for lack of better word) people into absorbing desired materials quickly. I think the behavior we see is actually defensiveness - a lot of people I talk to feel uneasy - but only in private - about how they present themselves in the Codesmith-way and I think some people feeling a bit uncomfortable double down on defending it so they feel less guilty for what they did themselves - I'm not a psychologist, but I bet a lot of these people don't even realize this.