Whether you like the criteria or not and whether it's gatekeeping or not, this is what everyone who has significant experience is telling you and I'm yelling loudly over and over **top tier CS schools are the primary path to entry level jobs right now!!** End of sentence.
If you want to career change then that's probably not an option so when you look at the next best thing, it's a massive range of:
1. 4+ years of experience = impossible
2. No job hoppers = you can show that in a previous career if you have tangential professional/technical experience
3. Significant experience at notable startups = maybe you can volunteer at one to get it on your resume?
4. **NO BOOTCAMP GRADS =** don't go to a bootcamp!
5. Fake profiles = if you went to a bootcamp **don't lie about your experience**
And that leaves pretty much no options if you are a career changer with zero experience and this is exaclty why there are no systematic paths for these people to get jobs right now.
Don't get too sad, bootcamp grads can get jobs right now, if you do, you are just going to have a one-off non reproducible path that won't work for everyone else, and you won't find advice on how to do it becasue you have to forge your own path.
u/svix_ftw wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
100% agree with what you are saying.
But based on the downvotes, it doesn't seem like people want to accept the evidence that's right in front of them.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I try to be on guard here with activity that is provable disingenuous but there is a lot of fake accounts on here that carefully manipulate conversations with the intention of advertising.
You'll see accounts popup that talk very middle-road and casually drop in bootcamp names or program names, etc...
There's one top bootcamps you hear about a lot here that has had comments that go from 0 to +20 or from +20 to 0 (if it's negative) in minutes.
I can't do anything about voting manipulation as a mod, but Reddit's AI has improved a lot and it seems to wipe out these fake accounts after a few weeks of suspicious activity or when an account makes a mistake and they don't get their VPN and virtual machines right to evade the algorithm.
It's why you have to be vigilant on here.
u/svix_ftw wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I wish it was fake, but I'm more than happy to prove this is real with any of the mods.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
If you feel comfortable you can confidentially contact me with proof and I can back you up on here, but it's up to you
u/Correct-Complex-8342 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How can I send you a message? Have some info you may be interested in
u/michaelnovatireplied·
You can DM me on Reddit if you want
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
Regard allegations of fake screenshots. OP sent more evidence confidentially. It's impossible to 100% prove an email is authentic over Reddit, but the evidence adds more credibility to the original post. I can't rule out an elaborate Reddit-fraud scheme, but as far as a coin toss I would guess more likely than not real.
u/BK_317 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
so the recruiter mail is legit?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
The email and the recruiter who sent it both appear legit and story adds up, but people can fake emails and send fake emails so I can't rule everything out.
u/Travaches wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I graduated from Hack Reactor in 2018 but no longer lists it since it’s useless on my resume.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Oops yeah I guess the email says all bootcamp grads EVER should be excluded - which is more extreme. I've seen bootcamp grads with no experience flat out excluded because of lack of experience, but once you have 4+ YOE it doesn't matter as much.
It does matter for proxy signal though. It's so hard to get into Stanford and MIT that if you do, you are probably an extremely strong candidate for the rest of your life - more likely to be than at other schools for example. But that's more of a reason to +1 those schools, not to ban all others.
u/GenevievetheThird wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You put "more than likely not real", I think you meant "more than likely real"
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Thanks, edited
u/Ocluist wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Waterloo being lumped in with Stanford and Caltech is hilarious lmao
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Waterloo grads have six internships so you're basically getting someone who's a mid-level engineer as an entry level engineer and they are indeed in that bucket for new grads. Over time I would say things level out. I don't think that Waterloo grids are particularly successful in the longer term compared to those other schools, but early career they can be a good find.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Whether you like the criteria or not and whether it's gatekeeping or not, this is what everyone who has significant experience is telling you and I'm yelling loudly over and over **top tier CS schools are the primary path to entry level jobs right now!!** End of sentence.
If you
u/michaelnovatireplied·
wow! this thread blew up so I'm going to add some more thoughts here because there's a lot more to this than I commented.
so these things don't mean that people who don't meet these requirements are bad Engineers or worse engineers.
some of the best Engineers I worked with came from not top tier schools and somewhere self-taught and had very interesting backgrounds and life experiences.
the problem big tech companies is that those people are not systematically recruitable. like the data shows that maybe 95% of the Stanford grads that join a big tech company perform exceptionally well and if they were to hire a hundred people from a local community college in a non-tech heavy area, then maybe three out of 100 people would be performing well.
so it's in the company's interest to recruit from these sources that produce people that historically perform well because they can then efficiently find people with those traits and them with a higher chance of it working.
if the company tries to find those three community college people, they're going to have to interview tons of people and spend a lot of time trying to identify which of hundred people are those three people. even if those people performed better than the Stanford grads, the effort isn't necessarily worth it in the hiring side.
those three people will probably find their way to the company in some way over time and that's why there's amazing self-taught community college grads big tech companies today.
so the intention of this isn't mean or degrading anyone. it's really just recruiters trying to act rationally with data.
what it means for you if you don't have those top-tier credentials is that you need to find other paths.
My life's work now is actually trying to help people from all these different backgrounds make their way to these companies and there isn't as much gatekeeping as it sounds like there is from these requirements that were posted. there are paths and ways for people to get there but you do have to be exceptional and prepared and ready.
those Stanford grads have had recruiters talking to them since freshman year. they've had friends working at these companies. they know exactly how these pipelines work.
if you push hard enough and try hard enough, you will find a couple of paths to these companies without being a Stanford grad but you're going to have to make the most of those opportunities because you're also going to be inherently unprepared.
u/garlic_bananas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I'm sorry but I don't understand how your "life's work" a.k.a. formation.dev could ever solve this problem. Leetcode coaching and interview practice is going to do jack shit if your client's resume gets thrown out immediately because they don't fit the criteria.
