A number of people have contacted me about this. I'm going to give a balanced take here so please read the whole thing, it's likely polarizing. Unless noted as a personal opinion, the information is being summarized from what people (students, staff, etc...) have been telling me, and is still illustrative and examples, not definitive facts
Overall though, I do advise to exercise extreme caution to join before all the changes settle... it's risky right now, meaning that the variance in what really happens versus what is expected to happen is wider than the variance of joining their typically super stable and consistent previous programs. But I know many risk-taking students there who might want to take that risk.
PROs:
- I think it's fair to give them a chance to change and settle in on those changes before jumping to conclusions that there is no hope
- Clearly with such a massive reduction in programs and staff, things are not going well, but Codesmith overall has been around for a long time and has an incredibly strong community, and while this transition might be super hard, it's the alternative to shutting down and I don't think a lot of people want to see them entirely shut down either.
- The changes are risky, because they are cutting instruction headcount to survive but have ambitious plans for how to simultaneously improve the experience. If those plans work then they might be better off in the future.
CONs:
- The changes were not handled well logistically. Students in March are extremely confused about what's going on and panicking and they are contacting me because I'm responding faster than Codesmith is, a couple joked that I'm like Codesmith customer support. The blog announcement was more defensive about how good Codesmith is instead of logistically explaining what's going on.
- A number of the most loyal instructors were let go and it hurts. People who went to Codemsith, became fellows, became lead fellows, became mentors, became instructors, became lead instructors, .... like they gave their journey to Codemsith and they know nothing else in the software industry and they are rattled, even the ones not let go are rattled to see how loyalty is rewarded to some of their peers.
- A number of people think Codemsith had plenty of heads up (I personally agree with this too) so they either could have had a more graceful ramp down, or they could have tried to make changes sooner. A couple of people attribute this to stubbornness and defensiveness on behalf of the leaders that they personally experienced. Keep in mind people who are laid off might be feeling more negative right now, but no leader has actually reached out to me to express their side.
So yeah, optimistic changes, but we don't know yet what's going to happen, if they will hit the nail on the head the first time around with these changes and they will all work as expected or will they cause more problems? Could go either way but the roll out of the changes logistically makes me cautiously sitting right in the middle and observing.
u/Winter-Blood-936 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The company SUCKS at forecasting. They are also still very top-heavy. They need to make cuts at the "director"/"manager" level.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Feel free to DM me, we might already be chatting haha, but I mean they are not a very big company at all.
When I was first looking into them I thought they had like 150 people, but the VAST majority are contractors and not employees.
The actual number of employees seems to be around (after the layoffs) three dozen. And of those like 6-7 leaders in 2 tiers roughly?
That doesn't seem that bad.... but are you saying that the leaders don't do enough on the ground and with the cuts being only on the ground people, that that has you concerned?
u/SpiritualDoughnut638 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I tried sending you a message but for some reason it doesn't work - just wondering if you have any extra information about the situation. I'm a current student at Codesmith.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Have you tried asking people at Codesmith openly? Or do you feel uncomfortable asking your leads?
For the students who have been contacting me, I would advise going to your instructors and asking them openly and transparently about your questions.
I know some have reported confusion because their instructors were laid off but finishing the cohort and asking someone who was laid off what's going on is a bit awkward for sure.
I'm aware of all the people laid off, and there were a lot of instructors, but maybe try going to the leaders? If they don't reply to you then you then ping me more privately to come up with other people to ask.
u/SpiritualDoughnut638 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I haven't asked anyone tbh, just talked to some of the other students but we really don't know much. Both our instructors have been laid off unfortunately... the blog post and the layoffs are all the information that has been communicated to us so far - I was wondering if OP had
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Ah ok, yeah feel free to DM me. A lot of information has come my way about this. I tried to summarize in my comment on this post, but if you are comfortable sharing more personal circumstances then I can give more specific advice as well, if not, just follow along and will continue to comment on things that I see to present a neutral perspective of what's happening to try to help people who are really nervous :S
u/Relevant_Tip7757 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So wouldn’t you say ‘if you wanted x instructors in particular’ you should get a refund? Why does a particular layoff matter?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Two sides to this:
1. Codesmith instruction is really consistent - not 100% - but the instructor matters less. PTRI had thrash with their lead leaving last summer and it was eventually fine for the residents.
