u/michaelnovati replied · DELETED · archived copy
If any more alumni have issues with being paid to write reviews, my DMs are open to talk.
Don't go to Codesmith from a Codesmith alumni
21 of Michael's comments in this thread · View thread on Reddit ↗
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Moderator note: Codesmith and Alumni - if you share a link and ask for voting, responses, or a "let's fix this" response, that violates Reddit's ToS and you are risking having your accounts not only banned from the sub but banned from Reddit.
u/frenchydev1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sucks that you haven't got the outcome you're after! Is there anything we can do as a community to help in your next steps? Let us know! Interesting note on the gift cards for reviews, I've never worked in an industry where this is not done, seems normal but I might be missin
u/michaelnovati replied ·
It violates Course Reports terms of service. Imagine I offered non-placed alumni $50 each to write reviews, would that be cool? That's the exact same thing.
u/frenchydev1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Not saying it's cool or not, just usual marketing practice. I just quickly review course reports website terms and conditions and their review guidelines, didn't see anything prohibiting this. Please provide if true
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I agree it's not explicitly stated literally as not allowed, but these are two places imo. This is good discussion and I appreciate being asked - I should have shared this first so people can judge from first hand source.
1. "Write a Review" page: https://www.coursereport.com/write-a-review.
"I certify this review is based on my own experience and is my genuine opinion of this school, and that I have no personal or business relationship with this establishment. "
- Being paid to write a review is a relationship IMO
2. TOS: [https://www.coursereport.com/terms-of-service](https://www.coursereport.com/terms-of-service)
"You agree that you will not upload, post, transmit, distribute or otherwise publish through the Site or any service or feature made available on or through the Site, any materials which \[...\] constitute or contain false or misleading indications of origin, endorsement or statements of fact."
- This implies that if someone was asked to write a review and that was the "origin" of the review, then they should at least be stating that in the review they were offered swag. One or two people did mention this and that was one of my pieces of evidence on this.
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How am I ignoring anyone? Which parts of my questions have anything to do with that? These are questions to a single person (the OP). Please help me understand which of these questions I've asked - are confusing.
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
The list of recent Codesmith placements is much more of 'intern', 'it analyst', 'program manager', 'technical writer', 'apprentice'. There are still SWE jobs, but people who had committed to a bootcamp a year ago are really struggling and taking whatever jobs they can get. And this is on top of the fact that placement rates are down significantly
The story needs to be told because celebrating the 15% of success cases only is misleading.
I actually think your questions are fine and good to stimulate discussion. But you can't win in this sub. People are suspicious about scams they should be questioning everyone, it's just not a fun place right now now :(
u/frenchydev1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sucks that you haven't got the outcome you're after! Is there anything we can do as a community to help in your next steps? Let us know! Interesting note on the gift cards for reviews, I've never worked in an industry where this is not done, seems normal but I might be missing
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Duplicate comment for some reason, cleaning up
u/frenchydev1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You're incorrect with your interpretation. 1. Being paid to write a review is a relationship IMO - no, it does not. Even when its in a sensitive industry like finance anything under a $300 limit is not categorized as establishing this. Your opinion is wrong. 2. This implies
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I'm not a lawyer either and I chatgpt'd to try to analys it in forming my opinion. I think my opinion is reasonable but open for debate and I still don't agree with your interpretation either haha.
But I concede it's not explicitly stated "you cannot be paid directly or indirectly" for reviews.
Zooming out, let's say Course Report says this is totally fine (I reported it to them already). I'm going to post about it, and I don't think it will look good. Someone has to take responsibility for manipulating online reviews whether everyone else does it or not.
I know at my company we have never once offered anyone anything to write a review. We used to indirectly say long ago 'Reviews are important for people deciding on their options, consider writing one on quora' but I felt that was even not good so we removed it. We don't do it, and I'm offended others and everyone can be wrong even if everyone else does it.
u/Solid_Appointment_24 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
One of the meetings, Will sentence claimed he started to compete with ivy League University to give opportunities to people who were gate kept from them. I felt it was an emotional act and rubbed me the wrong way.
