+1. I know my main college classes were taught by legit professors but a lot of tutorials and stuff were TAs who were PhD students.
I think the difference is that at Codesmith even the lead instructors went to Codesmith and haven't been SWEs yet.
I mean alumni who are working in industry to the career support stuff. They just aren't super super senior engineers who have had strong trajectories and track records hiring and helping people grow, so their words are taken disproportionately.
Someone I know closely was told to "practice their buzzwords" by one of the mock interviewers.
I mean the way staff have framed this to me is that the leaders genuinely think Codesmith is the best and is a very special place (which I would also describe as a special place and one of the better bootcamps) but that has resulted in what some people perceive as arrogance. The wild success they've had and lack of outside investors, no growth mindset, and the fact that all their technical people went to Codesmith themselves results in decisions being made completely blindly to how most companies do things.
They have this Senior Advisor that the CEO can't stop racing about who I dug into and has some inconsistencies about his past company's claimed acquisition. Yet the CEO might be completely blind to what this stuff means because he doesn't have anyone around him that can advise on this.
This is an advantage when things go well and it will be a major disadvantage when they don't.
Thanks for sharing openly how you feel. I receive a lot of similar messages from people who don't have the courage to post (they are typically in the program or more recent grads and concerned about retaliation or being shunned)
Opinion words aside like "not very skilled" and "scam" the factual statements you make are extremely consistent with what I hear and I try really hard to present on here in my comments as fact-based and transparent as possible.
I get attacked, I'm sure this comment will get attacked too, but all I'm doing is repeating the very clear patterns I'm being told/sent/shown/seeing with my own eyes.
At Formation (we aren't a bootcamp or school and CIRR doesn't work for us) but we have a 95%ish completion on our rigid success form because we work with people intensely until they get a job.
The fact that it's so hard to gather outcomes from people is a sign that the longer and longer time goes by post-bootcamp, the less and less the bootcamp has anything to do with the outcome. And the fact that the more time goes by the harder and harder that gets, is also notable for this.
My 2 cents against using the 12 month window for placements, but that's a whole other discussion haha.
Codesmith students often put their group project as a company and some people don't label that as unpaid work. I have asked dozens of recruiters I asked who mistook these for real companies (and only a handful who didn't!)
Would these projects get picked up as companies by an auditor for LinkedIn verification? The auditors presumably have even less context than industry recruiters, unless they aren't really independent and get more context from Codesmith, no?
Anyways, I'm not sure how much you personally look at audits and maybe this is more of a question for Codesmith directly.
That sounds like you had a solid interview experience where they took the time to get to know you and your code, and that's not what people typically do. Phil at Codesmith repeatedly tells residents that "no one looks at your code" in a way to justify the exaggerations.
But I'm specifically talking about SWE work experience and canonical top tier tech roles. There could be tech jobs where you leverage former backgrounds to get a better offer or better fit, **if you have zero SWE experience you are a junior engineer no matter what your title is and recognizing that is important for your career growth and trajectory.**
More importantly, I'm speaking about trends at the level of dozens/hundreds/low thousands of people AND over one's entire career, and not individuals at a point in time. There are always exceptions and one offs and everyone's journey is unique.
We don't have that many Canadians but they are definitely all over the place and typically lower than in the US.
Some points:
1. The market in Canada is MUCH LOWER COMPENSATION than in the USA, the salaries are maybe 30 ro 40% lower and don't increase as rapidly as you get promoted.
2. We're see a combination of people getting FAANG-level jobs in Canada, working for startups in Canada, and doing remote jobs in the USA, but I don't see any clear patterns or trends (too few people overall), and I don't think anyone can come in expecting any specific outcome.
3. My typical stance is that you should come to Formation and pay to be able to **confidently** walk into a Google interview and feel good about your performance (in DS&A, System Design, Behaviorals) and I feel comfortable saying that in ANY MARKET we as-close-to-guarantee-that-as-legally-possible that if you meet our entry bar, we c…
The program is Codesmith. They have a high bar but most people have zero work experience and get mid level roles. The typical grad does so by lying about the length of their experience and the program itself has a non profit sister company sign off on letters of reference to confirm them.
I agree it's impossible and all of my coworkers agree, but was curious about your opinion too.
They want to see your collaboration and communication. Be a good partner and not a good individual.
My hunch is they might have had some concerns about your communications Either you didn't talk enough or you talked too much and weren't getting social cues or something.
