Yeah we have. Most people have some professional experience, but there are a few people with zero experience that have gotten top tier jobs (Facebook included).
Again, it varies so much by person so there aren’t definitive patterns, but these are some examples:
1. We have a production level internal codebase where people complete tasks and bugs and get code reviewed by our team. People with less experience often work on this area, whereas people with experience do not. The goal of this is to learn professional level git, and how to communicate with engineers. So while employers know this is a project and not a job, people have examples for team-based stuff to talk about.
2. Some people have extremely impressive personal projects (this is an entire thread topic hahaha) and we help you practice talking about them very impressively.
Overall, using our extensive Facebook experience, we kn…
One point of clarification that is critical is that it depends on what role at Facebook (SWE vs other roles like Solutions Engineer) and if it's a contractor role or a full blown role. I can only speak the the full blown SWE bar, which is the highest and most consistent as well. The contractor bar is very different and I could see the above approach not being a problem for those roles.
For the SWE bar, absolutely we prepare you. We have extremely senior and director level former FB mentors preparing people in a variety of ways (1-1, small group) for the behavioral SWE interviews. We coach more experienced people so each person has to prepare differentlty and needs unique feedback and a unique strategy to the behavioral interview. We also have several full time team members who taught engineers at Facebook how to conduct these interviews.
One thing to consider more than the numbers alone for any program is to find people at the bootcamp who had a similar background/profile to yourself and see how they did.
Two things to consider specifically for Codesmith's numbers:
1. They have more people with some kind of experience before joining than a lot of other programs, and those people tend to make higher salaries coming out, which brings up the median.
2. Students are encouraged to put their open source projects as work experience, so they tend to get more real engineer interview opportunities than other bootcamps. Whereas at other bootcamps people get more junior, apprenticeship opportunities, and internships.
So you really want to try to see what people that look like yourself on paper have done rather than the overall stats.
In my opinion, the problem with ISAs and coding bootcamps is that an ISA only works if you are actually guaranteed to get a job at the end, then it's a win-win. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, so many people don't get jobs out of bootcamps and break this model. The win-win approach of both sides giving 100% until the day you get that job has been working really well for us at [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), but we're not a bootcamp or eduction program so it's a little different.
u/Comfortable-Cap-8507 do you think it would make a difference for you if GA was 100% training you until you got that job without stopping or do you still think you it would be a bad idea to do an ISA?
I have some neutral comments on the project-as-work-experience debate. I was a E7-level Engineer at Facebook for 8 years, interviewed hundreds of people, read thousands of resumes. I'm co-founder of Formation.dev now which does mentoring and coaching and I have worked with many Codesmith grads and alumni and am familiar with their program. We also have recruiters at Formation with 10 years recruiting experience at Facebook as well who review Codesmith applicants to Formation. We also hired a Codesmith alumni who we worked with at Formation as well.
1. If you put something on your resume that says Software Engineer for a "company", where the company is an open source project, it's a little grey area/pushing the limits of what people deem acceptable at top-tier companies. Here's an example of a prolific open source contributor and what their resume looks like with things clearly labelle…
It's great to see so many supportive comments on the thread, and the fact that you got some interviews means there is hope and it sounds like you have some fight in you!
If you DM me your LinkedIn/Resume (or provide a little more details about what you've done in the last 7 months here), I can take a quick look for more detailed advice (I'm co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), and was a E7 level Engineer at Facebook for 8 years, interviewing hundreds of people and reviewing stacks and stacks of entry level resumes).
\+1 to all the people who said you probably need coaching and interview prep more than a bootcamp. There are two things to deep dive into, 1. benchmarking your raw skill levels to see if you are interview ready or not yet. 2. you need help getting the interviews.
Given you are applying to 100 jobs a week, I think you absolutely need some help on your approach.
There are different options for all of these goals, [interviewing.io](https://interviewing.io) is good for doing one off interviews without any training or job hunt help, and [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) is much more expensive and is your one stop shop (disclosure: I'm co founder) for assessment, skill building, job hunting, negotiation.
