Codesmith is fantastic for the right people! It has a very unique culture and that's why it's controversial on Reddit. I'm an under the hood type of person and try to look at how things work and Codesmith isn't super transparent about how it actually produces really good results.
So how it works:
1. High bar. Their process looks for numerous characteristics of successful grads and is an objective measure or raw programming skill. You need to be good AND have good communication and the right attitude.
2. You don't really learn much... topics are rushed through, you are told to snuggle the struggle, and all but one teacher came from Codesmith students themselves. BUT you are building strong bonds with friends and you are being supported infinitely from those instructors. You might have an hour long convo about your imposter syndrome that helps boost your confidence and do better.
3. Exaggerating resumes. I've seen countless Codesmith resumes now and they are all very similar. 12 weeks of Codemsith turns into a 500 word full page resume. Overlapping time-frames on projects to triple count your time at Codemsith. A number of people dropping month labels to portray 3 week projects as over a year of experience. This works. I see Codesmith grads with no experience getting interviews before people with actual experience and worse resume structure and in every case I've personally observed it was this factor. If you are down and ready to do that, it works. I've looked at dozens of OSP projects now and not a single one is senior or mid level FAANG code and I've elaborated on that before. They are amazing junior level projects that would make you stand out as an entry level engineer but no not deserve months of resume experience. OSLabs signs off on 4 month letters of reference for that time so Codemsith is explicitly endorsing this strategy.
4. Incredibly supportive culture. Like you make a comment and get emojis to the moon. It's a culture when you go in without confidence in your engineering ability and leave feeling confident to take on any job and this is the magic that they are able to accomplish in 12 weeks, consistently, over top of anything else.
Edit for 3. I know some instructors at Codesmith disagree and have called me out before but I seriously challenge you to show your project's code to a random engineer with 10 years of FAANG experience and review the code line by line and then say if it is senior level work. Not a random tweet or random comment, like a through code review of a randomly selected OSLabs project and an examination of the PRs and code history and not just the current state. It's not imposter syndrome and a number of students realize this and contact me more and more the more that is reinforced in response to my comments. Not trying to be mean, just realistic and I'm happy to support anyone that messages me.
u/LongjumpingFan9447 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yep although I think they focus a lot on what a software engineer is nowadays. I talked to alumni of CodeSmith but also other schools like AppAcademy to choose a school and they all said that the ability to communicate how you approached a problem in a team is pretty much the mai
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I did a break down of the "achetypes" of top bootcamp grads in their first year post job. And I do think the majority of top grads do indeed see the 12 hour days of the bootcamp as much "harder" technically that most non-top-tier jobs, and that communicating well cross function and to other engineers and making sure you are on the same page, is important.
I've heard in a Codesmith session that Software Engineers "nowadays" don't just write code like "they used to" and are collaborative team members. From what I've seen, nothing has really changed and that was always really important and hasn't really changed.
The biggest change is that entry level engineers don't need as much hard tech skills because we have AWS, Google Cloud, and all kinds of frameworks and tools, like VS Code, so entry levels engineers can differentiate themselves by being great team members and communicators.
It's absolutely not true that mid level and senior engineers get there primarily by being good communicators and problem solvers - they need hard skills that bootcamps don't teach and that take a long time to build (not because of aptitude but because while you can control your speed, you can't control the speed of typical users who use your product and you need to learn over time interacting with those users those technical and hard skills that help you level up.
u/EquivalentReal584 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Let men make an honest recommendation from someone who went to a software school/bootcamp
In retrospect no pun intended, I would do the following: Sign up for Coursera Pro and take the following Meta Front End, Back End, and data engineering certification pathway. Then invest i
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I would add to this to do open source work throughout. Like at Codesmith people do THREE WEEKS on a big open source project and then claim months to years of experience (4 months is signed off by OSLabs) and they claim that it turns them into midlevel and senior engineers
So you can only imagine how good you should be getting if you starting working on LARGE open source projects for actually MONTHS.
u/cozyonly wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
how do you get involved in an open source project like that though?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's super hard at step 0, but you can start by just following a project without contributing. Pull the code, spend 10 hours trying to figure out how to build the thing and get it working. Run test suites until they pass and confirm you have things built properly. Watch the PRs, watch the issues. I think you'll find the time when you are ready to contribute. Maybe you'll try and not get anywhere, and it will take some time!
