Timeline

Jeez sorry to hear that you were a sales engineer and still cant make it work. Can you elaborate for everyone what it means to talk about your open source product as real work experience? I'm super familiar with it, but I think it's useful for general people to hear what that means because it's a little surprising to a lot of people I talk to.

1. Yes, if you join the Unlimited option we will work with you for however long it takes and you aren't forced to take your first offer. So as long as you keep job hunting, applying, interviewing, and accepting our feedback and guidance (and don't have to withdraw for personal reasons, unexpected emergencies, or change your goal and don't what to job hunt anymore) then we keep supporting you. We have some people with us for two years and counting haha. We don't have strict requirements to meet to maintain this either. We have a two way trusting relationship and as long as you are continuously intending to job hunt we do our part. We don't hand you a job though and it's not a place to sign up expected to be handed interviews and a job on a plate. 2. Yeah sounds like you've read my views on this. It makes a lot more sense when you do Formation and see how individually unique each person's…

I'm the co-founder of Formation so I'm really biased. I would say that none of these are boot camps, so the perspective you get from here is probably skewed to boot camp grads that then went to some of these programs. Which could be really useful if you're also a boot camp grad but less useful if you're not. All of these are really different. Outco, I got the vibe was shutting down or isn't really running because you can't apply on their website and their founders seem to have moved on and there's been a number of people being threatened to be sued by them who didn't get jobs within 12 months. I haven't heard firsthand from the company directly so I can't say anything definitively but I'm not really considering them right now when I talk about competitors. Pathrise, they publish some annual stats and the number of people who go there as a software engineer is has been decreasing s…

Codesmith kind of pushes you out the door and alumni and older alumni kind of use their ambitiousness to hustle into a job. Leaders aren't super involved in individual people's job hunts. Launch School's Founder personally gets involved in people's job hunts and tries to use his network to hustle you into a job. This is impossible to scale, so keeping Launch School small makes this possible.

Yeah they have been working on shifting the narrative. I think they are close but the things you pointed out are crushing deal breakers. You won't be irreplaceable by doing 5 lectures in AI.... anyone else can do that. I can do that, you can do that and next week we are irreplaceable. You can't be irreplaceable in 12 weeks for $22K or else anyone else can be irreplaceable in 12 weeks. I like your idea of a 10 month or longer approach.... you became irreplaceable with time, and you can accelerate a little bit with good direction and advice.

Codesmith Immersive and Launch School Capstone have relatively similar formats. Focused on a delivering a big group project and leveraging that as internship-like experience. Launch School is also working on setting up mini internships and contributions to giant open source projects like Firefox and is leagues ahead of Codesmith right now!

Hi, yeah off topic but I can answer: - we take data engineers and data scientists but with SEVERE WARNINGS. We don't do any data-specific preparation or practice, so those people come to us for DS&A and System Design, networking, resume stuff, negotiation, etc... and not for any data specific stuff. At the FAANG-level companies the data loops are fairly similar to SWE with 1 or 2 unique interviews that we don't prep for, so some people think it's worth it. We strongly don't advise it though and these people tend to think hard about and come back to us on their own. - we take people on different visas case by case, depends on the visa and the amount of time before it expires. Generally existing H1B is ok, TN (Canada/Mexico) is ok, F1+OPT with 2+ years left and a backup plan is generally ok.

Hi, thanks for sharing, I've heard similar things. Interestingly, Codesmith isolates each cohort so it's actually fairly hard to figure out how others are doing. People know their own cohort and the ones before and after who they interact with as junior/seniors. Do you have any comments on how Codesmith staff have communicated to you? Like if they have told you it's not good or there, or they say things are fine instead? But yeah, the 6 month placement rate for end of 2023 and early 2024 grads has tanked and Codesmith isn't saying a word - instead they are saying things that make it sound like everything is fine and Codesmith is doing great. Launch School transparently had a 75% 6 month placement rate and because of Codesmith delusion above I've actively recommended not going there and actively recommended Launch School. Anyways, if others in your cohort feel the same, share this pos…

