Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate you being realistic about the market.
RE: 3RD PARTY PLATFORM
Personally, I'm not a fan of bootcamps marketing features that they outsource to 3rd party services anyone can use. You are indirectly paying for that choice.
Second, in this market you need people looking for different angles that other people don't have and using 3rd party solutions is using something a bunch of people have access to - like you said - jobs getting 100 applications in 20 mins.
RE: MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
If something is too good to be true it probably is. The motivations of the guarantee make sense, but it doesn't work if they refund most people and paid all this money on Prentus and staff members in the mean time, company goes bankrupt.
We're seeing that happen a lot of places!
But the ideal in this market is meeting in the middle - you have some lower…
I've seen a number of bootcamp success stories over the past year (speaking personally, not professionally) across a range of bootcamps and I'm super inspired by the individual stories and journeys. Like almost tear jerker level of impressive grit and determination.
This weekend I felt really sad after hearing a story because the larger problem is these things just aren't reproducible.
Each person has their own story and the mechanics of how it happened are unique to that person.
The common traits are grit and curiosity that stand out as the top 20%.
Meaning if you went to a bootcamp, and there were 20 people in your cohort, you have to have more grit than 16 other people, so if they are working late, you have to work later, etc... If they are digging into "why" something is the way it is, you have to dig further.
If you consistently do that for 6 months post bootcamp you have a b…
>Our team is very focused on the bigger picture, being a rigorous and accessible pathway for a new gen of technologists able to help meet this moment (arguably the 4th industrial revolution)
Your team should spend more time on the ground with students and less time with the bigger picture. If you want to only work on the bigger picture, go into academia or politics.
Otherwise don't take peoples' $22.5K and use that money to fund your "bigger picture" explorations and ideas, or to fund the creation of new AI/ML programs.
VC, loans, and outside funding is meant for investing the future. Your students are paying to get jobs, not paying for developing future programs and so the team can go to conferences like Davos and write books.
I haven't made a penny of salary or compensation from my company in 5.5 years since day 1, and we have never had a profit, because every penny given to us is…
Yeah at Formation we support people until they get a job and it's very understandable that some people will change their mind and not job hunt, or change paths.
On a human level, at Formation, if you do 100 mentor sessions, a hundred practice tasks, and you change your mind about job hunting, it's not fair to get your money back or not pay anything. We'll keep supporting you and you are choosing to leave.
Ultimately the contract you sign governs the relationship though and if you owe the money you'll owe the money, so if you don't want to compromise and approach the situation reasonably then you shouldn't expect to not pay anything. You are working with businesses and you are asking all your peers to pay for you if you do that.
For example, if a program offers you a contractual promise that they don't fulfill and the contract says you don't owe anything then you shouldn't pay anything…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
1. first try free and cheap online resources and courses until you feel like a couple of things are clicking
2. look at Launch School - it's the "slow way" to becoming a SWE, but it works well if you are a good fit. The reason it works is because it's small and only takes people who are very likely for it to work for
3. consider bootcamps ONLY TO LEARN not to get a job. you might get a job, but you should look into them as a way of learning skills you don't have in an intense way and if that approach will work for you. Codesmith is like $22.5 for 14 weeks so that's like $1500 a week and for some people it's worth that much "just to learn", for many it's not - and the curriculum itself is like not the same as the public content they do - it's more like 2 hour long slide show lectures on a topic + projects.
4. consider an online masters like Georgia Tech OMSCS - this is ideal if you hav…
Sorry this is confusing, I'm intentionally not giving specific timeframes or specific details on events because it will reveal who is involved and Codesmith has at least two times tracked people down from Reddit with specific examples shared to me of that.
All of that is correct no?
1. Codesmith is arranging letters of reference from OSLabs (there is a specific person mentioned in arranging I'm not disclosing their name)
2. The example presented to me evidence yesterday was not about a reference that took place yesterday
3. I'm not giving details of what this example was because even the type of reference, time, location, people involved I think could DOX who it is.
4. As far as I'm aware OSLabs is still providing reference checks and as far as I'm aware, the person signing them is still Phil. Someone sent me a letter from a few years ago signed by Phil and this is not about that si…
Can you clarify what you are asking? I don't want to mistake it and I'm not 100% sure. I wasn't informed of a specific person signing letters today in a specific situation on a specific letter, rather that Codesmith as a whole supports and instructs graduates on and how to prepare for OS Labs background checks when you are asked to verify "work experience" there.
I think people are interested in scams, my Netflix and HBO are full of scams and this is far more interesting than those scams because it's so polarizing - some people think this is fine and others think it's completely fraud.
When 80% of people get jobs it certainly helps, when like 20% of people get jobs and they see this stuff it has a real financial impact on them.
Codesmith took in about $80M over 10 years if they actually had 4000 paying students, so that's up there with some of the biggest ed-tech headlines I've seen.
Anyways, my understanding is Phil is still an advisor at Codesmith despite having a new full time day job.
The person who signed letters is Phil Troutman who was Codesmith's Head Instructor for 10 years and left recently.
