From what people have told me there is a paid one (that is 75% off for alumni) and there is a like self service guide an alumni made (which I've read). There is A LOT of content, guides, opinions out there (some paid, some free) to get ready for DS&A interviews and these are honestly are fairly similar on par.
Obviously I'm bias, but we (Formation) have people who live and breathe 24/7 how to train people on DS&A, SD, etc..., thousands of tasks, hundreds of assessments, dozens of mock interviews with senior+ engineers people who have done hundreds of interviews, all the stuff is living and breathing and changing daily. So I have a high bar for DS&A courses because we are creating something magical here.... but we're very expensive and it takes everyone a different amount of time. Most of these courses above are a few weeks and static.
I left out the community support in my post below/above, I also hear that often about Codesmith. So most bootcamps have alumni slack/discord/etc... where people talk about jobs, referrals, etc... But Codesmith alumni are really bonded with the bootcamp and come back to do mock interviews and give advice. Like I heard about several attempts at creating advanced DS&A courses for alumni that were driven by alumni just wanting to help out and contribute.
So there are paths for bootcamp grads, like top-tier apprenticeships (Dropbox, Asana, Twilio, etc...) but it is hard. The top bootcamps after widdling down people who actually graduate, have 70 to 90% placement within six more months.
I don't know about the outcomes of a short degree from WGU. Having a legitimate degree can help your resume get past screens. But a few years down the road, I'm not sure.
If you have a natural propensity for coding, are super ambitious and hard working, I think a bootcamp can accelerate things.
I wish there was a simple answer to this because I get asked a lot.
It really depends on you. How do you learn (e.g. by reading, by doing, with people, alone)? What are your starting skills and how much programming have you done? What kind of job do you want? Where do you want to work?
For a high school student who has the opportunity to go to a top 10/20 CS/engineering schools, I would almost always recommend going the college route and doing top tier internships each summer. 1. you get to try working at different places and find the BEST job for you and not just A job. 2. you meet a lot of other people who will go one to other top companies and in other areas as well.
If you are going to go to a less well respected college just to get a degree on paper, I don't know if it's always worth it over other things, like bootcamps. This is where it becomes more personal. Codesmith is 9am to…
Yeah totally, when I bring this up people think I'm like calling them out and I'm really very much in the middle. Their work is a lot better than what a lot of bootcamps do. Their alumni are relatively successful. So I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making a judgment call for everyonI'm just trying to answer the question from my perspective as someone with a ton of industry experience who works with a lot of people who went to bootcamps in the past.
Codesmith is really focused on efficiently doing things to build up a resume that appears really good on the surface. They also do a good job teaching, but I just mean the priority is to make it all look good to help people get jobs, i.e. getting resumes past screens.
One thing is the open source projects that a lot of people ambiguously label as Software Engineer jobs at companies. The projects have websites and all the Codesmith people like and promote each other's projects to build momentum. Not bad stuff, just very focused on making it look good. The actual projects don't have outside people working on them and are like really really good college class group projects that got portrayed a little more like company like engineering work. And there is a playbook for every project that is the same flow. The Codesmith way.
Another thing is these tech talks that people do. They prepare…
Hey, it's Formation.dev We do mentorship and training for people from non traditional and underrepresented backgrounds with experience to help them level up to top tier roles. Strong bootcamps grads are the most junior starting point to work with us and most people have 1 - 3 years of experience already. But we have a lot of people who have done bootcamps in the past and I know a decent amount about some of the top ones.
I haven't done Codesmith but can answer the question from working with Codesmith alumni.
With Codesmith you get lifelong support in their community. After you officially graduate, you get continued check-ins, practice, access to the community for support and referrals, and ongoing lectures for interviewing and negotiation. While normal Codesmith is 9am to 8pm every day, this phase is way more hands off and on your own.
I cant answer when it ends. Around 90% of people get a job within 6 months of graduating. The 10% that don't, someone else can hopefully answer.
From what I've observed, most Codesmith people are ambitious and hard working and a lot of people find jobs. At Formation we've worked with a range of alumni from those who need extra help to find any job to those who are really solid but need extra support to achieve top tier jobs.
