Currently in Codesmith, question for former students?

Sorry kind of replying to the whole thread here. This is a normal thing I've heard too. I know alumni who felt similarly even during OSP. If you are open about it you get a "trust the Codesmith way, it worked for alumni" response and that has motivated people to keep going as they see the light at the end of the tunnel. Throughout your career you'll feel overwhelmed a lot. Admitting it means you are open minded to learning. When senior engineers feel this way they sometimes fall back to what they know, even if it's not the best solution for a new problem. I'm biased (no bootcamp, eng degree, ex FB 8 years, run career accelerator program) but I strongly believe in learning the fundmamentals rather than any specific technologies, or memorizing DS&A. You want to be like a handy person that can do a heck of lot with a couple of beat up old tools by being just knowing all the different ways to use them, rather than someone who goes to the store and buys a brand new 50 piece set of all the tools and barely knows how to hang a picture. Or a skier with super beat up old skis who can like ski backwards in a tshirt and is really good at the fundamental skills, versus someone who buys top of the line brand new skis and clothing but can barely get down the hill. If you excel at fundamentals then you can get any job because you can learn anything.

I'm curious to hear CS students and alumni stance on this from the inside. I can speak to the broader market and economy. It's quite an interesting time. Salaries and hiring were hot for the past 3 months and things are definitely freezing up right now. Two months ago, Google outreached to bootcamp grads inviting them to interview, getting inundated with thousands of applicants, and now Google is freezing hiring and reshuffling priorities and some people think there will be fewer L3 slots - yet to be determined. The companies that are hiring are aware of the "FAANG-Freeze" and are not negotiating as much and they have more leverage. I'm also seeing some interviews get cancelled or offers being "delayed" out of hesitation, and this can be demoralizing if you are super close to a dream offer and it gets put on ice. So regardless of the result - be ready for a potentially rougher time. That said, tons of companies are hiring, offers remain strong, and you just have to be more competitive in raw skills and leverage your network to find opportunities. Job hunting is a probability thing. So a way of looking at it is if you have fewer interviews, so you want to invest in your skills to have the highest chance of passing. Codesmith has a strong network and the way people craft their resumes to showcase experience should help people continue to look better than most bootcamp grads on paper.

Great question. So we have a deep bench on staff. I was 8 years FB E7, we have two other ex-FB E7+ engineers, two senior/staff ex-FB/MSFT engineers, an ex-Oracle/Amazon senior engineers, ex-FB 10 year recruiter, and two other ex-FAANG \~5 year each recruiters. We also have top tier investors who have a pulse on the industry behind the scenes too. So through all of these connections and network (and obviously how Fellows are doing on the job hunt) we have a pulse on how things are moving. We lean very very ex-FB heavy, and while we've been at FB so long we know people all over the place now at pretty much every company, we do have a Facebook-leaning network. I love that you mentioned probabilities. Some people come to us thinking that they do Formation to "pay for referrals" or asking us to "guarantee they pass their Stripe interview" and that's not how the industry works. Every interview has a probability of passing, based on skill, luck, and all kinds of things. A small number of people get a Google job out of Codesmith and that's because based on Codesmith and a lot of extra DS&A prep, you might have a 5% to 10% chance of passing a Google onsite. We view our job as preparing you to have the highest probability of passing interviews (we want you passing FAANG mock interviews at least 50% of the time for example) but that's never 100%. This extends not to gamifying and hacking the interview, but the best way to increase you probably is to have very strong fundamental tools and be ready to adapt to new situations. We want you do to incredible and creative things with a small toolbox of old beat-up tools , rather than sell you a full $1000 set of power tools that you don't know how to use properly but look nice. Sorry sidetracked on interviews, now answering the actual question.... Some people think we have an unfair referral advantage because of our network, and that's not the solution at all. We want to find the best path for your target companies and teams on an individual level based on your goals and fit at the companies. So for some people that might mean an apprenticeship at Dropbox as the best path to converting quickly to full SWE there. For some people they have recruiters pinging them all over the place and it's about finding the right teams and the right timing of their interviews. So FAANG-FREEZE! Facebook is frozen, but they are hiring ML, Business Eng and Network Eng, Production Eng. SWE is the right role for the majority of people, but some people might be good fits for these roles and are interview there right now! Apple has a lot of roles open. Amazon is starting to slow a tad after moving like their pants were in fire, but managers have a lot of power there and we'll try to send you to a good-fit manager that we know is hiring still. Google is temp frozen and we are expecting lower L3 headcount. Google does interview and hold people in team match for up to a year, so we have people moving through Google but we prep them to not expect offers super fast. Netflix we've never had a hire at or interview at and have less knowledge of. Now other companies that are arguably better than FAANG-FAANG are hiring: Stripe, Square, Notion, Figma, Databricks (all larger ones, but many more). We don't do magic and we aren't magicians, you gotta work with what you got, but we feel like we are a very good co-pilot for you in navigating whatever the market is and helping you land safely at your dream destination 🌴... I swear to god they don't let me write anything at Formation because I'm not good but this last sentence could be a good slogan haha.

