CodeSmith Grads-How to get best job offers

I have the same questions and the distributions based on experience, but I can give objective answers to some of those other questions. 1. 120K is the median, not the average, so it doesn't mean you are likely to get this salary. It means of all the people who join there is a 50/50 shot making over 120K and a 50/50 shot making under 120K. But it's more important to narrow it down by people of a certain background. Like I know at Formation, the average first year TC for people with 0 experience is $134K and for 1 - 2 years is $181K, so I have to hypothesize that people with less experience are on the lower end, but need data to test that. 2. The Codesmith numbers in CIRR do not include any kind of options, bonuses, etc... they are just base salary. This is a criticism of CIRR, but it's also very hard to compute TC fairly. At Formation, we EXCLUDE all TC that is not objectively measurable (most options and private company stock). They would need to have very clear rules on this. All of that said, Codesmith claims midlevel and senior outcomes, and if people are getting stock, they are sandbagging their own results by marketing CIRR results and talking about base salary only. 3. This is counter-Codesmith advice that I give to Codesmith alumni (they help you create a more cookie-cutter resume based on your Codesmith projects). You can have a leg up by leveraging whatever about your background is unique. A lot of Codesmith students were amazing in some other field and telling that story and tying it to your job hunt is my main advice.

Hey, fewer than Codesmith, can't generalize any patterns other than they have all been similarly hard working, professional, collaborative people and their outcomes at Formation were no different (not statistically significant, but qualitatively). I actually spend like 5 to 10 mins a day connecting with \~20 bootcamp grads on LinkedIn from all different programs, as my network is super Facebook-heavy and I want to connect more with junior devs and see what they talk/care about (also why I'm here haha). Despite Codesmith's reputation, HackReactor has quite a plethora of alumni who down the road end up a top tier companies. Granted they are larger than others, but many more than Codesmith. I have a strong stance that if you have the life circumstances to do so, you want the RIGHT job out of a bootcamp to kickstart your career in the right direction, not the HIGHEST PAYING job, so you shouldn't judge bootcamps only by their compensation numbers. So long story short, look at which one is a better fit day to day and choose that one.

Yeah I'm also everywhere at Formation too, I just have no life :P I worked at Facebook for 8 years and saw a lot of fake news stuff and I believe in transparency and empowering people to have the information needed to judge their sources, so I use my real name yeah. Same name on LinkedIn :D 1. It's unique to you. So like for some/most people a $100K apprenticeship at Dropbox is better than a $130K job at a marketing agency. If you are coming in at zero, don't pretend you are at a mid or senior level. Be the best darn junior engineer you can be and in the right environment you will accelerate your skills quickly and in a supported way. I always want people to ideally align the role with their passions. If you love gaming, try working at your favorite gaming company. If you love photography, maybe on Google Photos, or Pinterest. It will help make your work more fulfilling and your intuition will give you a leg up. 2. Startups are if they pass "the test". A lot of startups are not and might do more harm than good. "I was the only frontend engineer and had no idea if my code was good", "They told me to build the release process so I googled a lot and hope I did a good job", "I never had any code reviews!" all bad things. If a startup has 1. "top 10" investors, 2. has a lot of funding ($10M+ and ideally Series B or later), 3. has at least one technical co-founder/leader with 5+ years of legit FAANG experience. Then it's usually worth it. 3. So there are "bleeding edge" things that sound good, but it's like the wild west (VR, AR, autonomous driving, drones) and those are not necessarily the most exciting things to work on to me. I think web-based product continue to "eat" more traditional applications and companies like Figma and Notion are super interesting. A company that has an innovative product but is stable and building a sturdy team, with rocketship growth, is a winning formula for me!

There are too many cases to go over all of them but some factors to evaluate for each offer before being able to compare are: 1. Company's engineering reputation 2. What team you will be on/department/team matching process 3. Who will be your manager, if it's known 4. Career trajectory paths at the company. e.g. Microsoft requires like 2-3 promotions for every 1 promotion at Google. e.g. Can you progress as an IC in your career or will you be "forced" into management to grow as the only option. 5. Base salary 6. Signing bonuses 7. Performance bonus targets 8. Equity, type, amount, and vesting schedule (equity is most complex to understand usually) 9. Other benefits/perks that are impactful for you 10. Startups: need to be evaluated on 11. Leadership has 5+ years of FAANG-level strong career experience 12. Investors are "top 10"/"top tier" 13. Understand the funding stage and how much funding they have. i.e. no funding startup versus Series C $100M raised company. Codesmith's CIRR results focus on ONE thing and only ONE thing. number 5, which might even be one of the least important factors haha.