Timeline

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.

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.

Oh I mean I have no idea how serious it was or how often it was said. Or more details on why. And it might be Princeton, not Yale, I have to check my notes and I was on an airplane with terrible wifi. There are ivy league grads who go to Codesmith and do extremely well so I actually don't think that would be an absurd consideration to do it after graduation if you changed your mind about CS. The link is about senior engineer titles which is a completely different topic, but falls under the marketing bluster, but has nothing to do with choosing Codesmith over an ivy league education.

One of their advisors said in info session(s) that his son who went to Yale was considering Codesmith or wished he did Codesmith or something, so I don't think it's all bluster. Look at this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9\_hxujtFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9_hxujtFQ) 1. Mid level "contractor" at Microsoft, not full time employee - called Senior Engineer 2. Codesmith instructor turned CS educator - called Senior Engineer 3. "Tech Entrepreneur" 4. Staff level manager - legit It's continuous bluster!

I seriously think your a troll and I try really hard to treat everyone without assumptions, but like Reddit keeps flagging like ALL of you comments as 'may be from a spammer or someone likely to break rules' I've repeatedly directly answers to you about what Formation is and what we do and why we don't have a concept of a placement rate so I can only assume you are a troll at this point. CA 180 day was 42% or so and this is 43% or so, so they align really well.

Codesmith people don't put Codesmith on their resume. They list their 3 week project as a year of work experience. I like the idea though and if you actually did do this basically a fake resume that looks like you have 1 to 2 years of work experience. I bet you you will actually get a couple of callbacks and the strategy grads are relying on to get interviews.

I've only seen recent days from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps. Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s). Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023. The best bootcamps we're ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse. Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE. Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.

That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads. It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad. The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system. Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they…

And this is he problem. Bootcamp's have been pushing people to put lipstick on a pig instead of actually preparing people better. There's a bootcamp called Codesmith that previously had pretty good outcomes and most of their grads learn how to fake their experience. They are told their 3-4 week projects are equivalent of 4 months of experience for background checks (that their employee says they sign off on). I reviewed these projects on GitHub and they were so full of noob problems that I flagged this and called them out on it. Their response: double down and make no changes. Good intentions but even the best bootcamps are failing people right now. And Codesmith costs $22,500 for 14 weeks.

I have a list of LinkedIns for Future Code people and a bunch are doing the same old experience exaggeration that students do. I thought you couldn't have any experience or a CS degree going into Future Code and now I'm seeing these people retroactively having adjacent experience and computer science degrees in progress or computer science minors. Future Code students - if you are reading this - don't lie on your resumes and don't believe Codesmith if they tell you aren't lying but just representing your "real capacities" and making your "perceived capacities" align with the real ones. It might help you get a job but the industry looks down on this and if you get a job this why and OSLabs signs off on your background check, you'll have to live with the fact that you cheated your way into the industry and the consequences will catch up with you someday. I've worked with a couple of Fu…

CIRR is dead and deserves scrutiny because Codesmith's marketing of it has mislead hundreds of people to pay them $21,500 in 2024, it is indeed worthy of scrutiny. When Codesmith had like 12ish cohorts in 2024 and 2-3 of them say that they only know about 1 person placed in 6 months, that's not a fact by any means but it raises flags and warrants questions. Codesmith's response has been to entirely evade the question. They clearly have 2024 data of some kind that they are publishing, but they aren't publishing H1 2024 placement rates - which they obviously have preliminary versions of or they can't publish the offer data they have. Even if they don't have or want to publish placements rates they can say "warning, placement rates are down, we want to double down on finding and supporting the RIGHT people for Codesmith so if you want to become a SWE, work with us and we'll be honest wi…

I was informed today that Codesmith is still signing letters of reference and background checks on behalf of OS Labs to confirm fake work experience. I care less that people are lying on their resumes and care more the Codesmith has been participating in these lies for years and years. Codesmith alumni, spread the word - 3 weeks of commits on a project isn't 7 months of unpaid work experience at OS Labs. Tell Codesmith this is unethical and let them know loud and clear. People are sending me evidence of this stuff because maybe they are afraid to lose their jobs for being found out and it's sad. If you feel guilty about this and don't want to be public - my DMs are open. I won't stand for this garbage behavior from people with no integrity.

