1. I did not doxx anyone. I referred only to information that was already publicly available. Doxxing is wrong, against Reddit ToS, and I do not support it.
2. You stated as fact that I “posted the real names and private information of others.” That is a serious allegation. Please identify the specific examples you relied on at the time you made that statement, because I am not aware of any instance in which I did this. In fact, the vast majority of information I refer to I cannot post explicitly because of this, even though Codesmith has the information in public for whatever reason, it would still be inappropriate to post or say anything that would identify anyone.
3. I participated in the Codesmith CSX Slack. I used a single account, under my real name, and I never mentioned my company to individuals. My participation was limited to helping with technical questions on a small number o…
I participated actively on the subreddit from around May 2022 to the present, and I served as a moderator from approximately March 2024 to October 2025.
Someone asked: 'If he’s been doing this for years, why didn’t Codesmith say anything?' That’s a fair question. In March 2024, Eric Kirsten emailed me: “With regards to your posts re Codesmith, I generally don’t have any issue with them.”
If Codesmith’s leadership now believes my conduct was problematic. Responsibility for that breakdown rests beyond me.
Instead, information was later presented publicly in a way that I believe lacks important context and portrays my actions and motives inaccurately. In my view, this approach is unfortunate and unnecessary. I strongly disagree with how this situation has been characterized and with the conclusions drawn from it.
This situation has been presented publicly in a one-sided way that omits material context.
I have been characterized as a competitor who harmed a coding bootcamp. However, months earlier, that bootcamp’s CEO stated to me in writing that she did not consider our companies competitors and that our products were different.
I also raised concerns about security practices and the handling of sensitive personal information. Those concerns required multiple follow-ups, and an audit was discussed. There was later a publicly observable disruption to their AWS access. While I did not cause that disruption; I raised issues related to engineering oversight and security hygiene that were unaddressed flags .
I have been subjected to serious and false accusations, including claims of stalking and other misconduct. My personal email was circulated, and I was subsequently subscribed to unsolicited and…
It’s exhausting to have multiple anonymous accounts, many of which present themselves as part of the Codesmith community, repeatedly targeting me in threads where I’m sharing publicly available news, facts, and sources for open discussion.
As I’ve consistently said, and as the record reflects, I’m participating here as an individual, using a single account, expressing my own views. Over the years, I’ve faced sustained antagonism from numerous anonymous accounts, many of which were later suspended or banned by Reddit.
It’s worth noting that what gets characterized as “hundreds of comments” largely comes from a small number of long-running threads where I’ve declined to disengage simply because the information is uncomfortable. I want to find common ground with people I strongly disagree with. My commentary reflects my interpretation of observable market conditions and operational develo…
Do they have open source projects? I know for places like Codesmith and Launch School you can just go through the open source projects that every student does and figure out placement rates. Anyone can do this and see raw information - with the caveat that LinkedIns could be out of date. However CIRR and Codesmith's auditor considers LinkedIn "LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else" (quote) so if you go off of LinkedIn you can figure out the placement rates.
I can't comment on that right now but encourage people to spend like an hour digging into it themselves and correlating it with public messaging if they are curious about this, and if they don't care then don't! haha.
I have a THEORY, but this is just my person opinion/thoughts and not a fact.
This sub tends to talk about the most expensive bootcamps (including former ones now closed), Launch School, Codesmith, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Lambda School, because these programs are so expensive that it's a huge commitment. When you spend $20K on a bootcamp you are also more included to self-justify that investment. You are also not paying for nothing, and those bootcamps could have more robust communities, more staff, more marketing dollars to pay for "reddit support", etc...
The audience for these programs are people who are seriously committed, put in a lot of effort to choose a bootcamp, and want to make sure they are confident in the decision.
The programs like Triple Ten, NuCamp, Springboard, Coding Temple are: 1) much cheaper, 2) focus on advertising to a large audience, a lot of them have 'X% o…
You also don't have all the information on Codesmith and this is what lawyers can look at.
For example, this is from a private email from Codesmith's current CEO from March 21, 2025: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different." This was well after I started commenting on Reddit.
SOURCES (hopefully you can read them because copy pasting all relevant pieces doesn't fit in a comment):
[https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams](https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams)
[https://help.usajobs.gov/working-in-government](https://help.usajobs.gov/working-in-government) (USAJobs is the only OFFICIAL federal government job board, other than USPS).
[https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/employment-laws-and-regulations/](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-information/employment-laws-and-regulations/) Federal hiring is governed by **5 U.S.C. § 2301**, which establishes that hiring must be determined solely on the basis of ability, knowledge, and skills, after fair and open competition.
I have zero idea of what's being offered. I made a statement that having the public nominate me cannot guarantee me a full time job directly with the federal government (i.e. not a contractor, trainee, apprenticeship, etc...)
I was trying to look a bit and this is one of the companies on the contract, and it doesn't sound like it's a positiion directly with the government; [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/sol/sol20240710](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/sol/sol20240710)
Bootcamps work for a lot of people!