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Well Codesmith is absurdly selective and creates a community of tight knit people that support each other.
Sounds exactly what he did - simulate the Ivy League gatekeeping model where he is now the gatekeeper and selects the most brilliant people from non-tech backgrounds and gets them into tech.
Nothing wrong with that, it's a good idea that has gotten some exceptional people (I've worked with some of them later on!) into tech much faster and easier than traditional paths.
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I empathize with people, in general,/businesses who need reviews. People are shy or embarrassed by their writing, embarrassed to post/cringe, forgetful, or simply pressed for time. I've worked with clients where they had really happy customers but were embarrassed to ask fo
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I mean laws and laws and everything in the USA requires interpretation.
But I don't think anyone can possibly say that an institution has integrity if it's paying people to write reviews. And maybe that's why the bootcamp industry is so messed up.
Stanford isn't paying people to write reviews.
If you want to do this a better way you create a prize with Course Report (anonymously) where a random person who submits any review to any school will be chosen for some kind of prize.
This is an incentive that isn't biased to one school and is an effort by the Platform to increase content on it even if one school secretly funded this because they think they will benefit from some of those new reviews.
u/metalreflectslime wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>In April of this year (2024), us alumni received an email from Codesmith asking us to write them a good review. When my brother attended Hack Reactor Remote in 2016, Hack Reactor also gave out free hoodies to alumni who wrote them reviews.
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Explains why there are so many positive reviews everywhere :D
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
First of all, *that's a pretty good idea*. But I think people are often embarrassed to be truthful. Most of those reviews on those services are nonsense fluff. "One of the best boot camps I've attended." Anecdote from yesterday: My stepdaughter is applying for colleges (a speci
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah don't get me started on the school rankings from US News and others... lol
u/BeneficialBass7700 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Launch School also has a "help spread the word and we'll give you $20" kind of thing but it's offered very early in the course, and I believe the review/post/article has to be posted through a platform where you can reasonably be personally identified (e.g. linkedin)
u/michaelnovati replied ·
That sounds fine if the people disclose that in some way too or if it's disclosed on the landing page that students get a $20 referral fee if you join through this article.
Two different things to debate
1. being paid to write stuff
2. disclosing you were paid to write stuff
u/frenchydev1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sucks that you haven't got the outcome you're after! Is there anything we can do as a community to help in your next steps? Let us know! Interesting note on the gift cards for reviews, I've never worked in an industry where this is not done, seems normal but I might be missing
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Lol your duplicated deleted post is ranked really highly because of the manipulation on these threads jeez.
u/michaelnovati replied ·
For OP or any alumni. OP mentions services for life. Do you know how to book a mock interview and let's say you want to do a DS&A interview, how easily can you book it and for when?
u/Solid_Appointment_24 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
That's not what I meant by the ivy League quote. He said it as he created it as an alternative to ivy League but for every one
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I have no doubt that's the vision. But they've published stats and only a tiny number of people at Codesmith didn't have a degree (single digit percentage?) and the majority cummulatively went to top public schools or presitigous private schools.
So it's more like a place for Ivy League people who changed their mind and want to quickly go into SWE than Ivy League for everyone.
I could talk for hours about this topic, it's super complicated but if that's the vision, I'm sure he speaks about it and it sounds awe inspiring but it's incredibly impractical and I could rip it apart piece by piece.
The first step to understanding all this is what unpacking what "gatekeeping" means.
It's not a group of privileged people intentionally trying to protect their jobs and culture and exclude outsiders.
Second is to unpack these top 1% jobs. The are paid so highly because it's a free market. If everyone had them, they wouldn't pay a lot. It's frickin hard work being a janitor but too many people are willing to do it for low pay. If anyone can do a 12 week bootcamp and get paid $150K there will quickly be more supply and lower salaries and then SWEs will be super lowed paid and the police offers might get paid $200K a year (like in San Francisco).
