I saw a video once of Will Sentance from 7-8 years ago where he had almost the exact same language. I think it's one of those things that if you tell yourself the same thing for 8 years you believe it.
Either it's incompetence at not understanding the levels and confidently calling 61 senior - even though the speaker herself says 61 is "mid-level", or it's intentional manipulation. I don't think the CEO is incompetent, so...
And yeah, the talk was awesome, the alumni is awesome, it's sad she's being used for marketing in this way, she deserves better.
I think all three of those programs mentioned are very different and can co-exist rather than fight. Rithm is very small right now and I don't think they are fighting anybody haha. Launch School is heavily run by the founder Chris and is also small and capped size, and I think they will get by.
Right now, from my estimates (no hard numbers) Codesmith is about the enrollment numbers of Launch School (maybe 1.5X larger because of part time) but from my estimates has 5X more full time staff. So I'm most concerned about Codesmith surviving without more layoffs or without a major pivot.
Codesmith is the only one going big on AI, however there isn't any signal from the industry what AI skills they want, and interview processes haven't adapted to test for AI skills either, so they might be betting on 'Web3 blockhain' like Lambda School did. It's entirely possible that the AI skills companies…
I agree that for profit business are companies and they have to make money, and they can make money in a win-win way that improves the overall economy and people's lives, but that marketing isn't something bad or evil or despicable, it's normal.
I have the same advice with reading any bootcamps outcomes. I'm very on top of TripleTen because their stats are carefully worded too (and also not lying or false, just worded well by a marketer).
We need people having reasonable and thoughtful discussions about these things openly to move the industry forward.
The bootcamp industry is barely surviving right now and using marketing to convince more people to join to keep it alive isn't going to solve the systemic market problems that are stopping bootcamp grads.
I've said this once or twice now but Codesmith might have a good angle with getting people into non-SWE technical jobs, or with leve…
I don't think I am at all whatsoever, but whether I was or not, it doesn't mean I'm wrong.
A lot of Codesmith people love me and lot hate me and I try to build bridges with those that don't like me because we can do far more working together positively than apart.
But in a world of Lambda School have a lot of problems, you all need rational and reasonable looks at bootcamps - the GOOD and the BAD and not only look at the good. People are making huge life decisions and spending a ton of money on these things.
I've said this before but I posted a report about Launch School and no one cared because it was super boring. Codesmith stuff turns into mega discussions with anonymous accounts coming out of nowhere.
⚠️ WARNING: Codesmith subreddit is mostly propaganda (resharing Codesmith content without full context and boosting with positive comments from accounts that mostly post about Codesmith only). Challenges and negative comments are called "lies" and you get banned. BE SMART AND THINK CRITICALLY.
NOTE: I'm not saying the content itself isn't true or that it's bad intentioned, but I am saying that it's marketing material that missing context and it's likely the people sharing it don't even realize this. I've accumulated a lot of information over the years and while I see a **A LOT OF GOOD THINGS CODESMITH IS DOING,** the outcomes have changed dramatically in 2023-2024 and these materials are not reflecting that.
**DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions using publicly available information and my own insights.**
**MODERATOR NOTE: any comments talking about my own company will be delete…
I can connect you with some of the people to find out. $2.5K a month is by far the most expensive option and most people choose a package (you can see more options in post-application stage) but the pricing is meant to be a range of pricing for a very very wide range of circumstances. If you are time sensitive you are looking at different options than if you want unlimited support. And if you want unlimited support you can balance between paying all upfront and paying half based on how much we increase your salary.
We're far from perfect but we're working hard to support engineers and we feel we have a good product and experience and we make hundreds of changes every week to adjust to the market and to improve the experience based on feedback.
The main reason though is if you are a senior engineer and super busy, you can just dial into Formation based on your schedule dynamically every…
No one should be choosing Formation over a bootcamp at all.
a
We work with people to support their goals. Right now we have observed very clearly that there is no systematic way for people with no experience to get jobs and we therefore don't take new people with no experience. We still have people with us with under a year of experience for 1.5ish years because of our indefinite support promise.
We had three ex Facebook senior engineers start recently, current Google Manager, like these are not people considering Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Springboard, etc...
