Latest SWE salary & hiring data is live: A clearer picture in a tougher tech market

I've been told this is "sketchy" but you can you get lists of students from GitHub OSLabs projects as everyone heavily markets themselves in those projects.

The biggest reading between the lines problem - which they also directly confront but the consequences re less clear - is that in 2022 - like a good 60% of people got jobs in 180 days AND reported salaries to Codesmith, whereas in 2023 - it's like 25% of people who got jobs in 180 days AND reported salaries. So like imagine having a room full of 800 people and in 2022 you look around and people more likely than not had a job and was still in contact with everyone. In 2023 that number is like tanked. So one level past the raw placement number is this concerning sign of disengagement, mass staff turnover, etc... I think Codesmith is trying to navigate that and we'll see where they end up but I do think they need (and are) making a lot of changes and these 2023 results are not an affirmation that everything is working and it's JUST the market.

To me the discussion isn't so much what the norm is but is it work the cost for a random person looking at a bootcamp. And if it's now taken 6 months longer to get a job, that is an insanely critical piece of information to factor into a decision to drop $20K on a bootcamp. Maybe it means it's not the end of the bootcamp model itself, but it might be the financial end if no one wants to pay to go anymore.

Carlos received a Senior Analyst Role, which corresponds to high entry level/low mid level at top tier companies compensation and scope-wise. "Senior Software Engineer" at Capital One is a different level and corresponds to Prinicipal Associate that he was promoted to. I know at least one Codesmith grad who got a Senior Software Engineer role but he lied on his resume to show 4 years of work experience to get the job. Similarly Carlos in that blog says he had zero experience yet his LinkedIn showed a large amount of experience, I think as a freelancer or something last I checked.

"Senior Software Engineer" at Cap1 === "Principal Analyst", they are the same level, which is what he was promoted into. You need to have 4 years of experience to be senior at Cap1, and I personally have seen the resume of a grad that a Codesmith career services engineer helped him fake to show 4 years and be qualified for that role as he was not going to be considered without a resume showing that.

"🚫 OSPs (Open source projects) were **not include**d in employed-in-field stats, even if some of our grads had them featured as experience on their LinkedIn profiles. " u/annie-ama \- doesn't that mean you reviewed all of the grads regularly who both placed and didn't place as well to see if they were placed and should be aware of this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/) I did the exact same analysis early to mid 2023 graduates in that report and that's what I observed. I know you all are still working on this problem so I'm not going to be too hard on it but I've been hard on it for years now because my point the whole time was you can't have it both ways - i.e. you can't claim to not know about this problem while also stating that you regularly review grad's LinkedIns and see how they represent themselves. i.e. Like you can claim not to know about this and then not include the 25%+ of placements verified using LinkedIn. Or you can claim you had 50% placement by verifying LinkedIns but you are aware of how people represent themselves.

Yeah all of your comments are being flagged by Reddit for various reasons so I've been overriding when I see it.

I couldn't disagree more and this comment demonstrates a lack of understanding of how top tech companies work. Maybe it's how other companies work though. Like I know Capital One, which isn't like a top tech company but is a good company, has a very gamble process. Codesmith has so many people there that feed each other questions to prepare and game the process, specifically the System Design round which is very fact based and a small number of questions there. Codsmith grads have a document that contains these questions and they practice them with previous grads who work there. They also have a channel at Capital One to support each other because most have to lie to get past the resume screen and work with more junior peers who outperform them at first, and they use this channel to support each other. Anyways, the interview process isn't a game of leetcode and saying what you need to do pass. The entire process at Meta (which I contributed to designing and trained interviewers for) was intended to evaluate your INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE and measure you against current engineers at Meta at various levels. So system design wasn't about faking an answer but it was about evaluating the systems YOU HAVE ALREADY WORKED ON AND HOW YOU APPLY IT TO A PROBLEM. New grads didn't do system design as a result because they had no experience to evaluate. Meta hardly hires any new grads directly because and hires interns instead who they evaluate for months and then convert to new grad offers. So by definition, anyone with no SWE experience should be able to pass the SD process and if they do they are basically lying in some capacity to work the system. At Meta specifically you'll either get fired eventually for not keeping up performance, or you will somehow work your ass off and are a special person who fills in the gaps in real time and gets lucky that they don't need all of that experience in whatever team they are matched to. Google looks more for raw intelligence for early career people, even at the mid level, but experience comes into play hard at the mid and senior. Amazon has the same philosophy as Meta but they have a more gamble system because they aggressively fire false positives. Nothing is perfect and people get through the cracks, but this is the intention of these processes and they have performance review processes in place to catch people who make it through for the wrong reasons. If you squeeze through and perform well, you are an edge case that broke the system and won, and it's not attributed to Codesmith's systematic way of teaching or the community that helped them initially beat the interview process. So if you think Codesmith grads deserve to get jobs that require experience and are evaluating experience and they are so special they deserve to break the system and skip it, then you need to focus on changing the system and that starts with trying to understand deeply why it is the way it is from the people who CREATED THE SYSTEM. It's not gatekeeping and there are actual practical reasons! Those of us who created the system understand the flaws of the system too and you will get farther addressing those than supporting people faking it through and celebrating them.