Hi, yeah that's a slightly above average starting score means you have some room to get to the consistent top tier bar but Formation could potentially be useful yeah! We work with people based on their experience and background and their goals as well, so I would suggest applying so that you can talk to a member of the team about the later and see if it's a good fit for your current goals.
I'm extremely biased, but you should look into the career accelerator bucket of programs in addition to bootcamps since you have some experience already. These programs are focused on getting you a better next job in the industry, instead of getting your first job in the industry.
Formation.dev is the one I help run, which focuses on filling in skill gaps for people with non traditional backgrounds, targets too tier companies, and works with you for however long it takes to get a job, as long as you do your part. But you should look into Outco, Pathrise, Interview Kickstart, Scalar... each one is very different.
Is it possible that you are awesome and demonstrated both natural talent and a strong connection to the company?
I obviously can't speak to this experience, but I've worked with top bootcamp grads and top CS grads from MIT and Stanford and that statement doesn't apply at all when comparing the two.
A Stanford CS grad has about 300 hours across 6 core CS courses and then another 1000 hours in a dozen or two CS electives, then then have 3 FAANG internships on their resumes and leave with 5+ offers at FAANG companies.
This obviously isn't the typical CS degree and many of them are not like this. But saying the best bootcamp produces grads that are more experienced than a mediocre CS degree is more accurate. I would give Codesmith less of a hard time in this regard if they didn't market themselves as equivalent to an elite grad school and instead marketed themselves as the outcomes of a…
Sorry, I don't have time to write a lot and will try to come back to it, but two big ones:
1. It tells you the number of graduates included as an absolute number, and that's it. All other numbers are percentages, which can hide the underlying truth. The salaries are only for graduated and for people who report them, and exclude people who did not. So saying that X program has a $120K median salary is great except it's the median salary of the 95% of people who graduated on time and 85% of those people who got a job and 95% of those who reported salaries... the people who are excluded from the salary data are slowly shaved off the numbers.
2. There's no indication of number of people who started the program in absolute numbers.
3. Not everyone follows CIRR properly, Codesmith doesn't follow CIRR guidelines and "fellows" extend their their "clock" on CIRR by 3+ months. Which makes it even…
I think your view is too cynical about getting into Amazon and you're trying too hard to game the system with that mentality. I know about the Codesmith Slack channels and Discords where people try to game the system. I know it works for some people and that only makes others double down on the same approach. But please hear me out.
I've worked with a few people, and one in particular super closely, to get into Amazon with zero work experience. We also have a senior manager bar raiser mentor who did a panel discussion a few months ago for us around this topic.
You shouldn't memorize some "stories for their Amazon principles and answer medium leetcode" to get in, you are missing the point and you might not keep your job very long if you get it.
No interview system is perfect, but you'll have an easier time and more successful career trying to:
1. Become a genuinely strong generic prob…
I've worked with a number of Codesmith alumni and everyone is an adult capable of deciding what approach they are most comfortable with, and we can make that work, but my general advice is:
1. Leverage what's unique about your pre-SWE experience. If you were an accountant, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or something else that you put a lot of time into preparing to be, then you should present openly and try to pull out relevant things from it, rather than hiding it. For example, a doctor who did research in protein folding and was fascinated by the large scale computer systems used for simulations and some day wants to work on such systems to help save lives.
2. Target entry level roles and apprenticeships at top companies. I time box the time I spend writing replies on Reddit and this one needs it's own essay.
1. A summary for entry level: starting off with right support and expectation…
\+1 to the warning about mid-level and senior roles with no experience. It's one of the 3 things I push Codesmith on constantly because it's dangerously mischaracterized.
I do know edge case people with zero experience who get mid-level or senior roles (either direct from Codesmith or that we worked with post Codesmith) and it's not the rosy colored picture of success you might imagine... it's a stressful imposter syndrome filled ride and the gaps are extremely evident to these people when they start their jobs. I still think they can get by in these roles when they happen, but it's not fun and it should absolutely not be the Codesmith's goal to get people into these roles.
I know Eric K constantly says junior roles are the worst thing you can do for your career and to target mid level and senior roles but he's flat out wrong and I'd be happy to debate him live in public about this.
Look at career accelerator style programs. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder at [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) but you should also check out Pathrise, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Scalar, and others. I know I'm super bias, but you should genuinely consider this kind of option in addition to considering a bootcamp.
The model is to have each cohort overlap for half the time with the previous cohort. The "senior students" mentor the "junior" students as part of the process. So the cohorts typically overlap 50% with the previous cohort and the next cohort, and I think they have +/- 1 weeks extensions here and there for closing and holidays.
I did some digging and OSLabs and Open Source Labs are not registered entities that I could find anywhere and don't appear to be anything legitimate. An early Codesmith and executive is listed as a "sponsor", and there are two other sponsors, one seems shut down and 404s and the other has their executives working at multiple companies.
I don't think there is any funding or legitimacy associated with this institution and it's a label that's used to try to legitimize the projects and separate them from Codesmith.
I have two interpretations of this from people who have talked to me about it:
1. This was a good intentioned idea from Philip Troutman to create an open source ecosystem supported by Codesmith and other companies as a way to get students visibility in the community. And as Codesmith grew that vision didn't work out so it's day to day usage is just a legacy label put on the op…
I don't judge whether this is good or bad because I understand why individuals do it as well that I've worked with, but I do strongly want to present the industry sentiment about this which is more aligned with what you just said and people should know that when thinking about their resumes.
We have a small list of rules that are not super complicated:
1. Look for OSLabs, Open Source Labs, and often "product incubated by" with that. It's usually the last line of that item on the resume
2. Look for "Tech Talks" "sponsored by" Single Sprout, Bractlet, or Jeeny
3. Look for jobs with no months specified and just year, e.g. 2021 to 2022
After a while you get to know the more common projects:
1. [https://github.com/orgs/open-source-labs/repositories](https://github.com/orgs/open-source-labs/repositories)
2. And also, if you are unsure, go to the LinkedIn, click on the company name, and see…
So we actually always wonder like what if you meet a cowoker on Formation or someone you knew from a bootcamp, and at least with colleges and bootcamps that's not uncommon. We genuinely have some people out of bootcamps, but we also have people many years out of bootcamps that TEACH at bootcamps WHILE also at Formation. Because of the way you progress independently week to week, we are trying to put you in sessions with people at your level on a given topic, so you kind of find your pocket of people naturally.
Similarly with mentors, we have Fellows who work at FAANG companies right now, or were laid off and someone from their company might be a mentor at Formation. We also might have a super senior mentor who gets laid off and wants to join Formation as a Fellow because while they are fantastic at coaching the thing they are mentoring, they might need a lot of practice with System Des…