u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
So you have zero affiliation with Codesmith, staff, former staff, alumni, etc... and you are just a person that happens to comment a huge percentage of comments on Codesmith related content.
I covered that case, and you could be normal Redditor who happened upon here, and then is being used for manipulation.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
You realize all day long the counts jump +10 in minutes and then Reddit cleans it up later. I've had numerous notifications of comments on this post and I click through and the account is already banned and the comment is gone.
I will stay here with my one account, and let Codesmith destroy it's own reputation for not trying to stop this behavior.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I don't want to share the raw link because there is A LOT Of stuff on there. Seems like he hires all his lawyers, interior designers, all the people for their IRS thing.... you can try to find it on your own, it's all public and not hard to find.
I don't really understand why the IRS would pay Codesmith a bunch of money if all these people are just Upwork contractors that ANYONE could hire for $40 an hour. Maybe that's how the government works, but we need more integrity and value creation and not people selling off the work of Upwork contractors with a huge markup to the government.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well the team isn't any more qualified than anyone else to do AI consulting so we'll see if they are successful at it. Will Sentance has never worked full time at a real company.
The IRS contract means nothing as there are 6 companies and counting in that contract and they have to compete on actual work and haven't seen any receipts yet for that.
It's possible they didn't want to shut down the Codesmith brand so this is just like a holding company, shell/home for the briend.
Will Sentance seems like he's completely moved on to physical AI, manufacturing plants in the mid-west, robot hackatons, Oxford Fellow, Stanford Fellow.
Amazing how quickly he moved on from Codesmith and abandoned everything after personally making millions of dollars (based on court filling estimations) off of Codesmith.
The sad problem is that out of the $50M Codesmith approximately/estimate made in pure stude…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Will Sentance has been unambiguous about this. He thought most bootcamps were driven by profit motivated investors who pushed for scale.
He maybe be right about that but his OWN COMPANY had PROFIT MOTIVATED INVESTORS that resulted in internal disputes, chaos and lawsuits, that impacted the business and took a lot of money off the table.
People need to know about this four-faced liar because he took advantage of people's distrust of bootcamps, thousands of people believed it, when he was no better off himself.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well read this before you trust Lars Lofgren with anything... https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
I'm not a perfect human, but I'm fully transparent, honest, direct... wear my heart on my sleeve.
Lars has a black-hat mind and trying to pull me down to his level.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
u/Gullible_Mousse_4590 here is the debunking: https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith
Either you didn't know about all of this stuff and you want to correct all of your misinformation or you did already know everything in here and all your posts calling me a liar are defamatory.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I proved this here and yes you are a proven Codesmith alt and shame on you for what you've said and done online, absolutely disgusting and no surprise Codesmith enrollment has tanked to zero with people like you sneaking around with those alts.
[https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith](https://michaelnovati.substack.com/p/a-response-to-lars-lofgrens-codesmith)
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah like if he even just asked me for comment I would have pointed out his OWN mistakes in his own evidence. Like he didn't realize a key screenshot trying to demonstrate how I poisoned LLMs has a quote of me defending the bootcamp (because it wasn't labelled). He mixed up the timeframe of two events 2 years apart and framed it as me being a 'stalker of leadership's kids'... people are calling me a 'p-word' in some of the social comments and it's absolutely unwarranted.
Lars has blocked me on every avenue and I have no way to contact him.
I submitted a request to pull my personal email address from his blog because people were signing me up for porn subscriptions and he seems to have done that but didn't not actually respond to me.
I care less here about being right and more about the irreparable damage caused by him not fact checking anything.
8000 words of all the shit he missed,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it uses attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
It's up to you to decide if the lawsuit was relevant during this period of decline, but leaving it out of that blog post does not give you the information needed to do that.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Vote manipulation continues. I'm not saying who is doing it, but someone is.
Comment after 2 hours from commenting: +4 karma, 60 views
2 more hours later: -7 karma, 92 views
So the first 60 people that saw this had a 4 karma rating
Then the nex 32 people 11 of them voted negatively.
The participation rate in commenting went from 7% to 35% suddently, **but only one one comment**
Makes no sense and regardless of who is doing it, it makes Codesmith look bad.
Especially after Codesmith's CEO sent me evidence unintentionally of hiring a Reddit market who manipulates Reddit comments and has had dozens of accounts banned from Reddit.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The blog post does not even mention this lawsuit and the examples it attributes incorrectly to causing millions of dollars of revenue loss are out of context comments that received dozens to hundreds of 'view counts' compared to negative Codesmith posts **from other people** that received tens of thousands of views.
