Timeline

Well the strategy isn't even working for $22K though. Tanking outcomes. In 2021, about 90% of people placed within 6 months of graduating, in 2023 it's like 40%. In 2024 only Codesmith knows and they aren't telling us anything other than saying that 70% of their grads get jobs within a year. 40% in six months is not bad, but that's a massive collapse and this model doesn't work anymore. Companies caught on and a 3 week project can be vibecoded in an hour now and companies don't care.

there isn't any universally recommended boot camp and there never was for me personally at least. I used to recommend three rithm, codesmith and launch school. Rithm closed. but it's the program I recommended most broadly because it was pretty well-rounded for most people. Launch School still doing okay, A cohort cut back but generally they have the resources to keep making improvements. They have a different philosophy, their website talks about being this low way to career change and if you're the right person then it remains the best place for that fit. Codesmith is like falling apart with like hardly any staff left complaints of disorganization. they just advertised for one of their projects on their LinkedIn page and the sign up is completely broken and I can't even try it out and when I point that out they delete my comment instead of actually fixing the problem. it's like fal…

Everyone has bias but I don't think the channel is biased against bootcamps. During the boot camp boom every other post was someone with a $100K job telling everyone who would listen to go to a bootcamp. Now it's the same people telling everyone to not go to a bootcamp. I personally told tons of people to go to Rithm, Codesmith and Launch School during the peak because the market was open to giving bootcamp grads a job. I'm bias but I'm just following the data and facts and trying to advise accordingly.

I feel like a lot of bootcamps say that. ' Our program is 70 hours a week and it's so intense it's like a year of school' Codesmith's former head of instruction would tell people in their career prep lecture that their "open source product" that they spend 3-4 weeks on was 'so intense' it was the equivalent of '4 months of mid level engineering work'. A student told me someone challenged him on this during the lecture and the instructor got so offended and upset he ranted for 10 minutes and then had to 'take a break' before resuming. It's absolutely wild what these programs are telling people and it should be called out for discussion in the open so both sides can be heard, because I wouldn't assume the bootcamps are doing this to scam people, they might just be delusional and out of touch with reality... many bootcamp instructors haven't worked in industry and don't even know!

RE: INTERNSHIPS Possibly, but you are competing with people who had FAANG internships, so it's tough. I would consider enrolling in a Masters (or having the intention of doing it) and then applying for 2026 (summer but possible spring) top tier internships RIGHT NOW through NOVEMBER and try to land one, and convert it full time job and 'drop' the masters program. RE: CODESMITH You heard about more layoffs since like this week? Or just general layoffs? They have had numerous both layoffs and voluntary departures without 1-1 replacement yeah but there are hardly any people left. They were advertising for a part time program coordinator offering below minimum wage in some cities like Seattle so it doesn't seem like they are replacing those senior staff with high paying roles. A recent review from a staff member on [Blind](http://www.teamblind.com/company/Codesmith/review/R_kgSHMi_K) s…

1 YOE is taking a long time right now overall in the market and at Formation but I don't have exact averages because each person has different commitments and goals and it's not meaningful to average all people. Additionally, we have people that had 1 YOE that joined like 2 years ago that it took 2 years to get a job... but the market when they joined was different then. So it's even harder to try to average people who started at different time because the market has been changing. It's like a bootcamps touring 2023 CIRR number when they very well know things are different now... I feel that kind of thing is misleading. So to help advise I would need to know: 1. what is the 1-2 years of experience and what kind of company? 2. have you been promoted yet? 3. are you getting interviews either directly from recruiters or from applications? If you work at a solid company, commit fully to F…

I guess I've been overkill then documenting and organizing hundreds of pieces of evidence over three years for the statements I make on Reddit about Codesmith and other bootcamps. Maybe I am crazy then or at a minimum I'm drastically underselling my arguments if you don't know where they are coming from. Let's just say that I'm not commenting so much about Codesmith because of any reason other than the overwhelming amount of documentation I have that Codesmith gaslights me and others about.

"lol bro is actually clinically insane" This is a statement that negative impacts my reputation. And it's provably false and you said you don't want to put the effort into a paper trail to back that claim. You can say "In my opinion, this guy is clinically insane" and I would be totally fine with that!

