Timeline

I have to disclose bias because my company works with engineers later in their careers to help prepare for interviews and about 1/4 of people were bootcamp grads in the past. But I'm very curious how you even came up with the idea of going to App Academy because they sold their brand to Coding Temple and it's their course now as of about a year ago, so anything you heard about App Academy before then is completely irrelevant. If you are asking if you should go to a bootcamp in general, there are a very small number of people who have industry experience that go to bootcamps and my opinion is that placement depends more on you than the bootcamp. Meaning the people that get placed didn't need the bootcamp, they needed a self confidence boost that the bootcamp gave them... like doing a 3 week project and framing it as 2 years of work to help get interviews and feeling confident in framing…

In my opinion, Codesmith’s leadership appears to have overestimated the impact of my Reddit comments and attributed broader market and business challenges to them. Based on publicly visible engagement metrics, many of my comments receive relatively limited visibility, often dozens to low hundreds of views, and many are buried deep within long threads. By contrast, several negative posts about Codesmith written by individuals I do not know received tens of thousands of views. I had no involvement in those posts. I cannot discuss all of the underlying information I have reviewed, but based on my assessment of publicly available data, industry trends, and the overall decline affecting many coding bootcamps, I believe the challenges facing Codesmith are primarily market-driven rather than caused by my commentary. It is also my understanding that Reddit was discussed internally at Codesmit…

1. Both are good languages to learn the common programming concepts without too much language specific unique things that could distract. AI is making languages less relevant over time. 2. Either. JavaScript is used in all parts of the stack so I would choose it as my first language.If I was more on the data side/analytics and wanted to superpower my job I would do Python. 3. It always depends on you and your situation and I don't blank recommend a bootcamp for everyone. Heck even after all the crap I've been through with Codesmith, there are specific people for whom it could be a good fit still, and I would recommend it to people if it's the right choice for them. My main advice in 2026 is not read too much into past reviews and performance because most bootcamps have changed unrecognizably... whether notable staff changes or changing programs (where reviews apply to older programs),…

For those following this discussion, I believe this exchange highlights the core disagreement. You’ve stated publicly that you managed Codesmith’s finances and described the company during that period as a “clown show.” In the blog post, however, the only causes cited for Codesmith’s decline were Reddit activity and broader market conditions, with no reference to internal operational issues that we both were aware of at the time. That discrepancy is notable. My Reddit activity has been undertaken in a personal capacity, reflecting my own views and opinions, as I have consistently stated for 4 years. Given that, it is not possible to infer someone’s internal intent without direct evidence. Characterizing my conduct as a coordinated, bad-faith attack directed by executives or driven by improper motives is inaccurate and harmful to my reputation. If there are specific factual statements…

I’ve operated in good faith throughout this entire situation. If I make a good-faith mistake, I correct them as fast as possible, often in minutes or hours, and I've continuously displayed an openness to correction. Personal attacks like this don’t address any substance. Calling someone a liar, especially while remaining anonymous, through a rotating list of accounts that seem to primarily engage only with me, is easy, but it doesn't go unnoticed or undocumented. There are already formal legal proceedings and written responses addressing these issues in detail. I stand by my position, and I will continue to defend my reputation through appropriate channels. If you want to discuss facts, I’m open to that. If not, I won’t participate in character attacks.

In my personal view, there appears to be a strong internal narrative within Codesmith leadership about my intentions and activity. I don’t have visibility into how those discussions occur, but from the outside it often feels like my posts are interpreted in the most negative possible light. What isn’t visible publicly is that I’ve had many one-on-one conversations over the years with individuals who reached out privately. Those conversations were independent and not coordinated. Some people expressed appreciation for perspectives I shared, particularly when they felt uncomfortable speaking publicly at the time. I’ve also frequently played devil’s advocate in private and public discussions. When people made strong criticisms of Codesmith leadership or staff, I often tried to explore alternative explanations or encourage nuance rather than assume bad intent. I genuinely wish I were give…

RE: "lying" I think (my opinion) Codesmith execs have some kind bubble around this, where they reinforce this idea to each other, like a Slack channel where they share things I post and pile on to me about it, but there really is another side and you can't see my DMs by definition to see it. I have 1-1 conversations, no coordinated groups, and many people (completely independently) thank me for 'telling the truth' because they didn't want to speak publicly about it at the time (although that could have changed since this blog post because I'm sure people are very fired up now at what they perceive as an 'injustice' against me, not sure since I can't discuss this with any of them anymore). You'd be surprised how much I also defended or played devil's advocate to people who said some pretty negative examples about leader's behavior and I was always trying to explore why or look at from ot…

