Awesome, thanks so much for this write up!
I can give quick open answers to these:
​
>time from "completion" to landing a job \[maybe shown as % of fellows who find a job within X months (3,6,9,etc.) after completing the work, for example\]
I forgot to mention another thing, which is that the amount of training you get changes week to week depending on your availability for the next week. So we bucket people in to "full time" and "part time" but that quickly gets more granular down to the number of hours and can change week to week depending on your schedule (you can also pause for vacations, etc...). I do think with all of these caveats though we could give some numbers based on different average commitment levels.
​
>% of job applications/interviews/etc. performed before landing a job
I think this one we could do. So you can apply for jobs whenever you want and we…
Hi legend, Michael here from Formation, we're running a small test starting this month (June 2022) with people in Canada. I'm from Canada originally too, now in San Francisco. So short answer is yes (whether you intend on coming to the USA after on TN or staying at a top tier company in Canada). Feel free to apply and DM me to make sure it gets looked at!
Hi! We just have some base comp + stock averages we computed last year on our website and no other statistics. We've been discussing how to publish outcomes though and if you have suggestions on numbers, would love to hear!
To reiterate our purpose: we work with you as long as it takes, full force, until you hit your goal and are happy with the outcome. Period. So at the end of the day, if you sign up, put in the work and you have the time, you will get an outcome you are happy with. We won't accept people that have goals too narrow or who we don't think we can help achieve their goals in a reasonable amount of time.
If we were to invest in making a robust report of statistics and outcomes we have a lot to think about. The guiding principles are:
1. We want to be fair and unbiased in reporting outcomes. Far too many programs throw around cherry picked numbers.
2. We want to ensure the…
I haven't attended either, I've coached and mentored alumni from both, either right after or later in their careers.
I hope you get other responses answering your specific questions but just want to pre-emptively discuss outcomes because in the past people have said for similar questions 'Codesmith has the best outcomes choose Codesmith'.
First, will put the best numbers at flagship locations for both.
Codesmith (H2 2020): New York median salary $120,000, 80.2% placed within 180 days (CIRR)
HackReactor (H1 2021): San Francisco median salary $107,500, 73% placed within 180 days (self reported audited)
HackReactor has a slightly lower bar to entry so more people drop out.
I believe both have people with experience attend, but a Codesmith exec reported about "a third" of people at Codesmith have a CS degree or work experience or another bootcamp (source Course Report interview with…
This is going to sounds like I'm plugging my company, but try out our (free, just put in email address) assessment if you haven't already [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment). If you score over 1400 - 1500 you are in good shape for random stuff thrown at you.
Keep practicing in their environment as well to make sure it doesn't trip you up.
Ok great, Codesmith is good for people who are more advanced in their journey so I would probably look at prep before going there. I would suggest doing some more intense self teaching or doing a free or cheap bootcamp prep course (freeCodeCamp, App Academy Open, Codesmith CSX, CSPrep, etc...) to test the waters first before committing to a bootcamp. Most bootcamps do full stack, but lean front end.
I can share my answer to this. Context, I did NOT do a bootcamp, I did traditional CS and have been working in the industry for 13 years since graduating (first 8 years at FB). However, I now work with a lot of people from a lot of different bootcamps a year or two into their careers to help them level up to top tier roles.
So a few controversial points:
1. Outcomes are hard to judge and often skewed. The reports people produce are a good starting point to narrow down the handful of bootcamps with better results. But there's a lot of reading between the lines. A Codesmith executive in a Course Report video about two years ago that about 30% of people have a CS degree or prior experience 1. (not sure if this is still the case), and their median salary is one of the highest. But people tend to have more experience going in, so the results for people with no experience might be different…
Hi! Behavioral interviews are a tough one to give advice on because they depend a lot on your company's goals and what they are looking for in the interview.
For example, at Facebook the behavioral portion was aiming to measure:
1. Scope of responsibility in past job. This is important for determining someone's level. Trying to ask questions so you can compare their previous responsibilities to the different levels at Facebook and pattern match.