Then don't comment here making stuff up. Research what libel is because you are admitting to it - making false statements as facts with the intention of discrediting me and admitting to not putting in the effort to research those statements. If you don't want to read anything then make it clear these are your unproven "opinions" and not facts.

You also have an extensive Reddit history on many different topics so this wouldn't apply to you. Not everyone who criticizes me is a bad guy. I'm saying there are like a dozen or more accounts that ONLY comment on Codesmith stuff and my posts and have been suspended over time as they get caught doing something not allowed on Reddit. Almost all of the older "AMAs" in the Codesmith sub have entirely deleted, collapsed, and suspended commenters. It takes months sometimes but eventually get caught. I'm not saying Codesmith itself is organizing this. I have a written statement from their CEO that Codesmith she talked directly to the leaders and their founder (has explicitly decided to not engage with any of my content) and lead advisor (doesn't have a Reddit account but might make one) don't use Reddit and never engage with me, so I have to assume it's not them. If evidence came my way the…

No, accounts that have zero comment and post history that come out of nowhere attacking me generally are though and Reddit has been pretty good at wiping them out over time as the people create more fake accounts with the same forensic fingerprinting. I'm not going to assume anything about who you are, I can only act on evidence, not theories. I'm just making an observation. I also don't know if they know but I can see the moderator list of the Codemsith sub and have been following that for a while. A rotating cast of suspended accounts and the official Codesmith account also moderates the sub! Like you might not like my commentary but imagine how many documentation I have over 3 years too. I've been dotting my Is and crossing my Ts for 3 years in case Codesmith tries to blame me on the way down.

Well people can read for themselves and decide. This thread is ironic because you are a fake account that only comments on my stuff and about Codemsith literally every single comment and this thread is an example of why I have so much comments in volume about Codemsith. General public: do your research and don't fall for bullshit like this. This behavior is exactly why Codemsith is collapsing, students aren't signing up, staff are leaving. You can wake up and try to fix it or keep doing this same old strategy and destroy the company.

Here is an analysis of my commentary purely about Codemsith "sporadic but consistent" "Here’s an unbiased summary of Michael Novati’s commentary on Codesmith over the past few years—covering the topics he addressed, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe: --- Topics & Themes 1. Curriculum Stagnation & Slow AI Integration Michael pointed out that Codesmith’s curriculum has remained largely unchanged over the years. For example, in early 2024 he noted: > "Codesmith's curriculum has been the same for YEARS but in Feb 2024 they added 5 lectures on AI… This is 'not changing'… 12–14 weeks of the same structure they did 5 years ago… I guess they think it's enough to raise prices to $22,500 this year." --- 2. Deteriorating Placement Outcomes He emphasized a steep decline in graduate outcomes. He shared CIRR-based figures showing that six-month placement dropped from ~90% in 2021 to…

In case anyone is curious, here is what AI said about my last 3 years of Reddit activity: "Here’s an unbiased summary of Reddit commentary by Michael Novati over roughly the past three years (from mid‑2022 to mid‑2025), covering common topics, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe: --- Topics & Themes 1. Bootcamps & "Learn to Code" Critique Skeptical of the bootcamp model. Novati has been notably critical of coding bootcamps—and especially the broader "Learn to Code" ideology. He highlights structural issues like oversupply of CS graduates, declining outcomes, and economic realities often overlooked by bootcamp marketing . For instance, in /r/codingbootcamp he wrote: > “The tech unemployment rate now exceeds the national average…” and argued “Learn to Code… ignored basic economics (oversupply depressing value/wages)” . He has also raised doubts about data reporting by entiti…

My commentary on Codemsith is fair and research backed. And yes, please look at my post and comment history! Do you realize how much of that is these 50 comments back and forth threads with fake accounts that are now suspended or deleted from Reddit? Their founder is encouraging people to attack me on this by selective pulling comments deep from threads where I was frustrated - which had dozens to hundreds of views and we're later edited or deleted - instead of focusing on the tens of thousands of views that point out fact based major flaws in Codesmith. - twice publishing mistake reports to official bodies and issuing corrections after I called it out - running a fake charity with no notable income with a fake leader who told me that Codesmith writes letters of reference on behalf of the charity and that she has been placed on leave for a year and isn't involved anymore. - tanking o…