Codesmith fit is really critical. They are selecting for people who have 5 traits and then steering them towards high paying jobs but you have to have those traits to start with or you won't be one of those 120K people.
I argue this often but all the Stanford CS grads I know have 10 offers and red carpet treatment during the CURRENT new grad hiring season RIGHT NOW.
So if you are calling yourself the "best bootcamp", as numerous Codesmith leaders and staff unabashfully do - both internally and externally, then you have to compare yourself to the best.
If Stanford were to compare itself to all the for-profit online schools, it would be apples to oranges.
And comparing Codesmith to programs with no or lower entrance bars is also apples to oranges.
I don't run or own a bootcamp. I'm extremely open about the mentorship platform I do work on (using my real name, one account, and being very transparent), but it's a **mentorship platform** for people with at least 1 year of SWE WORK experience and it's not competing with bootcamps at all. We don't teach anything, have a curriculum, we don't have teachers, so anyone considering a bootcamp wouldn't consider Formation... unless you actually have SWE work experience already and were still considering a bootcamp.
We compete with Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and I never see them mentioned here whatsoever. We in fact work with a lot of bootcamp grads later on their careers and not INSTEAD of a bootcamp so I don't see how trashing bootcamps would be in my business interests at all.
I also don't think you would fall into this bucket based on your post and your clear and transparency for 2+ years here.
I know a number of people that post on their own free will, a number of people who ask me to post things on their behalf, a number of people who just tell me about their multiple accounts and how they use them, it's a really wide spectrum.
Like I do have a trusted source who claims to have first hand evidence of an employee directly asking a group of trusted alumni to comment on specific posts and I want to figure out how THAT is happening and sprinkles down to others.
I don't know if you agree or not, but each cohort is a little different. Part time is a lot more chill (and hence why their ghosting rate is much higher on CIRR), new york onsite is super intense, east coast I get the most concerns about toxic positivity, etc... I don't know all the of the instructors…
Yes, from talking to a number of people casually, this is my current understanding (this is not fact-based but connecting the dots from various first hand sources):
\- enrollment is down, one timezone was removed, there were layoffs a month or so ago
\- there is pressure on admissions to get people admitted faster (less time between interviews and more discretion, BUT KEEPING THE BAR HIGH! - which is important)
\- the teacher hierarchy is students -> fellows -> mentor -> instructor -> lead instructor -> head instructor and program director. when someone leaves they get replaced by someone one step lower in the hierarchy
\- so when pressure comes from the program director, head instructor, and outcomes advisor to increase enrollment and that message gets spread down the hierarchy and eventually hits the current students.
so my working theory is that say the program director pulls i…
Only people who drink the kool-aid feel that way from what I see, the vast majority of people outside of the Codesmith bubble think I'm balanced and reasonable and I tell many of them to go to Codesmith if it's the right thing for them. I help a number of Codesmith grads (at Formation and not at Formation) think of ideas and things to do who are stuck. So I imagine that my view is skewed more for people on the struggling side who don't drink the kool-aid.
But like I said, many of the bootcamp leaders (current and former) talk with me anyone from once in a blue moon to regularly, except for Codesmith - they instead just call me a troll to their staff instead of acknowledging the truth in the things I say and making changes. With so much churn in staff, some of those people who are not so bought in are going to start talking to me (when they see me challenged by people who drink the kool-…
Feel free to send your resume for review, I'm also curious what you've been doing since then since that's a long time. The market is indeed tough for people without experience and there's no shortcut (other than if you lie or exaggerate on your resume) so it does take time, but I can give some tips for things to do while job hunting to be ready.
The market is indeed picking since end of September through now. It will be critical to see through Q1 2024 how things go, as new budgets and headcount kick in. All of my friends are doing all of their headcount planning right now and we'll see. No one can time the market, but you can make the thoughtful decisions you can with all the data you can.
Unfortunately Codesmith is sitting on their H2 2022 report and won't publish it and people can't make thoughtful decisions.
80% in ONE YEAR vs 80% in SIX MONTHS is very different.
Imagine people went to an interview prep program after and got a job from that, all within the 12 months... Codemsith still gets credit. The longer the time period the more people do on their own afterwards that contributes to their job than. And the portion any bootcamp would claim for the success of failure at that point is lower and lower. That's my point here, not that it's not a good point that people are getting jobs but just taking longer.
Like I said before, my commentary reflects what people tell me. With recent churn of staff and longer time staff who left a while ago reappearing there is more going on here.