33 is a pretty big cohort too for 2024. If this is true, I really wish people would do their fricken research and stop believing their bullshit marketing and leader. I used to have way more pros and cons about Codesmith and things have degraded to much over 2024 starting when they laid off everyone and promised amazing changes that never happened. You can follow my history. I'm pissed off now but back then I very rationally paused my endorsement of Codesmith in February when those layoffs happened and then a few months later when things continued to decline I actively recommended not going there. Now the leader is writing a book and barely involved, grads are less and less prepared and alumni complain to me more and more about grads who are faking their resumes but not accompanying if with the grit and hustle needed to fake it til you make it. Codesmith CEO: here's a thought experime…

Don't get me started on this because I've been hounding them for literally years on this and it's been happening since 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/ Every time I significantly push back you'll see like a blog post about someone who got a senior job right out of Codesmith, and they just adamantly adamantly believe this to the bitter end. So I don't think they are lying but instead are delusional. No leader there has a STEM degree, and no leader has been an engineer ever either in industry. Enough people for $130K jobs in the past they made them believe they and the secret formula to creating mid level and senior engineers out of s bootcamp that it became their identity. When your identity is attacked, you often defend completely irrationally. There are a handful of people that have gotten those jobs. and then when you zo…

I've been a massive fan of apprenticeships (some are better than others though so you have to watch out). You need 10000 hours to develop the taste needed to be a valuable engineer and a bootcamp gives you 1000. Doing apprenticeships for 2 years can get you almost there. You can rush it and you have to put in the time.

It's not that at all. They are gaslighting critics of Codesmith hahaha by countering facts with cherry picked numbers and then telling the critics they are wrong. But the students are genuinely rewiring their thinking to believe they are mid level and senior engineers. It takes 12 weeks and lots of tactics: - if you are ever negative you do correction meetings to readjust your mindset to be positive - You have to emoji like every post and an instructor apparently complained they didn't get enough emoji reactions for example. - you are told you have imposter syndrome and the solution is to follow Codesmith's resume advice to fix it and to trust them because you have imposter syndrome and aren't thinking properly about your work so you have to trust Codesmith's way as the "reality" This stuff actually works though! Like people systematically come out thinking this way and when Codesmit…

The way this has been framed to me: 1. the top couple of students usually get jobs quickly. they aren't on Reddit and they often aren't very engaged because they are in and out. others wonder why these people did Codesmith in the first place. when I've talked them I get a mix of responses: they were misled to believe Codesmith was more senior and they were way to advanced and we're advising the teachers, they needed some kind of structure and peers because doing it alone was emotionally challenging, and some people just wanted to do projects to refresh their skills and were misled that the codesmith projects were like work experience. I hear people here saying that it wasn't really with it but that they enjoyed the community and didn't think it was a scam or entire waste of money, just probably wouldn't have done it in retrospect. 2. the 2nd tier of students get hired by Codesmith. T…

Apparently someone said there are no support engineers available for March for resume and mock interviews? It's sad if Codesmith worked for you back in the day but it's imploding right now they don't deserve people's money right now. I can't believe one of their leaders texted an alumni who was considering Formation and told them 'it's a waste of money and Codesmith will give them all they need for life' Sure.... 'all they need'.... we have hundreds of mock interview slots available for the next week.

I can give my thoughts knowing a lot of Codesmith grads and what they've been saying recently: 1. Is it worth it for someone who literally has a Computer Science degree? (I tend to struggle a lot with building projects of my own due to demotivation or lack of people that want to build things with me) Placements are hovering somewhere below 50% six months after finishing Codesmith, so you are looking at ANOTHER YEAR before you get a job and maybe 2 more years, even going through Codesmith. Their most recent data shared showed something like 15% of people having CS degrees. I suspect that has increased in the current tough market for CS grads. I also believe people with CS and adjacent degrees have faired better than those without (anecdotal). 1. What did you build, what were teammates like? I used to review a lot of the OSP group projects because people asked me to and they didn't get…

I replied with direct numbers to backup my claims from CIRR reports and I don't appreciate you trying to gaslight me in public and ignoring that data. While a lot of what I state is a personal opinion, I clearly labelled my CIRR analysis as fact and if I made a mistake in my analysis, it was unintentional and I'm open to correcting, but I feel like those facts are clear that H2 2022 outcomes tanked from H1 2022. And I have strong evidence tying someone named "Will S." to paying for someone on Upwork to comment on Reddit who said negative things about me/my company on Reddit under the same account name. I would call those facts too, other than proving "Will S." is Will Sentance the Codesmith CEO and not another Will S, and I do not have evidence of who "Will S." is on Upwork.