Yeah I pinged our marketing person :P Here is an example of Friday's: # Engineering Digest — February 13, 2026 [Scaling LLM Post-Training at Netflix](https://netflixtechblog.com/scaling-llm-post-training-at-netflix-0046f8790194?source=rss----2615bd06b42e---4) (*The Netflix Tech Blog*) stands out today. The team details a migration from standard SPMD loops to a hybrid actor-controller architecture on Ray to support on-policy RL. The most interesting engineering nugget is their solution for model portability: using coding agents to automaticallt port Hugging Face architectures into internal optimized kernels, strictly gated by logit equivalence tests to catch tokenizer skew. For systems engineers, [Shedding old code with ecdysis](https://blog.cloudflare.com/ecdysis-rust-graceful-restarts/) (*The Cloudflare Blog*) addresses the classic problem of dropping packets during binary upgrades.…

Hey, you should ping your Fellow Manager team in your channel to ask. It depends on your contract, your progress, your activity, etc... We're try to be as flexible as possible and if you are in good faith participating and job hunting we are more likely to extend. If you want to pause to do something in between its important to communicate it to the team so we have a record. If you disappear and we try to contact you over numerous months and you don't respond, and then come back saying you did projects for three months, that's not a good reason to extend. Our job is to be your coach/mentor in the process, and there is trust both ways, so 'good faith' both ways is critical to that relationship.

Mid-level roles could be an option if you have a network that can push for referrals. In the old bootcamp days, you would get referred by previous alumni, you get an interview, they don't really care about your experience at that point, and you get the job if you prepared well and got coached by the alumni who referred you. Now a days there is a bigger emphasis on hiring manager calls that dig deeper. Not just for red flags but for green lights, and if you don't have big tech mid level experience it will be hard to get a mid level role in big tech. Meta had this "rotational engineer" program exactly for this case to transition you but, they stopped it and shut it down last year. So that's why right now I recommend the adjacent engineer path if you can align something with your background. Alternatively a mid level role at a smaller company that is hyper aligned with your pre-bootcam…

That helps. Mini rant first lol: yeah one of the reasons I'm so active in this sub is that the job is often the beginning and not all jobs are the same. I find it very frustrating when bootcamps push people to get offers to boost their stats instead of helping people find a good first step in a long career. I would guess with a bank too there are more guardrails about taking initiative. I think my advice would be to look at tangential role at big tech. Look at Facebook: Business Engineer, IT Engineer, Enterprise Engineer. These are engineering/coding roles generally around integrating 3rd party tools into proprietary code.

If this is a larger company, then two things: 1. Take initiative to learn larger scale systems outside of your team. Even if you don't work on these systems, exposure to them will help you make a case for a big tech transition 2. Get promoted. Having a promotion within 2 years will also help your resume get noticed. If this is a smaller/non-tech company and you don't have much serious engineering work being done. 1. Get promoted. You want to tell the story of a rocket ship trajectory and if the work is so easy and boring then you should be able to rocket ship your career. Even if you don't have the scale experience, having a number of promotions will stand out. 2. Acknowledge gaps with scale and complex product and don't pretend you have experience you don't. You'll want to study enough to barely get by in those areas..

Hmm it's tough but I would frame it as personal project/exploration time, or a personal break. It depends on exactly what you did and how it all relates. If you have projects during that time you can generally list them. The leveling will depend on the company and how they level. I advise to apply to entry and mid level and let the companies figure it out. And if you still have some expertise in fintech the average person doesn't then it's a legal up at companies like Stripe and Intuit. You might want to check out Gauntlet AI which is Lambda School reincarnated for the second time, with less puffery and more transparency: if you have like a 130+ IQ then you can probably get in and do 16 hours a day of AI :P Their cohort starts Monday.

Yeah I actually have a few dozen and have AI process them all daily and write a daily newsletter, we post it at Formation to all the Fellows :D. I've put in a lot of work and iterated on this for months but it's completely internal and not sharable. Sourcing from TechMeme, and then dozens of top tech company blogs individually. Checkout something like [Feeder.co](http://Feeder.co) and they have a lot of build in blogs.