2. That said, if too much changes overnight, that's a concerning sign, because Codesmith is a MACHINE and a lot of parts are being swapped around and replaced at once. You paid for one machine and it's turning into a different one, and it's not clear what the new one is. I wouldn't flip a table, but I would be on alert.
u/CarlFriedrichGauss wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Honestly, this sounds very alarmist and clickbaity. Downsizing due to decreased enrollment is happening to every bootcamp, at least there's still going to be an instruction team left over and they're not pulling any BS like replacing instructors/mentors with AI. From what it soun
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I'm presenting both sides in my commentary on this, and I'm also officially moderating the discussion, but I think it's fine for people to express their OPINIONS and label them as such, and as long as that's clear and we don't attack people personally for their opinions, we can have a healthy discussion.
u/Winter-Blood-936 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The remaining instructors are going to be even more overworked. This was a MAJOR complaint amongst staff.
OSP feedback is a joke - it is just copy/pasted. I would assume this is just going to be even worse now.
Many residents go to Codesmith because of a particular instr
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
RE: OSP Feedback, yeah I review 1-2 projects a week that students proactively send me and I give them feedback, why? I have no idea, I just see them and see how it looks like no legit engineer reviewed the code at all and feel bad that the students have no idea if what they produced is good or not. Many are aware of weaknesses in their code, but need help prioritizing what to improve.
For example, committed code with hundreds of random - legit - lines of code commented out and comments like "not sure what this does", is not mid level and senior work at all. And it's not acceptable for a code reviewer to sign off on that either, and it's not acceptable for a manager of a code reviewer to have this go unchecked across every project sent to be so far.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
They posted about stopping the NYOI and combining ECRI and WCRI for future cohorts on their site blog.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I mean they also eliminated CTRI last year and told people it was "coming back soon and just on pause". The eliminated the data science program after also saying it was "on pause".
I know they are marketing, it's a business and I'm not bashing that, but like they had signs for a long time and communicated to prospective students that everything was fine. So when everything turned out to be not fine, they should be equally supportive and helpful to those people - which is why I'm trying to help all the ones messaging me because I just think it's not fair, in opinion, to do that.
u/Relevant_Tip7757 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Also I was asking OP…
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Sorry yeah, I'm doing a pass on comments right now and blanket respoinding to everything because I have other work to do haha
u/Relevant_Tip7757 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is your reminder to drink more water and to try doing the thing you’re avoiding for 20m without distraction before coming back to Reddit 🤪
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Definitely drinking far too much cold brew coffee instead, and it's not good
u/CI-AI wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hey- let’s take a deep breath. Idk if you’re a student or what’s going on but let’s talk about a few things here.
1. I was scared when Codesmith went remote back in 2020. I cried in my car in a parking lot in Venice because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. It was a scary
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
This is all stuff I agree with too, like things change, the instruction quality will hopefully remain the same.
My personal concern is that this tone is one that Codesmith leaders have had during all the market downturns, and keeping instruction the same old same old isn't working - and it might just be impossible for people with 0 SWE experience to get jobs right now out of a bootcamp.
I was actually more optimistic about them finally making changes to the process, and I'm more nervous about THOSE CHANGES being executed flawlessly and working as expected. To me the risk is that those things may or may not materialize and have impact because they are brand new and since we don't know it just increases the risk in joining. Risk here is not a bad thing! It's risk in the technical definition - higher variance of possible outcomes/results.
u/endlightend wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Can you comment on what you heard about the CTRI lead leaving? Is that related to CTRI closing as well last year?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Those were independent events. The CTRI lead left in the middle of a cohort and the head of instruction took over at the CTRI lead temporarily. After the last CTRI cohort finished, they stopped advertising it and said it was 'on pause, hoping to return in the new year', and then it never did.
They did have about 18% layoffs later in the year, also unrelated to this person's departure and I think it was more related to that.