Or are you saying they are? That a staff engineer at Meta is choosing between Codesmith and Formation? They are choosing between Interview Kickstart and Formation.
I don't really know how to explain this more clearly, but I'll keep trying because I don't want anyone coming to us for the wrong thing, it's a waste of everyone's tim…
There's a difference between saying "my opinion is that the numbers on your website are deceptive" and "your numbers are deceptive"
unless a person currently contains evidence that the numbers are illegally deceptive then one of these statements is an opinion that is totally fine and the other is libel.
Those comments were deleted because the person is personally attacking in the comments and was previously warned. In my opinion, it's the equivalent of misgendering someone intentionally or calling someone a nickname they asked you to not call them. I flagged this to the other moderators in case they have different opinions and want to allow them.
Here are the most recent placement submission, in order unedited that I grabbed, and redacted tiny companies. Our outcomes are incredibly strong. The time it takes to get them is very long.
Meta
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Amazon
Meta
Atlassian
Paylocity
Disney
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Netflix
Gusto
Amazon
Western Union
Meta
Microsoft
Microsoft
Willow
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Reddit
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Microsoft
Strider Technologies
NVIDIA
Meta
I have conversations with a number of bootcamp staff and leaders from many places because I have a presence in the industry.
Both as a leader of this subreddit, as one of the former top engineers at Meta, as someone who works with bootcamp grads from all the programs later on in their careers.
If someone was talking about me or my company, I would have engaged them on the first message to talk about it and understand each other's point of view. If the person refused to talk to me and kept going, then I would call them out and ask why.
Build bridges not walls.
I can't speak for people, the vast majority start of with: 'I'm a codesmith grad/alumni/etc... and I really appreciate you presenting things as they are. I don't agree with some of the advice and I'm majorly struggling and I feel like Codesmith isn't helping if I don't follow the norms, can you help'
And then I try genuinely hard to advise and help the people and get into conversations.
Imagine I was an anonymous account that posted this.
If you understand Formation really well, please suggest the outcomes we should be presenting and how we should handle the situations I explained above, as I explained above, we haven't figured it out it yet and that's why I'm open to engaging with people to talk about it. Instead of Will's attitude of ban and ignore. He hasn't ONCE contacted me directly to explain ANYTHING.
Downvoting without understanding doesn't make people right.
So Codesmith genuinely has good intentions, and they do some things incredibly well. They do a lot of things not very well. That's reasonable, no company is perfect.
I believe in every number Codesmith presents is trying to be accurate, while also being marketing and that is maybe a similarity to Lambda School. Austen presenting what he felt was accurate information spun in very interesting ways - ex. 100% of cohort placed with very small sample size (not revealing sample size of 1)
Ultimately it comes down to outcomes. If you have good material to work with, and spin the marketing positively, then you have success. If you don't have good outcomes and spin the marketing, you end up potentially with problems and people being mislead.
Codesmith continues to have good outcomes relative to it's peers in the bootcamp industry, however the elephant in the room is that the INDUSTRY is doing…
Line by Line Rebuttal to Codesmith CEO dodging question about placement rates in a challenging market
**DISCLAIMER: these views are my personal opinions as I see them and they don't represent anyone but me.**
u/WillSen If you call yourself the best of the best, you need to hold yourself to that bar and respect others who are holding you to that bar too by responding with facts and arguments to every challenge rather than ban people who point out things you don't want to answer. I'm unable to reply in the Codesmith subreddit because I'm permanently banned.
Anyways, someone asked the Codesmith CEO in an AMA today [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1dofj3a/comment/la9fv9w/)
>There has been a large share of skepticism towards the results that Codesmith claims to produce with job acquisition rates, salaries, etc. since the company does not share its raw data, e.g., claimin…
1. What documentation is required for "Limited or no prior experience with the basics of coding and no paid professional web development, software engineering, or similar experience"?
If someone is lying to you and the city but went to a bootcamp and has an extensive portfolio, will they be allowed in?
2. Did the City of New York sign off on having people publicly post personal creative pieces to an unofficial non-Codesmith controlled sub-reddit?