This can really simulate what it's like working on big scale teams if you are contributing to a super large project, but you can't just cram this into 1 week and slap it on your resume, you would be missing the point.
u/InTheDarkDancing wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
> This is my personal opinion on this topic and I'm standing up for those that have complained to be that fall in the former bucket
Sounds very altruistic but I think you know better. There's approximately 500,000 open software engineer jobs in the US. Codesmith pumps out about
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I agree that there aren't enough Codesmith grads to make a dent in the system. It's why every time I talk to people about this they are super offended and some say they would never hire anyone who went to Codesmith, but no one does anything about it, because it's just not a significant number of people OR the complexity of training the ATS to block OS Labs is not worth it.
But the motivations are wrong and so think you know that. I had an AMA last week live that you could have come to and Neetcode, Blind75 and Sophie are doing a panel next week if you want to see our story and motivations and what we do and what we believe in, you can do so live and hear it from own mouths instead of inferring from comments I'm making in a minute or two typing like crazy on Reddit.
Anyways, this behavior will catch up to them. NY onsite paused indefinitely now, down to 2 cohorts a month instead of 4, cutting back fellow hiring to just 2 a cohort from now on. Uncertainty if their DSLM will continue. CIRR is delayed. Like clearly whatever strategy I'm complaining about isn't working 100% perfectly anyways so maybe I'm being pedantic.
u/VastAmphibian wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sounds like you have looked at a lot of Codesmith's project code as someone from outside of the CS system to give an honest review. Have you done, or are you interested in doing one for a Launch School **Capstone** project? Their website claims Capstone program projects are model
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I have looked at a few yeah! The documentation, presentations, and overall code structure is more consistent with a production codebase, the GitHub orgs and repos are setup more consistent with larger.o0en source work as well. I see more "good practices" and haven't seen the kinds of security vulnerabilities I see in Codemsith projects. But the actual code occasionally has commented out code and things and isn't flawless. The PR naming and structure could improve too on some I've seen. But they are a lot closer to a real production codebase than the Codesmith OSPs. I still don't think any of many become widely used or maintained projects though just like Codesmith.
The state of the Codesmith ones is a result of (my opinion synthesizing dozens of private comments):
1. Don't have anyone with extensive industry or open source experience so the guidelines and best practices are hit and miss. This is totally fine if the students didn't think they were doing "mid level and senior" projects and rebut my comments with "we just have imposter syndrome, you are wrong". Like they are fantastic entry level bootcamp projects compared to typical bootcamps and the problems they are trying to solve are great ideas to tackle.
2. They are rushed. You can tell from the commit history within PRs that people are frantically flailing around the codebase. Intermediary commits show a ton of copy paste, guessing, mistakes, arbitrary refactorings, inconsistencies, etc... Again, nothing wrong with this but not mid-level or senior work.
3. No overall architecture. The super consistent things about them are the surface level things: the medium posts, the boilerplate code, the websites, all the marketing. But the code architecture is a mess. One of the major projects has several different UI frameworks all mismatched together for example. The end state doesn't matter as much as how we get here and I don't think the people making these changes have any idea how they should even approach decisions like that. Again, totally fine for entry level, not mid level or senior.
This is just 3 examples because I timebox my comments but there are many more.
u/WinMost7132 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
If everybody is talking and communicating excellently, who is doing the coding?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I actually find Codesmith grads have great hustle and produce a lot of code too. Look I hired a Codesmith grad and know dozens, I worked with dozens of new grads directly in my career.
Most of them have more hustle than new grads I've worked with but most also have way more skill gaps. Very much ready to have a shot at succeeding in entry level roles and that's commendable for a 12 week program.
u/humidifier_fire wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you know anything about Haiku academy in Thailand? I was accepted there for a 10 week course but not sure if I should make the journey.