One downside of the job hunt support is…
u/question_23 u/AHighFifth Welcome! let me know if you have any questions or feedback as you ramp up and ping me on Mattermost if we haven't chatted already, or let your Fellow Managers know if you need anything! (I have no idea who you all are on Reddit haha).
For anyone else reading this, the "GUI" referred to is our "platform". Our engineers (including myself) build everything from the ground up and that's why the experience is so unique. Some really interesting stuff we've built to support Fellows, our team members, and our Mentors, and so much cool stuff behind the scenes too ;)
Hi!
Short answer: no.
Long answer: we accept iOS Fellows on a case by case basis. If you have several years of experience, we can focus on data structures and algorithms and system design, but not iOS specific expertise. You can use Swift for most of your practice, and Javascript/Python in group sessions. Finally, we have we have a few very senior mentors who are iOS engineers (Uber, Square, etc...) who can do one-off sessions to practice iOS system design interviews. Our most recent iOS Fellow received 5 to 10 (lost track) offers from top-tier FAANG companies, but I think having more iOS training would still help.
cc: u/Yak_Overflow as well, RE: ISAs.
I can give my perspective on ISAs in general (they aren't unique to coding bootcamps), this might be a bit long and boring but it's a very interesting topic and a lot of ISAs are full of problems.
TRANSPARENT DISCLOSURE: I am the co-founder of a non-bootcamp training and mentoring program that successfully offers ISAs.
"Scam" is a strong word, but most bootcamps that offered ISAs have stopped offering them because they are absolutely terrible for the company, especially when a lot of bootcamps don't have great placement rates. Lambda School (BloomTech) used to be a pioneer of ISAs and recently stopped offering them. About 50% of people who start BloomTech get a job within 6 months of graduating, so 8 months + 6 months = 14 months for HALF of the people that started to even START paying for their education. Meanwhile BloomTech has to pay its staff…
100%, we are all impacted by our surroundings. Sometimes I feel like all my peers are better than me and I don't deserved to be here. At least that feeling doesn't really go away the more you progress in your career. But over time, you build confidence in the things you are good at!
My goal is for all the people I work with to surpass me years down the road and would love nothing more :D
I love reading other people's perspectives and I hope I don't portray my perspectives as "the source of truth", I want them to be a point of view to help people.
Yeah in my opinon, Nucamp is a good alternative/competitor to Udacity and alternative to a weaker bootcamp (especially for the cost), where M-F are self-taught and Saturdays you do a multi hour live session with an instructor to fill in gaps and get feedback.
If you know nothing about coding, get started with a good Udemy course, like a Colt Steele intro series. Don't worry about absorbing everything but just follow along to see if you even like programming and if you like React/frontend or if you like data engineer, etc...
Then after a few months, I would consider if quitting your job makes sense and which program is right for you. If you advanced quickly you might be a candidate for some of the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, Rithm, HackReactor, etc... which require a very basic level of understanding to join, or if you want to Nucamp first while you work, to re-evaluate bootcamps a…
Thanks for this candid feedback! I appreciate it a lot.
Lot of stuff I will reflect on and try to incorporate into my responses. I got feedback I didn't disclose Formation so maybe I went too far haha.
I'm extremely thankful you gave that example of the two quotes because I didn't realize that came across that way.
Yeah I don't know what to say but I'm here to help people. I joined Facebook in 2009 and my stock 100x'd so I originally semi-retired a few years ago. The lack of diversity and people from nontraditional backgrounds in tech is such a huge factor contributing to the problems that big tech is facing today, so I came back with Sophie to give 150% on helping solve this problem. I have made $0 from Formation (no salary) and while I'm a partial owner, we lose money every month right now.
I want to help more people get into the industry and find the right path for them. This is…
Sorry you feel that way, and I appreciate the candid feedback. I'm genuinely here to help people and give advice.
Having worked with hundreds of people, maybe half or so(?) who have done bootcamps (of all kinds) years ago (and some recently) I do feel like I have a perspective that is useful for people.
Being the engineer at Facebook with the most raw output in the entire company, and being at the principal E7 level (highest leveled 1.5% of engineers at the company) I have a perspective that might be useful for people.
I spend all my time on Formation and certainly have biases, but I also do feel my perspective can be valuable and I'm here with my real name, for open and candid discussions, and I genuinely appreciate pushback and discussion.
