Codesmith actually faking jobs for there graduates now

I'm fairly familiar with this and can offer my 2 cents, in no particular order: 1. I heard that instructors, mentors, and fellows (TAs) were listing Codesmith as their recent job, but it was becoming less effective, because people recognized it as a bootcamp and it makes sense that people would perceive "Senior Software Engineer at Codesmith" as really just a bootcamp STUDENT embellishing their resume. It wasn't made clear to me who's idea this was, but someone came up with the idea of creating a "CS Engineering" brand that these people could list to differentiate their REAL jobs from coming across like a student. 2. In all fairness, I think that's reasonable because people actually had jobs with Codesmith that they should get credit for. My opinion is the need for "CS Engineering" as a brand is a very clear sign of the problems of appearing to work at a bootcamp and how you get written off by many, rather than a problem with Codesmith promoting fake resumes. 3. Now that said, I've interviewed instructors or reviewed their profiles (various reasons: people applying to jobs at my company, people applying for services from company, me just exploring what the people do proactively and sourcing) and people do exaggerate quite a bit in their descriptions. Instructors report being overworked teaching, helping, giving feedback, doing 1-1 support, and it's very rare for them to have time to contribute to the website. Most do at various points, but it ends up being a fraction of the work rather than the primary work - which is teaching. So should a teacher be called a "Senior Software Engineer"? Up to you, but I feel way less strongly about this than other things I've seen in Codesmith resumes. 4. The larger problem with these jobs is that the system they are working on is TERRIBLE in my opinion. The CEO did a "system design talk" recently that covered the system, and the explanation that was reported to me sounded like all of this stuff is really just a very simple website and the engineering needs were very small and the decisions made appear very poor to me. For example, it was reported they have 32 services running for something that could easily run on 1 box. They duplicate their website across Hubspot and their own code. Their authentication is a mess. And from what I've observed, their data model contains many problematic decisions. Assuming I'm understanding the system correctly, if I interviewed someone from Codesmith who was unable to articulate all of these problems and defended these decisions, they would be rejected for sure and would never pass a system design interview.

I commented extensively below with what I think is a fair response, let me know if you disagree..

This is a quote from one of their leaders from November 2023 in a public talk: "we don't ever ever ever endorse lying, exaggerating, there is nothing other than pure authenticity when you come out of codesmith in terms of applying to jobs what you'll say in interviews what's on your resume everything will be 100% truthful, alright, so stuff you read other people say, it's a weird thing"

Yeah good point. The experience is definitely better than nothing and may or may not be better than other similar entry level positions at tiny companies. And it might be an advantage in getting an education related role later.

Yeah some.other things to add; 1. Instructors are paid well and paid. I've heard second hand that salaries have gone down recently for new hires (not existing hires) and that a TA is paid like minimum wage, a mentor is paid like an intern/apprentice, instructor like entry level, and lead instructor like mid level. (FAANG levels). 2. Instructors are given a lot of responsibility. It has been expressed to me that the program leadership hovers a bit to make sure you do all your work and cover anything extra needed, but you are ultimately critical to the success of a cohort. A cohort has very few staff and each one is critical in my opinion. So it could be a rewarding job.

Do you have an opinion or facts on if this was a response from Will to Codemsith employees and specifically fellows, having a hard time placing? Or was the priority building a brand around Codesmith's engineering prowess to make the entire program seem more legit and like it has 50 engineers building it? Parallels was another thing that started that has been dead for months now. OSLabs haven't done anything for a while and stuff in their web page seems like vaporware (6 months fellowship?)

I haven't seen a concrete trend myself. The instructors haven't worked in industry (only a handful ever had but all but one were return Codemsith alumni) and Codesmith's codebase can best be described as a big OSP project and in some cases, some OSP projects have had more people touching their code than the Codesmith codebase. Based on the problems with some of the largest OSP projects which have their history plain for all to see, you can imagine the problems with Codesmith's codebase. I haven't seen Codesmith's codebase but just heard casually from people who worked on it and from people who saw this system design talk and approached me about it. If you've talked to alumni about the big OSPs you'll hear about how each new group tends to fail to understand the existing codebase and instead just builds something new. For example, a project containing 2 primary UI frameworks because a new OSP group didn't understand the current one. From what it sounds like, the Codesmith codebase is the same. New people don't understand and don't have time and don't have experience or training to be able to understand anything beyond a tiny codebase, so people kind of slap on their new feature so they can add it to their resume. This theory would explain 32 boxes and services for a system that needs one box.