Are the Codesmith Numbers Manipulated?

I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too. Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue. They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good. These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up. 1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including LinkedIn. meaning that if you see that an alumni who might have ghosted says they have some kind of job on LinkedIn. You can count them as a placement. They would report the salary as missing though, or they might be more likely to call and text the person to try to get their numbers. 2. and that leads to number two which is that the spec doesn't say how salaries have to be confirmed or what evidence is needed. so if someone replies to a text message with some numbers those can be used for CIRR. You need to document the text message but if the auditor is try to contact that person and can't confirm anything it will be noted but probably will still pass audit. 3. They notably do not follow the CIRR rules for their fellows/ TAs and people who sign up for that role get their graduation date pushed back until they're done their contract. so hiring those people who they may think might be struggling on the job hunt gives those people an extra 3 months or more to get placed and still count. during the boom times I was asked to waiting they were hiring four to five people from every cohort and they actually cut that back to two recently which makes me think that there might have been some kind of strategy behind that if they could get by with just two right now. 4. Their auditors accidentally signed off on the wrong version of their last CIRR report and the number isn't that one were actually lower than the final ones. so that makes me think that they do have a concerted effort when they see the draft reports to get like instructors and fellow alumni to try to contact people at all costs that they think got a job so that they can use any means necessary to get them into the report. I can't give out sources, but I suspect that this is happening based on what I've heard. And There is nothing wrong with this. 5. someone I think with good intentions. published a screenshot with a list of 70 recent placements with their current salaries and their salaries before Codesmith. The medium before was somewhere around 70k and about 20% of the people had 90k or more before. So clearly the people going there are reasonably successful people on the most part who are leveling up their careers. 6. The entrance bar is very high both in terms of the level of concept you need to know and also the hurdles you have to jump through that show them that you will be a good Codesmith resident. many people spend months doing their sessions and peer sessions and people do more than one interview to try to get in. This process eliminates people who are not completely bought it on the process and you don't have the determination to trust their system and make it through. In many ways just by getting accepted if you kind of drink the Kool-Aid and follow what they say, then you're statistically likely to be getting one of those 120k median offers. But that doesn't mean that someone maybe struggling to understand concepts or maybe went to another boot camp and didn't get a job. should think that Codemith will solve all their problems. 7. Finally, I've talked extensively about the way that the majority of alumni resume I looked at exaggerated, to various degrees. They typically listed out at least a three to four months experience which was actually there 3 week project. The theory is that Codesmith will sign off on 4 months of experience on that project because they feel that all of your time there contributes to that project and is really a part of it even if it's not spent on that project. However, people also list out all of their other Codesmith projects as separate items on their resume, so they end up with a full 600 word resume of many things that is really just 12 weeks of immersive. They very clearly tell people to not lie or exaggerate on their resumes but then they give them examples and the examples all do this. They give you step by step guides to making your resume and if you follow them, you are essentially doing this. They Tell you that if you keep working on your open source project after you're done that, you can keep putting longer and longer dates on your resume and I see a lot of that, but when I look at those open source projects, i don't see any code or activity from those people, so I'm not sure what they're involvement is, nor do I see the resume bullet points change from graduation to 6 months later that they keep claiming they were involved.

Can you elaborate more on why you found Eric K "awesome" and "inspiring"? There is some controversy around other team members but Eric K is by far the most controversial - people who work there love him or people hate him and no one is in between haha. I do have two sources of confirmation that he has a group of alumni that he asks to comment and post on Reddit and that raised eyebrows for me. But again, I keep an open mind until I have clear patterns, and sources are super polarizing on him. I did a deep dive into his resume (looked up press releases, articles, etc... and poked around) and found some questions about his background that appeared different or portrayed differently in his personal pitch, but I've never met him or talked to him personally to clarify those things.

Yeah me too and I appreciate you engaging because I know my direct and transparent tone is not interpreted how I intend it inside Codesmith, where the response has been 'badmouth me private, ignore in public and respond with positivity'. But yeah I had notifications on for the entire post and got one 1 hour ago for different comment, and then came back 20 mins later for this comment. None of the other comments on the post had any engagement changes at (no comment/no change in votes) and this comment had 11 upvotes within 10 minutes. I wish this place would be more welcoming easy to have professional discussions, but none of this behavior makes it approachable.

Thanks for sharing more details! Yeah that's what I've heard from the people in the "Eric is awesome camp". What I've found though is that while his advice is solid, he's overconfident in his understanding of the market. He said 'I'm friends with the CTO of Disney so I know the better than anyone on Reddit or TikTok', and 'I've done 4 startups and 3 of them were acquired' and like I said, public documentation raises a lot of questions about that. But I guess my question is, while he has been helpful, how do you know he's given you good advice and how do you know you wouldn't be able to be more successful with other advice? A senior engineeeing manager, M7, at FAANG, with a trajectory of being promoted every year would be making about $800K to $1M a year. It's analogous to E7 - [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e7](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e7) So if his advice got you more what you perceived as huge value, how do you know it was the best advice?

