NEWS: Launch School Official 2023 Outcomes: 75% placement in 6 months but time to placement almost double peak year at 14 weeks (still blows away competition). Impressive transparency. Described changes in response to market in detail and their impact 👏

NEWS: Launch School Official 2023 Outcomes: 75% placement in 6 months but time to placement almost double peak year at 14 weeks (still blows away competition). Impressive transparency. Described changes in response to market in detail and their impact 👏 DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions and feelings, when I state numbers or data, it is based on the source provided or other data that I have internally to inform my comments, by I'm human and not perfect, and welcome any corrections. Source: https://public.launchschool.com/salaries Video: https://youtu.be/_v1fccQ7OGM?si=s-Utxc4kdJVHkq7S Launch School has great transparency so I don't really need to interpret things.... just read the data and see what happened to every person. It's like one of those farms where you can track the carrot you ate from seed to table lol. Commentary: 1. Placement rate within 6 months is crushing at 75%. Rithm closed now but Codesmith isn't anywhere near that. I'm seeing something less than HALF that rate for 6 months placement time in my imperfect - but informed - estimates for 2023 grads. 2. Time to placement at 14 weeks is still strong but the Founder makes it very clear than this is a huge increase for them and one of the main things impacting people. He is transparent about the emotional toll a longer job hunt has taken. And he is transparent about what theyve done to respond to that extra time it's taking - giving people more to work on. 3. 71 students starting in 2023 is pretty low. It's on par with Rithm and it's much lower than Codesmith's well into the hundreds. The super high bar and selectiveness is one reason that helps outcomes. Codesmith is feeling tremendous pain right now in outcomes from probably letting in too many people in 2023 and not making enough changes to help those people post graduation like Launch School did. Rithm's placement rate was likely on between. 4. I'm a huge fan of the Open Source strategy Launch School is doing. Having mentors buffer the students so they can contribute to projects like Firefox while addressing the practical problems that prevents the magical vision of students jumping into random projects for a few weeks from actually working. If they can scale this, it's huge. 5. I'm less of a fan of the internships concept they are trying. Rithm worked or that concept and it did kind of work but the problems are harder to address when for profit businesses are involved as opposed to open source proejcts controlled by non profits. 6. Salaries are largely irrelevant but the Founders observation was that the big change is zero entry level low paying jobs and too much competition for 130K+ jobs, so seeing more graduates landing in the low 100Ks. Conclusion: I'm putting a solid recommendation on Launch School Capstone if the day to day is a fit for you. I stopped recommending Codesmith because of compounding problems that have not been addressed: changes are too slow, outcomes have tanked, very large layoffs and low morale, too many details like massive security vulnerabilities falling through the cracks and never getting fixed, every week a new change or annoucnement that died off shortly after, exaggerated resumes not working anymore but people are still doing it, and most importantly... the CEO is only defensive to all this feedback from his staff and entrenching more and more in a downward spiral. Talking to residents and alumni about their current sentiment of things was the final straw recently and I can't find any reason to recommend them right now. Launch School has really kept things run thoughtfully, small, efficient and put intention behind their changes and I'm recommending them now. Things change and I'm not going anywhere, but that's where I stand right now. The major caveat is that Launch School is very small and you have to Core first. It's not for everyone so Launch School is the THE answer for everyone. But if it works for you I would recommend considering it even in this market.

Yeah having to complete Core first is akin to people doing CSX first for Codesmith, but even higher bar. It helps Launch School Capstone be very sure about the people they let in. Core isn't free, but it's also a lot cheaper than if you went straight into a bootcamp. Definitely need to understand the whole picture, no shortcuts in the bootcamp world.

It's real but it doesn't mean much and you have to thoroughly understand how Launch School works to make heads or tails. What it means is that their multi step process with Core actually works at sending the right people to Capstone. They perhaps are rejecting others that they should allow in and maybe are even too strict at 100%. But if you are a student this is what you want. You want to be let into Capstone knowing it's right for you and knowing that even in this market it's functioning more often than not.

I mean they outline every single person who started and what happened to them. In 2020 and 2021, one person each year didn't graduate. Codesmith's graduation rate is like 95% too, doesn't seem that unreasonable, if you have a program that people spent months and months preparing for and preparing their entire day to day life around so that they can make it work. The only reason people might drop is unexpected chronic illness or unexpected military deployment and maybe there are cases to exclude those from the denominator? cc u/cglee. Nice thing about the Founder being here is you can just ask haha.

At the end of the day the percentages don't mean anything without context. And Launch School presents all the context so you can interpret things as you will. My biggest gripe with CIRR is they chop away at the denominator and their placement rates are not nearly as transparent.

Have you looked into the data and have ideas where the holes could be that you can ask Chris to address? Completion rate = # graduated / # enrolled So do you think the # graduated could be manipulated and include people who didn't actually graduate? A question might be, what is the definition of graduated and are there every any exceptions to the definition? Do you think the # enrolled could be manipulated and exclude people who were actually enrolled? A question might be what is the definiotn of enrolled and are there any exceptions to that.

Yeah It's very intense community, I think because they spend so long in the ecosystem and then they see it working so they believe. Codesmith is a similar kind of community. It's extremely powerful when the results are really good, but then the community will fall apart when the results are not good and ultimately it's what the graduates see in their own cohorts and their previous cohorts and how the company explains that to them and presents themselves. Launch school's outcomes have gone down a little bit, but the way that the team has explained it has maintained trust with the students. Codesmith is losing their students right now from the people that I talk to who are either current or recent alumni and people aren't buying the message. They have no visibility into outcomes and are judging based on their cohort and the previous cohort they work with. Ironically the Codesmith CEO told me in a public session that I have single-handedly undermined their community and that's insane because their poor 2023 and 2024 outcomes and students feeling like it's being covered up have undermined their community... I hear it directly from students. Since Reddit recently purged all of the fake accounts (about a dozen, including two moderators of their sub) that were pro codesmith and going after me and making up stuff that wasn't true. there hasn't been any controversial codesmith discussions.

Well I think the Founder of Launch School is fairly open about the strengths and weaknesses haha. No one who pours their hearts into their work wants to see it criticized by people who don't understand the nuances so I think some of the intensity comes from a deep passion for what you do. But if what you do is charge $20 to $30K for a 12-16 week program that is supposed to have a more likely than not chance of getting a $100K job at the end, then a healthy ecosystem will have voices on both sides having level headed arguments and hearing out the other side. You have to battle test anyone making these kinds of claims about their programs and be open to hearing the responses. I can't speak to the Launch School students but the Founder engages any kind of respectful question and comment on here at least.