u/reddingdave wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Given the recent article that came out about his behavior, and the attention it's gotten:
Original thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1o1guxj/thoughts_on_this_blog_post_alleging_harassment/
Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521920
Primeag
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
I support reasonable and respectful, fact-based discussion about if I should be a mod or not so that the discussion is transparent. My opinion is that anonymous mods with power are more dangerous than transparent ones because we all have biases.
I have email chains explaining the following to Codesmith leadership from Spring 2024 explaining all of this as well. Codesmith has yet to explain directly why they disagree with this framing, but continue to call my company a competitor.
This is my stance on my biases:
1. For the record. Formation is not a coding bootcamp and it doesn't compete for coding bootcamp students. We work with experienced engineers later on in their careers, about 1/3 of which were bootcamp grads in the past. The average work experience now is about 4-5 years of SWE work experience.
With regards to Codesmith, I'm aware of 3 people who were deciding between Codesmith and Formation, out of thousands and these were there situations:
a) Ivy league math grad, enrolled in Codesmith, it was too early on for his journey and he felt more advanced. He withdrew, came to Formation and then placed at Palantir.
b) Someone with no experience who was considering Codesmith. Another prospective Codesmith student suggested Formation based on the person's journey. The person came to Formation and placed at Statsig.
c) Someone with no experience who wanted to do Formation. She had a lot of drive and hustle and I told her to go to Codesmith. She said she might. About 6 months later she told me she didn't go to Codesmith, instead she just straight up got a SWE job and was ready for Formation now. We accepted her and she got a job at Google.
Codesmith claims they have 5000+ grads (the number they use in different places varies from 3500, 4000, and 5000). So to me the people that overlap are edge cases and not a primary business driver or target audience.
At the same time, we've worked with dozens of Codesmith ALUMNI later on in their career. Many successfully placed at FAANG-level companies, some placed at ok company, some withdrew. **Overall we have an order of magnitude more Codesmith ALUMNI joining us later on than Codesmith STUDENTS.**
2.
u/webdev-dreamer wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I disagree
Mods are most of the time faceless anonymous ledditors who can get away with shitty behavior because of their anonymity
Whereas we know who this mod is and can easily call him out for any potential shenanigans
It's rare to have a mod so public about his profile a
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I personally agree with this. I don't have many friends. I'm not really likeable. I'm not here for that. I'm here to try to promote reasonable and fair discussion in navigating the bootcamp industry.
What's fair to one person might seem unfair to another. Mods have to make judgement calls. Modes are biased. You can respectfully call me out and talk about it and I'll listen and respond.
u/L4ShinyBidoof wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I have gone through your program outcomes after you stated multiple times that formation is targeted for people looking for Senior engineering roles at FAANG companies and that this is the primary reason why you do not consider yourself a competitor to codesmith. You said that yo
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
1. Our numbers only include full time SWE work experience and exclude contract roles, internships and non-SWE work.
2. In 2022 the average amount of experience was lower, but you can see that that the vast majority had work experience already even then. The people who didn't have work experience were mostly bootcamp GRADUATES who were job hunting for their first full time job and wanted to level up even more. We don't accept those people.
3. This data is from 3 years ago around when I started participating in the sub. Things changes and you should read our newest report for H1 2025, or even 2024 annual. The reported in that article cherry picked 2024 and 2025 data so you should use the same.
4. You can have non-computer science background and still have worked for 3 years as a SWE.
5. Not everyone wants to be a Senior Engineer at FAANG, but the intention of those people was largely to be employed in FAANG mid level + roles. The ones with no experience were aiming for FAANG entry level roles.
6. Codesmith on their website says they have about 76 people out of 4000 who work at FAANG so the overlap seems incredibly low even on entry level FAANG roles.
https://preview.redd.it/wabz2995jcuf1.png?width=3196&format=png&auto=webp&s=676af34afaad94faf89116cb918df765b914edea
u/L4ShinyBidoof wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So is your answer is yes? only "3 out of thousands" when you had an entire year where about 10% of your fellows happen to be similar to codesmith students.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
In 2022, Codesmith -> Formation was an adjacent decision that the time and I would say up to 10% of people could be at the top end of the Codesmith side or the bottom end of the Formation side, but that there was a best decision on one side or the other that required zooming in to see which side they fall on.