I haven't been to any bootcamps myself, that's where I also appreciate hearing other people's perspectives and hopefully together there is a lot…
No, Formation is not a bootcamp, we have a handful of people with no experience and 80-90% of people have worked for one to many years. That is an example. I've been criticized for not disclosing Formation, if you feel this is promotional, that's good feedback, I guess I can't make everyone happy, but I can try. I edited to give an example of what I mean, it's a little off topic now but 🤷♂️
This is one of the dark secrets of bootcamps. Some basically let anyone in and that means people who they shouldn’t of let in might have a bad experience and don't get a job, which lowers their outcomes on paper. So the bootcamps that are more selective have more success cases and have stronger outcomes on paper. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the education is better or worse it’s just one factor. At Formation.dev we haven’t published these kind of outcomes because of this (like a staff engineer making $400K TC isn't really relevant for a bootcamp grad who has contracted and aiming to make $150K TC at a solid company, and aggregating these numbers into medians and averages isn't that useful imo). HackReactor is a great example of this where they are owned by a big company and have pressure to hit numbers and their outcomes for qualified people are actually really good and they ha…
One thing to watch out for is their CIRR remote outcomes are for their first test cohort and only contain 25 graduates (a typical cohort in person is 36). In their announcement about remote way back when, I felt it was implied they were going to be more selective for the first cohort to ensure the experience met their high bar and outcomes were high. Presumably the quality will continue or they would have stopped, but just something to note as their outcomes in the generally are partially due to having a very high bar to begin with (20% over 140K but also 20% under 110K)
The title is a overgeneralizing. Open Source projects vs Short Internship is different than Codesmith's projects vs Rithm's internships.
The one liners are that Codesmith's projects are curated learning experiences branded as work-like experience. Rithm's internships are real work, but tends to be understated on resumes, and people get hit or miss experience.
I'll do a quick Pros and Cons:
Codesmith's Open Source Projects:
PROS:
* They have optimized the heck out of talking about these projects. They look like real work on a resume, they have a lot of buzzwords, it's very effective for getting interviews.
* The projects are almost all tools, which is a great thing to work on in general because it's solving a developer problem.
CONS:
* The actual projects, people spend 6 weeks on and most people commit only a few commits over 2-3 weeks.
* Not many people use the projects outsid…
Not all mentors are created equal.
I strongly believe in the idea that people don't need a single dedicated mentor, but rather need the right mentor at the right time for the right reason.
If you can get this just right yourself while doing a Udacity course, you are essentially outsmarting these expensive programs that you are paying 15K to do this.
Now the reason it's hard to navigate because some programs charge 15K to be almost entirely taught by alumni of the program. Alumni can actually be better a teaching some topics! But there are also very rare times you need a $500 an hour mentor as well.... and most things fall somewhere on between.
When you are starting out, you don't know what you don't know and you just have to trust a program to make good use of your $15K.
At Formation, we actually think about our fees as a fee that you could easily pay to mentors directly on your o…
I basically work 24/7. Believe it or not but I spend most of my time working on Formation's technology and platform and helping Fellows in their job hunt phase and I respond to things on Reddit via push notifications and often times quickly on my phone - doesn't take that much time. Today I've committed 5 fixes/improvements to our codebase and have a larger feature i'm working on right now that I need to ship before Tuesday. I've also talked to a few Fellows, gave a person advice on two offers they are looking at, and am working on accepting a new Fellow because it's a Sunday on a long weekend and most people are off.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Hi there! What kind of job are you aiming for?
In general, having a CS degree without internships/experience can be tough: hundreds of applications and few responses. At FB we would go through piles of resumes and people who didn't have several top tier internships were instantly skipped over (this was when I was involved in 2010). Unfortunately bootcamp grads have it pretty similar, so I don't know how much a generic bootcamp will help at this point.
Georgia Tech Master's is good. The downsides are it will take longer and it won't necessarily help with getting a job. It might reset the clock and you can reconsider new grad jobs and hopefully have more direct access to recruiters is GT is a good CS school.
I would only go to a bootcamp if you feel like your skill level is not at an entry level bar yet. If you have the CS fundamentals to get hired and need job hunt help look at these o…
Good question. We didn't really know what to call it to be honest and **F**ormation **F**ellowship (F F) has a ring to it, and the word "fellowship" is used in a wide variety of ways without a fixed meaning.
