1. This is a completely different thread about CIRR and you didn't give any context, didn't give any feedback privately or on that other thread, and are bringing it up here on a thread about Codesmith - all without any context. **I absolutely copied that comment from that person from CSX Slack in that thread,** and I don't apologize for it at all. Anonymizing a comment from a 20,000 public Slack community that anyone is invited to join is not morally or ethically wrong.
2. She said she was new to the community and then that "we" (without clarifying) started the Codesmith sub for "especially those who are new to Codesmith like me!"... to me that implied that all the people who started it were new to the community. I agree this could be ambiguous, and I think I should have stated something like 'I am interpreting this to mean that it was started from people only new to the community for p…
I agree with this. I'm someone who has to navigate this challenge and I can't just have it all ways that work for me and dismiss the consequences of having a public identity because I don't want to acknowledge them.
I have my real name. Some people appreciate that, but others are skeptical.
I state clearly when something I say is an opinion, but if I say it when also talking about my company I have to think about the consequences. Is this something my company would agree with, and if it's not, I might have to extra emphasize where the opinion is coming from, rather than just throw it out there.
Working at Facebook from 2009 - 2017 through some really challenge times (some for Facebook and others for humanity) I really saw why it's CRITICAL to have integrity in pubic discourse.
It's hard. Someone insults me and I'm defensive and emotional in my head. But if I bring that online and it…
I talk to people as friends and give contract advice, helping people with HR violations, people complaining about their work environment, it's confidential because the people asks me not to talk about it. This isn't "content" and people have a right to complain about their work environment.
I actually have no idea what she's talking about and don't want to assume, but if you are interpreting it as content I shouldn't have access to the Codesmith needs to sound the alarms and call in their engineering team no matter what the time and address this stuff. At any company that would be an SEV 0 emergency.
I understand this is a tough situation and I wouldn't be so tough if someone reached out to me privately, told me this, and we have a human conversation about it.
I feel really bad personally if she feels this way and if she reached out to me personally I would listen and try to help with…
I don't see anything that I don't think I shouldn't see, other than perhaps confidential things people share with me that I never repeat publicly but certainly drives my opinions about how Codesmith is run. Anything I talk about publicly is stuff Codemsith is choosing to share. Since they always talk about producing the leaders of tomorrow and senior engineers with strong capabilities I treat this stuff like it's intentional. If it's not intentional and they communicate this to me then I would help and report all this stuff, but it would require admitting that their technical and operations team is super is not remotely up to even the industry standard, never mind the best in industry.
I appreciate the clarification about your personal feelings.
1. I don't think this is fair that you say above:
>The AMA is something I’ve done on my own volition as Codesmith’s Director of Outcomes, to provide an open space to talk about our CIRR reports, reporting standards, and graduate outcomes
Yet this was advertised by your CEO and in you CSX Slack in a giant image as an ["Official Reddit AMA" ](https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T7X3836NN-F06SK9BNY9W/ama.png)
I genuinely feel bad about the personal feelings, but unfortunately you are also the Director of Outcomes who was doing an Official Reddit AMA.
2. Similar to another commenter, I was also offended by this, in my personal opinion:
> Please all - go have a great weekend! Get outside, read a good book, spend time with family and friends.
I stayed up until 1am doing a super important infrastructure upgrade at Formation. The…
I mean it wouldn't surprise me at all if people are showing up at Codesmith and saying that they want to join Formation soon? and should they do Codesmith at all? But that doesn't mean that we are an alternative to that program. And people aren't choosing to do Formation VS Codesmith and comparing their options and outcomes the way Annie portrayed above. If someone is doing that it's because they misunderstand.
On our side we actually encourage those people to do Codesmith and come back later. On their side if they encounter confused people and are portraying Codemsith and Formation as similar options then they are not helping at all in getting people to the right place at the right time.
I explained this above that our primary competitor is interview Kickstart and they have similar numbers on their website and a lot of people ask us and then we try to explain to them why it doesn't mean that much. but since it comes up from people that are casually comparing us and Interview Kickstart we decided to put it there with multiple paragraphs of detail on how it's calculated.
We're going to updating it soon with our new highest offer with someone who really wants to put it up there for whatever reason.