I'm arguing that 3 people I know of were right on the border and could have gone either way.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You shouldn't be a mod. If I remember correctly, this post cited in the article was written by you. I'm not sure why you removed it, but it clearly shows your bias. It's even worse that the person exposed your own Formation students put their entire time at Formation as experienc
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
1. The person 'exposed' is a person who put on his LinkedIn what he said he did and was doing that during that entire time window.
2. That person was at Formation 2021 and half the stuff he did doesn't exist anymore because we have a dynamic platform with a few thousand things and it changes every day.
u/TU4AR wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Oh fuck off dude. You can't be the person in charge and say "I did nothing wrong". When people are being creeped out by your harassment. If people are getting doxxed or even being threatened and causing them to separate from a company you fucked up.
It's crazy how much you try
u/michaelnovatireplied·
1. I never contacted grads from specific class lists etc... I connected with people that showed up in my network with lots of mutuals, from all bootcamps.
2. I on specific occasions (a few times) make a spreadsheet of open source projects and the amount of time people committed to them.
3. I looked at open source projects and contacted people when there were security problems like leaked passwords, credentials, etc...
4. When I spoke to the CEO she didn't tell me anyone left the company or was thinking about leaving because of the Reddit content. If she told me that I would have talked more about it and trying to understand why.
5. I don't know who was DOX'd. I think DOX'ing is wrong and I want more context on that. I'm not going around DOX'ing people. Some people were public in their posts or they said a ton of info about themselves and if I looked them up on LinkedIn I wouldn't identify the person publicly.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I'm not going to post about specific students because I don't want to draw attention to individuals, but you have students putting it as "freelance" or "part-time" on Linkedin. That definitely makes it sound paid. I also found students that make it sound like it was work experien
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Resume representation is nuanced argument that you probably understand but most people outside the industry wouldn't.
The vast majority of people are working engineers that don't even think about putting Formation on their resumes. Some people who have been with us a long time - like years - have it on. Some of those people aren't even at Formation and they abandoned the job hunt.
The representation is clear. I have never heard of a recruiter or company thinking that Formation was a job. I can't think of background check someone ever had for Formation as a job.
Codesmith, the vast majority of people put their projects down as a work experience directly adjacent to an Open Source Projects bucket, making it look more like work. The description buries the 'accelerated by OS Labs' in the footer collapsed - if it's there at all.
Part of the mental trick is that they tell you 'Don't lie about your experience, it's only 4 months!' When in fact it's 3 weeks. If you put all your other projects on there overlapping you are double claiming your experience.
Finally people put X -> Present and get sign off and then they take on average a year to get a job and the X -> Present goes from 4 months to 16 months.
I would be more than happy to debate this one out because there are multiple sides to it and it's nuanced.
Is Codesmith responsible and is this the worst thing in the world? No.
Did I tell their CEO about it face to face? Yes.
Did she think it was wrong? Yes.
Is it still happening? Yes.
So there's more to what's going on and I think all sides should be heard.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You seem to remember it's nuanced when it comes to Formation, but you definitely did not say it was nuanced when you made that post about Codesmith. Again, this proves why you shouldn't be a mod. Of course you will always make exceptions for your own students and company.
I don
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Many of those people are mentors at Formation, who are contractors.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So you're not going to address the other issue?
Someone also messaged me and brought up a good point that "fellowships" usually mean paid positions, so that's also weird you guys use that language to describe your students. Many Formation students describe it as "a highly selec
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I don't agree a fellowship is a paid job, and if it was perceived that way by companies we might change the name.
u/metalreflectslime wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
As far as I know, he has not unfairly removed any posts or comments.
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
I can repeat what I've already stated, that we have guidelines and above average Reddit controls turned on. That there was a wave of sketchy accounts in the middle-ish of 2024, many that are suspended now, and their content was some autoremoved, some still here, and some being removed when found. And finally that mods are humans and make mistakes, like misreading, misjudging, looking at the wrong profile when reviewing escalated claims, clicking the wrong buttons etc... Obviously mistakes should be absolutely minimal, but they happen and we correct them if notified.