But even with those layoffs, they didn't make any significant changes (my opinion) to the actual instruction or curriculum or career support - at least not nearly as significant as what's been discussed in the recent announcement.
u/dak78 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Actually they have some really great alumni: like the Principal Engineer at Tinder was recently posted and many people in ML and AI companies.
Theres also people with regular engineering jobs but any alumni that come back have legit work experience.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah +1, my understanding is they want MORE EXPERIENCED alumni and not alumni who just got jobs, etc...
That said, that person was identified as a "Faculty", which has four very important consequences:
1. Since Codesmith is a "school", has important meaning (for regulation) and this person might be more tied now to Codesmith than they think, maybe they are fully aware but I'm curious if all these new "Faculty" will be aware of this.
2. Conflicts of Interest. Companies generally barely allow people to be lightweight mentors and a lot of the top companies block people from being the "Faculty" of a school without disclosure and review for conflicts of interest. I know at Meta this was a major thing and there was a very non-fun conflict review process that blocked a lot of things. So I'm hoping if someone is an alumni and wants to be a "Faculty" or is going to be identified as one, that they go through the conflict review process at their company first.
3. I talk to a lot of industry engineers all day long and a lot aren't a fan of the OSP projects (I'm sure alumni are) but alumni who have been in industry for a really long time and have legit industry experience might be more realistic about things. Codesmith will have to adapt the culture of positive reinforcement and overcoming imposter syndrome to confronting a reality that OSPs are not mid level and senior projects.
4. Compensation. The most recent E5 offers at Meta I've worked on are in the $500K range, and Codesmith is offering alumni that have messaged me in the $45 an hour range ($90K). I think the strength of the community will help get people to join up no problem, but people will be underpaid "Faculty" and if they are asked to do too much work for that rate, it will be a revolving door of alumni. If they have to spend a lot more on them, it will cost WAY MORE than hiring instructors, and it's a catch 22 problem. Solvable but just a ton of variables to adjust and fine tune.
**ALL OF THESE ARE SOLVABLE PROBLEMS BUT AGAIN - RISK! WE HAVEN'T SEEN THEM SOLVED YET. If they are solved, great, if they aren't solved, it might not work out as planned.**
u/WagonBashers wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Let's wait and see. It's tricky because the employed ones have less time for teaching (guessing Tinder's principal engineer won't have time to teach), but if they say "work experience", then the hope is that all or at least most of the teachers have actual experience.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
This is also true. Almost all the mentors at Formation are industry engineers and some are great teachers and some aren't. Fortunately, we aren't a school and we don't teach anything, so being a good teacher isn't a requirement, but a mentor who is doing lightweight mentorship can be very polarizing and we have a whole PATENTED system for managing all the engineer <-> mentor relationships. It's crazy hard problem for a group of 8+ year FAANG product engineers to solve haha. I believe Codesmith has one contract product engineer that I know of and if they want industry "faculty" actually teaching as teachers in a school setting, that's even harder in my opinion.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I remember the cohorts filled up quickly for quite a while, then it seemed like a lot of people were on waitlists. I guess it could have been rather sudden, but they should have seen the writing on the wall with what happened to the market and other bootcamps.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
+1 to waitlists, I check the programs page like once a week (or once a day for the past week haha, I was poking around already because they had zero cohorts in February and something didn't add up)
But anyways, about a year ago they had waitlists and cohorts full months ahead of time. Now they have cohorts open until the week before, and they are admitting people who appear on paper to have less qualified backgrounds (subjective judgement opinion, not a fact) who just REALLY want to go to Codesmith for a long time.
And 100% should have seen the writing on the wall. I know I'm hard on them even when the times are good, but it's because I don't ride ups and downs, I try to evaluate objectively and they should have been using the good times to invest in making everything more robust and better. I said this somewhere but even if my criticisms were hard to hear, listening instead of defending might have been better for them.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Wait, what?! You contacted them directly and they gave you an answer? No inflammatory Reddit post required? /s
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I mean there are several people who work with Eric K to reply to comments and posts on Reddit that I'm aware of and I think it's good of those people can broker information. But they are not responding so quickly to a lot of current students.