I see 78.6% placed in 180 days in H1 2022 (301 grads) and 70.1% in FY 2022 (732 graduates). So that means that about a 62% placement rate in H2 2022. 79% -> 62% is a tanking placement rate. And that was a relatively better 2022 grads. Anecdotally and based on numbers I can find - which are not official and not necessarily accurate, show 2023 grads 180 day placements with something below 50%. And since this number should have been known internally since June 2024 (with at least an estimate) they are free to clear this up for the record. Even if they don't have all the data in yet because they are delayed, if they even have 50% in 180 days already they can let us know that. I really won't listen to any marketing spins on this that make it sound good and anyone trying to do that needs an integrity check. Codesmith can go to town saying how they are doing better than OTHER BOOTCAMPS but…

Yeah there seems to be a lot of off advice here. Both going for frontend roles if you have backend experience and telling people to go to senior roles they are not qualified for. The latter I've talked about for a while, they are sending lemmings off a cliff with that advice and I believe it's impacted their enrollment and morale.

This is a quote from one of their leaders from November 2023 in a public talk: "we don't ever ever ever endorse lying, exaggerating, there is nothing other than pure authenticity when you come out of codesmith in terms of applying to jobs what you'll say in interviews what's on your resume everything will be 100% truthful, alright, so stuff you read other people say, it's a weird thing"

Not publicly no, it's ethically wrong. I have been permanently banned from the Codesmith community for comments I made during a live session so I don't have avenues to responsibly report them. If you have some connections DM me. I need to discuss this stuff under an agreement because it's quite bad and they might have to legally notify all their people about one or more of these issues and I do not want to be involved and would rather not say anything at all honestly. My personal opinion is that I would not apply to anything at Codesmith with personally identifiable information.

Someone sent me this: [https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595](https://app.codesmith.io/coding-events/documenting-a-system-architecture-with-will-sentance/3595) Did they discuss all of the fundamental architecture flaws with the Codesmith website and why they chose to make those decisions? Seriously disappointing.

I'm sorry to hear but this is what people have been telling me and it's causing tremendous distrust because in the middle of that window Codesmith updated marketing to explain how 53 offers were accepted in April-May, appearing to cover up that 6 months placement rates could be in the 15 to 20% range, in your case maybe lower. If the wheels are falling off the bus and the driver is blasting Taylor Swift music and singing along distracted and not acknowledging wheels, people want to get the heck off the bus... If the driver knows the wheels are falling off the bus and intentionally distracting away from the situation to fill up the bus, people will shout at you to stay the heck off the bus.

Hi, where in the post did you see the quote: "People becoming SWEs today are aware of tough market, but persevere because they're truly passionate about coding"? I read "People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job" I agree with Kim's comment that a far smaller number of people are considering bootcamps now BUT they are far more passionate and committed and know what they are getting themselves into. I thank that to places like Reddit helping people be informed about bootcamps so they can join for the right reasons and I'm glad she's seeing that trend too. I disagree with OP's characterization that people are "persevering" despite the market. I have a couple of friends who graduated from Codesmith in early 2024 and while it's far too early t…

I mean it's very optimistic about ML creating more jobs and I share that optimism. But at the same time, in the past year, Rithm has had layoffs, Launch Academy, Turing School, Hack Reactor, Tech Elevator, and even Codesmith has laid off almost half the staff. CodeUp shut down. Epicodus shut down. Like I don't want to be a big rain cloud hovering over the parade, but there are legitimate concerns for a typical student looking to join a bootcamp right now that didn't exist 2+ years ago. And to not acknowledge them is irresponsible. Acknowledging them doesn't have to be doom and gloom though. Living in an imperfect world and trying to be bring positivity to it, doesn't have to mean you ignore anything negative.

According to Codesmith data, only under 1/4 of students had CS degrees before Codesmith, and a good number of those were people who graduated a long time ago and never did SWE, or recently graduated and couldn't get a job. So while I'm not saying to go there or not to go there with experience, but I will point out that the vast majority of people there, do not have SWE experience and the ones that do are there for more specific reasons than mentioned above.

