I mean just look at the code yourself! I looked at two of the recent launches and found tons of commented out code without any reason why. Like a rushed school project flailing to the finish line, and then no further changes made to clean it up. It's not anywhere near real "work" in any stretch of the imagination - at least at strong tech companies, maybe it is at other companies.
Again, not bashing the students, it's just the nature of doing this thing in 3-4 weeks. Even though people can keep working on the projects - with vast majority not doing so - I see massive problems in the long standing stable OSP projects as well - like the ability for a bad actor to wipe a bunch of data from their database (which was disclosed privately to them)
Thanks for sharing, this is why I'm almost jerking insisting that y'all ask for placement rates. A median placement time of 4 months doesn't mean much if it's only 10 people in that number versus 100 in the previous comparable number. (Not saying the outcomes are those, just an illustrative example)
Here are 15 changes we made, which is a subset of roughly a hundred: https://formation.dev/blog/year-in-review-2023-at-formation/
Obviously we're not a bootcamp and I'm not comparing apples to apples but just giving some examples of things people need that changed in 2023.
Codesmith's take is that they didn't change because they are the best and the world is changing because non tech companies are now hiring engineers and paying them a little less but close to what they used to.
They are making a narrative that fits the outcomes instead of making changes to fit the market. The types of companies hiring haven't changed whatsoever and the companies hiring engineers haven't changed.
Again, this sounds critical and insulting, but it's meant feedback. Most other bootcamp leaders just talk to me and I give my opinions privately, so maybe it's a weird way to give feedback, but people tell m…
It shows 40% were above 120K, which seems about right. That's a very very large drop. The median was $115K according to this and this data is legit and up to date and it was $127,500 on their last CIRR report.
Regardless of the context around the numbers and cautions one should have, these are very larger drops in salaries.
Codesmith's CEO has attributed it to people taking lower offers sooner instead of waiting for a better one and that the world is changing - more types of companies are hiring engineers.
I attribute it to people taking less strong jobs are less tech-focused companies and that the world isn't changing.
But the jobs are clearly still very good compared to most bootcamps.
\+1, yeah definitely agree it's good advice to push grads to follow the advice
I don't have the full context on this presentation, but I do think Codesmith can do more though than use data to convince people to do the same old same old because what worked in <= 2021, doesn't work the same now, and alumni that talk to me don't think Codesmith is doing anything to address that. They've added 2-3 career support engineers, but a number of people feel like Codesmith is telling them everything is fine it's just taking longer to find jobs.
But with all of this new data they share to convince people of this, they haven't given any placement rates to compare and people aren't happy so I'm giving that feedback :D
They go over it in public talks but its:
1. apply
2. send email/cold outreach to engineering leader (referencing blog posts or showing that you put in the work and it's not a random email you send everyone)
3. send double down email if no response from 2.
4. send final follow up email if no response from 3.
With more direction on what to say in each step. It's basically a sales funnel to sell yourself and follows like cold outreach sales model.
Yeah I'm familiar with the Codesmith style 4 step application, with the double down and follow up, etc.. on the receiving side too haha.
I meant that I'm curious what people say and if how they portray experience in that process.
But yeah if you are using your own trackers, like sheets and notion trackers that Codesmith has access to, but it's enforced or standardized then they have no idea how successful Codesmith-style applications are.
It's entirely possible that people just log those more often because they put a lot of effort in them and they need to stay organized throughout the process. Whereas with quick applies, it's so easy that people might not be as diligent with recording them.
I'm giving direct insight though - if people are not required, they won't record all their job applications. Some bootcamps have people required to send in proof of applications to maintained job…
I have a ton of questions about this because I've seen similar numbers before:
1. What tools does Codesmith track to know conversion rates? Do they have a central tool that you have to log all applications in and what type of application it was? I work at a job hunting and interview prep platform and I know for a fact that people don't love logging all of their applications and tend to start logging them after the interviews start rolling in, so it could appear that conversions are higher but it's a lack of information. We have a completely custom in house built centralized platform for this and it's still hard! So I'm curious how people log the applications and how this data is collected.