The only content I personally have removed, as I've said before, is factually incorrect content that is provable. Like if someone says "X is actually owned by Y" and it's not, then it could be removed, typically challenged first but it's judgement.
Finally, when Reddit AI removes stuff it says "removed by moderator". Some of this content ends up in the Reddit Queue for FYI (which we typically confirm removal) and some of it is just auto removed and not even shown.
There's some judgement in the review of the queue. If an account was flagged for reputation but has a alot of content on Reddit and the post seems netural maybe remove the strike and approve. If the account is brand new then just dismiss.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
All of your comments amongst many others are flagged by Reddit filtering. You can send through modmail yeah and the other moderators can look at it.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Still waiting for a response for my comment.
Do you tell students to frame Formation as Experience instead of Education on their resumes?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I didn't see those comments but let me see... yeah I can respond but I can only share things I've explained before already.
1. We tell people if they want to include it to put under professional development if they want to include it at all. When we had Recur people worked on the codebase for [Recurcode.com](http://Recurcode.com) \- a closed source project that was shut down - and I don't remember exactly but we I think we had guidance about how to frame that too.
2. What the word Fellowhip means, I had like an hour long debate with someone. I don't want to go over it all again, but I hear you that there are used of it that are paid too, and academic uses of it, and many uses. We chose it because 1. F. F. is easy to say, 2. Pathrise used the word Fellow first, an industry standard for consistency as they were our biggest competitor (which isn't a great reason but it's a reason), 3. I take your feedback and will let the team know. We are working on new products and I'll share the feedback that some people don't like the word Fellow. We do not use that word in our new mini-courses.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
u/michaelnovati another person agrees fellowship means paid and it's wrong for your students to frame it as such. That's 4 people now. I'm sure that means there are recruiters who think the same.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I hear your feedback and it will be heard in thinking of names for future programs.
Like I said earlier, a small minority of people have even put Formation on their resume for the past 2-3 years (a lot of the people you find are not current active members of Formation) so it's not a high priority thing to change across the board that will have a lot of impact. That doesn't mean it's not heard, I disagree that it's a misleading word, but I hear you and it's noted because if potential customers are confused about the naming all the time that doesn't help us whatsoever and we have to listen to feedback.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Yup I’m not excusing Codesmith either. Just pointing out that Michael consistently generalizes students at Codesmith for lying and then excusing his own students by claiming “there’s nuance”. I think that shows that he holds double standards/bias and means he isn’t fit to be a mo
u/michaelnovatireplied·
That argument should go both ways then for anything and my opinion is that blog post should have had comment from all sides.
I think it's a fantastic discussion to have respectfully and openly and that's all I've always wanted on here for all sides at the table.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
"That argument should go both ways then for anything"
Michael, that was MY point lol. Don't act like it was yours. You're the one who kept generalizing and condemning Codesmith students while excusing Formation students over similar things. I'm the one who's saying the argument
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I want to restate using a different past example I've said before:
One of the things I spoke about was the git contributor graphs on all the open source projects being like spikes. There are no 'legit' open source projects that have these patterns. That makes Codesmith's open source projects very different from say Firefox or React or Angular, etc...
The same analogy applies here. How Formation people represent their resumes is completely different than how Codesmith people do fundamentally because the underlying goods are different.
I'm sure there are rogue Formation people and rogue Codesmith people that have out of date LinkedIns and who classified things wrong.
Even the fact that the boxes are under "experience" itself is irrelevant to my point.
There could be problems with A and not B, with A and B, with not A and not B, A and B need to be independent and not compared in my opinion.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
"I think we had guidance about how to frame that too."
You're the Co-founder of Formation and claim to be super hands on. How do you not know for sure what your guidance is? Doesn't seem like you're very involved if you "don't remember exactly" what you said to your students.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
It was like four, five years ago that people actively worked on RecurCode and I wasn't working on that involved, I just don't know.
My argument about "open source" not meaning paid is that ALL open source is not unpaid. And the instructions given say to put it as open source without stating that. It's a minor detail I've pointed out but that's what I meant by that.
u/zero_iq wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
But there's a big difference between a mod with biases and one with conflicts-of-interest.
