I can't speak for the commenter, but I can say that in this market Formation is ideal if you can get some interviews yeah, and we help you prepare for them and increase your chances of passing (the primary goal is to help you level up in general, but more practically speaking, that's how I would frame it).
We are seeing hiring slowly "resume" at the top companies, and have more recruiters to backchannel people through - a small number of people get jobs this way! But it's a nice to have and not a guarantee or something you should expect coming in. The market hasn't recovered enough for that yet.
We have some exciting programs launching soon for people in college! And we have a handful of formal pipelines established recently (apprenticeship, formal recruiter backchannels, 3rd party recruiters). But for these pipelines again still edge cases and DO NOT JOIN to be handed interviews.
We…
Yeah totally agree that it's a huge amount of time! Like people might go back to their old jobs as a mechanical engineer or what have you and count as "offers". They can't call those jobs "non engineering roles" for CIRR but call them "engineering roles" on their resumes - have to go one way or the other.
I also found that a significant number of alumni who got offers frame experience as jobs on LinkedIn and I always wondered how the auditors reconciled those. Did they flag things as jobs that were just projects? etc....
Sorry to hear, yeah one of the reasons I talk about Codesmith so much is that they have a very polarizing brand of people who will fight tooth and nail for Codesmith and people who do not like it at all.
My opinion is the people that don't like it shouldn't have gone in the first place and chose to go because of the super positive promoters talking superficially about how life changing it is, but without going into the nitty gritty of how it all works and realizing it probably isn't the right thing for them. The info sessions tout $120/$130.... $180K salaries, and it gives hope to people who aren't a perfect fit that maybe they'll be one of those people. Maybe you will be but maybe you'll also win the lottery and people need to understand what THEIR OUTCOME might look like, and I talk to a lot of people about this because Codesmith does not help with this.
I highly recommend Codesmith…
FWIW, I don't recommend the vast majority of people who do Codesmith do Formation and the vast majority wouldn't be accepted.
I know a couple of people (literally 2, one dropped out and the other just chose Formation but was very close to going to Codesmith) that did this and it was well over a year ago and it was the correct decision. Both got FAANG-level jobs that were the perfect jobs for those two people.
I also know someone who dropped out of Formation and did Codeamith, and they did not get a job after and went back to school.
These are all edge cases and people reading this should not generally be considering Formation over Codesmith. You should absolutely consider Formation over Codesmith if you have 1+ year of SWE work experience already.
I want to reiterate that Formation is not a bootcamp or school and we don't teach anything. The people we work with with no experience al…
The data their CEO shared once about college degrees showed only a very tiny amount, something like a few percent of people, had no college experience. And that's not of people placed, but just all residents.
That doesn't mean it's impossible because that still dozens of people and some get great jobs, but it is an uphill battle.
At the same time, getting a quick degree like WGU likely isn't the entire answer as well. The answer is that it will probably take 2 years of many things.and a lot of grinding and a lot of failures, not just one thing, that will eventually get you a job.
Yeah I mean it's on the lower side of others I've heard, but when you factor in non-job hunting individuals, out of country (they said they had people from 13 countries), and then exclude people who didn't graduate or ghosted, and then people who went MIA but got jobs on LinkedIn, it might end up being closer to 50 to 60% for CIRR.
Either way, this is what people ask me all the time and we need to see the data.
I really want to see 6 month data for H1 2023 and we won't be seeing any 2023 for a long time with the new CIRR rules, but they have been sitting on the informal 6 month data for H1 2023 for almost a month now.
Interesting. Yeah I work with a number of people at Formation that have 1. done Outco before, 2. mentored at Outco. (Disclosure: Outco is a direct competitor to my company)
I used to recommend people look into Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Outco, and Coachable, (and to some extend Interviewing.io if not looking for a holistic program) as the set of competitors around DS&A and interview prep.
But I removed Outco because they removed their application online and their website is wonky and seems not maintained.... it still says Copyright 2017.
Someone who did Outco recently before Formation also affirmed that in their experience Outco seemed to be running on autopilot with recordings and peer mock interviews and they felt like it wasn't really operating anymore.
I know they are a competitor so I want to triple emphasize this is just what I've observed and heard about Outco in my perso…
Hi, interview prep sounds exactly like what you are asking for. I'm the cofounder of Formation.dev and would recommend looking into Formation and Interview Kickstart if you are aiming to level up to a top tier company. Both are about the same price and take around the same amount of time.
BUT, both are super different day to day so feel free to ping me to ask questions.
