There's a fundamentally broken aspect of the entire education industry - both colleges and bootcamps.
You aren't paying for quality of education, you are paying for a name and an entrance bar. It just so happens that if you have a strong brand and the highest entrance bar that you end up with the most brilliant people all networking with each other and who go on to great things. It also means you have the best teachers who want to work at the best school and get the easier research funding.
Stanford is an example of this working.
Bootcamps are examples of where this entirely falls apart.
People should be paying to learn - but they aren't, they are paying for a label and community. If the thing doesn't deliver Stanford-like outcomes, the entire thing falls apart.
Codesmith is the closest example of this. It was trying to be the Ivy League bootcamp and unofficially had that reputation…
Speaking from Formation, we've been seeing increasing interview activity since July but we're calling this the 'new normal'. We expect to see more layoffs and more hiring in Q1 2024 and uncapped hiring surges like in 2021-2022 mid COVID... efficiency is the new normal.
Also no one should say anything until after the election settles. Things could change really quickly!
there's a lot in this comment that I think would be relevant at the top level too and really changes my perception.
1. the fact that you got or most of it covered from work is really relevant because it kind of changes the decision. I'm not making a comment on if something is a scam or not. I try to make comments on very specific aspects and not the overall program. generally, if a program encourages you to get your work to reimburse training, then usually the work doesn't really care that much what you're doing and the quality can be lower without impacting as much because you're not as angry or upset because your company paid for most of it and your company doesn't really care because they just have these big pools of money to allocate to these programs.
2. If you're working as a day job then I think it's very hard to do codesmith even part time. they have examples of people that d…
Sorry I meant they are over industry trend wise not specific ones.
Launch School is possibly only the least impacted program of all. It's primarily run by the founder and Capstone was always one of the smallest programs so while its enrollment and outcomes have been impacted by the industry collapse it hasn't been on the same scale as others.
For example, they are running cohorts a little smaller than in the past but the same cadence. Whereas Codesmith has 3 upcoming cohorts right now and this time last year had 9 they were enrolling for, and quite frankly 3 is too many.
Hard question: can you comment if CIRR's original spec was trying to be transparent, but also "rounding up" (in those definitions, as you described) to present bootcamps in the best light possible, while maintaining that transparency. For example, the number that should be used in marketing according to the spec loses a lot of the nuances above, where definitions alone could have a +/-10% variance in the examples you provided.
You've made a case for why salary shouldn't matter in your writing. I generally agree with that assessment and the right job is much more important than the highest paying one. Being the worse player on an NBA team is generally better than being the best player in the European pro leagues (and a small number of people might disagree based on their own choices but I would argue that even if you get paid more in the other European leagues).
Why do you think salary…
yeah 3-6 months post graduation is quite fast right now. if someone was starting today how much time would you recommend they budget and account for?
totally understand the challenges when someone takes a part time job to pay the bills - it's very good idea for the person, but challenging for DATA lol.
I'm crazy busy right now, might have more q's, but one more question is how engaged are alumni during the job hunt and how confident are you you are hearing from all of them when they get jobs etc... This is a problem with CIRR right now. We saw in the recent Codesmith report that there was a spike in H2 2022 grads who were non-responsive and placed via their LinkedIn's listing a job.
Which is fine, a placement is a placement, but I'm just curious about that more personally. If there are things you do post graduation to keep people engaged, etc...
The definition of an engineer is a problem solver.
Story time.
When I graduated college they gave everyone an "iron ring". It was forged from the materials of a collapsed bridge, where the engineers were found liable for screwing up.
I didn't want to wear my ring because I felt like software was so fuzzy - how can I be responsible for people's lives.
I've changed my tune. Software engineers are just as responsible for their code as a civil engineer is for their bridge.
Now ask yourself. Is a 12 week bootcamp grad someone who you would trust to build a bridge for you.
Obviously not. I would barely/likely not trust a new grad engineer to do it.
Telling bootcamp grads they are mid level and senior engineers is not just offensive, misleading and irresponsible.... it's reckless.
Encouraging a bootcamp grad to build a bridge and telling them they are a super senior engineer because o…
There are a couple more nuances too that aren't on the website.
All of the details change a lot as we try to create a wide range of configurations to support more people, while being fair and rational about the options. So they are all in our contract and post application flow but not on the website.
1. We have a few bundles if you want to commit to 2 or 3 months at a discount
2. If you were eligible for unlimited and chose to do the month to month, there is a cap right now too, kind of around the average of what the unlimited package might cost.
