I've been calling this out loud and clear and pushing them very hard for being deceptive and manipulative.
Their response: hire people on Upwork to manipulate Reddit and try to dismiss my posts and hire new people to push the brand with a refreshed story.
I'm appalled at their responses to my critical scrutiny.
Their 2023 California numbers showed that 2/3 of "placements" ghosted and were verified by LinkedIn - compare to just 15% the year before - and when I asked them if their contractor could have mistaken misrepresented group projects on LinkedIn at work experience.... no response. Instead they pulled the report and replaced it with an unofficial one using 12 month placement windows instead of 6 months and published these random stats about 102 offers accepted in the past 6 months.
102 offers accepted is a massive decline in offers per day from their previous numbers, $110K is a massive decline from the $137K peak.
3/4 of staff have left from peak.
3/4 of cohorts were shut down.
No humility, no humbleness, just keep saying how amazing things are.
It's surprising when I talk to people how they often just tell me about their own cohort and have some perception that others are doing way better because of this. and in fact that's what all of the people are saying and they're isolated so they can't really communicate with each other.
It's really sad because they built a special community of really cool people that I love working with but they made a critical error...
When times are good are when you have to be most self-critical and instead when they were at their best, their leadership's egos grew and they adopted diety-like status. Their CEO portrays himself as a world leader now....
And meanwhile the entire thing that makes them special crumbled underneath them and the people left to support the leaders instead of facing reality.
King Lear all over again.
u/Jumpy_Discipline6056 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
5 months isn't that long after the BootCamp. It will most certainly take longer than that to find a role depending on your experience. How many people were in your class?
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
What I'm observing is around half of the placements I see... which is not many anymore, take over a year to get packed and their LinkedIn has them 'working at' their 3 week group project (listed as a company) for the entire time... often offer a year.
This looks to the untrained eye like the person has a year of experience and the longer someone is job hunting the more experience this item shows.
So I think it's indeed taking people longer because they need to have a year or more experience to even be taken seriously on the market.
But all that said, their ghosting rate of alumni skyrocketed and that indicates that alumni are not engaged and disappearing after six months so even if they are getting jobs and it's taking longer, they are figuring it out on their own.
u/savage-millennial wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
dude...at 5 months, about 20 of my cohort of 23 found their first job in tech. Wtf are you talking about?
It takes longer now because of the horrible job market. But pre-pandemic, finding a job within one month was very normal.
Let's not normalize how bad things are by saying
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
The thing Codesmith leaders won't accept is that even if they have good intentions and even if they built a great community, they can't beat the market and the market says they shouldn't exist anymore.
Instead they have raised prices to $22,500.
I bet you went it was $18,000 and 80% got jobs making $125K in six months.
Now it's $22,500 and 40% of people in that time frame get jobs making $110K.
Finally, their CIRR numbers have always showed relatively low 90 day placement and very solid 180 day placement, so people weren't getting jobs in a month that often.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
5 months is a pretty short time in this market
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
A lot of people say that but what do you think that means?
Like does it mean that people need to continuously apply and they finally get lucky at month 12?
Or do they need to do more supplemental work and then job hunt when they have more experience?
Are they waiting for a local maximum in hiring to get into a job?
Are people fishing interviews from competitiveness?
And whatever the factor is, why isn't Codesmitb addressing that factor to strengthen grads in the areas slowing them down?
Codesmith's CEO loud and clear said that Codesmith style applications have a 20% response rate so why the heck would it take so long.... someone could spend an ENTIRE DAY doing a Codesmith style application and get a response a week.
They don't seem to understand the market or how to navigate it and keep telling people that the same old same old works, gaslighting alumni, not making enough changes, and it's too late now.
If people are getting jobs at month twelve because fake OSP work experience makes the person look like an engineer with a year of experience, that might work but it's not justifying Codesmith's existing right now.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I think it means the rate of supply of new available jobs for these grads is low, so it takes longer to get a job. And I think the provided data shows that - which is why the CIRR time to job was extended to 12 months.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
But why is it taking longer just because supply is low.
I reiterate, If there's nothing that codesmith can do about this because of the market, then they shouldn't exist right now
So I'm trying to open the door for them to be able to do something within their control to produce the placement numbers that could justify paying $22,000 for.
If they've made all the changes they can and they don't think there's anything else then they're done right?
Their CEO is off writing a book about ai and inequality and doesn't seem interested to be spending 12 hours a day on the ground with every single alumni helping them in whatever way they can.
So maybe that's a sign that they've tried everything they can and these are the best the results are going to be and if that's the case, they're not good enough to justify their existence right now or at least their cost.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It’s taking longer for just about everyone. It’s simple.
The rest is hyperbole
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I don't think I could disagree more.
