Codesmith Grads - Stop lying on your background checks. Your OSP is not 'employment history'. I've received a number of couple of people having trouble with background checks because they put their project as 'work experience'. STOP.
I've received a couple of reports over the past few months of Codesmith grads having trouble with background checks, failing background checks / having flags raised, etc... because their "Open Source Project" is listed as months to years of "employment history" and they need Codesmith to sign off on it, and it's too late after you started the background check. These reports were shared with me indirectly from concerned students/alumni.
A Codesmith leader told me point blank to my face that Codesmith does not sign off on background checks for OSPs as paid employment, and if you list it as volunteer work, they will verify the 3 week project for the timeframe…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Please keep demonstrating more incompetent use of AI and defending it... it looks terrible for the program you are the lead of shows why no one should go to it... the person in that video is the Lead Instructor for the FTRI and it's not taken down.
Seems like you know nothing about the IP situation.
Review the internal Microsoft procedures for conflict and review and submit this for review through the internal tools. Don't ask your manager. You aren't contributing to education, you are are the primary person responsible for a for profit private companies AI product. What the f... you are playing with fire here.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
Yes. the hard part of building projects is building a startup-like project and not just toy projects for fun. Having real users and iterating and deploying something publicly that is used. Even the best bootcamps don't produce projects people use. Like Codesmith's OSP capstone projects, 90% are untouched or dead after the people graduate. The larger projects that have undergone many teams working on them, I struggle to find anyone actually using the project. All the GitHub stars are fake and farmed from the community. I tried using some of the big ones and found security problems and broken experiences and I really don't think these things are used.
So you can see that just making a project that is a useful product, launching it and getting people to try it and then making iterations based on the feedback is already better than anything a $22,500 bootcamp gives you.
The $895 was meant for people that did the new SWE immersive because it's the same as the old + the 4/5 AI lectures now. So the $895 would be for the Saturday discussions I guess? I'm not super sure but I get the vibe they are trying to leave the door open for heavily discounted alumni rate because they originally said loud and clear that Codesmith will give you everything you need to be hired for LIFE and by backtracking on that to extract money from alumni, it's a bad look, so maybe if you watch the 5 free alumni lectures you can ask them to qualify for the $895.
I don't want rub salt in a wound, but an alumni could organize their own thing, like slap a calendar invite on your calendar to all watch a lecture recording every week and then discuss it with each other, and then do a project together.
You'll get 85% of the value for free.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took.
Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards.
It's just a pile of garbage.
Launch School Placement Date - Q4 2024 Cohort, ~70% placed within six months - similar to previous cohort. Lower salaries at $100K mediums - indicating role shifts. Very strong results given the market but very small program so hard to extrapolate.
Results [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort\_2405\_salary\_outcomes\_6months/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort_2405_salary_outcomes_6months/)
2024-2025 saw major changes to top bootcamps. Codesmith - arguably the top program alongside Launch Schoo - is down about 80% of it's staff and the founder seems to be moving on to writing a book about AI Ethics and doing a new Front End Masters course while the remaining Codesmith students are taught by recent graduate 'lead instructors' with no SWE experience that their website calls 'engineering industry experts' - most recent 6 month placemen…
oh yeah don't get me started on the patterns. I reported suspicious date patterns and also didn't care about that.
Codesmith gave people giftcards and they got like 20 reviews in a month and then nothing for months and months and months, then out of no where 3 reviews on the same day. Like WTF they are clearly asking people to write reviews.
Which on it's own isn't the worst thing in the world, but Course Report doesn't acknowledge that people are gaming the system and defends themselves.
Feedback for anyone reading this - if you get critical feedback from a competent industry leader and the feedback is delivered in a way that makes you defensive - accepted the feedback and give that person feedback on how you feel. By defending a bad product you are going to kill your product.
I don't say no one, but I do say that it's not systematic anymore - every placement feels like a one off case. Launch School Capstone is small enough that historically each person was a one off case and it never relied on patterns.
Larger programs had hiring partners and common places where alumni pass down back channel referrals and cover up the fact that all the people have zero experience and then help the people ramp up. For example Codesmith -> Capital One is this.... people scheming to lie on resumes and get through interviews and then help each other not get fired after starting.
I'm not a Peter Thiel supporter (and not a not-supporter either, just centrist) but Gawker is no more after they slighted him.
I can't speak for others but for me it's not personal in any ways whatsoever. I could pick up the phone and have a conversation with Will Sentance anytime.
This might sound crazy grandiose but I don't need to work for the rest of my life so I do what I do out of a deep belief that humanity will better if each person is contributing (work or otherwise) to humanity doing what they are both passionate about and good at. So people doing jobs that they don't like drive me to figure out how that person can move to a place where both THEY are happier AND they are contributing more to humanity.
If you have a scam product and scam marketing that bothers me a lot less.
When you have a pretty good, mediocre product like Codesmith has that refuses to see how it can be BE…
Other programs are bad too but Codesmith confirmed to me that they paid some guy on Upwork. And that person coincidentally (Codesmith claims that no one currently employed there asked them to) posted garbage about me and tried to get me banned from Reddit.
I asked them to apologize and they declined so any company that behaves like this deserves to be called out in my opinion. I'm sure others do it to but I can prove this about Codesmith and I'm not going to drop it, no.
Launch School is doing ok because its model protects against the market to some degree and the market impact is less severe.
