Timeline

I replied with direct numbers to backup my claims from CIRR reports and I don't appreciate you trying to gaslight me in public and ignoring that data. While a lot of what I state is a personal opinion, I clearly labelled my CIRR analysis as fact and if I made a mistake in my analysis, it was unintentional and I'm open to correcting, but I feel like those facts are clear that H2 2022 outcomes tanked from H1 2022. And I have strong evidence tying someone named "Will S." to paying for someone on Upwork to comment on Reddit who said negative things about me/my company on Reddit under the same account name. I would call those facts too, other than proving "Will S." is Will Sentance the Codesmith CEO and not another Will S, and I do not have evidence of who "Will S." is on Upwork.

I see 78.6% placed in 180 days in H1 2022 (301 grads) and 70.1% in FY 2022 (732 graduates). So that means that about a 62% placement rate in H2 2022. 79% -> 62% is a tanking placement rate. And that was a relatively better 2022 grads. Anecdotally and based on numbers I can find - which are not official and not necessarily accurate, show 2023 grads 180 day placements with something below 50%. And since this number should have been known internally since June 2024 (with at least an estimate) they are free to clear this up for the record. Even if they don't have all the data in yet because they are delayed, if they even have 50% in 180 days already they can let us know that. I really won't listen to any marketing spins on this that make it sound good and anyone trying to do that needs an integrity check. Codesmith can go to town saying how they are doing better than OTHER BOOTCAMPS but…

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.

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"

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.

Someone sent me this: [https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595](https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595) Did they discuss all of the fundamental architecture flaws with the Codesmith website and why they chose to make those decisions? Seriously disappointing.

I'm sorry to hear but this is what people have been telling me and it's causing tremendous distrust because in the middle of that window Codesmith updated marketing to explain how 53 offers were accepted in April-May, appearing to cover up that 6 months placement rates could be in the 15 to 20% range, in your case maybe lower. If the wheels are falling off the bus and the driver is blasting Taylor Swift music and singing along distracted and not acknowledging wheels, people want to get the heck off the bus... If the driver knows the wheels are falling off the bus and intentionally distracting away from the situation to fill up the bus, people will shout at you to stay the heck off the bus.

Hi, where in the post did you see the quote: "People becoming SWEs today are aware of tough market, but persevere because they're truly passionate about coding"? I read "People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job" I agree with Kim's comment that a far smaller number of people are considering bootcamps now BUT they are far more passionate and committed and know what they are getting themselves into. I thank that to places like Reddit helping people be informed about bootcamps so they can join for the right reasons and I'm glad she's seeing that trend too. I disagree with OP's characterization that people are "persevering" despite the market. I have a couple of friends who graduated from Codesmith in early 2024 and while it's far too early t…

I mean it's very optimistic about ML creating more jobs and I share that optimism. But at the same time, in the past year, Rithm has had layoffs, Launch Academy, Turing School, Hack Reactor, Tech Elevator, and even Codesmith has laid off almost half the staff. CodeUp shut down. Epicodus shut down. Like I don't want to be a big rain cloud hovering over the parade, but there are legitimate concerns for a typical student looking to join a bootcamp right now that didn't exist 2+ years ago. And to not acknowledge them is irresponsible. Acknowledging them doesn't have to be doom and gloom though. Living in an imperfect world and trying to be bring positivity to it, doesn't have to mean you ignore anything negative.

According to Codesmith data, only under 1/4 of students had CS degrees before Codesmith, and a good number of those were people who graduated a long time ago and never did SWE, or recently graduated and couldn't get a job. So while I'm not saying to go there or not to go there with experience, but I will point out that the vast majority of people there, do not have SWE experience and the ones that do are there for more specific reasons than mentioned above.

Similar to other feedback, this person graduated Codesmith in 2017, and has had 3 jobs since then and her trajectory and path don't reflect what a person going to Codesmith today will experience. I love reading profiles about people and their trajectories and I loved reading this post, I'm just giving feedback that Codesmith needs to deal with the market today more directly and not the market they want to have. And appeal to people who they think will succeed in this market through Codesmith. I would love to read a profile about someone who is struggling on the job market and doesn't have a job yet and how much they love Codesmith anyways and how Codesmith is helping them the best they can. That is representative of the common grad right now unlike when the person above graduated and started their career.

Prior experience as a SWE or prior experience in tech? Those are two completely different things. Prior experience as a legit SWE, do not do Codesmith. Prior experience as SWE-adjacent or other tech role, consider Codesmith. Since you are answering this "Official AMA" representing Codesmith, be careful misrepresenting the company. The vast majority of alumni according to your own data had no prior SWE experience and it's not even super correlated to Codesmith outcomes (it is a bit, but not really). If you haven't seen your own data ask for it before trusting other Codesmith staff. The one off single anecdote about a PayPal manage graduated Codesmith SIX YEARS AGO and took THREE YEARS to become a manager.

Unlike normal Codesmith, it's a government requirement that people have "Limited or no prior experience with the basics of coding" so that is somewhat limiting for Codesmith's community I think. Like Codesmith clearly advertises that CSX is all you need for a junior engineering job and that Codesmith is for midlevel and senior jobs. So anyone who has done CSX likely has too much coding experience to join this program.

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…

(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…

/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'…