I work on an interview prep platform, which is unrelated to boot camps, but we've shipped hundreds of changes in the past year. we're going to start announcing a bunch of changes publicly because we want people to see just how insanely hard. we are trying to help people navigate the market, read how we continuously challenge our most basic assumptions and redo things and rethink things to match what's needed. week to week and once a month.
and yes, it's absolutely a rough market and a lot of people are having a hard time but if people are paying a lot of money then it's your job as a company to really give it your all.
so like I said, if the CEO is more interested in spending more so his time writing a book right now about AI ethics, that is nothing to do with software engineering placements. then I don't think that they deserve your money.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You’re kind of beating a dead horse at this point.
1. You’re mad that Codesmith won’t talk to you or take your input and do things the way you believe they should be done.
2. You’re upset with their responses and non-responses
3. You don’t think it’s worth it for people to a
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
I write long responses because I don't have time to write shorter ones.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I've been calling this out loud and clear and pushing them very hard for being deceptive and manipulative.
Their response: hire people on Upwork to manipulate Reddit and try to dismiss my posts and hire new people to push the brand with a refreshed story.
I'm appalled at their
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
Gotta love a +28 over the course of 10 hours turning into -5 in the span of 15 mins 👏👏👏
I guess we have the answer
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sounds like what they’re doing - isn’t working, right? So - people need to stop expecting it to - and move on. We’re problem solvers - right?
I’ve met with many many CodeSmith grads in the last year. I get together with them, check their confidence, talk to them about their goal
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I've seen two groups of people
1. People who want to be "honest" (their words) and none of the career support engineers are helping them do that and they all push the "Codesmith style resume" templates and check lists that indirectly guide you to exaggerating your experience (which Codesmith says is unintentional)
2. People who genuinely think they are mid-level and senior - generally ambitious and intense people - successful in other careers - well connected - ivy league background - and they really think they have the grit and smarts to make it, but can't seem to pass the interviews. These people are definitely heading places but you just can rush things. In 2021 these people were getting jobs and doing okay, but in this market they are competing with their clones who also have CS degrees and actual SWE experience and they just can't cut it.
A lot of people in the second bucket understand and listen but they just want to try to find a path, and that's good for them, the ambition will pay off.... and their eventual success has nothing to do with Codesmith.
u/momo_0 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It's actually quite simple.
Codesmith CEO, Will Sentance, was a Hack Reactor graduate when he (unethically) forked (aka stole) the Hack Reactor curriculum and launched Codesmith. Literally the same modules, projects, even wording.
Now that the industry is facing novel challenge
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Do you know for sure that he intentionally copied Hack Reactor? As in his strategy was "I'm going to copy Hack Reactor's material and teach it better" or was it "I'm going to start a school, all bootcamps are the same, I'm just going to follow the curriculum Hack Reactor did because it doesn't matter"
Both are wrong, but one is criminal and one is a civil lol.
u/momo_0 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I can't speak on his intent, only that his early curriculum was a carbon copy, including typos and bugs in the code.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Oh wow, that's insane. But it also explains the absolute disregard for ethics and zero integrity.
He went to Oxford, I thought they taught integrity there.
Do you know if Hack Reactor ever took legal action?
We have stuff in our contract that if you take any IP from my company you are done for.
u/Substantial-Tie-4620 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The idea that you're going to get hired as a senior software engineer after a 2 day react/redux unit is as stale as the COVID hiring sprees. It ain't that market anymore.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
You would think it's that obvious but Codesmith explicitly tells people the opposite. They say that you are a mid/senior because Codesmith nurtures your capacity to be a mid/senior engineer and that gatekeepers in the industry are unfairly preventing you from getting the change you deserve, so their job is to make you realize your ARE a mid/senior and build your confidence believing that so you demonstrate that in interviews
This is what they have directly said almost word for word numerous times.
They have a chart of your "perceived capacity" vs "actual capacity" and they the problem is that people ARE mid/senior and just don't perceive themselves to be.
Comes across like an MLM pitch... you are "triple diamond status" you just don't know it yet. Give us $20,000 and work really hard and you'll see that soon enough!
u/J3L_87 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
1 in 5 months is better than i have been seeing personally lmfao
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Even if this was considered good, it's not good enough to justify the cost and no one is forcing anyone to do a bootcamp, you can choose to not do any of them.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
They should definitely do some good research. IMO it isn’t for everyone, and with the longer time it takes to get a job it isn’t for the same situations as during the ‘hay day’ times as well.
That said, people researching whether a coding bootcamp is right for them would probab
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Does doing your research include looking at reports and asking critical questions and then interpreting answers?
