AlgoExpert and Neetcode are two good resources, some people are Formation also like Structy.
People learn different ways so if you are going it alone, you should try to find one that resonates with you.
A lot of people I work with from Codesmith are DS&A focused and I imagine you'll find a sub community of people you can work with too on the side when you start.
For backend roles at non-top tier companies, DS&A isn't super important. It is used at large top tier companies as a way of consistently and fairly evaluating people and that's it.
I can't give an answer but I normally suggest looking into the breadth of teaching styles to make sure you are considering a broad set.
Super intense bootcamp style: Hack Reactor and Codesmith
9 to 6 with personal teaching from experienced instructors: Rithm
Self paced mastery based: Launch School Core and then Capstone
Focusing on specific demographics: Ada Academy
In each of those buckets there are more options but you want to cover your bases instead of looking for objective goodness.
Big tip is try to talk to people with similar backgrounds as yourself to hear how they found a program target than higher level metrics or reviews (use those to initially filter your list instead)
Yeah I'm pretty sure after 2023, FAANG as a term is going to end and we'll see something else arise from the turbulence. There will always be some hot place to work that has tremendously interesting and impactful work, and compensates at the top of market.
That said, even now, at Formation, we see many people chose companies over traditional FAANG on a weekly basis. We tend to call all these companies "top-tier companies" and the bar is very high, and often higher, for some of these other companies.
Not to sound too condescending but it's a lot of the "not knowing what you don't know" coming into play. Like a typical person in America who dreams of going to Hollywood, probably thinks of blockbuster movies and household-name actors. But the reality is that it's a complex industry where being in a leading role in a blockbuster movie might not be the best outcome for you. Maybe you are…
From what I've observed it's the following reasons, some good, some bad, and not in any order:
- Recent grads just went through the curriculum and might relate more to the struggles you went through. It's additionally good practice for those grads to reinforce their learnings.
- Some programs count people who are hired by the program as "placed" to boost their placements stats. Codesmith is bootcamp that hires back a lot of grads, currently about 50 to 60 of the 150 or so staff are former grads but they explicitly do not count these people as placed. They do however not consider them graduated either so they don't count at all on the CIRR stats until their 3 months contract is done. Most other bootcamps hire people back indefinitely while they are job hunting, which might result in them leaving suddenly and is a bad experience.
- If there are too many former students teaching, you do…
Hi, someone tagged me as I'm the co-founder of Formation, which is a program for experienced engineers to help them work on fundamentals and prepare for interviews.
So the topics you mentioned, we cover System Design in general, which is high level architecture and API design, and several of our competitors, like Interview Kickstart, also cover this topic. We don't go into specific hands on practice in specific tools because typically experienced engineers will learn that on the job in some way, and the more important things to learn is fundamental abstract thinking around these systems. Most companies have such complex internal frameworks that knowing specific tools is less useful for experienced engineers.
I'm not sure if Formation is right for you or not, but I'm fairly sure a bootcamp isn't. Some bootcamps will flash those words around, like Codesmith for example, but the depth is…
\+1 to everyone else. If you have a legit CS degree then you probably don't need a bootcamp. You'll be much more advanced then everyone else, and mainly benefit from networking, and the confidence boost that you'll get from basically unofficially teaching all your peers.
Codesmith is the most prominent bootcamp that attracts people some people with degrees and experience and I hear the above \^\^\^ as the primary issue. But some people are so lost in the job hunt post graduation that having a network and community might be extremely valuable and worth the cost, it's a personal call.
Also look at career accelerators. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev (we tend to work with people with 1+ years professional experience, so might not be a good fit, but look into it!) as well as Outco.io, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, and Scalar. These programs might be way more inline wit…
I've worked with a very small number of people with no college degree and no experience at Formation who are very talented. They are still job hunting but at the same skill level now as other entry level top tier engineers. Can't go into personal details but I'm confident they will get very good jobs at the same pace as no experience college grads.... which has been slower than experienced people in this market but it happens!
It's a challenge, but true raw skills at the end of the day cannot be denied. The challenges tend to be confidence related about not having a degree.
I think Launch School Capstone by itself is the only thing you can compare to a bootcamp head to head. The actual "capstone" projects blow Codesmith OSPs out of the water. I think they are what the Codesmith OSPs aspire to be. A big difference is the documentation... Launch School Capstone projects are documented like open source projects SHOULD be. They are fantastic though in part because of such tiny cohort size that has been growing, so will keep an eye on the next waves of them. And they also want you to do Core first, so it's hard to recommend to someone who is already chosen Codesmith. You should probably be choosing Launch School Core before you even start CSX months ago if you want to do Capstone.
Launch School Core is pretty hard to compare to anything. It's maybe more comparable to Nu Camp. Both are fairly async. Nu Camp also doesn't have outcomes because self-service, lower…
I believe they include that same information in their enrollment agreement as well and a few people have pointed that out to me, that it seems much worse than CIRR and that the it forces them to show salary buckets under $100K and that they go pretty low below $100K whereas in CIRR "under $100K" comes across as a higher amount.