All of that said,.there is an entrance bar to month to month because we have a fairly focused thing we do.... it's a super waste of money otherwise... we need to be effective and work more often than not to get positive word of mouth and support. So we strongly discourage anyone from doing month to month who isn't doing it for the right reaso…
I can reply with my thoughts, thanks for sharing yours as well. We aren't a perfect program and because of the adaptive nature, no two people will have the same experience, so we rely on critical feedback to make improvements.
Overall, we move absurdly fast, we make changes very fast, and we try to incorporate feedback fast. We aim to fix bugs within minutes or hours. We aim to acknowledge feedback within minutes or hours. And we discuss a lot of feedback internally for how we can incorporate it.
1. I won't comment on the cost. Formation isn't cheap by any means, but the average placed Fellow increases their first year total compensation by an average $127K right now, so it's extremely worth it for them. If you struggle to get a job and on the job hunt much longer than expected - we don't go anywhere and we still by you, but I very much understand that the cost could be weighing on you…
Hey!
1. Most people do Formation part time, but you can do it with whatever workload you want. We adapt your sessions to your schedule.
2. Formation isn't currently for people without any real SWE work experience, even if you have a bachelor or masters in CS with adjacent experience. We are looking for 2+ years of real SWE work experience right now. You are paying us like a personal trainer to get in shape for interviews and for your job hunt and we aren't a short cut to a job that you can't get in any other way.
3. Unfortunately I don't have great advice for you. I would try to transition within your current company, but that's not a guaranteed path by any means.
My personally opinion, I currently actively recommend avoiding Codesmith no matter what your background for two reasons. First, because of their morals and ethics and this view has changed in the recent weeks. Second, because a few more long time staff left recently and the haven't delivered on most of their promises in February last time there were layoffs. So I don't take their word to mean anything both morally on a personal level and practically on a deliverables level.
I'm currently only recommending Launch School (but under the caveat that it's not for everyone and has to be a good fit).
Note: I have no affiliations with any bootcamps.
Hiring is back to the way it was back in 2008. Experienced engineers have options in big tech. The only entry level pipelines that are reliable are the top-tier CS school new grad and intern pipelines.
174 isn't haven't a huge impact with big te…
This is a quote directly from a leader's work email on March 4th, 2024: "I heard from the team that you’ve RSVP’d for tonight’s info session - looking forward to seeing you there, and please let me know if you ever want to connect on a call."
Like I acknowledge my relationship with them is complicated and it's why I try to acknowledge the nuance all the time when I talk about them, but Codesmith has not been characterizing me fairly and if it's damaging my reputation, that's really not cool.
Hey, I personally feel like the conflict, if any, would be that people who come here and appreciate my advice, do whatever they do (bootcamp, or CS degree or whatver), then think of Formation in a **few years** and consider it. I tried to pull up data on where people come from and Reddit as a whole is a fairly small source, and we don't have data more granular - but anecdotally a lot come from Leetcode sub where I give Meta interview advice. Now we're only 5 years old, so maybe in a couple years tons of people will come pouring in to Formation because of my involvement in this sub. It's also not a corporate strategy and I'm here personally... my team would prefer if I post more on LinkedIn.
But I'm very open to talking about this and I appreciate the challenge.
In 2024, we're not talking people without 2+ years of experience. If you don't believe me, try applying and see for yourself.…
That's fair, I agree with that. If it means anything their Senior Advisor Eric actually invited me to an in person Codesmith event and while.ir didn't work out, he was aware I was going to attend an online event with the camera on.
I don't disagree with the arguments you are making, but Codesmith's framing of my presence in events.
Your account is three days old and references understanding this sub for a long time and has posted numerous negative opinions of me without strong rationale.
Learn something from the dozen plus pro-Codesmith accounts that have done this and gotten suspended, including the official Team Codesmith account.
You might not like me, but I make reasonable critical arguments and people come at me with wild opinions stated as facts. If you don't like my arguments, counter them with strong arguments and not loud opinions, and accept discussion about them.
Significant Wing, no matter who they are, has been here consistently two years and whether you like what they say or not, has some history to judge who they are.
Accounts with no context coming out of nowhere with strong opinions deserve zero trust. Trust must be earned and has nothing to do with how much you like someone.
I think they are confusing other people's behavior with mine. I don't think I disrupted any events intentionally and the one time they didn't like my comment I was banned and left.
Repeated disruptions? I think that's not accurate. If you think that because Codesmith told you that and you have a negative impression of me, then those comments could be defamatory.
The titles are irrelevant, the problem happens when people are entering roles that the company expects you to have experience for and the lack of experience causes performance issues against those expectations.