Question: the ghosting rate for placements went from 15% to 65% from 2022 grads to 2023 in CA reports, what happened there? Why are alumni not responsive and is there a problem continuing in 2024?
The problem, whether you think I have biases or not, is that I **do my research** and I show it to people. When things are good, I publish good.
There has been nothing good in the past 2 years, no silver lining, nothing. There have been anecdotal one off success cases.
Codesmith added 5 lectures of AI to their curriculum that are already dated and worse than the free stuff from Andrej Karpathy on Youtube... and they intentionally chose to go all in on an AI curriculum that they knew was changing daily and they didn't have any unique expertise in teaching.
Like I wish I had more good things to say, the last good thing I said was Launch School's 2023 6 month placement rate was 70% which was decent and barely good enough for them to justify continuing on. Codesmith's 2023 6 month placement rate is around 40% including the 65% ghosters... Launch School has every single grad accounting for and ghosting grads are excluded.
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m not arguing with you. I made a simple comment about the timeline to get a job in this market (which is pretty well documented on this sub) and you started interrogating me, going off on rants, and spouting every thought you’ve ever had about Codesmith.
It’s just a bit much.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah I can see that haha, I feel strongly about it!
u/Swami218 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m not arguing with you. I made a simple comment about the timeline to get a job in this market (which is pretty well documented on this sub) and you started interrogating me, going off on rants, and spouting every thought you’ve ever had about Codesmith.
It’s just a bit much.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Apparently someone said there are no support engineers available for March for resume and mock interviews?
It's sad if Codesmith worked for you back in the day but it's imploding right now they don't deserve people's money right now.
I can't believe one of their leaders texted an alumni who was considering Formation and told them 'it's a waste of money and Codesmith will give them all they need for life'
Sure.... 'all they need'.... we have hundreds of mock interview slots available for the next week.
u/ewhim wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
If you were to rank people in class, was the person who got hired the best student?
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The way this has been framed to me:
1. the top couple of students usually get jobs quickly. they aren't on Reddit and they often aren't very engaged because they are in and out. others wonder why these people did Codesmith in the first place. when I've talked them I get a mix of responses: they were misled to believe Codesmith was more senior and they were way to advanced and we're advising the teachers, they needed some kind of structure and peers because doing it alone was emotionally challenging, and some people just wanted to do projects to refresh their skills and were misled that the codesmith projects were like work experience.
I hear people here saying that it wasn't really with it but that they enjoyed the community and didn't think it was a scam or entire waste of money, just probably wouldn't have done it in retrospect.
2. the 2nd tier of students get hired by Codesmith. These are people who are good but not so good they get hired right away, so they stay back and teach as mentors and instructors. All of the teachers there went to Codesmith themselves - not the TAs but the actual lead instructors. The people who don't stay get jobs and they use this work experience listed at a separate company called "CS Engineering" (because the CEO thought people wouldn't get credit for working at a bootcamp if they listed Codesmith) and people include their entire time at Codesmith as a student in this entry, so after 6 months of being a TA you look like you worked at CS Engineering for a year.
3. The people with adjacent professional experience in a different field. These people are the bread and butter Codesmith student. They follow the advice and they drink the koolaid and do everything Codesmith asks them, "trust the process", etc... this is the bulk of the people no longer getting jobs and "the process" isn't working. But even then they give Codesmith a chance, but Codsmith didn't improve the process so they are abandoning Codesmith. Some still get jobs eventually doing it their own way.
3. The bottom. These are people with no professional experience who fell in love with Codesmith from various free marketing events and then got fully adopted into the ecosystem. They saw Codesmith as the ticket to better life and trusted every word of marketing but had zero chance in the market.... the people getting jobs were #1 and the marketing made the story look different. For the most part this bucket has caught on and stopped stopped enrolling.
4. The extreme edge cases: these are the people you see in marketing posts, blogs, videos, that had some unique and completely non reproducible path. Like they were in #3 and got a good job, of they had a major life setback and feel Codesmith helped them turn their life around and stuff like that. Completely non reproducible.
So the reason why Codesmith is collapsing now is that they still have #1 and #2 and those people are generally getting jobs but then are like 20% of people.... and the remaining 80% is both not enrolling, and the ones enrolling are not getting jobs.
The people who are getting jobs question if they even needed Codesmith so they aren't loud and yelling how amazing Codesmith is to build public sentiment... they are saying "meh'.
How can a program survive when it doesn't work at all? Most people with the best outcomes right now don't credit Codesmith, there are fewer and fewer life-changing stories from recent grads (notice how all the blog posts and videos are people who did Codesmith 3 years ago or so), and the bulk of the people who trust the system aren't succeeding anymore and very few of them yell loudly that the system worked and you should trust it too.