Yeah for $59 it's a great way to test things out for sure! I'm speaking more at a company strategy level and zoomed out view. I'm on a remote cruise right now and my analogy would be watching all the cruise ships big and small come in and out of the harbor from a top a nearby mountain and trying to gauge where everyone is going. Is the ship sunk? About to collide with an iceberg and just won't move out of the way? Or seems to be doing everything right. My view on Codesmith is that it's hit the iceberg and stubbornly not acknowledging it. But I might be wrong and they can try to change and do a 180, the CEO could step down, they could sell off, merge, or maybe they find a way to creatively keep the ship floating (e.g. Future Code) and then after reasoning their footings, make changes to avoid the iceberg in the future. If this are at the CSPrep phase then consider all your free and chea…

I think they have far too much price to drop tuition. I expect them to raise it again in January like they did this year despite tanking placements and outcomes. If anything they will start to give out "scholarships" to effectively lower the cost but maintain a high sticker price. Following the ivy League model. Stanford is $60K a year but most people (who don't come from rich families) pay much less or nothing. So taking a step back.... Codesmith, like Launch School, is for a certain person. There aren't magically more of those people in the world who just aren't going because of the cost. If it's the right program, the cost is irrelevant because the long term impact will be so much more than anything. So lowering the cost won't do anything at all. If they relied on anyone with a pulse paying them whatever spare change they have, then lowering the price would result in more people…

I absolutely think you should do many different things that are free because personally I found that you often have to do the same thing a couple times for it to click and to get the ball rolling. and there's also different styles at different times and there isn't just one thing that works the best for everyone. it's one of the most frustrating things about this subreddit is that people are looking for an objective single answer when they're often isn't one.

It's hard to say. Tax credits mean you were paying the taxes to begin with so they eat into profits more than they do to practical impact (for super high profit companies). As long as Wall Street adjusts their modelling and the companies remain insanely profitable, things should be fine. But companies that are smaller and rely on the credits might hold back and I don't know what that will mean for them.... maybe the Reich get richer and jobs concentrate at FAANGs?

The slow path is to get a job using your existing degree that is at a big tech company and use internal resources to transition over the course of a few years. I've seen some people do this and it's worked out extremely well. 1. You learn along the way 2. You get a good salary and benefits 3. You have a ton of context to help add value in a transition while you ramp up on technical 4. Some companies pay for masters 5. Many companies have internal engineering training you can try to participate in. Now if you can't get a job at a top tech company, try to find something that hits on some of these. Like maybe finding a job at a company that will pay for your masters. Or finding a non tech job at a tech company that has zero chance at ever becoming an engineering job

I was doing some math on Future Code and it's possible that the program will give them a significant profit to survive for a bit longer. Need more details about how much they are paid from the city. I'm sure surviving because of a philanthropic program from the city of New York makes you feel even better haha. Anyways, thanks for sharing. A number of former employees have contacted me over the years. Many to apologize for their leadership's internal behavior calling me out and dismissing me internally when they feel like they agree with what I say. Codesmith tells these people I'm a jealous competitor. I do what I do because former employees like this appreciate me for being real and wish they could too without violating their NDAs. I feel bad for current employees who still believe their story and tow the line and it's why I generally have patience with them.

One more question? How much interaction do you have with Codesmith staff. I was running the unit economy of the program. If Codesmith has two dedicated instructors and one program coordinator for 6 months, that's about $200K. If they have a fraction of other people's time for outcomes, program coordination, grading etc... that's another 100K. So if the program costs Codesmith $300K, I'm curious if this is a philanthropic program if the city of New York would pay $900K for everyone's tuition to enroll in Codesmith. Seems kind of weird if Codesmith profits a huge amount from the program to subsidize its other programs.... like the City of New York shouldn't be keeping the lights on haha. So just curious if you can list out the staff jobs (NOT PEOPLES NAMES) you work with in the program to do the math.