If you want a quick $200K job, become a police officer in San Francisco. Look at all these officers making hundreds of thousands of dollars per yere [https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=san-francisco&q=police+officer&y=](https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=san-francisco&q=police+officer&y=) DOZENS IN THE $300KS
Anwyays, out of time for this comment going to post about it
u/Puzzleheaded-Row9244 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Ok so I'm on the alumni website right now. The earliest slots are for July 8th. There are only a few spots available but they are open so to answer your question, not that difficult to book. There's about 10 slots available for that week. All other weeks are fully booked or pos
u/michaelnovati replied ·
That's for DS&A mocks or other mocks?
July 8th in unacceptable if they claim they are offering career services for life. We have hundreds of slots from today all the way through the week including the holidays.
u/dhaiman1 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Codesmith is the best bootcamp too? Crazy that this is what is going on at the best bootcamp. That’s a pretty bad sign for the entire bootcamp industry in general.
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
It quite frankly is, I posted about this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1dpyh7t/warning\_codesmith\_subreddit\_is\_mostly\_propaganda/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1dpyh7t/warning_codesmith_subreddit_is_mostly_propaganda/)
OP was banned from their sub today because of their post HERE.
u/NinJ4ng wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
i went to a free codesmith seminar in 2019, it was basically a presentation run by Will Sentence where he talked step by step how codesmith would help land you a job. it went fine, and i actually enjoyed the strategy. after it was over he invited everyone for drinks, i dont dri
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Congrats on your trajectory! Would love to hear more about how you got the first job. I work with some people self taught and we found that they often have equal or better outcomes than bootcamp grads (NOT ENOUGH DATA TO MAKE A CONCLUSION ON THIS) and it's interesting to me.
I couple of people have told me about weird interactions with Will that resulted in them staying clear of Codesmith, like he had note card of facts about people that he paused and looked up in front of them when he met them?
But I'm an extremely socially anxious person and sometimes a bit awkward and it might just be his personality or sense of humor too.
I would say in general though the second largest anecdotal complaint I get is social pressure to participate is very off-putting if it's not for you. The examples reported to me are:
1. Trying really hard to make people turn cameras on. But passive aggressively trying to force it. Saying it's fine to have it off but then things like 'maybe I'll randomly call on someone with camera off this time'. It's in the Codesmith Instructor teaching materials.
2. Making people snap all the time for giving trivial answers. I don't know if they do this as much anymore but in the past was a frequent complaint.
3. Social pressure to attend "family dinners" which felt cult-y to a number of people.
4. Squashing self-negativity through 'correction'. If you say things negative you are told to "snuggle the struggle" and made to feel like you are being monitored for saying only positive things.
I have seen some of this stuff in various sessions and recordings.
I think it all helps self select people they want.
Codesmith is for everyone to break down walls.... as long as you fit in and don't say anything negative... then you are kicked out and silenced by a mob.
u/SlowestTriathlete wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yeah, there were only two in my cohort without a degree (and you know I'm one of them). I wonder what the percentage is now... That said, I'm going back to school part time to get my degree for a variety of reasons (and I'm super grateful that my company will cover a good chunk
u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
Yeah you know I respect your path too and good luck!
I think things have really changed with the alumni graduating now and late 2023 that talk to me.
I think the layoffs in Q3/Q4 really hit a lot of people hard. Some loyal instructors were let go, a bunch of career support people left too, so there apparently are fewer people to talk to, instructors have an eye on backup plans.
I know I annoy them by expressing my views on all this so openly because I get the vibe Codesmith does NOT want to talk about this stuff.
Our debates 2 years ago are tame compared to the stuff I'm getting now 😞
u/Puzzleheaded-Row9244 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Just checked again - both mocks.
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah, I'm kind of shocked in the past. People said that it would take two days sometimes to get a interview but like if on Friday, I had an interview come up and get scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday and I needed to practice. I wouldn't even be able to remotely practice.
u/cglee wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
We might just do away with it. I think we get about one tweet or LinkedIn post per month from it. It’s not a meaningful lead gen or marketing thing for us. I don’t recall ever seeing it on Reddit or course report. I think it becomes tacky when posting to public space vs posting f
u/michaelnovati replied ·
I love how reasonableness flies under the radar and these controversial troll threads get so heated haha.