Complete and utter collapse.
u/deviled-tux wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Lmao it sounds like they’re basically gaslighting people
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
It's not that at all.
They are gaslighting critics of Codesmith hahaha by countering facts with cherry picked numbers and then telling the critics they are wrong.
But the students are genuinely rewiring their thinking to believe they are mid level and senior engineers.
It takes 12 weeks and lots of tactics:
- if you are ever negative you do correction meetings to readjust your mindset to be positive
- You have to emoji like every post and an instructor apparently complained they didn't get enough emoji reactions for example.
- you are told you have imposter syndrome and the solution is to follow Codesmith's resume advice to fix it and to trust them because you have imposter syndrome and aren't thinking properly about your work so you have to trust Codesmith's way as the "reality"
This stuff actually works though! Like people systematically come out thinking this way and when Codesmith had strong outcomes these people fought me to bitter end about how life-changing Codesmith was.
Now it all seems like I'm watching a Netflix cult documentary. Someone from the early days is also suggesting that Codesmith's founder copied the curriculum from Hack Reactor (where he went) and his "work experience" was just his capstone project from Hack Reactor framed as a company and are question if he has any real SWE work experience at all.
I would watch this documentary, it's a fascinating story - someone with no experience, allegedly stole a competitors curriculum after being a student there, crested a program that rewires you to build self confidence to also portray your lack of experience as mid level experience, and then somehow convinced 4000 people to pay $20K (making $80 MILLION DOLLARS?) AND hundreds of those people actually had life changing experiences in the end!
Like this is one heck of a Netflix or HBO documentary to me!
u/Rezident1995 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The market is really bad right now, but what I noticed is the highest chance of getting into the industry are apprenticeships or hire-train-deploy companies. With htds you are gonna be making 60k a year and locked into 1-2 year contracts. However, the clients are usually big comp
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've been a massive fan of apprenticeships (some are better than others though so you have to watch out).
You need 10000 hours to develop the taste needed to be a valuable engineer and a bootcamp gives you 1000. Doing apprenticeships for 2 years can get you almost there.
You can rush it and you have to put in the time.
u/HidingImmortal wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
> NOT EVEN A JUNIOR LEVEL ROLE!
Just to be clear, you had the expectation that you would be suited for a senior position after doing a bootcamp and no other experience?
Junior level engineers are typically hired from a college. That is to say they did a four year program in C
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Don't get me started on this because I've been hounding them for literally years on this and it's been happening since 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/
Every time I significantly push back you'll see like a blog post about someone who got a senior job right out of Codesmith, and they just adamantly adamantly believe this to the bitter end.
So I don't think they are lying but instead are delusional.
No leader there has a STEM degree, and no leader has been an engineer ever either in industry.
Enough people for $130K jobs in the past they made them believe they and the secret formula to creating mid level and senior engineers out of s bootcamp that it became their identity.
When your identity is attacked, you often defend completely irrationally.
There are a handful of people that have gotten those jobs. and then when you zoom into them and look at their careers over many years
1. about a third of those people like switched out of SWE or switched company shortly after because they got the job under false pretenses and it probably wasn't the right fit. even if they voluntarily left that job, they're transitioning way too fast and it's clear that this was not the dream job that is portrayed as.
2. there's another bucket of people, ive talked to who knowingly stretched the truth to get the Job and then are trying to secretly put in like 80-hour weeks without their company realizing it to catch up and fill in the gaps. someone in this bucket said that they felt like they were less good than a lower level calling that was hired the same week as them etc. so these people also didn't deserve the jobs but have the grit and aptitude to survive, at least for a while constantly fearing being fired. and
3. there's a group of people that had relevant other experience. maybe they went to an ivy League school and built a lot of networking and social skills and then worked in mechanical engineering for 5 years and they were able to transition a lot of the non- programming skills to get some kind of mid-level or senior job as a programmer at a company that valued their previous experience.
4. the final group of people are people who get like entry level. talk to your jobs that pay more than mid-level non tech company jobs that codesmith calls senior jobs even though they are entry level. an example here is someone at Google. got an entry level job and the HR level is called l3 even though that is Google's entry level and the person thought that they were a level 3 engineer which was senior because level one would be Junior level two would be mid and three would be senior. but this is just how Google's HR system works to normalize the number across non-technical disciplines and has nothing to do with it.
u/HidingImmortal wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
> NOT EVEN A JUNIOR LEVEL ROLE!
Just to be clear, you had the expectation that you would be suited for a senior position after doing a bootcamp and no other experience?
Junior level engineers are typically hired from a college. That is to say they did a four year program in C
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Great example here: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc\_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c\_03](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c_03)
"From conducting orchestras to software engineering"
1. The person's LinkedIn says they had 11 months of SWE experience prior to Codesmith and then 1.4 years of open source experience "software engineer" experience during Codesmith.
