Has anyone faked 1 or 2 years of corporate experience on resume after graduating from the bootcamp and got job?

This is a not so secret-secret to how a number of bootcamp grads get past resume screens. There are two critical pieces if you do this: 1. You have to practice your narrative and story to not get caught (you can't fake real experience so you won't pass every interview, but you have to get good enough to pass some. 2. Since you'll be in more senior roles than you should be, you have to be ready to fake it on the job to not get fired while also not telling the company the truth about your background and getting the support you need. I've seen some amazing people get fired or let go (and they might not even tell the program they were placed because it happens so fast sometimes). But I've also seen people make it with a little extra sweat, but they make it. Can't give numbers on each bucket, but it's not an easy journey for anybody. I work with hundreds of people from zero to 20+ YOE and have an excellence pulse on what resumes are getting through right and which aren't. A bootcamp resume that stretches a 3 week project into a 3 month project isn't getting through right now. On the other hand, I have talked to (but do not work with) a number Codesmith alumni recently that have been stretching their 3 month projects to 2, 3, and even FOUR YEARS and are starting to get jobs and interviews in this market. Apparently word is spreading there that putting 2, 3 YOE on your resume is getting through and 3 months to 1 YOE are not, so some are choosing to do what they need to do to get through. All of this extreme exaggeration happens post graduation but I've also learned in recent weeks that Codesmith knows about this turns the other way - referring to official documents telling people to not lie. Like in downtown San Francisco where dozens of people are dealing and using drugs right under a sign that says official 'drug free zone'. **How do you pass a background check doing this?** Codesmith's OSLabs will do backgrounds checks based on the information provided. So if you show them you worked on your OSP for 12 months (even though you didn't, but you "read the code every once and a while" or you pull and built the repo every few months, they will sign off on that) - this is according to a recording of an outcomes team member stating this and several others saying that 'a number of alumni choose to work on their OSPs post graduation and that's why they list so much time on their resumes' - GitHub histories of those same people say otherwise. Only a handful actual have ongoing contributions.

Were those Codesmith alumni hired at the same level as you or at a higher level?

I used to be more open minded on this based on all the materials I saw that every clearly tell you not to lie. But there have been some layoffs recently, employees are concerned and some ask/have asked me for advice on what to do because they cannot express their concerns internally. I don't think it's a mega conspiracy but they are well aware that alumni resumes don't portray what their guidance is internally but they have no control to change that. The reason I changed my mind is that these placements are celebrated by Codesmith as mid level and senior placements. Not everyone lies and they handpick the ideal alumni to talk about how they didn't lie and got high level jobs, but they are well aware of the ones that are and getting high level jobs and bucketing them all together showing that the handpicked cases are just common examples of the larger pool. I'm sorry I can't break people's trust and disclose more but there's really a lot going on peer-to-peer with at least a set of alumni that are ambitious and finding ways to get through in this market and get the best jobs they can in this market and those ways involve practicing stretching their experience in many cases and in other cases it's just alumni at companies, leaking interview questions and people preparing for those exact questions, but there's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of opinions on both sides and I don't want to get into that right now.