Hmm. I co founded Formation.dev and people sometimes call us a career accelerator amongst other things. Quite frankly we are quite unique so this is an edge case. We work with people with 1 to 3 years typically of professional experience to make a leap to a top tier company.
But would you call Outco, Pathrise, and Interview Kickstart career accelerators? I hear that used for these and I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.
The Headstarter sounds like it's in the bootcamp bucket based on their website. It sounds like Codesmith demographic, which is people typically without professional experience.
u/CryptoNite90 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I agree with the comparison, but I guess I look at the headstarter as an extension to a bootcamp or after you self-learn and need a boost to get job ready. I do have 8+ years of experience as a systems analyst but no coding experience at all and just now taking free courses, so I
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah I would look at something like that, Codesmith, Formation and those accelerators above.
We have this assessment at Formation you can do to help guage where you are too. If you get a very low score definitely consider the more bootcamp style programs. If you get a high score you can probably lean towards interview prep.
https://formation.dev/join/assessment
u/CryptoNite90 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Oh yeah I don’t even need to take it to know I’ll get a negative score lol. I just started a free bootcamp so it will take a few months to get my technical skills up to par. Would formation be able to help someone like me land a job once I’m done with a bootcamp? Taking into cons
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah possibly we can, bootcamp grads coming to Formation is a small percentage but it happens. Our training itself is full or part time, it's scales to whatever your schedule is.
Yeah we work with you 1-1 to craft your story, help you find the right jobs, refer you where possible, etc... So I'm sure there is some value in your 8 years to get credit for.
It could be a good follow on to a free bootcamp yeah, the main hurdle is the bar is pretty high to enter. Like I said, most people have work experience already, but if you can show you can learn a lot on your own and do well on that assessment for example, we can work with you and be effective.
In terms of practical work, for people with no experience, we have a production-derived codebase, tens of thousands of lines, and you get code reviews from solid engineers. This is very minimal for a resume, but it gives people the confidence to show up to a job and be able to work on an engineering team.
For resume experience, I usually recommend something like Hack4LA to get something on your resume that's real.
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Looking at *Pathrise*:
>Learn from the bestWe've brought together the best mentors from Google, Facebook, and other top companies...
This is always interesting to me. If you've ever worked for a big company (and I mean on a meaningful project - as a designer or developer) - the
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Hey I love your bluntness and edge. Something at Formation we haven't figured out is how to talk about mentors. We have many mentors that are like paid (the equivalent of) '$300+ an hour at their day jobs' and they work do mentorship with us for the mission. Genuinely very unique in industry mentors. And then we try to make sure people get sessions with many mentors and get more from the right people. I think this is a good way to work around a lot of the problems you mention.
RE: Facebook, I can comment on my experience. I left Facebook after eight years, the stock is up 100X since I started so financially it worked out, I built really cool things, met a lot of amazing friends who are doing awesome things outside of Facebook today, I had some life changing experiences, I met my partner!, I learned product insights you can't learn anywhere else. I left right after the 2016 election when Facebook was still pretty cool! The biggest problem was a lack of people from diverse backgrounds being in the room.
Most importantly, I helped a lot of people grow in their careers and that's why I'm doing what I do today. There are so many people from non traditional backgrounds who can have a major impact in the world in tech (not only big tech) and I want to help coach them to get there. Hopefully we agree on that at least :D
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What is your mission? It sounds like it’s to make money. That’s a fine way to make a living. But is it really a mission? Why are people working for you for free? Your goal is to help other people make money at big tech companies - so that you can make money. But they the mentors
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Not about money no. We operate at a loss right now and I don't make a salary or any money from Formation. I own a large amount of equity and if it becomes a very successful I plan on using the proceeds to invest and help others. Made enough money from the evil large scary corporation. We pay mentors so they take sessions seriously, just not $300 an hour and a lot don't want to get paid, but we have to pay people fairly for compliance and doing things by the books.
Yeah +1 to helping people find what they want and supporting them. See we can agree on that!
u/sheriffderek wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What is your mission? It sounds like it’s to make money. That’s a fine way to make a living. But is it really a mission? Why are people working for you for free? Your goal is to help other people make money at big tech companies - so that you can make money. But they the mentors
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Oh sorry "what is your mission":
To help engineers from non traditional and underrepresented background break into the most impactful roles in tech.