2. Then you read the blog post there and find out the person was an orchestra conductor with no experience prior to Codesmith
3. Then you ask a recruiter at Capital One that says to clear a background check for a "Senior Associate" role (which is not a Senior Software Engineer role there - which requires 4 years of experience), you need to have 2 years of verifiable SWE experience to get hired...
So something doesn't add up.
This person clearly has a stable and good job so maybe the ends justify the means, but this story is missing a lot of details about how it happened...
The blog post is telling you one story, but in reality this person had to fake 2 years of experience to get that job.
u/Real-Set-1210 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
One year post app academy, 3 people hired out of 33 that graduated.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
App Academy certainly is no saint here, but at least paused their SWE program entirely recently given these issues instead of pretending everything is amazing and telling career changers that "you can be next".
u/endlightend wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Michael,
The Hack Reactor claim was something you heard only a day ago. Did the person who said that provide a source or have you already managed to corroborate that within the last day?
You have extremely valid criticisms of Codesmith- I wouldn't sink to the level they accuse y
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah I received private corroboration.
u/HidingImmortal wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I agree, it doesn't add up.
It's just a bit sad. I wish for the best for these folks going through the program.
Realistically, even if you succeed in your role, companies fire individuals if they discover that they lied on their resume. I imagine it's continually stressful wh
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
I commented on this separately, I see four cases, and one of them is indeed living in fear and feeling like you are underperforming lower level colleagues.
u/endlightend wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
My point stands: what is the point of repeating something that isn't publicly verifiable or cannot be substantiated with evidence? You are supplying them with ammunition that this is a personal vendetta for you. From what I've seen, you have always been able to back up your other
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I mean I don't know what's confidential but there were private legal processes involved and the sourcing seems good, I just can't source publicly so I have to say allegidly.
u/endlightend wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
My point stands: what is the point of repeating something that isn't publicly verifiable or cannot be substantiated with evidence? You are supplying them with ammunition that this is a personal vendetta for you. From what I've seen, you have always been able to back up your other
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
This came up in my Youtube queue: [https://youtu.be/yZomz9vPqjg?si=QJ0DHU\_PrGEMMdHP&t=683](https://youtu.be/yZomz9vPqjg?si=QJ0DHU_PrGEMMdHP&t=683)
Apparently the CEO totally is transparent that it's not that he's "not a very good engineer" but he's "barely one at all" and that "the stuff I was teaching \[\] I was learning as I go", "when I was making my hard parts workshops I didn't know how a map function works"
So I guess it's not really a secret that he new practically nothing about engineering when starting Codesmith and he actually considers it a strength.
But he does claim that he made the Hard Parts from scratch. Which was late 2010s, so even if it's true that the original materials were copied, it seems he entirely changed to a first principals approach at some point long ago such that any recent Codesmith student went through original curriculum.
u/Able_Awareness8973 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
6 months post Codesmith, 33 graduates and zero got a job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
33 is a pretty big cohort too for 2024. If this is true, I really wish people would do their fricken research and stop believing their bullshit marketing and leader.
I used to have way more pros and cons about Codesmith and things have degraded to much over 2024 starting when they laid off everyone and promised amazing changes that never happened.
You can follow my history. I'm pissed off now but back then I very rationally paused my endorsement of Codesmith in February when those layoffs happened and then a few months later when things continued to decline I actively recommended not going there.
Now the leader is writing a book and barely involved, grads are less and less prepared and alumni complain to me more and more about grads who are faking their resumes but not accompanying if with the grit and hustle needed to fake it til you make it.
Codesmith CEO: here's a thought experiment. if all of the instructors departed, would you be extremely motivated to teach all of the students yourself again and spend all of your time in the classroom? Would that make you feel more excited to go to work every day than anything else? if the answer is no, then you should step down and leave. If the answer is yes, you should actually consider doing that. You have been living too high in the sky and you forgot what it's like on the ground and things are really crumbling. Talk to random new alumni yourself, not just older ones who love you. Don't ask the remaining sycophantic staff how things are because you aren't getting the full story.
The typical alumni now are nowhere near prepared for a job and have a fake looking resume that they don't even believe in anymore and the people at Codesmith they talk to are reading from a script you wrote like 3 years ago.... it's really bad in my opinion. Do you have any way to objectively evaluate graduate quality? Do you actually read all their OSP code and go through all of the code reviews and see the massive decline I see? Like open your eyes!
u/Able_Awareness8973 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
6 months post Codesmith, 33 graduates and zero got a job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
No placements here either: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1ewbapi/comment/mgwdgic/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1ewbapi/comment/mgwdgic/)
u/slayerzerg wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You are shocked? Bootcamps are dead what’s shocking
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
The shock is because their marketing is super aggressive that things are great right now "you could be next" and such.
u/No_Bottle7859 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
For years codesmith grads were consistently getting mid-level roles and yes even some senior ones. I know for a fact 3 of my cohort of 35ish got solid senior roles. They were also by far the best in the cohort, but it's possible. The difference between junior and mid-level is a b
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Those placements were accidents and people exaggerating on their resumes.