You just wrote 2
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I had to find my own path into tech too. I did an engineering degree so it was much easier than others, but I empathize with this problem.
My life's mission is for people to end up in roles they love where they have impact on world instead of doing jobs they don't like to get by. I want to see people in jobs that leverage their passions and strengths.
Don't judge a book by it's cover or a website from it's homepage!
u/garlic_bananas wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Michael I appreciate the reply and I wanted to say that the frustration in my comment isn't aimed at you or your company but rather the state of recruiting right now, even though I completely understand the stance of big tech/yc startups! It makes sense, there's a ton of candidat
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
It depends on the person but in the current market if you have 2+ years of real SWE experience we can generally help you. We do a lot of job hunt and resume work but I completely agree that we can't beat the market - we used to take more people right out of bootcamps with minimal experience (like working at the bootcamp itself, or contracts, some people faked their work experience and go through) and we increased that threshold in the bad market.
But if you have 2+ years of experience in any legit SWE job you can get into big tech, I see it multiple times a month. It takes longer if your background is less strong, like in the past few weeks we had placements at Meta, Google, and Stripe of people who had been with us for like 2 WHOLE YEARS and wouldn't meet the criteria on this post. If you work with mentors from FAANG-adjacent companies for weeks and weeks you eventually absorb some of the fuzzy things it's hard to put on paper that help you bridge the gap.
So I agree with you it's harder for people of those backgrounds and it's harder for us because those people are with us for so long, people with strong background say working at Instacart for 4 years, come to Formation and are like 'whoa why is this person here for two years' and the new person gets a job in 3 months.
I want to level the playing field but to me that means systematically understanding and working with each person as a unique individual and not trying to shove a 10 week Leetcode course down their throats.
u/FaroresWind17 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
But as of right now, there is no path for people. It’s not that they just have to “find their own path,” there just isn’t a path to follow. If you don’t get into a top school, you don’t get a job. And if you didn’t come from wealth and have lots of opportunities, you don’t get in
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I agree there's no path in the sense that no one can give you a path/road to follow to get there.
So maybe a different framing is that you have to make your own path.
You have dig a tunnel under the wall, or build a flying machine to airdrop yourself in.
And that can feel unfair when they lower the drawbridge for every MIT grad that walks in.
There are ways, and I can give you tons of examples, but these examples would be to stimulate ideas and not to give a path to follow.
This is my philosophical view:
Stanford and MIT generally have incredible smart people and some people are smarter than others. They are selecting for a certain type of "smart" person that our society deems will be an impactful person.
Whereas community colleges let in just anyone who pays for credits.
So the societal structure is setup to try to rely on top schools as vetting our the people who are "supposed to be" successful.
I used a lot of quotes there because this system works kind of, but it leaves out all the people who WOULD BE deemed equally "smart" if they had opportunities when they were growing up that they didn't for various reasons.
So I think our society is missing out by not leveraging bootcamp grads/career changers who WOULD BE equally impactful but can't demonstrate that yet.
If the companies get enough Stanford grads, they don't have an interest in working on this problem.
So right now the bootcamp grads are fixing this by paying bootcamps and career coaches etc... out of their own pocket to try to get help.
If the market shifted and companies couldn't find enough people, then they would open the doors to bootcamp grads. And they would need ways to vet those people because they aren't demonstrating the potential yet - they need ways to identify who WILL be super strong. But if they need engineers so bad they have an incentive to invest in figuring it out, or in working with the bootcamps or career coaches directly to have those people pull out the right people for the right company.
\-----------
This is super high level, because in reality - when companies DID hire bootcamp grads, they didn't perform as well on the whole and proved there still is this "skill gap". It doesn't mean they didn't eventually do very well in the industry, just that proved the point that it takes time for those extra gaps to fill, and bootcamp grads are not just as deserving and being gatekept out of the industry.
u/toocold4me wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I have a masters from one of the schools listed. It didn’t do shit to help me get a job. I also have had to move almost every 2+ years with the brand name companies I worked for. I little research and they would see the issue the companies have why they laid off many.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I don't mean to dismiss anyone's personal story or journey or invalidate it - everyone has their own path.
When you zoom out and look at the data, the companies see trends, and they go with those trends, it's rational.
If bootcamp grads were crushing it at companies, they have the internal data processes and metrics to know, and they would go all in hiring bootcamp grads.
That simply isn't happening and they are sticking to their story.
Funny enough, your anecdote isn't that uncommon, and a lot of people get to these top jobs and then see all the problems with the companies and then want to move on to new jobs.
The SWE career can be a wild ride for many!
u/toocold4me wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I got hired at one of those brand name companies. Their public perception was that they are the cat’s meow. I had 15 interviews, I know crazy and lesson learned. My first month I learned that the place is out of control and polar than the public perception. I stayed because I tho
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Feel free to DM me if you want me to look at your resume (anonymized if you want) because if you have 2.5 years at FAANG as a SWE you should be able to get interviews.
If you are getting interviews and not passing, then it's a different challenge to work on.
u/Ocluist wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Even if fewer in number, I’d imagine most Stanford students have more impressive internships than Waterloo. You’re talking about the single most competitive CS program in the world to attend, these aren’t “typical” college kids.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Stanford is a bit unique because a ton of people do startups IN SCHOOL themselves and they are physically IN silicon valley bumping into tech people left right and center. They have all kins of talks from tech CEOs in person, on campus programs, VCs fund students to scout talent, it's like INSANE.
I've been to Waterloo a ton of times recruiting for Meta.
