Saw that Codesmith’s NYC cohort is going back to in-person classes starting in the fall. I wonder if other bootcamps will start doing the same. Do you guys prefer remote or in-person?

This will be super interesting to see, I'll be watching! COVID changed things drastically and people stopped working 9-5. 9am to 8pm M-F + 9am to 3pm S is quite a lot of time to spend in person at a place. We haven't had that kind of in person interaction for 2+ years now.

One thing to watch out for is their CIRR remote outcomes are for their first test cohort and only contain 25 graduates (a typical cohort in person is 36). In their announcement about remote way back when, I felt it was implied they were going to be more selective for the first cohort to ensure the experience met their high bar and outcomes were high. Presumably the quality will continue or they would have stopped, but just something to note as their outcomes in the generally are partially due to having a very high bar to begin with (20% over 140K but also 20% under 110K)

I think Codesmith’s responseness is good remotely fwiw, they have former student Fellows working pretty hard to help. Do you know otherwise? I only know second hand

Sorry you feel that way, and I appreciate the candid feedback. I'm genuinely here to help people and give advice. Having worked with hundreds of people, maybe half or so(?) who have done bootcamps (of all kinds) years ago (and some recently) I do feel like I have a perspective that is useful for people. Being the engineer at Facebook with the most raw output in the entire company, and being at the principal E7 level (highest leveled 1.5% of engineers at the company) I have a perspective that might be useful for people. I spend all my time on Formation and certainly have biases, but I also do feel my perspective can be valuable and I'm here with my real name, for open and candid discussions, and I genuinely appreciate pushback and discussion. I haven't been to any bootcamps myself, that's where I also appreciate hearing other people's perspectives and hopefully together there is a lot of perspectives for people reading to consider. I can give a separate answer about CIRR. You mentioned you are at Codesmith. People talk and I know their CEO was speaking about me and my comments about CIRR. Additionally, some accounts attacked me on Reddit and told me that anyone who criticizes CIRR is a scam artist, which is quite extreme from the balanced pro and con approach I'm intending to present... and if I'm missing the mark, I will take feedback and try to improve. When I say something great about Codesmith, no one comment-replies me. When I say something bad about Codesmith, at least one comment reply criticizing me. Codesmith is one of the best bootcamps and I've said that like fifty times privately and publicly and suggested a couple dozen people to go there. But anyways, My response to CIRR and numbers are: 1. 100% if you don't have something perfect it doesn't mean you don't do anything at all. There are problems with CPI, problems with lots of metrics. People should be critical of metrics, but it doesn't mean they don't have a purpose. 2. We're trying to figure out how to talk about outcomes, it's genuinely hard, and our peers (Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco) all have different ways to talk about numbers, none of which are CIRR-like. We literally have someone from a bootcamp and a bit of experience go to become a mid level SWE at Capital One, and then have someone else with several years of SWE at Capital One go to Plaid. We want to capture this relative nature of what Formation does, rather than try to present absolute numbers. We haven't solved it yet. 3. I'm making bootcamp comparisons because I need to make it very clear to people we are not a bootcamp and are a completely different thing and that I am here to give advice about starting out in the industry. Again \~80 to 90% of people at Formation have worked in the industry as full blown SWEs for 1-3+ years. The stats at bootcamps are the inverse.

Thanks for this candid feedback! I appreciate it a lot. Lot of stuff I will reflect on and try to incorporate into my responses. I got feedback I didn't disclose Formation so maybe I went too far haha. I'm extremely thankful you gave that example of the two quotes because I didn't realize that came across that way. Yeah I don't know what to say but I'm here to help people. I joined Facebook in 2009 and my stock 100x'd so I originally semi-retired a few years ago. The lack of diversity and people from nontraditional backgrounds in tech is such a huge factor contributing to the problems that big tech is facing today, so I came back with Sophie to give 150% on helping solve this problem. I have made $0 from Formation (no salary) and while I'm a partial owner, we lose money every month right now. I want to help more people get into the industry and find the right path for them. This is what I do at Formation for very experienced people, and I find I can help pretty efficiently for like 5 to 10 mins a day here for people earlier on (recommending them bootcamps and other options, rather than Formation) I really really appreciate this feedback.

100%, we are all impacted by our surroundings. Sometimes I feel like all my peers are better than me and I don't deserved to be here. At least that feeling doesn't really go away the more you progress in your career. But over time, you build confidence in the things you are good at! My goal is for all the people I work with to surpass me years down the road and would love nothing more :D I love reading other people's perspectives and I hope I don't portray my perspectives as "the source of truth", I want them to be a point of view to help people.

Cool that's a good compromise. I'm curious to see if the staff end up going back in person. From the company side, remote work has really changed a lot of things with people's work-lives so will be interesting to see (not just Codesmith but all bootcamps that return in person)