Pathrise is somewhat of a competitor (they do job hunting support, not so much technical training) and they use the word "fellows" so we figured it was reasonable.
I strongly recommend just pinging people on LinkedIn, no specific people, just ask anyone!
I have two responses to this:
1. The main reason the outcomes are so great is because the timeframe is variable and the outcome is fixed. I don't know any program/bootcamp/school that is like this, which is why we are our own type of thing. You get the result you want and you get there on your own timeline rather than working on someone else's fixed timeline and getting whatever result you can get. All of the logistics I've already described are 100% accurate and talking to people should confirm that (if it didn't let me know and I will reword something)
2. Our team is legitimately experienced and senior compared to anything else out there. We have 3 ex-principal FB engineers (E7+), we have 3 more ex-senior FB/FAANG engineers (\~8 yrs each) who have done many hundreds of interviews each (Amazon B…
I've had over a dozen conversations in the past two weeks recommending various bootcamps to people so can you clarify what are the "dishonest marketing tactics" you are talking about?
I don't know where these anonymous empty profiles come out of nowhere to criticize me. It's really hard to use my real name here and I don't love randos coming out of nowhere criticizing me for no reason. I only use this account with my name and picture for everyone to see (and have access to Formation's team account for helping to manage Ads). I've only recently started being active on Reddit and the amount of people who have criticized me FROM throwaway accounts and accusing other people of BEING my throwaway accounts (that aren't) is really weird... this sub at least has really great discussion for the most part and y'all are spending too much time trying to play games that no one else is playing.
Lambda changed it's name because of a trademark lawsuit. They were fighting it for 2 years or so (another company has a Lambda trademark and was being negatively impacted by bad press and reviews around Lambda School - which didn't have a trademark). They even bought this company in Florida called Red Lambda (which has a trademark) to try to fight back. They settled the suit after depositions and changed their name.
I'm surprised no one talks about this story! A chunk of thir $120M of finding probably went to this.
Regarding fundraising. So two things in general.
1. Even though Lambda had so much funding, they were losing a ton of money. We call this the "VC funded discount". Uber was similar, where they were losing money on every ride so that they could grow by giving people cheap rides. The investors were basically paying for thoss cheap rides. Lambda's case was different. They had…
Hi, I'm the co-founder and I just posted a large comment and 100%++ this. Reach out to any Formation person you can find. Ideally those that have similar backgrounds to yourself and recently went through Formation. Our [https://formation.dev/network](https://formation.dev/network) has people who opted in to being public... some of the best outcomes the people don't want to be, so while that might seem cherry picked, it's a fairly typical representation of the outcomes.
More junior Fellows are more likely to list Formation on their LinkedIns. Most people are working and don't want their employers to know, but they might have posted about Formation after getting their jobs and you can try finding those posts through post search to contact people as well.
We have one Fellow who talked to DOZENS of Fellows and messaged ALL OF OUR STAFF before joining, and I think talking to people is the b…
Hi, yeah I'm the co-founder (Sophie is the CEO and founder) and hang around this sub as Derek said :D. As Derek kind of said as well, Formation isn't a "bootcamp" and roughly 80 to 90% of Fellows (approx) have some kind of professional engineering work experience (typically 1 to 3 years) and are working full time while they do Formation. A lot of people did bootcamps in the past so I took an interest to this sub, and a ton of people have been asking me questions about bootcamps (we have Formation Fellows representing many different bootcamps in the past) and the industry since I became active, so I stuck around to help.
I also highly doubt past Formation Fellows are in this sub, I know a few people in this sub who are doing Formation now and are on the more junior side and they might be able to comment on their experiences to help you get a better picture. Try contacting people on Linke…
I wouldn't recommend choosing a bootcamp based on the languages or the stack. Choose the one that you feel is aligned with your goals. You might not realize it yet because learning programming is hard, but your engineering powers grow 10X every year in your career and years down the road no matter which bootcamp you go to, be it App Academy or Codesmith you'll see how the stack and language don't matter.