I can state officially that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the time and choosing between them.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that wouldn'…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…
I stay told to not comment on the AMA, but my questions weren't critical. they were just hard questions. They are looking at data intelligently and asking questions from it. I saw a Launch School AMA where all of the questions were like that and they were extremely strong supporters of the program that asked them.
I was super concerned that the Codesmith poster also expressed concern that she feels like I'm ever present in her work and I have no idea where that came from and I've never seen her before until the call yesterday that they had where I was present camera on with my full name.
Codesmith shares so much student and user information, code, content widely that if she is unaware of that I think that that's on them to figure out and not to blame on me. But now I see where this attitude comes from. If a leader feels like that, it tells me they have absolutely no clue whatsoever how…
I mean this is another flaw of CIRR. The data for it comes from the survey that bootcamps do at the end and they really don't need that much evidence for anything included in the results. The Most complex part of the specification is the documentation requirements for outcomes and there go through a lot of different cases for if someone gets a job or doesn't get a job etc. but the key thing is that they say that things like a text message counts as documentation as long as it includes the offer date or start date of the job, the type of job - e g. full time job, and that the person accepted it.
The data is audited but No auditor needs to check that the original data was provided is correct. the auditors are checking that you followed the process. so if you have a text message, the auditors check that the text message is documented following the process, but nowhere does it say how a sal…
No definitely not. They have good intentions and they try. I've read every word of the standard document five times and it's just not robust.
I could spend a day rewriting it to fix numerous ambiguities and gaps.
They just updated it too and didn't fix any of this stuff.
Like if you read the G.R.A.D standard document from Galvanize it reads like a properly written legal specification.
The CIRR spec reads like a marketing brief. No numbers sections, no clear definition of terms, ambiguities in the worksheets that don't match the spec.
Many people with good intentions don't do a good job executing and this is one of these cases.
CIRR changed the standard to go from 180 day reporting to 360 day reporting.
So there are H1 2022 numbers published from the old standard and full year 2022 numbers from the new standard.
I did the simple math to estimate H2 2022 numbers based on those two reports.
The fact that they tanked in H2 and we had to wait 6 months longer than usual to get the results is my biggest complaint about the process.
That and Codesmith said a couple times now they had an H2 2022 report six months ago they didn't share because of these last minute changes.
It's marketing.
There is no standard to publish that no. I think an increase in compensation is a really good metric though because it puts a dollar value on before and after to compare to the cost of the program.
Calculating it is hard. There isn't just one way to do it. The two options are 1. someone comes up with a reasonable way and then makes a standard that others agree on and use. 2. You calculate it however you want and then explain very clearly exactly how so people aren't misled.
I would LOVE to just share raw results per person, but you have to find a way to do it without people being able to figure out a person's identity.
I mean facts are facts, and upvoting and downvoting doesn't change them. People can follow me and downvote all my comments, doesn't make then false.
People in the bootcamp industry need honesty and transparency. They do not need the next level of manipulation: using transparency as a marketing tool, they need straight up open communication from the source.
This Codesmith AMA blog is no where near open communication from the source and no one is engaging in tough questions. The moderator told me not to reply to anything.
Nothing is perfect but if Codesmith doesn't confront it's imperfections it's going to fall apart, they seem to be intentionally spewing out user and student information, source code, and content all over the place and are upset AT ME for reading it and make me out to be some creepy person spying on them. They need to get their stuff together instead of putting lipstick…
I don't have explicit list of who is paying how much, but this is what I have:
1. They are on the "featured schools" list: "Schools may compensate Course Report for featured placement."
2. The mention sponsorship tiers here: [https://www.coursereport.com/connect](https://www.coursereport.com/connect)
3. I follow their Youtube and they release videos there (and on their blog) from the same list of bootcamps, that they also publish "weekly events" for on their socials. And all of them are "featured schools" on their website.
I wish they were more transparent about all this, it's not easy to tell.
I did report a review on there from an alumni who listed their name, so I found their LinkedIn and that they worked at the school they reviewed and didn't disclose that in the review. Course Report said it was totally fine and didn't remove it.
The marketing team was all laid off, correct. They hired a former student to write blogs and post in CSX Slack.
