Maybe you are wearing Codesmith-colored glasses too? I totally comment on a LOT of posts and I get how that can be like the loudest person in the room. I try to ask a lot of questions and stimulate discussion if you read all my stuff, but I see where this is coming from.
But percentage-wise Codesmith is not dominating the content in this sub, factually speaking.
It makes total sense there would be a ton of discussion in the past two weeks! They shrunk down a ton and laid off / lost a third - possibly up to half - of their staff, like that's a huge thing to discuss for the "best", "s-tier" bootcamp and if there was no discussion I might be more concerned. If anything there hasn't been enough talk about how people feel about it.
No worries, was just answering very literally like a log-like answer hahaha
But yeah I've known Don for a long time now.
Formation sponsored one of his videos about 2 years ago, and Daniel and Sophie from Formation did a couple of collaborations on mock interviews with him around then.
I used to go to his live streams so that's why he was responsive and knew me in the video and we know other's personalities pretty well.
The last time I interacted with Don prior to this live session was December 8th, 2023, and he had no idea I was going to be there, nor did I, I joined when I saw the push notification about a live session reviewing Reddit posts.
At the beginning (edited out) he opened CodingBootcamp, CSCareerQuestions, ExperiencedDevs and scrolled through the first couple of posts looking for ones to talk about.
There was a lot of odd posts prior to the one Don reviewed that were removed by both mods and Reddit-level admins, so I suggested that post as the most reasonable RECENT post. I then found two more posts that were much older way past the fold about self teaching vs bootcamps, and cs degrees that I recommended as well. And he started with the Codesmith one.
I mean I've seen the paperwork and lecture notes and they very adamantly tell people not to lie.
But I agree that they in the same breath tell them that OSLabs will complete background checks for your entire time at Codesmith on the 4 week projects because they say you were in 'OSLabs that entire time'. And they tell you to list your other Codesmith projects in parallel with overlapping timeframes.
Similarly, the representation of prior jobs is borderline. Don't lie, that customer service job was actually a "Support Engineer" role you just have imposter syndrome and are underselling yourself. I work with a number of students and grads unofficially/casually to help them tell their stories because they feel like they can't tell their authentic story at Codesmith.
Finally, I know someone that worked with a career support engineer to squeeze 4 YOE out of their resume when they had 0, the…
I happened to pop into that live stream when he was going over recent Reddit posts in a few subs.
I answered some questions he had very neutrally since this was his stream and not mine.
Don calls out pretty strongly some of the patterns and behaviors I've seen too, specifically how he didn't know OSPs were 4 weeks because every grad he's seen lists months or years on LinkedIn and hardly writes any code when looking at the GitHub repos. He even challenged the Codesmith CEO to come in his podcast and explain that to everyone, since it sounds like he has done his homework and would fairly aggressively push him on this.
I mean I have a couple of spreadsheets over the years and I would also like to see the CEO's response going through the most recent one of these privately, why 48 out of 52 people stated they had on average 11 months of experience on their OSPs, many not disclosing it wasn…
This is my personal recommendation, not trying to sell you anything:
- If you have multiple interviews at "big tech"/FAANG-ish companies lined up that are about 1-3 months away, I would consider joining for 1 month, 2 months ($4500) or 3 months ($6000). The key is "multiple" becuase, as a I said, joining thinking you are paying a ton of money to pass one specific interview is not the right mindset to have. Lets say you didn't get any of those, we want you to leave feeling like you are still ready and feeling good about more interviews and that you got your money's worth. For people with offers, negotiation help alone can pay back 10X those costs, for others, feeling like they can pass DS&A, SD, hiring manager/technical behavioral/jedi/bar raiser interviews is worth it enough.
- If you are actively job hunting and 95% looking for a new job within the next year, but don't have any schedu…
1. No back of the envelope calculations. A lot of people are worried about that when this comes up, it's primarily used to help you identify which part of a system will break first under different usage patterns and that you should be able to do, math or no math.
