Can you elaborate more on what toxic positivity means to you there? I hear it a lot and have numerous examples myself but I'm curious what examples you see that way.
Like I've seen both dismissive and ignoring of criticism but also covering it up by asking people to remove posts or tracking people down who have NDAs or gag agreements and asking them to remove stuff.
Definitely not all, some do, and I have no idea if it's more or less than CS grads or the general pop, but these are the four buckets I've identified IMO and they apply to a lot of bootcamps. I just tend to see wayyyyyy more Codesmith people who come to me in their first job and ask for advice because they are struggling to keep up and don't want the company to know they have no experience because they stretched it a bit during interviews. But 100% anecdotal and not can't any meaningful statistics from that, jusy my 2 cents from my position.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/173usbz/job\_market/k46xcya/?context=3
1. They aren't just looking for raw coding skills, but communication, collaboration, improvement, etc....
2. The fact that you care so much means you probably prepared a lot more for the 2nd one and are/will show great improvement.
3. If you get anxious or freeze up, take a deep breathe and focus on clear communication.
4. If you get nervous, or are worried about panicking in the interview, PRACTICE A PROBLEM SOLVING METHOD and stick to it. BIAS, THIS IS MY COMPANY: this problem solving method can be used to solve any problem, helps people pass Google interviews without doing my LeetCode. It's more complicated than it seems to get good at this under pressure, but check it out: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
5. Most of the interviews are friendly and collaborative, but don't be TOO friendly, you want to balance dem…
\+1 this, Codesmiths placement rate isn't great right now. They published some SALARY numbers for 2023 on their blog but conveniently left out placement rates. Fortunately I know a bunch of people who work and worked there and they share these things internally - the numbers are down, they know it, they aren't telling anyone and people have a right to not be happy about that and to demand numbers. If Codesmith info sessions and their website tout an 80% placement rate when their internal presentations show a lower number - that's not cool.
They laid off almost 20% of people, who are under gag agreements, but there are numerous people considering leaving or who left who are not. They have reduced cohorts, they are moving around resources for the Future Code program, there's so much going on that people should not be judging Codesmith by CIRR right now even if they did publish 2022 results. Everyone has to be so positive on camera and behind the scenes I bet Codesmith has no clue who the people who are most upset are.
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is b…
I would walk through the exploration. You might say something like "I think I have a good instinct on where to go in this problem but let me walk through first".
And then do a typical:
1. confirm you understand
2. identify a few approaches (even though you know the one you want to go with)
3. then start coding
This is my company's approach that you could follow, but highly recommend following a structure problem solving method even if you know the solution: https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/
In all fairness, Codesmith literally says in their info sessions "If you are admitted into Codesmith you are already employable as a junior engineer and Codesmith will turn you into a mid-level or senior engineer". If you know anyone there you yell at them with the same insults and tone as your comments here.
Hi, I appreciate you for being transparent and disclosing biases, it's really hard to know who is posting what on here and even though your post is obviously very positive, it helps having context and seeing your passion come out.
I'm not sure what comments or posts you are referring to, but I personally don't think being "the best" bootcamp in this market necessarily means you should go there in this market. (I'm NOT making an analogy between bootcamps and cigarettes in ANY way) But being the best cigarette company doesn't mean everyone should be smoking, but if you do, maybe you would buy them from that company. So people recommending not to do Tech Elevator (or any bootcamp) right now might not be attacks on TE itself.
Finally, I don't think there's any best or worst programs and the right program for the right person is key. Codesmith has super high outcomes but isn't the best prog…
Does that mean that the expectation is that if someone wasn't following CIRR standards, they will have to pass a consistent audit in order to be posted?
FOR REFERENCE OF WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT:
I mean they published [this](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/codesmiths-commitment-to-cirr-transparent-reporting-frequently-asked-questions) and stated:
>Who is included in the “hired by school” statistic?
Codesmith deeply values team members who grow their careers from the ground up and have a first-hand understanding of the mission behind the work that we do. For this reason, we appreciate instructors who have completed the immersive program themselves and understand the student experience. When you see the percentage hired by school on a Codesmith CIRR report, these are a very small handful of graduates that have moved on to work full time as instructors or Software Engineers for the compan…
I added a correction to my comment above. So Codesmith has been telling prospective students and staff their CIRR report will come out any day now. Given that this is changing and it will now come out in January is there anything stopping them from self publishing an official report themselves without the CIRR designation?