That is clearly tunnel vision blog post that started with a narrative around motivations that I believe is false and then worked backwards. In middle school that's how you fail essay writing.
Codesmith's CEO emailed me several months before that blog post when we discussed it and said: "I do not consider Formation a competitor, it is quite clear to me that our products are different."
If you want my opinions about the lawsuit, I have many, and I'm not sharing them.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can’t comment on any of this at the moment due to legal reasons. I’ve been advised not to make any further statements about Codesmith or its programs while this matter is active.
Anyone who wants context can look at what I’ve previously said directly and review the public sources I cited at the time. I can’t add or restate anything beyond that right now.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith gives away all of their CSX content in a single JSON file so you can turn it into anything with AI trivially.
The fact that they haven't updated it when I can grab this and improve it with AI in minutes is major incompetence.
Other places have open source content you can grab too.
But that fact is also why you won't get anywhere doing it yourself either.
It just goes to show you why bootcamps are failing and not even doing anything about it.
Icing on the cake is Codesmith is producing all these high production value marketing videos and patting everyone on the back for them and entirely missing the point....
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can't disclose exact things nor do I proactively reach out to people about it. From what people told me the numbers aren't good.
They removed all their highest paid employees and pay very low now. They fired the most expensive people and hired people in their place and paid them a lot less for the same job.
Codesmith is $22,500 so if you have 10 people every 8 weeks, thats $225,000 or about $100,000 a month.
Their staff right now:
1 instructor: $10,000 (they are paid a lot less now)
3 mentors/combined fellow: $30,000 (fellow is multiple people part time)
1 coordinator: $6,000
1 admissions: $6,000
1 outcomes: $6,000
Marketing/Career Support: $6,000
Overhead = 20% $13,000
Total: is like $80,000 or so?
I think this is why they are clinging to life, they convince loyal alumni to work for a fraction of what they should be paid... like those MLMs that run off of the labor…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh so it's Meta then. Yeah Meta doesn't take bullshit, and maybe that's why I'm equally firm about calling out bullshit.
Meta is particularly sensitive about levelling and people who are mis levelled are generally laid off instead of adjusted or supported.
Also most of the people were contractors via 3rd party and those are throwaway at Meta and not a path to full time work.
I wrote a letter to Codesmith about this because one student lied (he apparently APPARENTLY STARTED WORKING AT CODESMITH BEFORE HE EVEN WENT TO CODESMITH on his LinkedIn) and I suspected this was to meet the YOE requirement at Meta.
Codesmith defended it and wrote a blog about him.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Let's start with looking at an AMA I did 3 months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama\_im\_michael\_exmeta\_principal\_engineer\_1\_code/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1jz5i0h/ama_im_michael_exmeta_principal_engineer_1_code/)
Normal comments, normal replies.
Now let's look at a Codesmith AMA from 3 months ago:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im\_ayleen\_a\_software\_engineer\_and\_current/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1ilpihd/im_ayleen_a_software_engineer_and_current/)
Notice how **EVERY SINGLE COMMENT IS DELETED OR COLLAPSED BY REDDIT** except for the OP's comments and ONE question.
Most of their other AMAs - similar thing.
I'm not saying it's a fact that Codesmith is responsible, but like something they are doing on Reddit is very sketchy.
I have reems of similar documentation of this kind of…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I dunno, you seem to now want to be collaborative and that's on you. You never mentioned anything about stating that we do this to make money and I hope that's your opinion and you aren't starting that as a fact because it's provably untrue on our side and I can't see how you have facts to prove that yourself. So if you had this opinion the whole time, you are debating disingenuously.
I started the conversation with 'I'll talk to you if you accept the facts' because the facts are important.
The average person we work with has 5 years of industry work experience as a SWE. Why would they put a mentorship community Fellowship on their LinkedIn as a job or resume when they currently work at Google or Amazon?
It makes no sense whatsoever and why would they not do Formation if the name changed?
Like the facts are abundantly clear that very few percentage of people put Formation publicly…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I'll share your feedback with our team to consider it, that's what I mean about gaslighting, like I'm not saying you are crazy and I see where you are coming from and I'm arguing that I don't agree and I don't think it's a problem and why I think that.
Like it's a good debate and if a lot of people feel that way we might change it so your feedback is important to share and note so we can pay attention to it.
We improve through feedback and accept it.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
Here is what AI says to the question: "Is Formation Fellowship a paid job"
"No — Formation is not a paid job, nor does it offer employment. It’s a paid fellowship/training program (focused on interview prep and career coaching), not a salaried position."
