Codesmith is down and they can't access their AWS because of incompetence. I've had enough of their claims to go from "zero to mid/level senior engineers" when they repeatedly demonstrate lack of engineering competence (this isn't the first incident)

Codesmith is down and they can't access their AWS because of incompetence. I've had enough of their claims to go from "zero to mid/level senior engineers" when they repeatedly demonstrate lack of engineering competence (this isn't the first incident) No excuses for this and it's the last straw for me. I've privately reported a number of engineering issues to their team, and they have continued to try to gaslight me that their team is "extremely talented" and other claims. I apologize that my tone and wording comes across direct but people need to wake up to this. I've had enough of bootcamps marketing themselves in ways that in my opinion mislead people to reality and I hope these situations show you what's going on if you don't see through the marketing words. https://preview.redd.it/l07ritvw3pdf1.png?width=1246&format=png&auto=webp&s=f944dff9e23eaca40bec9bb3b9ea50a8e630510b https://preview.redd.it/2wddqwrx3pdf1.png?width=1368&format=png&auto=webp&s=8355c311ea1252ed7f638c9368a25395cd0acba0

If you are going down, just blame everyone else on your way down! Their Founder needs a close friend or family member to give him a wake up call that these problems are HIS PROBLEMS for NOT KNOWING WHAT HE'S DOING, and it's not imposter syndrome, or gatekeeping or AWS's fault, etc... He needs to authentically own up to this stuff, or his company literally will implode, like it seems like it literally is.

Google wasn't down because the team has incompetent engineering practices. CIRR also has incompetent processes and deserves equal criticism. In my opinion Codesmith is full of liars and exaggerators. For god's sake the founding advisor's own sign had a LinkedIn and resume full of lies and exaggerations. I meant that this was the last straw about engineering practices because I had been privately telling them all kinds of problems for a while now and they keep telling me how great their engineers are.

It's a good question because I'm not normally like this and it hurts my personal reputation. I'm so so so so professionally upset at Codesmith's lack of integrity on the matters. Gaslighting me and the public when I criticize their competency. I'm personally upset because a person that they paid to post on Reddit (which they confirmed), coincidentally (which they deny being involved with) posted negative things about me and tried to get me banned. I'm not a happy camper here.

It's long but the TLDR is this person posted things in the mod escalation channels and was almost instantly suspended from Reddit because the person was using a network of fake accounts that Reddit has recently cleared out. It's very much possible this person was retaliating because after going after me Reddit discovered the network of accounts and removed most of them. So I genuinely saying that Codesmith claims they had nothing to do with this. But they hired someone who specializes in "reputation management" (which again, they confirmed) and are partially responsible for what that person does.

I'm restarting my comment: Formation is not a bootcamp or generally competing with Codesmith. Codesmith has marketing adds explaining what a for-loop is and assuring you that even if it's too confusing Codesmith is for you. You can't join Formation without industry work experience as a SWE. The closest overlap is the AI program because we're offering AI productivity courses soon and they offer AI leadership courses. But there is very little overlap. We are harmed if Codesmith declines because because 75%+ of Codesmith grads that join Formation like Formation a lot and it's a wonderfully complementary service. There's a difference between continuous demonstration of incompetent engineering practices, tons of security issues and such. I meant that this was the last straw about engineering practices because I had been privately telling them all kinds of problems for a while now and they keep telling me how great their engineers are. Don't justify shitty junior-level engineering because of bias, it is objectively shitty. Normalizing it is the grooming behavior Codesmith does with it's students to convince them their 3 week OSP is 4 months of experience equivalent. RE: CIRR, there's no excuse for a website to be down for days for a rebrand. ZERO. RE: 2024 outcomes were tanking from the past and half as good as their main competitor, Launch School. These are objective facts and I'm going after Codesmith because of their behavior lacking integrity. Not a single employee at Formation cares about Codesmith or how they do, on the record. If I ever mention it, no one knows what I'm talking about. Upvotes don't dictate the truth, facts do.