2. Past performance. I don't remember if Facebook explicitly trains for this, but I like to try to guage how the person was performing in their last job in some kind of measurements. Like performance ratings, relative performance to peers, awards at previous job that we're rare, etc...
3. Values alignment. When I was at Facebook, the values we're things like 'move fast and break things', and 'nothing is someone else's problem'. I would ask abo…
I work with a lot of people to break into big tech, specially top tier companies.
We have a small number of self-taught developers who we have helped land top tier roles specifically. At Formation.dev , if you have a decent starting point at DS&A, we would probably work with you for 6 to 9 months to be FAANG-ready... that's the range of the people self-taught people we have worked with.
I do actually think NuCamp is more competitive to Udemy and Udacity. Their materials are almost all hands off except for the Saturday sessions. And many of their instructors are kind of like TAs at a bootcamp. So I think positioning it as a "Udacity with more hands-on support" isn't a bad position given the cost.
\+1 if you want to go to Codesmith or a better bootcamp to do their in-house prep first instead of a separate bootcamp.
I would try. It's good practice. You typically don't need to solve "hard" problems to pass at most companies. Or if you are given hard problems, you aren't expected to 100% solve them.
We have a test you can use for practice and benchmarking if you haven't done an OA recently and want practice first: [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment) (DISCLOSURE: I'm co-founder, I do coaching and training, I'm sharing this to genuinely help you benchmark before doing this OA and not soliciting anything)
It's a 45 min CodeSignal and you'll get your score after to get a sense of if you are ready.
I can speak from the other side. [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (I am co-founder) isn't a bootcamp but do turn people down who want to join us (sometimes really really want to join).
The typical reasons we have turned people down are:
1. Misalignment of goals. If you want something out of your training that we don't think we can achieve with you, we won't move forward. We would only take someone we are confident we can help achieve a top tier company role, because we commit to training you all the way until get a happy result.
2. Not at the technical skill bar. We have a fair technical assessment to help us assess starting data structure and algorithms skills, if you aren't at the bar, or we don't see enough potential, then we will typically not move forward. In this case, we would want you to join in the future though if you can get to the skill bar necessary.
3. Other reason…
Not about money no. We operate at a loss right now and I don't make a salary or any money from Formation. I own a large amount of equity and if it becomes a very successful I plan on using the proceeds to invest and help others. Made enough money from the evil large scary corporation. We pay mentors so they take sessions seriously, just not $300 an hour and a lot don't want to get paid, but we have to pay people fairly for compliance and doing things by the books.
Yeah +1 to helping people find what they want and supporting them. See we can agree on that!
Hey I love your bluntness and edge. Something at Formation we haven't figured out is how to talk about mentors. We have many mentors that are like paid (the equivalent of) '$300+ an hour at their day jobs' and they work do mentorship with us for the mission. Genuinely very unique in industry mentors. And then we try to make sure people get sessions with many mentors and get more from the right people. I think this is a good way to work around a lot of the problems you mention.
RE: Facebook, I can comment on my experience. I left Facebook after eight years, the stock is up 100X since I started so financially it worked out, I built really cool things, met a lot of amazing friends who are doing awesome things outside of Facebook today, I had some life changing experiences, I met my partner!, I learned product insights you can't learn anywhere else. I left right after the 2016 election when…
Expanding access: Formation's coding benchmarking assessment to see if you are ready for FAANG DS&A interviews (free 45 min CodeSignal test)
Hi all, I shared this assessment with a smaller sub last week and wanted to expand the early-access here if that's ok!
We are working on a free assessment to help people gauge if they are ready or not for FAANG interviews. I've been hanging out here for a while now and I'm hoping it will be really useful for people!
Background: our team has 5 ex-FB engineers with average 8 years each at FB, commutatively thousands of interviews, trained hundreds of interviewers, so we feel qualified in the FB DS&A bar.
