These seem to be about two unrelated things:
RE: Codesmith's comments about Reddit, I don't think there is much new in the additional responses. The tone does seem a little more focused on "attacks" and not so much opinionated commentary, and I appreciated that there is acknowledgement that all feedback is not an attack, because I have felt from my perspective that fair feedback was being perceived as an attack and maybe it's wasn't or isn't, or the tone has changed.
RE: The general Slack post, wow that's a can of worms there that seems out of nowhere.
1. I saw those job postings too! There were three roles for PHP developers in Kolkata, India. I didn't read the actual postings but I saw them on LinkedIn.
2. So there are TEN COMPANIES NAMED "Codesmith" that all do software, and I my initial hunch there was that these were legit job postings attributed to the wrong Codesmith. I might b…
The concern came from the wording in the blog post that comes across that he was creating content while working at Tinder in a way that implies there is an association with his role at Tinder and his role at Codesmith, and making statements on behalf of Tinder. Maybe it's poor wording or I'm misunderstanding.
The only reason I process these things this way is because Meta has contracts with some universities to have engineers teach full courses for a while semester and there is a heck of a lot of paperwork and regilatort stuff that comes with that.
If a Tinder engineer is representing Tinder as the faculty of a regulated school I would expect paperwork and formalities.
Maybe this is is just my lens and not reasonable, I dunno, but to me it's a fair concern.
I'll just ask people at Tinder instead of guessing though, that's a fair point.
So I agree with the part about the person with the right skills and most capabilities should get the job and credentials shouldn't matter as a surface level criteria.
BUT the interview processes are not perfect and they are super fast to try to evaluate these things. They rely on people having the experience they say they do. It's not like just that X got the question right so they are qualified. It's X got this question right that someone with 2 years of experience is expected to get right and therefore this question validates that they have that experience. System design interviews are the best example of this. If you don't have experience, you shouldn't be passing a mid level or senior system design interview flat out, and if you lie and game the system so you are violating the interview process. Passing the interview doesn't mean you are qualified for the job.
Hey, feel free to DM me if you want me to look into your specific case, it's hard to generalize what happened or if there was a miscommunication perhaps.
To give some more info:
- There is no fixed schedule or fixed materials. Every week you get a new schedule of small group sessions, practice and benchmarks to work on based on how you did the previous week, and eventually you'll get to real mock interviews to sign off that you are at the top tier performance bar. A small caveat is no two Fellows will have the same experience or materials and our job is to sign off that you are at the top tier interview performance bar as efficiently as we think we can get you there, rather than by exhaustively covering fixed materials. That's why the time it takes, the time per week, etc... are all very ambiguous and fuzzy because we don't want to mislead you into thinking there is anything fixed abo…
Yeah I mean smaller cohorts with same number of instructors would be better and that makes sense and probably what this means.
As others pointed out, I think there are a lot of ways fewer staff can be worse for alumni and grads. Like the wait time for reviews and mocks was really bad for the past few months, people asked me to review their resume. But I think they improved that a bit recently, and that they churned out not involved alumni and pushed the existing ones to open up time.
Yeah I think all that is fair. I just don't see how the person in that post would know I became a moderator unless they were on here very recently and noticed that I happened to be a moderator.
And yeah I mean I don't expect Eric K to ever like me, and I think if I had switched up the language a bit when I talk to Formation Fellows about a startup that closed down 10 years ago, and someone was just harping on that, it would be a bit irritating. I would probably message them and be like hey, this is what went down, and I was trying to summarize the experience maybe too casually and I'll be careful with how I talk about it in the future.
Anyways, I don't have anything personal against Eric K, maybe it's like politicians debating, who co-exist professionally but don't really see eye-to-eye.
I also don't think my personal treatment matters whatsoever and I'm not going to discourage anyone…
I don't think it's super secret but I don't know if I can say because Netflix might have to sign off too, but there were a significantly large number of applications, so it will be tough. The recruiters are going through every single application and making sure they get read, but the number of slots is much smaller than the number of applications. If you get an interview though that's good though, because the ration of interview -> accepted will be much higher.