I'll give you the straight up facts on this if you are willing to accept them. I can prove every one of these statements. Formation has flaws and this isn't one of them. FORMATION: 1. A small fraction of Fellows at Formation put it on their LinkedIn. 2. No one says it's paid anywhere. Of the ones that do it's abundantly clear that it's a mentorship program for high performance and not a job. 3. We have not received a single request for a background check for anyone that I'm aware of in the past 5 years for anyone claiming they were employed by Formation. 3. The people who say 2-3+ years have genuinely been at Formation that time and actively participating. Maybe it's terrible they didn't get a job yet, but the timeframe is correct from what I'm aware of. CODESMITH: 1. In my [reporting end of 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/) 48 out of 52 recent placements put down their OSP projects under work experience. 2. It was for an average of 11 months, when they contributed on average 3-4 weeks to the GitHub reports for those projects. 3. Codesmith setup an entire charity to run their projects that pretends to be independent. Their director told me she is "on leave indefinitely" and Codesmith told her to keep her email address and stay on the website anyways (for appearances?). 4. I have a letter of reference from this charity for someone's background check saying they were involved there as a "software engineer" for 4 months. Another person told me he got a letter of reference for a background check for a year and he submitted bogus dates just to see if they checked. I have evidence of 2 other people who were freaking out because they needed W2s and employement verification for their OSP projects and didn't know what to do because they didn't really work there. In one case, it was reported to me that Codesmith staff acknowledged the post and the person seems to be hired. 5. The former/on leave director of OSLabs claims to know nothing about the letters and said that Codesmith manages it all. FORMATION VS CODESMITH: 1. Formation has nothing to do with Codesmith and has worked with dozens of Codesmith grads later in their careers. Some unsuccessfully, many **very** successfully. I would love nothing more than to woo over Codesmith grads to come to Formation and all my commentary burns bridges with them honestly. 2. Formation isn't better or worse. Formation has it's own problems. For example, because of our dynamic mentorship and scheduling, we have about 10% of sessions get rescheduled or cancelled whereas a 'formal course' would have minimal. Pros and cons and we think the benefits outweigh, but it's a negative thing about Formation. 3. Formation is a tech company. We have built out entire systems that get better and better. This is why dozens of people have paid to come back to Formation a second and third time. Like 5 people this week are people who are coming back and paying again and a couple noted how much has changed since last time.

The official on the record answer - we used the word Fellow because our industry doesn't have many competitors: Interview Kickstart and Pathrise. Pathris used the word Fellows so we copied them and used the word Fellow. So that our customers could compare the two familiarly. I'm not trying to gaslight you but I Googled Fellow and this is the dictionary definition it presented and not any of them say anything about being paid. The definition for "Fellowship" has two meanings, none of them saying anything about being paid either (I can only attached one screenshot, but pasted:) 1. friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests."they valued fun and good fellowship as the cement of the community" 2. the status of a fellow of a college or society."she held the Faulkner fellowship" Formation is not affiliated with education/schools/universities and no where in our marketing or materials in anyway does it say that whatsoever and there is no chance a reasonable person would think we are a university offering paid Fellowships. I could see rare edge case people maybe being confused based on their personal backgrounds or from other countries with different norms but we don't see that in the USA. https://preview.redd.it/yf0vrmhofrdf1.png?width=1444&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf36eeae8c5b7b654d0d8dbb284c588cd1583dc4

Here is what AI says to the question: "Is Formation Fellowship a paid job" "No — Formation is not a paid job, nor does it offer employment. It’s a paid fellowship/training program (focused on interview prep and career coaching), not a salaried position." Here is what it thinks about Codesmith: "are oslabs engineers paid?" "Yes - OSLabs does pay engineers in at least one of its key programs" Like I don't think you'll find anything anywhere that would make a reasonable person think Formation Fellows are paid roles - but acknowledge that edge case people might be confused because of the multiple definitions. But in Codesmith's case like everything is blatantly twisted to appear that way. This discrepancy is one of the 3 primary reasons I've been going after Codesmith. Dictionary definitions aside, what the leaders of these companies do and stand for and their integrity matters because both are small companies. That's why I take a hit for being so blunt and direct about my opinions about Codesmith, because it can appear that I have a grudge and go after them too hard. But no, in my PERSONAL OPINION (not a fact) Codesmith is running some kind of borderline fraud/scam and I will not sit back and let it happen and I play within the rules in doing so even if that looks negative on my personality.

