They claim to have between 3,500 (their recent info session info) to 5,000 (recent job posting as of 1/19/2024) alumni of the immersive program total.
Most people who work there as TAs put that under "CS Engineering" and not Codesmith.
But yeah the vast majority do not list.
However every resident does an OSP and you can get a list of students from their GitHub repos and most have LinkedIns checkin to the repos too.
[Layoffs.fyi](https://Layoffs.fyi) doesn't capture everything.
First SWEs versus non-SWE.
Second, layoffs for layoff reasons versus performance removals wrapped into layoffs. Performance removals were backfilled, real layoffs weren't
And third, big companies move slowly, so it's a rollercoaster ride.
For example, there was a small bump in Jan/Feb 2023 from layoff backfilling, for those performance based cuts within the layoffs.
People who are "laid off" don't generally know, or admit, when it was performance based so you get all kinds of narratives floating around.
Ask a manager or director (at a big tech SWE company) about layoffs and 100% will say that performance plays a factor in choosing who to layoff.
I think their director is a reasonable person trying to make CIRR better, but there are hardly any schools left and Codesmith is the elephant in the room.
I mean I expect they will have to show 3 month, 6 month AND 1 year placement rates, and hopefully it will be clear people are taking a lot longer to find jobs.
I'm not anti CIRR or anti bootcmap, I'm just a perosn who believes in the win-win-win - student wins by being in the right place, bootcamp wins by making money, company wins by hiring the right person for the right job.
This is correct, I say 2+ YOE myself but maybe it's the definition of "difficult".
It's absolutely more competitive. I know Formation is working with a number of CURRENT OR FORMER FAANG ENGINEERS who are rusty and want to give interviews their best to stand out.
I'm super bias so I would argue that any current engineers benefit from mentorship to various degrees, but I am seeing it more competitive to get the offer.
People doing a great job on interviews but getting rejected is more common than in the past.
But if you have 2+ YOE, eepecially at FAANG, you'll get interviews for sure and you shouldn't have that difficult of a time. If you are come talk to me about Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... because you might benefit from extra mentorship. If you worked at FAANG for 3-6 years, $5-$10K won't be a huge cost from your savings to save a ton of "difficulty" if that's w…
In both directions, Reddit threads don't capture reality.
Like Codesmith is a 11 hour a day crazy intense program (for full time) for 13 weeks and then you graduate and sit there in your room, day in day out, applying to jobs, month 1, month 2, month 3, month 4, month 5, month 6, month 7, month 8, month 9, month 10, month 11, month 12.
Like Month 12 is wildly different from month 6. Full time is wildly different from part time!
The feelings and emotional journey of of people in 2023 is really hard to capture in Reddit comments.
I make an effort to meet with groups of people in person in real life (which is hard because I'm fairly socially anxious), I'm meeting some people in Denver next week.
When you talk to people as humans face to face it's just a really different vibe and story than I what I see on Reddit
In good ways and bad ways, but to me that's "real".
There are dozens of people being placed who graduated in 2023, and you'll find a lot who did. You'll also find cohort to cohort variances in both directions.
Unless Codesmith publishes all of their data, or you do an analysis based on GitHub projects in OSLabs, or LinkedIn, or various lists and info Codesmith has shared, there isn't going to be one answer.
A said B cohort which graduated in C and had a D placement rate. And collecting those statements, with no single one-liner answer overall.
They are being hired at companies like Mavis Tire random agencies like I can go through the list of placements. There are edge case top tier placements like someone on LinkedIn last week who didn't seem to have any particular experience. Someone got a mid-level job at Octa. each of these better placements has a different reason, One important factor is how people present their past work experience and frame it as engineering adjacent or flutter engineering work
One person in a public talk recently said that they had no relevant experience before the program and got a job pretty quickly after and their LinkedIn said that they had 19 years of experience as a web developer/software engineer.
The solution is really hard because They have been advertising for 7 years that they create mid-level and senior engineers but they are like a grad school boot camp.
It's extremely hard in this market to actually place people with no or little experience in mid-level and senior roles, enough people did during the boom times that it carried the reputation of the program.