Hi Rachel, I have a bunch of questions! I very openly have numerous criticisms of the CIRR standards but I also appreciate the vision of having standardized outcomes. My goal is to ask fair questions with no shades of opinions and hope to have constructive discourse.
1. Why are the results delayed for Q2 2022 compared to the Q2 2021 timeframe for release?
2. Why did the domain name expire earlier this year and no one renewed it for about 10 days afterwards during the domain recovery period?
3. What are the annual fees for being a "member school"?
4. Why is CIRR a 501c6 business league instead of a 501c3 non-profit?
5. What's the process for making changes to the standards and how to members contribute to that? (this might be a very long answer but just a high level overview)
6. What is the role of a board member of CIRR and what does the board do?
7. Why are outcomes reported as percent…
I think this reply characterizes the controversy as I see it as it represents the attitude that Codesmith itself has about things.
I went to an info session once where the one of the speakers 'We're ready, ask us the hard questions' followed with a bunch of thumbs up emojis. So I asked passive agressively (anonymously) 'How did you get your current job 8 months ago' (because their LinkedIn showed they were employed as a Software Engineer at their OSP - no "OSP" - the company didn't say "Open Source" in a single place, or OSLabs. NO RESPONSE. No emojis, no acknowledge, like it wasn't even asked.
Like you can't say give me all the hard questions and then only answer the hard questions you want.
This attitude is pervasive at Codesmith and in this subreddit.
I'm pretty tough on Codesmith in this regard and I haven't seen evidence yet that people are paid to write reviews, I have seen potential symptoms of that but I personally can't draw that conclusion.
I think that people who love Codesmith might be mislead into posting and commenting without realizing that it was strategic on behalf of the company.
I don't know if you've been to any Codesmith events, but a number of people there are like crazy crazy crazy friendly, positive, and emoji reaction to everything-type vibe and I can easily see how "an instructor saying everyone: we need to tell the world how awesome this is!" can turn into Reddit comments and posts, and the instructor said that because the program manager said that enrollment is down and they need to try to boost enrollment and the instructor too in on their own accord to ask people to do that.
Like I don't think it's like b…
Good outcomes + marketing.
1. Codesmith has the highest outcomes on paper and about a quarter of people who go there found them on Reddit (internal second hand number)... so people find it on Reddit and then come back to where they found it to talk about it.
2. Rithm is a very tiny program, but is also good and word spreads. But give it's size and much smaller alumni size I don't expect as many students to hang around.
3. Launch School Unique mastery model and "slow approach" so it gets discussed a lot and the Capstone rivals Codesmith for outcomes.
4. Turing. The only accredited bootcamp that became a school, other than Make School that shut down.
5. Hack Reactor. One of the oldest programs, consistently with pretty good outcomes. Has a lot of alumni over the years hanging around.
It's called Formation, but just to be clear, it's not super relevant for this sub (it's meant for people who have been working as a SWE already for 1+ years and generally more) and I'm here to try to give helpful advice because I have both extensive industry (including 8 years at FB as it grew from 750 employees to like 20K) experience and have worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads later on from all kinds of bootcamps (and helped my partner run her own free in person bootcamp for 2 years), and synthesizing these, I feel gives me a unique point of view to share.
You can look up more about Formation.dev and ask me questions. It's a unique type of approach that not a single other program is doing and we're working on updating our website to try to explain better what it is haha, but definitely ask questions.
/u/InTheDarkDancing you are a by the books and audit-appreciating person who disagrees a ton with me about most things, so what are your thoughts on this?
Am I wrong in asking this "violation" (i.e. inconsistency with CIRR standards) be disclosed by the auditors in the report because it's not for Codesmith to decide what rules they choose to follow and not disclose in the official paperwork, or do you think this rule breaking is so obviously okay that we shouldn't question it?
I'm fine either way as long as it's consistent. Like we all follow the rules and disclose meticulously when we don't and feel justified, or we get aways with fudging the rules when we feel like it and hope that everyone agrees but it should discredit the trustworthiness (just a little bit.... not entirely obviously) of the outcomes.
