One of the “projects” of my bootcamp is to post positive reviews for them online?

Codesmith students when launching their OSPs post everywhere and then "stars and clap" each other's projects. They have a script to instantly clap 50 times on Medium and they comment on each other's project posts comments like how awesome and useful the tool is etc... Then they talk in their marketing about how many GitHub stars the projects have as a sign that the projects are very important and impactful in the community. They used to officially have a week where people spent all their time hyping each other's projects but it's been reported that they stopped this long ago so I don't think this is what you are referring to. It's also very student driven and more of a tradition to "celebrate" OSPs being done.

Trying to grow a project from nothing is a skill on its own, "growth hacking". You have to be extremely talented at growth hacking to remain ethical but be successful at growing a project. I think Codesmith teaching people how to be good growth hackers would be much more effective then giving the templates and scripts to do it and just telling them to do because that's what you do at Codesmith and it's what everyone does. Like of all the growth hacking stuff I've seen in my career, asking people to write fake comments to hype your projects and embellish their usage of it, is middle of the road borderline sketchiness. Giving them a script to instantly clap 50 times is also kind of middle of the road sketchiness. Don't think this is necessarily across the line for most people. People in industry I've asked haven't really found this to cross the line. If anything I would think it's a little more interesting that it's masterful display of growth hacking for Codemsith instructors or leaders to have created this whole system as a growth hacking tool FOR CODESMITH itself... like publishing the number of GitHub stars as marketing, but knowing it is based off a pyramid of projects that ultimately have excited and optimistic new students in CSX doing all the "liking and starring"

Triathelete's comment got downvoted but I think it's VERY important to separate asking people for positive reviews and making it part of a course to say good things about the course (which could be fraud) versus asking people to promote projects they are excited about (which Codesmith students do). I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that Codesmith systematically does the former and I think shouldn't get downvoted to point that out and make it clear. RE projects used by other developers. There are a tiny handful that are. Codesmith has been supporting the Svelte community a lot recently and a few projects have been acknowledged by engineers. But I've audited the GitHubs and that's the edge case. The vast majority have spikes of brief activity every 7 weeks as a cohort moves in, and then crickets - no issues, no discussions, no PRs from the outside, etc.... I LOVE OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS! I hope over time they move towards building real open source projects and I'm sure that's what they would like too, nothing to really complain too much about there.

As usual I am somewhere on the middle haha but two VERY STRONG stances 1) My entire mission is about helping fix systemic inequalities in tech and the way to do that is by fixing inequalities in SKILLS primarily and not leveling the playing field through deception. There are systematic biases that need to be addressed for sure, but the biggest problem is that a 12 week stint at the best bootcamp in the world is no where near the skill level of a top 4 engineering school undergrad. Don't call yourself the equivalent of an elite masters program if you are not. I think the gap can be filled much faster than 3.75 years but you are being delusional if you think you get close. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT POTENTIAL, just raw skills. In my undergrad (which as only half CS and half other eng), I studied operating systems, built a computer processor, human computer interaction, distributed systems, gaming, graphics, databases, software engineering theory, ethics, algorithms, 8 math courses, a logic course, statistics for engineers, business for engineers, and that's just what I remember and excluding civil engineering, electrical circuits, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, and more). I had 3 notable capstone projects including building a robotic system from scratch, all the wiring, hardware and code, building a product from scratch following a scientific research based approach involving 50 hours of user research alone, building a tool for processing online reviews that won a best paper award at the top conference for HCI. It's actually offensive to me that these OSPs take more space and credit than a few intense projects I did in school. I had a 4 month project where I had to run several user studies around Toronto, including designing studies, prototypes, doing real research, and then building a final product and shipping it. Hundreds of pages of write-ups and careful research. When I see Codesmith students exaggerating their 3 weeks of PRs and copy pasting Single Sprout talks it's all just missing the point of what real engineering is about. I work with a lot of bootcamps grads... I see the passion, I see the curiosity, I see the potential, and having a program use that to make embellished resumes and fake tech talks is throwing away some of that potential imo. You don't need nearly all this to be a successful engineer, but if you distill what you do need, it's the core fundamentals so that you can learn only the "extras" you do need next and do so efficient and rigorously. Jumping straight to the "extras" is lipstick on a pig. And no, a week of DS&A is not the core fundamentals. If you want to learn the needed hands on skills quickly and get a starting job, then I would do things differently than I suggest. But if you want to be an elite engineer with a robust tool belt, then no. Maybe Codesmith's marketing is just completely overblown and they are just trying to do the former, but then don't make your students think you are turning them into elite engineers at the ivy league of bootcamps. This is a pretty academic argument. Individual performance varies, and there's a whole spectrum of practical matters in between, but I am trying to argue where the anti-deception camp comes from and am very open to further discussion. 2) Regarding the resumes specifically (and usually LinkedIn but specifically resumes) have two sections: "Experience" "Open Source Projects" The Open Source Projects are always the personal small projects that should be just called Projects. Putting a project on your personal GitHub does not make it "Open Source" as these projects were not designed to create something the world will help build... they are practice to learn different topics personally. Then the "Experience" section actually SHOULD BE "Open Source Projects". These projects ARE intended to be things the world works on and improves. The fact that 95% of them have no one at all from the outside world working on them is already a stretch but I think that's more good intentioned. By placing an Open Source section beside a Work Experience section it's intentionally trying to deceive the reader into thinking that work experience is more legit.

