From my knowledge working with a wide variety of Codesmith alumni I disagree that "they don't teach anything". I see two buckets of people: first are the 2/3 of people with zero experience who self taught enough to get in, and they learn a tremendous amount of practical skills; second are the 1/3 of people with experience who do say things along those lines, and it's likely true because Codesmith's is a bootcamp aimed at helping people with no to little experience. The 1/3 of experienced people probably shouldn't go to Codesmith to learn skills but the 2/3 of not experienced people do find it incredibly valuable.
At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, work with experienced engineers) we have seen a slightly increased demand from bootcamp grads who can't find jobs, and our outcomes remain very strong, but we are targeting top tier companies and it's not for everyone. There are not statistically significant numbers here because of our target audience above, but people with no professional experience have gotten offers from Amazon (by far the most common top tier company hiring now) and from top tier startups (top tier funding + founders + investors) but also Bloomberg. The banks are also hiring, Capital One, Visa, Schwab, JP Morgan Chase, American Express. Capital One is by far the current most common Codesmith destination and they joke about it haha.
There are a lot of jobs. I'm biased from my job, but I believe investing in strong fundamental concepts (not just data structures and algorithms, but understanding why they exist) always makes you a stronger engineer. If you are spending more time on vanity work for your resume (like projects for your resume instead of projects for your passions) then you won't get as much bang for your buck in this market.
u/BootcampBen wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
We hear about at least one Capital One offer basically every week when we go over some of the past week’s outcomes. It’s definitely joked about and they aren’t a FAANG company for sure, but clearly there is a pretty good pipeline there.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah it has solid cash compensation too, I think it's a great first job for someone with no experience.
Oh one followup: "Senior Associate" there is like "Early Career L3" at Google. and "Master Engineer" or "Lead Engineer" is what Google calls Senior Engineer... just showing the level names being meaningless as it's a good example of that.
u/stoph311 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I just spent some time looking at job posts on Capital One's website, and all the standard SWE positions require 3 years of experience. Are they just listing "3+ years of experience" as a gatekeeper to deter truly unqualified applicants, or do they really want 3+ years? I feel li
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
So there is such a size-able Codesmith contingent at Capital One, they have their own Slack channel and they can refer people to a variety of teams.
Capital One has a variety of positions, but the one most people are getting is "Software Eng - Senior Associate" which pays around $150K a year base salary and total comp. A FAANG entry level is about $200K+ total comp based on performance for comparison.
Reasons how this works.
1. They only have one level lower than this that is very entry level "Associate Software Eng" and it's meant for new grads and kind of like a mini internship. So anyone with any experience would be considered for "senior associate"+.
2. Some of these people at Codesmith have experience already and don't do anything special to be considered.
3. Some of these people at Codesmith list their group projects as "work experience" and mislead the company into thinking they have experience. <--- This one is controversial but it happens.
4. Overall Capital One is not a FAANG-level company and their evaluation is a bit more "recall based" so you can game the interview more especially with a lot of friends giving you advice.... versus a new grad who has no idea what to expect.
u/BootcampBen wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You think the people at Capital One, who have hired gobs of Codesmith grads, are going to be fooled by someone listing their OSP as work experience?
Not just fooling them into getting an interview, but then fooling them through multiple interviews and into a job? Really? At a c
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Yeah actually I do. The world is very large. These companies are very large. People see hundred and hundreds of resumes.
1. Several times a week people on my team mislabel Codesmith alumni as industry experienced based on their LinkedIns. Recruiters spend seconds looking at your resume and they don't read bullet point 15 that says "product incubated under oslabs" and when they do, they aren't pondering what that is and if it's open source
2. I asked some people the other day about this with some examples, industry experienced people and two said expletive laced sentences about this practice.
You can blame it on the recruiters or the companies but things are the way they are because the vast majority of people have integrity in their resumes and don't do this and companies don't build teams of recruiters who are trained and focused only on this tiny edge case.
The problem here is that Codesmith teachers reinforce this because it's all reinforced in the Codemsith family and I come across like a "gatekeeping crazy person" around these engineers. But there are far far far more people who think this practice is wrong... not lying about experience but just listing OSP as experience right beside an open source section intentionally placed to validate the OSP as legit experience.
