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…
I agree yeah generally speaking, but they removed the times from the website so it's not entirely clear if the times will change. They have been soliciting feedback on the times for a while.
FEEDBACK FOR CODESMITH (OPINIONS):
1. The blog post should have had more logistics for the students impacted instead of half defending how great Codesmith is before discussing any of the changes.
2. The website should have been updated in tandem because it's very confusing right now
3. Staff should have been around when the blog went out to assist and support people
4. Will should have written a letter in his name about all that Codesmith has accomplished over the years as a preface to alumni and to the public, and then a SEPARATE LETTER from a Shanda about the program changes written to students and future residents about logistic changes that was more tactical and less marketing.
Yeah I know some instructors and I REALLY hope they have a transition time because the ones I know are amazing and I know will find great jobs outside of Codesmith but might need a little bit of time to ramp up and compete in this same market as the Codesmith grads.
But yeah eliminating two cohorts is 6 instructors (2 leads, 2 instructor, 2 mentors) and a number of lead fellows and fellows, I agree there might be some people looking for jobs. Even if they are promised their jobs will survive and morph, I would be looking for a new job given the state of things...
DISCLOSURE: I am actually bias on this because Codesmith instructors coming to my mentorship program is decent option to consider and they are at the lower end of our acceptance bar, but still a viable option. I know we're only talking like a few people and my comments above aren't meant to be an ad, but I'm just disclosing t…
Launch School is a little smaller and has always been smaller, and follows a vaguely similar idea to Codesmith. You spend a lot of time preparing to go to Capstone via the Core. Difference being Core is paid and more committed and CSX is free. Capstone is a little longer and the projects - also open source products - are a little more polished and legit.
So TLDR: depends on what works for you. If you like Launch School Core go to Capstone. If you like CSX and Codesmith public lectures go to Codesmith - although note I would pause and wait to see what's going on with these changes before locking it in. I'm sure everything will be totally find, but just calmly absorb what they tell you and process it, I'm happy to be a sounding board 1-1 if you are nervous about something they tell you to chat it through with an independent rational look at things.
Oh wow, I assume they would have told you or will tell you any second now and have people ready to respond all night, that's what I would do. That would be a huge miss if they announced this publicly and left all the March people hanging :(.
That said, I would just take a deep breath though and wait to hear from them, they are already small and shrinking but they seem committed to providing a good consistent experience, so I would cautiously wait and not get too worried yet and give them a day to explain everything.
Hopefully they let you know soon and let me know if you find out the answer! I'm really busy too and not proactively trying to find out, just surfacing and summarizing what comes my way.
Similar to another comment, all of the day to day details haven't come out yet and it's why I temporarily paused my recommendation until it is sorted out.
I've also seen in CSX Slack a number of people super excited to join in the next month. The new times are very different. Like 7:30am to 5:30pm PST Monday through Saturday, and some people might have to change up their schedules.
My COMPLETE GUESS FOR NOW is that the March NY cohort will run "hybrid" style as a "co-working space" where the instruction is remote and the same as all others in the cohort, but a group of people happen to be in person for as much as they want to be.
I'M JUST GUESSING! I want to know too
They didn't say explicitly but what they did say:
- The March 4th cohort sounds like the last one that will run the old way
- I would guess they will have a transition time where the instructors of all these cohorts are kept on to wrap things up and co-teach the first 1-2 cohorts before moving on to other things outside of Codesmith. So maybe as they transition the first "new" full time remote cohort will be taught a little differently with multiple lead instructors? No idea, good question! **This is exactly why I'm pausing recommendations until all the day to day details are out** and we see what happens
- All the cohorts are still on the website through July, but staff were removed from the upper section and the new times were placed there instead. So it seems only partially rolled out.
I made a whole post to summarize my comments, they couldn't fit in a normal comment:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1b2q8ck/codesmith\_due\_to\_declining\_enrollment\_shutting/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1b2q8ck/codesmith_due_to_declining_enrollment_shutting/)
Codesmith (due to declining enrollment) shutting down NYC in-person, merging remaining full time remote cohorts into one. But also alludes to new Future Code program, co-working spaces and announces new changes! See my line by line commentary and personal opinions.
SOURCE: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech)
DISCLAIMER: The following is my top to bottom analysis and personal opinions. I always disclose this and hopefully it's not boring. These are my personal opinions. I've not new to the sub and I have been giving my opinions on bootcamps for almost two years now, daily, from the FAANG angle, and also having worked with hundreds of bootcamps grads. I'm the co-founder of an interview prep mentorshi…
Yeah they are preparing to release 2022 outcomes any day now so that means they just use the data you self submitted in the form.