Thanks for the update! Do you have a sense of how important job hunting is going to be yet? or an emphasis on preparing to get a job at the end and references to that? Also just want to confirm you haven't started working on the OSP project right? I want to make sure in the end people don't list 6 months of work experience on their OSP when it wasn't close to that haha. Codesmith normally advise to put the entire time at Codesmith for their OSP on their resume.

Launch School is experimenting with Launch School Core Live, which is entirely free and might have prompted Codesmith to discount CSPrep. Launch School works well for specific people, just like Codesmith still works for a dwindling number of specific people. The main advantage Launch School has if it's smaller. They run 4 cohorts a year or so, and then the founder is more directly involved in the day to day, keeping costs way down. As a result they have a decent placement rate in this market. So I am recommending Launch School but only if it's the right place for you and you can explore their free options to try to figure that out.

I have to be fair, both to sleep at night for my own values, and because I have a following on here that expects me to be fair and reasonable. I don't know Will Sentance and why he does what he does. But the sad thing is that we're approaching scam or incompetence. One is illegal, and one is career ending. So even with the benefit of the doubt, I don't think I'm being too kind here. I do believe though deep in my heart that everyone at Codesmith would like nothing more than to see their grads succeed in incredible jobs and I stand by that too.

Numerous new warning flags at Codesmith. Concerned they are grasping at straws (Personal Opinion) Hi all, over the years I've developed a decent sense of the bootcamp industry from both the inside and the outside. For better or worse I have developed quite the insight into Codesmith. As one of the more controversial bootcamps (known in the boom-times for placing people with $137K median salaries who will fight to the bitten end for Codesmith, with others who aren't buying the 'Codesmith way' on the opposite side. "Polarizing" is a good word and the most innovating things in the world are polarizing. Over the past month I've been pretty quiet as a number of current and former students and staff have contacted me to chat about things and shared their views. I've organized this post into clear sections. Just a disclaimer, I'm a moderator of this sub and I supported my founder in startin…

Yeah that sounds good. It doesn't hurt to do Leetcode problems, just do them following a problem solving methodology like I suggested in another comment and not just flailing until Leetcode tells you you passed the question. The how is much more important than the what. I would also recommend spending significant time. just understanding the basic data structures and algorithms. The bootcamps that cover them spend like a few days on them and it's just not enough time. for me personally, I had to go over the same cost that several times before they clicked over several years. I worked with a number of people from a formerly top bootcamp Codesmith, where people do a problem a day during what they call "hack hours" and I saw the pattern a lot of people who didn't really understand the underlying data structures and algorithms and were just kind of trying to get the problems right. I'm…

Outco is a competitor to my company so I'm super biased about talking about them. Personally, I thought they were shutting down because their website is half broken and doesn't let you apply, some founders moved on to new things, and they are threatening to sue a bunch of people (search Reddit) who didn't get jobs in a year and thought they were getting their money back. I would compare Outco to Formation (my company), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise. These are all different approaches and entirely different day to day, but all are focused on helping you get interviews and pass them. I have always had pretty fair assessments on here despite my bias, so I'll give my PERSONAL OPINIONS trying to be as fair as I can be: Formation: dynamic and adaptive mentorship, unique, unlimited mocks, small group sessions (3 to 6 people), 3 dedicated non technical support team members, only focused…

Sorry I should clarify the recommendation is because Codemiths system sounds like a HubSpot website with API integration and they don't seem remotely aware of any of the massive problems with their service and apparently Will doesn't seem to understand the architecture himself in detail. Their lead engineer left and I don't think anyone does. I chatted with someone who corroborated this. Like I would not be comfortable giving them any personal information personally based on my judgment.

Someone reached out who attended this talk and I now actively encourage no one to go to Codesmith... Any alumni who attended - this doesn't seem like a system design talk but rather Will trying to learn about a system he doesn't understand well. Did he talk about pros and cons of different approaches? Did he talk about the decision process for each piece? Was the system large scale and in need of complex decision making? Are the APIs between components discussed in great detail? Are the schemas and data model decisions discussed in great detail? Was there any discussion of a technically challenging problem solved and how they overcame it? Did the system make sense and were good decisions made? Like if someone reviewed it and thought it would just be one service instead that would be a no hire or fire.

