Is a Tuition Price Drop Coming for Codesmith?

I think they have far too much price to drop tuition. I expect them to raise it again in January like they did this year despite tanking placements and outcomes. If anything they will start to give out "scholarships" to effectively lower the cost but maintain a high sticker price. Following the ivy League model. Stanford is $60K a year but most people (who don't come from rich families) pay much less or nothing. So taking a step back.... Codesmith, like Launch School, is for a certain person. There aren't magically more of those people in the world who just aren't going because of the cost. If it's the right program, the cost is irrelevant because the long term impact will be so much more than anything. So lowering the cost won't do anything at all. If they relied on anyone with a pulse paying them whatever spare change they have, then lowering the price would result in more people going. Launch School solved this problem by having 3 cohorts a year and having much fewer staff to run them, so that they can operate in a steady state. Codesmith has far too many directors and managers and employees and cohorts. What they really need to do to survive is fire half the company. Run one cohort at a time, the CEO teaching most of the classes and relying on alumni mentors to do some grunt work. Remove 3 of 4 outcomes people, all HR people, half the admissions people. If the CEO just doesn't want to reach (numerous alumni told me they feel like he always appears busy and barely acknowledged students, spending 2 hours on a rambling public talk every week but spending one hour with an entire cohort (alumnus words, not mine) then they will probably shut down before that happens. Codesmith's ideal situation is the market recovers enough, alumni who currently are extremely disgruntled and offended all get jobs, and start spreading good word of mouth again. But even that would take 8 months for the point the market turns and they might not make it that long. If it happens today, it would take until April 2024 for all the negativity to turn in my opinion. Codesmith has been trying to appease alumni. The CEO did a talk with alumni about the System Design of Codesmith's website. I heard it was one of the most embarrassing talks ever, that the architecture looked like a big OSP project (not surprising since it was developed mostly by alumni with no industry experience) and that the CEO didn't seem to understand Codesmith's architecture. It made at least one person think Codesmith is a giant scam (which is a little extreme, but a couple of former instructors have echoed that sentiment). Sorry rambling in the middle of the ocean on a Sunday night, but hopefully some useful stuff in here. Reading this over it feels so negative and I feel bad about that. I'm trying to represent the voices I hear who don't feel able to speak themselves and maybe I'm biased from hearing so many complaints recently. Even if you really hate me, please DM me if you disagree. I haven't had a single person DM me and tell me my commentary is wrong.

Yeah for $59 it's a great way to test things out for sure! I'm speaking more at a company strategy level and zoomed out view. I'm on a remote cruise right now and my analogy would be watching all the cruise ships big and small come in and out of the harbor from a top a nearby mountain and trying to gauge where everyone is going. Is the ship sunk? About to collide with an iceberg and just won't move out of the way? Or seems to be doing everything right. My view on Codesmith is that it's hit the iceberg and stubbornly not acknowledging it. But I might be wrong and they can try to change and do a 180, the CEO could step down, they could sell off, merge, or maybe they find a way to creatively keep the ship floating (e.g. Future Code) and then after reasoning their footings, make changes to avoid the iceberg in the future. If this are at the CSPrep phase then consider all your free and cheap options and give them time. Unless you are autodidactic, take things slow and keep coming back to it, and if it sticks for a while, THEN consider going all in on a bootcamp. Launch School bakes this process into their curriculum, from free Core Live, to Core to Capstone and it works extremely well. Codesmith bakes this into their process but frames it more of a privilege to move forward rather than a confirmation of fit, but similar thing. Lowering the bar to CSPrep will result in more people going, But if I'm right should not result in more people making it to the immersive because I believe there's a fixed amount of people there. if lowering this price results in way more people going into the immersive I would consider that a massive red flag. The problem is our top of funnel - the same number of people as ever are interested in bootcamps - the problem is the market which they have no control over. Their own numbers show the market is worse and odds of getting a job worse. So I advise slow and steady. If you do CSPrep and feel pressured to do the immersive (because behind the scenes numbers are dwindling, and in the past they offered admissions people bonuses to get people to join faster) then please tell me and please do not go unless you talk to more objective people after more views.

Hi, yeah off topic but I can answer: - we take data engineers and data scientists but with SEVERE WARNINGS. We don't do any data-specific preparation or practice, so those people come to us for DS&A and System Design, networking, resume stuff, negotiation, etc... and not for any data specific stuff. At the FAANG-level companies the data loops are fairly similar to SWE with 1 or 2 unique interviews that we don't prep for, so some people think it's worth it. We strongly don't advise it though and these people tend to think hard about and come back to us on their own. - we take people on different visas case by case, depends on the visa and the amount of time before it expires. Generally existing H1B is ok, TN (Canada/Mexico) is ok, F1+OPT with 2+ years left and a backup plan is generally ok.