I'll share your feedback with our team to consider it, that's what I mean about gaslighting, like I'm not saying you are crazy and I see where you are coming from and I'm arguing that I don't agree and I don't think it's a problem and why I think that. Like it's a good debate and if a lot of people feel that way we might change it so your feedback is important to share and note so we can pay attention to it. We improve through feedback and accept it.

I dunno, you seem to now want to be collaborative and that's on you. You never mentioned anything about stating that we do this to make money and I hope that's your opinion and you aren't starting that as a fact because it's provably untrue on our side and I can't see how you have facts to prove that yourself. So if you had this opinion the whole time, you are debating disingenuously. I started the conversation with 'I'll talk to you if you accept the facts' because the facts are important. The average person we work with has 5 years of industry work experience as a SWE. Why would they put a mentorship community Fellowship on their LinkedIn as a job or resume when they currently work at Google or Amazon? It makes no sense whatsoever and why would they not do Formation if the name changed? Like the facts are abundantly clear that very few percentage of people put Formation publicly at all as anything and clearly it's EXTREMELY USELESS if it's still taking them 2+ years to get a job when dozens and dozens of people got jobs this year so far without telling anyone they did Formation and telling us commonlty they want it to be a secret so their employer doesn't find out. Seriously - if we argue the facts we can have productive conversations about Formations problems and weaknesses that we are constantly trying to improve and instead we're talking about something largely largely irrelevant.

Reddit flagged your account

Your account was flagged as suspicious you can DM me if you want to keep talking and I'm happy to talk

Personal insults are what bullies resort to when they don't have anything useful to say. Your posts are majorly being flagged but this one seems fine, but watch the attacks.

Let's start with looking at an AMA I did 3 months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama\_im\_michael\_exmeta\_principal\_engineer\_1\_code/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama_im_michael_exmeta_principal_engineer_1_code/) Normal comments, normal replies. Now let's look at a Codesmith AMA from 3 months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im\_ayleen\_a\_software\_engineer\_and\_current/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im_ayleen_a_software_engineer_and_current/) Notice how **EVERY SINGLE COMMENT IS DELETED OR COLLAPSED BY REDDIT** except for the OP's comments and ONE question. Most of their other AMAs - similar thing. I'm not saying it's a fact that Codesmith is responsible, but like something they are doing on Reddit is very sketchy. I have reems of similar documentation of this kind of shit and I've had enough. Some people tried to run AMAs in other channels too. Example after example of Codesmith pretending. It's not imposter syndrome, they are imposters. Spend more effort patting people on the back for nothing instead of pushing people to be exceptional, but the brand themselves as exceptional. The number of actors they have had on staff over the years who are acting like engineers is a sign of this. I wrote a long letter a few months ago to Codesmith's leaders suggesting they focus on placing people as entry level jobs and help the people get promoted in 6 months. They would be the Stanford of bootcamps instead of living the dark alleyways hiding from site hoping no one calls them out. No response to that one. I've offered suggestion after suggestion, and they refuse to accept so I'm not letting them get away with this shit anymore. The site is still down their founder is calling it an unfortunate catch 22. No, it's not a catch 22 because HE IS RESPONSIBLE for this - whether directly or indirectly. **Will no one at Codesmith take responsibility? Well I'm going to be yelling loud and clear until they do.** These things happen to engineers and they do post-mortem, debriefs, and reports. I look forward to scrutinizing every detail of Codesmith's report and demanding details.