Similar to other feedback, this person graduated Codesmith in 2017, and has had 3 jobs since then and her trajectory and path don't reflect what a person going to Codesmith today will experience. I love reading profiles about people and their trajectories and I loved reading this post, I'm just giving feedback that Codesmith needs to deal with the market today more directly and not the market they want to have. And appeal to people who they think will succeed in this market through Codesmith. I would love to read a profile about someone who is struggling on the job market and doesn't have a job yet and how much they love Codesmith anyways and how Codesmith is helping them the best they can. That is representative of the common grad right now unlike when the person above graduated and started their career.

Prior experience as a SWE or prior experience in tech? Those are two completely different things. Prior experience as a legit SWE, do not do Codesmith. Prior experience as SWE-adjacent or other tech role, consider Codesmith. Since you are answering this "Official AMA" representing Codesmith, be careful misrepresenting the company. The vast majority of alumni according to your own data had no prior SWE experience and it's not even super correlated to Codesmith outcomes (it is a bit, but not really). If you haven't seen your own data ask for it before trusting other Codesmith staff. The one off single anecdote about a PayPal manage graduated Codesmith SIX YEARS AGO and took THREE YEARS to become a manager.

Unlike normal Codesmith, it's a government requirement that people have "Limited or no prior experience with the basics of coding" so that is somewhat limiting for Codesmith's community I think. Like Codesmith clearly advertises that CSX is all you need for a junior engineering job and that Codesmith is for midlevel and senior jobs. So anyone who has done CSX likely has too much coding experience to join this program.

I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time. There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality? I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job. I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…

(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why) /u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own. I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term. The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates. I'm much more concerned about that than our number…

/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own. I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates. I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead. RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…

I wrote a long comment on the top level post, but all of this is correct. We don't disclose much information about our membership base and because of the flexibility of Formation, it's hard to come up with useful numbers that you can use. I usually suggest to find people with a similar background and goals to yourself that did Formation or are here now and find out more about their experience. There are people who get jobs in 2 weeks, people who struggle to get a job in 2+ years, and everything in between, and the experience those people have are wildly different - mostly resulting from different backgrounds and goals. We aren't a school or bootcamps and we have a dynamic program so everyone's experience is unique, we also don't ask people to write reviews. But we have a lot of strengths and weaknesses that I'm happy to elaborate on.

New info: \- One of the final employees at Fanzter who was involved in the deal didn't know who Eric was and had to look him up. \- This employee said that Disney had no interest in purchasing Fanzter or Coolspotters and that the purpose of the deal was to pay back the investors in Fanzter as a guesture as the talent was being hired by ESPN to work there and Fanzter was shutting down. Whatever you call that, it's not something I would show off as the way I introduce myself.

\+1 there is a common pattern of Codesmith comments that get 10 or more upvotes in < 30 mins. I had evidence shared with me of a senior leader asking people to comment on a thread, and it's really sad that it happens, and they blame declining enrollment on anything but their leadership and just have stern talks with admissions people and pay them extra money to fill cohorts.

\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported. From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates. Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point. At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things). So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is b…

100% I literally recommended OP consider Codesmith and was discussing in private 30 mins ago. The ignore strategy is because I mean this: I've talked to the founders of numerous other programs on here and have professional open conversations with them, and not a single leader at Codesmith has contacted me for 1.8 years now of me being the same old person on here every day. Instead, the CEO has badmouthed me in internal all hands, the outcomes advisor has texted someone telling them Formation's a scam and he'll give them all he needs. An alumni made very inappropriate comments about me in an alumni Slack that were screenshotted to me. And all this kind of BS in private and the public response isn't "he is dark depraved person whose sole mission in life is to take down the great thing \[we\] have built" (this was quoted to me by a student but I don't know if they quoted it or paraphrased…

/u/InTheDarkDancing, enough time has passed now so one of the examples of things I'm going to be talking about more is their "culture management" and how Codesmith strategically manages the culture (e.g. not just the slogans but internal processes to identify and manager any signs of negativity). It's not just a goal but it's someone's actually paid job to do.

I randomly stumbled on this because of a random comment talking about something I was looking for. Four days ago you yelled at someone for talking about H1 2022 results because you said they didn't apply anymore but 16 days ago you were touting cherry picked results from H1 2022 to promote Codesmith. Source https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/14341x7/comment/jna31yd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 I'm flagging just so others can see this in the future when evaluating sources.