[haikuacademy.com](https://www.haikuacademy.com/)
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Sorry, I don't
My advice is to:
1. Talk to alumni you can find about their experience and see if the day to day is a good fit. Try to ignore opinions about quality and stuff because they are subjective and try to understand how it works day to day
2. Search for "X scam" and see if anything serious comes up. Nothing is perfect and you'll find some complaints I'm sure, but just make sure they aren't like a true scam.
u/cozyonly wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yeah that’s what I meant. Contributing to open source is difficult. Especially as a beginner and especially for a large project. That’s why it’s crazy they’re able to do it in 3 weeks during a 12 week bootcamp. I’m guessing it’s a project that’s purposefully open ended and with i
u/michaelnovatireplied·
The projects are made from scratch and then released to open source. I would almost say they aren't "real open source projects" but I can't really say that because they technically area, but they are not done in the spirit of what "real" open source software was meant to be. If they were real, they would be less complete, more well thought out starting points, rather than rushed and almost unusable end to end projects.
u/cozyonly wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
In what ways do they have hustle? Like are they reading a bunch of books? messaging a lot of recruiters? Pushed code to GitHub daily? I’m interested what you mean by that because CS students are probably spending 30-40 hours per week on coursework and three still have to learn th
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I can only speak to trying to generalize the people I know but everyone is a unique person with unique set of skills and experiences.
So the "hustle" comes someone who would do 11 hours a day M-F and 9 hours on saturdays. People who will ping and message recruiters, people who will genuinely apply to 1000+ jobs and send outreach for many of them. People who will come to you and say "how can I make this past accounting experience sound like 2 years of engineering experience" and then spend a lot of time practicing and practicing until they can make it sound convincing. Like someone who might post on Reddit about their journey and how hard it was to get a job, but leave out that they had 13 years of "web developer" experience that's on their resume that might have helped.
Again, not trying to be negative even though when I talk about this it sounds like blatant fraud, it's too easy to judge without knowing people on a personal level and many of these individuals are great and I know will have great careers. But a number of people (NOT ALL, and some haven't identified themselves, especially on Reddit) who have posted about Codesmith and how amazing it was in reviews and how their support was amazing, leave out the fact that their LinkedIns show exaggerated experience shown... it's almost normalized behavior that people don't even realize the impact of.
u/cozyonly wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It basically sounds like a portfolio project that you see in most CS courses. Which is basically around what you can except after 10-12 weeks of learning + a few weeks of working on it. That’s why I’m surprised that bootcamp grads learn enough coding skills in 3 months to be able
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yes it's a 4 person group project that's 3 weeks and you spend like 1-2 additional weeks puffing it up with blog posts, websites, social media posts and getting all the cohortmates to like and share it. It used to be called "marketing week" or something but they reframed it after that was perceived very negatively.
u/JayawardenepuraKotte wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It does work though.
There're countless posts on the net (Reddit, Medium, personal websites) where Capstone grads mention being encouraged to actively look for mid or senior positions.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yup, and in info sessions they say that your OSPs are mid level and senior projects that will hundreds and thousands of stars. Or one project that got a tweet once from a prominent React figure that it was a 'good idea' has been now become 'industry experts love the projects'.
They are no, most don't get those stars, and the main source of people starring it are Codesmith residents themselves, and posting in the broader Codesmith CSX community to people who have just started learning how to code.
Marketing is marketing but when challenged on this marketing they double down and I'm shared all kinds of things staff and residents say to push back against me... they truly unequivocally believe at all levels of the company that these projects are genuinely mid level and senior work.
u/JayawardenepuraKotte wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How would you measure a bootcamp-to-mid/senior success? By time spent at that role? By the complexity of the tasks?
One of the complaints you find here (which you also mentioned in a previous post) is that while these grads do find a mid or senior role, if somehow their skill
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
It's a good question and there isn't one answer. I've even heard Codesmith's CEO changing his tone a bit here, he said recently 'by mid level and senior we mean real Software Engineer jobs'.