2. This is really granular data, so what are the placement rates for people, I'm assuming they shared this if they shared that detailed data? Median time to offer is useful for one aspect, but if 100%…
The part time is the same but stretched out over longer time and at a slower pace. It's broken into 3 phases instead of 2.
The workshops tend to be a bit higher quality than the actual teaching but similar style.
The instructors at Codemsith almost all have only worked at Codesmith and the content and lectures are fairly rigid. So they have very good consistency as a result which is very predictable.
The downsides are they are limited by lack of experience and often can't give more context on why things are the way they are. So you hear "trust the system" a lot and "Codemsith put a lot of thought into this and know what they are doing" versus like confident answers.
Not a bash on the people's potential and abilities just lack of experience.
Sure.
So I'm talking about the full time immersive that is 13 weeks.
It's split between the junior portion and the senior portion.
There are about 4-5 weeks of classroom style units. You spend a day or two on a topic and then do some homework / practice, then get the approach from the instructor the next day, then move on to the next topic. There are weekly tests and if you don't do well you get extra 1-1 help from a senior or an instructor. Once you pass an assessment you are done the core materials and become a senior.
After that you start doing projects and there are 4 projects you do, which I won't go into more detail on right now, but 3 of them are a bit smaller and end up being listed as "open source" work on your resume. The biggest one is the OSP which most people feature as standalone experience on their resume and takes about 3 to 4 weeks.
During the project phase there ar…
Thanks, a lot of people see Formation as something Codesmith grads would do in their 2nd, 3rd, etc... transitions if they are leveling up from a solid SWE job to a top tier SWE job and in a lot of ways it could be a great and supportive partnership where we complement each other... imagine that!
For example, Formation Fellows who want to work on projects could help make OSPs better and act as mentors to Codesmith residents. We could help Codesmith with DS&A and SD - two areas they are extremely weak at for top tier companies (but are one of the best at for a zero to 1 bootcamp). We could at a minimum collaborate on public content and sessions.
But for some reason, staff/former staff members report to me that Codesmith's leaders (particularly Eric K and occasionally Will) firmly believe that I'm trying to take down Codesmith and get people to go to Formation and that I'm personally sip…
Definitely good questions. We stand by what we do but we also don't do everything and I fully support making sure you know what we do and know it's a good decision for you.
Overall I would say we are good for half of what you mentioned.
The SD and technical behavioral practice the explanation part. Technical behavioral is about talking about your past work in the best way possible. SD is about connecting your big scale experience with more general concepts and applying those as tools to discussing general systems problems.
Anyone can read a solid systems design book for general materials and we're focused on actually applying the tools and communicating well in group and interview settings (and getting feedback) so you can successfully pass system design interviews.
We don't do any hands on projects or capstone projects and we don't do anything that builds your resume. It's somethin…
We don't cover CICD or DevOps and we also don't have mentors I would say who could do mocks overing those topics specifically. We have some mentors which an do iOS and Android mocks, so while we don't cover those skills either day to day, there's at least some practice available.
There's no fixed curriculum and you'll do different things at different paces. But the overall areas we cover are:
1. CS fundamentals/DS&A, up to all the topics needed for the hardest interviews (including DP, advanced graphs). How much you do will vary by your goals but you can go all the way up to the hardest of the hard.
2. System design. This is full stack system design preparing for top tier company system design interviews.
3. Technical Behavioral. Preparing your resume, pitch and practice hiring manager interview and things like the Amazon Bar Raiser
4. Minor areas: frontend (practice and mocks), softwar…
Hi, I'm happy to answer questions and always like to hear what others have to think. I'll list just a couple of shorter comments to help answer, but feel free to me, I'm very open with people about if I think Formation is a good option to consider or not, and ultimately you have to decide.
1. It sounds like you are somewhat familiar with it at least, but just to clarify that we're not a bootcamp and have no fixed curriculum, lectures, classes, lessons, etc... We are a practice, benchmarking, mentorship, job hunting and mock interview platform. You do practice by yourself in in small mentor-led group sessions, you get feedback in those sessions and through benchmarkings, and you trust us to move you through topics and skill areas at whatever pace you go at, and you trust us to tell you when you are at the top company bar. So you are paying to reliably get your skills (from DS&A to System…
I can answer this very transparently, apologies it might be long or over detailed, but trying to explain clearly and openly.