But this has always been their marketing strategy - they don't pay anything on display ads anywhere. The closest thing is sponsoring Course Report.
I think this kind of marketing is fantastic use of money and it's also more organic than seeing blatant ads like we do.
But it IS marketing, correct, and the person who ran it is a career long director of marketing. So if people think it's all fun and great community - it both is great community AND it's marketing, but anyone who thinks it's purely one or the other is choosing sides.
I mean if you look at what we do and IK does and Pathrise does, it's a really completely different way of operating.
Bootcamps are human-centric business. Codesmith has almost no actual code, the engineers work on their Main website and CSX website.
Pathrise, IK, and Formation are all platforms with a bunch of proprietary technology to help people prepare for interviews and job hunts.
It would be like a small fine dining restaurant changing to selling food in the grocery store.
It's possible, but it's not as obvious as it sounds.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why)
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term.
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our number…
There's a campaign against me right now since I criticized CIRR yeah. It happens every time I criticize CIRR.
That's why I'm here day in day out for 2+ years now and have a strong long term reputation.
There are some alumni that REALLY love Codesmith and some that REALLY DON'T love Codesmith, and it is what it is.... on both sides, anonymous people who have very little history making rude, angry, or personal comments.
I have nothing against Codesmith overall and up until their recent changes recommended a lot of people go there (and might again once things stabilize).
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary"
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead.
RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…
1. Why was there such an increase in people not reporting salaries between H1 and H2 2022 data? It jumped about 14%, meaning that 14% more of the outcomes in H2 2022 did not have a reported salary (e.g. were verified by LinkedIn) compared to H1 2022.
2. How does the "Where Are They Now" data normalize for people who don't respond or cannot be reached? For example, CIRR requires you to verify the outcome of EACH graduate, whereas this data appears to be based on whoever replies to the survey. CIRR requires EACH graduate to be verified so that people who don't do as well, maybe leave the industry, etc... are counted, but in the "Where Are They Now" if people didn't do well and disengaged from the community, how are they accounted for?
3. Can you give preliminary six month placement rates for H1 2023 full time grads? Based on the CIRR reporting process, there should be a preliminary estim…
I told you repeatedly that I don't spend much time on Reddit and you and other Codesmith alumni keep saying otherwise. I can PROVE how much time I spend on Reddit relatively to work so I'm giving you warning to back off and stop lying about it.
You can talk about how you "perceive" me to spend all my time, but you can't make a factual statement like that that is not true, this is your warning, and I will consider further cases harassment.
Yeah I can't share much because people send me stuff in confidence, and since I can't share the evidence, you can't value that statement either, so I understand.
I don't know what's happened since the CIRR stuff came out but lots of accounts came out of nowhere that were a lot meaner.
Until the recent changes Codesmith underwent, I recommended it to a lot of people 1-1 for whom it was a good fit, and I'm pretty sure that some of their leaders know that. I still talk to those students while they are in Codesmith and then afterwards.
It's not so cut and dry, and I wish the people jumping straight to attacks would give me more wiggle room to present both sides. I'm not perfect, but I'm very fair. I was invited to be a moderator because I'm seen as a disciplined, high integrity person who is very responsive.
You can give me feedback in a nicer or more direct way instead of being passive aggressive on a thread about Codesmith involving other people personally attacking me who are affiliated with Codesmith.
You think that's great behavior, and my constant reasonable, fact-based comments and thoughtful opinions are toxic...
Codesmith people think this sub has become "toxic" becuase it's not full of positive posts about Codesmith.
The CIRR results finally showed the cause of this and it's that there is an unprecedented drop in placement rates - and we haven't seen 2023 data yet - and a unprecedented spike in ghosting.
The market is bad.
Do you think all those people not getting placed and dropping out of the community are positive supporters? Or do you think they anonymously go to Reddit and complain or generally have a sour attitude.
I push people to present evidence and facts and thoughtful opinions. You can agree and disagree but it doesn't have to be done through anonymous accounts, insults and flippant personal attacks.
Anything I say on here I would say directly to Will and Eric K to their faces.
Y'all using anonymous accounts to attack me and people using anonymous accounts to attack Codesmith a…
Yeah interviewing.io is great for doing 1 to 3 mock interviews.