Good question and really you shouldn't take only one person's advice because this industry is full of strong but different opinions. Formation isn't all me and I'm not really involved in the theoretical aspects either - we have people who are better at that stuff working on that haha. I work on the platform that powers all the practice, sessions, etc ... and I help people 1-1 with support, job hunting strategy, negotiation etc... Our general model is that you'll have a core team of support staff that's stable, but that all your sessions are run by independent industry engineers . Each has different backgrounds and different strengths and weaknesses so you actually get a wide range of perspectives and personalities. You'll like some mentors and you won't like others, depending on you. RE: coding machine. At my level I believe in the professional sports analogy. I plan one position rea…

Launch School Capstone announces cutback from 3 cohorts a year to 2 cohorts a year starting in 2026. Acknowledges tough job market, longer job hunts, and new changes to help people get real work experience though internships and open source commitments to to Firefox and large projects. [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1moix9n/capstone_changes_announcement_for_2026/) Note this is unofficial, personal commentary and opinions on these changes: **SUMMARY OF CHANGES:** * **Schedule change:** Moving from 3 cohorts/year to 2 (Spring & Fall only) to focus more resources on each group * **AI Engineering expanded:** Now 2 full weeks dedicated to AI Engineering (model selection, evaluations, ingestion/retrieval strategies) * **More experience opportunities:** * Expanded Open Source Initiatives (OSI) - last cohort got everyone patches into Firefox * New internship op…

Well I wouldn't assume it's doing that well business-wise, I don't think any bootcamp is doing well right. The thing Nucamp has done very well, leveraging Ludo's strengths from Microsoft experience, is making connections with partners and governments to pay for aspects of the program. But yeah for some reasons I always felt like Nucamp was advertised as Udemy + live mentors, rather than a legit pathway to a job, but I might be wrong. Codesmith advertises itself as an 'outcomes of an elite graduate program for 1/10th the cost'. Springboard is where I would be upset with because they license all their content, which is like Colt Steele's Udemy course + Rithm's original curriculum + mentors but charge like 2-3X Nucamp.

To me this is the difference: Like people can 'owe so much to Harvard' and still see the pros and cons of going to Harvard - even if the pros outweigh the cons for you as an individual. If you 'owe so much to Harvard' and then attack anyone criticizing Harvard for anything, then something is wrong. When people are in the mindset of 'it changed my life', It comes down to leadership. I talked to Codesmith's new CEO and said straight up about why I do what I do face to face, so when their founder goes around riling up the community as a 'competitor attacking the community' - that's a cult-like characteristic - turning reasonable and well-researched criticism (even if you find me annoying) into an "us vs them" ideological battle instead of a reasonable debate. I'm aware of both groups at Codesmith. Many alumni that reach out to me or that I connect with, are very much in the 'I got a go…

The key thing here is "it" YOU changed your life. YOU decided to sign up and put in the work to pass the entrance interviews. YOU showed up 13 hours a day. YOU hustled hard on your narratives to get past resume filtering. YOU passed interviews. What did Codesmith do? 1. accountability 2. support 3. building self confidence 4. helping tell your narrative to get past screens 5. basic programming education 6. access to a network of alumni I can see it getting blurry when instead of feeling like "Codesmith supported me in changing my life" the feeling tilts towards "Codesmith changed my life". Cults (speaking generally from watching over 200 hours of cult documentaries) prey on people with low self confidence who will credit "it" with the positive impact the cult brings because that is easily turned into devotion and exploiting a need to "pay it back"). Things like free labor, donatio…

If people will pay for that given it's available for free, maybe that's not so bad. I guess the jury is out on Codesmith because we'll see if they ever get it back or not yet. Not paying your bills, not having the phone number for 2 factor, and not being able to reclaim ownership of your core AWS account and not having a backup plan though is one in a generation failure if they aren't able to ever get the account back.

They pivoted to doing this because the next CIRR report for 2024 students will be out in April 2026 and they want to give some idea of what's going on, but their reports are very problematic to me. Why? CIRR reports account for people who graduate in a specific time window. 2023 report means people who graduated in 2023 and got offers. The reports Codesmith is publishing are offers in a specific time window but from any cohort. Meaning people who got those 102 offers could have graduated in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2021 even. For all you know many of them are 2022 grads who took 1.5 years to get a job? I actually like salary lift as a metric but they are confusing things by providing these reports side by side with CIRR reports with completely different definitions. I used to give more benefit of the doubt, but last year this time they were defending against word of mouth of reports of de…

So they cannot control the domain or direct it anywhere else because that is configured under DNS which is under AWS. The domain registrar can point the domain to a new DNS configuration to work around that but the domain registrar in this case is also AWS. What they should have done on day one reboot become irreplacable, then get a semi peromanent redirector domain like [cs.site](http://cs.site) or something, and then change all of their socials to the new redirector and have that redirect to become irreplacable. Then whenever they get their site back they coulld have it redirect back to [codesmith.io](http://codesmith.io) This doesn't solve the email problem and the user data problem though. They could re-host CSX but people would have to create new accounts and it might be a mess, but it would be better than notihng. Email is a huge problem - because a lot of other service will sen…

Technically they have a website at become-irreplaceable.dev that was updated 4 days after the outage, but they don't have an AWS account so they don't control and these are down: 1. codesmith.io 2. email to codesmith.io 3. all their user data stored in AWS 4. the CSX platform Not at all a defense but just giving facts for people to digest on their own.

I spend very very little time on Codesmith. It might appear that way but it's all relative. Instead of assuming I'm spending a lot of time on it, try just imagining how much code I'm writing on a daily basis. Like other than a couple of threads that blew up, I'm genuinely not spendong s lot of time here relatively speaking. I use a lot of voice to text a lot too while causally walking around which is why I have so many typos and edits.

I don't want 'revenge', why do you think that? I'm pissed off because their leaders have been gaslighting me for years and now that their website/email/AWS is down for like 3 weeks almost and counting, you all can see what kind of garbage was going on behind the scenes too. I'm frustrated that their leaders don't acknowledge problems or issues and they have been driving their business into the ground and it pains me to see that impact the people who pay $22,500 to go there.

Codesmith's problems are a leadership skill issue, not a student or alumni issue. I criticized for years while simultaneously recommending specific people go there. For a handful of people it's the right place. For statistically the vast majority of people reading this it is not. But that was before the 20ish day outage and counting. Leadership skill gap caught up with them and took down the company and there are zero people that should go there right now.

This is what I do all day. I spend ridiculously little time on Codesmith: [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati) I explained everything to their new CEO in a video call a few months ago and told her face to face the full truth from my mouth. Their founder keeps going around perpetuating false narratives, paying people to post on Reddit, encouraging people to mock my appearance, some fake LinkedIn account is now in on the game. Like I'm angry but I'm right and even though I'm just me, I'm not going to tolerate any bullying from the "team" as they call it.

There are a few days of DS&A. I'm possibly one of the industry experts in DS&A and it's laughable to call that sufficient. It's the equivalent of a "sneak peak" without even really getting started. The idea of hack hours is great, but they are a waste of time because it's you and recent alumni going over problems and no true expert guidance. So you are wasting your time. People who have a natural affinity for DS&A don't need this and would be much better off NOT paying $22,500 and learning on their own. I really wish I could articulate this more - so many things at Codesmith are about putting on the appearance of something legit and I get where their DS&A motivations come from they have to acknowledge how much it sucks. Instead they celebrate it as the reason people get great jobs. I've spent SO MANY YEARS really studying all aspects of Codesmith - I know more about it than their c…

Nope, I've been telling them about problems publicly and privately for years. They have problems with their platform, whenever it comes back, that a credible org would never allow to be live and they shouldn't turn it back on even if they get their domain back. I can't speak to what happens inside Codesmith, but people who have worked there have told me they have complained about it. They had a code freeze for a year or something because they had no competent engineering leader so none of the "engineers" that worked at Codesmith during that time actually did anything. Some of the issues I pointed out it took them several attempts to fix after repeatedly telling me they were fixed each time. I know my tone is extremely offensive to them so I see why they act defensively instead of open minded to it, but seriously, I got this way because the sheer incompetence breeding incompetence bree…

1. Well a lot of the more tenured teachers resigned or were laid off recently. They then promoted newer people and filed out the rest with people who just graduated. 2. Well Codesmith is saying they are getting access back soon and that seems to be at least 24 hours ago now... so... these people clearly have no idea what they are doing and what's going on. It's kind of sad that I've been calling them "delusional" for years and they are showing that to the entire public about getting their AWS account back - they don't understand the magnitude of what happened. To me Codesmith is dead and it's because they haven't APOLOGIZED ONCE for this. No responsibility. I'm shocked anyone calling themselves an engineer would support their behavior right now.

I received a tip that Codesmith claims that they are making progress and expect access very soon. My understanding is that they successfully removed the 8 year old phone number from the account, however they can't login or recover it yet and have to proceed with account recovery. No matter what they tell you - keep in my that this is not normal. If you have an account properly in your name and company, you should be able to recover it in fewer steps with proper identification. My suspicion os the account is not setup properly and they cannot restore access based on the name/ownership and they are trying to get back in via creative approaches. For example, by proving they pay the bills and that the two factor phone number is invalid and getting it removed, it removes one of the hurdles, but if they can't get access to the email address on the account, and someone else's name is on th…

1. Alina is CEO 2. Phil left almost a year ago 3. Eric K is still there as an advisor 4. Will is doing a visiting fellow program at Oxford so he's still involved but not in the same way as before. 5. There are only 4 full time admin team left: admissions person, program manager, events person, outcomes person + Alina 6. All of the instructors are recent Codesmith grads, most within months, and one about a year. No more head instructors or senior lead engineers to head of engineering or CTO etc.. I did criticize them a year ago that they had like 6 directors and needed 1, but I didn't expect them to go down to 0.

If I was Will, I would have posted this on day 1: ==== HYPOTHETICAL MESSAGE - NOT A REAL POST ==== "Codesmith community. I'm deeply sorry and I let you down. We have been so focused on delivering value to the community we make a rookie mistake with keeping our AWS account up to day, and we lost access. Not only did we lose access, but the our website, email, and all backend services are down as well. We don't know when we will regain access, and we will communicate daily updates. ==== HYPOTHETICAL MESSAGE - NOT A REAL POST ==== In the meantime, we purchased [codesmith.org](http://codesmith.org) \[it's available for $10K\] and we will be moving our operations there ASAP, keep an out for more about that. ==== HYPOTHETICAL MESSAGE - NOT A REAL POST ==== Most importantly, we are conducting a thorough activity log of what happened and what we will do to change our engineering team to pr…

1. CSX is not there 2. This is not AWS shenanigans whatsoever. Whatever drug your on, where can I get some, I've been having a rough week and need some delusional juice. It's 100% their fault 1. Using a phone number for 2 fac 2. Not having other 2 fac backup options 3. Losing the phone number 8 years ago 4. Not having a monitored email on the account 5. Not updating a credit card for apparently 8 years because they haven't logged in for 8 years? 6. Not have multiple backup payment options provided (AWS allows for many) 7. Not having proper information on the account to recover it 8. Not separating accounts and systems for separation of concerns. If they did ANY ONE OF THESE THINGS, they would not lose their account. That is SHEER INCOMPETENCE and not AWS shenanigans.

It took them 4 DAYS (which is absolutely absurd) to relaunch their marketing page on their previous temporary domain yeah. It's a .dev which AWS doesn't support so must be registered somewhere else. But they should have fully moved over to a new domain on day 1, put the issue loud and clear there to explain, and redirect all inbound organic links at their source (or change url redirecting services) to point to the new domain. I can't state enough how much incompetence is being demonstrated here. I made a list and it was 15 things they did wrong and I wasn't even done and I gave up because it was just like so ridiculous. Codesmith is done. Even if they get the domain back there is zero they can do to rebuild credibility now. I even called them out on DAY ONE and pushed them to make a report of what happend. The "report" was a set of MARKETING SLIDES that didn't explain at all what h…

They have not been transparent at all in explaining the problem at all and shame on them. Their founder would rather choose now to call me on LinkedIn instead of doing anything about the problem. They made a number of failures but the length and escalation of the outage are consistent with the problem being that someone else's identity is on the AWS account and without their cooperation it could be impossible to get it back. Instead of dealing with this like a real company would, they have had zero mitigation plans. Zero communications in a week after repeatedly saying they will get access back soon. Zero ownership of the problem. Icing on the cake is they have this fake account manipulating the arguments I'm having with them on LinkedIn and whoever is responsible will probably get their real LinkedIn suspended too. It's indeed a disaster at a time when they were already on thin ice…