Originally we worked with Leif to administer "classic" ISAs, which is something like, don't pay anything until you get a new job, then pay X% a month for Y months, capped at Z dollars, e.g. 10% per month for 15 months, targeting 15% of one year's base salary. These also had caps so if you make over $165K base salary, you won't pay more than the cap. If you didn't make $65K or more then your payments are paused until you do, or until a year passes in which case the contract is cancelled.
There's a lot of good things about classic ISAs as they really help people pay who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, or be approved for an upfront cost or a loan.
The flip side is that, as I've said many times, the job market was particularly rough in 2023. Since we work with…
Tangent: this is timely, but you should apply to this if eligible: [https://formation.dev/partners/netflix](https://formation.dev/partners/netflix) (disclosure, co-founder of Formation), but you should not apply to Formation otherwise if you are still in school - this is a special program for Netflix.
The best thing you can do is to get an internship this summer. If you can't get an internship, then volunteer for Hack4LA or for a professor. If you can't volunteer, make a "startup" and build that all summer super disciplined and try to find others doing that to join with, like Coding for Callie, 100Devs community, etc....
Codesmith is more for people who are almost job ready to brand and market themselves for the job hunt, it's not really a strong learning experience itself in my opinion (I can go into why, but it's 6 weeks of curriculum, almost all instructors went to Codesmith itself…
Now that it's been a day, you can see that cglee is super right - and the voting reflects the distribution of conversation in this sub.
This is also the reason why you see me talking about Codesmith so much IN THIS SUB (and I never talk about it in any other subs) because it just reflects the nature of the conversation.
Haha, so Formation isn't a bootcamp or an option to consider instead of a bootcamp and doing so would be a huge mistake. Formation is an interview prep and mentorship platform that doesn't teach any specific skills and instead is about practice - benchmarking - feedback - and mock interviews/job hunt support.
From my best estimates, there are somewhere between 5 and 10% (i.e. 2 to 3 people per Codesmith cohort out of 30+) that might BARELY be candidates for Formation - and only if they understand what Formation is and it's genuinely the right move for them.
In this market that has become rarer and rarer and it might even be almost 0 overlap because the number of people with under 1 year of experience we accept now I can count on one hand, and the people spend a ton of time talking to our team and determining that Formation is indeed the objectively right fit.
\---------
# RE: "CODEMI…
I mean I work with alumni who went to all of them so I have some good insight across the board.
I disproportionately hear about Codesmith because it's the biggest anomaly of them all that just has a very unique ecosystem around it. But maybe given the results of this poll so far that helps explain why I get such polarizing information haha.
📌 Netflix x Formation Program is back for 2026 grads in the USA aiming to do SWE internships at Netflix in summer 2025. It's a free part time program over the summer (paid for by Netflix) and the goal is land an internship at Netflix! Applications close Feb 16th.
Hi all sharing this with the community if you haven't seen it already! This is a competitive program to train all summer to get ready for Netflix internship interviews in the fall, and hopefully land a coveted Netflix internship for 2025!
See the details here on LinkedIn and let me know if you have questions: [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7160354895420604416](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7160354895420604416)
From the announcement:
>[Formation](https://www.linkedin.com/company/formation-dev/) and [Netflix](https://www.linkedin.com/company/netflix/) are joining forces to help un…
Codesmith grads don't list on LI, read this why: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
What you can do instead is go through the OS Labs projects (or watch for their launches in the CSX Slack) and then message the people from there. Everything lists the project members and their LinkedIns there or on the project websites: [https://github.com/oslabs-beta/](https://github.com/oslabs-beta/)
I find a lot of polarization from graduates I chat with. Some good advice for anyone you talk to about any bootcamp is to dig into the HOW and not just the superficial.
There was a Codesmith grad last week that wrote a comment 'I graduated and it changed my life'... that was it, and it got 40 upvoted in a day on a 2 month old dead post that 3 upvotes.
That's fantastic, and it has changed hundreds of people's live, over a thousand! But HOW did it change them is key because what worked for them might not work for you too and you have to get into the details.