Here is what it thinks about Codesmith: "are oslabs engineers paid?"
"Yes - OSLabs does pay engineers in at least one of its key programs"
Like I don't think you'll find anything anywhere that would make a reasonable person think Formation Fellows are paid roles - but acknowledge that edge case people might be confused because of the multiple definitions.
But in Codesmith's case like everything is blatantly twisted to appear that way.
This discrepancy is one of the 3 primary reasons I've been going after Codesmith.
Dictionary definitions aside, what the leaders of these companies do and stand for and their integrity matte…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The official on the record answer - we used the word Fellow because our industry doesn't have many competitors: Interview Kickstart and Pathrise. Pathris used the word Fellows so we copied them and used the word Fellow. So that our customers could compare the two familiarly.
I'm not trying to gaslight you but I Googled Fellow and this is the dictionary definition it presented and not any of them say anything about being paid.
The definition for "Fellowship" has two meanings, none of them saying anything about being paid either (I can only attached one screenshot, but pasted:)
1. friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests."they valued fun and good fellowship as the cement of the community"
2. the status of a fellow of a college or society."she held the Faulkner fellowship"
Formation is not affiliated with education/schools/universities and no where in our…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I'll give you the straight up facts on this if you are willing to accept them. I can prove every one of these statements.
Formation has flaws and this isn't one of them.
FORMATION:
1. A small fraction of Fellows at Formation put it on their LinkedIn.
2. No one says it's paid anywhere. Of the ones that do it's abundantly clear that it's a mentorship program for high performance and not a job.
3. We have not received a single request for a background check for anyone that I'm aware of in the past 5 years for anyone claiming they were employed by Formation.
3. The people who say 2-3+ years have genuinely been at Formation that time and actively participating. Maybe it's terrible they didn't get a job yet, but the timeframe is correct from what I'm aware of.
CODESMITH:
1. In my [reporting end of 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recen…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Google wasn't down because the team has incompetent engineering practices.
CIRR also has incompetent processes and deserves equal criticism.
In my opinion Codesmith is full of liars and exaggerators. For god's sake the founding advisor's own sign had a LinkedIn and resume full of lies and exaggerations.
I meant that this was the last straw about engineering practices because I had been privately telling them all kinds of problems for a while now and they keep telling me how great their engineers are.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I suspect you'll get messages from Codesmith people telling you I'm crazy, all you have to do is ask how many people were placed in 2025. They were very upfront about that number in 2024 and they currently list 102 offers between August 2024 and January 2025. Ask them how many offers that have reported in 2025 and if they won't give you a number, don't give them your dollars.
Just look at their own data carefully, look at the "percentage of people not reporting salaries" spiking on their reports. Look at the dropping salaries.
By all objective measures the data is falling off a cliff - and this data is trailing reality.
They know very well what's going on internally and it's offensive to me that they gaslight the public to the contrary in my opinion by still quoting old data combined "recent placements at Amazon and Meta" (yes, like 4 people... and most had tangential experience). Don…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Shame on you OP - according to Codesmith's website, you work there on staff and didn't disclose that anywhere in your post or comments.
This is an ad for Codesmith and it's really not cool to manipulate people like this. Everyone reading this, please don't fall for this kind of fake-organic advertising.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
# ⚠️ SCAMMER ALERT
This thread is full of Codesmith planted questions that are not disclosed.
**Your LinkedIn is full of lies - you apparently already have 3 years of "software engineering experience".** So you are lying there or you are lying here.
Sounds like you are just like the majority of Codesmith grads who lie cheat and steal your way to a SWE job.
Check out all the recent alumni who get jobs, open each of their LinkedIns and see how many months or years of experience are listed for their 3-4 week long project.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I used deep research and deep research sources some reddit threads but I feel like "serious allegations of unethical practices" is a bit extreme, the content was:
1. discussing outcomes
2. discussing resume practices and applying for jobs for people
I'll update the screenshot - I honestly only looked at the IK column and didn't read the others, including Formation hahaha, I'll give it a look and update in a few mins
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh ok yeah for sure, people can also get temporary jobs too, I'm just seeing right now people who don't go all in on SWE for the entire job search time having a harder time - it's such a difficult job search that people are just going back to their old jobs.
Talking Codesmith again since I know them so well, they had a huge spike in placements that 'ghosted' and their placement was verified by their LinkedIn instead of officially.
This is a sign of people giving up and going back to their old job or a tangential old job and giving up and not reporting it back as a placement because it's not a full blown SWE job.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hopeless but not impossible yeah.
So look at Codesmith's stats since we're talking about them and they release numbers.