My advice is first ask yourself if area X is your passion, and if it is then look into the marketability. I think data roles are always needed but it might manifest in unexpected ways. Like being a customer support analyst at Facebook needs a ton of data skills. Lots of ivy league grads in those roles.

Good question and I don't know, we need more academic research into it haha. AI is a tool. And like any tool, use it as much as possible and build deep intuition. The problem is the time window is small because AI is powerful enough tool to fully supplant juniors. I think you have about 1 year maybe until the end of 2026 to either master AI or be left behind. No offense but juniors need to fight to strap themselves into the luggage storage area on the rocket ship but that's better than not getting on at all.

I haven't experience ageism myself so I can't speak for others, but I can give my 2 cents having worked with people of a large range of experience levels, regardless of age. I have two points. 1. Dunning Kruger. when you have decades of experience you are on the real expert side of the curve. But you have do deal with the bootcamp grad a couple years out who calls themselves an 'industry leader' at peak Dunning Kruger. Those people are hyping AI right now and the more experienced I get the more I roll my eyes at the peak BUT you have to also take AI seriously. So my advice is to look at AI through your experience and 1+1 = 3. [2.Be](http://2.Be) open minded. Kent Beck is one of my mentors over the years and he's an example of someone who inventing testing frameworks, signed the Agile Manifesto, and still voluntarily went to Facebook - which had basically zero tests when he joined, and…

Hi, good question... So first off, use it. Most of the FAANGs have limitations on AI use (wether its models, or cost, or tools) but I would recommend using low level tools that are either publicly available or very similar. Now, if you are learning you have to fail to learn. So ,second, put in extra time and fail and don't give up. Look for low hanging fruit, like deprecated code and use AI to refactor it, numerous times and in different ways, and pay attention to each step. Use different techniques and models to redo the same thing and compare. I personally broke a ton of stuff and Q4 was really bad for Formation, lots of bugs, lots of angry team members. I fix things fast so the overall product was fine, but just a lot more bugs than there should be. But I sure of heck learned a hell of a lot about AI and I have a strong intuition now and Q1 has been absolutely insane building o…

I can't disclose what Formation makes but I can say that we have hundreds of engineers doing interview prep at a given time and several thousand ever. But we're really not making that much money in revenue if you ballpark it and we have losses since day on. I personally make $0 salary, have made $0 from equity, no sketchy backchannel compensation, and even put more money into the company when I can. I do it because I feel like the world will be a better place if people land the right role for them and everyone is more impactful than they were. One of my hobbies is studying scams and fraud, and if all those scammers spent their energies on something value add for the world, we would be so much better off. If the bootcamps spent more energy with people getting outcomes then figuring out how to "creatively market" their poor outcomes, it would be better off. So I call out this behavior a…

Q1: Find WHAT and WHERE you are a top 10% person at and go there. Video games + Amazon Games. Ice Hockey + The NHL. Languages + Duolingo. If you feel average, you have to put in more hours than anyone and you'll put in those hours in an area of passion. If you spend 5 hours a day playing video games and that's what you want to do you have to figure out how to connect that to a company and job. Q2: I don't have a good answer for this one. I can give my personal answer which likely doesn't work for others and has costs, but when things don't go well I build. If I cause a bunch of bugs and feel bad, I don't mope, I fix them all as fast as humanly possible. If I take down the site, I don't freak out, I fix it as fast as humanly possible. So my answer is to build, but yeah, not for everyone. Q3: I think AI is turning testing on its head, see this: [https://engineering.fb.com/2026/02/11/deve…

I don't think it's going to pop the way people talk about it popping with circular investments all a giant scam about to implode, etc... The efficiency gains are real. Every day I save hours of people's time. If someone spends time on something manually I offer to use AI to replace it. And over time I think we do 3 to 5X more output than we used to without AI with a smaller team. That is undeniable value add and the companies are undercharging for that value creation right now. Meaning there is a ton more room for AI to grow and REAL cash flow. That doesn't mean there will be some investment mistakes that pop along the way, but I don't think it will implode the entire market like some think.