Yeah my stance on this is:
1. That there is indeed ALL the free material in the world you can find on your own to self study. There is actually TOO MUCH, and that's why programs of all kinds (not just bootcamps, but even like a $20 udemy course) exist to kind of set a pathway through the mess.
How much is the pathway for you? That's up to you to decide.
2. Return on investment. Paying for a bootcamp is an investment and not a transaction. You should be getting that value back, ideally in the job you get afterwards, but it could also be in your time savings, or by you learning something permanently you just couldn't learn on your own.
Could you get a higher return by doing things on your own? Maybe, but if you get a return via the bootcamp than you can't complain.
If you don't feel like you got a return, and that happens to most people, that's when the bootcamp has problems.
The raw evidence I've seen shows Codesmith on paper discourages people from lying about their experience - almost awkwardly directly - like it's said early on in the resume process and said firmly, so I think it's important to call that out to lay the pieces out there.
It's also a fact that they sign off on background checks for the time that you claim you were involved with your OSP. By default they sign off on your time in Codesmith but they sign off on it under OSLabs and under your main project, and not under Codesmith's name. And if you update a README 6 months latter and tell them you've been active over 9 months, the would sign off on that.
I've talked to two students who refused to exaggerate at all and were struggling on the job hunt and I honestly don't have much advice for them. But when you see how demoralized these people were, you start to piece together how another demor…
I mean when it comes to harassment or serious negative impact, everyone should be heard and it doesn't really matter what you said in the past. I'm just a human and I don't have all the answers and I can see hard cases come up. Some things are meant for more calibrated Reddit employees to deal with, but my stance is open and fair lines of communication.
When people talk to me 1-1 I often recommend Codesmith to people based on their personal situations, I'm no longer going to be doing that. Maybe Phil actually heard from students who said I was the reason they went to Codesmith and has more appreciation of what I do.
Eric K though seems to have no idea, and if my stopping to recommend them has a further impact on enrollment then maybe he'll change his mind and if it doesn't have an impact, then my conversations don't really mean anything significant.
I'm happy to respond to this point by point, but **if this is real, the timestamp is accurate, and it's one of the leaders (i.e. Eric K or Will)** then I'm going to reconsider recommending anyone go to Codesmith instead of just pausing that recommendation like I did when the new changes came out. Why? 1) they are directly admitting to being involved with this subreddit, and 2) they are continuing to be defensive and vaguely dismissive instead of providing specific examples, and it doesn't sound like anything has changed.
MY PERSONAL RESPONSES:
1. **Most importantly this post is clearly admitting to being extremely involved on this subreddit after being fairly dismissive of that in the past.**
- I became a moderator like three days ago-ish, it wasn't announced anywhere, and the Codesmith person is already aware, so they are clearly paying attention to Reddit closely
- "We've had grads…
Hi, I would mention it in the interview yeah. It may be possible it could work but it's not ideal timing wise. I'm not sure what the minimum is, but there could be some important onboarding sessions you would miss.
Just generally speaking, the program isn't just something to put on your resume and it takes time and it's also why it's really valuable and effective :). So if the team doesn't think you'll benefit properly it might just not be a good fit, and you don't want to push it because you won't get the most out of it. So I would be transparent and accept the decision if we can't support it.
FWIW you can't have "contractors" be training in a strict style of teaching and force them to teach that way, otherwise they are employees. You can't give contractors mandatory training on how to do something and you can't give them performance reviews and direction on how to do their job.
Obviously there is a massive gray area and a lot of factors play into this, but that's the general overview, but if they are systematically making people contractors and exerting strong control over their work, that might be illegal.
Finally, you mention you "could", that's the key thing here. Very strong industry engineers have complex jobs and can't commit to consistent teaching or projects as "faculty". You need to build a system around managing these people so they can "teach a workshop" every few weeks that makes sure everything is covered. Which my company has patented and built.
Giving back a…
Wow 6 core staff and 6 TAs for 30 people seems like a lot actually hahaha.
Formation isn't a bootcamp so I won't try to explain our org chart, the majority of people are engineers, designers, PMs building the mentorship platform, and the next largest group is the Fellowship team that runs the flagship Fellowship we offer.