u/CI-AI wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Fair points honestly. It was still tough back in 2020, took me a while to get a role because the market was horrible back then. Lots of layoffs/ companies shutting down/ hiring freezes
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I dunno, I work at a mentorship for experienced engineers and the last 10 offers are : Microsoft, Meta, Waymo, Oracle, <startup>, JP Morgan, Atlassian, Meta, Meta, Netflix, JP Morgan, <startup, Waymo
Like it's **NOT DOOM AND GLOOM IF YOU HAVE 2+ YOE**
It is though if you have no experience, and unfortunately even 1 year on paper of experience a "OSLabs OSP" doesn't cut it.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Or - with so many layoffs in the industry and people having trouble finding roles - are there plenty of qualified people available who’d rather make less than nothing? While contributing to their alma mater? From this, we can draw our conclusions about the importance of consideri
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I commented this above, and I don't want to make this about me, but even if you don't like me, we are proving there are options for people **who genuinely have 2+ YOE for SWE jobs**
Last 10ish placements in the past 10 days: Microsoft, Meta, Waymo, Oracle, <startup>, JP Morgan, Atlassian, Meta, Meta, Netflix, JP Morgan, <startup>, Waymo
Hate me or not, it's not doom and gloom out there if you have experience, but it certainly is if you don't.
u/DentistRemarkable193 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Tbh, I thought that Node unit was bloated and outdated, which is less of a criticism on Tinder man and more on Codesmith for not consistently updating their curriculum. Is your teacher with experience still there? From what I’ve heard, most of the teachers there don’t have outsid
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah again, presenting both sides:
1. Having people with experience contribute is fantastic.
2. BUT, they can contribute in infinite ways: content, teaching, mocks, resume review, talks, etc... and it takes time to figure out who should do what - and is it too little too late.
We'll see, but it's good they are trying.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
No, I don’t ‘not like’ you and I certainly don’t hate you. And I don’t think it’s total doom and gloom out there. I actually said in a different comment that I was sick of other people being all about doom and gloom.
I don’t understand why you’d make this comment to me.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Sorry I was offline for 3 hours and flailing a bit to catch up and responding to things not well, agree it's a half baked indirect comment.
Anyways, the point was if people are getting laid off and they have experience they are very much capable of getting great new jobs and moving forward, and I don't see why they would go back to teach at Codesmith.
I was trying to explain that the way it happens isn't trivial and you won't be handle those offers, it takes a lot of focus and effort, where having the first instinct to go teach at Codesmith might slow you down or distract you, and it maybe a little add on for some side income.
The whole thread about people being laid off teaching is not really super interesting to me and I would prefer to focus on the changes Codesmith is making and understanding what's going on, it's a big tangent I probably should have just skipped.
u/DentistRemarkable193 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
+1 to this. It doesn’t come across as organic to me.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I don't know anything about the specific people in this thread and they are keeping the discussion fairly civil and I appreciate that as a reader too, but I do know people in the past were asked to post and comment on Reddit by their senior advisor. There are a ton of people that post and comment on their own too.
The more interesting case was super sleek to me: someone spread word to instructors that 'they really could use more support on Reddit' and the instructors then asked top students like 'wow you should really share that, that's amazing' type things. Percolates down.
Is it wrong or bad, personally I don't think so, but just have to read everything skeptically, INCLUDING EVERY WORD I WRITE TOO.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m actually in favor of the well researched and objective posts. Even the well researched opinionated ones are fine.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
+1 to this, we're all human and we'll say things wrong sometimes, but if we can just try to not take it personally and just coexist we can have a much more healthy community than most of Reddit. I try to talk to people 1-1 so we can recognize each other as humans and not as avatars.
u/NoOutlandishness00 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
tbf, this has been coding bootcamps in 2023-2024 in general and not exclusive to codesmith. Tech has been rough and app academy went through the same thing last year
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I was doing some illustrative math.
THESE ARE NOT FACTUAL NUMBERS, THERE ARE ESTIMATES FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES AND THE SOURCE OF THE GUESS SPECIFIED.
In early 2023, Codesmith had 4 full time cohorts (running every 7 weeks - roudning up ) and 1 part time (running twice a year), and seemed full or with waitlists
So that's 7.4 cohorts a year (let's say 7) = 28 full time cohorts + 2 part time.