I would recommend hoping on an IK info call they have every day to learn about IK and then applying to Formation and talking to a recruiter and then deciding if either, or neither, are a good fit.
Would you be doing this part time? And with 16 years of dev experience you probably have a ton of ability to pick things up quickly that you might not realize.
I would recommend doing a big project in a modern stack like React and Node.js and learning little things along the way as you get blocked.
I know Amazon will pay for a program but this approach would be more effective IMO.
When the time comes to job hunt, I would then look at interview prep programs like Formation (disclosure: co-founder) and Interview Kickstart. Something that recaps CS fundamentals and gets you interview ready.
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience and I hope we can/are helping you find a great next job.
This is correct that we don't force you to take a job or not. If you accept a job, you can often continue with Formation (if you continue job hunting) but it's case by case and not contractually obligated so we can protect against anyone taking advantage of us.
All we want is to see you in a great job you love, and it's completely correct that you are paying us and we need to make sure you get a return on investment but we're also small and over time well hopefully get better at helping people who are else comfortable voicing what they want/need even if they are less naturally comfortable doing that.
Hi all, I don't want to step on the discussion (I'm the co-founder of Formation) but will share my thoughts too. I think it's very important and healthy to talk openly about the pros and cons of programs so people can figure out what works for them, so feel free to ask me questions and I'll give the most transparent answers I can!
I also post the feedback with the Formation team because there are a couple of points of feedback that we can make improvements on and thanks for sharing that!
My personal thoughts:
1. I wouldn't say you HAVE to be extroverted but you do have to interact with people and one of the selling points is face time in 3-6 person small group sessions, and 1-1 mock interviews with legit industry engineers to get their perspective. The amount of sessions and types of sessions can adapt to you, so introverted people can get by, IMO, but you should expect to interact wi…
👋 Hi friends (specifically bootcamp grads), we just launched TIRA by Formation on Product Hunt and I wanted to share it here as a useful free tool and also to get your feedback. It's a dynamic 45 min benchmark to see how interview ready your DS&A skills that you hopefully find useful!
Hi all, I'm sure many of you know me already but I'm a long time group member who comments daily here and I've me a ton of what I would call friends along the way! I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I've done hundreds of DS&A interviews at Meta and a number of people on my team have as well. So we put our minds together and to come up with a solid tool to see how interview ready your DS&A skills are!
I would LOVE to discuss your experience in the comments here, and suggestions to improve the tool.
The benchmark takes 45 mins and is free, and it will tell you what areas you are strong and weak at, a…
Hi, DM me who! Our Fellowship recruiters are former FAANG recruiters and not really salespeople so it might be different from other programs. But no one should be a jerk to you and most people comment that the recruiters are helpful to talk to even if Formation isn't a good fit.
A weakness of our model though is that everyone is a industry engineer or recruiter and not a trained teacher or salesperson. You'd be surprised how many times a day we get session feedback where one person thought the mentor was the best ever and disliked them so much they requested to not have sessions with them again.
Pros and cons, you get to work with a ton of different people, but it takes some time to figure out who you get along with and who you don't.
But there is a bar for attitude where we would remove a mentor or an engineer.
Yeah I mean at Formation people pay us explicitly for interview prep mentorship so you can get resume reviews and mock interviews on demand (when you need them or ask for them), usually within a day, often same day, definitely same week, almost a 24/7 clock of availability across dozens of mentors across a dozen+ interview types. Occasionally people cancel mocks, or resume reviews take longer on rounds of feedback, but that's the bar for "career support" that people should expect if they are being promised career support.
The Codesmith career support is:
1. A handbook with a ton of very good resources, including the 'Codesmith Style Resume' and 'Codesmith Style Application' walkthroughs
2. 8 alumni you can book 1-1 sessions with who have varied schedules, some available in days, some in weeks, some never.
3. 2 alumni you can book for technical algo mock interviews who also have only…
One part of the polarization with Codesmith is that a handful of people do land FAANG jobs, even in 2023. Context matters. Someone got a job at Netflix, but it was a non-SWE job and it was in the field that the person had 8 YOE... which 100% CODESMITH HELPED THE PERSON, but this was not an outcome that anyone should EXPECT, it was a unique situation.
Someone got a job at LinkedIn recently, but the FAANG placements are really rare, because FAANG isn't interviewing bootcamp grads with no experience right now. If someone has experience then you might get a FAANG job.
\+1 to getting a good job at another company, they have a couple placements at Mavis Tire making in the mid six figures.