I'm seeing all junior roles of all areas being impacted with no short cut. I'm kind of annoyed that bootcamps keep pivoting to the short term hot area. There was this big pivot to Crypto, then to cyber security, now to medical areas that aren't even programming. It's hard for all juniors because the day to day of what you do is replaceable with the leading age LLMs and tools and bigger companies are still catching up and it's only getting worse. I've given this advice in other answers, but you need judgement through experience to get hired and if you don't have coding experience, leverage the non-technical experience you have. Maybe you played a musical instrument for 15 years, did figure skating, ballet, soccer, collect stamps or pokemon cards, played video games. Whatever you spent more time doing than most people, start by plopping yourself down there and networking.

Hi, sorry to hear that an it depends a lot on the startup. If you were working with other engineers, designers, PMs, customer support etc... even at a small scale, then you have transferable skills to big tech / stable larger companies. I would leverage your network, prepare for interviews and brush up on how it works, and cross your fingers. If you were the only engineer and didn't work with other people, I would try getting a job at another small startup, maybe target YC companies around demo day, expect to work on a contract for no guaranteed time. And plan for more ups and downs. If you have a background in a different area and did a bootcamp, I would target companies aligned with that, where your common experience on a hobby or topic helps you stand out and have better product sense there.

Hi, yeah my 2 cents through the lens I mention my OP. I don't have a pulse on the ratio so I'm not going to guess, but it feels like every entry level engineer, if you didn't go to a top 10 CS school, is a battle right now. My advice if you have a previous career/training/expertise is to stick to your lane and learning programming to do something more technical in the same space. Instead of aiming for a SWE job, you might take 3 years to become a Support Engineer. Many of the bootcamps that haven't shut down are offering some kind of AI thing now and transitioning away from pure SWE programs. An example is let's say you studied nutrition in college and are a personal trainer, this is a realistic trajectory in an AI world: \- learn to program for free for 1-2 years. build a website/app related to your business \- integrate payments, build data analysis etc.. \- launch an app for tr…

I didn't answer this, one: how do people feel about the change? It doesn't come up that often. If someone didn't get a job well before 15 months, it typically means they stopped job hunting and are ready to move on. And if someone hits that and they are in good faith job hunting, we can extend it. It hasn't been used as a reason that i'm aware of for someone not signing (I vaguely remember one person possibly not signing but I forget). If you joined without a time limit then you aren't impacted.

Quick correction: For newer agreements, our contract allows Formation to end the program after 15 months. That isn’t an automatic cutoff, and it’s not something we’re looking to use against people who are actively and honestly job searching. **Important:** If you’re on an older contract that does *not* include a time limit, that agreement remains valid and we fully intend to honor it. **How we handle the 15-month clause in practice:** If someone is **still actively engaged** (showing up, doing the work, applying/interviewing in good faith, communicating with the team), we can and often do **extend** support beyond 15 months when there are reasonable circumstances. **Why we added the 15-month term (3 reasons):** 1. **Clarity for accounting/finance.** An open-ended service period is unusual and creates ambiguity; having a defined term makes planning and accounting more standard. 2. *…

AMA: 👋 I'm Michael. Former-moderator of the sub, Facebook top performer, "the Coding Machine", junior -> principal / 2009-2017, helper of bootcamps students and grads, founder of Formation for experienced engineers preparing for interviews. Hi all, I've been one of the top five most active members in here for 4 years (!) ask me anything about anything and get official answers! I'll keep this open all evening and respond to lingering questions when I can. Just because you can ask me anything, it doesn't mean I'll have good answers.... the areas I'm particularly knowledgeable about: 1. Getting a job at a FAANG company 2. AI's impact on day to day engineering 3. Reddit bad actors / content manipulation / social engineering attacks 4. Coding bootcamp history and industry news and trends I give blunt and direct advice and opinions. I use my real name on Reddit. My comments are…

1. The blog post was not based on fact, it was based on his opinions as a blogger. A reasonable person can see that he is a marketer/blogger and that was a blog post. It was not fact checked, the methodology is not specified, journalism ethics were not followed. **I have a direct email from Codesmith's CEO telling me that she doesn't consider my company a competitor.** But somehow that was left out of the "leaked emails" and only ones that make me look bad out of context were shared. I mentioned above but I can only discuss public info because of legal matters, so I can't comment more on this blog. 2. As I pointed out above, your sub has 6 moderators, 4 of which are banned accounts, and all of those accounts display patterns of inauthentic behaviors (such as phishing for karma in r/AskReddit and other large subs, etc..) and biased commentary.