I'm someone who posts a lot of criticism of CIRR, the most out of anyone, do you think my comments are misinformation or are you talking about other comments. My comments are critical but sourced directly from the CIRR standards, worksheets, the website, and talking to one of the founders of CIRR, and not made up. Most Codesmith students I talk to get their information about CIRR from Codesmith posts. Some people do state misinformation about it on here but that doesn't mean that all criticism is misinformation either. For starters, Codesmith openly doesn't follow CIRR's standard for graduation date as it considers PAID FELLOWS to not have graduated until the fellowship contract is complete and does not count them as placements, even though the CIRR rules are clear than any job after someone meets the consistently applied graduation requirements is a placement and graduation dates are supposed to be locked in on the first day of the program. Changes in cohort or delayed graduation isn't suppose to change that date. This is violating the standards (as Codesmith openly discusses [here](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/codesmiths-commitment-to-cirr-transparent-reporting-frequently-asked-questions): ) but the auditors haven't stated this and sign off on the reports. I actually think it's violating for good reasons because it would bring down results and look like Codesmith was hiring people back to juice placements, and their placements stand on their own. But it's also something I would expect an "independent" auditor that is judging the outcomes against CIRR standards to question and mention in their reports, which [they do not](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/b35b1c749107439681950ac95498691f/1/Codesmith%20Full-Time%20Remote%20Audited-AUP%20H1%202022%20Final.pdf)

100% I literally recommended OP consider Codesmith and was discussing in private 30 mins ago. The ignore strategy is because I mean this: I've talked to the founders of numerous other programs on here and have professional open conversations with them, and not a single leader at Codesmith has contacted me for 1.8 years now of me being the same old person on here every day. Instead, the CEO has badmouthed me in internal all hands, the outcomes advisor has texted someone telling them Formation's a scam and he'll give them all he needs. An alumni made very inappropriate comments about me in an alumni Slack that were screenshotted to me. And all this kind of BS in private and the public response isn't "he is dark depraved person whose sole mission in life is to take down the great thing \[we\] have built" (this was quoted to me by a student but I don't know if they quoted it or paraphrased) but it's a coordinated set of positive comments. That outcomes advisor also has a group of alumni that are asked to comment on Reddit. Anyways, I'm not saying this to make a negative comment because as you said, there are hundred and hundreds of amazing humans that Codesmith has been a tremendously positive force in helping happen, but I do note it as a lack of leadership and a piece in the puzzle of understanding it as a whole.

That's awesome and congrats! I'm really happy for you as a person and you sound like you have a superstar trajectory. My FAANG comment was not meant to be a comparison, just that there is +/- six figure negotiations at that level so I was genuinely curious how he helped navigate that! I have seen his videos, and notes of his advice and I think it's on point and solid, but it's also inline with the advice that industry career coaches and negotiation coaches give. So it's fantastic that this is included in Codesmith and for life, like [Levels.FYI](https://Levels.FYI) charges like $2500 to help with negotiations per time! But I also think people who he's helped often portray him a flawless person who truly knows everything and has all the answers, and quite honestly, he literally said the above, that he knows "everything about the industry" because he's friends with "the CTO of Disney" (btw Disney doesn't have a single CTO and also isn't a tech company). So I'm probably wrongfully assuming that he carries that public attitude to private negotiations and assuming that he portrays himself like that privately, and that's an inappropriate assumption to make on my part.

Thank you, I appreciate the feedback and comments and will take it to heart. I agree with you and I don't want Codesmith peopled judging me without talking with me either, so I truly appreciate it.

Yeah that's fine! I think I haven't reached out because I'm introverted and shy lol. I prefer talking to people async online and make up for shyness with extreme responsiveness. So almost all the leaders I've talked to have been long and slow online conversations first. I don't know if I would immediately jump on a call, but I would appreciate having a direct and open channel to be like 'hey, someone sent me a screenshot, is this a thing' and where he can be like 'hey I feel that comment is misleading can you adjust it because of Y', and then hopefully being more understanding over time, even if we're not best friends lol.

I fully agree and support this, just make sure to consider the OSP projects at Codesmith projects and not number 2 or 3. A number of people have like X to present, it might look like they have a job but that was just their project. Speaking from experience and trying to help navigate your search.

/u/InTheDarkDancing you are a by the books and audit-appreciating person who disagrees a ton with me about most things, so what are your thoughts on this? Am I wrong in asking this "violation" (i.e. inconsistency with CIRR standards) be disclosed by the auditors in the report because it's not for Codesmith to decide what rules they choose to follow and not disclose in the official paperwork, or do you think this rule breaking is so obviously okay that we shouldn't question it? I'm fine either way as long as it's consistent. Like we all follow the rules and disclose meticulously when we don't and feel justified, or we get aways with fudging the rules when we feel like it and hope that everyone agrees but it should discredit the trustworthiness (just a little bit.... not entirely obviously) of the outcomes. The voting on these comments suggests people are in a different camp: 'Whatever makes Codesmith looks good is right as long as it sounds reasonable to people' RE: 'catch22', it's not a Catch 22, CIRR has rules, of all the loopholes in CIRR, this one is not ambiguous, no one is forcing Codesmith to hire it's graduates, whether it's to be nice and supportive or it's to get cheap labor, it's completely irrelevant, and the rules are the rules and they are clear. They are on the board of CIRR, if the rules make them look worse and they feel the rules aren't fair, they can try to change the rules... that's how CIRR was made. Companies PAY A MEMBERSHIP FEE TO BE IN IT and they get to make their own rules.

I think this reply characterizes the controversy as I see it as it represents the attitude that Codesmith itself has about things. I went to an info session once where the one of the speakers 'We're ready, ask us the hard questions' followed with a bunch of thumbs up emojis. So I asked passive agressively (anonymously) 'How did you get your current job 8 months ago' (because their LinkedIn showed they were employed as a Software Engineer at their OSP - no "OSP" - the company didn't say "Open Source" in a single place, or OSLabs. NO RESPONSE. No emojis, no acknowledge, like it wasn't even asked. Like you can't say give me all the hard questions and then only answer the hard questions you want. This attitude is pervasive at Codesmith and in this subreddit.