There isn't a single person with zero relevant experience who had an honest resume who got a senior role.
Did people get "senior" titled roles at Capital One (which map to entry level FAANG) by lying about their SWE experience and getting referred by other Codesmith grads and get coached on questions in a special Capital One channel? Yes.
Did people leverage past experience that maybe wasn't SWE work but had a lot of similar behavioral skills and call it "engineering" experience on their resume to squeeze into mid level roles? Yes.
Did most people put their 3 week long project as 8+ months of work experience? Yes.
Did people who were hourly TAs at Codesmith put down months of work experience as a Software Engineer at "CS Engineering" that Codesmith provided background checks for? Yes.
People who got these jobs are:
1. Naturally talented
2. Have tons of grit and ambition
3. Stretched the truth on their resumes to get a foot in the door.
If this is ethical, it's up to you to decide - some people think it is and some don't.
But it wasn't Codesmith that helped people get these job.
If you got a job at Amazon or Capital One by working with previous alumni on referrals and getting coached on how to lie to lie to them that's not something to celebrate as the "Codesmith method" that no one else has figured out.
If the secret sauce it "develop a program that selects for naturally talented people with a lot of grit and give them fake resume experience so they can sneak into good jobs and take them away from honest people" then they exploited a short term market anomaly that does not exist anymore, they haven't changed to adapt, and their program is irrelevant now.
u/No_Bottle7859 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
One of them was Amazon. The other was I think an energy company, i don't remember the third but neither was capital one. I think your assumptions are a bit off. Some people are actually just that good. There were basically 5ish people that learned every lesson immediately and wer
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I 100% assure you that no one got an SDEIII senior role at Amazon out of Codesmith with zero work experience.
SDEI - L4 is entry level there, SDEII - L5 is mid level. I know 2-3 people from Codesmith that got L5 jobs (and I think at least 2 are still there) and those are extreme edge cases out of 4000 people.
These aren't case you put on the website as a core feature of Codesmith.
The fact you call their Leadership Principles questions "bullshit questions" shows me how messed up and broken Codesmith is... taking ambitious people and making them feel like the job market is a "game" to get a high score on.
They don't set people up for good careers and with good long term mindsets. It's all a game where the ends justify the means.
You completely dodged my rambling about how people lie on their resumes to get jobs and it's a fact from my research. It's the elephant in the room. Amazing reviews, amazing blog posts of people with no experience whose lives were changed.
All they did was sell their integrity.
u/No_Bottle7859 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
They absolutely are bullshit questions and it's hard for me to believe anyone has done that interview process and thinks differently. What a joke. I dodged your rambling because it's not relevant to anything I responded to. And rambling is correct. I don't really care about your
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
What's your email address, I'll send you the chain of proof evidence of someone named "Will S." hiring someone on Upwork to post a disparaging comment about me on Reddit.
u/No_Bottle7859 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Aight fair enough. Honestly, I assumed you were just going off the sudden downvotes because I saw you mention that, and that seemed like a total reach. Idk how you found that evidence but that's pretty deranged. Will sentance actually did come off super sleazy to several of us wh
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Thanks for considering, I am very upset about Codesmith's behavioral and I'm sorry if I come across confrontational, I think we should all speak openly about Codesmith's outcomes and stories because even amongst the group of alumni I'm calling out above - those people on an individual basis are all really awesome people - working incredibly hard to have more impact and a better life (many with families), and don't want to come across as judging those people entirely. I'm judging Codesmith for selling those stories as a magic pill to change your life, instead of being transparent about how it all works.
u/Perfect_Pudding_5251 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Who is the Reddit account? I’m curious. They really posted a job to post about you?
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I have dozens of screenshots and PDFs,.HTMl logs etc...but I don't have time to bundle it up, and I would also prefer discussing it with their team privately first so they can respond.
If they apologized and assured me it would never happen again I might just drop it.
The person's Reddit account was permanently suspended along with dozens of other accounts and a number of official Codesmith accounts as well. When all of the accounts were suspended I also noticed a bunch of accounts that have been harassing me for a year now for suspended too and since then I have had relatively little harassment on here.
I would love to publish a case study some time because the behavior is insane and hard to tell at first!