The voting on these comments suggests people are in a different camp: 'Whatever…
Hiring is picking up for mid level engineers. Disclosure: I'm co-founder of a mentorship platform for SWEs with 1+ YOE under their belt. We have seen 4 or so Meta offers in the past few weeks and many more interviewing. It's definitely not easy but if you have a legit 2+ YOE (like full time SWE job, not projects, not open source, etc...) then you should be getting interviews in a reasonable timeframe in this market. There are many more challenges in passing the interviews and with headcount, but the gears are turning.
That's not at all the case for new comp sci grads and new bootcamp grads (including Codesmith and Launch School and other programs that have these kind of "open source work experience" projects) and the market remains incredibly hard just to get interviews without lying about that experience. The exception being CS grads from top tier CS school - they have a lot of choice…
This makes me sad :(. I think each individual has a different path. You might not be cutout for SWE, but just because Codesmith didn't work, it doesn't mean SWE isn't for you, it's just ONE way to do it.
Feel free to chat with me if you want to talk about your experience and get my 2 cents on other things to try.
I fully agree and support this, just make sure to consider the OSP projects at Codesmith projects and not number 2 or 3.
A number of people have like X to present, it might look like they have a job but that was just their project.
Speaking from experience and trying to help navigate your search.
Yeah that's fine!
I think I haven't reached out because I'm introverted and shy lol. I prefer talking to people async online and make up for shyness with extreme responsiveness. So almost all the leaders I've talked to have been long and slow online conversations first.
I don't know if I would immediately jump on a call, but I would appreciate having a direct and open channel to be like 'hey, someone sent me a screenshot, is this a thing' and where he can be like 'hey I feel that comment is misleading can you adjust it because of Y', and then hopefully being more understanding over time, even if we're not best friends lol.
That's awesome and congrats! I'm really happy for you as a person and you sound like you have a superstar trajectory. My FAANG comment was not meant to be a comparison, just that there is +/- six figure negotiations at that level so I was genuinely curious how he helped navigate that!
I have seen his videos, and notes of his advice and I think it's on point and solid, but it's also inline with the advice that industry career coaches and negotiation coaches give. So it's fantastic that this is included in Codesmith and for life, like [Levels.FYI](https://Levels.FYI) charges like $2500 to help with negotiations per time! But I also think people who he's helped often portray him a flawless person who truly knows everything and has all the answers, and quite honestly, he literally said the above, that he knows "everything about the industry" because he's friends with "the CTO of Disney" (bt…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
100% I literally recommended OP consider Codesmith and was discussing in private 30 mins ago.
The ignore strategy is because I mean this: I've talked to the founders of numerous other programs on here and have professional open conversations with them, and not a single leader at Codesmith has contacted me for 1.8 years now of me being the same old person on here every day.
Instead, the CEO has badmouthed me in internal all hands, the outcomes advisor has texted someone telling them Formation's a scam and he'll give them all he needs. An alumni made very inappropriate comments about me in an alumni Slack that were screenshotted to me. And all this kind of BS in private and the public response isn't "he is dark depraved person whose sole mission in life is to take down the great thing \[we\] have built" (this was quoted to me by a student but I don't know if they quoted it or paraphrased…
I'm someone who posts a lot of criticism of CIRR, the most out of anyone, do you think my comments are misinformation or are you talking about other comments. My comments are critical but sourced directly from the CIRR standards, worksheets, the website, and talking to one of the founders of CIRR, and not made up.
Most Codesmith students I talk to get their information about CIRR from Codesmith posts.
Some people do state misinformation about it on here but that doesn't mean that all criticism is misinformation either.
For starters, Codesmith openly doesn't follow CIRR's standard for graduation date as it considers PAID FELLOWS to not have graduated until the fellowship contract is complete and does not count them as placements, even though the CIRR rules are clear than any job after someone meets the consistently applied graduation requirements is a placement and graduation dates ar…
Thanks for sharing more details! Yeah that's what I've heard from the people in the "Eric is awesome camp". What I've found though is that while his advice is solid, he's overconfident in his understanding of the market. He said 'I'm friends with the CTO of Disney so I know the better than anyone on Reddit or TikTok', and 'I've done 4 startups and 3 of them were acquired' and like I said, public documentation raises a lot of questions about that.
But I guess my question is, while he has been helpful, how do you know he's given you good advice and how do you know you wouldn't be able to be more successful with other advice?
A senior engineeeing manager, M7, at FAANG, with a trajectory of being promoted every year would be making about $800K to $1M a year. It's analogous to E7 - [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e7](https://www.levels.fyi/compan…
Yeah me too and I appreciate you engaging because I know my direct and transparent tone is not interpreted how I intend it inside Codesmith, where the response has been 'badmouth me private, ignore in public and respond with positivity'.