There are some other options for coaching, like Pathrise and Outco and you should do your research, and figure out what's right for you, but I would strongly suggest something like t…
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation that the commenter below mentioned a few weeks ago. We are indeed busy and growing the recruiting team... we are a small team focused on the quality of our training, so we want to grow sustainably.
If you are still interested DM me and I can follow up and see what happened.
I'm a co-founder of Formation, you should do a lot of research and make informed decisions. Most importantly, we work with you for however long it takes until you have a great job and you have our full support the entire time. As of writing this, our last 10 offers signed, in order, are from great companies: CloudTrucks, Plaid, 1Password, GitHub, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Google, Snap, Akasa. It's not cheap, but it works.
I would try to contact current and former people we've worked with to see what their experience is like. Some of the people with less experience list Formation.dev on their LinkedIn and if you are more experienced it's a little harder to find people, but you can look on our network page and ping some of those of those people that have a similar background.
If you have been self studying DSA and that’s your main gap, I would absolutely not look at a bootcamp, and instead look at more interview prep. I’m the founder of Formation.dev and an 8 year E7 engineer at Facebook and have helped many bootcamp grads with some work experience level up to top tier jobs. While we support you all the way until you get a new job, and it’s intense,it’s also not cheap so I would carefully look at your options and figure out what’s best for you.
Leetcode is a great way to get some kind of benchmark. For example, you want to be comfortable solving medium level problems to have a chance at top tier roles.
Everyone has a different path. I would look at Formation.dev (disclosure: I am a cofounder) if you are trying to fill in CS fundamentals and your goal is a job. If you are already getting interviews I wouldn’t consider a bootcamp. A masters degree has the advantage of being considered for new grad roles, but is costly and will take the most time. All options are very different.
At Formation, our recruiters are all super experienced former top tier company recruiters (e.g. Facebook 10 years) and they can talk to you about your goals and give you genuine advice based on your specific journey.
If you haven't already made a decision, check out Formation.dev (disclosure: I'm a co-founder). It might be a good fit and you should look into it and do your own research. It's not a bootcamp with a structured curriculum, nor is it a job hunt only program. We work with people to fill in whatever gaps they have across the board (technical and behavioral), refer you to top tier jobs, help you interview and negotiate, etc... And we work with you on your schedule all the way until you get your new job.
Our last ten placements (at time of writing) were at Plaid, 1Password, GitHub, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Google, Snap, Atlassian. Many of these engineers went to bootcamps in the past.
I also don't really know any other programs like this at the time of writing, perhaps having several private mentors who is are senior engineers at top tier companies and paying them directly?
I've worked with several alums who got their first job after Codesmith and it can get you there. However, if you are targeting top tier roles with a ton of impact and very high comp I would absolutely suggest a "2nd bootcamp"/more training.
At Formation.dev (disclosure: I'm a co-founder) where we do exactly this kind of additional training, our last ten placements (at time of writing) were at Plaid, 1Password, GitHub, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Google, Snap, Atlassian. And at one of these people was a Codesmith alum, many did other bootcamps in the past. I don't want this to sound like an ad, so please do your own research about [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) and other programs that do additional training and make an informed decision.
So people who want to achieve this truly top tier bar absolutely can benefit from more training.
I’m the cofounder of Formation. The other commenter below summarizes the value proposition well: if you do your part, we do ours and we work with you until you get a new job, through the entire journey, and never decrease our support. Many people drastically increase their income such that the cost of the program is a fraction of the compensation increase alone (and we help negotiate offers where a 5 min email counter offer can pay for the program).
If anything, the time and energy you dedicate should be a bigger factor if you are working already. We are your coach and adapt your training week to week to push you to grow, no shortcuts.
Hi, I’m the co-founder of Formation and specifically for this question of if Formation would be good for someone from CodeSmith… we have worked with a handful of CodeSmith alum at Formation and I would recommend trying to find them on LinkedIn and asking them about their experience. It’s hard to find people that list CodeSmith and/or Formation on their LinkedIns but some recent outcomes were Snap, Facebook x2, and some still job hunting.