What are you using to judge that Codesmith is the clear #1? Have you looked into smaller programs like Rithm and Launch School Capstone. Rithm has very small class sizes directly taught by seasoned instructors. Launch School Captone projects are very similarly designed but blow Codesmith OSP out of the water in terms of time spent.
Depending on what you are looking for Codesmith is likely a contender for the top choice, but curious what "consensus" you are basing that statement off of. Reddit is full of anonymous people who come and go. Codesmith currently has 50+ previous students on staff as Fellows and many more as instructors, and how do you know a bunch of "alumni" on here aren't also on payroll and leave that out?
u/bootcampTA wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thanks for the reply.
I will confess that my opinion on the consensus is mostly shaped by Reddit mentions/stories, with a bit of the paid review sites thrown in. My big concern with HR is that they dropped out of CIRR, and the precourse has not been updated in quite a while.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I think they are generally similar yeah in that the materials are similar and they move at similar paces, and you should look at the day to day. Codesmith has a very tight community of awesome people as it's a bit smaller than HR. HR has a fantastic alumni network as well and it's much larger than Codesmith's but I feel like Codesmith alumni really "stay in the family".... just look at how many alumni come back in some capacity to teach or help out... almost every instructor at Codesmith WENT to Codesmith. People aside, Codesmith has really figured out the resume/job hunt process that works and has scaled to like 150-200 simultaneous students or so. Launch School's Capstone is in my opinion stronger but they take like 30 people at a time.
When it comes to HR vs Codesmith I often ask people's timeframes and their goals because both are solid options. Codesmith is slightly better if you have no fixed timeframe (i.e. can wait for both an opening and for job hunting) and for generally more ambitious and people who hustle
u/witheredartery wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I really don't like that cs just employs their own people who don't have professional exp.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Their about page has a list of all employees. All engineering fellows are former students. All the full time, senior, and lead instructors went to Codesmith and never worked in industry. All the part time instructors are former students with full time jobs. They recently hired someone outside, who worked at Coding Dojo.
Don’t make assumptions and also don’t just trust what I say. Look through the employee list and look at their LinkedIns…
u/witheredartery wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
What's the case with formation in this regard
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Formation isn’t a bootcamp with lessons and instructors. Our Fellows do 2 to 6 hours long sessions a week in groups of 3 to 6 people (or 1-1 mocks) and those are led my industry mentors who are mostly independent senior, staff, and principal engineers from top tier companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, over 100 mentors likes this. The sessions are scheduled every week just for you from scratch and on specific topics you need to work on, or 1-1 mock interviews run exactly like real interviews.
Our mentors are well respected engineers and most are doing it to help with our mission of helping people from non tradition and underrepresented backgrounds level up.