But Waterloo grads tend to get 2-3 FAANG internships in there. It's 5 year degree an they alternate 4 months school, 4 month internship, so the first ones tend to be lower companies and then they work their way up to FAANG. The top people have 4-5 FAANG internships.
So you hire someone as a "new grad" who has worked at Meta, Amazon, Google, Palantir etc...
I would personally lean Stanford grad, it's a special ecosystem. But Waterloo is up there.
Waterloo is kind of a quiet secret and companies get a lot of solid talent from there, but they don't want anyone else to know because it's absurdly competitive amongst companies - they compete for the best people and put a lot of money into the COOP program sponsorships and such and the COOP department has all kinds of strict rules about engaging with students. So fewer people that focus on it the btter.
u/mitchmoomoo wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The funniest part is that we are talking about people with 4-10 yoe.
It is laughable that anyone should care about what undergrad school you went to at that point.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's not laughable because the selection bias in those schools, it's a proxy signal.
It's not a sole decider and I'm sure they would take people from any school in reality, but it's easy to target people from those schools.
u/Failurentrepreneur wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yes but it was disclosed to the Mod, reasonably you cannot expect more. Any proof supplied could be faked that's the entire thing.
I've also been in tech for over a decade, everything in the screenshot isn't stuff that's surprising or shocking. Only point I didn't necessarily a
u/michaelnovatireplied·
+1 this, fake or not, these are legit and blunt guidelines tech use (which variations per company) and I was surprised by the reaction to this post. It's telling me that bootcamps are brainwashing people to believe in some alternate reality and makes me sad that bootcamps grades thought the industry might be different.
I think some people see this as very devastating to accept and they just want to believe in an alternate reality to have hope. I'm more realistic and I think you have to understand reality to navigate it, but there's always a way that there's a will, but you have to direct your energy in the right direction, directing it on false hope is a waste of time.
u/MathmoKiwi wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>so these things don't mean that people who don't meet these requirements are bad Engineers or worse engineers.
>some of the best Engineers I worked with came from not top tier schools and some were self-taught and had very interesting backgrounds and life experiences.
>the pro
u/michaelnovatireplied·
\+1 to this, on average thecost of false positive >> opportunity cost of mistaken false negative
u/Kingfrund85 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Having a bonus for diversity candidates isn’t discriminatory unless they are solely basing their hiring decisions on it.
For example; let’s say a company has the bandwidth to interview 20 candidates. It’s totally OK for a company or agency to actively seek out their desired rep
u/michaelnovatireplied·
There are a lot of gray areas and a lot of state and local conflicting laws around discrimination.
Some of these areas, like explicitly hiring decisions mentioned, have been battle tested in court more than others so if some negative behaviors have been firmly affirmed as illegal in the courts, companies will try harder to avoid those behaviors.
There are a lot of areas untested and if you feel discriminated against and want to push a company in an untested area. You have to be ready to go to the supreme court, to get what out of it.
Recruiting funnels tend to separate the hiring process (from application being received onwards) from the marketing process (sourcing and advertising for jobs).
If the marketing process has diversity goals, they might focus their advertising and outreach in certain communities in the hope that more people apply from those communities. But every application that hits the inbox is treated equally.
u/PLTR60 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Is there any way for us to know what company this was?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
The person who wrote it has come forward and hasn't said which company but posted here explaining: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/constructive-discussions-my-startup-software-engineer-ali-taghikhani-x2d7c/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/constructive-discussions-my-startup-software-engineer-ali-taghikhani-x2d7c/)
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Regard allegations of fake screenshots. OP sent more evidence confidentially. It's impossible to 100% prove an email is authentic over Reddit, but the evidence adds more credibility to the original post. I can't rule out an elaborate Reddit-fraud scheme, but as far as a coin toss
u/redditfov wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Interesting. I've always been told that your school name doesn't really matter much for simply finding enjoyable work in engineering, as it doesn't carry as much elitism as politics, or academia.
To me and many others, this idea is just foreign and seems like some fabricated
u/michaelnovatireplied·
School doesn't matter unless you went to a top 4, or top 10 CS school haha, but that's hundreds to maybe 1000 people a year and these people have recruiters lined up, rather than seeking advice on how to apply to jobs.
u/Basic-Expression-418 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I wanna be a systems librarian, so I’m majoring in CS, am going to minor in history (this is for my bachelor’s degree) and then get my masters in library science!
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Cool, I think we're going to see more and more people with tech-enhanced non-programming roles. Not sure what these will look like but we've always seen coding-adjacent activities (like Excel skills) change jobs and AI is going to take that to the next level with enabling people to leverage code in different ways to change their jobs.
u/BillRepresentative41 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So is the self-taught hackers day over? That’s how I started out back in the mid-90s. I knew some theory and was quick on the up take and by five years was a star performer and never had a problem finding a well paying job. I’m a life time learner and always enjoyed new challenge
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Definitely not over at all but no one can give those people advice on how to succeed in the industry. People can share examples, find mentors and role models, but you should see it all as motivation and not a direct path.
u/kengen16 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Just out of curiosity because I’m not in the coding world but I am curious. Whats the problem with bootcamps?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I'll try to do a quick summary but it's a more complex answer than just this.
Bootcamps at a high level are trying to compress programming education into a short period of time. For example 12 hours days for 6 days a week for 12 weeks.
The idea is that unlike a lot of industries, you can get into the coding industry with no credentials and just your brain, so if people can accelerate their education, they might be able to accelerate their careers as coders.
What happened though was that bootcamps started being judged (and judging themselves) by the jobs people got immediately after. Like X% of people got jobs averaging $Y salary in three months post graduation.