Your CEO made it sound like this is part of the application that is required: "I also want to shout out the amazing creative applications I’m seeing for Future Code on the sub."https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1dnmohm/comment/la3kxr7/
Can you elaborate on the "slightly shifty resume" means for your?
I'm also seeing this that unless you shifty-it-up to 2 YOE, you won't get any callbacks.
I'm trying to shout this loud and clear - and that Codesmith grads taking non-SWE jobs isn't because they are getting "modern engineer" roles and is because they aren't get SWE roles because they don't exist.
I think self paced part time like Launch School Core is a good idea. Part time structured like HR and Codesmith are crazy intense.
I can't imagine going to Codesmith 4 hours a day M to T and Saturdays for 9 months straight.
It kind of just stretches things out a bit but doesn't solve the fundamental problem of being ready when you are ready and the market is ready and going up and down with the life
I'm maybe biased by the mastery based approach so take it with a grain of salt but I think it's a strong argument for this approach right now.
When you have self paced arbitrary programs you can't really have outcomes reporting to compare between programs.
It depends on 1. your goals, 2. your starting point, 3. your learning style, 4. your location
Generally speaking though things aren't going great amongst the top bootcamps so this comment might need updating and might not hold true over the long term.
SOME OPTIONS OF DIFFERENT STYLES ACROSS THE THREE AREAS YOU MENTIONED:
1. Rithm: small classes, reasonable but tough number of hours per day, high on the teaching side
2. Launch School: starts with a self paced mastery program called core and then ends with Capstone, which is a normal "bootcamp" style program focused on building open source projects. They have very strong outcomes because you do Core first and they only let in people they are confident it will work for. The projects you build are the most robust I've seen and probably wins on the portfolio side.
3. Codesmith: I completely stopped recommending two weeks ago so I wouldn'…
I'm defensive of the truth and facts yeah. But I totally get the dominating conversation issue. It's a downside of commenting so much and it can be intimidating to others. I try to balance my commenting and only comment if I have something I feel will add to the existing conversation. But I'm a person and have opinions and a personality too.
Sorry my comment felt snarky.
I do have anxiety problems and other issues yeah, but I don't have an agenda, I'm here because I'm a big fish in a small pond and I feel like I can give a lot of advice that's missing.
The Codesmith subreddit literally has conversations amongst 2-3 people who are all low acitvity accounts almost exclusively commenting and posting about Codesmith... that feels completely fake and disingenuous - [https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/)
Even if you don't like me, or don't agree with me…
Moderators list on the right hand side maybe?
My partner ran a bootcamp called Buildschool, which was a free in person iOS bootcamp from 2017 to 2019.
That turned into Formation when I work now, which isn't a bootcamp but I absolutely have bias as a result. We work with engineers who are already employed as SWEs prepare for upcoming interviews and job hunts. So I've worked with a lot of bootcamp grads later on in their careers (about 1/3 or so of people we work with).
As a result I hear a lot about a lot of the top bootcamps.
But I'm also bias because the more people that go to bootcamps the more people need Formation later on.... but ironically I get yelled at for bias AGAINST bootcamps for some reason, which makes no rational sense to me.
I tell it how it is and Formation would be WAY better off if thousands of people went to bootcamps and went to Formation down the road, which is why I emphasize that these are my personal opinions. Our investors might get angry at me for deterring people away. Maybe read all of these comments instead of my little post :P: https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/s/maKdYSF2CC
Speaking on behalf of Formation, we do not accept bootcamp grads without any work experience right now and haven't for at least a year and they are not our target audience. If you are a bootcamp grad and can't get a job for a year, good luck, we can't help you, but come to Formation in a year or two after you do get a first job and we can help with the second, third, fourth, and fifth.
Thanks for sharing. This is the path Codesmith is calling the "Modern Engineer" by the way, which I strongly disagree with.... you aren't a modern engineer and instead took non SWE roles, and that's ok!!
I think your path is great for a bootcamp grad and while you aren't a SWE yet, you found a way to apply.yoir new technical skills to a more interesting job and it took a could of hops to get there.
Congrats! And good on you for keeping the motivation going.