But yeah I had notifications on for the entire post and got one 1 hour ago for different comment, and then came back 20 mins later for this comment. None of the other comments on the post had any engagement changes at (no comment/no change in votes) and this comment had 11 upvotes within 10 minutes.
I wish this place would be more welcoming easy to have professional discussions, but none of this behavior makes it approachable.
Can you elaborate more on why you found Eric K "awesome" and "inspiring"? There is some controversy around other team members but Eric K is by far the most controversial - people who work there love him or people hate him and no one is in between haha.
I do have two sources of confirmation that he has a group of alumni that he asks to comment and post on Reddit and that raised eyebrows for me. But again, I keep an open mind until I have clear patterns, and sources are super polarizing on him.
I did a deep dive into his resume (looked up press releases, articles, etc... and poked around) and found some questions about his background that appeared different or portrayed differently in his personal pitch, but I've never met him or talked to him personally to clarify those things.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
/u/InTheDarkDancing, enough time has passed now so one of the examples of things I'm going to be talking about more is their "culture management" and how Codesmith strategically manages the culture (e.g. not just the slogans but internal processes to identify and manager any signs of negativity). It's not just a goal but it's someone's actually paid job to do.
I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too.
Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue.
They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good.
These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up.
1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including Lin…
Fair point on people's goals and that was lost in this thread for sure. A lot of people don't aspire to "FAANG" and I help a lot of people go to NOT-FAANG explicitly.
I also appreciate the callout on "worse" and it's not at all pedantic. That should have been qualified since it meant "worse in most respects to top tier tech companies, such as compensation, empowerment of engineers, scale, challenges of work, career growth" but even then "worse" is still a judgy word and a mistake to use it.
I use a definition of top tier as follows (which I mean by "FAANG") and I'll be clearer from now on:
1. Tech focused company - the primary business value is the technology or a product relying on the company's core technology.
2. "High compensation" - which varies particularly by region, but generally offers include some kind of equity or ownership participation (or equivalent), extremely strong be…
It's a good question and there isn't one answer. I've even heard Codesmith's CEO changing his tone a bit here, he said recently 'by mid level and senior we mean real Software Engineer jobs'.
Which is a fair point. ENTRY LEVEL FAANG jobs pay about $200K with $150K base right now, so even measuring by cash, Codesmith's "$127K median outcome" would not be below even entry level of the highest paying roles so I don't think they are trying to say their grads are "canonical FAANG mid level and senior" but rather that they are "legit" engineers. Many bootcamp grads get much lower paying, engineering jobs, and Codesmith's point is that the grads get full blown SWE jobs.
My problem isn't so much debate over the choice of language, but that they claim the OSP PROJECTS ARE A KEY TO PRODUCING MID LEVEL AND SENIOR ENGINEERS and that is where I draw the line in my personal opinion. Any kind of non-e…
Yup, and in info sessions they say that your OSPs are mid level and senior projects that will hundreds and thousands of stars. Or one project that got a tweet once from a prominent React figure that it was a 'good idea' has been now become 'industry experts love the projects'.
They are no, most don't get those stars, and the main source of people starring it are Codesmith residents themselves, and posting in the broader Codesmith CSX community to people who have just started learning how to code.
Marketing is marketing but when challenged on this marketing they double down and I'm shared all kinds of things staff and residents say to push back against me... they truly unequivocally believe at all levels of the company that these projects are genuinely mid level and senior work.
I can only speak to trying to generalize the people I know but everyone is a unique person with unique set of skills and experiences.
So the "hustle" comes someone who would do 11 hours a day M-F and 9 hours on saturdays. People who will ping and message recruiters, people who will genuinely apply to 1000+ jobs and send outreach for many of them. People who will come to you and say "how can I make this past accounting experience sound like 2 years of engineering experience" and then spend a lot of time practicing and practicing until they can make it sound convincing. Like someone who might post on Reddit about their journey and how hard it was to get a job, but leave out that they had 13 years of "web developer" experience that's on their resume that might have helped.
Again, not trying to be negative even though when I talk about this it sounds like blatant fraud, it's too easy to ju…
I actually find Codesmith grads have great hustle and produce a lot of code too. Look I hired a Codesmith grad and know dozens, I worked with dozens of new grads directly in my career.