2. I'm sure you'll find a ton of resources while Googling but two more I like that are:
The video archives from Meta's official conference website (specifically the product related ones about how core systems work) https://atscaleconference.com/
The author of Blind 75 has a website focused on product SD that has some free stuff too https://www.greatfrontend.com/
I should disclose that someone mentioned in the comments about Formation and I'm the co-founder - which is also why I know a lot about this because we help people professionally to pass these interviews. You should NOT join just to pass one single interview with one…
Haha I like the analogies :D
I think that today, success is still proportional to talent and hard work, but the things that's changing is **TIME**.
If you are talented and work hard for \~2 years, I think you can get a job without a Stanford CS degree, but people are expecting that to happen in 12 weeks + 1000 applications over 6 months.
I have an engineering degree, but what got me my job at Facebook was actually self teaching web programming on my own. I was doing a full time 13 month internship/co-op at the time and woke up early and went to bed late working on a web platform (it was an internship review website, from scratch) for about 8 months straight. I learned so much by having real people using this thing, turning into a corporation with 3 other people, acquiring a competitor.... not just about programming, but product building and growth and marketing and all kinds of things…
Codesmith has weekly "family dinners" where you eat and socialize with others and I think sometimes there are announcements there. I've heard of different rituals during lectures, I don't know if they are set by cohort or by section, I've heard of the powerclap at the end, snapping, various zoom background stuff.
A lot of "family" references. Like in CSX Slack, people sometimes address people as "family".
When you spend 11 hours+ a day with people 6 days a week, it makes sense people feel like family.
Yeah I agree with this but I'm really bias because of Formation so this is obviously a skewed position that I have.
Like I personally worked with someone to increase an initial offer by $200K first year TC and how much is that worth?
It's a really odd industry compared to most because the amounts of money thrown around a "typical" FAANG senior, staff, etc... engineer is not just like 8% per year compounded, but like 5X a junior engineer.
The amount of work on my side it takes to help that super senior person negotiate is less time, but a lot more extremely nuanced expertise that took years of exposure and observation to build.
It's a lot more natural to try to associate the cost with "what services am I getting, how many sessions, how many projects", etc...
**It's a lot harder to think of paying as an investment that will hopefully offer a return. Increasing comp by $200K first y…
By building a jetpack so you can fly above them all.
Joking aside, it's an analogy. You have to do something different, and there three approaches (I got this framework from a friend who was an amazon warehouse worker and an OpenAI Principal Engineer and many things in between and he shares this a lot privately):
1. Do something smarter than anyone else. If you are naturally smarter than 99% of people, you can find some way to show that.
2. Get luckier than anyone else. Maybe you can make your luck by being in a tech city and going to bars every night to "bump into" software engineers, but you can just sit there and hop to get luckier.
3. Work harder than anyone else. This is the only one in your control. But you actually have to do it. The person said he would sleep at the office in a hammock under his desk every day for a month at a time for example. Like you really just have to do…
+1, agree on a lot here.
I do actually agree that the scope of the products could be mid-level and senior, the only missing piece is the SCALE - building a product for a larger number of actual users is important in being a mid-level and senior. Building a tool that solves a vague problem is an important part - actually working through benign day to day problems actual users have and prioritizing and making judgement calls along the way is a missing piece that's just hard to get anywhere. Even the most successful and long running OSPs don't have any real usage I can find (e.g. ReacType is a headliner that as far as I can tell no one uses, and no one seems to care about the security issue I reported that lets anyone wipe out their marketplace thing, and clearly no one is using that feature anyways)
But yeah agreed on scope actually haha.