But revelaing this might also help the bad guys get away with it by understanding the sophistacted techniques I used :(
The fake accounts would warm up by posting and commenting on generic things in large public channels and then post somewhere like 'I live in Denver, what's a good tire repair shop?' And then another fake account would be like 'Go to X for sure, best place'.
A number of these accounts were commenting on fake comments on Codesmith posts as well.
If you go to AMAs from many months ago you'll see a ton of comments collapsed, deleted, or accounts suspended.
A bunch of top level posts in the Codesmith sub were these people, including one disparaging my company and another poll about what people want to see in the sub.
These accounts tried to get me suspended from Reddit as well and ironically they got suspended.
It's possible the creator of the Codesmith sub herself is a fake account too who and one of these fake accounts associated with the Upwork guy claimed to be her partner and went after me - I never proved that but her email address is codesmith[redacted]@gmail.com
I found it fascinating because you wouldn't think this stuff is fake at first. And even then, some of the stuff I would have no clue if it wasn't for the fake accounts history.
For example one of the accounts harassing me seemed like a totally normal alumni who didn't like me but their comments history was commenting on all the other marketing threads for these accounts like for flowers, custom suits, hemorrhoid cream, etc... and intermixed are non marketing posts like about sports and stuff.
u/Crazy_Charge6957 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Be that as it may, going through Formation myself I haven’t seen any content in that program that rivals the “Hards Parts” series in depth or educational value.
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Formation isn't a school and doesn't teach any concepts like that. We are a place to practice problems, get feedback, benchmark, enhance your job hunt and do mock interviews.
We believe there are tens of thousands of hours of excellent materials out there and we try to help you navigate that.
All of our efforts are out towards our product and you can see form our launches blog how much effort that is.
Codesmith doesn't have dynamic scheduling of 500 sessions a week, source thousands of job posts a week and provide personal recommends and network outreach, provide a job tracker tool that helps you prepare for upcoming interviews through personalized practice and interviews automatically, collect and read about a dozen feedback points per person every week, provide a personal algorithmic feed of things to work on, provide a custom built on platform collaborative coding environment supporting a dozen languages and frontend frameworks and drawing pad with AI analysis, built a custom benchmarking frameworks...
We did this in months.
All of our sessions are run by industry mentors and while we provide a lot of guidance, monitoring, facilitate feedback and evaluation, mentors are independent and explain things their own way.
There are pros and cons to our approach, but it's quite unique so it's important to join for the right reasons. Because if you join Formation for excellent lectures it's not the place, we don't offer any form of education.
u/Substantial-Tie-4620 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The idea that you're going to get hired as a senior software engineer after a 2 day react/redux unit is as stale as the COVID hiring sprees. It ain't that market anymore.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I was informed today that Codesmith is still signing letters of reference and background checks on behalf of OS Labs to confirm fake work experience.
I care less that people are lying on their resumes and care more the Codesmith has been participating in these lies for years and years.
Codesmith alumni, spread the word - 3 weeks of commits on a project isn't 7 months of unpaid work experience at OS Labs. Tell Codesmith this is unethical and let them know loud and clear.
People are sending me evidence of this stuff because maybe they are afraid to lose their jobs for being found out and it's sad.
If you feel guilty about this and don't want to be public - my DMs are open. I won't stand for this garbage behavior from people with no integrity.
u/Own-Customer-4516 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Just out of curiosity, OSLabs website says the board is a bunch of people (not sure if I can write their names) that aren't from Codesmith, are they ones signing the letters?
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
The person who signed letters is Phil Troutman who was Codesmith's Head Instructor for 10 years and left recently.
Codesmith's placement staff "help coordinate" letters for you if you have trouble.
And OSLabs phone number is intended to go to Phil.
The instructions presented to me offer support for "work verification", "background checks", and more and indicate that Phil is the primary person who does background check calls.
**The board members on the site, look into them:** one is Codesmith's lawyer, two I beleive are Codesmith alumni who don't advertise it much but show up on alumni lists.
The "director" is not affiliated with Codesmith but I'm not sure if she works there, last I chatted with her she was "on leave" and she reported some security problems I had to Annie - Codesmith's Director of Outcomes and Admissions who is present here on Reddit.
Finally, OSLabs tax records show they haven't had more than $25K of donations in any given year, nor are they properly registered in NY State where they are homed (which could be because they have no employees and have taken in little to no money).
I can keep going about this... it's a giant scam in my opinion and I hope someday it's headline news.
u/Own-Customer-4516 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Headline news...really? Headline news is Russia-Ukraine, Syria, Trump's tariffs, Climate Change. One would have to have very little happening in their life or zero interest in the world for a minor charity's connection to a small coding school to be headline news, no?