Bootcamps are super expensive given their short time, like $1000+ a week in many cases, so they would justify the cost by demonstrating that like 80% of graduates get jobs paying $100K within three months of graduating.
This worked when people got jobs! People started pushing the limits by exaggerating their resumes to get higher paying jobs, which jacked up the states, which attracted more people, and people were getting away with it.
But since 2023 the job market for entry level engineers has crashed and those outcome numbers have tanked. One of the top bootcamps that tries to still share information had a California 6 month placement rate go from 2021: 90% to 2022: 80%: to 2023: 42%, and the salaries went from about average $130K to $110K.
Because the bootcamps justified their fees and existences from those outcomes in good times, they were now feeling the pain because of those same outcomes in bad times.
Enrollment stopped, many shut down, many paused, and some are still trying to keep going and trying to spin the story more positively than it is.
u/NotYourDadOrYourMom wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
It's probably because the jobs already know the course the schools give and what they learn. Especially if they are only hiring from those schools.
Every college is different and their results in workers are the best from those lists. Plain and simple.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
At Meta it was all data actually... they looked at who the top performers were and which schools they went to and they went and recruited at those schools.
Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley were at the top of the list.
If bootcamp grads joined Meta and performed just as well, Meta would have targeted bootcamps too, but bootcamp grads didn't and still don't perform as well.
u/Azman4u wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What about a 2020 female grad with high honors in Industrial Design, CS minor and TA in CS, from Georgia Tech with CS work experience at NCR and Spotify? Got a job for her?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
This isn't my post, so I'm not sure! Or are you asking rhetorically?
u/sassysiggy wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is reads as pretty defeatist and might be a bit misleading. I went from surgical tech to IT by applying and doing working(paid) interviews. I have no college degree, in my first two years of IT I earned certifications and eventually moved to another company.
Where I work ha
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I can clarify that I'm speaking specifically for legit "SWE" roles (Software Engineer) titles and not speaking about any other jobs in IT or adjacent, including cybersecurity and others. I'm not saying they are or aren't the same and I just have no comment on those areas.
u/ausedteabag wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What are the top tier CS schools we're talking about?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It varies by company, at Meta they based their top school list off of the schools that top performing employees went to.
I'm sure it's changed but back then it was Stanford, MIT, Berkeley (specifically EECS), CMU, and then Harvard (a lot of early Meta people were Harvard), CalTech, University of Washington (after they expanded to Seattle but not early on) and Waterloo, Brown and Princeton.
They added UT Austin, UCLA, UCSD later.
I don't remember UIUC - it was in the mix but I don't remember when.
u/batmanineurope wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Where does WGU graduate fit?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
WGU isn't compared to these schools, it's like on par with Community College and, however, it's cheap, accessible, non-profit, and easy to get an accredited actual degree.
So it's both not a bad option but also not the golden ticket other.
u/captaindog wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I am a forester who knows nothing about coding…
Why is all that industry experience with big company’s a red flag? That’s exactly who I would look to hire to bring blue chip experience to my small outfit
u/michaelnovatireplied·
My understanding is these requirements were for a top tier startup and experience at certain "slow" big companies can create behaviors that don't do well at startups. There are always exceptions and this is quite the generalization but that's why they are on the list. At startups you have to deal with ambiguities daily.
u/Difficult_Bird969 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Except the diversity as a bonus is fucking illegal, but sure.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
There was a comment about the diversity angle and it's more complicated than that.
Hiring laws vary across states and even local cities, and everything is illegal somewhere.
So a lot rests on what has been tested in courts and is 'consistently' illegal, like making explicit hiring decisions based on protected classes.
What a lot of companies do is separate sourcing from hiring. Sourcing gets applications, but every application gets looked at "legally" by hiring without asking where it came from.
Sourcing people from different areas can still be illegal but it's less of a tested area.
Like if a recruiter sponsors a job post in a bunch of diverse community groups, and doesn't pay to sponsor it equally in all groups representing all people, is that illegal?
These instructions could just mean, all things equal (i.e. as a "bonus"), put your dollars into places that might have more diverse talent.
u/gimmethatcookie wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What do you mean by 4+ years of experience = impossible? Sorry didn’t understand that
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Hi, I mean that if you want to change your career now, and are planning on spending 3 months preparing, 3 months at a bootcamp and 6 months finding a job, you can't create 4 years of experience from scratch.
Basically that this requirement almost immediately shuts off career changers from being considered for these kinds of top tech jobs.
u/TheGreenMan13 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I never can figure out the need to have people who went to specific schools after they've been in the work force for a few years. Just look at their work performance. You can't tell me that 4-10 years of work experience isn't going to tell you more than what school the person wen
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's because after 4 years of work experience, people who went to these schools tend to perform better at a lot of these top tech companies. It could be like promoting like, but that's where it lands at the FAANG-type companies.
u/goatee_ wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
call me a doomer, but the first thing came to my mind after reading this is software engineering might be the next investment banking of career choices. I went to college for CS and have decent work experience but after my current job I will try to pivot to a different career ngl
u/michaelnovatireplied·
You know the adage, in a gold rush, people only get rich selling shovels. In this industry, bootcamps were actually selling shovels during the gold rush but they thought they were King Midas minting gold everywhere.
u/AliMcGraw wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Big Tech's own internal recruitment science teams tell them that hiring from Stanford is affinity bias and ends up with worse engineers than looking for qualified people from other universities and having valid qualifications screening instead of "hey buddy, did you go to Stanfor
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Well one thing for sure is that big tech will rationally invest exactly where it gets most talent that delivers performance, so whatever the reasons are and regardless if they are at a local maximum and not a global one, they prefer a Stanford grad over a bootcamp grad.