The auditors don't check everything and they are just checking Codesmith's math and processes that they are following CIRR, they are not actually auditing that your salary is what you say it is.
It's one of the misunderstandings of CIRR. CIRR allows self-reported salary data without specifying how it should be verified so the auditors make sure Codemsith is following CIRR and ultimately involves a heck of a lot of self reported data.
My understanding is that your offer details form IS what they use for CIRR. Their auditor contacts a random sampling of people to confirm the numbers they have for you are what you told Codesmith originally and that's the extent of the audit
With the new CIRR rules, which have t been published yet (which isn't great because the outcomes might come at the same time as the new spec, not leaving time for anyone to give feedback on the spec, other than the 3 schools remaining in CIRR) so I can only speculate, but if you graduated in 2023, you might not get contacted until 2025 with the 12 months cycle. So try to remember exactly what you told Codemsith haha if it comes to an audit.
It's a classic sales funnel.
It's a pre-arranged cold outreach sequence.
It's like a sales funnel to sell yourself as a candidate and is leveraging the fact that cold outreach sales funnels have decent conversions.
They don't call this a special method and it's not a secret what the steps are and how they work.
I would love to interview you and see how much of the "workings of React" you absorbed in a bootcamp.
I've interviewed a bunch of people from Codesmith one of the top bootcamps, with a Facebook-level technical behavioral interview, and within 5 mins their technical abilities fell apart, all of them.
What I observed was the people were learning how to appear to understand things for an interview but people didn't actually understand things the way they portrayed they did.
People would have been better off portraying less understanding and actually having that understanding than portraying a deeper understanding that they don't have.
It's nothing against bootcamps, it's just true expertise takes a lot of time, and takes different paths for everyone. A fixed length bootcamp where you absorb as much as you can in the allotted time just isn't an environment conducive to expertise and is…
Yeah great point! These outcomes are still very strong and consistent with the industry changes in bootcamps.
My analysis is on the tougher side because Codesmith doesn't call itself a bootcamp, and it compares itself to the top grad school programs in the world so I'm anlyzing against the top in the world bar.
A student pasted some data shared with the alumni in a session and it showed that the median person with an offer sometime last summer was making $70Kish BEFORE STARTING CODESMITH. But this post isn't about "who should go to Codesmith", it's just an analysis of the data.
Codesmith posted an "Early Look" into 2023 outcomes w/ 2022 comparisons. My personal opinions and anlysis. Notable to me is both that median salary was $130K in 2022 and that it was $115K in 2023. Placement rates are missing, but I would guess much lower, for a double whammy 🥺
SOURCE: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/early-look-2023-outcomes-and-analysis](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/early-look-2023-outcomes-and-analysis)
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal opinions about the data. I'm human and I make mistakes, but I'm giving my quick personal thoughts and opinions the most open and transparently I can, comments and corrections with sources are appreciated. I have a long history of being around this sub and giving my opinions from the FAANG angle, and the bootcamp angle (having worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads from all kinds of bootcamps over the years). I'm the co-founder of an…
I'm acting as a moderator because there is an ongoing conversation that OP is involved with making very large claims about Codesmith with I've seen first hand evidence of some of those claims. Some public messages called out certain individual Codesmith employees resulting in the account being suspended and the person appears to be trying to steer the conversation in a constructive direction with this new post.
It sounds like you made the right choice going to Codesmith and it's a fit for you. Some people don't like the "cringe moments" and some alumni, as they get real industry experience, feel like people there don't "know their shit", but instead know how to portray that they "know their shit". You won't be able to judget that until you are in the industry for a few years, but regardless, it doesn't mean the experience can't be effective at helping the right people find jobs.
Where…
Yeah I agree it's a fine line. Like if someone is a leader of a company and touting their industry expertise, they also can be called out as a result (obviously in a fair way that's not liablous), and that's the nature of the job. I feel like if you are publicly an instructor at a bootcamp who is present in the public domain on the bootcamp's behalf, LEGALLY it might be more ok (idk, I'm not a lawyer), but just on a human level, I personally would be more sensitive because not all lower level employees might realize that job they are signing up for like leadership would.
I personally support productive conversation about bootcamps and I agree with OP that that shouldn't involved calling out people by name that you had a bad experience with on Reddit. There isn't a different between "reviews" on review websites and "reviews" on Reddit, but Reddit has rules against DOX'ing people (other than public figures) to protect against anonymous harassment - which I totally support.