The ideal strategy right now is to place people in internships and apprenticeships and other entry level roles that are designed for people with no experience and will very quickly ramp them up into mid-level and Senior engineers. but if Codemsith doesn't drop that stance then there's not much they can do except what they've been doing.
Yeah I'm sure you've seen my post about this and it really seems like people overstating their experience are almost table stakes for getting a job.
I know that a lot of these people think that by adding one line to their work experience that the experience was " partnership with OS Labs" absolve them of any claims of exaggeration but in my personal opinion that's not valid. More importantly, the time window is not backed by GitHub commit data.
Their curriculum is no different than anyone else. and it's almost always criticized as one of the weaknesses.
But It's actually somewhat intentional from what their CEO says publicly and there's a reason for it. The bar to get in is so high that people will generally have decent technical skills coming in and they actually have to work on the rest of their non-coding skills. so they're really focused on trying to get you to overcome imposter syndrome and communicate on a team and the language to use to describe engineering work and building open source projects to build your resume and those kinds of things. and I think that they do all of this in a very unique way. not necessarily unique good but just unique.
Yeah my feeling was they were just going off reported offers, which could be from anyone at any time via a Google Form. And past alumni sometimes go back for negotiation help.
Seems disingenuous for them to say that though if they know placement rates are lower and have shared all this other data and numbers except for those.
They have an internal 2023 report that the CEO leaked in one of his talks so I know THEY know the data internally at least haha.
I've been extremely middle road in trying to examine Codesmith outcomes for a while now (I know I have personal opinions about the framing of OSPs and mid level and senior projects but on the outcomes I try to follow the facts). I am often attacked here on different sides because this is a controversial topic, but please try to have a fact based discussion, no one off anecdotes.
I think it's important to get more data on placement rates because Codesmith is presenting marketing that everything is going great, and we only have anecdotal and napkin math estimates for placement rates.
This is what Codemsith has said so far about 2023 publicly:
1. They had 600 offers (CEO in public talk)
2. There were 68 offers between October 15th 2023 to November 30th
3. There.is a blog post showing average salaries dipped to $110K medium but have been going back up.
4. Last week, the most recent 10 offe…
If you have a background in programming adjacent areas, like any kind of engineering, or math, and if you are really ambitious and value communication, then I would consider Codesmith strongly and look more into it. That said, it's still a huge commitment of time and doesn't work for a lot of people's lifestyle and circumstances.
The self-paced programs (Springboarrd/Triple Ten/BloomTech) tend to have no or a very low bar and high drop out rates. So they are great if you need a very flexible program and schedule to fit your lifestyle, but less great for building a strong tight network or for outcomes. You could probably do a free or cheaper course on your own, and what these programs add is some accountability to keep you moving along and some mentorship if you get stuck.
Feel free to DM me if you want to share more personal info about your background and goals.
Disclosure: I co-found…
Maybe to clarify, are you looking for something that is like 3 hours every evening for 9 months? Like Codesmith part time
or something is completely self-paced where you can do whatever amount you want to contribute every week whenever you're available until you graduate? like springboard and triple ten and bloomtech?
Hi, did you have any internships during school? If so I wouldn't do a bootcamp and would do a career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (bias disclosure, my company) Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable, etc... (all different but worth looking into)
If you have a CS degree from a top tier university and are aiming for top tier companies, you need to be good at DS&A, and all of those options above help get interview ready with that, and a bootcamp won't help.
If you don't have any experience or projects of note then I would consider a bootcamp and aim for a non-top tier role. Codesmith is a pretty good option for this bucket for CS grads to get a six figure non-top tier tech role. Rithm, Launch School are other options of good bootcamps that you can research and compare to Flatiron.
Happy to answer more, I'm tight on time and can't right now, but feel free to D…
1. Do you have thoughts on bootcamp grads exaggerating their projects? e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/
2. Do you think someone can become a "mid level and senior engineer" in 13 weeks? Codesmith claims this, I disagree but I understand their argument too and want to hear your thoughts
It's worth checking out Codesmith then, it fits that vibe and there is one person I'm 100% positive they would connect you with that took that path. Stanford MBA -> Codesmith -> CEO.
It's super intense and it's an all in-world so it's ultimately up to you to figure out if it's the right use of time.
I might also consider something like https://www.beondeck.com/ .