I think big tech is actually super open minded to new sources. They supported bootcamps briefly and it didn't work out.
They search far and wide - tiny little Olin College is a GREAT SOURCE of PMs!
But if they knew of talent that would boost overall company performance, they would go there, anything else is a possibility of achieving a higher maximum but not proven.
u/Difficult_Bird969 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you think you’d make the same comment if it said “bonus for white male applicants”? Or that anyone here would give it a pass if it said that?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
If it said bonus points for white males it wouldn't change the analysis to me. I'm making legal arguments, not moral ones and I'm not saying anything about how I personally feel about this one side or the other.
u/DayNormal8069 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Eh, bootcamps used to be great. Now they don't work - market isn't hot + regulation caught up with them. But with minimal prev coding experience, bootcamps got me, my husband, my sister, and my brother-in-law six figure jobs over the last 10 years. It was a great gamble for hardw
u/michaelnovatireplied·
You were sold a shovel during the gold rush and you found gold. If people didn't find gold during the gold rush then the gold rush wouldn't have happened.
Whoever went first in your family probably did an excellent job explaining it to the next person, and they entered with the right mindset. They showed everyone where the gold is and y'all went for it!
However, for countless other "gold-seekers", the story was much harsher. Many arrived on ships after a months-long journey risking their lives. Some facing extra discrimination and language barriers. These newcomers often had no local networks and no reliable guidance. Many had to pay high fees or faced outright exploitation from unscrupulous "claim jumpers" or camp owners. Disease, violence, physical overworking... a significant number died, gave up, or returned home with nothing.
It's not that they didn't try!
None of that diminishes your story. Your story is celebratory for you and your family because it worked for you and changed your life.
u/Sambensim wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
If I’ve been to a boot camp in addition to uni I should take it off my resume?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
If you have a STEM degree, I would take it off yeah.
u/Soccerlover121 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What would be the purpose of lying about this to people on Reddit? Karma farming?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Why do people lie?
1. Astroturfing: scheming to create ground up-appearing support for a product/service/cause but using a number of fake accounts posting all over the place and creating fake conversations to make something appear a way that it isn't.
2. Karma farming: accumulating karma to build credibility in your account and then using that credibility for something self serving or nefarious later on
I'm a moderator of the sub and we see a lot of #1 here and it's a problem.
u/No_Tumbleweed1877 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>Whether you like the criteria or not and whether it's gatekeeping or not, this is what everyone who has significant experience is telling you and I'm yelling loudly over and over **top tier CS schools are the primary path to early career jobs right now!!**
Everyone except me, I
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Primary path, as in the vast majority of new Software Engineers come from CS degrees and the most reliable and battle tested path is going to a top tier CS school.
There are other paths.
u/Shuriin wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you have a source for that claim?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah good question and I love you are asking for sourcing I push on sourcing a lot on Reddit :D.
It's me summarizing a bunch of high level studies over the years, but I think the biggest flaw is that the growth and leadership might be also related to them getting top tier positions earlier in their careers.
It's generally found in studies that Stanford and MIT grads start off higher and grow faster in salary etc...
In terms of this conversation specifically, I'm basing it off of who Meta recruited from and their rationale at the time. I would ease up on the "performing better" because it was really based on who was "still there" and the histogram of schools they came from and to survive there you had to perform well. This was back in 2009 to 2012 era and it might not be true today anymore. I'm aware that Stanford remains a top demand school with dedicated recruiters, events, wining and dining students, so I presume it's still a good top source of talent.
But the complexity is also a good reminder to qualify statements more because my statement is very broad.
u/fngbuildingapc wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
what are "top cs schools"? I dont see michigan on this persons list
u/michaelnovatireplied·
the top four are generally regarded: Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and CMU
after that it becomes more subjective and complicated because some schools have very strong COMPUTER SCIENCE but weaker engineering overall and others have excellent (but a little worse) COMPUTER SCIENCE but VERY STRONG ENGINEERING.
The Ivy Leagues tend to have good theoretical CS from their Math roots.
The large premier state schools tend to have more robust engineering UMich, UIUC, UT Austin, GA Tech
Elite tiny tiny schools come into play too: CalTech, Olin College.
So it's complex and I can't say.
Each company tends to find their people their own way and they land on the same 4 and the next are a venn diagram.
u/BayleeBaylee4578 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So in short, no, he does not have a source for that
u/michaelnovatireplied·
This was my source as I've been making the argument over the years but yeah it's getting old haha and I should redo my research to get newer ones.
[https://www.slate.com/blogs/business\_insider/2015/04/02/stanford\_graduates\_get\_fought\_over\_by\_tech\_companies\_like\_snapchat\_and\_have.html](https://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2015/04/02/stanford_graduates_get_fought_over_by_tech_companies_like_snapchat_and_have.html)
u/Arrogancy wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I mean, if you can actually do the work, like if you can do really hard technical stuff, I'll hire you. But it is true that very few bootcamp grads can actually do that. I don't know that I've ever encountered one who was able to pass our first screen.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
And this is he problem. Bootcamp's have been pushing people to put lipstick on a pig instead of actually preparing people better.
There's a bootcamp called Codesmith that previously had pretty good outcomes and most of their grads learn how to fake their experience. They are told their 3-4 week projects are equivalent of 4 months of experience for background checks (that their employee says they sign off on).
I reviewed these projects on GitHub and they were so full of noob problems that I flagged this and called them out on it.
Their response: double down and make no changes.
Good intentions but even the best bootcamps are failing people right now.
And Codesmith costs $22,500 for 14 weeks.
u/TShara_Q wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Having taken classes at a top university and a middle-tier (but of course accredited) university, the content really isn't that different. It's really stupid to restrict applicants to just the "top schools."