1. What kind of background did they have before?
2. Can you see their resume that finally worked?
3. How long have they kept their job for and how did Codesmith prepare them for the job and what do they wish Codesmith had prepared them for? (Codesmith says every single info session I've seen that 100% of grads get promotions within…
Codesmith has posted twice in their CSX that someone is posting negative comment in multiple channels, anonymously. I have no idea what the comments entail but a number of people have shared different side conversations around this that I won’t get into.
We’re launching a FAANG partnership publicly and I haven’t been paying much attention but asked about my name being thrown around to see why.
Yeah I know when Formation started, Outco was a big player, along with Pathrise and IK, but a lot of benefited from the tailwinds of the market.
In the toughest market, we had a notable drop in top tier placements (down to about 50% of placements from 70%ish) and first year TC increases dropped to 80K on average. I think our numbers still justify the cost of the program for us, but we can't change the market, I wish we could, but we're way too small!
But that said, I can see how it's harder for the teams to say focused and motivated. Employees might leave or do new things, or there might be layoffs. I know a couple of people that did Outco that came to my company later on and they felt like it didn't have the heart in it that they expected from the past (completely anecdotal personal reflection, ask people for yourself).
It's why every program is different. Like me and my partner have…
Codesmith's CEO explicitly said publicly several times that Codesmith's application to offer rate is 1 offer for every 50 Codesmith style applications. And he said the main factor in people not getting jobs is that it's hard to do these kind of applications (that involve personal messaging and a ton of reach out). He presents this as a funnel from application to recruiter screen to technical interview to offer and if you do the math it implies 1 offer for every 50 applications.
Do you agree or disagree with that?
I know Codesmith is soliciting feedback from students over the past few days because of a kerfuffle of some kind that people have told me about but I don't know all the details of. So if you disagree it would be good to tell him that.
I think the 12 month placement might be higher than 60% but we'll see. We know placements have been a lot slower, but it's hard to tell whose getting the jobs.
If I had more time or cared about this more I repeat my 52 person audit and cross reference their cohorts from some other data. Part of the reason the average time on OSPs was 12 months was becasue people tended to be job hunting longer and just had like June 2022 - present, listed for their OSP. But when you do all the accounting I don't have a strong sense of where this lands but I highly suspect 6 month placements rates of 50 to 60% are reasonable.
My nightmare that everyone should prepare for is if CIRR comes out and Codesmith has a 12 month placement of 78% or something, and touts that as not much different than the H1 2022 SIX MONTH rate of 83% (or whatever it is close to that) then I think that would be bad.
Yeah I totally get where you are coming from and we can and want to share more.
The hesitation is that people truly do have unique journeys at Formation. They do entirely different things at different paces and it's something noted by many people who go through, and it also makes it hard to review as no one else will have the experience you did again. You can go on leave and there is no expected timing. Some people have really demanding jobs already and need to ramp up and down completely unexpectedly... this is surprisingly common and I don't think I've ever seen a Fellow who hasn't adjusted their involvement because of unexpected things.
So we have to be super careful that people don't get misled by making assumptions about their experience or their self assessment of their skills or how fast they think they can do stuff, and we really want to give more personalized data and estimate…
No one has a right to any data, but they have a right to say CIRR's data is outdated, sorry if that wasn't clear.
I don't think I'm pedantic about why we don't report CIRR results or other reporting standards, I'll try to explain again very bluntly and directly.
Formation is a mentorship and benchmarking platform and not a program or school so we don't publish CIRR-like outcomes data. We really want to publish more data but when we sit down and look at it, it's just almost impossible.
We had two $500K+ seniors Meta offers in the past three weeks - for people with a many years of experience and we recently had someone with a few months of experience get a role paying much less at a startup that they are thrilled with.
It's super meaningless to publish CIRR-like data that doesn't take background into consideration.
Sounds easy, publish data by experience level right? Now because we wo…
I don't think Tech Elevator is a particpate anymore. They merged operations with Galvanize (which has their own reporting system) and have let go of a number of long time staff. It's still running great and a solid option, especially if you are in their in-person cities, but I doubt they will participate in CIRR anymore.