We (Formation) have formal and informal pipelines with FAANG companies and recruiters, and they are extremely picky about who they interview and I wish they would interview everyone, but they won't in this…
\+1 here. You got what you expected and going to Codesmith was probably the right call for you and has nothing to do with the 20% placement rate you observed. If you are looking at quitting your job and joining right now though, even if Codesmith will deliver the day to day that you expect, it's important to be real about the market and how long it will actually take to get a job.
Yeah there's two sides to every coin. I try to present a balanced view but it's notable to me how polarizing Codesmith is compared to other programs. Like people who feel this negatively towards BloomTech even don't talk about the 'behavioral techniques' that they observe at Codesmith.
I'm making this vague to not out the person but someone related to a Codesmith student who overheard their Zoom calls while working from home, was so concerned about this they contacted me. The person was trained in psychology and said they observed concerning techniques being used.
I'm not a psychologist, I don't know who this person is in real life, could all be made up, but they did convince me at that they overheard the sessions and lectures at least.
And I really have never had anything like this from other programs.
It's an unsolved problem I asked a lot of people on the inside about, because I g…
They claim to have between 3,500 (their recent info session info) to 5,000 (recent job posting as of 1/19/2024) alumni of the immersive program total.
Most people who work there as TAs put that under "CS Engineering" and not Codesmith.
But yeah the vast majority do not list.
However every resident does an OSP and you can get a list of students from their GitHub repos and most have LinkedIns checkin to the repos too.
[Layoffs.fyi](https://Layoffs.fyi) doesn't capture everything.
First SWEs versus non-SWE.
Second, layoffs for layoff reasons versus performance removals wrapped into layoffs. Performance removals were backfilled, real layoffs weren't
And third, big companies move slowly, so it's a rollercoaster ride.
For example, there was a small bump in Jan/Feb 2023 from layoff backfilling, for those performance based cuts within the layoffs.
People who are "laid off" don't generally know, or admit, when it was performance based so you get all kinds of narratives floating around.
Ask a manager or director (at a big tech SWE company) about layoffs and 100% will say that performance plays a factor in choosing who to layoff.
I think their director is a reasonable person trying to make CIRR better, but there are hardly any schools left and Codesmith is the elephant in the room.
I mean I expect they will have to show 3 month, 6 month AND 1 year placement rates, and hopefully it will be clear people are taking a lot longer to find jobs.
I'm not anti CIRR or anti bootcmap, I'm just a perosn who believes in the win-win-win - student wins by being in the right place, bootcamp wins by making money, company wins by hiring the right person for the right job.
This is correct, I say 2+ YOE myself but maybe it's the definition of "difficult".
It's absolutely more competitive. I know Formation is working with a number of CURRENT OR FORMER FAANG ENGINEERS who are rusty and want to give interviews their best to stand out.
I'm super bias so I would argue that any current engineers benefit from mentorship to various degrees, but I am seeing it more competitive to get the offer.
People doing a great job on interviews but getting rejected is more common than in the past.
But if you have 2+ YOE, eepecially at FAANG, you'll get interviews for sure and you shouldn't have that difficult of a time. If you are come talk to me about Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... because you might benefit from extra mentorship. If you worked at FAANG for 3-6 years, $5-$10K won't be a huge cost from your savings to save a ton of "difficulty" if that's w…
In both directions, Reddit threads don't capture reality.
Like Codesmith is a 11 hour a day crazy intense program (for full time) for 13 weeks and then you graduate and sit there in your room, day in day out, applying to jobs, month 1, month 2, month 3, month 4, month 5, month 6, month 7, month 8, month 9, month 10, month 11, month 12.
Like Month 12 is wildly different from month 6. Full time is wildly different from part time!
The feelings and emotional journey of of people in 2023 is really hard to capture in Reddit comments.
I make an effort to meet with groups of people in person in real life (which is hard because I'm fairly socially anxious), I'm meeting some people in Denver next week.
When you talk to people as humans face to face it's just a really different vibe and story than I what I see on Reddit
In good ways and bad ways, but to me that's "real".
There are dozens of people being placed who graduated in 2023, and you'll find a lot who did. You'll also find cohort to cohort variances in both directions.
Unless Codesmith publishes all of their data, or you do an analysis based on GitHub projects in OSLabs, or LinkedIn, or various lists and info Codesmith has shared, there isn't going to be one answer.
A said B cohort which graduated in C and had a D placement rate. And collecting those statements, with no single one-liner answer overall.