EDIT: Capital One has 11,000 engineers so yeah having 30 from Codesmith is completely under the radar. Most companies this size assume there are more foreign spies working for the company than that.... seriously.
u/stoph311 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
They literally say that they hear about offers from Capital One often and that it seems to be a pretty good pipeline out of Codesmith.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Which companies hire who and when will change over time. We had a lot of people going to FB and Google and then they froze. Now we have a lot of people going to Square/Block and Amazon. I suggest that no one follow the current week to week trends and plan based on that.
u/SlowestTriathlete wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hi Michael - so I'm going through the hiring portion right now and we have strict instructions that our iteration project has to be listed under something like Open Source Experience, which I think is kosher since it is. Do you think otherwise? My actual work experience is under
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
So this might sound very subtle. So assume that no one will read the bullet points and the key trick is having the following
OSP:
-bullets
Open Source Projects:
1. solo
2. refine
3. enhance
By putting your other projects under a single "open source" bucket it tricks someone into thinking the OSP is likely work experience (even if it says open source somewhere.... people don't read it)
u/buttholewax wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
You get what you put into CodeSmith- some people don’t work as hard as others and joke around during the immersive. Lots of people from my cohort are getting jobs. I wouldn’t have attended any other bootcamp. And I’m happy I went to CodeSmith. Most people I know are getting jobs
u/michaelnovatireplied·
How many people don't have jobs yet though. One key problem with CIRR is that it is focused on the outcomes of people who get jobs and report. It's not the median salary of everyone who started, only the median salary of those that got intended to job hunt, graduate, for a job, and report a salary.
u/SlowestTriathlete wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hmmm so I only have my OSP project under open source. Then experience (actual work - a lot of database stuff ) and below that I have projects. That was the guideline I was given.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Oh so all your projects are under one section? Like a single top level item “Open Source” with your OSP and your all projects all as equal sub bullets? That’s my recommendation as well yeah. Very curious to see why the majority of resumes end up with OSP as a separate item! Let me know if you get any insight why.
Always appreciate good discussion Ben and Triathlete!
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
That’s not true.
Every CIRR report includes every single student who did or did not find a job within 90 and 180 days of their start date.
It also includes a small fraction of students who have to report BEFORE the start of the program they aren’t intending to job hunt (entrepr
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
Again, not a school, no graduates, no end of program, no curriculum and we can’t be compared to a bootcamp head to head. All good questions to ask and also exactly why we can’t possibly report CIRR like metrics.
I think you have a big misunderstanding about what Formation is and it might be helpful to research more instead of trying to make us for your mold for what you think we are.
I feel personally attacked because I repeatedly tell you we don't have a school and we are running something different, and you repeatedly call Formation a school or a bootcamp and repeatedly ask for data the schools and bootcamps offer. You seem so fixed on the fact that you believe we are a school and I've offered at least once to do a call with you to explain what we are. Yet you keep saying it and the I have to keep correcting it.
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I actually do try researching everything I post, which is why I clarified your false statement about CIRR (it includes every student in its report who started at the same time)
Do you intend to get your students employed?
Then there’s a definite start date and a definite end da
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I keep saying the same things but everyone comes in at different skills. We have someone with literally zero experience who got a job af Amazon entry level and a staff engineer with 6 years of experience. Aggregate times don’t make sense. They make sense if everyone is starting at the same point like a bootcamp or school. They take you from A to the best B possible. We take you based on your B goal and if we think we can get you there from wherever your A is. It’s seriously nothing like a bootcamp or anything remotely similar.
Im here to give people advice because I work with so many past bootcamp grads and see a lot of misunderstandings. I’m sorry if my involvement here is confusing but I would ask you try not to read into it.
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Bootcamps admit people of all skills levels and background as well (the good ones require skills testing).
People with no experience alongside classmates that are computer science grads or product managers. It’s not an excuse to withhold employment %
You can also absolutely tr
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
You’re asking to compare people that get jobs within 90 days of starting so you can compare it with people who get jobs within 90 days of FINISHING. Makes no sense. You are asking to compare people that do 50 hours a week to 10 hours a week. Makes no sense. You are asking to compare people with a goal of getting a job in 8 months with those who want one ASAP. Not everyone wants a job ASAP at Formation. People often get several offers and keep training until they get one they like. All of this makes adds to why it makes no sense to give those CIRR numbers.
I agree with your ask though. I would love to provide better data that can help people estimate how long it might take to get a job given their unique circumstances across over 5 dimensions. So far it hasn’t been a big ask and people talk to current Fellows to get an idea of how it works. Quite frankly we are doing ourselves a disservice not explaining what we do clearly so I hear you on this. I just need to overwhelmingly emphasize that nothing else like Formation exists in the world because calling us a bootcamp over and over only makes it harder to understand.
I hope over the next few years it will become clearer what we are doing!
EDIT: I really need to emphasize how unique each persons experience is. They can ramp up their hours week to week, pause for personal situations or work issues (majority of Fellows are currently working full time) , and our number one priority is to help them achieve their goals. For some people that’s time, for some peoples that’s money, for some people it’s role. We measure a lot of metrics in regards to how satisfied people are with their progress and outcomes and those are super important to us.
u/chasinthedra wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m a codesmith grad starting with capital one shortly. This thread is interesting 🧐
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Let me know if you disagree with anything or have more perspective to add!
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m not asking you to compare your data to anyone, I’m asking you for qualitative data PERIOD.