Thanks for civilly discussing too, like very much appreciate talking about this from different angles! Yeah my response above was the two things I didn't feel middle of the road on, but I very much appreciate the hustle mentality as well. I don't sit with the "CS degree snobs" that a degree is strictly better than anything. I also strongly agree with the argument about performance but that Codesmith grads are performing well at what Stanford/Harvard grads would call 2nd or 3rd tier companies. If Codesmith advertised itself as "Get the outcomes of 2nd tier CS school, paying the price of a 3rd tier school and in only 12 weeks!" I think that would still be appealing to MANY people. Instead Codesmith advertises "Codesmith is a team dedicated to democratizing higher education for a new era - with graduate outcomes of an elite grad school but online and for 1/10th of the cost" [Link](https://codesmith.applytojob.com/apply/tKB7YQoSlz/Chief-Of-Staff-To-CEO) Combining hustle + "skills". Two people with roughly equal skills, one CS degree, one Codesmith, 100% that hustle mentality combined with the same skills should help you and should level the playing field long term. If the Codesmith grad has much worse skills and more hustle and out hustles a 3rd tier school CS grad... let's zoom in more and talk, we're close. But even the most brilliant person with hustle, can't fill this gap to an "elite school" in 12 weeks, and the top companies don't fall for any tricks here. The strategy should be to use that hustle to get a "foot in the door" first job (I consider $110K job out of Codesmith with no experience a "foot in the door job" WHEN YOU ARE TALKING ELITE GRAD SCHOOL COMPARISON). And then over a year work your butt off to catch up. Then do something like Formation (disclosure, co-founder) to revisit the fundamentals again. Then take a shot at the top tier companies. I actually think one of the best jobs out of a bootcamp is an apprenticeship or internship at a top tier company. Even if you are paid less, your trajectory will be much steeper and faster. In your comparison though 100% Codesmith way, #1! I agree. But that's not a comparison to an "ELITE GRAD SCHOOL". An elite grad school, like Stanford, has people with 8 FAANG offers paying them $300K a year and it's a laughable joke to make this comparison. Maybe I'm being too literally with Codesmith's words.

When I say anything remotely negative (I'm a big pros and cons person, hence I do say the cons as well, as I would for Formation too) a lot of new accounts come out of no where and criticize and I'm not sure if it's just a few people, or something bigger.

I work with many ex-FAANG recruiters directly on my team and many more in the industry. I also did 400+ interviews at Facebook, and work with colleagues that have thousands. So I can give my view, which is obviously biased by that background, but is hopefully useful for that perspective. 1. Many recruiters do immediately ignore bootcamp grads. But the reason is the same as why they ignore a lot of COMP SCI GRADS resumes. They all look the same and they can't figure out how to differentiate them. We would go to a recruiting fair at a college and we would get 300 internship resumes, having to choose 20 people for interviews then next week. All the resumes have the SAME projects, SAME courses, so what do you do? How would you differentiate. There's no time to go through everyone's portfolios. So you look for referrals, look for past internship experience, look for grades sometimes when all else fails. It's not easy at all. When Formation posts new job postings, we similarly get hundreds of bootcamps grads all applying. Codesmith resumes might not say "Codesmith" but they all look the same. 2. 100%, Facebook interviews I did and observed and trained people on, you would be "exposed" within 5 minutes and be vetted based on your skills. Unfortunately though Facebook almost exclusively hires entry level via the internship program, and you absolutely cannot get mid level full blown SWE roles there with zero experience. Amazon is the most approachable right now, and they don't care that much about background. In fact, most FAANG companies don't actually care about your background and they care about your fundamental skills bar. 3. Where the alleged "deception" comes into play is in the "2nd/3rd tier" companies, which are all the non-FAANG level tech companies, and the non-tech large companies. This is where Codesmith students are getting "mid level" jobs, sometimes with no experience. Some of the companies are not tech-centered, and might not do the vetting you think they should. Some companies have lower bars for titles.... "Vice President" at Goldman Sachs translates to "E5 Senior" at Facebook so you can imagine what kinds of titles below that are not actually the canonical FAANG mid-level. Most of these companies have a hard time finding strong engineers, so they lower the bar for entry level and spend more time training them... so their "mid-level" might be considered entry level at strong companies. 4. Finally, I've seen some Codesmith students use the number in their title as a sign of seniority. Software Engineer Level 3 at Google is the lowest level and what they call "entry level" or "early career". Because it has a 3 in the title, doesn't mean it's the 3rd level of engineers and is a senior or mid-level role. Codesmith (the company) used to market that 70% of people get mid level roles and 25% get senior roles (this has since been removed from marketing) so they don't correct people. If I were Codesmith, I would be in a tough place because I would be so much better than most bootcamps, I would want me marketing to stand out and show that. So I think I understand this doesn't come from bad intentions.