I have the impression OP plans to continue to share their experience but without naming people, not that they are being silenced or not wanting to share that experience.
\+1 to "It is 100% not "imposter syndrome" when you don't know what you're doing."
Hit the nail on the head there. Sometimes people just don't know things and it's not imposter syndrome haha and with engineering it's often a little of both: you don't realize what you do understand and you have no clue what you don't understand, and you need to figure out how to get by.
Hey, thanks for sharing your experience with everyone, two follow up questions in bold below. There's a lot of common stuff I hear about career support at Codesmith (in terms of response times and the idea that they don't really care if you give up after a year because it won't impact CIRR numbers anymore). Additionally, people often report that alumni mentors tend to regurgitate the lectures, repeating the same solutions and people who get it, do well and people who don't just get told they are "hard learning" and to figure it out.
**I have a follow up question, which is how many people in your cohort do you think were in a similar boat, i.e. what was your approximate placement rate within 6 months?**
Codesmith aggressively markets that their alumni are mid-level and senior engineers and bluntly, I saw [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most…
Their goal is to hire you as an intern next summer, but it's fine to do internships this summer.
However, their goal is also to improve people's skills in hiring them and not just hiring people who are already at the bar. Formation is 15+ hours a week meant to improve you as an engineer, so they want people who are all in on that and not appearing to possibly trying to find a shortcut to get to Netflix.
So if you are committed and want to work at Netflix and ready to juggle Formation and an internship it probably can't hurt.
I don't know but Codesmith is one of them, also don't know who the new president is.
If the new president is from Codesmith then it basically makes CIRR a marketing tool to validate their outcomes, just like GRAD for Hack Reactor and Rithm 's own standard. Which is totally fine just have to realize that.
There are no bodies and I don't expect one to happen because CIRR had more force than anyone and failed to get schools on board.
Yeah Codesmith has a sister charity called OSLabs and that charity does background verification for your time at Codesmith plus additional time you worked on your main project afterwards.
A letter was forwarded to me and it doesn't say Codesmith anywhere. It's "X was a software engineer working on Y as part of OSLabs"
I know a ton of industry companies that don't hire bootcamp grads for these reasons.
So bootcamp grads have gotten creative with resumes to try to get by. And companies have raised entry level experience requirements to 4 years.
Codesmith is the one that stands out where grads [tend to do this](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/s/QfiCldAoPA) but they also tend to not get fired - some do, but I know many that have struggled to ramp up and not found it easy to catch up, the gaps become very evident but some people are able to fill them.
Yeah it's certainly interesting. It's more of an object oriented systems design than bug scale systems.
Netflix historically hasn't hired junior engineers at all so it's relatively new to hire interns and new grads, and I think that is why they look for some of these things - it's a culture biased to senior engineers.
The highest score is 1000 but it's not linear.
hello@formation.dev!
No, you'll also need systems design topics covered. In terms of getting accepted, having a good video is a start! Reaching out to team members won't help and all applications will be reviewed fairly. But if you are nervous about the application or have logistical questions please reach out to the team.
Good question!
Netflix is looking for all kinds of skills beyond just DS&A, such as systems design skills, and you'll work on all of those during Formation.
Second, the assessment is just a gauge your readiness and doesn't have any actual code in it. To have the highest chance possible of passing the interviews you also need to practice other skills for how to work through a problem live with the interviewer, breakdown problems you haven't seen before, communicate well, and right clean code. So all of those things are things you'll work on as well.
Other people might have weaker DS&A but lots of potential and the program works for those people as well and will adapt for the things you need to work on.
I can clarify that my motivation for the original post was to point out that CIRR appears to be falling apart and that Codemsith is the only entity left with motivation to keep it going, so that a former Codemsith employee being connected to CIRR to work there could possibly indicate close and control between CIRR and Codesmith.
That's all, I don't think I implied anything about anything nefarious going on or changing standards or a Codemsith person backdooring anything and if I did, I'm happy to edit that to make it clearer.
When I reread the title, it's not the best, it's limited to 300 characters and I could have done better. I'm literally skiing all over Hokkaido and waking up at 5am every morning to work and dropped the ball a bit with the title in terms of communicating what I intended. The content itself is only briefly about Codemsith and is mostly about concerns about CIRR.
Yeah I mean I'm not trying to call any individuals out, except maybe Eric K because he seems to be at the center of all the stuff people tell me about that is personal about me by name. But the CIRR people: nothing personal in calling this stuff out, literally just open and transparent and want people to see interesting realities
Words are easy, actions are hard.