I know Codesmith pretty well - before all the recent changes: a full Cohort is 36 students. There is:
- 1 Lead Instructor
- 1 Instructor
- 1 Engineering Mentor
- 1 Admissions Coordinator (before you start) + 1 Program Coordinator (after you start) + 1 Outcomes Coordinator (after you finish)
- 2 to 5 fellows (TAs/former students on contract)
Company wide staff involved partially:
- 1 Head Instructor
- 1 Director of Programs
- 1 Program Manager
- 1 Outcomes Manager
- A number of on demand fellows who do things like resume review and code review
So overall 4…
Ok the tone is a little bit antagonistic, but I do agree with the opinion stated that not all alumni and staff are super happy with everything going on and there's a significant lack of organization of things internally. A lot of people have access to a lot of things and a lot of those things are completely publicly shared. So I wouldn't be surprised if people do start posting more about their experience even with an NDA because a bunch of things are publicly available that I certainly wouldn't make publicly available. People who have non disparagement clauses might not be able to post anything.
That said. I learned from someone last night that Codesmith actually doesn't have much "code" that employees actually work on. The main codebases are the public website and the CSX website, both of which are like junior web developer level work and not "senior software engineering work". I looke…
Codesmith grads are getting jobs, from the data they share publicly, the people getting placed tend to have adjacent experience prior or they exaggerate their resume or they list their contractor work as a fellow as like 8 months of Software Engineer experience.
And Codemsith has almost no code, it's mostly the website that people work on, like junior web developer work. So it's just not enough to get by right now.
I was doing some illustrative math.
THESE ARE NOT FACTUAL NUMBERS, THERE ARE ESTIMATES FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES AND THE SOURCE OF THE GUESS SPECIFIED.
In early 2023, Codesmith had 4 full time cohorts (running every 7 weeks - roudning up ) and 1 part time (running twice a year), and seemed full or with waitlists
So that's 7.4 cohorts a year (let's say 7) = 28 full time cohorts + 2 part time.
Let's say 32 people per cohort average (a full is 36 but's lets again round down)
That means = 960 people starting, @$21K = $20M of revenue
Now the current state:
1 full time cohort (running every 7 weeks) = 7 per year full time cohorts + looks like 4 part time from their website
Enrollment end of 2023 was 'averaging 26 people' from one of the info sessions, so let's use that
That means = 286 people, $6M of revenue
-------
That's not just a drop, that's like a 70% drop in enrollment and re…
I don't know anything about the specific people in this thread and they are keeping the discussion fairly civil and I appreciate that as a reader too, but I do know people in the past were asked to post and comment on Reddit by their senior advisor. There are a ton of people that post and comment on their own too.
The more interesting case was super sleek to me: someone spread word to instructors that 'they really could use more support on Reddit' and the instructors then asked top students like 'wow you should really share that, that's amazing' type things. Percolates down.
Is it wrong or bad, personally I don't think so, but just have to read everything skeptically, INCLUDING EVERY WORD I WRITE TOO.
Sorry I was offline for 3 hours and flailing a bit to catch up and responding to things not well, agree it's a half baked indirect comment.
Anyways, the point was if people are getting laid off and they have experience they are very much capable of getting great new jobs and moving forward, and I don't see why they would go back to teach at Codesmith.
I was trying to explain that the way it happens isn't trivial and you won't be handle those offers, it takes a lot of focus and effort, where having the first instinct to go teach at Codesmith might slow you down or distract you, and it maybe a little add on for some side income.
The whole thread about people being laid off teaching is not really super interesting to me and I would prefer to focus on the changes Codesmith is making and understanding what's going on, it's a big tangent I probably should have just skipped.
Yeah again, presenting both sides:
1. Having people with experience contribute is fantastic.
2. BUT, they can contribute in infinite ways: content, teaching, mocks, resume review, talks, etc... and it takes time to figure out who should do what - and is it too little too late.
We'll see, but it's good they are trying.