Hi! RE: Update. Things seemed to get worse in October/November, and have since gotten a bit better. Seeing more people getting FAANG interviews again - with generally longer time frames (e.g. scheduling onsites for over a month from now). We've seen mid-level and senior engineers (based on FAANG standards, not Codesmith standards) get hired and get interview more easily. Zero experience people definitely have a harder time with FAANG. We've seen people go to Palantir, Amazon, Bloomberg, but in general having some kind of genuine connection to the company is key. Something about your background that aligns so much better than most other people, that by trying every angle from referrals, to recruiter pings, to networking events, something works to get that interview. Google specifically has hired a few experienced engineers at the L4 level and has slowly resumed some entry level interviews. However, there might be some turbulence coming and I don't expect many slots to open up. If you pass the interview, you can be eligible for team matching for up to a year, so they are proactively interviewing a small number of people in case spots open up. RE: Formation. We are continuing to grow actually and cautiously take on as many people as we can while maintaining (and improving) the experience. We've actually increased the amount of support people have - from 1 dedicated staff member in your private channel to 3 staff members. The really unique thing about Formation is that we have invested in a senior/staff/principal level FAANG-level engineering team to build the technology that powers it, and this will let us scale while constantly improving where every other program relying on humans to scale will have to stop, or will get worse and worse as they grow. First, every Fellow gets a unique schedule created from scratch every week based on what they have to work on. You would need an army of humans to determine and schedule almost a thousand sessions a week that are entirely scheduled magically for everyone's schedule and that happen to be on topics you need. This process is far from perfect but it's already orders of magnitude better than what humans can do and it requires almost no human input. Second, we are building world class product tools so that we can identify and offer support when it's needed, at the right place at the right time. Our engineering team has built all kinds of complex tools like this and it takes tremendous product building experience to do this well. The key thing about Formation is if it you keep putting in the work and progressing, we keep working with you for as long as it takes to get a job, so we're finding people who are joining are not concerned that much overall economy (a small number are for all kinds of reasons, but vast majority are not). A lot of people do Formation part time, so they can do it for many months and opportunistically take interviews. We have good revenue yeah from all the people placed already, from people who pay upfront, we are able to get loans and financing for people who will pay us in the future. Because of the power of our technology, our team is relatively small. That said, this roughly breaks even and we as we are also venture backed, we plan to continue fundraising so that can continue to proactively hire the best engineers to continue making the technology better and better. RE: Interviews. Nothing is changing no. It might be the end of FAANG as a new set of up and coming top companies solidify themselves as the best places to work. I would say that right now generic referrals are less relevant, and might become more relevant again when things pick up. Formation isn't gamifying interviews or helping you figure out some loopholes to get a job. We're building fundamental problem solving skills all engineers need and we're helping you navigate the job hunt (and adapting to changes in the market, the best we can). All of that said, I generally recommend Codesmith grads get a first job directly from Codesmith and then come to Formation in a few months or later to fill in their fundamental gaps and level up. If you are struggling on the job hunt and want Formation's help, that might work (it's just expensive to do two programs back to back). Or if you are extremely ambitious and want to take as much time as you need post-Codesmith for a really good job, then that could work too. Let me know if you have any more questions!

RE: Formation's growth. I might have explained too many details about the growth. From the Fellow point of view you would only perceive more support and improved tasks and sessions. The goal here isn't to automate away but to enhance what humans are capable of doing. The number of live mentor sessions we don't expect to change much as they are some of the most important practice opportunities. RE: Code reviews. Yes, from experienced engineers on bugs, tasks, and take home assignments we assign you. No, on code review for personal projects (officially, but possibly case by case). RE: beyond DS&A. We have FAANG recruiters and managers around as well to answer questions and mock interviews and sessions in the job hunt phase (once your skills are deemed at the bar), Formation is far from just technical training alone. We have hired back two Fellows as full time SWEs. We have 5 senior (like 5, 10, 15, 20 yr FAANG experienced engineers) and we have 2 junior engineers (who we hired after they did Formation). We hope to hire more junior and mid level engineers from Formation itself over time. We have I believe 3 or 4 Fellows who have come back as mentors because they are so good at specific sessions. We work with people of all kinds of experience levels and your peer Fellows might even be senior FAANG/ex-FAANG engineers. So while the majority of mentors are senior top tier engineers, they are also good at teacher - which is a rarer combination to have both. We are a technology company at heart and I don't think any Fellows would be hired as interns to contribute to Formation's codebase itself as a contractor or intern. Perhaps for creating or contributing practice problems. We might consider doubling down on our practical tasks and bugs and developing more unique options for people to turn into portfolio work, but we need to focus and this isn't a priority right now. It might be if we expanded more to people with zero experience.