It's even more weird if a CIRR.org owned Google Drive is being edited by a former Codesmith employee, no?
Like it's not flip the table conspiracy theory, it's just this is not the bar I expected from CIRR or from Codesmith and they all need to get their stuff together! Codesmith has so many problems with their website, privacy, cookies, sharing of data, I don't know where to even begin, and this CIRR thing isn't helping convince me otherwise lol
Yeah, when the times are good, people can't wait to shout the results from the rooftops, when they are bad, lots of excuses, changing the metrics, changing definitions, etc...
The USA is a capitalist market and the companies are doing what they should be doing, and we as consumers (I mean I represent a company too and I need to always disclose that, but I'm on Reddit representing myself personally) also need to do what we need to do our homework as well.
Anyone have any updates from CIRR and their new standards for 2022 full year outcomes? All the "official standards documents" on their website are "owned" by Codesmith's former product manager (!?!), not someone at CIRR, and haven't been updated in a long time.
Hi all, I'm hitting the slopes skiing in Japan and what else would I be doing but checking up on CIRR's website because we're all awaiting new updates any day now! However, I'm more concerned than ever that it's kind of falling apart :(
1. All previous data seemed to have disappeared, so there are no past reports to look at, zero data on the site. After the site changed ownership and hosting behind the scenes, I'm concerned they lost access to the previous data and it's gone :(. I would love any evidence anyone has if this is correct or not, just a theory because I can't imagine why they would delete all the old data.
2. I notic…
This could be two questions, so I'll answer both:
1. Last summer we ran a smaller program and many people received offers, and those that didn't found all the training was did helpful in other interviews and I think people unanimously found the program very helpful according to the exit survey they all do, and anecdotally. These engineers were preparing for full time roles though and not internships.
2. If you are asking if a non-Netflix program Formation Fellow has gotten a job as Netflix intern, then no. In the paid Fellowship, we work with people with existing SWE work experience and we don't work with college students looking for internships, so it wouldn't be expected for them to get internships.
The SDE 2 role at Amazon is for people.with generally 2+ YOE as an SDE 1 or equivalent so you are much better off posting somewhere else.to get advice because most people here haven't been to a bootcamp yet, nevertheless worked already in industry.
Now if you want SDE 2 onsite advice, I'm quite qualified to provide that.
1. Your coding interviews are standard LC style,.usually medium to hard questions and occasional touching on very hard topics like DP. At Formation, we benchmark and practice exactly what you need to know for this but outside I would say you should be able to solve any LC Medium you haven't seen before in 25 minutes or less with a very clean solution.
2. Ping me if you get an offer for negotiation,.so I can compare that to other SDE 2 offers I've seen at Formation this month and let you know.exactly what to ask for. They are unique offer structures. Don't trust Blind o…
It's more like this:
1. apply with the best channel, i.e. referrals if possible
2. send message to hiring manager/with the application - as personal as possible, referencing blogs or videos, or unique connection to company OR something special about your background
3. send double down - similar message to 2 but to an executive or very senior person and doing it shortly after 2.
4. follow up - if you don't hear back after a few days
But yeah I really don't buy that 5% of these end up in offers and the data sourcing seems iffy. I totally agree with this method but they literally tell people that this will result in a "minimum 20% conversation rate" and I don't buy that.
Yeah and those jobs to me are great first jobs and can be great jobs in general, just not what I call "solid tech SWE jobs". This companies have been hiring engineers for years and haven't changed that. Hiring ebbs and flows depending on the market, just like anything else. Banks doing fine with high interests hired a little more. Healthcare is hiring as more stuff moves online. These things go up and down and my point is there is no magical change in the world that results in those companies hiring more engineers now for jobs that didn't exist before .
I agree with your framing too, I awas being a bit flippant, but I would agree their stance is they are trying to make well rounded engineers who are leaders in todays world. My argument is that all of those qualities were things that always made a good engineer and that this hasn't changed, but I don't think it's a bad or wrong view to have.
To me it's not FAANG === tech. There are a lot of tech companies that are not FAANG but are "good tech companies", like [Bill.com](https://Bill.com), Twilio, arguable Salesforce. People use FAANG+ sometimes but to this is the definition (my personal one):
1. Engineers are empowered to make major decisions, if not are major deciders in most decisions
2. The company is product led - building the best tech-based solution to problems, and the money comes from that as a consequence
3. The company has strong technical chops in it's founding team (this is…