Look at their Glassdoor reviews (I hadn't but a prospective student shared them and asked if I knew of they were real). Notice how all the 1 star ones have a shit-ton of upvotes and the great ones have none. And this is with Codesmith monitoring page and reporting reviews for fraud review.
Finishing in April means your CIRR 6 month mark was October, so that's about a 40% placement rate. I tend to round up because people that you dont' know ghost, and if their LinkedIn says they have a job, they count as a placement anyways. So let's say 50%, which is consistent with Triathletes' comment. This is also consistent with the data I have as well.
I still think they should be more transparent about this since since they are so all in on CIRR and transparency in results.
For anyone reading this who is skeptical because of the somewhat sketchier pro Codesmith posts recently, this person is a very long time reliable commenter who has been here for a long time.
So about 70% placement in A YEAR is quite low compared to the past CIRR results almost concerninly low because they are advertising an 80% placement rate in 6 months post graduation and telling people that in info sessions. Just because CIRR hasn't published an H2 2022 report, they have a report prepared already and know the numbers and that's deceptive in my personal opinion to life in customers knowing the latest placements rates are.mjch lower. The CIRR executive director already said that Codesmith is free to self publish those if they want to.
Everyone reading this - CIRR is expected to change the 6 month window to 12 months and I expect Codesmith to start quoting 12 months placement rates of…
Zooming out, masters degrees are super complicated.
You know how 2U/Edx/Trilogy has partnerships with most of the top schools to run bootcamps under their names.
Masters degrees fall into a similar world of for profit, where a lot of top schools that have expensive, short degrees that they offer online or in remote cities for a very high fee.
The real benefit I'm talking about above for CS degrees is if you are able to engage directly with recruiters who are dedicated to hiring from your school and get priority interviews and "the red carpet treatment" (recruiters taking you out for dinner, fancy events, boxes of coconut water mailed to you).
It's not going there just grants you these benefits, they happen because the students end up being superstars at the companies and the recruiters go back for the next year's graduates.
The fundamental problem with bootcamps is that there isn't…
I partially agree with the OP yeah. I do think the "ship has sailed" for a group of people that had a previous career they didn't like, saw the flexibility and high salaries of SWEs in a youtube video or an ad, and impulsively joined a bootcamp to career switch without considering all the options.
I do think a smaller number of people it's still a viable option (not THE ONLY option, but a viable one). People who have put in months or years of self study, have a lot of personal runway/savings and no hard headlines, and have a previous career that has some or many transferrable soft skills to SWE (e.g. lawyer, doctor, accountant, teacher). Then a bootcamp might be a good option to focus and make the final jump.
People post on here when they get their job or shortly after to celebrate, but it's not the end, it's the beginning and there is quite a journey ahead - of ups and downs.
But to…
My 2 cents are that it depends on:
1. your current programming and professional background (and prior education)
2. your goals in your next job hunt (including both the type of job and also the location)
3. your timeframe range (if you have one or not)
In the current job market, going to a bootcamp with little to no experience isn't a great idea because the market is really tough. The graduates getting jobs are those from bootcamps that have a high bar and require a lot of self-teaching before even being admitted (e.g. Codesmith and Launch School, both take months to get into).
That said, regarding certificates, they are useful if you are targeting specific roles that explicitly require them - tend to be roles at contracting firms, for example - and by having the cert, you can get put on the bench for new clients. But if that's not your plan, I don't think getting a certificate is rea…
I don't agree with the representation of all of the things that person sid, but feel free to DM me because I see you posting frequently about Codesmith as well. I talk to a lot of people who work/worked at Codesmith... there is a heck of a lot of churn in admissions and instruction and people's titles and jobs change like every week... there are dozens of people that Codesmith long forgot about that know a heck of a lot and share a heck of a lot.
I'll I'm going to say is people trust me because they see how I protect them in my frequent/daily posting and don't reveal what they tell me while still presenting the views they want shared but feel unable to for all kinds of reasons, but the stuff people share is well beyond anything I post.
So algo sessions are done in either JS or Python. Generally with your preferred language but it could be done in either. The main point of sessions is to learn and practice how to think about problems, so the language doesn't matter that much. But you don't develop a JS expertise at Formation.
We do have frontend work you can that goes through for JS language practice, but similar to DS&A it's more practice focused than teaching focused.
So the TLDR is that you probably want to be somewhat familiar with it but to not worry or stress about being good at it before starting.
I actually explicitly removed Outco from the list because they seem to have shut down and aren't taking applications and numerous people I've talked to said they have been non responsive to them :S.