"storytelling" to me is where the strategy part…
So Codesmith doesn't just hire fellows/TAs, but there is a pipeline - which is extremely disrupted by the recent changes and could very well change
Resident (student) -> fellow 3 month @$50K salary -> lead fellow 3 more months -> mentor (full time paid $80K - $120K depending) -> instructor ($120K to $150K) -> lead instructor ($150K to $180K)
At Codesmith the ENTIRE instruction hierarchy is this except for:
1. One person who was hired as instructor who went to another bootcamp and taught there for two years
2. Two instructors I know of were SWEs in industry and came back to teach. Both of those people are no longer instructors and didn't last long after coming back from industry.
There are a lot of pros and cons to this approach, but just laying out there in this comment for starters, can discuss more.
Sadly, +1 to this in the current market, you need 2 YOE in general to have a "standard job hunt" pipeline and under that is a bit of unreproducible wild west.
It's one of the reasons I jump on anyone posting a success story right now and framing it like anyone can do it. Anyone CAN IN THEORY do it, but there's no reproducible path to getting through with under 2 YOE right now.
I think really tiny bootcamps with a single cohort under 30 people that all get personalized help might be able to increase the odds of finding your edge case path, but again not scalable, not reproducible, a lot of 1-1 strategizing and a bit of luck.
Yesh same for Rithm and Launch School. The main difference in grads is how they present themselves and not in their skill sets or experience levels. I tend to see a little more adjacent tech experience at Codesmith but not enough to target higher level jobs. That experience though could maybe explain why Codesmith grads who really frame that adjacent experience as technical coding experience, can get $130K jobs at less tech focused companies. But no reason a Rithm grad could do the same strategy.
I mean like I said, a lot of people like the vibe, and it was a whopping 11 hours a day and 6 days a week. It's not like it's extroverted activities for 11 hours a day straight.
I saw a session recording once that someone described as an example of what they meant. It's a vibe that you are present and active. You acknowledge you are present with positive emoji reactions to every post.
The more concerning example of toxic positively was if someone had a negative attitude there was a process for instructors and coordinators to correct it and go to phrases like "snuggle the struggle". Being negative was seen as a problem to correct versus a person to debug.
The theories people have said are more around that the people doing the debugging have no SWE experience and just know the Codemsith way so they are going to these tools as all they know to try to help people. Someone sticking with i…
Yes. Codemsith grads with no prior experience are by definition entry level SWEs and I think can compete with CS grads who don't have internships under their belt. I can go more into why if this is challenged, but that's my opinion.
Codesmith levels people by capabilities and not skills when talking about levels, which is the main source of disconnect.
My stance, CAPABILITIES GET YOU PROMOTED FROM JUNIOR TO MID IN 8 MONTHS, BUT NOT MID AS THE FIRST JOB. Again, can do into why but very strong opinion based on 8 years a Meta seeing it grow from 200 eng to 10K eng and observing a lot of growth of poele and hiring systems.
A really important part of what I'm saying that I haven't people comment on is the relative expectations.
If you are comparing yourself to the best in the world, these projects are far below the bar of junior work. The Medium articles and resumes dont match the work. Someone says "integrated test suite and achieved 95% unit test coverage" and then the code has jest with example strings in it still copy pasted from stack overflow in it and there are like 20 tests for the backend only that don't actually test properly. This type of thing is the norm and not the exception. It doesn't come across like it's an MVP but it's a slapped together code to check off boxes to expand resume bullets.
WHICH IS FINE FOR A BOOTAMP!!!!
META COMMENTS:
There's been a lot of suspicious posts regarding Codesmith over the past few days (all over the spectrum, good and bad, and from a lot of brand new accounts, people have gotten banned)
This post is from a brand new account that seems created to write about Codesmith, which is a bit suspicious too.
That said, the factual content about the logistics of Codesmith all reads accurate. I don't work there and haven't gone there, so maybe I shouldn't be the judge of that, but I've seen the entire curriculum, and have private been told of certain little details around "family dinners", the clapping stuff, etc... that either someone is training a on all my public commentary about Codesmith, or this person - if not actually a resident - is pretty close to Codesmith.