Codesmith has very solid instruction, has scaled really well, and is a great choice to get into the field. They have a very strong culture, and if you have friends there and feel like you fit, go for it!
Both Codesmith and Rithm care a lot about their curriculum and their instruction in general. So even though Codesmith has like a hierarchy of former students teaching, they do a good job and have a high bar for sure. Both teams have employees with lots of instruction years of experience and comparatively little industry years of experience. They both prioritize the learning experience.
Codesmith wins handsdown on the job profile preparation. Codesmith grads usually don't list Codesmith on their resume, they post about their projects, their talks, and come across as accomplished industry engineers, etc... Rithm grads post graduation messages proudly stating they graduated from Rithm and are on the job hunt. Very different approaches that show the difference in approaches.
At the end of the day, no school will get you a job, you are the one that gets the job and if you are driven, smart, things will work out. Maybe your FIRST job will be better or worse depending on the school, but you'll be on a good long term trajectory and you sound like you are on the right track.
I know the founder of Rithm and they are very focused on quality of education because of negative experiences at other bootcamps. They run very small cohorts with lots of face time. They care a ton about the quality of curriculum and education. I haven't talked to them since they went remote though.
We have a few Rithm alumni who we worked with a Formation.dev and they were a pleasure to work with.
I can't reply to RobSteinsVoice, a current Codesmith student, because they blocked me. But I'll add some notes here.
If you go to Codesmith's website about page, and look at the LinkedIn for all the instructors (junior, mid, senior, lead), they all went to Codesmith. They either graduated and stayed on for sometimes many years, or they worked somewhere and teach part time. I'm not sure if this is what was meant above about hiring back students. From what I understand "Fellows" are hired on…
Yeah you are borderline and I agree you could use either higher starting DS&A skills or more extensive project work to have a higher chance of success with our training. Note: for anyone else who might read this, if you are not at our current overall bar, our training is less effective so we want to make sure you are there before joining, or that we have adapted our training enough to support you (we have people who really want to do Formation, but it's too early in their journey and I don't want them to read your specific case and generalize). When we work with someone it's until the very end, so we have to accept the right people.
So two approaches for you specifically:
1. Keep practicing DS&A. Great growth so far so keep going down that path to get through a good number of LC easy problems.
2. I think a standalone project that's not a personal website is great. Ideally something whe…
That’s not bad. It’s not linear, so even though 1400+ means you are pretty close to ready for the stop tier interview raw skill bar (obviously you need to practice) 700ish is borderline ready for Formation to get there, obviously the low end but depending on your goals it could be sufficient. So you should look into it and see if it could be a good fit for you. The goal would be an entry level job top tier job or apprenticeship and you’re probably looking at 6 to 8 months. It’s very different from a bootcamp but you can weight your options between self teaching more, bootcamp, and Formation.
I can give my thoughts on this. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I want to be very upfront that I do not think Formation is a good fit for you yet (we work with experienced engineers to get top-tier roles), but I do have extensive experience with mentoring as a result of Formation and can highlight the pros and cons in my opinion.
**Personal Mentoring**
PROS:
* Goes at your pace
* Focused on your strengths and weaknesses
* Content can change and adapt as you go
* Always have a helping hand
CONS:
* Only get one person's point of view. If you hire an army of mentors it will cost you a fortune.
* Relying on one person's teaching style working all the time
* Different people are good at teaching different things, you are overpaying for some things for worse quality
* It's hard to find a good mentor and hard to judge if they are good, when you don't know what you don't know
**Str…
So they get FLOODED with applications. Which is why that Google recruiter was brave to post the other day haha.
Most of them send out some essay style questions in the application and more importantly a hackerrank or codesignal test. The tests I've seen (second hand through Fellows) are classic DS&A/leetcode and medium-hardish. The problem is because there are so many applications, you basically have to be perfect or very close to perfect to not get filtered out. I've heard of some people cheating (and they detect that too) and trying to really "pass the test" mentality... which is actually the opposite of what these apprenticeships want.... there are just so many applications it's the best they can do to filter.
You can try a sample test we offer at Formation: [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment)
You'll get your score after completing. Since…
1. Thanks. Yeah just want to help give my perspective on things. It's just one perspective, but so many people in the sub are in bootcamps or choosing bootcamps and it's missing the experienced perspective so I try to comment often.
