Codesmith vs 100devs - how to decide?

I would say the fair comparison would be 100Devs to CSX if CSX were to have a full bootcamp curriculum, but they are still very different. I've been following 100Devs since fairly early on and haven't talked about them much because it's a quite unique offering. Disclaimer: personal opinions based on observations. I don't know Will Sentance or Leon personally to know their long term ambitions with their programs and am commenting on what I see today. SIMILARITIES: * Like any teaching style, Leon has a unique teaching style and it works for a lot of people. Will Sentance has a unique style that works for a lot of people. You can't argue objectively what is better and I don't want to start an academic argument about pedagogy. Objectively, 100Devs is certainly at least comparable to another complete online web-dev course and could be better depending on you. * Very loyal community. Both communities are super loyal and supportive family-like vibes. Comparing CSX to 100Devs, 100Devs has a very active and lively Discord, more so than CSX. 42K members with 5K online right now, whereas CSX has 13K members 1K members active in the past month. But regardless, but have similar super supportive vibes and being surrounded by people with good intentions. * One unexpected similarity is the hustle mentality. Leon unabashedly tells people to puff their resumes to 'fix a broken system with gatekeepers' and hope that an employer doesn't call you out, but he also tells people to hustle to get real contract projects so they can get some paid experience on there (I strongly support the real paid contracts, do not support puffing resume and hope you don't get called out). Codesmith similarly encourages people to not list Codesmith on resumes and to enhance the \~6 week OSP projects to make them look much larger scope than they are. Both take the stance 'if you can do the job, the resume shouldn't matter, so ends justify the means' DIFFERENCES: * Quite bluntly, by paying $20K upfront, the Codesmith immersive students are super dedicated to finishing Codesmith and working those 11 hour days to get there. 100Devs has a much higher drop-off rate and a lot of super enthusiastic people who start, are all over the discord and super intense, and then kind of disappear about a few weeks when they get stuck on something major for the first time. The super unique thing though, is that for a completely free program, Leon inspires a lot more people to stick around a lot longer than one would expect for a free program, and I think this is something about the way he unique connects with people. * Codesmith is focused on getting more larger company jobs and building a resume to appeal to middle and large, 1st to 3rd tier companies. 100Devs is focused on getting a job, but really just any job and I don't think they would care about median salaries and such. Leon wants to get more people from underrepresented backgrounds a way to skip some hoops that people from more traditional backgrounds have already jumped through and is proud in doing so.

I agree with most of this, but one additional point is that people who are doing 100Devs are likely on the lower experience end of the spectrum so comparing them to the zero experience Codesmith outcomes would be more fair in the thought experiment. If someone makes $105K and it takes them 6 months to get a job and they had to wait 3 months to start Codesmith (which seems to be the time you have to apply), i.e. 12 months total.

I don't know them personally, I can't remember if Sophie did back when. So Bradfield is basically two qualified, solid engineers who teach people and they are very small (which is likely a good thing). I think it's only once or twice a year so if you are going to plan your life around their timeline, I would talk to one of the two instructors now and see if it's good for you, and then make that plan. You'll want to have a good rapport with them to move forward. One minor thing I noted in the past and has not changed, is their website is a little sketchy, in that they call themselves a "School of Computer Science" but don't even have a terms of service or privacy policy, address, any kind of little details that most legit services have. This isn't a giant flag though because I feel like it's just two really solid engineers teaching people out of a passion, so don't get distracted by the "School of Computer Science" branding and reach out to talk to them!

Some companies are freezing, but at Formation we're seeing people get hired and interviewing at dozens of top tier companies, so while some of the bigger names are frozen, most are not. There is more of a shift to experienced engineers, and less risk taking with no-experience people (I've heard from students that are recent grads from Codesmith for example that they are having a harder time getting interviews than students in the past for those with no experience, but the people with experience are getting interviews and strong offers still). At Formation, we are also seeing a bit of a shift. For example, a company might interview someone for senior and they didn't meet the bar, but in the past they would down level to mid-level and now they are just not making an offer at all. So a slight "tightening" rather than full blown freezes. On the no-experience side, at Formation we're surprisingly still seeing many people get interviews. Perhaps fewer interviews than in the past, but still getting interviews and offers. So I would frame it as the variance in the time it takes is wider, meaning if it was going to take approx. 6 to 8 months before, it might take approx. 5 to 13 months now. Some people are job hunting a tad early because of the market and getting unexpected offers too... each person at Formation has a unique path so it's hard to generalize here. A key piece of advice is double down on your unique background and find opportunities that match it. If you were cook, look into restaurant and food technology companies. If you were an athlete, look into sports tech. If you were a semi-pro gamer, look into gaming companies. Leverage your network to find paths into these companies that can skip the resume reviews that might otherwise have filtered you out.

Yeah! There are a TON of interesting ed-tech companies, Guild, MasterClass, Coursera, Duolingo, just immediately come to mind. I would look for paths there. Also, roles at bigger companies leveraging that experience. Like Facebook has a team working on employee education software internally. You might be good for that team. At Facebook you interview generically, so this doesn't work there, but at many companies, finding the right team to approach can help.