I commented this above, and I don't want to make this about me, but even if you don't like me, we are proving there are options for people **who genuinely have 2+ YOE for SWE jobs**
Last 10ish placements in the past 10 days: Microsoft, Meta, Waymo, Oracle, <startup>, JP Morgan, Atlassian, Meta, Meta, Netflix, JP Morgan, <startup>, Waymo
Hate me or not, it's not doom and gloom out there if you have experience, but it certainly is if you don't.
I dunno, I work at a mentorship for experienced engineers and the last 10 offers are : Microsoft, Meta, Waymo, Oracle, <startup>, JP Morgan, Atlassian, Meta, Meta, Netflix, JP Morgan, <startup, Waymo
Like it's **NOT DOOM AND GLOOM IF YOU HAVE 2+ YOE**
It is though if you have no experience, and unfortunately even 1 year on paper of experience a "OSLabs OSP" doesn't cut it.
+1 to waitlists, I check the programs page like once a week (or once a day for the past week haha, I was poking around already because they had zero cohorts in February and something didn't add up)
But anyways, about a year ago they had waitlists and cohorts full months ahead of time. Now they have cohorts open until the week before, and they are admitting people who appear on paper to have less qualified backgrounds (subjective judgement opinion, not a fact) who just REALLY want to go to Codesmith for a long time.
And 100% should have seen the writing on the wall. I know I'm hard on them even when the times are good, but it's because I don't ride ups and downs, I try to evaluate objectively and they should have been using the good times to invest in making everything more robust and better. I said this somewhere but even if my criticisms were hard to hear, listening instead of defend…
This is also true. Almost all the mentors at Formation are industry engineers and some are great teachers and some aren't. Fortunately, we aren't a school and we don't teach anything, so being a good teacher isn't a requirement, but a mentor who is doing lightweight mentorship can be very polarizing and we have a whole PATENTED system for managing all the engineer <-> mentor relationships. It's crazy hard problem for a group of 8+ year FAANG product engineers to solve haha. I believe Codesmith has one contract product engineer that I know of and if they want industry "faculty" actually teaching as teachers in a school setting, that's even harder in my opinion.
Yeah +1, my understanding is they want MORE EXPERIENCED alumni and not alumni who just got jobs, etc...
That said, that person was identified as a "Faculty", which has four very important consequences:
1. Since Codesmith is a "school", has important meaning (for regulation) and this person might be more tied now to Codesmith than they think, maybe they are fully aware but I'm curious if all these new "Faculty" will be aware of this.
2. Conflicts of Interest. Companies generally barely allow people to be lightweight mentors and a lot of the top companies block people from being the "Faculty" of a school without disclosure and review for conflicts of interest. I know at Meta this was a major thing and there was a very non-fun conflict review process that blocked a lot of things. So I'm hoping if someone is an alumni and wants to be a "Faculty" or is going to be identified as one, that t…
Those were independent events. The CTRI lead left in the middle of a cohort and the head of instruction took over at the CTRI lead temporarily. After the last CTRI cohort finished, they stopped advertising it and said it was 'on pause, hoping to return in the new year', and then it never did.
They did have about 18% layoffs later in the year, also unrelated to this person's departure and I think it was more related to that.
But even with those layoffs, they didn't make any significant changes (my opinion) to the actual instruction or curriculum or career support - at least not nearly as significant as what's been discussed in the recent announcement.
This is all stuff I agree with too, like things change, the instruction quality will hopefully remain the same.
My personal concern is that this tone is one that Codesmith leaders have had during all the market downturns, and keeping instruction the same old same old isn't working - and it might just be impossible for people with 0 SWE experience to get jobs right now out of a bootcamp.
I was actually more optimistic about them finally making changes to the process, and I'm more nervous about THOSE CHANGES being executed flawlessly and working as expected. To me the risk is that those things may or may not materialize and have impact because they are brand new and since we don't know it just increases the risk in joining. Risk here is not a bad thing! It's risk in the technical definition - higher variance of possible outcomes/results.
I mean they also eliminated CTRI last year and told people it was "coming back soon and just on pause". The eliminated the data science program after also saying it was "on pause".