Obviously I'm extremely bias but I would say that:
Formation is a completely different world from Outco, I know some people that did Outco and came to Formation and can connect you. For example, you get a team of three dedicated support staff, an adaptive platform, mocks with actual senior engineers and recruiters who actually work at FAANG companies, personalized prep for upcoming interviews, a custom platform built from the ground up for your progress, scheduling, feedback, job hunt tracking, etc...
Interview Kickstart is a little more structured than Formation and not adaptive to your progress and needs, but it's consistently been ok for preparing for interviews. Similar to Formation th…
I'm bias because I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform/career accelerator, but I would consider this type of option if you already have work experience - [Formation](https://Formation.dev).dev, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable (all of these have deferred payment options as well). These are all very different but they are all built to prepare you in different ways for the job hunt.
Since you already have legit work experience a bootcamp probably isn't what you want to do because the majority of people you work with be much further behind. **You will have way more exerience than most of the instructors who teach you.** And you don't actually learn much raw skills. If you do want to choose a bootcamp, Codesmith is probably the best option for you if you want to hustle your way into the next job and get all the support you need doing that, but I wouldn't go there to actually…
Three Important factors:
1. flat out lying and having the bootcamp verify your experience to get through a background check
2. performing well on interviews. Whether it's raw work ethic or ability to sponge knowledge or extreme practice of the narratives, and relentlessly until you get a job
3. The job is the beginning. You have to be ready to put in work everyone, put in nights and weekends to secretly catch-up while pretending to be relaxing etc...
This is what I hear from Codemsith grads but I'm happy to share my personal opinions too.
Yeah I push back on people who have crazy conspiracy theories and I only say things that I have observed first hand, or been given evidence of, and I have many, many people of all kinds of relationships to Codesmith share their own things with me.
... the decision isn't always A or B, it can also be "none of the above" and Codesmith IS BETTER than many programs objectively, but it still might not be the right program for YOU and to me that's critical to evaluate.
I've been here for almost two years now and heard numerous arguments almost word for word the same and I've heard numerous arguments that this is offensive and fraudulent. We're not going to solve this in this thread... people reading this get to decide which approach they want. I tell people who agree with you to go to Codesmith on a weekly basis. I tell people who disagree to not go on a weekly basis.
1. Maybe that's the problem with bootcamps if all graduates have to lie to get jobs?
2. Individual cases vary - people who go to Codesmith have a higher entrance bar and are allegedly already "hirable as junior engineers" so it's likely that more exception cases of people who can perform well on the job are from Codesmith grads, but just going to Codesmith isn't the reason why, YOU are.
3. I've posted extensively on this but there are four buckets of grads I've seen: ones who do well, one's who get fired on their first job or laid off because they don't make it, one's who struggle and barely get by and job hop, ones that just can't get a job.
4. How do you know you couldn't have done better with something else other than Codesmith? If you are as successful as you say you are, this would be top of mind. If you aren't making 7 figures yet then aim higher if you're that good.
It reads more like 1-2 years of experience, and most companies that hire Codesmith grads are smaller non-tech companies OR contract roles that don't really know or check.
But correct, I have a number of industry friends who have gotten upset at recruiters for wasting their time in the next rounds, and experienced engineers can tell in seconds/minutes of a behavioral interview.
Codesmith's sister charity (OSLabs) that manages the projects, provides background check letters and reference checks to confirm your time. I have a video record of an employee saying that they will sign off on 'your entire time at Codesmith' under your "OS Labs work" and longer if you "kept working on your project". A sample letter I reviewed showed active work over 4 weeks, but the letter stated 3 months of experience.
Yeah that's a good point it would be extremely hard to just apply online and get interviewed as a L5.
If the person gets promoted to staff though at this company, they will have a narrative for a high L4 offer and possibly L5 - would need to deep dive into what the person did.
I went from new grad to E5 at Facebook in roughly 2 years, so it's definitely possible, but it's not the norm.
Not to toot my own horn here, but that's why things like Formation exist, because everyone has a unique story that needs to be untangled. We can only do so much, but there are exception cases when this kind of thing can happen.
\+1 there is a common pattern of Codesmith comments that get 10 or more upvotes in < 30 mins. I had evidence shared with me of a senior leader asking people to comment on a thread, and it's really sad that it happens, and they blame declining enrollment on anything but their leadership and just have stern talks with admissions people and pay them extra money to fill cohorts. (all second hand from primary sources)
This person is also affiliated with one of the instructors at Codesmith that is super all in on Codesmith and likely asked them to comment, and likely a leadership member asked the instructor to comment. I say "likely" because I'm not supposed to know these things haha.