Let's say 32 people per cohort average (a full is 36 but's lets again round down)
That means = 960 people starting, @$21K = $20M of revenue
Now the current state:
1 full time cohort (running every 7 weeks) = 7 per year full time cohorts + looks like 4 part time from their website
Enrollment end of 2023 was 'averaging 26 people' from one of the info sessions, so let's use that
That means = 286 people, $6M of revenue
-------
That's not just a drop, that's like a 70% drop in enrollment and revenue.
I have no idea if this magnitude of drop is similar to all bootcamps, I would assume it is, but I would not be chalking this up to a 'this is the norm' type argument.
I guess while were all around here talking about bootcamps, maybe we're all the unintelligent ones and the smart people have moved on to other things already...
u/CI-AI wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I have a perspective that it takes the amount of work necessary. So let’s say in 2022 peak hiring it took 50 job apps to land a SWE role, awesome. Let’s say now it takes 500, then people need to send out 500 (made up numbers as an example obviously). Yes, it is objectively harder
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Codesmith grads are getting jobs, from the data they share publicly, the people getting placed tend to have adjacent experience prior or they exaggerate their resume or they list their contractor work as a fellow as like 8 months of Software Engineer experience.
And Codemsith has almost no code, it's mostly the website that people work on, like junior web developer work. So it's just not enough to get by right now.
u/CodedCoder wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I can not wait until an article comes out about this clown school and all the alumni that are asked to defend the place on Reddit. Just know all of your alumni aren't down with your bullshit even though they still have access to it.
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Ok the tone is a little bit antagonistic, but I do agree with the opinion stated that not all alumni and staff are super happy with everything going on and there's a significant lack of organization of things internally. A lot of people have access to a lot of things and a lot of those things are completely publicly shared. So I wouldn't be surprised if people do start posting more about their experience even with an NDA because a bunch of things are publicly available that I certainly wouldn't make publicly available. People who have non disparagement clauses might not be able to post anything.
That said. I learned from someone last night that Codesmith actually doesn't have much "code" that employees actually work on. The main codebases are the public website and the CSX website, both of which are like junior web developer level work and not "senior software engineering work". I looked through a couple of instructor resumes and just very bluntly - they are going to need some work, I'm
My understanding is that instructors and employees whose only "software engineering" experience post Codesmith is working on the Codesmith website with a couple of small changes are stressed.
I worry Codesmith is going to blindly try to "help" these people get jobs and it's not going to do much.
u/Spunky_Pineapple wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I mean, this feels a bit like complaining about the thing that was asked for... a pretty consistent criticism of bootcamps overall (Codesmith included, but this is often a general bootcamp gripe), is that the teachers don't have industry experience.
I agree that teaching is an
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
FWIW you can't have "contractors" be training in a strict style of teaching and force them to teach that way, otherwise they are employees. You can't give contractors mandatory training on how to do something and you can't give them performance reviews and direction on how to do their job.
Obviously there is a massive gray area and a lot of factors play into this, but that's the general overview, but if they are systematically making people contractors and exerting strong control over their work, that might be illegal.
Finally, you mention you "could", that's the key thing here. Very strong industry engineers have complex jobs and can't commit to consistent teaching or projects as "faculty". You need to build a system around managing these people so they can "teach a workshop" every few weeks that makes sure everything is covered. Which my company has patented and built.
Giving back and helping people are strong reasons to do it too. 100%, and you have to balance that with reasonable compensation. Intrerviewing.io costs hundreds of dollars for some interviews and that attracts a certain engineer. The numbers I've seen from Codesmith are a bit on the low side. You can't tell an alumni they are a senior engineer worth $150K salaries and they pay them the equivalent of $90K run rates to do sessions. But then if they pay them all at higher rates the whole model doesn't work.
Anyways, I'm rambling a bit, there a large number of practical problems they will have in bringing alumni back in as faculty.
If you are such an alumni, strongly look at your conflicts of interest rules at your company if you are going to be the official "faculty" of a "school" and your company allows that. Some do and some don't, but even if they do they often need to know about it and review the contract anyways.