Timeline

No, I've had enough of this condescending bull shit response and I'm not having it. The smug attitude with the tone of arrogance is disgusting and I'm not playing nice. If you don't know about the layoffs a month ago in a 20 person company then I don't know what to say... go figure it out before gaslighting me. I'm not going anywhere until you are all healed accountability for this bullshit and publicly apologize for this behavior.

To give you an idea of how things have changed - if you went to Codesmith and graduated in 2022. 95% of people who started graduated, 70% of the graduates got jobs within 6 months of graduating (and 90% of them reported their placement to Codesmith) = 63% "self reported placement" If you graduated in 2023: 95% of people who started graduated, 43.6% got jobs within 6 months of graduating (only 60% reported their placement to Codesmith - **A MAJOR DECLINE =** 26% "self reported placement rate" \---------- Codesmith hasn't given any 2024 placement data even though **ALMOST ALL 2024 GRADS HAVE HAD 6 MONTHS POST PLACEMENT AND THEY INTERNALLY KNOW THE DATA** The reason I'm so enraged here is that in 2024 when they internally knew about that major decline, they told the public that even in a tough market, Codesmith was crushing it. They conveniently pulled all these blog posts from thei…

I don't care either way, but if a program is publishing how amazing their outcomes are when they are good and goes RADIO SILENT when they are bad it pisses me off. Codesmith's CIRR results tanked so they started publishing random time windows of absolute number of placements and then then even stopped doing that because in the past six months it's like fifty or something and a number of them have been looking for over a year. I criticize them LEGITIMATELY and they come back with garbage data. I bet their response to this is 'Michael is an asshole our placements are amazing, we had an average increase in salary over previous work of $70K so far this year! who cares if there aren't as many placements it's take people longer that's fine, it's all about average increase.' My point is that changing the goal posts and each time telling everyone how "transparent" you are is garbage behavio…

WHEN you went matters a lot. If you went during "era 1" (2012 to 2016) then it was a great time! App Academy too! If you went between 2020 and 2022 - Launch School, Codesmith, Rithm School were all that your heard about. Now - Rithm closed, Codesmith should have closed, and Launch School is the only program to remotely consider (after doing core for a year) and it's the only one that advertises itself honestly as the "slow path" to becoming an engineer.

Short answer yes. But long answer - Launch School still publishes detailed reports exactly 6 months after the cohort finishes and Codesmith published garbage reports to cover up their collapsing results. I would put Codesmith worse than the ones that don't publish reports because it's been misleading the public in my opinion and that is worse than if they didn't say anything at all. They keep saying how "transparent" they are and it's a giant performance and bull shit from people with no integrity. I spoke directly to one of their leaders on a phone call and I really just don't think they understand how messed up their own data is, or they won't admit it publicly because their company is collapsing and this is the nail in the coffin for them. More details on what that why I feel this way.... I'm a very centrist person and I have been centrist with Codesmith for 3 years. I used to reco…

I'm extremely pissed off at your bullshit response Codesmith. It's now 10 months later and things are worse then even and everything I said was correct. Everything you wrote (your post was removed by Reddit) was false bull shit you made up to manipulate people when you knew how bad things were. Things did not get better. The 2025 "recruitment rush" never happened. Another 50% of your staff was laid off and you have hardly anyone left. Your unethical behavior and marketing is catching up with you and I hope everyone sees it.

Here's some feedback for Codesmith you can relay. BE HONEST AND STOP LYING TO THE PUBLIC. Will: you very well know about continuing layoffs that keep happening over and over and over and you straight up lied above that there haven't been any 'restructurings'. I'm absolutely not backing down and going to keep applying pressure until you are honest and tell the truth and stop manipulating the public. Students deserve better. Your alumni deserve better. The former staff members who are treated like garbage deserve better. It's so sad that such dedicated team members who are laid off suddenly are so insignificant to you that you don't even acknowledge any 'restructuring' happening. Absolutely garbage behavior and I'm enraged.