Can I give you notes on your resume here? Happy to give via DM but it might be helpful to others to give them publicly too. This would be in a personal capacity and not representing Formation.
Your projects sound GREAT. They key is having real users and you have more than 99.5% of bootcamp grad 's personal projects.
These will help you in interviews (if you also speak about them well).
Your problem is going to be getting interviews because of lack of experience. You can't fabricate experience, but you can at least present what you have more strongly.
That said, you have a strong background for a non traditional engineer, so you have some ingredients to worth with at least.
2024 Bootcamp Predictions [MIDYEAR CHECKIN AND UPDATES!]
The past two years I've been making bootcamp predictions and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18ivago/2024_bootcamp_predictions_mega_post_revisiting_my/) is a link to my 2024 ones from six months ago.
I want to share my background for context in the spirit of openness and transparency. I try to write the best content I can, but everyone has biases and it's important to evaluate ones biases for every post you read.
BACKGROUND: I co-founded a mentorship platform and work with many bootcamp graduates as they progress in their careers and I'm a heavy contributor (and moderator) of this sub. Before this, I was at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I grew from intern to E7 principal engineer, conducted over 450 interviews, and participated in hiring committees. I keep in touch with hundreds of my former colleagu…
SimilarGlass5: 100% of comments about Codesmith (past 4 years)
Mean\_Rough1137: 100% of comments about Codesmith
Infinite-Platform-78: 100% of comments about Codesmith
A bunch of the other accounts on my list are permanently banned from Reddit.
I also want to know why these people do what they do with fake accounts.
Yeah extending my views to Codesmith specifically, if they can get people placed in tech, but not SWE jobs, I think they can keep going and rebrand as a "get your first job in tech" as opposed to be "become a software engineering leader"
We're going to need a TON of customer service rep - engineer hybrids to help navigate this evolving world, such as debugging self driving cars for customers in real time, and some of Codesmith's recent placements have been in this area. Great, high paying, tech jobs that are not "software engineering" roles.
They might have a giant market of people who do like customer support, operational logistics, product management, and other jobs where have a "engineer mindset' might help people navigate a world of AI and rapidly changing tools.
And more experienced software engineers can build those actual tools.
If they have enough humility to accept reality I…
The "Modern Software Engineer": Refuting the "lawyer engineer" and instead an argument for Specialization + Collaboration
Hey everyone, friendly neighborhood moderator sharing my person opinions on this topics for all of you getting into software engineering. My background is started programming with QBasic and Lego Mindstorms when I was 12, worked at Meta from 2009 to 2017 (from \~200 engineers to \~10,000 engineers) and was the #1 code committer when I left. And since then have started a mentorship and interview prep platform for people with several years of experience who are changing jobs or want to prepare to change jobs. NOTE: I have some amount of bias because I work with a number of bootcamp grads later in their careers. While my company doesn't compete with bootcamps directly, I want to openly disclose my background so you can interpret my comments better.
PURPOSE: I'm writing…
This is correct. Codesmith claims to not to ANY display advertising. Although a former employee was configuring Google Ads for them and they log a lot of stuff to various advertisers, they aren't running standard ads.
They put that budget to running free public events and their blog. Those events and posts are marketing. They were run by a marketing director (who was laid off end of last year) and they are bread and butter marketing.
Alumni telling others about Codesmith is also marketing.
At Codesmith, the **community is the product** - **you are the product** (they have almost no actual "code" that runs anything at Codesmith, just a website and a lot of Google Docs and 3rd party services) so you spreading the good word of Codesmith means they succeeded in their product efforts.
I don't care enough to deep dive, but people with all kinds of relationships have sent me screenshots of conversations and I know that at various points in time it has been a) alumni, b) staff members, c) leaders but I really have no idea who's doing it now.
What I do know is that, like all bootcamps, Codesmith isn't doing well now. They might be even doing better than many others, but as you said, best of crap might be crap - which I don't think any of the top bootcamps are at all).
The "cult vibes" I also don't have a direct source of, but I have three notes:
1. The CEO speaks about the "community" he's built over 9 years as the product that Codesmith built, not the curriculum and not the class. So if you are an alumni, you ARE THE PRODUCT of Codesmith and if they did a good job, you were produced to be a strong community member.
2. CEO Control - this is multi-part. First, they ha…
Find someone else to harass. I don't stand down to bullies and what beats bullies is the truth.
Anyone can see my comment history and see what I talk about: Codesmith and otherwise. If you are stalking me with authorized Reddit apps that's harassment.
I get all my data from stuff the CEO explicitly shared himself, or public data, so turn your energy on him and ask him why he's shared this stuff if you are pissed off at me.
Yeah I agree. We don't have apprenticeships en masse so what should someone do? It's a free for all and I don't think there is one way to do it, but the result is bootcamp grads fighting to find edge cases and one off opportunities to get a foot in the door.
Now that the entry level market was wiped out and there are no loopholes we're seeing a bunch of bootcamps struggling and shutting down and laying off.
The response has been to rebrand tangential engineering jobs as just as good or better than SWE jobs and have people go there.
Codesmith had a grad go to Palantir as a customer support engineer and framed it as a new role for the modern engineer.... when it's an age old role that is NOT a SWE role even though it is indeed a great job.
But these are the times we're in. If there are no SWE jobs and you can't rebrand, you will fail, not enough entry level SWE jobs to make a program t…
To me this is more complicated than a one sentence tweet.
Are you a software engineer? Sure, you can be whoever you want to be and it doesn't really matter because the Dunning Kruger Effect is much more important to understand.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2017/01/24/the-dunning-kruger-effect-shows-why-some-people-think-theyre-great-even-when-their-work-is-terrible/
More dense original paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780123855220000056
It's not so much that "aha you ARE an imposter!" but a rejection of people who are at that initial peak of Dunning Kruger and have no idea whatsoever how far they have to go.
Like - I did a bootcamp, I'm as capable as a mid level and senior engineer is peak Dunning Kruger. Codesmith grads and Codesmith leaders you should read about this.
Helping you realize what you don't know yet is a step towards overcoming…
I started a mod thread about this and was encouraged to ban all of you, which I'm not doing because I think that's wrong.
But seriously get it together and stop making stuff up, just ask and believe my answers or discuss them without making false accusations. If you don't trust me and I'm a moderator and you don't like this place, leave and go spend your time more effectively elsewhere.
I got banned from the Codesmith sub, from Codesmith CSX Slack, permanently banned from all Codesmith events, for pointing out an alumni placement they were highlight is no longer employed at the company they said he was.
Not all communities are for everyone and if this one isn't for you, you can leave!
This is correct. When I talk about other programs there are very short threads. When I talk about Codesmith people come out of nowhere and we have these endless back and forths
The Codesmith comments are very dense on Codesmith posts and comments and it has to do both with my frequent commentary about Codesmith AND the amount of back and forth that happens when I talk about them.
Reddit removed your post I think, wasn't me and not sure if my reply will go through, but I'm replying anyways:
1. 100% agree one of the things that comes with being open is that you should be reasonably questioned and that's the critical part to being open. On the other hand, it's not open seasons to anonymously attack me (which you aren't doing Ludo and you aren't anonymous, but others have over the years).
2. I don't know what to say, I logged into our Google Ads account and spent time to confirm myself and the only keyword we are targeting with the word bootcamp in it is "formation bootcamp" and it had 0.2% of all impressions compared to all of our keywords. Google Ads use all kinds of algorithms to display you ads and we are not targeting any other terms with "bootcamp" in it and most of the impressions are for variations of "interview prep".
If you don't think I'm lying on the r…
FACT: I stated this for the public record: I asked the team and we do not and have not as far as they are aware, bid on any Google search keywords containing the word "bootcamp", other than "formation bootcamp" (as we bid on many phrases containing formation as it's a Beyonce song and common term)
I don't know all of the job offer details people are getting no, but if it was shared to the public intentionally I would see no problem using it in theory. But no, I don't know all of the job offer details.
I key part of this analysis is that CIRR 2022 data is out, so if I run a less perfect analysis on 2022 data and compare to CIRR, I can do the same analysis on 2023 data and adjust the output based on that + other factors (like that 2023 cohorts were on average smaller according to the public record, APPROX: 30ish H1 2023 and high 20s in H2 2023.)
I'm allowed to pay attention to details,…
1. We're not competing with any bootcamps at this time and have repeatedly told you that. I've given you the objective correct answer from the source of truth and you keep spreading the same false narrative. If you do not have a year of SWE work experience you will be auto rejected. If you have under 2, you will likely be rejected but can have a conversation about. If you are special case, we might admit you under a year, but I can count those people on one hand in the past year.
We might compete with bootcamps in the future, but have no plans to anytime soon and it would require a large investment and changes on our part.
2. I explained how we advertise on Reddit and that we target all the top programming subs and we have re-targeting ads anywhere. So people who engage with Formation will see us everywhere, not just here.
3. You don't have any right to say who I am and why I do what…
1. As I told you privately before this post, I had our team check and we do not bid on any keywords containing the word "bootcamp" other than "formation bootcamp", and none of our Google ads say we are a bootcamp.
2. As I'm sure people here will attest, we flat out automatically reject people who don't have a year of SWE WORK experience since mid 2023. So a struggling bootcamp grad will not be a candidate for Formation right now.
3. I openly acknowledged my conflicts transparently. The individuals whose close allies have informed me lurk this sub anonymously and manipulate by engaging under the radar are who you should be going after if you care about conflicts and integrity.
I think they will allow you in as long as you don't have paid work experience doing programming and don't have a CS degree.
I was also confused about this because Codesmith claims people who did CSX are junior engineer hirable so therefore they shouldn't be eligible but they assured me that someone who did CSX could do this as long as they weren't paid SWEs.
Yeah I mean the number of alumni in 2023 vs 2022 is about the same and I expect 2024 to have like 1/4 of the number of alumni and they are more "ready" for the process mentally speaking. I don't know if that means they'll get more jobs.
I know Codesmith for example, people are starting to tangential jobs and be celebrated for it. Like customer support engineering roles, whereas historically people got SWE roles and all they talked about was mid level SWE.
Got long, TLDR: agree a bootcamp should do what it needs to to help you get your first job, including career services, but ultimately you are paying a bootcamp to teach out and not paying for a job and that has the following consequences.
-----
I have had super intense arguments with Codesmith people about this who adamently INSIST their lifetime mock interviews are amazing and any other service (like [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) or my company) are a waste of money.
There is a massive difference in a mock interview run like a real interview with a former Google engineer who has interviewed people on the job recently, than an alumni or teacher doing a mock interview and giving you feedback.
Notice I said "DIFFERENCE" and not that one is better or worse, both are good. The bootcamp should do what it does because it's super helpful to have multiple points of view and types…
SWE generalist is the most secure you can be. Which is a SWE who can work in any part of the stack on on any kind of problem.
I wouldn't worry about AI yet. AI is going to create a bunch of new kinds of jobs - which might be amazing for bootcamp grads. We're seeing Codesmith go heavily in this direction trying to push AI skills to students and encouraging them to take all kinds of "tangential" SWE jobs. Those are all one-off jobs right now, e.g. a Lawyer Prompt Engineer (definitely not something anyone going in would assume they would get), but in the future, these will be real entry level jobs to get into tech, and being a Generalist SWE will be the longer term thing you become over time.
1. It's free for you so that's amazing, you are basically getting Codesmith's immersive and more for free.
CONCERNS
1. The job market is terrible right now and this program requires you to have zero experience to get in. Unless they have hiring partners guaranteeing jobs, I would be cautious about planning to get a job at the end, just like any bootcamp.