There are a few newer competitors that you can look into like hellointerview.com
I'm the cofounder of Formation, we don't officially support the UK, but we do on a one off basis, and our competitors are Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and you can look into those as well. All of these options are the many thousands of dollars range of cost but more consistently fill in the the last 20%, but are way more time commitment and way more expensive than just a few mock interviews.
All these options are worth looking into to see if something feels like a good match for what you think you need.
Several\_Top is no longer a mod of r/Codesmith as of today.
Another moderator said this announcing the sub: "Hey everyone! My name is \[A\] and I am a CSX student. I work full-time as a remote analyst. I discovered Codesmith through Reddit and also through a friend who has gone through the program. We saw that there wasn’t a subreddit for Codesmith so myself and a few others have started r/codesmith. We want to invite everyone to join, especially those who are new to Codesmith like me!"
And stated that it's not affiliated with Codesmith at all.
Several\_Top stated that they were an alumni of Codesmith and has shared inside information about Codesmith in the past (leaked screenshot from an [Alumni presentation](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1apcrg5/83_of_job_offers_from_codesmith_in_2023_were/) - , so being a founding moderator of the sub would look bad and go again…
It's extremely condescending for you to think you know who I am better than me and what my company does better than me. It's fair game to ask me questions and challenge my answers, but not to personally attack me and who I am.
If you think I spend a lot of time on Reddit, then you should see how much I get done at Formation, it's 100X more. Just imagine what an engineer that prolific can accomplish. If you don't believe me, that's on you, you've seen my GitHub and comments about how responsive I am 24/7 to Formation Fellows as the priority over Reddit and other people.
I'm exceptionally good at what I do. I was THE number ONE code producer at the ENTIRE COMPANY of Meta. I left 7 years ago and I'm still in the top 30 or something - that's how far ahead I was even when I left.
You have absolutely no right to judge me and what I do just because your imagination is limited to what you can…
Consistency and integrity always triumph over trolling so I'll keep doing my thing.
My priority is Formation's Fellows. We are approaching 10 Meta offers in 2024 and a few of them were in the 7 figures with their stock, so trolls be trolls and I'm busy with more impactful things and trying my hardest to make a difference in people's lives, not warming the heart of a Reddit troll. All I have is my integrity and I stand up for my integrity.
Yeah +1 to that the reason I heard about this was that instructors felt overloaded already, they hardly EVER write code but though they were signing up as "software engineers" for Codesmith, and they get forced to do this as well.
The complaints were about work load and being forced to do it without it feeling "optional" to help out if they wanted to on their own time.
In April-May is what Will said last week I think or a few weeks ago. My understanding it was going to be paid and not free, and for current residents and alumni, framed as a "minor", like in college.
In the mean time, you can do this completely FREE online course from Stanford and Andrew Ng, an industry expert in AI and teaching AI: [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction)
**Historical Context:**
- They had an entire Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) track they experimented with, but it initially failed as they needed people with more experience to go through it.
- Then they forked it off as a separate concept aimed at PhD students/grads, https://www.dsmlresearch.org/. They reportedly spent over $1M on this to get a cohort running and when they brought on their new external…
Yeah sorry, I'm replying for everyone who reads this, I got a lot of rando accounts all over my comments on this CIRR stuff and don't know who is who.
It's why my responses are so long and repetitive, but I feel it's what I need to do.
If you want to chat 1-1 DM me and I'm way different way of writing lol
Well CIRR's specification allows any text message sent from a graduate, without any kind of verification, as long as it has the start date, that it was accepted, and the job type (i.e. full time, part time, permanent, contract) to be used as the "gold standard".
There is ZERO specification for how to verify salaries, ZERO. The only rule is the salary has to be base salary and correspond to the job used for the start date, but absolutely ZERO rules for how it has to be collected or verified and auditing doesn't have to verify salaries either.
Are you saying that people should be pressuring schools to join CIRR or pressuring them to be more transparent? Or are you implying that CIRR is the only source of transparency?
Rithm School and Launch School are best of the best bootcamps and both have a similar vision of providing transparent data and choose to not be in CIRR because of they have different views on transparency than CIRR does.