I know they are marketing, it's a business and I'm not bashing that, but like they had signs for a long time and communicated to prospective students that everything was fine. So when everything turned out to be not fine, they should be equally supportive and helpful to those people - which is why I'm trying to help all the ones messaging me because I just think it's not fair, in opinion, to do that.
RE: OSP Feedback, yeah I review 1-2 projects a week that students proactively send me and I give them feedback, why? I have no idea, I just see them and see how it looks like no legit engineer reviewed the code at all and feel bad that the students have no idea if what they produced is good or not. Many are aware of weaknesses in their code, but need help prioritizing what to improve.
For example, committed code with hundreds of random - legit - lines of code commented out and comments like "not sure what this does", is not mid level and senior work at all. And it's not acceptable for a code reviewer to sign off on that either, and it's not acceptable for a manager of a code reviewer to have this go unchecked across every project sent to be so far.
I'm presenting both sides in my commentary on this, and I'm also officially moderating the discussion, but I think it's fine for people to express their OPINIONS and label them as such, and as long as that's clear and we don't attack people personally for their opinions, we can have a healthy discussion.
Two sides to this:
1. Codesmith instruction is really consistent - not 100% - but the instructor matters less. PTRI had thrash with their lead leaving last summer and it was eventually fine for the residents.
2. That said, if too much changes overnight, that's a concerning sign, because Codesmith is a MACHINE and a lot of parts are being swapped around and replaced at once. You paid for one machine and it's turning into a different one, and it's not clear what the new one is. I wouldn't flip a table, but I would be on alert.
Ah ok, yeah feel free to DM me. A lot of information has come my way about this. I tried to summarize in my comment on this post, but if you are comfortable sharing more personal circumstances then I can give more specific advice as well, if not, just follow along and will continue to comment on things that I see to present a neutral perspective of what's happening to try to help people who are really nervous :S
Have you tried asking people at Codesmith openly? Or do you feel uncomfortable asking your leads?
For the students who have been contacting me, I would advise going to your instructors and asking them openly and transparently about your questions.
I know some have reported confusion because their instructors were laid off but finishing the cohort and asking someone who was laid off what's going on is a bit awkward for sure.
I'm aware of all the people laid off, and there were a lot of instructors, but maybe try going to the leaders? If they don't reply to you then you then ping me more privately to come up with other people to ask.
Feel free to DM me, we might already be chatting haha, but I mean they are not a very big company at all.
When I was first looking into them I thought they had like 150 people, but the VAST majority are contractors and not employees.
The actual number of employees seems to be around (after the layoffs) three dozen. And of those like 6-7 leaders in 2 tiers roughly?
That doesn't seem that bad.... but are you saying that the leaders don't do enough on the ground and with the cuts being only on the ground people, that that has you concerned?
Hi! I believe our team members dedicated to reviewing applications are still thoroughly going through and interviews are expected to begin at the posted date of March 6th. I believe interviews will happen through the interview period, so not hearing back by March 6th doesn't mean you won't get one necessarily. I will say that the team reported a very large number of applications and thank you to everyone for taking the time to apply and make a video! But many great candidates, naturally, many will also not get interviews unfortunately.
There's no progress tracker for the program this year but it's something we would like to add in the future and appreciate the implied feedback that that would be useful.
This is my concern too, they don't really have time, without adding these on as add on modules. If they charge for them they are breaking the promise of lifetime support to me, but I could be misunderstanding what that means.
But yeah, the people I talk to believe the future tech are things explicitly asked for by grads that they never launched or focused on that they threw in there to appease them, but that don't have concrete plans on how to implement them yet.
A number of people have contacted me about this. I'm going to give a balanced take here so please read the whole thing, it's likely polarizing. Unless noted as a personal opinion, the information is being summarized from what people (students, staff, etc...) have been telling me, and is still illustrative and examples, not definitive facts
Overall though, I do advise to exercise extreme caution to join before all the changes settle... it's risky right now, meaning that the variance in what really happens versus what is expected to happen is wider than the variance of joining their typically super stable and consistent previous programs. But I know many risk-taking students there who might want to take that risk.
PROs:
- I think it's fair to give them a chance to change and settle in on those changes before jumping to conclusions that there is no hope
- Clearly with such a massive redu…