I'm surprised your big tech company is allowing you to reach as a W2 part time employee of a bootcamp. I would run that by the conflict of interest team first.If you are a contractor with that much influence over the curriculum, I would double check the contractor / employee relationship in your state and the state the bootcamp is in to make sure it's not being violated. Not paranoia but serious. Like if you work at FAANG and you are doing to teach people under any kind of IP agreement with the bootcamp, you have a conflict not to reveal any IP of the company and unintentionally transfer that IP to the bootcamp. You also might unintentionally transfer that IP to students who go and work at competitors in the future. Sounds crazy but you can get insta fired at some companies so be careful and make sure your relationship with the bootcamp is clear. Codesmith was telling everyone their o…

I didn't want to share but I found that too and was like what Stealh Startup is public on GitHub and called "Stealth Startup" haha. Do you have evidence the person was fired from a real startup? I think it's reasonable for people to not make it for all kinds of reasons, even if they lied about their background and couldn't make it at the level they were expected. But I think it's offensive and absurd to portray those situations as successed to be celebrated. I've seen potential students who don't know any better asking a "senior engineer" representing Codesmith at an official event questions about hiring and management, that the person was NOT QUALIFIED to answer but answered anyways with bull shit answers... and the potential students were impressed and appreciative. It does such harm to those people to keep the charade going. It catches up to you and that's what we're seeing now. A…

I'm currently recommending Launch School but only for the right people and you should do their free stuff to see if they are the right school. The other best ones I'm no longer recommending for various reasons. Codesmith I'm suggested to not go to. App Academy, Hack Reactor, I'm more neutral on. Tech Elevator was amazing when they had in person partnerships but those have been dwindling. These are just my opinions. There isn't a correct answer for everyone though. Happy to talk through based on your own background.

Not publicly no, it's ethically wrong. I have been permanently banned from the Codesmith community for comments I made during a live session so I don't have avenues to responsibly report them. If you have some connections DM me. I need to discuss this stuff under an agreement because it's quite bad and they might have to legally notify all their people about one or more of these issues and I do not want to be involved and would rather not say anything at all honestly. My personal opinion is that I would not apply to anything at Codesmith with personally identifiable information.

Hey! Thanks for the update. Do you have more comments about the group of people? One of my concerns is people who used to make a lot of money, like someone was a Medical Doctor, but who left their jobs, would be considered a low income student. Any insights on the backgrounds of other people? Also do you feel like people truly have no programming experience and are starting at similar places?

So if you graduated from Stanford, the market seems great. If you are considering senior top tier tech companies, the market seems pretty good. It's not going to improve for bootcamp grads unfortunately until we see what happens with AI. The market right now is looking for top 50% engineers (illustrative number, not a fact), like good CS grads and experienced engineers who have done pretty good on the job. AI is going to create a lot of jobs but unclear yet what they will be. I'm very nervous about bootcamps like BloomTech, Codesmith, and others focusing so much on generative AI skills. These are skills that we see in headlines, but talk to hiring managers at top tech companies and no one knows what AI-skills they will be looking for. These companies have super consistent and careful hiring processes and they will over a couple years operationalize for AI and the skills they look fo…

What credible employment reports are you going off of? The only recent one I know of is Launch School, which while still has a 75% placement rate it has dropped from 100%. So clearly things are not the same anymore there. Codesmith has a CIRR for people that graduated 1.5 to 2.5 years ago which is useless. The six month placement rates I'm seeing for 2023 abysmal. Codesmith won't let us know the official numbers until March 2025 and we won't see 2024 numbers until March 2026. So people who graduated 6 months ago in Jan 2024, even though Codesmith knows their 6 months placement rate and could give a great heads up to people about the changing market, they won't say even one hint of it until March 2026, almost two years from now. That's absolutely garbage and they need to do better if people like you are relying on these reports to judge the market.