2021 grads: about 90% of grads placed within 6 months
2022 grads: about 80% of grads placed within 6 months
2023 grads: about 40% of grads placed within 6 months (and very notable that there was a huge double digit percentage increase in people who ghosted Codesmith and got counted as a placement because of LinkedIn
2024 grads: no data yet, but based on Codesmith's little bits of data there have been about 250 offers in h2 2024 -> h1 2025, which covers some 2022 grads, 2023 grads, 2024 grads, and then 2024 grads.
Now enrollment has declined because they cutback from 4+1 to 1+1 cohorts in Feb 2024 so it's hard to tell what the placement rates are but they definitely aren't good.
Codesmith also should have plenty of information about 2024 grads now that i's 6 mon…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I agree with this point as of June 2025.
We (speaking for Formation now) use a ton of AI for helping people practice and off the shelf ChatGPT is not perfect for learning right now. We have a lot of unique product applications of AI specifically tuned for helping people have effective practice and feedback and fortunately there's enough judgement and taste and nuance in that that it justifies our existing right now haha.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The leaders that have left are the ones that stopped believing or were laid off. I wouldn't be surprised if Annie also left and moved on.
I spoke to Alina and she's a much more reasonable person and open to criticism, but she's in a very tough place with Codesmith imploding and trying to pivot to AI - which many programs have struggled with.
Alina: if Will, Annie and Eric all left the company I would definitely be open to talking, but with them there there is too much baggage of low standards and lack of diligence.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I haven't made a penny of salary for the past 8 years and i'm not selling anything. I'm pointing out how poorly positioned Codesmith's AI program is and how they need to seriously watch out for growing it through milking alumni - who are paying for something that they were promised for free for life.
I've spoken to a number of companies on the B2B side floated different ideas around. The answer - we want our fleet of 100 ML engineers to teach this internally.
Codesmith's AI program is maintained and lead by someone with I think about 2-3 years of industry experience, ZERO prior to Codesmith, has not done AI professionally.
AND IS DOING IT PART TIME WHILE HE WORKS AT MICROSOFT.
There's no way in heck this program can be good. No way.
I'm telling you I will work 16 hours a day to build a much better AI program applying my experience as the number one code committer at Meta and showing…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I didn't say anything about you. I was responding to that person about the typical grad behavior for why many Codesmith grads defend this behavior.
I had a rant that I deleted because it was not coherent. But time will tell and the truth is catching up with them.
Most people have already figured it out and apparently many remaining staff are one foot out the door.
Maybe the CEO steps down and Alina takes over and maybe brings in some funding to buy out the company for cheap and they try to build something new and sell it off for a profit later on in a consolidation of remaining bootcamp brands?
Kind of like what happened at App Academy. The founder finally left, the new CEO replaced everything with he own AI platform. They stopped doing SWE and kind of floating around as a completely different version of the program before.
Codesmith will probably follow that path and they really sh…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A good question is to ask why I'm like this.
Seek first to understand, then be understood is what Codesmith told their staff, and they should action it.
I offered to help Codesmith and some ideas to work with them. Their leaders didn't want to.
Alina confirmed to me that Codesmith paid some guy to post on Reddit and I gave her evidence that the same guy lied and tried to get me banned and that the mysterious missing founder of the Codesmith subreddit was involved with this scheme.
I offered to apologize publicly for any individual person who felt attacked by my commentary if they publicly apologizing for making shit up about me and sending it out to their community.
They declined to apologize.
Then I open up LinkedIn and see all kinds of fake made up stories that seem to rewrite history and promote Codesmith.
I hear about more and more layoffs even as of a month ago.
I hear about…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A number of alumni are brainwashed and don't even realize they are lying. And then they get upset or defensive when you call them out because Codesmith "changed their life".
A number of these people come around eventually and it's one of the reasons there is zero Codesmith activity anymore on here.
After people get out of the bubble they see the truth and they don't go back and Codesmith alumni network is also dying.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I commented on a similar comment but the person deleted their comment so here is my thoughts:
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah they do and I do not agree with it and would debate him on it BUT he is transparent about it, and quite blunt.
He says stuff up to fake it and that you will be exposed like 9 out of 10 times and it just has to work once.
I really don't agree but I respect that he's clear on it.
Codesmith has a giant facade that pretends to teach people and brainwashes them to think that it was Codesmith that did it. Look the other way and blame students for doing it.
If Codesmith told people hey the job market is not fair so you have to exaggerate your experience to get through. You deserve the job and you pass the interviews so this is a means to end.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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'…
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.