They are being hired at companies like Mavis Tire random agencies like I can go through the list of placements. There are edge case top tier placements like someone on LinkedIn last week who didn't seem to have any particular experience. Someone got a mid-level job at Octa. each of these better placements has a different reason, One important factor is how people present their past work experience and frame it as engineering adjacent or flutter engineering work
One person in a public talk recently said that they had no relevant experience before the program and got a job pretty quickly after and their LinkedIn said that they had 19 years of experience as a web developer/software engineer.
The solution is really hard because They have been advertising for 7 years that they create mid-level and senior engineers but they are like a grad school boot camp.
It's extremely hard in this market to actually place people with no or little experience in mid-level and senior roles, enough people did during the boom times that it carried the reputation of the program.
The ideal strategy right now is to place people in internships and apprenticeships and other entry level roles that are designed for people with no experience and will very quickly ramp them up into mid-level and Senior engineers. but if Codemsith doesn't drop that stance then there's not much they can do except what they've been doing.
Yeah I'm sure you've seen my post about this and it really seems like people overstating their experience are almost table stakes for getting a job.
I know that a lot of these people think that by adding one line to their work experience that the experience was " partnership with OS Labs" absolve them of any claims of exaggeration but in my personal opinion that's not valid. More importantly, the time window is not backed by GitHub commit data.
Their curriculum is no different than anyone else. and it's almost always criticized as one of the weaknesses.
But It's actually somewhat intentional from what their CEO says publicly and there's a reason for it. The bar to get in is so high that people will generally have decent technical skills coming in and they actually have to work on the rest of their non-coding skills. so they're really focused on trying to get you to overcome imposter syndrome and communicate on a team and the language to use to describe engineering work and building open source projects to build your resume and those kinds of things. and I think that they do all of this in a very unique way. not necessarily unique good but just unique.
Yeah my feeling was they were just going off reported offers, which could be from anyone at any time via a Google Form. And past alumni sometimes go back for negotiation help.
Seems disingenuous for them to say that though if they know placement rates are lower and have shared all this other data and numbers except for those.
They have an internal 2023 report that the CEO leaked in one of his talks so I know THEY know the data internally at least haha.
I've been extremely middle road in trying to examine Codesmith outcomes for a while now (I know I have personal opinions about the framing of OSPs and mid level and senior projects but on the outcomes I try to follow the facts). I am often attacked here on different sides because this is a controversial topic, but please try to have a fact based discussion, no one off anecdotes.
I think it's important to get more data on placement rates because Codesmith is presenting marketing that everything is going great, and we only have anecdotal and napkin math estimates for placement rates.
This is what Codemsith has said so far about 2023 publicly:
1. They had 600 offers (CEO in public talk)
2. There were 68 offers between October 15th 2023 to November 30th
3. There.is a blog post showing average salaries dipped to $110K medium but have been going back up.
4. Last week, the most recent 10 offe…
If you have a background in programming adjacent areas, like any kind of engineering, or math, and if you are really ambitious and value communication, then I would consider Codesmith strongly and look more into it. That said, it's still a huge commitment of time and doesn't work for a lot of people's lifestyle and circumstances.
The self-paced programs (Springboarrd/Triple Ten/BloomTech) tend to have no or a very low bar and high drop out rates. So they are great if you need a very flexible program and schedule to fit your lifestyle, but less great for building a strong tight network or for outcomes. You could probably do a free or cheaper course on your own, and what these programs add is some accountability to keep you moving along and some mentorship if you get stuck.
Feel free to DM me if you want to share more personal info about your background and goals.
Disclosure: I co-found…
Maybe to clarify, are you looking for something that is like 3 hours every evening for 9 months? Like Codesmith part time
or something is completely self-paced where you can do whatever amount you want to contribute every week whenever you're available until you graduate? like springboard and triple ten and bloomtech?
Hi, did you have any internships during school? If so I wouldn't do a bootcamp and would do a career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (bias disclosure, my company) Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable, etc... (all different but worth looking into)
If you have a CS degree from a top tier university and are aiming for top tier companies, you need to be good at DS&A, and all of those options above help get interview ready with that, and a bootcamp won't help.
If you don't have any experience or projects of note then I would consider a bootcamp and aim for a non-top tier role. Codesmith is a pretty good option for this bucket for CS grads to get a six figure non-top tier tech role. Rithm, Launch School are other options of good bootcamps that you can research and compare to Flatiron.