2. It depends on your goals. You can get an entry level job directly from a bootcamp that is decent. Doing any kind of internship or volunteer work will help. If I were doing a bootcamp I would try to get an apprenticeship at a top tier company. Even the apprenticeships are super competitive right now, but I would try to be a top student and get one of those (e.g. Asana, Dropbox, Twitter).
1. Formation is called a Fellowship, but it's really like having a personal trainer for your technical and career skills and it's not an internship or apprenticeship. Doing something like Formation takes time. Like I said, MOST people at Formation have work experience al…
So I think the actual quality of the work is probably similar. But Codesmith resumes APPEAR much farther along. I've been told 1000 times that Codesmith doesn't tell you to do this, but the vast majority of people I've surveyed (out of 200 graduates) list that open source contribution as "Software Engineer" experience at a real "Company". This gives them a huge leg up with smaller companies that don't check these things well and care more about what you do than what your resume says.
I've audited their flagship projects and almost no one uses them. No one reports bugs. No one reports feature requests. No one outside Codesmith contributes to them. They are group projects that are marketed as big open source tools.
Sorry if this sounds negative, not meant to be. It's a brilliant strategy and it's working to help their alumni get the most out of their experience.
I think both are strong. Neither will prepare you for a strong chance at passing Google though. Both have a handful of alumni ever that go to Google right out of the program in their first job.
At Formation for example, we work with bootcamp grads, and the vast majority of our Fellows get top tier jobs. With many at Google alone, and many TURNING DOWN Google.
So I've seen the transformation needed for most people post bootcamp to be at that level. I would like to clarify that most people we work with have work experience already post bootcamp, so the number that come directly from a bootcamp is smaller, but I'm including all of these people in one bucket, because presumably people who graduated and worked are farther ahead anyways than new grads.
I might get some comments on here saying that all Codesmith alumni are Google-ready because people get jobs at Google, so I want to emphasiz…
Sorry I should have clarified "soon". I think it was a Codesmith employee in a talk that said something like 'they had plans to go back in person', but I didn't feel like it was in the next 6 months or so, maybe early next year.
I have a lot of Youtube and podcasts and stuff running in the background and I don't remember exactly where. Maybe ask them directly!. I'll edit that comment for clarity to not mislead anyone.
Codesmith is a solid choice in NYC, but isn't cheap, but probably worth it. I heard they are going back in person in NYC ~~soon~~ (edit: by "soon" I meant I heard they were forming plans, but with no specific date)
EDIT #2: App Academy is back in person in NYC now, would also consider
EDIT: sorry, first time for some reason I thought you wanted in person and there aren't many choices right now. Some more questions u/helpmegetrichpls, how much time do do you have? will you be full-time or part-time? What is your starting point? Are you coding already and trying to improve, or are you learning how to code?
Hi all, I've gotten a lot of DMs about my comments asking for more advice. I work with a lot of bootcamp grads a bit down the road in their journeys to achieve roles at the top companies including Google. I probably don't have as many messages as Mike has thought ;) but I'll share some thoughts on here.
1. Google is one of the top companies in the world and has one of the hardest hiring processes and highest bars for data structures and algorithms. This post isn't about a special program for bootcamp grads. This is an opportunity to connect with a recruiter who is supporting the "Early Career" (a.k.a. "New Grad") L3 pipeline. The bar hasn't changed and remains very high.
2. The interview process is the normal L3/Early Career process. You'll do 1 technical screen covering 1-2 medium to hard data structures and algorithms problems, not much talking. Sometimes you'll do a second one if th…
I don't want to give specifics for privacy but several Formation Fellows have Google L3 offers with first year TC over $200K (most people have 1-3 years work experience already). You can see a good breakdown here of many other offers: [https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google&track=Software%20Engineer)
Straight from a bootcamp with no experience, you'll be on the lowest end of the spectrum, unless you have competing offers to negotiate with.
Also to clarify for Codemsith grads (Codesmith advertises that it prepares you for mid-level and senior jobs) you will not be considered for mid-level (L4) and senior (L5) jobs at Google out of Codesmith with no prior work experience regardless of your interview performance. You can take a shot at early career (L3).