Whether the candidate misrepresented themselves or the company took a chance on you because of potential, it's absolutely absurd that Codesmith suggests people with no experience aim for senior roles. They should present it as an option, but not an expectation that you should be getting a role requiring experience.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah there seems to be a lot of off advice here. Both going for frontend roles if you have backend experience and telling people to go to senior roles they are not qualified for.
The latter I've talked about for a while, they are sending lemmings off a cliff with that advice and I believe it's impacted their enrollment and morale.
You might not like my style but critical thinking is important for engineers. Others apply it was well and those are good discussions, but if people are coming here with holes in their arguments (which everyone including myself will have) and they respond defensively or with even worse rebuttals then those responses won't stand up.
Is it not possible that everything I'm writing about Codesmith is strong arguments and there just aren't strong counter arguments? I've heard of a number of staff who left/leaving/plan on leaving this week (4).
It might be sad and come across doom and gloom, but I don't have a goal with, I just want us to have really nuanced and detailed critical arguments.
When confronted with a strong argument, like data backed analysis of the resumes of most grads show an average of 11 months of experience on their 3 week long projects, and the response is "well what ab…
To clarify, I'm concerned about any program that is trying to TEACH Gen AI stuff right now. I did a survey of top tech engineers and around 90% of people said they don't look for Gen AI skills in engineers. So I'm not sure how you can invest in a curriculum yet, or know what to teach. What I'm seeing is that anyone with broad engineering skills is expected to learn how to use Gen AI without the need for explicit training.
Formation doesn't offer any kind of mentorship, practice with Gen AI at this time. We will add it when companies interview for it.
We USE AI to build our platform, make mentorship better AND more efficient. We use AI to help you figure out what to practice next, and to schedule hundreds of dynamic sessions every week. Very different!
Wow there is a lot of just like blatantly wrong facts there.
There are a few people who don't like Codesmith and maybe that's them but you should make sure you have evidence of what you are saying because if you don't you are defaming me with facts that are wrong.
1. I have a written statement from the person in that blog post that another prospective Codemsith student told him about Formation, not a team member.
2. 2 year fixation on Codesmith, yes that's true.
3. I mention Codemsith a lot because there are these extremely long threads of back and forth with these anonymous Codesmith people who are mostly suspended from Reddit now. My proactive commentary leans Codesmith but is much broader.
4. I never hired a private investigator or anyone to look into Codesmith. That is weird and not me.
5. I have two main spreadsheets that I created. One for OSP tracking, one for Alumni. I hav…
I'm not deleting or auto collapsing your posts. You have an extremely negative karma score (which is computed by Reddit, not moderators) and everyone with that negative of a score is treated the same by Crowd Control. Not overriding these filters does not mean we are deleting stuff.
I explained that you can increase your score by engaging positively and not doing vote manipulation.
Are you requesting to be treated unfairly? You are asking to override all of the stuff we have in place for everyone else that is in the same boat (which is a lot of people every day).
If you don't accept that, I'm happy to hop on a call and walk you through it all to prove that to you. If you keep pushing back and ignoring my statements and insisting I'm lying, that's on you do take responsibility for.
--------------------
PERSONAL COMMENTS:
1. That link to that video has ONE SLIDE on predictive analysi…
Why do you consider me personally your competitor or Formation your competitor? We don't consider you a competitor and I've stated that for like over 2 years now.
Not only that, but I've tried to explain in numerous ways why we aren't your competitor, in writing, in detail, to your leadership, which you haven't refuted and just keep calling Formation your competitor passive aggressively.
Are you seeing a bunch of people applying to Codesmith and asking about Formation? And if so, were those people OFFICIALLY ACCEPTED BY FORMATION or they just mentioned hearing about it or wanting to go there in the future?
I really want to sort this out, all of the alumni that have come to Formation that have talked to me about this (which is probably bias sample) have asked me to try to make sort this out with you because Formation is an amazing complement to Codesmith. These people have fully been i…
My understanding is they exclude people hired by Codesmith. I'm very confident people hired short term as TAs (fellows) are excluded as they are not considered placements for CIRR. I'm reasonably confident that it excludes instructors. But if it did, the number of instructors hired in that time is 2 and wouldn't impact this data.
These are **first offers only!**, based on the date reported though and not when they started the job. I asked for clarification on that because someone who graduated in 2022 and got a job end of 2023 and submitted the form in August 2024 would count.... and two alumni reported being promoted to update or re-submit their data in August.
COMMENTARY/UPDATE: Codesmith updated their accepted stats today, 168 offers accepted between March and August 2024 VS 53 in March and April alone. Average base salary in those ranges down to $117K from $119K.