Happy to answer more, I'm tight on time and can't right now, but feel free to D…
1. Do you have thoughts on bootcamp grads exaggerating their projects? e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/
2. Do you think someone can become a "mid level and senior engineer" in 13 weeks? Codesmith claims this, I disagree but I understand their argument too and want to hear your thoughts
It's worth checking out Codesmith then, it fits that vibe and there is one person I'm 100% positive they would connect you with that took that path. Stanford MBA -> Codesmith -> CEO.
It's super intense and it's an all in-world so it's ultimately up to you to figure out if it's the right use of time.
I might also consider something like https://www.beondeck.com/ .
Anyways feel free to connect with me LI, my partner technically did YC and can't hurt to connect to see where your company goes!
Yeah I love reading about people's stories, and the twists and turns along the way and it's a pretty detailed overview. He's certainly moved around a lot and jumping between film/tv and tech (and jumping from product to marketing and back).
I like the shift in narrative in general with Codesmith in 2024, Profiles In Tech and focusing on people having impactful jobs and stories, rather than just "we are the best", I think it connects more with people.
At the end of the day though, it's tough to run a 13 week 11 hour a day bootcamp in this market and I'm seeing a lot of "wordsmithing" with the marketing around placement times that demonstrates to me some concern that cohorts aren't filling up and they don't want people to delay or get cold feet because of the market.
So hopefully the market turns around or they make bigger changes to adjust.
P.S. I still diagree on the framing of the p…
Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC.
But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing.
Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience.
From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win.
There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself.
Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218…
Yeah good points. So IT/HR I'm factoring into the 2X multiple.
Curriculum dev is R&D. If a bootcamp was failing it could fire the entirely team and keep functioning because of the unit economics of a cohort.
Marketing and CAC for Codesmith is different than others, but they basically just have an Admissions person and they run about 10 to 20 public sessions a week (often with leaders or instructors running them, so the cost is mostly salaries accounting for in the unit economics above).
Bootcamps closing up shop entirely should be pretty rare even if they don't do well.
First off - unit economics.
Anyone can do the math. Let's take Codesmith, because I know their structure super well, their salaries, and they have a very consistent experience.
THIS IS AN ESTIMATE FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES BASED ON MY OPINIONS AND PUBLIC JOB POSTINGS AND REPORTED SALARIES, DO NOT QUOTE THIS AS FACT
ONE COHORT: 13 weeks (cohorts overlap for 6 weeks)
1x Lead Instructor - $170K -> $20K for 6 weeks
1x Instructor - $130K -> $15K
1x Mentor - $100K -> $11.5K
3X Fellows -3X 40 hours @ $25/hour -> $18K
Admissions person - $60K -> $7K
Operations person - $70K -> $8K
Outcomes person - $70K -> $8K
Career support at $25/hour, 2 per week \* 6 weeks \* 35 students = $11K
Management (COGS only) (spread across 4 timezones, lead intstructors, director of program management, etc...): $2M ->…
Yeah I agree with a lot of that and why for a number of people 1-1 I recommend Codemsith for their situation. There's a lot of good things for the right people with the right expectations.
I don't think they are being open and transparent with candidates though. Having seen a number of info sessions and/or people who go and message me quotes or questions.
And I see people in the audience get hyped up by statements that are borderline.
Like imagine an alumni said straight up, I have no experience and I got a 120K job, you can do it by following the Codesmith way.
Then you look up the LinkedIn and see 19 years of web developer experience listed.
Then you look up the LinkedIn of the person who asked the question. Some have gold backgrounds for Codemsith, but some do not, yet they still things along the lines that he speaker and say how their reply gives them hope and they feel so much…
Two reasons.
1. Setting proper expectations
The reason I think it's important is that I've seen info sessions where employees straight up tell people that you don't need a degree or any relevant experience to get a job, followed by reading out 10 offers ranging from 80K to 170K, making it feel like anyone on Reddit reading reviews from these people can also get the same outcome.
I'm showing my observations that there's a lot more to it than just a line cook at Applebees who was good at math becoming a senior SWE in 4 months making $150K.
That people who are successful might not be aware of how background and their representation of their background massively impacts the outcomes, as the people exaggerating the most present live on camera that they aren't exaggerating or aren't benefit from their backgrounds.
The unique thing about Codesmith is that the grads who this works for, do…
I posted an update here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Probably not much new to you but if you are curious.
# UPDATE JAN 9, 2024
This is a recent follow up with non-anonymous grads that further perpetuates the observations in the original post.