1. You do Core for months so then only people who are perfect fits for Capstone get in
2. The founder is hands on doing most of the work, so there aren't many people to pay. He could personally take lower income for some time to survive. Codesmiths founder uses your tuition money to go to conferences and write books and make lectures for Frontend Masters and students complain they never see him. Fine but you have to pay more people to run the program and when most of those people leave and you are still MIA - math doesn't work out.
3. Launch School's very small, like 20 capstone at a time, 60 a year. Codesmith had like 1000 people in 2023. The founder knows everyone by name and helps them try to get jobs individually.
So yeah Launch School ends up with like a 70…
I believe that when an engineer is working on something and it "just works" without knowing why - some day you will have to understand why. Maybe not right away but some day in the future.
Similarly I believe that about integrity. Integrity doesn't mean being nice or friendly or a good leader or friend. Integrity means acting honestly, transparently, and with good faith towards others.
If you lack integrity and lie to one or more people to get a job, it's going to catch up with you and you will have to pay the price some day.
In Codesmith's case they never taught anything technical of value. All of the teachers and instructors are former students who follow a script and don't have any / much real engineering experience. They lie about the nature of that work. A lead instructor who claims to be a senior engiee= at Codesmith has hardly any commits on GitHub because they are actually a t…
Surprisingly I was actually quite neutral until mid last year. I gave the pros and cons fairly and genuinely was in the middle. Recommended a number of people go there.
They didn't see things that way and paid that dude who went on Reddit and literally straight up defame me with lies... and no more neutrality until they apologize which they refuse to do and thought it was a joke that I asked for that.
It does get screened and you get a "unverified" for that section - and many companies don't care and ignore it.
Just remember that selling your soul has a price and it will catch up to you some day. Maybe it will take 10 years.
Look at how great Codesmith felt taking in $20M a year and feeling like the kind of the world.... changing the industry.... creating the leaders of the future.
All bullshit built on lies and when people figure it out, reputation is gone, money is gone, and you are worse off than when you started.
I've been trying to talk to them privately but it's too hard. Too many lies and I can't trust anyone there. I talked to them in good faith and they did nothing.
I tried to extend the smallest olive brand and they did nothing.
They told me they care about fixing the problems I talk about but I think the only thing they care about is keeping me quiet. No changes except half of the staff left since I stsrted talking to them.
They have a rotten seed there and until the seed is removed nothing will ever change.
I dont think this tone is great but it's worse than that.
First, the stats were wrong because they only included people who responded to reach out and submitted salary information at first. The "adjusted numbers" included all the people who never responded but appeared to have jobs somewhere on LinkedIn and count as placements who "did not respond" boosting the rate to 42%.
But the reason it is worse is because the newest numbers don't make any sense.
They published unofficial 12 months numbers but the 2022 numbers are copy paste from the 6 months report so the drop of 2023 12 month from 2022 six months doesn't look as bad.
On top of that, they had to check everyone's LinkedIn to count them as a placement so they are fully aware that all those grads are exaggerating and lying about their experience.
Finally, I proved they paid someone to post on Reddit - a person who posted bullshit…
During the boom times of 2021-2022 it had like a 95% graduation rate and 90% placement within 6 months.
Now in 2024 they have like a 90% graduation rate and 40% placement within 6 months.
HOWEVER, people list like "X to Present" for these fake listings. The bootcamp has like a 60-70% placement within 12 months now and as people hit like 1 year post bootcamp these fake listings look like 1+ years of work experience and help people start getting jobs.
So the TLDR - no - Codesmith is falling apart and I would recommend running for the hills - they are down to a skeleton crew of staff, half of who are looking for work.
The best bootcamps have closed down or pivoted.
Rithm closed, App Academy closed SWE, General Assembly pivoted to B2B according to their annual report, Bloom Tech closed SWE, Turing shut down, Launch Academy shut down, Code Up shut down, Episcodus shut down. Tech Elevat…
Codesmith is the SWE place where 80%+ of graduates do this by stretching their resumes.
How people get away with it all?
1. Companies not verifying employment
2. The person putting friend's contact info and the friend verifies
3. They use fake pay stuffs or offer letters to verify
4. The bootcamp lies for them for background checks
5. They list group projects as work and have peers from the group project do the background checks
6. The list a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn to get recruiters attention but they don't talk about it to the engineers and they don't include it on the background check.
Both App Academy Open and Codesmith CSX are not good now.
App Academy Open: AA paused their SWE program so it doesn't seem actively maintained. The only good thing is that it's the entire AA curriculum and not just an introduction trying to upsell.
Codesmith CSX and workshops, I have a lot more to say about this.
CSX:
- it's an introduction to JavaScript only and their goal is to upsell you to Codsmith by the end. They don't have enough money to dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars to building a free platform of unique content that doesn't do.
- their coding editor CSBin isn't even HTTPS and my browser won't let me open it anymore... I don't see how anyone can take this seriously nowadays.
- it also hasn't been updated that much. They could at least run their curriculum through ChatGPT in 5 minutes to improve what they have now. But substance isn't the priority... spend more time…
I wouldn't do a bootcamp no, it's probably a waste of $5 to $10K given you are in college.
If you can't get an internship, try volunteering for a professor/lab at school and if you can't do that, try volunteering for a startup. It's better to be paid $0 for as summer of real work than to pay $10K to do a Udemy-type course with human mentors.