So my understanding is that this is a result of different standards. I constantly say this and constantly get attacked by throwaway accounts, but CIRR HAS FLAWS. It's setup by bootcamp insiders to have a common and clear standard, but it's also setup with little small nuances to make the top level reported numbers look the best possible and in the best light.
The regulatory information probably has stricter guidelines because people can be heavily fined for not complying, but it might not tell the full story behind the numbers either. For example, they regulato…
Good question and the short answer is that it depends on the company and the person. I have worked with a number of recent bootcamp grads for example and might suggest THREE different resumes to someone.
If applying to a new grad job that accepts non-traditional programs, then I suggest putting the bootcamp loud and clear as Education, and listed course work and any grades in there. And then putting your projects and projects, or Open Source Contributions section for larger OSPs.
If you are applying to a job requiring genuinely 2+ years work experience that does not appear to be a new grad job and could potentially be intended for an experienced engineer then I would try to highlight more work experience. For example, if your past career involved technical stuff in some way, working on highlighting that. If you have no relevant experience at all then you might not be qualified for the…
It's interesting how that's a similar ratio to Codesmith but there are so many Codesmith students and alumni on here that talk like Codesmith is in a league of it's own.
Consider your options everyone and figure out which programs are the right ones for you because finding the right program will yield the best personal result, rather than choosing the program that you think is objectively the best.
I understand this is why we have CIRR and audited results and what not. Hack Reactor is larger and let's in people at a lower bar, who have lower outcomes, but for the right people it works really well too. And unfortunately non of the outcomes reporting schemes take into account background before starting.
Definitely not. You can always exclude the bootcamp from your resume if it was harming it, so focus on what skills you are missing from your next step and if how a specific bootcamp will address those.
Tech Elevator is great in the non tech large cities they focus on. But cast a wide net and consider options. Look at Codesmith, Rithm, Hack Rector, and look at career accelerators like Pathrise, Outco, Interview Kickstart and Formation (disclosure: I'm the co founder).
Worked at Facebook for 8 years a principal engineer, did hundreds of interviews and looked at thousands of resumes. My team has 3 engineers with similar backgrounds. My team has 4 ex-FAANG 5+ year recruiters who have seen tens of thousands of resumes and done high thousands of interviews.
We have seen a heck of a lot. I think it’s worth hearing all sides as none of us have attended Codesmith. But what we see on a weekly basis on the outside is very clear and i’m presenting that view.
It’s very possible that we see more of the exaggerated resumes because they make it through the other filters, so I will admit that bias.
So I’m just basing this of the hundreds of LinkedIns I documented and the dozens of people I’ve worked with directly or indirectly from Codesmith. Things change, but you need to survey your whole cohort to kind of counter this rather than one case. You can always do whatever you want on your resume. It’s pretty frustrating to have super diligent data and people tell me I’m wrong because of one off cases. I’m not sharing the spreadsheet because it’s a privacy violation in my opinion but I’m happy to share the methodology and you can repeat it on your own.
Similarly. At Formation, the majority of people we work with are experienced industry engineers and we worked with them 10 to 20 hours a week as they have full time jobs elsewhere. Yet just because we have a small number of people with no experience at all - either no bootcamp or straight from bootcamp - and combine with the fact that…
1. People practice how to talk about OSP in depth without lying and without identifying it as a it is. This public video describes what I've heard from alumni and staff members, and what I've seen in alumni that I've interviewed myself, and specifically who talk to Erik Kirsten (a senior board advisor) as well: **"there's this one guy in particular his name is eric kirsten uh and this guy has a silver tongue and he will teach you how to say anything like you know you tell him hey um this is my background how do i present it to an employer to where it doesn't look like i just decided to switch careers because you want to avoid that stigma and he will give you a great way to say it you know"** 33:03 from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s)
2. I totally agree there should be additional checks and bounds to catch people m…
Well Formation is a Delaware Corporation, but you have to register in any state you are physically located in (and in some cases if you just have customers or employees in!). So just physically living in California means we have to have register here and pay taxes. People do try to avoid these things with "stretching" the laws, but we are trying to run things by the books.
My wife had a CA LLC in the past which is why I know a lot about that.
On a weekly basis, in my personal experience only, people are mistaking these resumes for experienced engineers. The blame might be entirely on the people making these mistakes, but I'm stating that I'm seeing it happening almost all the time.
I would like to emphasize what I repeatedly said in the past, MOST people working on real, legit Open Source projects ARE PAID for it. So Open Source !== not a real job and instantly make something that looks like a company not a company. Anyone reading, happy to talk more what Open Source really means because there is a lack of understanding in this sub about it.
In auditing 200 GitHub commit histories, over 75% of people had 2-3 weeks of commits on their projects, far less than even 1 month, never-mind multiple months. I have a nicely organized Google sheet from around May when I did the analysis. This is not two sides, it's a continuous spectr…
I agree that some things are a result of limitations of LinkedIn. This is not one of them. People might not be doing this with bad intentions, but someone, somewhere, is aware of this as a strategy to stand out from other bootcamp grads.