CodeUp shutdown so they are probably no longer a participant either.
So from the CIRR website that leaves:
Turing - an accredited school
Code Platoon - a school focusing on veterans
Hacktiv8 - a bootcamp in Indonesia
Codesmith - a full stack immersive bootcamp in the USA
Launch Academy - a full stack immersive focusing on Boston
These are so different it doesn't seem useful really
I highly encourage schools to make their own standards, have them vetted and audited and then publish their own data on their own time. Using CIRR for branding doesn't seem to have the…
The latest CIRR reports were for graduates from Jan 2022 to June 2022.
Jan is over 2 years ago, and June is 1 year 8 months, which rounds to 2 years too.
So if someone graduates now 2024, that would be like receiving data about them in 2026.
Codesmith for example said they were ready to publish their old format H2 2022 CIRR report and (before the change in specification) said to my recollection that it was coming out 'any day' - which it never did after CIRR changed the specification. So the data is there and wasn't' released and I think people have a right to claim that published CIRR data is out of date for that reason alone.
CIRR essentially collapsed and one of the board members took over and is trying to reboot CIRR.
I have no idea why all the historical data is gone but it's expected for CIRR results from 2022 to come out in February (i.e. this month).
The new results will look at a 12 month placement window in addition to 3 and 6 months, which is the cause for the delay.
The new director of CIRR is super reasonable but I disagree with almost all of this and I get the feeling like CIRR collapsed and lose it's members and the director has great intentions of rebooting it, but it's going to take a lot of time.
That said, the new Director just started a full time job and it's questionable how much time and effort their going to spend on CIRR.
Anyways, **there is absolutely no reason why schools didn't publish 6 month 2022 CIRR data and then re-publish the 12 month data under the new standard.**
At the…
2 month old OP post that went completely inactive.... comment from 1 day ago gets 28 upvotes almost instantly 🤔
Whether Codesmith is good or not, this is why people think Codesmith is manipulating discussion and asking people to comment about them.
People read this as an ad and it becomes super polarizing.
I just haven't worked with a lot of people who have done Le Wagon and don't have detailed thoughts or information to surface unfortunately :(
Just a note to be clear, I think it's fair to consider each program differently. Codesmith is Codesmith, and Le Wagon is Le Wagon. And I don't want to make any connections or accusations of either party.
I can't speak for the commenter, but I can say that in this market Formation is ideal if you can get some interviews yeah, and we help you prepare for them and increase your chances of passing (the primary goal is to help you level up in general, but more practically speaking, that's how I would frame it).
We are seeing hiring slowly "resume" at the top companies, and have more recruiters to backchannel people through - a small number of people get jobs this way! But it's a nice to have and not a guarantee or something you should expect coming in. The market hasn't recovered enough for that yet.
We have some exciting programs launching soon for people in college! And we have a handful of formal pipelines established recently (apprenticeship, formal recruiter backchannels, 3rd party recruiters). But for these pipelines again still edge cases and DO NOT JOIN to be handed interviews.
We…
Yeah totally agree that it's a huge amount of time! Like people might go back to their old jobs as a mechanical engineer or what have you and count as "offers". They can't call those jobs "non engineering roles" for CIRR but call them "engineering roles" on their resumes - have to go one way or the other.
I also found that a significant number of alumni who got offers frame experience as jobs on LinkedIn and I always wondered how the auditors reconciled those. Did they flag things as jobs that were just projects? etc....
Sorry to hear, yeah one of the reasons I talk about Codesmith so much is that they have a very polarizing brand of people who will fight tooth and nail for Codesmith and people who do not like it at all.
My opinion is the people that don't like it shouldn't have gone in the first place and chose to go because of the super positive promoters talking superficially about how life changing it is, but without going into the nitty gritty of how it all works and realizing it probably isn't the right thing for them. The info sessions tout $120/$130.... $180K salaries, and it gives hope to people who aren't a perfect fit that maybe they'll be one of those people. Maybe you will be but maybe you'll also win the lottery and people need to understand what THEIR OUTCOME might look like, and I talk to a lot of people about this because Codesmith does not help with this.
