Career outcomes from coding boot camps

This is probably Codesmith because they make these promises. I did a deep dive on 200 Codesmith students/alumni that I will repost here. The summary is that 120K is their median salary in NYC from 2 years ago, and that is legit, but that they also mislead people into thinking they can get mid level roles right out of the bootcamp. They base these claim on salary and it’s impossible to get a mid level FAANG role out of a bootcamp with no experience. ---- I'm not affiliated with any bootcamps but I work with a lot of people who have gone to bootcamps in the past. I was also an E7 level principal engineer at Facebook, where I worked from 2009 to 2017, and interviewed hundreds of people. I run coaching and training for experienced engineers to help them level, but I've heard a lot of problems with bootcamps from people I work with and started hangout in this subreddit. I can give my assessment of Codesmith, the good, the bad, the warnings. Overall, for a bootcamp it's think it's a solid consideration, just look for this level of detail in any bootcamps you consider. GOOD: 1. Instructors are good teachers and care a lot about teaching. They publish a lot of videos and run a lot of free sessions, and they get really great feedback. 2. They've scaled pretty well. Like most bootcamps, recent grads immediately teach the current students, but unlike most bootcamps, those grads have 3 month contracts and typically don't suddenly leave when they get jobs. 3. They have an excellent community. Every Codesmith grad I've worked with and talked to works hard, and is driven. This is why there is so much positive support in this sub. They rely on that strong community to grow and it works. 4. Codesmith grads have salaries on the higher end of the spectrum. I believe their median salary in 2020 was $120K in New York city and this was an audited number. A minor thing I won't put under bad, but I've never heard Codesmith talk about equity, which is one of the most important factors of a top tier offer, and if these offers are really top tier I would want to hear about their total compensation, and not just their salaries. BAD: 1. They have a prep program that filters out people who are they don't think will succeed and you have to pass that to get into their real program. There might be a way to skip this, not sure. But this makes their graduation percentage higher in CIRR reports than other places. EDIT: two people corrected this that you can apply directly for the full program! Someone estimated 25% of people did do prep first. So this might still help them keep graduation rates s tad higher, but also being more selective, which is a GOOD. 2. The community is really strong, but they also turn really hard on people who criticize Codesmith or say negative things. I wouldn't be surprised if this post gets downvoted a lot. 3. They don't have the presence of truly top tier industry engineers in their instruction or training yet they claim best in industry results. They don't really have anyone with deep top tier company knowledge in their ranks and they state a strong desire to hire former Codesmith grads as instructors and mentors rather than super senior engineers (EDIT: most bootcamps don't either so comparing bootcamps, this is not a huge deal, but if you are holding them to the "S Tier" bar, I think it's important). The Co-Founder is one of the more Senior Engineers and he left and is sporadically involved. My team at Formation.dev for example has 6 people with 8+ years at Facebook, an advisor to Mark Zuckerberg who reported directly to the CTO, 3 people who trained interviewers at Facebook, a 10 year FB recruiter who ran the internship program there, and those are our staff. Our dozens of mentors are equally impressive. Like I said, different ballgame, but there is a room for a tier above Codesmith in the training space in my opinion. WARNINGS: 1. I audited a few hundred Codesmith grads LinkedIns and Github histories, and the vast majority claim to have 6 months to 1.5 years of software engineering experience at companies. But if you look deeper the companies are not real jobs but open source projects. In addition, the people's actual commit histories offer evidence that they only work on the projects for 2 to 6 weeks, no where near 6+ months. This is kind of a 'fake it til you make it' situation as Grads tend to do well, but there it's a little sketchy as literally hundreds of grads do this and they seem to get past background checks. To counter this, many Codesmith people I've talked to explain in person after some questions that these projects are not real companies and they are unpaid projects, so it might be a technique used to get through resume screens and get more opportunities. 2. Their claims of graduating mid-level and senior-level engineers are debatable. Like I said above about my qualifications, not a single graduate without real, paid engineering experience is at a mid-level Facebook bar because by definition it's impossible. So unless they are lying on background checks and deceiving top tier engineers during interviews, which I doubt, or they are using a different scale than is used at all the top companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Snap, Dropbox, Asana, etc... (EDIT: similar to Bad.3 above, relative to other bootcamps, I think their grads get above average jobs)