Anyways feel free to connect with me LI, my partner technically did YC and can't hurt to connect to see where your company goes!
Yeah I love reading about people's stories, and the twists and turns along the way and it's a pretty detailed overview. He's certainly moved around a lot and jumping between film/tv and tech (and jumping from product to marketing and back).
I like the shift in narrative in general with Codesmith in 2024, Profiles In Tech and focusing on people having impactful jobs and stories, rather than just "we are the best", I think it connects more with people.
At the end of the day though, it's tough to run a 13 week 11 hour a day bootcamp in this market and I'm seeing a lot of "wordsmithing" with the marketing around placement times that demonstrates to me some concern that cohorts aren't filling up and they don't want people to delay or get cold feet because of the market.
So hopefully the market turns around or they make bigger changes to adjust.
P.S. I still diagree on the framing of the p…
Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC.
But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing.
Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience.
From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win.
There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself.
Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218…
Yeah good points. So IT/HR I'm factoring into the 2X multiple.
Curriculum dev is R&D. If a bootcamp was failing it could fire the entirely team and keep functioning because of the unit economics of a cohort.
Marketing and CAC for Codesmith is different than others, but they basically just have an Admissions person and they run about 10 to 20 public sessions a week (often with leaders or instructors running them, so the cost is mostly salaries accounting for in the unit economics above).
Bootcamps closing up shop entirely should be pretty rare even if they don't do well.
First off - unit economics.
Anyone can do the math. Let's take Codesmith, because I know their structure super well, their salaries, and they have a very consistent experience.
THIS IS AN ESTIMATE FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES BASED ON MY OPINIONS AND PUBLIC JOB POSTINGS AND REPORTED SALARIES, DO NOT QUOTE THIS AS FACT
ONE COHORT: 13 weeks (cohorts overlap for 6 weeks)
1x Lead Instructor - $170K -> $20K for 6 weeks
1x Instructor - $130K -> $15K
1x Mentor - $100K -> $11.5K
3X Fellows -3X 40 hours @ $25/hour -> $18K
Admissions person - $60K -> $7K
Operations person - $70K -> $8K
Outcomes person - $70K -> $8K
Career support at $25/hour, 2 per week \* 6 weeks \* 35 students = $11K
Management (COGS only) (spread across 4 timezones, lead intstructors, director of program management, etc...): $2M ->…
Yeah I agree with a lot of that and why for a number of people 1-1 I recommend Codemsith for their situation. There's a lot of good things for the right people with the right expectations.
I don't think they are being open and transparent with candidates though. Having seen a number of info sessions and/or people who go and message me quotes or questions.
And I see people in the audience get hyped up by statements that are borderline.
Like imagine an alumni said straight up, I have no experience and I got a 120K job, you can do it by following the Codesmith way.
Then you look up the LinkedIn and see 19 years of web developer experience listed.
Then you look up the LinkedIn of the person who asked the question. Some have gold backgrounds for Codemsith, but some do not, yet they still things along the lines that he speaker and say how their reply gives them hope and they feel so much…
Two reasons.
1. Setting proper expectations
The reason I think it's important is that I've seen info sessions where employees straight up tell people that you don't need a degree or any relevant experience to get a job, followed by reading out 10 offers ranging from 80K to 170K, making it feel like anyone on Reddit reading reviews from these people can also get the same outcome.
I'm showing my observations that there's a lot more to it than just a line cook at Applebees who was good at math becoming a senior SWE in 4 months making $150K.
That people who are successful might not be aware of how background and their representation of their background massively impacts the outcomes, as the people exaggerating the most present live on camera that they aren't exaggerating or aren't benefit from their backgrounds.
The unique thing about Codesmith is that the grads who this works for, do…
I posted an update here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/comment/kh5ujfs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Probably not much new to you but if you are curious.
# UPDATE JAN 9, 2024
This is a recent follow up with non-anonymous grads that further perpetuates the observations in the original post.