Most of them have more hustle than new grads I've worked with but most also have way more skill gaps. Very much ready to have a shot at succeeding in entry level roles and that's commendable for a 12 week program.
I have looked at a few yeah! The documentation, presentations, and overall code structure is more consistent with a production codebase, the GitHub orgs and repos are setup more consistent with larger.o0en source work as well. I see more "good practices" and haven't seen the kinds of security vulnerabilities I see in Codemsith projects. But the actual code occasionally has commented out code and things and isn't flawless. The PR naming and structure could improve too on some I've seen. But they are a lot closer to a real production codebase than the Codesmith OSPs. I still don't think any of many become widely used or maintained projects though just like Codesmith.
The state of the Codesmith ones is a result of (my opinion synthesizing dozens of private comments):
1. Don't have anyone with extensive industry or open source experience so the guidelines and best practices are hit and miss…
I agree that there aren't enough Codesmith grads to make a dent in the system. It's why every time I talk to people about this they are super offended and some say they would never hire anyone who went to Codesmith, but no one does anything about it, because it's just not a significant number of people OR the complexity of training the ATS to block OS Labs is not worth it.
But the motivations are wrong and so think you know that. I had an AMA last week live that you could have come to and Neetcode, Blind75 and Sophie are doing a panel next week if you want to see our story and motivations and what we do and what we believe in, you can do so live and hear it from own mouths instead of inferring from comments I'm making in a minute or two typing like crazy on Reddit.
Anyways, this behavior will catch up to them. NY onsite paused indefinitely now, down to 2 cohorts a month instead of 4, c…
I would add to this to do open source work throughout. Like at Codesmith people do THREE WEEKS on a big open source project and then claim months to years of experience (4 months is signed off by OSLabs) and they claim that it turns them into midlevel and senior engineers
So you can only imagine how good you should be getting if you starting working on LARGE open source projects for actually MONTHS.
I did a break down of the "achetypes" of top bootcamp grads in their first year post job. And I do think the majority of top grads do indeed see the 12 hour days of the bootcamp as much "harder" technically that most non-top-tier jobs, and that communicating well cross function and to other engineers and making sure you are on the same page, is important.
I've heard in a Codesmith session that Software Engineers "nowadays" don't just write code like "they used to" and are collaborative team members. From what I've seen, nothing has really changed and that was always really important and hasn't really changed.
The biggest change is that entry level engineers don't need as much hard tech skills because we have AWS, Google Cloud, and all kinds of frameworks and tools, like VS Code, so entry levels engineers can differentiate themselves by being great team members and communicators.
It's…
Codesmith is fantastic for the right people! It has a very unique culture and that's why it's controversial on Reddit. I'm an under the hood type of person and try to look at how things work and Codesmith isn't super transparent about how it actually produces really good results.
So how it works:
1. High bar. Their process looks for numerous characteristics of successful grads and is an objective measure or raw programming skill. You need to be good AND have good communication and the right attitude.
2. You don't really learn much... topics are rushed through, you are told to snuggle the struggle, and all but one teacher came from Codesmith students themselves. BUT you are building strong bonds with friends and you are being supported infinitely from those instructors. You might have an hour long convo about your imposter syndrome that helps boost your confidence and do better.
3. Exagg…
✨ For the Leetcoders out there I have a mega-event to share.... the founders of Neetcode, Blind75, and Formation are hosting a panel discussion talking about DS&A and also a chance to get to know the people behind these things. It's on Thursday next week!
Bias disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation, but I'm not taking part in or involved in the event itself. Sophie (the founder) is moderating and Daniel (lead instruction engineer, 20+ year FAANG engineer) are representing Formation.
RSVP and **SUBMIT QUESTIONS!:** [**https://neetcodexblind75xformation.splashthat.com/**](https://neetcodexblind75xformation.splashthat.com/)
Happy to chat more in the thread!
✨ For the Leetcoders out there I have a mega-event to share.... the founders of Neetcode, Blind75, and Formation are hosting a panel discussion talking about DS&A and also a chance to get to know the people behind these things. It's on Wednesday next week!
Bias disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation, but I'm not taking part in or involved in the event itself. Sophie (the founder) is moderating and Daniel (lead instruction engineer, 20+ year FAANG engineer) are representing Formation.