If CIRR is going to put efforts in lobbying to try to brand themselves as the only transparent source of bootcamp data, it's not surprise no one wants to be a CIRR member and don't reply to your emails.... the spec is full of issues and problems.
I don't even want to help fix those because you aren't open and transparent about how the spec is managed. You said you had a meeting to adopt the spec AND approved the results at the same time? and the new spec was published alongside results instea…
I completely agree and support correcting the time windows for CIRR and also observe a lot of people mistaking them, but it's also true that this period is for the very last graduate on Dec 31st, 2022.
The first graduate who started Codesmith in Sept 2021, graduated in Jan 2022 and wrapped up the job search by Dec 2022 took 1.25 years to show up in public data here.
Rithm School criticized this this morning as well, that the annual reporting cycle causes a 6+ month delay in getting that data from earlier people, even the 360 day data, not just the 6 month one! And they don't like that and do their own standard as a result.
"In this day and age, LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else"
Which is fine with me, if people just know this and understand that in interpreting CIRR results, but this obviously introduces weaknesses if people are exaggerating or optimizing their narrative on LinkedIn.
OFFER LETTERS are gospel, not LinkedIn and an auditor speaking with a board member of CIRR, and Codesmith advisor, all agreeing on LinkedIn being gospel... gives me a darn good right to call that out so people are aware, no?
You can argue if you agree or disagree, but calling that out shouldn't warrant attacks and defensiveness. Like I said, I think LinkedIn should be used but want to discuss the documentation mechanisms and details on how so that it's transparent.
No drama when people are boringly transparent and don't have a single thing to read between the lines: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith's CEO just says straight up like Launch School's founder did, people had low morale and started ghosting from Codesmith and it was devastating blow to Codesmith's culture and one of the reasons they shrunk down 70% (est. 1000 alumni in 2023 vs on pace for 300 in 2024) so they can re-focus on a tighter and more supportive group of residents, then that's FANTASTIC.
All of the alumni from BEFORE this "ghost era" who had that great culture should cheer on that kind of change instead of misleading prospective students that everything is still fine because Cod…
+1 it can go both ways for sure and I didn't comment on salaries at all.
That said, there are always people who ghost salaries every half, and it's generally a smaller number, but it REALLY tanked this half and I think something else is going on. Like combining all of this, 25% of people are ghosting in some way in H2 versus hardly anyone in H1 and the market only got worse in the rest of 2023 for H1 2023 grads.
It should be zero surprise that sentiment on this sub is bad and that enrollment tanked 70% in end of 2023 and it's certainly not me pointing this stuff out that's causing it. Smart engineers making $130K salaries can figure this out by talking to these alumni and hearing about this stuff from them.
Now I have inside info here that end of last year, Instructors were asked to text and reach out to alumni to try to get placement info out of them via whatever means they could to…
From the interview prep company point of view, like Pathrise, Formation, Interview Kickstart, these places aren't schools and aren't 'education' and I can't see why they would join CIRR (personal opinion)
It might end up bing a waste of time to come up with a standard you think will work for these companies by observing from the outside without getting to know how they work first.
I know for Formation, it would be like making a standard for Personal Trainers for how good they are at being a personal trainer based on analyzing all of their clients. Some people are overweight and want to just lose weight. Some people are in good shape and want to get ripped. Some people want to get skinny. Some people want to run a marathon. Some people want to be a sprinter. Some people are recovering form injuries.
Like weight lost, muscle gained all misleading metrics. Some people want to lose weight…
I think you're trolling me so I'm going to link to my recent answer about this too: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/)
And my most recent post before the CIRR one today was about Launch School: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith did what Launch School did in that AMA and presentation, then there wouldn't be a discussion because it was just all super clear and transparent about what was going on in the market cohort to cohort and month to month.
Codesmith's Unofficial/Reverse Engineered H2 2022 CIRR Report - NOTABLE OPINIONS: concerning increase in number of ghosters on salaries (that still counted as job obtainers !!), 180 day placement rate of 63% (a little higher than expected)
CIRR finally published 2022 outcomes! They aren't as bad as expected at first glance, but I'm not a fan of the change to 360 day reporting period. Three schools reported, one of them had only 15 graduates in all of 2022, another published H2 2022 outcomes instead of full year 2022 outcomes.