I highly recommend Codesmith…
FWIW, I don't recommend the vast majority of people who do Codesmith do Formation and the vast majority wouldn't be accepted.
I know a couple of people (literally 2, one dropped out and the other just chose Formation but was very close to going to Codesmith) that did this and it was well over a year ago and it was the correct decision. Both got FAANG-level jobs that were the perfect jobs for those two people.
I also know someone who dropped out of Formation and did Codeamith, and they did not get a job after and went back to school.
These are all edge cases and people reading this should not generally be considering Formation over Codesmith. You should absolutely consider Formation over Codesmith if you have 1+ year of SWE work experience already.
I want to reiterate that Formation is not a bootcamp or school and we don't teach anything. The people we work with with no experience al…
The data their CEO shared once about college degrees showed only a very tiny amount, something like a few percent of people, had no college experience. And that's not of people placed, but just all residents.
That doesn't mean it's impossible because that still dozens of people and some get great jobs, but it is an uphill battle.
At the same time, getting a quick degree like WGU likely isn't the entire answer as well. The answer is that it will probably take 2 years of many things.and a lot of grinding and a lot of failures, not just one thing, that will eventually get you a job.
Yeah I mean it's on the lower side of others I've heard, but when you factor in non-job hunting individuals, out of country (they said they had people from 13 countries), and then exclude people who didn't graduate or ghosted, and then people who went MIA but got jobs on LinkedIn, it might end up being closer to 50 to 60% for CIRR.
Either way, this is what people ask me all the time and we need to see the data.
I really want to see 6 month data for H1 2023 and we won't be seeing any 2023 for a long time with the new CIRR rules, but they have been sitting on the informal 6 month data for H1 2023 for almost a month now.
Interesting. Yeah I work with a number of people at Formation that have 1. done Outco before, 2. mentored at Outco. (Disclosure: Outco is a direct competitor to my company)
I used to recommend people look into Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Outco, and Coachable, (and to some extend Interviewing.io if not looking for a holistic program) as the set of competitors around DS&A and interview prep.
But I removed Outco because they removed their application online and their website is wonky and seems not maintained.... it still says Copyright 2017.
Someone who did Outco recently before Formation also affirmed that in their experience Outco seemed to be running on autopilot with recordings and peer mock interviews and they felt like it wasn't really operating anymore.
I know they are a competitor so I want to triple emphasize this is just what I've observed and heard about Outco in my perso…
Hi, interview prep sounds exactly like what you are asking for. I'm the cofounder of Formation.dev and would recommend looking into Formation and Interview Kickstart if you are aiming to level up to a top tier company. Both are about the same price and take around the same amount of time.
BUT, both are super different day to day so feel free to ping me to ask questions.
I would recommend hoping on an IK info call they have every day to learn about IK and then applying to Formation and talking to a recruiter and then deciding if either, or neither, are a good fit.
Would you be doing this part time? And with 16 years of dev experience you probably have a ton of ability to pick things up quickly that you might not realize.
I would recommend doing a big project in a modern stack like React and Node.js and learning little things along the way as you get blocked.
I know Amazon will pay for a program but this approach would be more effective IMO.
When the time comes to job hunt, I would then look at interview prep programs like Formation (disclosure: co-founder) and Interview Kickstart. Something that recaps CS fundamentals and gets you interview ready.
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience and I hope we can/are helping you find a great next job.
This is correct that we don't force you to take a job or not. If you accept a job, you can often continue with Formation (if you continue job hunting) but it's case by case and not contractually obligated so we can protect against anyone taking advantage of us.
All we want is to see you in a great job you love, and it's completely correct that you are paying us and we need to make sure you get a return on investment but we're also small and over time well hopefully get better at helping people who are else comfortable voicing what they want/need even if they are less naturally comfortable doing that.
Hi all, I don't want to step on the discussion (I'm the co-founder of Formation) but will share my thoughts too. I think it's very important and healthy to talk openly about the pros and cons of programs so people can figure out what works for them, so feel free to ask me questions and I'll give the most transparent answers I can!
I also post the feedback with the Formation team because there are a couple of points of feedback that we can make improvements on and thanks for sharing that!