RSVP and **SUBMIT QUESTIONS!:** [**https://neetcodexblind75xformation.splashthat.com/**](https://neetcodexblind75xformation.splashthat.com/)
Happy to chat more in the thread!
If it's not Codesmith, that's definitely THE one for the behaviorals. You spend more time working on HOW to talk about and present projects then you do on the projects. It's the most extreme place for focusing on that aspect at the detriment of the actual technical curriculum in my personal opinion.
I don't have any universal data so I should make it clear that Codesmith claims 100% of alumni get promoted within 5 years (it's based on 120 grads who decided to reply to the survey and from a long time ago, vs the 3000 grads they claim they have, so I don't entirely believe this - and know counter examples that were probably not in the 120 people, but that's the most zoomed out data we have).
Anecdotally, four buckets:
1. People who get by but change companies within a year or around that time, or they get a contract job they don't do super well on and just don't get the contract extended and then switch to a similar or slightly better company after a year, and then do this a few times. And soon enough they have the 2-3+ YOE for real to make a bigger jump to a top tier company. Worked with a few of these people at Formation. So they kind of show up, give it a huge amount of hustle bu…
The market is indeed tough. It's not quite "improving" in the sense of going back to the good times we had.... it's changing.
I won't give my full background but I'm expressing my observations having a pretty good pulse on hiring at the top tier companies specifically.
Hiring during the freezes was senior engineers only. Like canonical senior engineers with 5+ YOE at strong companies and who have worked on large scale products already.
The hiring now has opened up to canonical mid-level engineers. At Meta for example, this means a bare minimum of 2 YOE at solid companies working on large scale products.
So this is benefiting people who have solid experience already.
New grads are generally struggling. There is new grad headcount during the current fall hiring season, but it's going to top tier school grads, like Stanford, and other schools they have dedicated recruiters for.
So for…
RE: Outcomes, I summarized my threads a bit to respond to that. So what has been publicly stated is that average cohort size is down 25% from full capacity, people are being accepted until immediately before a start date, on their first interview, resulting in reported "lower bar" (a handful of reports from more "advanced" students who feel like they are working with more people were let in later, completed an accelerated pre-work, haven't been working for months in the Codesmith ecosystem before, and are struggling to "write basic code" as it was put) I don't have numbers on this but it tracks with the trend that Hack Reactor has done by making a "beginner" track (the 19 week one) as the enrollment of advanced people is down there too.
Placements are at not as strong companies as in the past. Their own data that was shown at an info session, albeit with the caveat of the presenter sayi…
+1 to this, don't go to Codesmith for content. The instructors are your mentors and guides who care about you succeeding but.there just isn't enough time to really teach anything.
From their website it also appears their prior curriculum developer departed at the same time as the recent batch of layoffs.
Hi I commented in the [Formation sub,](https://www.reddit.com/r/formation/comments/17155jl/comment/k3or36f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with a thorough reply in the context of Formation and how we feel about the contract.
In the context of bootcamps, I'll share some other examples of this kind of thing. I do not think "this is the standard" is a good justification and ultimately you need to feel comfortable and confident with what you are signing.
[Codesmith terms for attending any public event](https://codesmithdocs.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Codesmith+Documents/Code+of+Conduct+-+Events.pdf) (without joining the program):
>Codesmith, at its discretion, may record audio and video from the community event. Codesmith may use these recordings in various ways, including, but not limited to, for promotional and educational purposes, at its sole discretion. By actively par…
There are about 5% of people that might overlap is my estimate.
So if you don't have 1 year as a SWE or a full time job that will be 1 year by the time you are job hunt ready then we won't even accept you and will reject you, I ironically recommend Codemsith often for ambitious people who are trying to move a little too fast but don't have that yet.
If we reject you and you spend a significant time talking to the team and we do think Formation is a good fit for your goals and your goals likely aren't 200K job in that case, we may accept you or wait-list you because we limit the number of people in that bucket. These are also the people who might show up in this subreddit in the very limited talk that there is about Formation (and also why stuff in this sub is likely not representing the typical person at Formation).
Our reporting is clear on what YOE means in that context and it exclu…
Reddit is very strict about doxing, and a number of people who I think Codesmith deeply trusts are less bought in than they think and things get out, I have to strike a balance between presenting these facts and not doxing or revealing anyone's identities.
It's confusing as heck yeah... but Reddit is completely anonymous and people should be going to authentic sources if they want actionable information.