Look at CIRR data and the latest for Codesmith showed like 40% of people getting jobs within 6 months of graduating.
Launch School has like a 70% ish placement rate within 6 months.
These are the source of the massive negativity right now;
1. Trends are tanking and down. The trend is more important than the absolute numbers.
2. Salaries are down in these reports, despite inflation and SWE base salaries being up. This indicates more people taking worse jobs or tangential jobs instead of the SWE jobs.
3. Ghosts. Launch School doesn't have this problem but Codesmith's data shows about half the people NOT RESPONDING TO SALARY REQUESTS. Meaning that of the 100% of people who start, 90% graduate, 40% get a job, and 50% actually submitted a salary, so the "median graduate salary" for 6 months includes 18% of students. Historically far more people got pl…
Someone recently nominated me for something, and I received an email from Codesmith as part of that process. It made me wonder whether the security audit they had previously mentioned was ever completed, since the email raised questions for me given past security concerns that were flagged.
If Codesmith is operating as, or pursuing, federal government contracts, I would expect that to involve standard requirements like regular security audits and SOC 2 compliance. There was also a period in the past where issues were identified involving the handling of applicant data, which I believe have since been addressed.
Nominate me for what? I'm not sure what this is haha. If you want a job directly with the Federal Government there are background checks and legal processes and you can't just be nominated and chosen by the public to skip those. So anyone guaranteeing a full time job directly with the federal government is scamming you because there are legal processes to follow and there are fixed public pay-scales based on your education etc.... So I'm not sure what exactly this is. A sub-contractor job?
DEVELOPING: FedStack and Lantec won up to $118M government contract for non-IT training for the Federal Government/IRS - Codesmith will be involved (conflicting reports)
Source: https://app.g2xchange.com/FedCiv/posts/smoothstack-obtains-118m-treasury-ocio-non-it-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bp
FedStack is large government contractor.
Lantec is a training company with three locations in Louisiana.
This is a blanket maximum contract and it's unclear what specific services are provided or expected, and what "non-IT training" means.
Codesmith claims here that they won the contract https://www.codesmith.io/federal and made the following statement
"Codesmith now extends its mission to driving tangible impact across the US economy, with the potential to return billions of tax dollars.
Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired with…
I'm going to caution with the premise of the question.
So first off, check for yourself because one off examples of jobs or no job don't mean much in isolation. A small number of people get jobs from all bootcamps. Both Codesmith and Launch School work on open source projects and you can review the projects, see the contributors, check their LinkedIns and see if they got jobs or not. Launch School has provided a report for 2024 grads that accounts for every single person that started and you can see that without doing the work.
Second, it highly depends on the person. People with a engineering background, or experience at a tech company in a non software role, and who take adjacent roles have a much better short.
For example, a 15 year salesperson at tech companies -> "Sales Engineer" is a massively different placement from no-degree no-experience line cook -> FAANG Software Engineer…
Current price: Codesmith: $22,500 (14 weeks). Launch School "18% of your first year salary, or $18k (USD)" (16 weeks), Hack Reactor: $19,480.
Enrollment at Codesmith based on OSLabs Github projects appears to have dropped from about 1000 people in 2023 to about 100(?) people in 2025 and like a dozen in the past 3 months?
Launch School had 71 people in 2023 and 76 in 2024, so it's maybe capturing the market share since that's actually higher.
So not that many people are paying that much no more.
They were offline for about a week and then reappeared with a new website, without much public explanation at the time.
The current site lists three schools: two in the U.S. and one outside the U.S. Of the two U.S. schools, one appears to be enrolling for a cohort starting roughly six months out.
The site now lists four board members. One individual publicly notes on LinkedIn that they are no longer serving in that role, which may simply reflect a recent or transitional change that hasn’t been updated everywhere yet.
The most recent update to the standards documentation was made by someone who previously worked at Codesmith and is now listed as a consultant there, which is publicly visible information.
Separately, Codesmith’s own website appears to reflect some recent staff changes, and they no longer appear as a sponsor on Course Report.
Taken together, these are just surface-level…
BREAKING: Launch School Capstone 2024 Outcomes
SEE ORIGINAL: [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024\_capstone\_salary\_data/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024_capstone_salary_data/)
Launch School is one of the remaining top programs, that announced a small cutback from 3 to 2 cohorts in 2026. These outcomes are very strong though still.
Overall for 2024 grads they had 66% placement rate for ALL ENROLLEES in six months (74% if you exclude non-job-hunting)
Early 2025 cohorts have a lower placement rate but a little above 50% so far.
Overall this is a good sign as the only CIRR reporting school that competes directly with Launch School is Codesmith and their 2023 data had a 42% placement rate (excluding non job hunting) in 6 months, which is almost HALF that of Launch School.
This isn't magic, Launch School's program takes a long tim…