OVERALL:
It sounds like you probably shouldn't have chose to go into Codesmith to begin with because your style do…
Yeah I try to explain Formation over and over and each time I have to repeat things not because I'm being annoying but because people might not have seen previous answers and not familiar.
If you are curious how we are doing now, because we have an adaptive mentorship platform model we can adjust in real time and we've therefor adjusted more senior and seen very good placements in February and March so far, this is unedited list other than < 10 person startups removing the name for privacy, and there are a couple Meta and Microsoft offers that haven't been signed yet!
||
||
|Scale AI|
|Google|
|Oracle|
|<STARTUP TOP TIER>|
|JP Morgan Chase|
|Atlassian|
|Meta|
|Meta|
|Netflix|
|JP Morgan Chase|
|<STARTUP 2ND TIER>|
|Google|
|CoreWeave|
|Arista Networks|
|Doosan|
|Withe|
Everyone at Formation has a different timeline, does different things, has different needs, and it's very hard for us…
Hi, I looked this up, and I don't feel like I was super involved in that post or thread, but sorry you feel that way. I do indeed participate in a lot here, which I hope encourages and stimulates productive discussion more than discouraging people from participating.
I have absolutely zero intention or standing (moderator or not) to doubt or question your personal experience as you see it. I have full intention and full right, just as a user, to question extrapolations and statements beyond personal experiences. So saying something like "I feel like I learned all the DS&A I needed at Codesmith" is not something I would question. Saying "Codesmith absolutely teaches you all the DS&A you need for any job" would be something I would absolutely question, because I have a examples that strongly counter that. This might be subtle but I think it's a huge difference that I take very seriously.…
I saw that thread because I was mentioned in it and I immediately commented that I thought it was not appropriate. I don't know why someone posted it, but it was pretty inappropriate for the person to insult and mock people and I stated that on the thread and the person will hopefully back off a bit. I don't think anyone wants that kind of thing.
I know the mods attitude is to only delete things that are very clearly violations and really blatant. Not to apply opinions and not to judge in the gray area.
I think the most borderline Codesmith-related thing I deleted that was in the multi-year long queue when I was added as a mod was a comment from 1 year ago that said 3000 Codesmith grads has mid-level and senior jobs that was reported for misinformation and there is first hand sources from Codesmith that show that that was not correct a year ago. But maybe that's one step too much judgement? I wouldn't delete ANY comment that was an opinion or just 'felt wrong' or something very vague like that.
Maybe TMI, when I was clearing out the queue I approved comment I HAD REPORTED MYSELF like 2 years ago THAT INSULTED ME, but I didn't think met the threshold for removal with my mod hat one.... kind of weird hahaha.
Good question, it doesn't matter at all skills-wise how much experience you have to benefit technically from Formation, and you can do Formation for a fixed length of time if you are at the minimum skill bar (which it sounds like you might not have been yet on the benchmark) but don't have enough experience.
We just don't want you to think we have a magic formula to get you a job, and nor can we afford to pay more to mentor you than you pay us (which can happen if you are here for like 1-2 years) :P
Internship + Formation isn't quite enough experience right now for the unlimited Fellowship. We are actively exploring different shapes and sizes for different people though, because there is a lot of demand from people we currently don't support and that's where are month to month and short term packages come into play right now.
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation and before I got to the part about you applying I was going to say it's not a good fit if you don't have any experience yet, but it would be an excellent fit once you get your first job to level up to your next job.
Now in terms of advice/questions:
1. Yeah entry level FAANG is basically internship conversions + new grads via top tier CS schools right now and we'll see in the fall if that changes. Apprenticeships are extremely competitive. Contract to hire might be the only possible option and still not likely.
2. I think that's a good idea, getting a real product in the app store with real users can count as experience but I would give it say 6 months of real work-equivalent full time contributions to really make it count.
3. Real 40 hour a week experience on a single company/project can trump credentials yeah, but you need an equivalent amount o…
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…