Yes please commenting using garbage AI integrations because it's proving my point how no one at Codesmith is qualified to teach AI or SWE - and everyone gets to see what happens when graduates of Codesmith with very little or no industry experience portray themselves as experts and pat each other on the back doing it. Like this clip from a LEAD INSTRUCTOR who has ZERO SWE WORK EXPERIENCE talking about AI who clearly has no idea about AI tools in their response: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/evDsJlN3Mms](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/evDsJlN3Mms) I'm glad you don't have the capability of managing Reddit and teaching at the same time. I have 8000 commits in the past year, respond within minutes to all my Fellows feedback, bugs, questions, etc... (which anyone reading this will back me up on) and I reply to Reddit quickly too. Just because you aren't capable of doing this and I am, I…

I specialize in interview prep, check out my background at Meta, and this is the method we propose for solving DS&A problems: https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/ Note that Formation is a paid service but that blog post is entirely free with no strings attached and I'm not trying to sell you anything, just check out the blog post and try following those steps when solving problems.

Well it's a great time to learn how to use AI tools because they are completely changing the day to day faster than anything else before! I have a background with top tier tech (Meta) and top tier interview prep (Formation) so this is my advice through that lens: 1. Everyone has gaps no matter what your background or experience. If you have INTERVIEWING GAPS (e.g. System Design and DS&A and struggle to perform) - those are one set of skills to work on. If you have gaps day to day and just feel behind - part is imposter syndrome and part is lack of work experience. Most people with CS degrees have a lot of internships and 4 years of CS that make you actually behind in work experience. 2. If you are trying to interview - which is sounds like you aren't, do DS&A like NeetCode, and SD like Hello Interview or other free and cheap options. 3. If you are just trying to level up on the job,…

I really hope Will isn't actually the lead instructor for this program for long because this is one of the worst uses of AI I've seen and thank you for proving my point that he is not qualified to be leading with curriculum development and teaching of this course. I don't want to discourage people from learning AI and I wouldn't be remotely hard on Will if this was a student learning AI, not someone branded as an industry leader in AI leading teaching a $4600 for 4 week course. This is a completely defensive comment about one of five points and it doesn't even address the point whatsoever... it defends the legitimacy of the music band - which I never disputed - and instead I was attacking Will for posting like a dozen promotional comments for the band that didn't disclose he actually was in the band at the time. Your comment is defending that behavior - defending manipulating Reddit wit…

How many people in your cohort got jobs and in what timeframe? Second, does your resume and LinkedIn reflect that you have no experience? Third, it's important to hear from you in 1-2 years because a lot of bootcamp grads are having a hard time keeping jobs right now. It's great you got a job but you are making it sound like everyone gets jobs and the entire data backed argument right now is that like half as many people are getting jobs as in the past and it's taking like twice as long to get to the same placement rate. You would be an idiot not to question going to a bootcamp right now with data like that. And this is data from Codesmith, one of the top bootcamps. Staff members have been abandoning ship for 2 years now and almost no one is left. As of last week almost the whole full time company has turned over in the past year so any experience prior to that would be completely di…

They are 100% online already, and they pay their instructors approximately market rate as engineers because if they don't pay them what they claim they would make as engineers in the industry they are admitting the people aren't ready to be engineers. E.g. if they claim an instructor is qualified to be an engineer making $150K they have to pay them $150K or their entire product is a scam. The CEO puts pressure on the team to improve things but they aren't qualified to so very few changes have been made over the years. The CEO claims the pedagogy is based on Oxford's teaching methods and has nothing to do with any specific skills or topics - "learn how to learn" so he uses that to justify the fact that nothing has substantially changed in the past number of years. The CEO training materials for instructors are very performative. Like how to ask people questions to engage them, how to…

Based on their website as of 6/7/2025 Admin Team (8 people): no one on that list has a technical/engineering background. Instruction & Engineers (15 people): more complex breakdown - Lead Instructor (2 people): full time staff, both of whom graduate Codesmith roughly a year ago and have no real industry experience. One of them "works" for a Codesmith alumni's shell company/startup that Codesmith people use to beef up their resumes. Engineering Mentor (2 people): full time staff, a stepping stone to the Instructor title. These are Fellows who stay on full time - kind of like Full Time Fellows. Faculty Lecturer (1 person): James Laff was the head of curriculum and seems to have left, and this role is kind of like the more junior stepping stone to that role. This person graduate Codesmith end of 2024 and has never worked in industry. Engineering Fellow (5 people): these are hourly TAs…

All programs have seen much lower enrollment in 2024/2025. The only solid numbers I have are Launch School - which publishes cohort by cohort data and their cohorts dropped below 20 people at the end of last year. Codesmith has been downsizing for 2 years now. They mega expanded during the end of COVID to almost 50 cohorts a year because everyone Google 'best bootcamp' and chose the first one. Now that's not the case and they are down to like 10 or maybe less cohorts a year - which is still shockingly high. People might be dabbling with code but they aren't paying $22.5K for likely nothing. And as of late Codesmith is seeing fewer and fewer show up to those free learn to code sessions. So as others said, SWE bootcamps really ended in 2024 and this is the tail end.

Most of your Reddit history is you promoting this wedding band you like over and over (about how your friend used them and how you heard them once and loved them) and I looked into it and it's **YOUR OWN BAND** and you are front and center on the website. WTF. Why can't people just have integrity anymore. I've had enough of bullshit marketing in this space and I'm not backing down on holding you all accountable.

Both. They had a number of program cut backs that resulted in people being laid off formally with severance. But after several rounds of layoffs and when no one shows up to your info sessions that used to have 20 people a week showing up, the remaining staff get the hint and a number of people have also voluntarily departed since then. Even if the remaining staff, my knowledge is that most are open to work. I don't mean this offensively at all but there isn't any engineering talent left. The instructors seem like fantastic communicators and eventually I expect to be superstars but they are sooooo early in their journeys the reality is they are not remotely there yet. And the pressure of being sold to the public as a super expert is a lot. I commented on this elsewhere on here but I just don't understand why their founder - who is respected as a great lecturer - doesn't just teach thing…

Other instructors feel exploited. So In your case - you do this program for 1 month and say have 30 people = $130,000 of revenue for Codesmith. What are they paying you? $100 an hour? And you are doing like 10-20 hours a week? So you are responsible for making the curriculum, teaching it all, and you get paid like $10,000 a month and Codesmith made $130,000. Even if they have a couple of other helpers (both technical and operations) and the total cost is $20,000. There are no other costs here, no career program, no alumni support, etc... This means that Codesmith is exploiting your generosity to make $110,000 a month off of you, which is absurd. Now imagine you ran a program entirely by yourself and started your own company, think of how much money you would make... you are effectively paying Codesmith $100,000 a month for the opportunity to 'pay them back for all they did for you'…

In the past month we started moving to async agents that run in GitHub etc... and they literally behavior like a junior engineer who is assigned tasks, ask questions in the comments, and sends PR. So the future is coming fast. You have to assume these tools are going to get 5X better in a year and plan for that because the delta is so much, if you aren't remotely ready, you might get left behind.

People who have done the course have chatted with me about their experience, but I haven't done it myself. I've fairly familiar with the content. But for starters - you work at Microsoft full time and you are doing this as a side gig - which is a conflict of interest because your Microsoft contract probably owns your IP unless you got sign off for it. Second, no offense, but you don't have much industry experience, a couple of contracts here and there and you are solely responsible for the curriculum for this program? My frustration is that Codesmith is full of people with very little experience - even 5 years of experience if nothing if someone is going to portray themselves as a world expert on a topic. The arrogance and attitude and confidend tone I've seen from people with very little experience is a massive disconnect. I applaud and support the effort and I don't think it's int…

Well my understanding is the only people left are Annie and Eric (and Will isn't involved with Codesmith much) and that all the other leaders left and keep leaving. My understanding is all the instructors and engineers left and the two leads become instructors right out of Codesmith about a year ago. All of the staff who were dedicated to Future Code are no longer on their website and I believe are looking for work.

Well I hear partial info about some changes going on and a number of staff departed again.... they are really done to not many people left. They also dropped their approval status in New York which was a contractual requirement to have based on the contract for this program. The contractual requirements for the teachers also isn't met if their current staff ran the program. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on and if it's still happening but they downsized it or if it's not happening, or if it's running but with delays to manage the restructuring.

I don't understand if you think I'm lying and a super sketchy person then you should join the club with Codesmith's leaders who think I'm out to get them to promote my company and steal all their students. I literally talked to one of Codesmith's leaders face to face and explained this and if they don't believe me it's on them, but it doesn't change reality.

I would argue if we froze LLMs as they are today, using Claude 4 Opus/GTP o3/Gemini 2.5Pro I would be 2X more productive based on my person stats over the last few months. That alone will change the industry and destroy the junior engineer market (other than top 10 CS grads who companies deem worthy of investing in) and destroy bootcamps. If we go beyond that depends on model and tooling improvements. From what I hear from my close friends at Anthropic and OpenAI, there's more room to grow here.

Absolutely! 1. We spent literally 5 years building a platform from scratch where people can practice anything and do dynamically scheduled mentorships sessions on anything. So we're adapting in real time to AI. We've added a dozen new AI features in the past few months. We've increased the experience bar for people to work with. We're paying very very close attention to interview changes that are happening with AI out there. 2. We're introducing our first AI-specific tracks shortly and started offering one off sessions to iterate on those within our platform engine. The goal of this is to help people become more efficient engineers on the job and keep up with AI. 3. It's entirely possible that AI will crush a lot of SWE industry. It's not a guarantee but a possibility we have to prepare for. In that world, competition for the top SWEs is even more and we'll play a role helping those p…

It's not about getting the role, it's about the next 5 years and what AI is going to do with that. Codesmith's results were from people exaggerating resumes and Codesmith looked the other way. AI will replace you if you were lying and getting by by sheer hustle. AI works 24/7. AI can parallelize 1000 tasks. The only think AI can't beat yet is the taste that comes through SWE experience. IMO, there is no alternative right now, just don't change careers and learn programming for free on the side slowly over a couple of years. I'm very confident in the next 5 to 10 years 1. We'll know what all the new jobs AI created are 2. We'll be able to train people for those jobs quickly with bootcamps - but the demographics might look different than bootcamps today with smaller deltas each time around and people aren't becoming "programmers", they are Accountatns becoming like AI Accountants.…

I'm seeing top 10 university grads getting internships and if they perform very well, getting jobs. I think that's the only path to a canonical entry level SWE job. I think we're going to have a ton more tech-adjacent jobs coming up with AI but that's not what you pay $22,500 to go to a SWE bootcamp for.

Codesmith marketing campaign: "you’re not late to tech". Unfortunately you likely are, and this kind of thing is tone deaf and misleading. Instead of making changes in their program structure they are marketing a 10 year old program structure as if it still works and please don't fall for it. Codesmith sent out a mass email campaign today that I found offensive. >If you’ve been thinking, *“Is it still worth trying to break into tech right now?”,* you’re not alone… but we will let our latest data speak for itself. Yes, let's the data speak for itself. For 2021 grads about 80% got jobs within 6 months of graduating, and for 2022 about 70% and for 2023 grads about 40%. We don't know what it is for 2024 grads but word on the street is it's about the same as 2023 grads or worse. The trend is falling off a cliff so let's let the data speak for itself and run for the hills. >Despite layof…

This falls into the Codesmith bucket to me. People with good intentions trying to do a good thing who don't have the experience to do it well. The two people that pick their best bootcamp awards stated there is "subjectivity" in choosing them but that it's based on the Course Report reviews and other sources of info. Since these two people ALSO do partnership pieces (blogs and videos) and work directly with partners, that's super bias in the "subjective" piece of the pie. I asked them why they don't have a 3rd party contractor review Course Report data and determine the list and got no response. I'm sure they THINK they are choosing it without bias, but they have insane bias. The result is they add programs with 0 reviews that don't meet the qualifications but they hear about. It's like lobbying in politics. The cash cow programs like Codesmith that charge $22,500 to be educated pri…

That's great for you but even back for 2022 the better bootcamp like Codesmith had something like a 80% placement within 6-month rate. Now it's like 40%. The price for that program went up I think $3,000 or so to $22,500. So I think it's very reasonable for people to ask why they're paying for this now not in 2022.