A mod of a car subreddit might have a clear like for, say, Ferraris, and a dislike Lamborghinis. That's a bias. A good mod should accept that others might not share his opinion, even if he
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
In that analogy and based on my previous arguments I would say being like the CEO of the Rolls Royce Airplane Jet Engines unit being the mod of a car sub.
u/L4ShinyBidoof wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Your argument is based on contradictions. you generalize about your group to fit your narrative while being highly selective with the other.
The term "open source" has an objective definition based on its license. Factors like corporate funding or specific commit patterns are ir
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I can’t comment specifically on the items mentioned in the blog post or video because I’m following legal advice.
What I can say is that anyone interested should review the original source material directly in its entirely (which I understand is a lot) to understand the context.
One of the comments referenced had its original context deleted, making it impossible to know what I was responding to.
The other referred to a discussion about the Future Code program, which is funded by the City of New York for residents earning under $50,000 a year with no computer science degree or prior developer experience. My intent was to highlight the importance of graduates accurately representing their backgrounds rather than presenting themselves as having prior work experience, as that was a critical, verified requirement of getting into the program.
u/L4ShinyBidoof wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
If the blog post does severely misrepresent your actions or have outright lied about you, I do wish you the best in the difficult situation and hope the full story comes out.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I’ve always tried to be reasonable. I’m not perfect, but I dig and how I’ve uncovered real issues in the past. I’ve received thousands of dollars of legitimate security bounties for finding vulnerabilities, I’ve also helped expose and shut down coordinated Reddit account networks that were misleading people, I helped remove a drop shipper from Amazon taking advantage of people during COVID.
That said, I take integrity and harassment very seriously. It’s absolutely possible to investigate deeply while still being respectful and professional.
If you reach out to someone and they don’t reply, that’s the end of it. No follow-ups. And while looking at someone’s public LinkedIn, GitHub, or Googling their name can be part of basic due diligence, that’s not harassment. The line is clear: no repeated contact, no personal attacks, and no crossing into anyone’s private life.
Even when I’ve been on the receiving end. People blocking and unblocking me just to respond and blocking again. I’ve had to stay grounded in these principles while being still being an imperfect human. It’s the only way to keep my integrity intact.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
https://preview.redd.it/j2xtbi7ojjuf1.png?width=1568&format=png&auto=webp&s=86ce9f586e6fcad2fee8bd35425cd1d8a692ff1a
Here's an example of Michael saying he's going to watch students like a hawk. It's interesting that he talks about monitoring their Linkedins but then claims "eve
u/michaelnovatireplied·
By context, I meant the context of what the Future Code program is, the requirements to get in, and the video's representation as me 'watching kids like a hawk' when these are full blown adult residents of New York City who make under $50,000.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
The core issue is that you’re holding double standards when it comes to resume exaggerations. Fellowships almost always imply some form of paid experience.
I also doubt anyone thought “kids” literally meant children. People in their late 30s and older often use that term colloqu
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I'm not allowed to comment because of ongoing legal situations but can refer you to Primeagen's video this morning discussing that topic and the language he used.
u/siraliases wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
>ve also helped expose and shut down coordinated Reddit account networks that were misleading people, I
Oh you're working for reddit this makes sense now
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I can't comment on the matters at hand because of legal considerations, but I'm clarify that I'm not employed by Reddit and have no employment/work/contractor relationship with the company.
u/peppiminti wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
So you're not going to address the other issue?
Someone also messaged me and brought up a good point that "fellowships" usually mean paid positions, so that's also weird you guys use that language to describe your students. Many Formation students describe it as "a highly selec
u/michaelnovatireplied·
u/peppiminti just updating that we reduced the use of the word Fellowship on the website in our most recent copy path.
I also found this Oxford Visiting Fellowship that's an example of a paid Fellowship: [https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/visitor-programme/](https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/visitor-programme/)
It costs 19,000 pounds = $25K USD to attend for 2 years.
u/reddingdave wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Given the recent article that came out about his behavior, and the attention it's gotten:
Original thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1o1guxj/thoughts_on_this_blog_post_alleging_harassment/
Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45521920
Primeag
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
True to my word, I wanted to take the time to write an equally detailed reply. For all the shit I got, the least you can do is read the equally long response.
[https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith)