Codesmith people think this sub has become "toxic" becuase it's not full of positive posts about Codesmith.
The CIRR results finally showed the cause of this and it's that there is an unprecedented drop in placement rates - and we haven't seen 2023 data yet - and a unprecedented spike in ghosting.
The market is bad.
Do you think all those people not getting placed and dropping out of the community are positive supporters? Or do you think they anonymously go to Reddit and complain or generally have a sour attitude.
I push people to present evidence and facts and thoughtful opinions. You can agree and disagree but it doesn't have to be done through anonymous accounts, insults and flippant personal attacks.
Anything I say on here I would say directly to Will and Eric K to their faces.
Y'all using anonymous accounts to attack me and people using anonymous accounts to attack Codesmith a…
Yeah interviewing.io is great for doing 1 to 3 mock interviews.
There are a few newer competitors that you can look into like hellointerview.com
I'm the cofounder of Formation, we don't officially support the UK, but we do on a one off basis, and our competitors are Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and you can look into those as well. All of these options are the many thousands of dollars range of cost but more consistently fill in the the last 20%, but are way more time commitment and way more expensive than just a few mock interviews.
All these options are worth looking into to see if something feels like a good match for what you think you need.
Several\_Top is no longer a mod of r/Codesmith as of today.
Another moderator said this announcing the sub: "Hey everyone! My name is \[A\] and I am a CSX student. I work full-time as a remote analyst. I discovered Codesmith through Reddit and also through a friend who has gone through the program. We saw that there wasn’t a subreddit for Codesmith so myself and a few others have started r/codesmith. We want to invite everyone to join, especially those who are new to Codesmith like me!"
And stated that it's not affiliated with Codesmith at all.
Several\_Top stated that they were an alumni of Codesmith and has shared inside information about Codesmith in the past (leaked screenshot from an [Alumni presentation](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1apcrg5/83_of_job_offers_from_codesmith_in_2023_were/) - , so being a founding moderator of the sub would look bad and go again…
It's extremely condescending for you to think you know who I am better than me and what my company does better than me. It's fair game to ask me questions and challenge my answers, but not to personally attack me and who I am.
If you think I spend a lot of time on Reddit, then you should see how much I get done at Formation, it's 100X more. Just imagine what an engineer that prolific can accomplish. If you don't believe me, that's on you, you've seen my GitHub and comments about how responsive I am 24/7 to Formation Fellows as the priority over Reddit and other people.
I'm exceptionally good at what I do. I was THE number ONE code producer at the ENTIRE COMPANY of Meta. I left 7 years ago and I'm still in the top 30 or something - that's how far ahead I was even when I left.
You have absolutely no right to judge me and what I do just because your imagination is limited to what you can…
Consistency and integrity always triumph over trolling so I'll keep doing my thing.
My priority is Formation's Fellows. We are approaching 10 Meta offers in 2024 and a few of them were in the 7 figures with their stock, so trolls be trolls and I'm busy with more impactful things and trying my hardest to make a difference in people's lives, not warming the heart of a Reddit troll. All I have is my integrity and I stand up for my integrity.
Yeah +1 to that the reason I heard about this was that instructors felt overloaded already, they hardly EVER write code but though they were signing up as "software engineers" for Codesmith, and they get forced to do this as well.
The complaints were about work load and being forced to do it without it feeling "optional" to help out if they wanted to on their own time.
In April-May is what Will said last week I think or a few weeks ago. My understanding it was going to be paid and not free, and for current residents and alumni, framed as a "minor", like in college.
In the mean time, you can do this completely FREE online course from Stanford and Andrew Ng, an industry expert in AI and teaching AI: [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-introduction)
**Historical Context:**
- They had an entire Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) track they experimented with, but it initially failed as they needed people with more experience to go through it.
- Then they forked it off as a separate concept aimed at PhD students/grads, https://www.dsmlresearch.org/. They reportedly spent over $1M on this to get a cohort running and when they brought on their new external…
Yeah sorry, I'm replying for everyone who reads this, I got a lot of rando accounts all over my comments on this CIRR stuff and don't know who is who.
It's why my responses are so long and repetitive, but I feel it's what I need to do.
If you want to chat 1-1 DM me and I'm way different way of writing lol
Well CIRR's specification allows any text message sent from a graduate, without any kind of verification, as long as it has the start date, that it was accepted, and the job type (i.e. full time, part time, permanent, contract) to be used as the "gold standard".
There is ZERO specification for how to verify salaries, ZERO. The only rule is the salary has to be base salary and correspond to the job used for the start date, but absolutely ZERO rules for how it has to be collected or verified and auditing doesn't have to verify salaries either.
Are you saying that people should be pressuring schools to join CIRR or pressuring them to be more transparent? Or are you implying that CIRR is the only source of transparency?
Rithm School and Launch School are best of the best bootcamps and both have a similar vision of providing transparent data and choose to not be in CIRR because of they have different views on transparency than CIRR does.
If CIRR is going to put efforts in lobbying to try to brand themselves as the only transparent source of bootcamp data, it's not surprise no one wants to be a CIRR member and don't reply to your emails.... the spec is full of issues and problems.
I don't even want to help fix those because you aren't open and transparent about how the spec is managed. You said you had a meeting to adopt the spec AND approved the results at the same time? and the new spec was published alongside results instea…
I completely agree and support correcting the time windows for CIRR and also observe a lot of people mistaking them, but it's also true that this period is for the very last graduate on Dec 31st, 2022.
The first graduate who started Codesmith in Sept 2021, graduated in Jan 2022 and wrapped up the job search by Dec 2022 took 1.25 years to show up in public data here.
Rithm School criticized this this morning as well, that the annual reporting cycle causes a 6+ month delay in getting that data from earlier people, even the 360 day data, not just the 6 month one! And they don't like that and do their own standard as a result.
"In this day and age, LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else"
Which is fine with me, if people just know this and understand that in interpreting CIRR results, but this obviously introduces weaknesses if people are exaggerating or optimizing their narrative on LinkedIn.
OFFER LETTERS are gospel, not LinkedIn and an auditor speaking with a board member of CIRR, and Codesmith advisor, all agreeing on LinkedIn being gospel... gives me a darn good right to call that out so people are aware, no?
You can argue if you agree or disagree, but calling that out shouldn't warrant attacks and defensiveness. Like I said, I think LinkedIn should be used but want to discuss the documentation mechanisms and details on how so that it's transparent.
No drama when people are boringly transparent and don't have a single thing to read between the lines: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith's CEO just says straight up like Launch School's founder did, people had low morale and started ghosting from Codesmith and it was devastating blow to Codesmith's culture and one of the reasons they shrunk down 70% (est. 1000 alumni in 2023 vs on pace for 300 in 2024) so they can re-focus on a tighter and more supportive group of residents, then that's FANTASTIC.
All of the alumni from BEFORE this "ghost era" who had that great culture should cheer on that kind of change instead of misleading prospective students that everything is still fine because Cod…
+1 it can go both ways for sure and I didn't comment on salaries at all.
That said, there are always people who ghost salaries every half, and it's generally a smaller number, but it REALLY tanked this half and I think something else is going on. Like combining all of this, 25% of people are ghosting in some way in H2 versus hardly anyone in H1 and the market only got worse in the rest of 2023 for H1 2023 grads.
It should be zero surprise that sentiment on this sub is bad and that enrollment tanked 70% in end of 2023 and it's certainly not me pointing this stuff out that's causing it. Smart engineers making $130K salaries can figure this out by talking to these alumni and hearing about this stuff from them.
Now I have inside info here that end of last year, Instructors were asked to text and reach out to alumni to try to get placement info out of them via whatever means they could to…
From the interview prep company point of view, like Pathrise, Formation, Interview Kickstart, these places aren't schools and aren't 'education' and I can't see why they would join CIRR (personal opinion)
It might end up bing a waste of time to come up with a standard you think will work for these companies by observing from the outside without getting to know how they work first.
I know for Formation, it would be like making a standard for Personal Trainers for how good they are at being a personal trainer based on analyzing all of their clients. Some people are overweight and want to just lose weight. Some people are in good shape and want to get ripped. Some people want to get skinny. Some people want to run a marathon. Some people want to be a sprinter. Some people are recovering form injuries.
Like weight lost, muscle gained all misleading metrics. Some people want to lose weight…
I think you're trolling me so I'm going to link to my recent answer about this too: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/)
And my most recent post before the CIRR one today was about Launch School: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith did what Launch School did in that AMA and presentation, then there wouldn't be a discussion because it was just all super clear and transparent about what was going on in the market cohort to cohort and month to month.
Codesmith's Unofficial/Reverse Engineered H2 2022 CIRR Report - NOTABLE OPINIONS: concerning increase in number of ghosters on salaries (that still counted as job obtainers !!), 180 day placement rate of 63% (a little higher than expected)
CIRR finally published 2022 outcomes! They aren't as bad as expected at first glance, but I'm not a fan of the change to 360 day reporting period. Three schools reported, one of them had only 15 graduates in all of 2022, another published H2 2022 outcomes instead of full year 2022 outcomes.
So I reversed engineered some of the the H2 2022 outcomes for Codesmith.
DISCLAIMERS:
1. See Methodology for how to reproduce what I did yourself.
2. This may contain errors or misunderstandings, please check the numbers yourself and point out corrections and I will update anything incorrect.
3. These are illustrative examples based on the **reports and the me…
I'm on Reddit representing myself.
RE: Formation, I've explained here fairly recently why CIRR or CIRR-like reports don't make sense in advancing open and transparent understanding of what Formation does. Maybe some other standard would but until we get to a point where Pathrise, Interview Kickstart and us need a standard, we publish information on our blog about outcomes: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz)
I see this post getting downvoted so I'll just add that I had nothing to do with this post, had no idea it was coming and got a push notification like anyone else, but I do know who this person is based on the trajectory.
The bootcamp they are talking about indeed doesn't exist but was around in 2017 to 2019. It was Sophie's company where she single handedly ran an in person iOS bootcamp for 0 to 1. It was free and had an expensive office in downtown SF and was intended to be a small business that broke even. I worked on the learning platform (which is now a toy project some Fellows work on at Formation to practice SWE skills) and the back office stuff.
VC funding presented itself and she considered it so she could hire a team but we had to focus on a larger market than bootcamps. So we decided to pick up where bootcamps leave off, and that's what Formation is. While there are a ton of…
I think Codesmith is responsible for 1. letting these people in in the first place. 2. making sure they are progressing and doing what they are supposed to.
You as a random alumni probably should be unofficially responsible for helping people do their work... they are paying almost $22K for 13 weeks - $1700 a week.
We have a private chat server yeah, no public ones. We have a small numbr of public events but not many.
I always recommend people do the free TIRA benchmark because it gives you an idea of where you are at, and we'll also notify you of upcoming sessions and events and get you in the system.
We also have a 21 day coding challenge you can sign up for on our website.
But that's about it at this time.
+1 to number 2. Stanford and Berkeley did a lot of work to vet and evaluate people at a high bar for 4 years, and if a company hires those grads and those grads tend to do really well at the company, it creates a cycle of reinforcement.
FOLLOWUP: **Why don't bootcamp grads have that reputation**? Like if people hire HR or Codesmith grads and they out perform Stanford grads, wouldn't that want to make the company go back and hire more HR grad? From my observations at Meta the Stanford grads just flat out outperformed on the job and it took bootcamp grads a lot longer to settle in and find their place. It's why apprenticeships became a thing.
A couple of Codesmith alumni are constantly on my case and claiming that I'm trying to put down Codesmith and get people to go to Formation instead. Now I don't really want to talk about Formation but I'm going to try to use this as an example of my constant points about this and I hope this doesn't seem like an advertisement.
(Apologies to the commenter that I used this comment as an example)
But this trajectory is not that uncommon and in fact it can be improved beyond this for those that want to prioritize work and want to work at big tech, and that's what FORMATION does. We help at that 2021/2022 mark in this trajectory to get to the E4 mid-level $300K job at top tier tech companies. We are NOT designed to help with the 2020 first job like Codesmith does.
Now not everyone wants to do that, but for people that do, you pay around $10K to Formation to hopefully make that 2023 jump to…
Yeah attending workshops and full ahead of time counts in my theory haha.
End of 2023 people were being let in like 2 days before and one in particular was absolutely not a good fit and it was not good for them or Codesmith that they got in.
Now that they shrunk down do like 25% of their peak capacity hopefully they will stabilize at a 30 person solid cohort filled up a few weeks ahead of time.
The people I know who work there say that leadership is terrible at forecasting and appears to make changes every few weeks at all hands meetings that are reacting to the current state of things. Like they paid bonuses to admissions people who filled cohorts - which resulted in people getting pushed to their 2nd and 3rd interviews days apart to rush them to get in.
Their website is full of so much randomness now: career accelerator courses, paths to prepare for Codesmith, future code for NYC re…
My theory for this is that I see ebbs and flows with how much demand there is to get in. When demand is low and cohorts are open until the last minute, they let in people who more recently got into the community and are less engaged. When there is a backlog, they have people clamoring for months to get in and they let in the most "Codesmith"-y people who will perpetuate the culture and spread the good word.
FWIW, at canonical FAANG (Meta specifically I can speak to with 95% confidence) this person would likely be an E4 mid-level. Titles don't mean much.
But it's a very good progression - doing really well at this level for a couple (2-3) years and that might pattern match to a canonical E5 senior.
(I see this kind of background often and I'm very calibrated on this)
Awesome, thanks for sharing your trajectory! This is a super reasonable trajectory for a ambitious bootcamp grad working their way up from entry level SWE To senior SWE (generally speaking, not title-wise) in 3 years.
Some questions:
1. Curious if you changed companies anywhere in there or if you stayed at the same company and got promoted.
2. I've also heard from a lot of people that Codesmith wasn't happy with them considering a < $100K job. But your trajectory really worked out so well and maybe even better, so I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. Any more thoughts on this?
3. The market is super different right now, so do you think someone with a similar background to you should start Codesmith today?
Whole range, canonical E4 (FAANG mid)/E5 (FAANG senior) is the most common, skewing E4. The most senior placement was a FAANG staff level. In the current market the majority of people who have joined in the past few months are high mid or senior as well.
This is an example of a more senior person and hopefully we'll have some public examples soon (a couple of people right in that 6 to 8 year bucket who got senior Meta roles): [https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/](https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/)
The mentors range as well. We have those super senior managers and principal engineers - generally for specific 1-1 mocks. And we have more mid level mentors that run small groups sessions who are really good at coaching or specific technical topics.
In comparing to [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) - we want the equivalent of those "expensive"…
Very different things. I think we are somewhat competitive but we're more directly competitive with Interview Kickstart than Interviewing.io.
**Interviewing.io:**
- Good to do one or two interviews if you have an upcoming interview and have no idea if you are prepared
- Good for benchmarking - you know how close to the bar you are.
- Okay/but less good at levelling up - you can buy interview packages and get 1-1 feedback, but it's limited to coaching sessions and there isn't day to day or broader job hunting support
- Not good if you need 5+ mocks with senior people as the cost will be closer to Formation cost and Formation gives you a ton more value.
**Formation:**
- Ultimate goal - get you the highest chance of passing top tier interviews and identifying and getting you whatever mentorship and practice you need to get there
- Very broad coverage - DS&A, SD, technical behavioral…
Sorry, was also not implying you said that either and didn't fully explain what I was talking about.
Tech is still largely dominated by men and it was even worse back then. The big tech IPOs attracted a demographic that previously went to wall Street out of school.
Mothers are statistically the primary care giver in the USA and doing a 11 hour a day bootcamp - in person back then - was not at all inclusive. We still see this today in intensives like Codesmith which have been majority men as well (prior to all the recent changes, don't know anymore).
In person bootcamps were - perhaps unintentionally - made for unattached people who could move to SF or NYC and do 11 hours days in person for 3 months and then hustle their way to a job.
For the past year we don't accept anyone without a year of SWE experience, and literally a handful of people who appeal to come in with say 6 months of experience but are clear on their goals and aligned, so no one recently does them back to back.
We've had way more people come back to Formation twice and pay us twice (or three times) than we have people who have done Formation immediately after graduating Codesmith.
The fact that people come back to Formation multiple times and pay us each time is a very clear indication we are not remotely anything similar to Codesmith. We don't teach anything.
The personal trainer analogy is much stronger. Hire a personal trainer, get into shape, good for a few years, have new training goal, get into better shape again, good for a few more years. Have a kid, need to make routine changes, get into shape again.
\`I think it is very difficult to obje…
Talking out loud and whiteboarding-style prep are two big ones to practice, that is very different from crushing through LC problems in your room alone.
This is very bias and not meant to be an ad at all, but I highly recommend following a "problem solving process" rather than just trying to solve a problem based on ones you've seen before. This is the one I helped create: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/) <- I'm commenting here as an individual and not on behalf of my company
There's always a chance you'll get a new problem and you don't want to fail the interview because you spent 6 months memorizing a list. Not only that Meta doesn't want those people, they want people who can solve problems. The same approach works with Google interviews as well.
Finally, SD and the technical behavioral round are also important…
What you said here to me is that the people attending Codesmith are awesome. The people graduating are self-organizing to run standups and encouraging each other in the job hunt.
That's all fantastic stuff but is it what you are paying $21K for? Imagine a random person added all those same people to a Discord and they all had self studied and were supporting each other just the same.
Similar arguments are made about going to Harvard Business School - you go to meet the people, not to learn anything special, so it quite frankly might be worth the cost.
I talk to a lot of alumni, and the lowest ballpark I've heard is 30% placed in a year, and the highest is what you just said at 75%.
Given that they had about 1000 students START in 2022, and 550ish offers in 2023, that sounds like a 50ish% placement rate within a year - maybe higher on CIRR because they reduce the number of people in…
The problem I have with Codesmith alumni is that I'm not in fact attacking Codesmith or defaming them. I'm reporting on the facts, some are good and some are bad. But the WORST of all is the market for entry level jobs, which Codesmith has absolutely no control over, and that's the primarily reason people aren't going to bootcamps right now, not anything that Codesmith is doing poorly.
Formation isn't a competitor to Codesmith but I'm happy to tell you how we are doing. You can read it on our blog. Our 2023 offers tanked and people's average first year total comp increase dropped from $100K to $80K. Our top tier placements tanked from 75% of all placements to 50%. This is on our blog since December 2023. In 2024, which is not published anywhere, top tier placements are back up to 75% and average comp increase is $117K. We don't have any placements rates because it doesn't make sense the…
We aren't a school, don't teach anything, and don't educate. What we do is unique and the closest competitors are IK and Pathrise and we're still unique amongst then. It's on us to explain what we do in our marketing and materials, but we haven't figured it out yet so I'm here telling you directly from the source of truth to try to help.
I would love if you actually listen and ask questions to clarify and talk to me about what Formation does and then I don't have to write essays.
Which competitors am I discrediting? Our competitors are Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco (before they kind of went MIA) and I never say anything to discredit them on Reddit or anywhere and I've even ENCOURAGED people to go TO SPECIFIC ONES in specific situations, e.g. for Product Management - which we don't help weith.
Our recruiters talk day in and day out with people considering between these options (or only considering Formation) and these are our competitors.
It comes up like ONCE a month that someone is considering a bootcamp OR Formation and the recruiters escalate to see if the person is experienced enough for Formation. The bootcamps vary from Codesmith to Springboard and the majority of the time if the people don't have experience we tell them to go to a bootcamp.
If someone has legit SWE experience for 1+ years they should not go to a bootcamp in almost all circums…
What information have I refused to release? I've explained extremely transparently what information we have and don't have, and why we do what we do. You can see an entire list of every single placement's company on our blog.
If you think that CIRR would work for Formation, you don't understand what Formation is and how it works, and coordinated downvoting my comments doesn't make you all understand what Formation is better than I do.