The NPR podcast references sources from a stanford study showing that SWE jobs are likely to be replaced sooner than later, and federal government stats on unemployment rates of CS grads. They state that they are 2X the unemployment rate of history majors, but I didn't read the source. They also discuss anecdotally with examples from 'talking to people for research' how top tier CS grads always had it easy and now they are just barely getting jobs, whereas 3rd tier CS grads always had it hard and now find it impossible. Like Codesmith has 6 month California data for 2024 students and the number of people placed who reported a salary and weren't self-employed or employed by schools can be estimated at 12%. Which is a massive cliff from 2023 which was a massive cliff from 2022. It's an example that demonstrates a complete and utter collapse of the bootcamp grad market, going from like…

Well if you become a freelancer or self employed.or go back to your old job, you'll count as a placement for your bootcamp and they'll be happy Codesmith's 2024 California government data showed that of their placements about 2/3 were non responsive to report their salary and counted as a placement from LinkedIn, and a surge in "self employed" people this year too, and more "hired by school" than last year. So it's kind of sad but if you get any kind of job the bootcamp is happy and you are kind of left for yourself.

Hey, I'm very familiar with this area, the transition (note, my company started because we saw gaps in people with non traditional backgrounds so that's how I know a lot about this, but we **do NOT accept bootcamp grads with no experience and I am not recommending at all to you).** I have a FAANG lens and that's my bias, 400+ interviews conducted at Meta, trained interviewers, helped create interviews, candidate review, recruiting trips, juniors, interns, seniors, directors, etc..... So first off, almost all bootcamps promise 'career support' and all these words on their websites, that basically we're not accurate. I got into many Reddit arguments 3 years ago with staff from a particular bootcamp that insisted it provided all the support you need for your lifetime (where the people conducting the mock interviews were mostly recent grads with minimal or no work experience). The fact is…

Please share any evidence that Lars has described himself as a *journalist* or that this piece has been presented by him as a *journalistic article*, rather than an opinion blog post. Based on what I’ve seen so far, the piece appears to be a personal blog post, and third-party references (including platforms like Muck Rack) describe him as a blogger rather than a journalist. That distinction matters, as opinion commentary by a non-journalist is treated differently from reporting published as journalism. If there are statements, bios, or representations where Lars explicitly characterizes himself as a journalist in connection with this post, I’d like to review them so we’re aligned on how the piece should be framed and evaluated. Absent that, my understanding is that this should be treated as an opinion blog post, not a reported news article. If you have information that suggests other…

You’re free to express your opinions. That said, your comment history toward me consists largely of sarcastic remarks, name-calling, and repeated accusations of bad faith over an extended period of time. I don’t view that as substantive engagement. I understand that some people in the Codesmith community strongly disagree with my tone or conclusions. That’s fine. What matters to me is whether the underlying facts, sources, or interpretations are wrong. To date, no one has meaningfully challenged those. Recently, I haven’t seen rebuttals of the data, alternative analyses or arguments to discuss, or disputes over methodology, only personal commentary. I’m here specifically for fact-based discussion. If you believe something I’ve said is incorrect, misleading, or unsupported, I’m open to that conversation. Point out the specific issue and explain why it’s wrong, and I will review it and…

Facts and accountability are foundational. You can troll all you want, but facts are the facts and your assumptions about my intentions are not facts. The press release I quoted says that "Federal selection followed rigorous evaluation of Codesmith's independently verified outcomes: 85-90% of graduates placed within 12 months, two-thirds promoted within three years, and an average starting salary of $130,000. Unlike competitors, Codesmith relies entirely on word-of-mouth referrals rather than advertising, with all outcomes verified by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting." Website: "Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired within 12 months, most land leadership roles within big tech & AI labs and many directly contribute to the world’s largest open source projects" **There is nothing at CIRR that says that 85 to 90% of the 5000 gradu…

I don't know if they are having it again this year but this is something to consider if you are making under $50K a year and live in the five buroughts: [https://www.codesmith.io/future-code](https://www.codesmith.io/future-code) But even in that program you have to 42.5 hours a week online (remote but it's very intense) and they suggest not having a full time job outside of that because of after hours work. I also have been monitoring the placements because their heavily measured on people getting jobs and based on LinkedIn a see a handful of placements from the first cohort a year ago. So it's worth looking into for sure but zooming out, even with all of that support it's insanely hard to make the transition right now. My personal advice would be to learn as much programming as you can and then try to get an adjacent tech job, like customer support at a tech company - leveraging you…