(Again, do not work at Google, making these statements from extensive industry experience and extensive experience supporting people whose dream company is Google)
Disclosure: I'm co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), and we've worked with a few people in similar buckets - it's not our most common case of Fellow, but you can look into it and see if it's a good fit on your own. We have a high bar for entry skills, particular with data structures and algorithms, and people's goals are to get top tier jobs (like truly top/FAANG-tier companies), rather than any job. We are like a personal trainer, so there's no fixed length, but I would ball park 6 months to get a job.
Another bootcamp could be an option is if you are really rusty and a lot hasn't stuck from 3 years ago.
Finally, you can try doing some serious project work, like Hack4LA (volunteering) and see if that helps go somewhere.
My hunch is you would benefit from some help or some structure, and also with resume and job hunting etc...
100%! Not that you have a 100% chance, but you can absolutely get a decent job with just a coding bootcamp. The top bootcamps typically need you to qualify by having some minimal coding skills first.
The differences I've observed are more in attitude and perspective comparing the top CS students (MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley, etc...) and the top bootcamps (Codesmith, Hack Reactor, etc...):
CS DEGREE: Has dedicated 4+ years to programming and have a longer term point of view. They are thinking 10 years down the road - pre-FAANG, post-FAANG, a lot want to start companies, a lot are looking beyond FAANG to the next best things. They are typically super passionate about the underlying technologies and have the time to have gone on tangents pursuing random things. Likely has done 3-4 internships already before graduating.
BOOTCAMP: People want a job and prioritize making themselves look as…
The Codesmith tech talks they arrange for each student with "Single Sprout" are copy / paste. I watched 5 videos, all of the people plagiarized from sources and read them word for word or with minimal changes without properly sourcing them. I just googled 10 or so sentences and found the original posts where sentences and paragraphs were pulled word for word. If a college student was caught doing that they could be suspended or expelled.
Don't get me wrong, as people will attest, I often recommend looking into Codesmith as a strong option in DMs. This is just a tiny portion of the process to check off a box on your resume.
I don't want to call anyone out specifically but you can reproduce by watching some Codesmith Single Sprout tech talks, and google sentences here and there.
u/SlowestTriathlete do you know anything more about this? I might be completely wrong, just something I noti…
RE: paying for content - this is a tangent and not CS prep specific. You can get great Udemy courses for very cheap (e.g. Colt Steele). You can get a lot for free even on Youtube. Springboard licenses content from other people for example and it's the same content you can get elsewhere. Nucamp is another example of a program that is very affordable, relies heavily on somewhat generic content, and the reason you are paying four figures is for access to instructors to help you and give you feedback. People pay to have accountability and to have instructors give you feedback and answer questions and my understanding is think that's the goal of CS Prep (and there is a lot of problem solving and feedback), but generally I advise people to never spend more than \~$100 for one-way fixed curriculum content.
1. Yes for that specific person, without knowing their skill level, they should look into Formation. If their skills are at our bar, it would be a better choice than a bootcamp. For reference, the comment thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/viw3bd/switching\_from\_civil\_engineering\_to\_swe/idhm08u/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/viw3bd/switching_from_civil_engineering_to_swe/idhm08u/?context=3)
2. 80K is the increase in total compensation over people's previous job engineering, not the compensation itself (and we exclude people who don't have a previous job from the calculation as it would be very unfair). I've been trying to crunch more recent numbers and my rough calculations for median base salary is $138K for salaries submitted (not job start dates but when people submitted a form with the info) Sept 30th 2021 to May 29th, 2022 (…
80K is the average INCREASE in compensation for people that had jobs prior. Not the average compensation.
I think that's kind of proving the point, we are not competing with them and there's nothing to be put to rest. A bunch of people have messaged me here about bootcamps and I've recommended they go to Codesmith given their situation, it's not either or. Others have messaged me about Formation. No one has said "I'm choosing between Codesmith and Formation"
Again, people typically talk to us about Outco, Interview Kickstart, Scalar, Exponent, and Pathrise - some of whom don't have pricing on their websites, let alone outcomes, but have had thousands and thousands of engineers go through their programs nonetheless. We're playing different games here and I'm sorry if my involvement in this subreddit is causing this confusion.
This is the best I got for raw outcomes: last 50 offers acce…