Codesmith recently posted this video of recent alumni who got jobs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw)
All 3 were asked if their past experience helped them get a job. Without doxing anyone (you can watch the video), these were the response versus LinkedIn
**ENGINEER 1: Senior Software Engineer**
Response: "the company that I'm currently working for there's a lot of overlap in what my previous company was doing", "I understood their business a little bit better um so that aspect really helped me", "but yeah for from a technical standpoint I'd say Codemmith will will get your back"
**LinkedIn: 10 years+ at robotics company, 7+ years as "director of implementation" using the skills: " Py…
I take that as feedback because your take on my comments is not at all what was intended. I'll clarify here some things just for the record, but happy to discuss more.
1. I don't endorse or support Codesmith. Their leaders don't like and bad mouth me constantly as "the Reddit Troll" to their staff and students. Current students have messaged me telling me this.
2. I don't think Codesmith is better or worse than Tech Elevator and completely agree, different things for different people.
3. I don't have ANYTHING against TE and I recommend them often, I think my choice of language was offensive to people and I talked to the CEO (who left yesterday) briefly about this to open the door for a more amicable relationship.
4. TE moved a couple of in person cohots online in 2023 and that's what I was referring to. The magic of TE and the reason I recommend it - is their in person program and comp…
The changing narrative around becoming an engineer in 2024, an argument for taking a longer and slower journey to becoming a SWE instead of a 12-16 week bootcamp.
Before beginning I want to disclose that these are my personal opinions (I know I post here like all the time and you probably know this, but I have to disclose!) but that I'm the co-founder of mentorship platform that while isn't a bootcamp, does work with a lot of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job transitions. In some ways that might bias me want more people to go to bootcamps and this post talks about taking your time instead, but this post is my personal views on the topic.
This is a mini essay I threw together to outline some new thoughts I had. Curious to hear your thoughts. I'm not going anywhere and this is not an anti-bootcamp post. I might post something else making the case for traditional bootcamps too. Th…
Thanks for sharing your views, largely agree.
Regarding the second set of points:
1. Agree for bootcamps local can help and it's one of the reasons that Tech Elevator is on the radar despite the raw salaries being lower than say Codesmith. They have stronger in person connections in some smaller-big non-tech cities that can be a good way to get your first job.
2. \-
3. Networking is harder than it sounds and takes time. Start early. Don't just network and ask for referrals from everyone you meet. Make genuinely connections on genuine topics of interest.
4. \+1
I'm not a gatekeeper, but objectively, one story does not prove anything in either direction, whether a good or bad outcome. If 100 people complain about outcomes, and 1 person got a job, that doesn't meant the "gatekeepers" are wrong and if you follow that logic you are setting yourself up failure.
The truth is often in the details, and Codesmith is a good example of 80% placement within 6 months turning into 70% within 12 months, is a good example of that detail. It's really not as binary as people make it seem in this sub.
An important thing to note is not so much if you will get a job but when you'll get it.
Codesmith had an 80% placement within 6 months of graduating for H1 2022 grads. And the reported, unofficial, numbers people are reporting are around 60 to 70% within 12 months for 2023 grads.
That might still be a very solid number compared to a lot of programs, and a strong reason to go there, but people in 2023 unexpectedly spent A LOT longer job hunting, and fewer people still got jobs... and the ones that did appear to be severely [exaggerating their LinkedIns](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I agree with the commenter that the top programs are still the top programs, offering the best experience , but regardless of which programs you are looking at, only sign up if you have a significantly longer time horizon for getting a…
Well the data does show that 2023 was a rough year and there's no way to sugarcoat it and there's no silver lining - it was tough because companies have been cutting back, e.g. laying off their DEI teams, and they went back to basics for entry level hiring - i.e. sending recruiters to top tier Computer Science schools.
That said, some people get jobs!
I'm still seeing about 1 offer a day at Codesmith. Those people had an average of 11.7 months listed as "experience" from their 3-4 week long group projects though - [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/)
Those people haven't been posting here as much because why would you if you got your job through exaggerations. If you claimed you had 2 YOE in your resume and you…
Without coming across one side or the other, this is a terrible attitude that makes the problem worse.
You absolutely don't need these courses to get a job, but if you mock these courses as useless experiences then you have a major blind spot about computer science that will hold you back.
Getting a $150K job out of Codesmith doesn't make you better than all those CS grads who struggle to get $65K jobs.
Circumstances matter.
While you all polarize the debate, I'm going to be working on the understanding the nuances and hopefully moving the industry forward.