My personal thoughts:
1. I wouldn't say you HAVE to be extroverted but you do have to interact with people and one of the selling points is face time in 3-6 person small group sessions, and 1-1 mock interviews with legit industry engineers to get their perspective. The amount of sessions and types of sessions can adapt to you, so introverted people can get by, IMO, but you should expect to interact wi…
👋 Hi friends (specifically bootcamp grads), we just launched TIRA by Formation on Product Hunt and I wanted to share it here as a useful free tool and also to get your feedback. It's a dynamic 45 min benchmark to see how interview ready your DS&A skills that you hopefully find useful!
Hi all, I'm sure many of you know me already but I'm a long time group member who comments daily here and I've me a ton of what I would call friends along the way! I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I've done hundreds of DS&A interviews at Meta and a number of people on my team have as well. So we put our minds together and to come up with a solid tool to see how interview ready your DS&A skills are!
I would LOVE to discuss your experience in the comments here, and suggestions to improve the tool.
The benchmark takes 45 mins and is free, and it will tell you what areas you are strong and weak at, a…
Hi, DM me who! Our Fellowship recruiters are former FAANG recruiters and not really salespeople so it might be different from other programs. But no one should be a jerk to you and most people comment that the recruiters are helpful to talk to even if Formation isn't a good fit.
A weakness of our model though is that everyone is a industry engineer or recruiter and not a trained teacher or salesperson. You'd be surprised how many times a day we get session feedback where one person thought the mentor was the best ever and disliked them so much they requested to not have sessions with them again.
Pros and cons, you get to work with a ton of different people, but it takes some time to figure out who you get along with and who you don't.
But there is a bar for attitude where we would remove a mentor or an engineer.
Yeah I mean at Formation people pay us explicitly for interview prep mentorship so you can get resume reviews and mock interviews on demand (when you need them or ask for them), usually within a day, often same day, definitely same week, almost a 24/7 clock of availability across dozens of mentors across a dozen+ interview types. Occasionally people cancel mocks, or resume reviews take longer on rounds of feedback, but that's the bar for "career support" that people should expect if they are being promised career support.
The Codesmith career support is:
1. A handbook with a ton of very good resources, including the 'Codesmith Style Resume' and 'Codesmith Style Application' walkthroughs
2. 8 alumni you can book 1-1 sessions with who have varied schedules, some available in days, some in weeks, some never.
3. 2 alumni you can book for technical algo mock interviews who also have only…
One part of the polarization with Codesmith is that a handful of people do land FAANG jobs, even in 2023. Context matters. Someone got a job at Netflix, but it was a non-SWE job and it was in the field that the person had 8 YOE... which 100% CODESMITH HELPED THE PERSON, but this was not an outcome that anyone should EXPECT, it was a unique situation.
Someone got a job at LinkedIn recently, but the FAANG placements are really rare, because FAANG isn't interviewing bootcamp grads with no experience right now. If someone has experience then you might get a FAANG job.
\+1 to getting a good job at another company, they have a couple placements at Mavis Tire making in the mid six figures.
We (Formation) have formal and informal pipelines with FAANG companies and recruiters, and they are extremely picky about who they interview and I wish they would interview everyone, but they won't in this…
\+1 here. You got what you expected and going to Codesmith was probably the right call for you and has nothing to do with the 20% placement rate you observed. If you are looking at quitting your job and joining right now though, even if Codesmith will deliver the day to day that you expect, it's important to be real about the market and how long it will actually take to get a job.
Yeah there's two sides to every coin. I try to present a balanced view but it's notable to me how polarizing Codesmith is compared to other programs. Like people who feel this negatively towards BloomTech even don't talk about the 'behavioral techniques' that they observe at Codesmith.
I'm making this vague to not out the person but someone related to a Codesmith student who overheard their Zoom calls while working from home, was so concerned about this they contacted me. The person was trained in psychology and said they observed concerning techniques being used.
I'm not a psychologist, I don't know who this person is in real life, could all be made up, but they did convince me at that they overheard the sessions and lectures at least.
And I really have never had anything like this from other programs.
It's an unsolved problem I asked a lot of people on the inside about, because I g…