To Try it out, go to [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment) and we will automatically/instantly send you a personal CodeSignal link to the test.
Let me know if you have feedback or comments about it and esp…
Yeah possibly we can, bootcamp grads coming to Formation is a small percentage but it happens. Our training itself is full or part time, it's scales to whatever your schedule is.
Yeah we work with you 1-1 to craft your story, help you find the right jobs, refer you where possible, etc... So I'm sure there is some value in your 8 years to get credit for.
It could be a good follow on to a free bootcamp yeah, the main hurdle is the bar is pretty high to enter. Like I said, most people have work experience already, but if you can show you can learn a lot on your own and do well on that assessment for example, we can work with you and be effective.
In terms of practical work, for people with no experience, we have a production-derived codebase, tens of thousands of lines, and you get code reviews from solid engineers. This is very minimal for a resume, but it gives people the confidence t…
Yeah I would look at something like that, Codesmith, Formation and those accelerators above.
We have this assessment at Formation you can do to help guage where you are too. If you get a very low score definitely consider the more bootcamp style programs. If you get a high score you can probably lean towards interview prep.
https://formation.dev/join/assessment
Hmm. I co founded Formation.dev and people sometimes call us a career accelerator amongst other things. Quite frankly we are quite unique so this is an edge case. We work with people with 1 to 3 years typically of professional experience to make a leap to a top tier company.
But would you call Outco, Pathrise, and Interview Kickstart career accelerators? I hear that used for these and I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.
The Headstarter sounds like it's in the bootcamp bucket based on their website. It sounds like Codesmith demographic, which is people typically without professional experience.
Yeah excellent point! It is by far the best results compared to other bootcamps, and I actually think their program and results are very good (other than the work experience and mid level thing... sorry I have to qualify this every time so this statement is not quoted out of context).
Maybe Codesmith should just go the HackReactor route and publish their own audited results. I don't think they really need CIRR anymore as a stamp of approval. It's kind of like the Olympics where one country keeps winning everything and the other countries don't want to play anymore haha. If all the other bootcamps stopped reporting for example, that's what would happen.
Sorry if I came/or come across harsh on CIRR, I'm like truly very open minded to arguments both sides and love this discussion!
HackReactor is another program with audited results (not following CIRR because of some drama with CIRR, but audited), where some cohorts have six figure medians as well. Other than Codesmith's fake project work framed as months of experience and the whole mid level claim that I can talk about for days, I think Codesmith had better results than HackReactor for a lot of people who haven't done much coding yet.
Formation isn't a bootcamp or school and doesn't have a "program", fixed dates, cohorts, etc... so we haven't figured out the best way to talk about results. The median base salary of the past 12 months (since May 1, 2021) is $138k and TC is much higher when factoring in stock (usually in the tens of k per year) and bonuses (5 or 6 figures). But many people start Formation making a good salary (sometimes 6 figures already) already so apples and oranges. If you want to research, tal…
Hey u/aetrides
Codesmith full bootcamp program is 12 weeks and is upfront $19,950 paid over 8 months or so. But they have various loans and scholarships to look into to spread it out further.
Formation doesn't have a bootcamp program, it's kind of like a personal trainer program. So we work with people however long it takes to get a job, typically 4 to 6 months. Our price varies from 9% to 15% of your new base salary (deferred until after you start your new job) depending on how much work you need and experience you have. Our median BASE salary for the past 12 months (since May 1, 2021) is $138K, so about $12,420 to $20,700?
So the programs are entirely different and we actually work with people who both come DIRECTLY FROM Codesmith to us and people who get jobs after Codesmith (amongst many other bootcamps) and then come to us.
People starting at zero fall in the bucket that have do…
That seems like a long time, you might be able to get into Codesmith sooner. Most bootcamps might say "waitlist" or "closed" but they have room still. Can't hurt to ask.
If you want to gauge your DS&A alone, we made this 45 assessment you can do from Formation: [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment)