Stuck between Rithm School or Codesmith

I can give my 2 cents. I know a lot about both programs. Very different options. I'm currently not recommending Codesmith (in my personal opinion/capacity - I need to mention this because it's in my company's interest for more people to go there) for three reasons, but you might feel differently: 1. They had large layoffs and promised coworking spaces, more curriculum and more three months ago and haven't done any of that, other than add 5 ML lectures (of which only 2 I think have been done) 2. They have a subreddit that is full of propaganda. I asked Reddit Corporate to look at our subreddit here and theres, and roughly 10 prominent accounts + 1 moderator were suspended from Reddit. I don't know if this was just one person or a coordinated effort but those people were working with Codesmith for "official AMAs" so whatever was going on it, Codesmith has visibility of this behavior just like I did and did nothing but encourage it. 3. Their placement rates and outcomes appear to be dropping. They published a report that in April and May they had 54 placements (some of which were looking for over a year), which is less than 1 a day. Whereas there most recent CIRR report had about 1.5 a day. In June, I estimate they had about 15 placements, 0.5 a day. These rates alone are largely driven by the market, but Codesmith's attitude has not been to acknowledge these challenges and instead is continuing to show off. NOW COMPARED TO RITHM: 1. Codesmith is 11 hour days + Saturdays, Rithm is 9-6. A little more balanced, Codesmith is a bit more intense and immersive. 2. Codesmith spends like a day or two on topics and all the instructors are former students with no industry SWE experience. A number have said that the instruction was worse than CSPrep or the public sessions, and I haven't heard anyone tell me it was better. Don't go to Codesmith to learn anything specific, you go to learn how to deal with a firehose in 11 hour days and keep swimming. Rithm has tiny classes with very experienced instructors. They provide lecture notes in numerous formats for different learning styles. It's more of a place to learn concepts. 3. Rithm isn't above the market problems either and despite Codesmith's apparent tanking outcomes, it's still the place with the most aggressive placement strategy. They have a machine in place to spit out a certain type of engineer. Make sure you understand what that is, because a number of residents who don't want to "exaggerate" their resume have come to me for advise and help because they feel like the Codesmith machinery produces just one type of engineer. That said, I can't say Rithm's career services are any better. There's only so much you can do in this market. 4. Codesmith OSP and Rithm's "internships" are roughly similar in impact and time spent, which are similar to Launch School Capstone. Don't fall for any BS about the OSP being "senior equivalent" work or "equivalent to 4 months of work experience".

Thanks for sharing. Based on my broad experience with Codesmith I would +1 the recommendations there on who should go. I like how you also broke up successful people into two buckets: those who needed Codesmith to get there and those who would have done well anyways. This is a key thing to directing what a program offers. It's something at Formation we think about all the time - what would people do without out and what value are they getting, and we constantly need to give people VALUE to justify our existence. We're not perfect but we spend all of our time trying to do this to and will keep doing so. And we've seen incredible results in a hard time as a result. If you aren't generating true value, then you get hammered in a tough market. RE: OSP reviews. It's sad to me to hear you still aren't getting reviews. A few months ago right around the layoffs a number of groups asked me to review their projects because they weren't getting any review internally. The TAs weren't able to help much :S. I was hoping this would improve.

I don't want to throw OSPs under a bus at all, I want to be reasonable about describing what they are and what they aren't But question: I try to be quite vocal about that, but why did you think they were so good before Codesmith? Was something misleading about their explanation? Did alumni misrepresent them? Did they just seem impressive and you didn't know any better?