2. Codesmith grads tend to portray their group projects and past work experience as close to software engineer work experience as possible in your resumes, many resumes leaving it up to the reader to realize these things are not actually SWE experience because they look like it. I'm going to be watching these people like a hawk because all Future Code people have zero SWE experience and if the majority of resumes indicate otherwise at the end of this program that will be a huge concern and they might get into legal trouble with the Ci…
Unofficial Analysis: a top bootcamp's 2023 grad placement rates APPEAR TO DROP ALMOST HALF from 2022 grad placement rates (from about 80% to 45%). Even the best can't beat the market right now. [Illustrative only, may contain errors]
DISCLAIMER: I'm a moderator of this sub and I'm the co-founder of mentorship and interview prep platform aimed at helping existing SWE's prepare for upcoming interviews and level up their SWE jobs. We do not compete with bootcamps but I have a conflict of interest because we work with a bunch of bootcamp grads later in their careers. More bootcamp grads === more customers in a couple years, so I believe I have a bias to encourage people to go to bootcamps rather than be doom and gloom on the industry like this post largely is. BUT having worked with so many bootcamp grads I think it's imperative people have as much information as possible if they are inve…
Sorry I didn't realize the wording of that was poor at the time but think it was now.
I meant the CEO, the advisors, etc... have other ways to make money and could do number of other things so my theory is they are sticking to Codesmith's current narrative out of 1. loyalty and 2. pride.
I didn't meant to imply Will was making money from FrontEnd Masters directly - just that it's evidence that he could make money teaching in other ways.
I posted the thing you linked to above but I want to clarify two things in this comment:
Launch Academy temporarily halted enrollment
Codesmith continues enrolling but reduced from 4 cohorts options + 1 part time to 1 cohort option + 1 part time
Rithm School had possible layoffs, but continues enrolling as of 5/26/2024
Thanks for sharing and hopefully it was also a learning experience good and bad.
A lot of bootcamps are in a similar situation unfortunately, some nicer than others.
When you say that they needed to pivot to ML and AI, was that officially planned and they couldn't pull it off?
I've seen Codesmith (adding on AI) and BloomTech (pivoting to AI) but it still feels like the days of Web3 and BlockChain bootcamps that popped up during the Bitcoin spike.
No one knew what Web3 skills companies wanted and companies didn't have systematic ways of hiring and accessing for Web3 skills so a bootcamp focused on Web3 didn't make sense.
Right now no one knows what AI skills companies want because the companies don't know.
We're in a 1-2 year phase where companies are exploring generative AI internally and we'll see what kinds of skills people need.
The existing senior engineers will have a lot of…
I've studied Launch School grads and Codesmith grads side by side here because both do these group projects called "capstone projects" (Launch School) or "OSP" (Codesmith) that are open source, have websites, blog posts, and all kinds of scaffolding around them to brand them as super legit projects.
I did this write up last year of [Codesmith](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I haven't done one for Launch School because they are much smaller and it's easier to find students yourself and look it up.
There are three completely separate issues here:
1. Representation of project as Software Engineer job. Codesmith students often list the project as "Software Engineer". They occasionally add "Open Source" to the title or description and occasionally add "Developed under OSLabs" in the description - both of which don't m…
Yeah disclosure my company runs an interview prep and mentorship platform to help people get ready for interviews. We don't solve these problems I'm talking about but we help people on the ground who are in the process of changing jobs. So some overlap, I disclose if I was directly promoting my company to someone :P
Teaching AI or using AI?
BloomTech has a B2B $5000 'using AI' course that's 5 months or something fairly detailed.
Codesmith is working on an AI add on package and had the first session this week and someone who went didn't find it very useful yet. (It's early stage)
Most of the companies I talk to don't really need any AI skills yet and want senior product engineers who will figure out AI. Because it's changing so fast there isn't a way for these companies to consistently and fairly test people for AI so it's not really meaningful yet in hiring decisions.
It might matte…
1. Yeah we'll see, I hope that's what happens too and it's what's broadly expected. A number of bootcamps that are not doing so well though are banking on this happening to avoid further layoffs or shutdowns. If I'm planning ahead for multiple outcomes I would bias towards your view here, but I wouldn't bank the survival of my company on it.
2. Agree to disagree, I don't think my view is the only view here and it does depend on a bunch of personal factors. Agree there are startups that can be fantastic to go to as well.
3. Yeah it's old and it's Galvanize so I assume it's bias. I have a bunch of friends leaving Climate Tech to go to AI companies, so my personal view is bias and I tried to find other resources and couldn't find any showing that Climate Tech will dominate hiring this year.
RE: CODESMITH - long story. But the triggering point is that they are an advanced bootcamp that t…