So I reversed engineered some of the the H2 2022 outcomes for Codesmith.
DISCLAIMERS:
1. See Methodology for how to reproduce what I did yourself.
2. This may contain errors or misunderstandings, please check the numbers yourself and point out corrections and I will update anything incorrect.
3. These are illustrative examples based on the **reports and the me…
I'm on Reddit representing myself.
RE: Formation, I've explained here fairly recently why CIRR or CIRR-like reports don't make sense in advancing open and transparent understanding of what Formation does. Maybe some other standard would but until we get to a point where Pathrise, Interview Kickstart and us need a standard, we publish information on our blog about outcomes: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz)
I see this post getting downvoted so I'll just add that I had nothing to do with this post, had no idea it was coming and got a push notification like anyone else, but I do know who this person is based on the trajectory.
The bootcamp they are talking about indeed doesn't exist but was around in 2017 to 2019. It was Sophie's company where she single handedly ran an in person iOS bootcamp for 0 to 1. It was free and had an expensive office in downtown SF and was intended to be a small business that broke even. I worked on the learning platform (which is now a toy project some Fellows work on at Formation to practice SWE skills) and the back office stuff.
VC funding presented itself and she considered it so she could hire a team but we had to focus on a larger market than bootcamps. So we decided to pick up where bootcamps leave off, and that's what Formation is. While there are a ton of…
I think Codesmith is responsible for 1. letting these people in in the first place. 2. making sure they are progressing and doing what they are supposed to.
You as a random alumni probably should be unofficially responsible for helping people do their work... they are paying almost $22K for 13 weeks - $1700 a week.
We have a private chat server yeah, no public ones. We have a small numbr of public events but not many.
I always recommend people do the free TIRA benchmark because it gives you an idea of where you are at, and we'll also notify you of upcoming sessions and events and get you in the system.
We also have a 21 day coding challenge you can sign up for on our website.
But that's about it at this time.
+1 to number 2. Stanford and Berkeley did a lot of work to vet and evaluate people at a high bar for 4 years, and if a company hires those grads and those grads tend to do really well at the company, it creates a cycle of reinforcement.
FOLLOWUP: **Why don't bootcamp grads have that reputation**? Like if people hire HR or Codesmith grads and they out perform Stanford grads, wouldn't that want to make the company go back and hire more HR grad? From my observations at Meta the Stanford grads just flat out outperformed on the job and it took bootcamp grads a lot longer to settle in and find their place. It's why apprenticeships became a thing.
A couple of Codesmith alumni are constantly on my case and claiming that I'm trying to put down Codesmith and get people to go to Formation instead. Now I don't really want to talk about Formation but I'm going to try to use this as an example of my constant points about this and I hope this doesn't seem like an advertisement.
(Apologies to the commenter that I used this comment as an example)
But this trajectory is not that uncommon and in fact it can be improved beyond this for those that want to prioritize work and want to work at big tech, and that's what FORMATION does. We help at that 2021/2022 mark in this trajectory to get to the E4 mid-level $300K job at top tier tech companies. We are NOT designed to help with the 2020 first job like Codesmith does.
Now not everyone wants to do that, but for people that do, you pay around $10K to Formation to hopefully make that 2023 jump to…
Yeah attending workshops and full ahead of time counts in my theory haha.
End of 2023 people were being let in like 2 days before and one in particular was absolutely not a good fit and it was not good for them or Codesmith that they got in.
Now that they shrunk down do like 25% of their peak capacity hopefully they will stabilize at a 30 person solid cohort filled up a few weeks ahead of time.
The people I know who work there say that leadership is terrible at forecasting and appears to make changes every few weeks at all hands meetings that are reacting to the current state of things. Like they paid bonuses to admissions people who filled cohorts - which resulted in people getting pushed to their 2nd and 3rd interviews days apart to rush them to get in.
Their website is full of so much randomness now: career accelerator courses, paths to prepare for Codesmith, future code for NYC re…
My theory for this is that I see ebbs and flows with how much demand there is to get in. When demand is low and cohorts are open until the last minute, they let in people who more recently got into the community and are less engaged. When there is a backlog, they have people clamoring for months to get in and they let in the most "Codesmith"-y people who will perpetuate the culture and spread the good word.