If you want me to give you a CIRR report you have absolutely no idea how Formation works and you should not be signing up whatsoever until you understand what it is and what you are getting.
We very transparently explain the average compensation gain of a placement which tanked last year from $100K to $80K and will hopefully be much higher in 2024. We were also transparent about how top tier placements tanked from 75% of outcomes to 50% (which is back u…
I wish I had a strong answer, but I don't. I think better information would include:
- backgrounds and experience of people before entering
- more clarity on the types of jobs people get
- more satisfaction related qualitative info, i.e. "how much do you credit your bootcamp in getting the job you got"
- histograms on placement times and salaries instead of medians and averages
- including all forms of comp in data, like bonuses, benefits, etc...
- salary increases - i.e. someone leaked data that mid last year the average placed student at Codesmith had a current/previous salary of about 70K - which is higher than the median placed salary at some bootcamps
- more transparency on hiring companies. too many bootcamps show a wall of logos of amazing tech companies, and talk about anecdotal placements there, but what are all of them. e.g. are people making $120K at a design agency v…
I wouldn't say it's the "only objective metric" no. It's a reliable and good signal to use, combined with other data and information.
The outcomes themselves are more indicative of the job market than the programs themselves, so judging a program by it's outcomes alone was never a good idea, even in the good times.
The fact that a CIRR report exists checks off one box of legitimacy, but it's far more concerning that Codesmith and possibly others had H2 2022 outcomes audited and ready for 6 months and won't share them, while they tout H1 2022 numbers in marketing. Even if this was not CIRR data, if that fact was true I would be demanding transparent placement rates before signing an agreement if it was me, but others might have a different bar.
Just to be clear, this post was a personal opinion and not one of Formation and not about Formation.
RE: Formation, I take that as feedback for sure, I don't think the 750K number is really effective too, but it's accurate and it's what our competitors do, so we took the easy there as we focused on other parts of our website.... Which I think is the fundamental reason we're on such different pages here, Formation isn't a bootcamp and CIRR-type data makes no sense. We've tried to cut numbers with artificial time windows for banks and loan providers and all those people love them and support us strongly, but we don't share them publicly because they used for math for finance people and don't help an individual understand their journey and likely would only mislead them because of the unique commitment and path that each person takes.... the timeframe is largely up to the person.
Not all…
CIRR appears to be done and irrelevant now - Codesmith needs to get off the Titanic before it sinks (Personal Opinion)
As many are aware, [CIRR](https://cirr.org/) started out a business-league from Skills Fund to try to standardize bootcamp outcomes in the early days of bootcamps.
While CIRR's stated goals were to create transparency in the Bootcamps industry, it was ultimately not a charity - and was a business league, like the Chamber of Commerce, whose practical value was promoting and marketing for it's member bootcamps (who pay fees to be members) that did particularly well. So as bootcamps started doing terribly - particularly in 2022 -> 2023, a lot of those backers left.
**You can see this in how important "transparency" was when bootcamps were doing well, and how quickly and efficiently they posted outcomes, and how when outcomes are terrible everything comes to a halt - this…
I went through some of CSX and did some of the materials, and it's fairly light, so you definitely need to supplement. From my experience working with prospective students, current students, and alumni, the universal advice is to leverage the pair programming and live sessions they offer.
Codesmith is looking for students that will ride-and-die with Codesmith and showing up to the live sessions and getting the vibe and fitting in will go a long way to progressing VS banging your head against the wall alone in your room... it's why you see a number of students and alumni so excited when they get in, and so supportive of the program publicly, and if they get a great outcome they will fit to tooth and nail about how Codesmith "changed their lives".
So TLDR: it works if you are the right fit, don't try too hard to BECOME the right fit - because then it doesn't work, and doing live session…
That's exactly why I used to, until the recent changes (which is paused until they settle), recommend specific people go there 1-1 if they are suited to it.
Just because I'm critical about a few things, doesn't mean it's not good for the right people.
But the market sucks for bootcamp grads right now. The most perfect person for Codesmith went there after college didn't work for them and is a totally fantastic person, has really struggled to get a job, even with exaggerating experience.
My university was 25 hours a week classroom time and 40 of homework/projects but 3 semesters a year and summers were off to do research or internships.
I was commuting from home an hour a day each way, no remote classes, no recordings, and it was absolutely draining. I woke up at 5am and went to bed at 10pm, I worked all weekend, people thought I had problems haha and I didn't have any friends or do any hobbies. I read school stuff on the elliptical everyday for an hour, and I did scorekeeping for hockey on Sunday nights where I did homework in the box while doing it.
But other programs are way less intense and way more expensive so this is an exception case.... in the same way that Codemsith is a special program for special people and not something that anyone can just sign up for and make $100K
I mean my university's web programming course was so bad that I wrote a letter to the dean explaining how I had already learned this on my own and got a job at Facebook lined up and what was taught in the course was embarrassingly wrong and outdated.
It took them a few years to finally update it and kept me in the loop.
The university cost $20K for 4 years and I did dozens of courses that actually were really good, and some not.
Finally, my program's goal was to get you into a top PhD program, and I did that path but withdrew for Facebook and they were disappointed in me.
So it's a completely different thing.
My department chair though was doing sell presentation that sounded an awful lot like Codemsith about how for 80 years they have produced engineers capable of solving the world's hardest problems and are leaders because of their ability to bridge communication gaps and execute…
Codesmith offers free lifelong job support i.e. resume reviews, mock interviews, negotiation, etc.... via being able to book calls with alumni dedicated to those things. This isn't so much free but included in your tuition, and it's a great feature to take advantage of. I've heard pay is about $45 session so the weakness and/or way to control costs, is by having a fixed number of slots and it being first come first serve. So if they were pressed on finances they could have fewer slots so you have to wait longer. They have pretty decent availability now, but in the past people have waited two weeks for a resume review for example.
I don't think they ever offered lifelong LEARNING though included in your fees. In fact the CEO said alumni would have to pay to join in new "minors" in ML-for-engineers and others floated around.
As far as I know, the cuts they made were primarily just scal…
NuCamp, Springboard, BloomTech are ones I know of that take experienced engineers as part time mentors.
The interview prep platforms like Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise also have industry mentors and pay more, but typically more experienced ones. 4 years at FAANG might be sufficient for some of the options there. I could look at your background and give more advice if you share it with me.
I'm personally very far on the don't tell people they are senior engineers side on this one but I've had many debates with people that "know someone that got a senior job out of Codesmith" who adamantly believe in Codesmith's stance on this.
I would argue with them why a program branding itself as a top tier program preparing people for jobs in the TECHNOLOGY industry should be using the canonical definitions of the top tier TECHNOLOGY industry companies.
Codesmith does this "how to get hired in 2024" talk that I saw most of yesterday and they aren't just saying this anymore, but the CEO spent almost 2 hours straight in the talk convincing people that using - what in my opinion - are incorrect arguments:
1. Argument: the 2024 market has changed and companies that didn't previous prioritize technology - like banks - are hiring laid off FAANG engineers to build the same level of produ…
Yeah a lot of these shut down though sadly: [https://apprenticeships.me/](https://apprenticeships.me/)
My advice is if you identify as one or more historically underrepresented groups in tech, I would join various industry groups as many are advertised there as well.
It's definitely not an all in option to go with because thye are very competitive! Just one you should consider.
The challenge of posting here is they will be directly confronted by me - with my personal hat on, not moderator hat and not Formation hat - in a neutral territory about the three topics I have person opinions on:
1. Constant, loud statements that they product mid-level and senior engineers with zero experience
- I think this is the one we can debate well, because it's a definitions issue, and a debate over what definition Codesmith should use to communicate accurately to the public
2. OSP representation. I would never accuse them of explicitly telling people to lie because there is only evidence of the contrary. But I would not accept any other comments on anything without an explanation as to why they let the majority of people who get jobs exaggerate their experience and if they weren't aware, what they will do about it now that they are.
- I think this one would be scary for Code…