I agree that how people portray their personal profiles is up to them But I pulled over 200 Codesmith alumni profiles and over 2/3rds of them have almost the exact same descriptions and representation of that experience as ambiguous work experience.
I really need to emphasize that I'm not saying anything personal about people that do this. Again, I support people doing this case by case, but the fact that the vast majority of students do it is a fact to note as no other bootcamp has this characteristic.
It's often listed as "experience" and portrayed somewhat like a job.
This is a sample Codesmith project that looks like a real company that produces open source software and you can see how the students list their experience if you look at the "employees" profiles. It says nothing about Codemsith and instead redirect to a non existent entity called Open Source Labs (this isnt registered in any state I could find and is just run by Codesmith)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/vaasdev/
EDIT: Some people didn't like me sharing one of the OSP company pages in particular. I randomly chose it from the recent announcements and you can choose any of them! As open source projects they are all public and easy to find and easy to document the commit histories of what people are actually doing.
I don't think I portray Codesmith as a whole as shady. All of the people I know personally who work there or went there are fantastic people. They also say how hardworking and awesome the staff is on the ground running the day to day.
I'm pretty sure since I've been around here for like 8+ months, Codesmith has longer lines than ever, and several people credit me with the reason they chose it, so sorry if this was offensive, but overall I want to have balanced pros-and-cons.
Sorry if it comes across that way, I work with Codesmith alumni daily to sort this out and they will attest how complex and case by case this is, and how middle road I am... I work with people to help them get the best outcome and sometimes they use their Formation resume and sometimes I advise them to use their Codesmith resume for a role.
It's a controversial point but they do officially suggest to exclude it. The reasons they tell you are that: 'you did Codesmith and it's an elite school so you don't want to disadvantage yourself by coming across like a bootcamp grad. you have done projects that are at a mid or senior level and you want to be recognized for your accomplishments so you should emphasize those'
I don't agree with this reasoning but that's what they tell people.
EDIT: Want to clarify a few things because saying "officially" might be misleading
1. The official documentation doesn't tell you to exclude it but tells you to include it as experience and doesn't tell you to include the word Codesmith in describing that.
2. People are told the above not in writing but have reported being told it verbally during a standard resume lecture
Capital One's "Senior Associate SWE" is equivalent to the Google entry level L3 and Facebook entry level E3.
"Principal Associate" is more like Google mid level L4 and Facebook mid level E4.
The bar is higher but Capital One doesn't evaluate people like top tier companies do, they are a little more recall and study based.
Capital One right now has a super broken process that Codesmith alumni are exploiting so try running with it while you can! We've had Codesmith grads be honest about their experience and not pass the recruiter screen for ANY role there, and others who do what Codesmith told them to say who get these interviews... but each person does their own thing.
I would just be careful about over-leveling if you have no experience and are interviewed for this role. In the current economy low performers at higher levels who are overpaid go first in layoffs.
I'm bias but I would self-teach and then do Formation :) but that's because even though I have a degree, it was a broad engineering degree and I self taught myself web programming and started a web-based company in college that forced me to self-teach with real users.
Bloomtech's results were not great unfortunately :( I don't want to judge but by moving to the flex, much fewer people graduate now.
58% of full stack web people "graduated" and 90% of them got jobs.
They used to have 75% of people graduate with 75% job placement.
So of the people that sign on day one, it remains to be about 50% of them getting jobs at the end within 6 months of graduating.
The median salaries haven't changed much.
There aren't any program bootcamps that cover theory sufficiently with your Computer Science hat on.
Some programs, like Hack Reactor and Codesmith spend a week or two on DS&A, and both have ongoing DS&A practice. But it's firehose-style crammed in DS&A focused on passing interviews, not DS&A to learn fundamental patterns and ways of thinking about how computers work.
If you've already done a course, then you'll find even at these bootcamps, 90% of your time will be doing practical work and then the DS&A you do will be you helping the more junior people that don't know the basics.
What are your goals? If you want to get a top tier CS job, then I would consider Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Outco, Interview Kickstart, Coachable, and other "career accelerators" as they are designed possibly more for your case. If you feel you need a lot of practical skills too, and you just want…
I've worked with several 42 alumni, and their former operations manager worked at Formation after leaving 42.
The long story short is having a free school with free housing doesn't really work here and people take advantage of it for all kinds of reasons, from homeless people, to non-work authorized people, etc... At the same time, they were extremely low-staffed in person, as their platform was all online, even though the physical campus and dorms were in-person. So people would show up and sit at the computer doing online work all day, where they didn't really need to be there.
So you have these really hard operation challenges of running an in person school with in person dorms, with extremely low staff, and add the fact that it's free and people from all over are trying to exploit that.... makes it really hard to maintain.
It think all the people I worked with at Formation (and pr…