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Once school requires this background going in: 1530 SAT score, leadership roles in national-level clubs, impactful research experience, and significant community service accomplishments.
The other this: 1210 SAT score, participation in school-level extracurricular activities such as sports or student government, and moderate academic recognition or local volunteer experience
There are lots of biases and problems with this, but for better or worse the typical Stanford student has a strong background that then gets nurtured over 4 years, further emphasizing those gaps.
If you have the Stanford background and go to to the mid tier school, you'll have a bit harder time getting interviews but I'm sure you'll do very well in your career.
u/TShara_Q wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I mean, sure, but SAT scores don't even matter for jobs. Also, who the hell even has the opportunity to do research experience in high school? I was lucky enough to be part of a project in undergrad, but even that is pretty rare.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah that's where biases come in because who the heck does that. I grew up in Canada and got into the hardest program in the entire country and had no chance of competing.
Then I met all these MIT CMU and Stanford students at Meta and they had more raw smarts than me. They worked just as a hard.
My views changed.
I was forced to find my strengths quickly and go all on them
But imagine if I went to Stanford and confronted that problem 4 years earlier and then spent 4 years under crazy pressure to squeeze out my strengths amongst legends.
I think about all of this a lot and I know enough that there isn't a simple answer or solution or Reddit comment to address it all. It's complicated.
u/CaitlinHenson1985 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
My brother is a developing advocate. Literally one of the best in the world. He goes around the world and does conferences on programming. He speaks 6 or 7 languages. Has 9 or 10 books (I have a few but don't understand them) and a few books on tape. He makes insane amounts of m
u/michaelnovatireplied·
The best people I know had "non traditional backgrounds" but if you are recruiting at scale, you have to follow the data and it's really COSTLY to find those people.
Instead they focus on reducing false positives and don't care about the opportunity cost of missing false negatives.
u/ctjack wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Would the top schools be still good for career changers?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
They can be but more complicated:
1. I highly doubt another 4 year undergrad makes sense. Maybe if you are still young and not attached to anything in life. OR if you are semi retired.
2. A Master's degree CAN POSSIBLY be good, but it has to be a full time "real" masters. A lot of schools have pay for play Masters programs or 3rd party continuing education programs that don't count. These are super hard to get into as well and the acceptance bar is part of the reason why they have that reputation.
TLDR: If it's too easy to get into then it won't count for much.
u/crimsonslaya wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sounds like a bunch of bs to me
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's real, the creator of the doc came forward and explained the doc and contacted me.
And yes, top tier startups have higher bars than FAANG!
My Meta friends are legends so they skip these processes. They are the S tier.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yes S tier, 8 figure engineers. You know nothing Jon Snow.
u/crimsonslaya wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The 8 figure engineers at Meta make up what, .1% of its engineering headcount? And yes, I do know something since I work for FAANG. 🤡🤡🤡
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Well with that attitude I don't think you'll last too long.
u/FrozenFirebat wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
4+ years of experience and they still care about what you did in school? I taught myself and was lucky enough to land a job. But after working for 5 years there, nobody since then has ever asked why I didn't have any schooling listed on my resume.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It matters less and less the more work you do but the credentialism transfers to the companies you worked at and you get judged more for those names and career trajectories there.
u/FUnisbaCK wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Sorry for the dumb question but this is so not my field: what is a "boot camp?" (Or, what is a boot camp grad?)
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Someone who generally didn't go to college in computer science who instead wants to do a 12 week super intense programming course to break into the industry and get the same job they would have gotten with years of school.
It sounds crazy but for thousands of people it has worked so if it's interesting to you would research more.
With this kind of get rich quick nature you can imagine all the scams that popped up and controversies that came with all of this.
u/Recent_Collar8518 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Can’t good interview questions identify the diamonds in the rough? Should companies start hiring term/temp employees and make an offer to those who prove themselves?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
They can reasonably well yeah. They do prioritize false positives but they should find all qualified candidates (and exceptional ones)
The problem is sourcing.
For every diamond in the rough there are people who look like they could be who are just quartz.
You can have to interview way more people and that is insanely costly in engineer time it doesn't work, especially if the hiring rate ends up lower = more interviews needed.
The practicalities and logistics are the reason why things are the way they are.
In a world where there were more efficient ways to pull the right diamonds out for the right companies, I think the companies would jump on more diverse candidates backgrounds.
u/Suspicious_Past_13 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Question: what would a trickster gain by making this post? Like what fraud is being done to gain anything beyond fake internet points?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Our sub has a lot of astroturfing so I have to be careful and not make any assumptions or conclusions when evaluating things. I'm human, but the best I can.
u/Ok_Comfort_5491 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is honestly kinda fucked, you don't have to be an ivy leaguer with rich parents to be good at coding. Like that's straight up just not an option for 90% of people
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I agree with you and if everyone who was destined to be a great coder had an easier shot, the world would be better.
But the gatekeeping isn't elitism or power grabbing, it's just practical and rational based on the data... and that means biases and problems in the system aren't dealt with.
u/Calm-Medicine-3992 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
No 'job hoppers' is the painful one for me. I don't think I've managed to stay at a job longer than 2 years but I only left one for a pay raise. The rest were either short term contracts or random layoffs around the 2 year mark.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah it was a big signal, they wanted to see:
1. career progression at the same job
2. spending enough time somewhere to see more and else more specialization
It's not the end of the world but just a weakness on your resume you have to acknowledge and then work on. Play to your strengths and try to work around your weaknesses.