Disclosure: I'm presenting my analysis as my personal opinions and commentary on the data provided. If anything commented is incorrect, I'm happy to make corrections and updates.
Codesmith updated their recent offer stats sometime today and I spent 15 mins throwing together my top of mind thoughts below.
Source: [Previous](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_CPn4TtghvS4UDvkZ9pD6G4JYItLODd3/view) and [New](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d7IGbYdtYPoI5Jbr4OxPwVgKyXhMTpI1/view?__hstc=109711322.0e322342ee14294aff502ad66630cdf2.1651003824655.1725406413979.1725413866740.756&__hssc=109711322.8.1725413866740&__hsfp=3801953514&hsCtaTracking=5fa5766f-6dea-46ee-b25d-ecf7276ecee9%7Ceed80937-e…
This is right in my wheel house and I can give my broad personal advice. Note, disclosure that my company is in the interview prep bucket of expensive options for helping prepare: Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. I'm given this answer with my personal advice.
Step 0:
- I agree, I'm effectively self-taught because I taught myself programming at a fairly young age, and taught myself all practical programming. My degree was a broad engineering degree and I did a ton of CS courses that helped me in my career, but getting the basics too a lot of grit. Re-learning the SAME THINGS like 5 times over many years before things started to click one by one. Making a lot of mistakes and banging my head against the wall, only to find a one line erorr.
Step 1:
- I recommend JavaScript equally now too
Step 2:
- Following Step 0, it takes time and I recommend learning and relearning DS&A m…
This post was blocked because of a "reputation risk", "may be from a spammer or someone likely to break rules".
I think this is because your community rating is extremely negative right now.
If you want to share this in the community as original content (not a reshare) accompanied with an explanation of how it's relevant to the community in a non promotional way, then I will approve it (subject to removal from other mods that might disagree)
I haven't seen a concrete trend myself. The instructors haven't worked in industry (only a handful ever had but all but one were return Codemsith alumni) and Codesmith's codebase can best be described as a big OSP project and in some cases, some OSP projects have had more people touching their code than the Codesmith codebase. Based on the problems with some of the largest OSP projects which have their history plain for all to see, you can imagine the problems with Codesmith's codebase.
I haven't seen Codesmith's codebase but just heard casually from people who worked on it and from people who saw this system design talk and approached me about it.
If you've talked to alumni about the big OSPs you'll hear about how each new group tends to fail to understand the existing codebase and instead just builds something new. For example, a project containing 2 primary UI frameworks because a n…
Do you have an opinion or facts on if this was a response from Will to Codemsith employees and specifically fellows, having a hard time placing? Or was the priority building a brand around Codesmith's engineering prowess to make the entire program seem more legit and like it has 50 engineers building it?
Parallels was another thing that started that has been dead for months now. OSLabs haven't done anything for a while and stuff in their web page seems like vaporware (6 months fellowship?)
Yeah some.other things to add;
1. Instructors are paid well and paid. I've heard second hand that salaries have gone down recently for new hires (not existing hires) and that a TA is paid like minimum wage, a mentor is paid like an intern/apprentice, instructor like entry level, and lead instructor like mid level. (FAANG levels).
2. Instructors are given a lot of responsibility. It has been expressed to me that the program leadership hovers a bit to make sure you do all your work and cover anything extra needed, but you are ultimately critical to the success of a cohort. A cohort has very few staff and each one is critical in my opinion. So it could be a rewarding job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
This is a quote from one of their leaders from November 2023 in a public talk: "we don't ever ever ever endorse lying, exaggerating, there is nothing other than pure authenticity when you come out of codesmith in terms of applying to jobs what you'll say in interviews what's on your resume everything will be 100% truthful, alright, so stuff you read other people say, it's a weird thing"
I'm fairly familiar with this and can offer my 2 cents, in no particular order:
1. I heard that instructors, mentors, and fellows (TAs) were listing Codesmith as their recent job, but it was becoming less effective, because people recognized it as a bootcamp and it makes sense that people would perceive "Senior Software Engineer at Codesmith" as really just a bootcamp STUDENT embellishing their resume. It wasn't made clear to me who's idea this was, but someone came up with the idea of creating a "CS Engineering" brand that these people could list to differentiate their REAL jobs from coming across like a student.
2. In all fairness, I think that's reasonable because people actually had jobs with Codesmith that they should get credit for. My opinion is the need for "CS Engineering" as a brand is a very clear sign of the problems of appearing to work at a bootcamp and how you get writte…