I'm pretty sure this is Codesmith and a posted a very long summary below. They do have an audited median salary in NYC from 2 years ago of 120K, but they also muddle that up with "mid level" titles. No one can go from zero experience to mid level FAANG. I worked at Facebook for 8 years and it's impossible there. So they are combining people who get $150K CONTRACTOR jobs at Facebook (not SWE, and not "mid level") with people who go to startups and get mid level titles but are compensated less... but 1 + 1 does not equal 2 here. The mid level titles at smaller companies is a result of a bit of a sketchy behavior and you can read about that in a long post I did here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/un1cyf/is\_there\_a\_good\_bootcamp\_besides\_codesmith/i85flg0/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/un1cyf/is_there_a_good_bootcamp_besides_codesmith/i85flg0/)

I would add that their negotiation advice is "Just ask for $150K right off the bat and let them call your bluff". The crazy thing that when combined with the fake work experience problem, they occasionally get that, or somewhere close, but it doesn't meant the roles are top tier, or that the people perform well in those roles. So that might be where what you heard "career services" told them

u/Cheese12345678901 Yeah I find this sketchy too. I pulled LinkedIn experience and GitHub histories for 200 Codesmith alumni on their flagship projects and diligently made a big table. The vast majority claim 6 to 18 months of experience and actually commits in GitHub over 2 to 6 weeks, most 3 weeks. Speaking with alums it sounds like the project is a 6 week unit and that their leadership actively encourage people to exaggerate this experience because they are "putting in 12 to 16 hour days" so it "counts as months of experience". The more people I talk to, the most frustrated I get, so I stopped haha.

Yeah they are. I work with a lot of alumni get their 2nd, 3rd, jobs etc... and I've heard things like that leadership tell people they work '12 to 16 hour days so their work counts as months of experience'. I've also heard sketchy things about background checks too. I didn't want to include anecdotes in that write up because I think there's two sides to every story and I wanted to present things objectively. But yeah that pisses me off too on a personal level.

Another thing I've heard is 'if the company doesn't do it's due diligence it's their fault not ours' 😡

Hey thanks for the thoughtful reply. regarding GitHub, I’m speaking specifically about the fake work experience project contributions. People also often have separate "open source" experience with 3 other projects. I have all the raw data carefully logged and can share with you but it's specifically the fake company experience listed on LinkedIn and contributions to those specific projects. That said I do agree with you about the ends justify the means argument. Like I said, I work with some awesome Codesmith alum that I love and support dearly (AND HIRED ONE MYSELF). The people are performing well then is it really so wrong? I do have anectodal evidence that people have challenge Codesmith leadership about it being implied, but not directly told, to fake the experience, as well as to pass background checks. Not going to mention who, but I'm sure Codesmith alumni reading this know about their 3 hour along resume prep lecture with one of the leaders. This is the piece that's wrong to me. Regarding the mid-level. I don't really know how to explain this and I hope any alumni at Facebook will back me up. But the levelling system is NOT based on technical ability, it is based on scope of responsibility, and it rewards you after you have ALREADY demonstrated that scope of responsibility for 6+ months consistently. So if you worked somewhere for a year, you could get hired as an E4 at Facebook and that has nothing to do with Codesmith! I talked to a lot people at Codesmith who felt otherwise and when you look into it, there are contract roles, non SWE roles on a different scale, people calling E3 midlevel, etc... Other companies are different. Amazon for one this could happen. And other FAANG adjacent companies. Facebook and Google, definitely not. EDIT: Sorry if the blanket midlevel statement offended you. To clarify, I'm speaking specifically about midlevel roles are Facebook, Google and other top tier companies with similar calibrated levelling systems. I have no doubt that people, Codesmith, or otherwise, get mid level jobs with no experience at other companies.

Appreciate the conversation as well, thanks!