You advertise a $134k TC on your website but provide no contextual information: how big is the sample size, what’s the average time those included spent job hunting, how many of thos
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
I tried to give some reasons above but I don't even like what we have now on the site, because the outcomes vary so so so much by goal and we have to very carefully decide which numbers best represent what we do - which we haven't done yet - so we encourage people to talk to whatever random Formation person they can find with similar backgrounds and chat with them. Like we literally have had 10+ offers over $300K TC in October for whom that is the market rate and we help the people choose between offers. The uniqueness of those situations for those people are not captured in an average salary metric because and we want people to know they are getting a bespoke experience aimed at helping the accomplish their goals.
I've said this before but some of Codesmith's alumni get stock and bonuses as well, excluded from CIRR, and CIRR does not paint an accurate picture of their outcomes as well. By going on all on CIRR everyone is OBSESSED with some of the arbitrariness of the metrics they ask for. But since Codesmith's numbers are better than other people they compete with head to head, it's not a bad strategy to go all in on supporting them.
For us, our competitors are Interview Kickstart and Outco. I would press you to find metrics and salary data from them, and they are an order of magnitude larger than us in terms of number of engineers, and they are both a lot older too. We're playing in different arenas than the bootcamps.
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
That’s not true.
Every CIRR report includes every single student who did or did not find a job within 90 and 180 days of their start date.
It also includes a small fraction of students who have to report BEFORE the start of the program they aren’t intending to job hunt (entrepr
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
You are straight up wrong about CIRR. The median salaries are of people who reported salaries and got jobs only and exclude everyone else. So drop off 1 is the graduation percentage. People who don't graduate are not included in the median salary calculation. Then there's people that don't get jobs. They are not included in the median salary calculation. And then outside sources can be used to confirm employment for percentage employed but without a salary to include the median calculation. You said you do a lot of research so read the CIRR and it's very clear in the Excel worksheets they provide... complete with examples showing exactly this
This is exactly what I'm talking about how CIRR has built in vagueness to make this happen and help paint programs in the best light.
u/buttholewax wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
How many people are actually applying for jobs the correct way and reaching out to CodeSmith for help? How many are using their hiring groups? Also they break down the data more than just one median salary. So if someone is just taking the median salary that’s on them. And you ca
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Yeah I totally think the percentages are very clear and the 20% under $110K and 20% over $140K is a lot more interesting than the median in the middle but I meet a lot of people who almost always say "but Codesmith grads make $125K" and the data, which is very different from all other programs that report, looks more to me like people with experience have made $140K+ (which is actually market rate a mid-tier companies for people with experience) and people with no experience tend to make under $110K. Most people in this Reddit have no experience, but they believe they will make $125K. I wish they had data for experienced and non-experienced people but that's not part of CIRR.
u/Efficiu wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I’m not asking you to compare your data to anyone, I’m asking you for qualitative data PERIOD.
You advertise a $134k TC on your website but provide no contextual information: how big is the sample size, what’s the average time those included spent job hunting, how many of thos
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited★ FEATURED
These are our last \~30 offers accepted in order (excluded declined offers obviously): Square, Flatiron Health, Amazon, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, WePay, Amazon, Visa, Doordash, Virgin Orbit, <top startup redacted>, UIPath, American Express, <mid size not top tier redacted> Amazon, Square, <top startup redacted>, Amazon, American Express, Zapier, Edelman, Klaviyo, <top startup redacted>, Dialexa, Amazon, Google, Plaid, Sense, <not top tier startup redacted>, <top startup redacted>, Figma, Google.
I think this list demonstrates both consistent top tier placements, as well as the breadth of placements on an individual basis. We still don't have more salary data to give because we don't want to give anything out that we feel doesn't communicate what we're doing.
As stated before, the methodology for the data is in the fine print of that dialog on the website and it's very clear how we compute the numbers.
u/Reo212 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Thank you for your detailed reply. I am hearing lot of criticism on this forum about codesmith. There are lot of unemployed grads looking for job. I was about to enroll in codesmith but backed out hearing so many negative things about codesmith.
But as you are saying about how
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
This person has been copy pasting this review on allo f the negative Codesmith posts from the past year. It's suspicious behavior.
Codesmith's leadership were saying earlier this week in a public info session call that they had 60 placements in the past month and it doesn't check out with the raw data some people inside Codesmith sent me who were upset that the leaders said this.
I put a pause since then on my recommendation of going there until I can sort it out (and it's not something I'm urgently working on because I'm busy with real things to do)
People are definitely getting placed still but there are some unknowns.
I also have a list of all the recent placements to go through in detail because I spot checked some with a long time industry person who doesn't know what Codesmith was and the person though their LinkedIns were all complete lies (e.g. 8 months of Software Engineer experience that was really just a 3 week long project).
I was going to make a list of all of the placements and how people presented themselves but haven't had the chance.