LinkedIn Post - Bootcamps vs. CS Degrees

Some people get upset because they did the wrong degree, want to become a SWE and want a path and it's demoralizing to realize there statistically isn't a good path right now. If they accept that, they have to accept that they might have made a mistake with their college choice that can't be fixed by bootcamps that have such strong marketing to make them feel like they can. To those people, my advice: 1. Edge cases happen, you could be one of them but statistically it's not likely you are. Do a lot of deep soul searching, and be extremely skeptical about bootcamps, take your time, etc... 2. Be honest with yourself why you want to switch. If it's not because you were meant to live breathe and sleep code, then look for other tech-adjacent options and don't fall into the lure of a better life. 3. Consider a masters degree or post-bacc to bridge the schooling 4. Consider combining coding with your current career to be more-tech-focused/engineering-focused at the current job instead of switching actual careers.

It's the exception, not because it doesn't have troubles from the market too but because they are marketing themselves as the "slow path" to becoming a Software Engineer. More people will try and few will succeed but they won't be mislead or burned with it. Now because of this philosophy it hyper optimizes for people making it through Capstone that are actually good fits and they actually get jobs, but it's relatively small compared to typical bootcamps. But the fact that they have a 70% six month placement rate (accounting for every student, down from 100%) that is quite high when somewhere like Codesmith has a 40% six month placement rate (when including ghosters based on LinkedIn) shows why this slow and stead approach works. Financially though it works because Launch School is small and founder run. Their founder teaches and helps people. Codesmith has a bunch of directors and managers that cost money, they have ads that cost money, highly polished videos that cost money. So they need people in the seats. I was informed by someone that one or more staff are upset at Codesmith reducing the number of steps to get accepted and perceiving it as lower the bar due to lower admissions and enrollment tanking. This is the kind of thing the new CEO is doing with a product and business had on as a business vice president, that Launch School will never do because it's just the founder. It might save Codesmith the company, but they might be unintentionally selling their reputation with it, especially given the tanking placement rates. Rithm School was similar to Launch School in all those ways and the founders just called it quits and moved on to Anthropic leading education there. Codesmith has burned so much reputation I don't see any company like Anthropic hiring their leaders away anymore.

I'll try to summarize haha: 1. I used to be on them like anything else, pros and cons, and I recommended people go there with Rithm and Launch School. I was very consistently hard on three things: \- marketing mid level and senior placements for people with zero experience (which I felt was wrong) \- marketing their OSP projects as 'equivalent of months of full time SWE work' when they were full of junior problems and most people worked on them for 3-4 weeks \- their instructors all went to codesmith itself and were promoted up the tree in a pyramid shape so they don't have SWE experience 2. Codesmith didn't see things the same way and framed me as a villain - which I completely ignored and kept doing my thing as a public service to offer my opinions through my lens 3. Throughout that time, former staff, current staff, students, etc... have proactively contacted me and told me about things that were concerning. I flagged these but kept my recommendation overall. 4. As the market has died down, all of those concerns flared up and went from pros and cons, to like major major red flags with very few pros. Things went off the rails and they doubled down on those problematic things instead of fixing them and around February 2024 they had massive layoffs, downsizing, and STILL doubled down. I officially paused my recommendation to see how they play out. 5. Finally in the middle of last year, they didn't make enough changes so I removed my recommendation. Around then, they paid this guy in Kenya on Upwork (which they sent me their own evidence confirming this) to 'post' on Reddit. This same account posted lies about me and then tried to get permanently banned, and also raised suspicion that a ton of Codesmith activity was fake, and possibly that the founder of their subreddit is fake (which is not confirmed). I basically flipped a table then and was enraged by that. I asked them to apologize and they declined because 'everyone involved with that is not at Codesmith anymore' and they don't know how or why it happened. So I basically think it's a garbage company full of people with no integrity who can't take feedback and refuse to correct lies they told their community of 20,000 people about me that they did not have evidence for - which is the definition of libel. Any questions about it? :D