Codesmith 2023 Year In Review Blog Post Released
SEE ORIGINAL: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/2023-codesmith-year-in-review](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/2023-codesmith-year-in-review)
(MAKING NOTES RIGHT NOW, WILL EDIT SOON!)
u/metalreflectslime wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
A person from my FreeCodeCamp study group attended Codesmith for remote PT graduating in November 2022.
37 people started, 37 people graduated.
At 6 months after graduation, 8/37 found their 1st paid SWE job.
At 12 months after graduation, 10/37 found their 1st paid SWE job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah I mean it's on the lower side of others I've heard, but when you factor in non-job hunting individuals, out of country (they said they had people from 13 countries), and then exclude people who didn't graduate or ghosted, and then people who went MIA but got jobs on LinkedIn, it might end up being closer to 50 to 60% for CIRR.
Either way, this is what people ask me all the time and we need to see the data.
I really want to see 6 month data for H1 2023 and we won't be seeing any 2023 for a long time with the new CIRR rules, but they have been sitting on the informal 6 month data for H1 2023 for almost a month now.
u/dak78 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
PT as in "Part time" or Pacific time? This figure seems off... I would expect at worst it's 50%+
Did this person verify each and every person -- all 37 -- to confirm their job statuses at 12 months?
Or did they only get direct confirmation from 10 people and lost touch with t
u/michaelnovatireplied·
See #6 above, added new analysis
u/metalreflectslime wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
PT = Pacific Time.
He checked their LinkedIn profiles at 6 months, and then later at 12 months.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
See #6 above, added new analysis
u/natoehhh wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do we have any information on the possibility of landing a position out of Codesmith without any type of college degree? I am thinking about joining the part-time March cohort but I will have to rethink my decision if we have any data that shows it's rare to land a solid outcome
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
The data their CEO shared once about college degrees showed only a very tiny amount, something like a few percent of people, had no college experience. And that's not of people placed, but just all residents.
That doesn't mean it's impossible because that still dozens of people and some get great jobs, but it is an uphill battle.
At the same time, getting a quick degree like WGU likely isn't the entire answer as well. The answer is that it will probably take 2 years of many things.and a lot of grinding and a lot of failures, not just one thing, that will eventually get you a job.
u/MisterSparkle8888 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
During my first week at codesmith I told a classmate about formation.dev. One day later he dropped codesmith, got his money back and signed up for formation. I feel like I should’ve done the same lol.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
FWIW, I don't recommend the vast majority of people who do Codesmith do Formation and the vast majority wouldn't be accepted.
I know a couple of people (literally 2, one dropped out and the other just chose Formation but was very close to going to Codesmith) that did this and it was well over a year ago and it was the correct decision. Both got FAANG-level jobs that were the perfect jobs for those two people.
I also know someone who dropped out of Formation and did Codeamith, and they did not get a job after and went back to school.
These are all edge cases and people reading this should not generally be considering Formation over Codesmith. You should absolutely consider Formation over Codesmith if you have 1+ year of SWE work experience already.
I want to reiterate that Formation is not a bootcamp or school and we don't teach anything. The people we work with with no experience almost all have bootcamps already, a CS degree, significant open source contributions, etc...
It's a benchmarking, practicing, and mentorship platform to help you level up your interviewing ability and fundamentals, but it's not an alternative to a structured classroom learning experience.
u/MisterSparkle8888 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Tbh, I didn’t hear about formation until much later into my journey. I was sold on codesmith because I knew a few different people who found success prior to 2020. However, I didn’t find that same success and didn’t have the best experience.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Sorry to hear, yeah one of the reasons I talk about Codesmith so much is that they have a very polarizing brand of people who will fight tooth and nail for Codesmith and people who do not like it at all.
My opinion is the people that don't like it shouldn't have gone in the first place and chose to go because of the super positive promoters talking superficially about how life changing it is, but without going into the nitty gritty of how it all works and realizing it probably isn't the right thing for them. The info sessions tout $120/$130.... $180K salaries, and it gives hope to people who aren't a perfect fit that maybe they'll be one of those people. Maybe you will be but maybe you'll also win the lottery and people need to understand what THEIR OUTCOME might look like, and I talk to a lot of people about this because Codesmith does not help with this.
I highly recommend Codesmith for a number of people, people who are extremely ambitious, have professional success in some kind of professional field (other engineering, accounting, medicine, mech eng, etc...), and people who will do whatever it takes to get a job, and stretch their resume as an 'ends justifies the means' argument. Those people do exceptionally well there and tend to have exceptional outcomes. We'll never know if those people could have had equal or better outcomes elsewhere, but for these people it works.
Anyways, feel free to DM me if you are looking for my opinions on what to do next (disclosure, no intention whatsoever to try to push Formation, I have no idea what the right next steps are for you right now)
u/dak78 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I emailed Codesmith directly about the nov. 2022 cohort that graduated and its at least 20 people not 10 per their internal data (they didn't verify how many people were in that cohort exactly, but 37 seems super high)
There are also usually 3-5% of a cohort that don't fall und
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
20 offers, could mean multiple offers for one person unless they stated otherwise.
u/metalreflectslime wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
> The OC's comment does seem fairly crazy that only 2 people got jobs in the second six months.
It is not as crazy as it sounds because 6 months of not making any income is a long time for most people.
If they are not living with their parents, they would probably need to be wo
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah totally agree that it's a huge amount of time! Like people might go back to their old jobs as a mechanical engineer or what have you and count as "offers". They can't call those jobs "non engineering roles" for CIRR but call them "engineering roles" on their resumes - have to go one way or the other.
I also found that a significant number of alumni who got offers frame experience as jobs on LinkedIn and I always wondered how the auditors reconciled those. Did they flag things as jobs that were just projects? etc....
u/MisterSparkle8888 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Formation or Codesmith?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I can't speak for the commenter, but I can say that in this market Formation is ideal if you can get some interviews yeah, and we help you prepare for them and increase your chances of passing (the primary goal is to help you level up in general, but more practically speaking, that's how I would frame it).
We are seeing hiring slowly "resume" at the top companies, and have more recruiters to backchannel people through - a small number of people get jobs this way! But it's a nice to have and not a guarantee or something you should expect coming in. The market hasn't recovered enough for that yet.
We have some exciting programs launching soon for people in college! And we have a handful of formal pipelines established recently (apprenticeship, formal recruiter backchannels, 3rd party recruiters). But for these pipelines again still edge cases and DO NOT JOIN to be handed interviews.
We can't make jobs where they don't exist, and we're trying to find every angle we can to get people jobs. Is it worth the cost? That's up to you to decide, but we're certainly working as hard as we can to make these connections happen and we're not sitting around doing the same old same old.
u/WagonBashers wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
u/michaelnovati we would love you to do this for Le Wagon. They are the Codesmith of Europe.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I just haven't worked with a lot of people who have done Le Wagon and don't have detailed thoughts or information to surface unfortunately :(
Just a note to be clear, I think it's fair to consider each program differently. Codesmith is Codesmith, and Le Wagon is Le Wagon. And I don't want to make any connections or accusations of either party.
u/tunachoona1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):