CourseReport is a scam in my opinion

CourseReport is a scam in my opinion I've pointed out a number of issues to Course Report: 1. They made a AI/ML course at a bootcamp a "Best of AI/ML" award when there are zero reviews of that program on their platform - the program is offered by a paid partner of Course Report and in the award announcement they say that this partnership has nothing to do with the list. 2. Interview with a "student" of a program who happens to also be the "Lead Instructor" of the exact same program he was interviewed as a student of. 3. Paid staff members writing reviews without disclosing, being called out, and Course Report not removing the post. 4. Reviewer lying - saying they had zero experience and the bootcamp helped them change industries, when the person's LinkedIn said they had 3 years of SWE experience prior to the bootcamp. 5. People getting giftcards to write reviews without disclosing 6. Not disclosing how much money they get from each bootcamp they refer you to, e.g. This bootcamp pays us like $1500 per person who joins, instead of fine print that says 'some bootcamps may or may not pay us but that doesn't impact our recommendations' I think the people have good intentions there but they don't realize their own biases and aren't looking out for the student as #1, they are looking out for themselves to protect their own business - which relies on bootcamps being successful.

oh yeah don't get me started on the patterns. I reported suspicious date patterns and also didn't care about that. Codesmith gave people giftcards and they got like 20 reviews in a month and then nothing for months and months and months, then out of no where 3 reviews on the same day. Like WTF they are clearly asking people to write reviews. Which on it's own isn't the worst thing in the world, but Course Report doesn't acknowledge that people are gaming the system and defends themselves. Feedback for anyone reading this - if you get critical feedback from a competent industry leader and the feedback is delivered in a way that makes you defensive - accepted the feedback and give that person feedback on how you feel. By defending a bad product you are going to kill your product.

Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took. Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards. It's just a pile of garbage.

This falls into the Codesmith bucket to me. People with good intentions trying to do a good thing who don't have the experience to do it well. The two people that pick their best bootcamp awards stated there is "subjectivity" in choosing them but that it's based on the Course Report reviews and other sources of info. Since these two people ALSO do partnership pieces (blogs and videos) and work directly with partners, that's super bias in the "subjective" piece of the pie. I asked them why they don't have a 3rd party contractor review Course Report data and determine the list and got no response. I'm sure they THINK they are choosing it without bias, but they have insane bias. The result is they add programs with 0 reviews that don't meet the qualifications but they hear about. It's like lobbying in politics. The cash cow programs like Codesmith that charge $22,500 to be educated primarily by people who graduated less than a year from Codesmith and don't have industry experience put that money to schmoozing the Course Report people in hopes they get picked for an award without any reviews and without qualifying.

I want to be Best Reddit Bootcamp Critic of 2025. Can you connect me with who to talk to?

Wow amazing, I won. Wait is that a Triple Ten referral code scam on there... gosh darn it.