The person is indeed a senior swe at a big 2nd/3rd tier company and got the job out of Codesmith.
The company has incredibly high churn because people use it as a feeder to FAANG and it's known to pay higher salaries to try to keep people as a result. It's a great place to go out of a bootcamp but I wouldn't celebrate is an an endgame role unless it happens to be the environment for you. And this person can likely be making $500K at a FAANG company if they took the jump and approached it right.
This person also listed their OSP as 1 year 11 months of work experience, didn't specify it was open source or a project on their profile and their GitHub contributions were 44 commits over 4 weeks. I guess my math is bad but somehow that = 2 years???
If you are judging peope by how much money they make in as little time as possible, you are not setup to make 7 or 8 figures down the road in as little as a few years. You're going to be limiting yourself if you think you are truly better than most other people here for going to Codesmith an making $300K out of it and Codesmith is not equiped to help people like you get there.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
\+1 there is a common pattern of Codesmith comments that get 10 or more upvotes in < 30 mins. I had evidence shared with me of a senior leader asking people to comment on a thread, and it's really sad that it happens, and they blame declining enrollment on anything but their leadership and just have stern talks with admissions people and pay them extra money to fill cohorts.
Maybe professional atheletes using steroids is a good analogy. Like Codesmith has a really high bar to the average resident is quite strong already, and the lying is like doing steroids for that extra boost. Not everyone does it, but even some of the best do... and just like professional athletes, they do it because "everyone else is" and lose track of why we're all SWEs to begin with.
Hi, I highly recommend you settle into the job first and feel good for about six months and then talk to someone in our team about your next goals and see if it's a good fit. In this market, having 2+ YOE (like legit work) is ideal for opening up doors and starting six months before then would be ideal, but ultimately depends on your goals and the exact current job you have and happy to chat more to give more personal advice.
The documentation says not to lie, means that their guides and docs and presentations tell people not to lie. It's awkwardly one of the FIRST THINGS they tell people.
The background checks? So they have a sister charity called OSLabs Inc. A member of that charity (who also happens to be Codesmiths chief academic officer) will do background checks for your work with the charity.
The thing is the "charity work" is really the 3 week long OSP group project. However I have first hand direct video evidence of an employee saying that the charity will sign letters of reference for your entire time at Codesmith, and longer if you "keep working on the project". A lot of people claim on their resume they did this for 6 to 18 months (as they continue job hunting) but almost no one actually had any involvement after their 3 weeks.
NOTE: Part time people spend longer on their OSP's because it's pa…
The documentation explicitly says to not lie, but they then also do background checks confirming months or years of experience for a 3 week OSP project. The staff remind people to not lie, but the career coaches help graduates fudge their resumes to lie.
It's really weird for sure.
I have numerous behind the scenes sources on this so I can't say that much without doxing people at this time, but it's something they are both aware of, but have created a narrative to justify it - so in their minds it's not lying.
I mean I talk to people that literally say "I will lie, chest and steal to get a job" and this post would be reassuring to them.
I also talk to people that think the Codesmith community is amazing but they never lie and they are hence conflicted. And some people go but are conscious of all of this and some people choose another program.
I mean their enrollment is struggling and they might be trying a new strategy because the puff pieces have not been working. so maybe they're trying to lock in the right people? I don't know. I still think that this is better than the previous stuff because even if it is planted, it aligns more with what I hear from lots of alumni who are successful too.
Thanks for sharing this! This is pretty much exactly what I tell people 1-1 and if you are ready for this, it's the ideal place for you (and a number of people go!)... maybe we even chatted before you went haha.
If you are looking at other bootcamps and see super high CIRR numbers then looking to how it works and if it will work for you then it's absolutely the right choice, but if it doesn't work for you then you're going to be making a very costly mistake.
I 100000% agree and I'm speaking out about one program in particular, Codesmith, that I don't think is being transparent about the reality of the market and a number of staff/former staff/alumni have privately messaged me asking me too.
Is there a reason you don't want to say where you went though? Every bootcamp and program is different.
I'm extremely biased because I'm the co-founder of Formation, but I would consider coaching (not necessarily at Formation but somewhere). It's possible that you're over focused on just passing LC DSA questions and lost track of the whole point of these interviews.
This is the problem solving approach we follow and if you don't have a clean, systematic approach to problems, that could be why you aren't passing, so check this out:
https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/