Which is a fair point. ENTRY LEVEL FAANG jobs pay about $200K with $150K base right now, so even measuring by cash, Codesmith's "$127K median outcome" would not be below even entry level of the highest paying roles so I don't think they are trying to say their grads are "canonical FAANG mid level and senior" but rather that they are "legit" engineers. Many bootcamp grads get much lower paying, engineering jobs, and Codesmith's point is that the grads get full blown SWE jobs.
My problem isn't so much debate over the choice of language, but that they claim the OSP PROJECTS ARE A KEY TO PRODUCING MID LEVEL AND SENIOR ENGINEERS and that is where I draw the line in my personal opinion. Any kind of non-entry level engineer shouldn't be making the decisions and mistakes that are consistently evidence in those projects.
Generally people learn these things with EXPERIENCE rather than studying or cramming, so maybe the debate is about is EXPERIENCE required to be a mid level or senior engineer.
This one I'm more open to seeing both sides. On the one hand, if you do the job and don't get fired then you are qualified. On the other hand, I strongly feel like the goal should NOT be "don't get fired" and should be looking beyond the first job, and entry level engineers should be taking the best entry level jobs. Those jobs come with the mentorship and support needed to grow to mid-level "properly".
Perhaps the problem is that the data shows that not many Codesmith grads end up in FAANG entry level roles (but some do!) and they can't consistently prepare people for that bar and into those roles, so the next best thing is to go for higher paying "mid level" roles at worse companies instead of entry level roles at those worse companies.
The strategies for approaching both tiers of company are entirely different and Codesmith's approach works for those companies and not top tier and the approach I'm advocating works for the top tier ones and less well at the worse companies.
u/illustrious_feijoa wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Michael, you provide a ton of great info on this sub, but I think you get way too hung up on FAANG. And I say this as someone who works at a FAANG company (I understand you were an L6+ at FB for a long time).
> Perhaps the problem is that the data shows that not many Codesmith g
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Fair point on people's goals and that was lost in this thread for sure. A lot of people don't aspire to "FAANG" and I help a lot of people go to NOT-FAANG explicitly.
I also appreciate the callout on "worse" and it's not at all pedantic. That should have been qualified since it meant "worse in most respects to top tier tech companies, such as compensation, empowerment of engineers, scale, challenges of work, career growth" but even then "worse" is still a judgy word and a mistake to use it.
I use a definition of top tier as follows (which I mean by "FAANG") and I'll be clearer from now on:
1. Tech focused company - the primary business value is the technology or a product relying on the company's core technology.
2. "High compensation" - which varies particularly by region, but generally offers include some kind of equity or ownership participation (or equivalent), extremely strong benefits, etc...
3. VC-backed or backed by top tier investors. This is also a bit subjective, but generally has investors or board members at this level. Top meaning top 10 or 20/30 investors (which is subjective too) but the point is that these people know how companies grow and while they might push you, they also help you grow and scale through challenges that technology companies have.
4. Founders (or founding employees) who have top tier tech backgrounds. Not to sound arrogant, but my rule is 5 to 10+ years in a leadership or principal engineer role at previous top tier companies. This is important so the engineering team has the ethos of how top teams are run (both technically and performance/growth/hiring wise). It's also important for hiring and bringing in the best people.
I would say a few hundred companies meet this bar and are not all "FAANG" but in the list of Codesmith alumni, there are very few percentage wise at these "top tier" companies.
u/hormonalvirus wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you have an opinion on Tech Elevator?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I don't right now because it's a little in flux. So they were bought by Galvanize a while ago but run independently. And then two months ago they announced that they were merging operations with Hack Reactor and some leadership left so I don't know if it's going to be the same anymore.
What I used to love was that they had good in person partnerships with companies in smaller cities, like Cincinnati, and it was a great path to a job. The salary stats were lower than others because these cities have lower compensation.
But I heard they stopped or merged or slowed down some in person cohorts, a number of those partnerships ended, and I'm not sure what's going to happen in the future.
So I would ask them what's changed since Hack Reactor took over!