Codesmith recently posted this video of recent alumni who got jobs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw)
All 3 were asked if their past experience helped them get a job. Without doxing anyone (you can watch the video), these were the response versus LinkedIn
**ENGINEER 1: Senior Software Engineer**
Response: "the company that I'm currently working for there's a lot of overlap in what my previous company was doing", "I understood their business a little bit better um so that aspect really helped me", "but yeah for from a technical standpoint I'd say Codemmith will will get your back"
**LinkedIn: 10 years+ at robotics company, 7+ years as "director of implementation" using the skills: " Py…
I take that as feedback because your take on my comments is not at all what was intended. I'll clarify here some things just for the record, but happy to discuss more.
1. I don't endorse or support Codesmith. Their leaders don't like and bad mouth me constantly as "the Reddit Troll" to their staff and students. Current students have messaged me telling me this.
2. I don't think Codesmith is better or worse than Tech Elevator and completely agree, different things for different people.
3. I don't have ANYTHING against TE and I recommend them often, I think my choice of language was offensive to people and I talked to the CEO (who left yesterday) briefly about this to open the door for a more amicable relationship.
4. TE moved a couple of in person cohots online in 2023 and that's what I was referring to. The magic of TE and the reason I recommend it - is their in person program and comp…
The changing narrative around becoming an engineer in 2024, an argument for taking a longer and slower journey to becoming a SWE instead of a 12-16 week bootcamp.
Before beginning I want to disclose that these are my personal opinions (I know I post here like all the time and you probably know this, but I have to disclose!) but that I'm the co-founder of mentorship platform that while isn't a bootcamp, does work with a lot of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job transitions. In some ways that might bias me want more people to go to bootcamps and this post talks about taking your time instead, but this post is my personal views on the topic.
This is a mini essay I threw together to outline some new thoughts I had. Curious to hear your thoughts. I'm not going anywhere and this is not an anti-bootcamp post. I might post something else making the case for traditional bootcamps too. Th…
Thanks for sharing your views, largely agree.
Regarding the second set of points:
1. Agree for bootcamps local can help and it's one of the reasons that Tech Elevator is on the radar despite the raw salaries being lower than say Codesmith. They have stronger in person connections in some smaller-big non-tech cities that can be a good way to get your first job.
2. \-
3. Networking is harder than it sounds and takes time. Start early. Don't just network and ask for referrals from everyone you meet. Make genuinely connections on genuine topics of interest.
4. \+1
I'm not a gatekeeper, but objectively, one story does not prove anything in either direction, whether a good or bad outcome. If 100 people complain about outcomes, and 1 person got a job, that doesn't meant the "gatekeepers" are wrong and if you follow that logic you are setting yourself up failure.
The truth is often in the details, and Codesmith is a good example of 80% placement within 6 months turning into 70% within 12 months, is a good example of that detail. It's really not as binary as people make it seem in this sub.
An important thing to note is not so much if you will get a job but when you'll get it.
Codesmith had an 80% placement within 6 months of graduating for H1 2022 grads. And the reported, unofficial, numbers people are reporting are around 60 to 70% within 12 months for 2023 grads.
That might still be a very solid number compared to a lot of programs, and a strong reason to go there, but people in 2023 unexpectedly spent A LOT longer job hunting, and fewer people still got jobs... and the ones that did appear to be severely [exaggerating their LinkedIns](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I agree with the commenter that the top programs are still the top programs, offering the best experience , but regardless of which programs you are looking at, only sign up if you have a significantly longer time horizon for getting a…
Well the data does show that 2023 was a rough year and there's no way to sugarcoat it and there's no silver lining - it was tough because companies have been cutting back, e.g. laying off their DEI teams, and they went back to basics for entry level hiring - i.e. sending recruiters to top tier Computer Science schools.
That said, some people get jobs!
I'm still seeing about 1 offer a day at Codesmith. Those people had an average of 11.7 months listed as "experience" from their 3-4 week long group projects though - [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
Those people haven't been posting here as much because why would you if you got your job through exaggerations. If you claimed you had 2 YOE in your resume and you…
Without coming across one side or the other, this is a terrible attitude that makes the problem worse.
You absolutely don't need these courses to get a job, but if you mock these courses as useless experiences then you have a major blind spot about computer science that will hold you back.
Getting a $150K job out of Codesmith doesn't make you better than all those CS grads who struggle to get $65K jobs.
Circumstances matter.
While you all polarize the debate, I'm going to be working on the understanding the nuances and hopefully moving the industry forward.