One of the problems with imposter syndrome is that some people actually aren’t skilled enough because they are genuinely in over their heads and use it as an excuse for their performance. Don’t get me wrong, many people have real imposter syndrome but a program shouldn’t be telling all of its students they have it and that’s why they feel stressed. People learn at different paces and in different ways and you shouldn’t use it as an excuse for a program that isn’t teaching you the most effectively for you.
Hey, you mentioned "most people entering had little to minimal experience ever making a website or using an ide"
I was under the impression that "a third" of Codesmith students have past experience, a CS degree, or relevant tangential experience, as Philip Troutman said in a video on Course Report's YouTube channel.
Would you agree with the rough "a third"? If I had work experience and was working alongside people who had never used an IDE, that doesn't seem like the right fit.
Based on their info sessions, they want you to take the prep courses to see what Codesmith is like and if it's a good fit for you. Knowing you aren't a good fit at the CSPrep level, helps keep their bar for immersive high and their outcomes high.
I agree with your reflection that you might have been better off starting another program sooner. It's great that Codesmith is hard to get into and waitlisted, but it means that you spend months preparing, 2 months waiting for your start date once you get in, and then months job hunting at the end. A lot of people would be better off starting sooner at another program, getting a foot in the door job doing anything programming related, and then working towards leveling up to a better job. (Disclosure: co-founder of Formation.dev and we help a lot of bootcamp grads make that second jump, so I'm bias in this opinion).
The biggest problem with th…
Codesmiths curriculum spends about a week or two on CS fundamentals and then has practice for the rest of the time while doing intense project work.
I also agree it’s not a single bar for what is “cs fundamentals” and that is not meant to gatekeep. Everyone learns and progresses differently.
My point restated is that interviews don’t ask these questions to gatekeep but they are testing understanding of the broad abstractions that all coding is based on. The best way to do well in these interviews is to understand those fundamental abstractions and patterns incredibly well instead of understanding minimally and practicing intensely. Don’t get me wrong, part of understanding intensely IS practice. But it’s practice for the sake of understanding, not practice for the sake of trying to pass an interview if that makes sense.
An example is someone might solve a LC medium problem and techn…
Hi, disclosure, I’m the co-founder of Formation.dev, which isn’t a bootcamp but a career accelerator focused on practice and feedback and not on lecturing/teaching.
I believe data structures and algos are extremely important but not just to practice them because they are interview questions. A lot of Codesmith alumni I work with are able to solve problems but lacking a bit in the underlying fundamental concepts.
If you believe DSA are important to you for interviews, learning CS fundamentals for months (not a week) and applying them to DSA is the way to go, rather than whack a mole trying to just solve problems for the sake of solving interview problems.
I saw you added the median thing or maybe I missed but this is my views on that. If I’m Codesmith I would very justifiably be marketing like you are saying, but to have students personally insult me about trying to steal Codesmith students
and tell me the “average” Codesmith student makes 120K and it is the best with nothing close is not looking at the data critically. Averages, medians are different things. Data excludes stock and bonuses, etc… It is not a factual statement to say that. Dancing, you are super reasonable on here so this message is meant for the others haha.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/x44mov/how_legit_are_codesmiths_stat/imtfku9
Yeah to be clear, this isn’t really talking about Codesmith so much as people who are fighting tooth and nail with me that Codesmith is the the “best bootcamp” because of CIRR and any data that’s not from CIRR is not to be trusted.
I think i just fall victim to engaging with trolls because most people are a lot more reasonable…
cc u/InTheDarkDancing, I commented on this today elsewhere and adding here for consistency.
I also appreciate the blog post explaining how Codesmith supports CIRR. I don't have a problem with Codesmith's position on CIRR, but what I have a problem with is people blindly supporting Codesmith as the "best bootcamp" because of their CIRR outcomes and regurgitating their marketing as unwavering fact. These are smart people, who want six figures jobs levering their problem solving and critical thinking abilities and regurgitating marketing without thinking critically about it is not demonstrating that ability.
Codesmith directly comments about how important equity and bonuses are in compensation. Yet they continue to market their CIRR results (which explicitly only include base salary and exclude stock and bonuses) solely as a marketing strategy to make a claim they are better than other b…
Yeah if someone starts, as long as they have the intention of job hunting after, they are included in the report and impact the graduation rate. The placements rates and medians are all based on the number GRADUATED and not the original number who started. Finally, if someone is unresponsive to CIRR requests but they can confirm they got a job, they person is included in the "placed" count but not in the salary counts. So the way CIRR is designed is it tries really hard to make sure the salary stats are only counting successful people and have the highest medians possible.
This doesn't change the fact that Codesmith has very strong outcomes, but their outcomes don't include equity and bonuses and hence are somewhat meaningless, other than as a marketing tool. They are well aware how important equity is in outcomes and would make their outcomes even better but they support and promote CI…
CIRR H2 2021 is out! [Discussion Thread] Same schools as H1
[https://cirr.org/data](https://cirr.org/data)
No new schools added, so same ones: Hacktiv8 (Indonesia), Juno (Canada), Launch Academy, Tech Elevator.
Codesmith and Turing are missing, but I'm sure will show up soon.
Feel free to comment in this thread to discuss! I'm busy but will add edits later!
1 minute glance looks like Tech Elevator and Launch Academy's results all improved for placements and salaries. End of 2021 was certainly a faster hiring period from my observations as well.
Stats are real but there's more to the stats. For example, CIRR doesn't include equity and bonuses which means the numbers are actually only equal to or HIGHER than in the reports.
The key thing here is "median", i.e. the 50th percentile.
20% of people make under $110K and 20% of people make over $140K.
An “average" is most useful when you have a normal distribution and this data certainly is not. A “median”, which is used often for data sets to remove the influence of outliers, is, but it loses a lot of information in the calculating. Let’s say one bootcamp has 3 alumni with salaries 0, 100, 200, and the other 100, 100, 100. Same median, same average, completely different stories.
Which is why you have have to look at the outcomes for people who are starting with a background like yourself.
It's very likely that people with zero experience and a few months of CSX before joining a…
I can add some info about Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder, not bootcamp, not an option for people with no experience). Each Fellow has a continuous conversation in their private job hunting channel containing 5+ team members. Each Fellow has a dedicated human (their Fellow Manager) to talk to and who checks in with you constantly. You have career team members who are constantly trying to find you opportunities for referrals at good companies. You also have ongoing continuous scheduled training and practice that never ends to you keep getting stronger and stronger as you job hunt.
This isn't the right forum as we compete with Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco, so apples to oranges. I'm commenting this because just because the bar for bootcamps is so low that even if the above commenter's story sounds like strong support, there is a bar 100X beyond that that exists if you look…
The summer isn't slow no... there are a lot of hiring freezes right now that are reducing the number of options but it certainly isn't slow anymore than the fall, especially since COVID turned everything upside down, and you should be interviewing regularly, even if some of them aren't your top choices.