Also you s
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I think people are interested in scams, my Netflix and HBO are full of scams and this is far more interesting than those scams because it's so polarizing - some people think this is fine and others think it's completely fraud.
When 80% of people get jobs it certainly helps, when like 20% of people get jobs and they see this stuff it has a real financial impact on them.
Codesmith took in about $80M over 10 years if they actually had 4000 paying students, so that's up there with some of the biggest ed-tech headlines I've seen.
Anyways, my understanding is Phil is still an advisor at Codesmith despite having a new full time day job.
u/Own-Customer-4516 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Okay, but you never answered the question. Who were you informed today was still signing the letters if not the guy that already left?
On the docs about scams, I'm sure they were slightly more world-wide or general interest stories to warrant a streaming giant making a documenta
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Can you clarify what you are asking? I don't want to mistake it and I'm not 100% sure. I wasn't informed of a specific person signing letters today in a specific situation on a specific letter, rather that Codesmith as a whole supports and instructs graduates on and how to prepare for OS Labs background checks when you are asked to verify "work experience" there.
u/Own-Customer-4516 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You just did clarify what I was asking in this response. You've done a 180 though, that's what's so confusing.
You went from saying (yesterday): "I was informed today that Codesmith is still signing letters of reference and background checks on behalf of OS Labs to confirm f
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Sorry this is confusing, I'm intentionally not giving specific timeframes or specific details on events because it will reveal who is involved and Codesmith has at least two times tracked people down from Reddit with specific examples shared to me of that.
All of that is correct no?
1. Codesmith is arranging letters of reference from OSLabs (there is a specific person mentioned in arranging I'm not disclosing their name)
2. The example presented to me evidence yesterday was not about a reference that took place yesterday
3. I'm not giving details of what this example was because even the type of reference, time, location, people involved I think could DOX who it is.
4. As far as I'm aware OSLabs is still providing reference checks and as far as I'm aware, the person signing them is still Phil. Someone sent me a letter from a few years ago signed by Phil and this is not about that situation, but I would assume the latest letters are the same as the newest information I received indicates the process is the same.
Does that clarify anything?
u/Own-Customer-4516 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You just did clarify what I was asking in this response. You've done a 180 though, that's what's so confusing.
You went from saying (yesterday): "I was informed today that Codesmith is still signing letters of reference and background checks on behalf of OS Labs to confirm f
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
Also watch your double quotes, I use very legally careful language and you are misquoting me :D
u/Apart_Yogurt9863 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
thanks michael. what would you suggest for bootcamp or online learning
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
1. first try free and cheap online resources and courses until you feel like a couple of things are clicking
2. look at Launch School - it's the "slow way" to becoming a SWE, but it works well if you are a good fit. The reason it works is because it's small and only takes people who are very likely for it to work for
3. consider bootcamps ONLY TO LEARN not to get a job. you might get a job, but you should look into them as a way of learning skills you don't have in an intense way and if that approach will work for you. Codesmith is like $22.5 for 14 weeks so that's like $1500 a week and for some people it's worth that much "just to learn", for many it's not - and the curriculum itself is like not the same as the public content they do - it's more like 2 hour long slide show lectures on a topic + projects.
4. consider an online masters like Georgia Tech OMSCS - this is ideal if you have a science undergrad and maybe already feel hirable as a SWE and want to formalize your learnings.
u/Successful-Divide655 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Not saying this isn't true. But once again hypocrisy is at an all-time high. Every word of a cirr result is scrutinized to death, but one person comes on and says 1 person got hired and it's gospel because it reinforces the negative Codesmith theme. Critical thinking skills missi
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
CIRR is dead and deserves scrutiny because Codesmith's marketing of it has mislead hundreds of people to pay them $21,500 in 2024, it is indeed worthy of scrutiny.
When Codesmith had like 12ish cohorts in 2024 and 2-3 of them say that they only know about 1 person placed in 6 months, that's not a fact by any means but it raises flags and warrants questions.
Codesmith's response has been to entirely evade the question.
They clearly have 2024 data of some kind that they are publishing, but they aren't publishing H1 2024 placement rates - which they obviously have preliminary versions of or they can't publish the offer data they have.
Even if they don't have or want to publish placements rates they can say "warning, placement rates are down, we want to double down on finding and supporting the RIGHT people for Codesmith so if you want to become a SWE, work with us and we'll be honest with you".
I don't know why they don't just accept reality and adjust and continue to try to manipulate things to be fine.
Like I said, King Lear all over, Emperor Has No Clothes, like we're talking age old human stories about the human condition and maybe it's not a surprise at all.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Any updates or changes in opinion since posting this a few months ago?
u/stonkersson wrote (the comment Michael replied to):