It's way better than getting rejected from 300 jobs and not knowing why and feeling like the world is against you like you see on Reddit a lot haha.
u/Ok_Comfort_5491 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I think there's something to be said for a companies unwillingness to invest in people. I mean essentially it seems like they all want perfect 10s with no risk involved, but I just think it's kind of insane to not be willing to train someone up to the level you want.
I'm still i
u/michaelnovatireplied·
If you are still in college my sole advice is to do internships. Those are the stepping stones to skip these fill time hiring requirements.
u/BurnsyMaan wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I would also say really depends on the company. Where I work, we take bootcamp grads all the time. We even partnered with a few boot camps to be feeder programs into our company. We still will obviously take college grads. But we have a rotation program we put the boot campers in
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads.
It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad.
The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system.
Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they would have been in the boot camp bucket with the others and I don't know why they so adamantly want their graduates to follow that path.
u/HelloThisIsDog666 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Curious question - don't you have to job hop to move up in your career usually?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I'm getting older now but back when I started out the best people stayed at one company and got promoted every year and accelerated their career that way and the companies supported this because they were trying to keep the best talent rather than lose it to other companies if the people job hopped.
so at the end of the day the best people were prevented from job hopping through rapid promotions, compensation adjustments, and discretionary equity.
u/Debate-Jealous wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
We have to ban idiots like you that fear monger during a bad market to sell there service. Let’s say that 95% of Stanford grads and 3/100 community college grads get into a fight and …. You’re talking in hypotheticals with no data to back up what you’re saying. The simple explana
u/michaelnovatireplied·
What am I selling exactly as a solution to this problem?
This is a coding bootcamp subreddit and I'm a moderator who is trying to be a good moderator here.
u/Debate-Jealous wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Don’t go to a boot camp!!! Buy my $2500 month leetcode prep instead!!!!??!!!!! 😂😂😂😂
u/michaelnovatireplied·
wtf, we only take people with 2+ years of SWE work experience. Those people aren't going to bootcamps.
u/BayleeBaylee4578 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The greatest astroturfing I've ever seen is someone becoming the MOD of a sub on an industry they want (and would benefit from) being ruined, regularly talking bad about that industry, then taking their "work hat off" and putting their "personal hat on" to casually talk (read:pro
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
How do we benefit from the bootcamp industry being ruined exactly?
I've told you time and time again that people on LinkedIn are a small edge case group of people about formation and you have zero idea and it's completely confidential who actually goes there so it is impossible for you to know the demographic better than I do.
so unless you think I'm blatantly lying to you in public then I'm not too sure what the argument is that you're making.
u/IllImpress2578 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
question for you, i’m a bootcamp grad that now has four years of experience working at a startup that got bought out by a larger company and has worked my way up to a SWE III title (one step below senior in my company). Is it better for me to just leave the bootcamp off my resume
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I would probably leave it off at this point. I don't think it's going to help you at all and it's not going to hurt to be missing.
having 4 years at one company and now being able to get some different big company perspective. sounds like a pretty good experience you want to highlight on your resume and put that front and center.
u/Other-Tangerine-8531 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Is UDub Seattle ok or nah
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's in the top 10 but not top 4, so it's a top school at some companies and not others.
But overall - yes. Great school for CS, beautiful CS building with lots of amazing CS professors doing great research with Microsoft and others.
UW grads generally get recruited heavily by Microsoft, Amazon and Meta in the Seattle area.
Bias: I was going to do my PhD there and dropped out to stay at Facebook :P
u/BayleeBaylee4578 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is simply a lie. It took me a few minutes of researching Formation grads, to find one from a recent cohort that had a few months as an intern before Formation, and now has a very minor SWE role at a place called Handshake. Stop lying.
REPOSTED AS THIS MOD REPEATEDLY DELETES
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
We have people who have been with us for a long time and our bar used to be any SWE work experience in 2019 to 2022, then was 1+ year 2023 -> and then 2+ years in 2024.
I was replying to a comment about the current state of Formation that someone was criticizing.
There can be edge case people people from a long time ago that place that have less experience and we also have a handful of people we accept now with less than 2+ years of experience.
You're right I shouldn't say "only take". We only market to and and only consider people with 2+ years since 2024 and reject others, and we have exceptions and edge case for one off reasons who come back and make a case or explain their circumstances on a call.
We also have partnerships with Netflix and Waymo where we prepare interns for their corresponding interviews. And those people are not paying $2500 a month, are not paying anything, and are in special adapted program for those people. All of those people might also get jobs at other companies.
I don't see any placement in the Fellowship ever at Handshake or anyone that has interviewed there recently.
I've said this 5 - 6 times from my count in the history, but LinkedIn does not give any kind of picture whatsoever into what Formation does or is and you seem to be getting frustrated that it doesn't make sense without trying to incorporate what I'm saying into the model with good faith.
Your account has 95% of comments automatically removed by Reddit and was flagged for having alt accounts posting the same content - your content is indeed under scrutiny .
u/Itoigawa_ wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Primary path to early career jobs.
But the kicker is they also require 10+ years of experience. To be honest, at that point the Uni doesn’t matter anymore
u/michaelnovatireplied·
This is a good thing to mention too. This job doesn't seem early career, it's more mid career. Super entry level jobs that bootcamp grads go to directly are a little different analysis than bootcamps going for a mid career job 4 years later.
u/BayleeBaylee4578 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How am I objectively wrong about them?
They were a teaching assistant before Formation for just 6 months.
Then, and this is where it gets tricky on their LI, they joined Formation in May 23. They stayed at Formation for 5 months. During this five months they did a 3 month inter
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
1. This person was not in Formation, they did a different program , a Netflix program. They have a certificate from Netflix, signed by Netflix, showing this on their profile.
2. We don't hire Fellows as Teaching Assistants, we don't have Teaching Assistants at Formation and we don't have classes or lectures or courses or anything. Fellows is the name of engineers we work with to level up. It's a vague and ambiguous word so I understand the misunderstanding, but you also should be trying understand our language that we use consistently because this is a word that doesn't mean job universally and in our industry it's the standard word for our customer that places like Pathrise use as well. Like if you visit another country and insist on speaking English and being upset people don't understand you... it's your job to understand.
3. The industry standard is for students to put "pathways" programs under experience, like Meta U, Google Scholars, etc... We don't give any advice on where to put it or how and I don't know if Netflix does, but I don't think listing it under experience makes it appear as work experience.
4. The Netflix Pathways program has Netflix support until a certain time (August/September) and then we continue offering extended support until December of the year - as people go back to school, it's up to them how much more they want to do to wrap up. So people could have end dates anywhere from August to December.
So the thing you are objectively wrong about is that this person did "Formation" they did a Netflix program implemented by Formation and you are going around making wild accusations about me lying about Formation Fellows. I'm not saying you are lying with bad intention at all, I'm just saying that you were incorrectly attributing this.
There are many pros and cons to Formation and many aspects we do well, many we want to improve, but the representation of people LinkedIn is not one of those problems.
We had 5 placements in the past few weeks at Google, Amazon, Meta, Stripe, and these were people with us for about 2 years or so each, which is insanely long and kind of crazy. But they got amazing jobs they are happy with, they were working during this time or did contract jobs, and like they all seem to value their time.
We have people with us for 1-2 years that are stuck and frustrated and have a completely different type of support needed, and different experience.
We don't have secrets to hide, we're not lying about anything, we don't have a Reddit Marketing campaign to manipulate people.
Like you've consistently been applying in your messages, bootcamp-like/Codesmith-like/CIRR-like concepts to us to make us fit YOUR mold of us, and I'm not going to defend Formation saying that we explain everything amazingly clearly either - we try but I don't think we explain things well and it takes a lot of back and forth to explain what Formation is to prospective Fellows.
By asking questions to understand hopefully we can also improve how we explain things. All I want is for you to understand better what we actually do and figure out how to explain it, so that we can in turn explain better to others.
u/TOGUDV wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
u/michaelnovati do you got the proof?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Yeah the actual original creator of the doc came out, claimed ownership, and explained too.
u/DayNormal8069 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I went first. I am a woman. My husband never finished college. None of us have STEM backgrounds.
The “way” was called hard work and choosing a bootcamp with good placement rates.
The privilege was the money to pay when loans were not possible.
No argument it was a gold rush b
u/michaelnovatireplied·
You sound like a smart and hard working person who did it right. But there are people worked hard and cobbled together a job, only to get laid off 2 years later and be lost in what to do, unable to compete with FAANG layoffs and having a really hard time.
I can't speak to how many gold finders are in each of the two buckets I hope most would be in the success bucket, but it's certainly not an edge case to end up in the other.
Winning the lottery is one thing, keeping your winnings is another.
I don't know how many 4 year success story videos and posts I read that involve someone being laid off, and while they bounced back and made it, it's not just like you get the gold and game over!
u/Present-Rain3393 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I have 5 years of experience as a web dev, but in the public sector, and I graduated from a third-tier state university, BUT had a 4.0 GPA. I pretty much assume that I have zero chance to get another job in the field and that I need to change careers if I want another job (again)
u/michaelnovatireplied·
If you have 5 years at one company and had 1+ promotions, then I think you'll be completely fine.
The "limitations" you have are that you haven't been around a culture of the "DS&A", system design interviews, probably haven't conducted them yourself at the FAANG bar, etc...
If you can get to that bar then all you have to do is land an interview and I see people with 5 years of SWE experience landing interviews very easily right now. 2 to 5 years is sufficient, but not as easy. Under 2 years is tough.
This post just has these requirements because they want the recruiter to bring in people likely to pass the interview process and these traits tend to have more people that pass.
I would be you you can get big tech interviews if your 5 years is legit SWE work.
u/Present-Rain3393 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thanks. My team is small with no room for promotion and none of my superiors leaving, so I haven't had a promotion. I'm the most junior member of the team amazingly
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Ah ok, if you've at least increased the scope of work in some way that would could more too if you can communicate that on your resume clearly, and help land interviews.
Working remotely from Canada usually works but Canada is under a lot of stress right now with the tariffs and no idea where the job market will be in a year.
u/GT_new_CS wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Why is Georgia Tech not in the Top CS program? I thought it was a Top 5 CS program.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I would say it's top 10 to 20 and depends on the company where they consider it. some companies consider hire and put it in their rotation and some don't.
it is indeed a very good program, but it's also very large. So for a company to commit to recruiting from there, they're going to have to put a lot of resources into it.
UIUC is a bit similar.
It's a lot easier for the companies to send one recruiter to a really small prestigious highly ranged program who just gets to know the students and wines and dines them, than it is to send like two to three recruiters and two to three Engineers to Georgia Tech to spend a few days combing through hundreds and hundreds of resumes and trying to find the best 10 people.
this is probably TMI at this point haha
u/Working-Agent-3715 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
guys is ucla cs considered good enough to be part of the conversation?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It's in the second bucket, some companies consider it "good enough" for that top tier and other's dont but it's not universal.
u/whathaveicontinued wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thank you so much. Very encouraging to hear this as other EE's are saying I'm crazy to make the jump. I'm planning to spend the next 6-12 months learning relevant langauges in my area (python, C#, C++) some SQL, git and some other things along the way. Going to aim to put up some
u/michaelnovatireplied·
EE is an easier transition but don't plan 6 to 12 months of your life based off a random thing one person says on Reddit.