Codesmith's placement staff "help coordinate" letters for you if you have trouble.
And OSLabs phone number is intended to go to Phil.
The instructions presented to me offer support for "work verification", "background checks", and more and indicate that Phil is the primary person who does background check calls.
**The board members on the site, look into them:** one is Codesmith's lawyer, two I beleive are Codesmith alumni who don't advertise it much but show up on alumni lists.
The "director" is not affiliated with Codesmith but I'm not sure if she works there, last I chatted with her she was "on leave" and she reported some security problems I had to Annie - Codesmith's Director of Outcomes and Admissions who is present here on Reddit.
Finally, OSLabs tax records sho…
It's a rolling window, so the team is reviewing all the applications and if they choose to move forward with someone they will offer an interview right away, which they continue to review more applications.
I would expect the first pass to be complete this week or next week with initial wave of interviews offered and as we see how many people pass interviews and meet the qualifications (graduation dates, etc...)
Hi, we are processing applications and doing interviews on a rolling basis throughout March.
I'm not on the selection team but the entire application is important, from your resume experience to your loom video.
Having a higher score is better but it's not necessary if you have a very strong video. And having a higher score alone isn't sufficient.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
Formation isn't a school and doesn't teach any concepts like that. We are a place to practice problems, get feedback, benchmark, enhance your job hunt and do mock interviews.
We believe there are tens of thousands of hours of excellent materials out there and we try to help you navigate that.
All of our efforts are out towards our product and you can see form our launches blog how much effort that is.
Codesmith doesn't have dynamic scheduling of 500 sessions a week, source thousands of job posts a week and provide personal recommends and network outreach, provide a job tracker tool that helps you prepare for upcoming interviews through personalized practice and interviews automatically, collect and read about a dozen feedback points per person every week, provide a personal algorithmic feed of things to work on, provide a custom built on platform collaborative coding environment suppo…
CIRR is dead - missing audited 2022 reports were due last December and they have gone radio silence on where they are 3 months later
I've been very critical of CIRR before and the problems with it's specification with very fair critical analysis.
This post is not that, this post is about me trying to stand up for people being manipulated by a shell company that appears to primarily represents one bootcamp - Codesmith - to create an illusion of validation in outcomes.
**One of the misunderstood aspects of CIRR is that initial results are NOT AUDITED. The results are for 20222 were submitted in March 2024 and the official audited results were due in December 2024.**
The last sign of life of CIRR I saw was in January, when a Codesmith advisor who is on CIRR's board changed the specification to make it looser on who they can exclude from statistics.
Yet no audited results were posted.…
I have dozens of screenshots and PDFs,.HTMl logs etc...but I don't have time to bundle it up, and I would also prefer discussing it with their team privately first so they can respond.
If they apologized and assured me it would never happen again I might just drop it.
The person's Reddit account was permanently suspended along with dozens of other accounts and a number of official Codesmith accounts as well. When all of the accounts were suspended I also noticed a bunch of accounts that have been harassing me for a year now for suspended too and since then I have had relatively little harassment on here.
I would love to publish a case study some time because the behavior is insane and hard to tell at first!
But revelaing this might also help the bad guys get away with it by understanding the sophistacted techniques I used :(
The fake accounts would warm up by posting and commenting…
Thanks for considering, I am very upset about Codesmith's behavioral and I'm sorry if I come across confrontational, I think we should all speak openly about Codesmith's outcomes and stories because even amongst the group of alumni I'm calling out above - those people on an individual basis are all really awesome people - working incredibly hard to have more impact and a better life (many with families), and don't want to come across as judging those people entirely. I'm judging Codesmith for selling those stories as a magic pill to change your life, instead of being transparent about how it all works.
I 100% assure you that no one got an SDEIII senior role at Amazon out of Codesmith with zero work experience.
SDEI - L4 is entry level there, SDEII - L5 is mid level. I know 2-3 people from Codesmith that got L5 jobs (and I think at least 2 are still there) and those are extreme edge cases out of 4000 people.
These aren't case you put on the website as a core feature of Codesmith.
The fact you call their Leadership Principles questions "bullshit questions" shows me how messed up and broken Codesmith is... taking ambitious people and making them feel like the job market is a "game" to get a high score on.
They don't set people up for good careers and with good long term mindsets. It's all a game where the ends justify the means.
You completely dodged my rambling about how people lie on their resumes to get jobs and it's a fact from my research. It's the elephant in the room. Amazing…
Those placements were accidents and people exaggerating on their resumes.
There isn't a single person with zero relevant experience who had an honest resume who got a senior role.
Did people get "senior" titled roles at Capital One (which map to entry level FAANG) by lying about their SWE experience and getting referred by other Codesmith grads and get coached on questions in a special Capital One channel? Yes.
Did people leverage past experience that maybe wasn't SWE work but had a lot of similar behavioral skills and call it "engineering" experience on their resume to squeeze into mid level roles? Yes.
Did most people put their 3 week long project as 8+ months of work experience? Yes.
Did people who were hourly TAs at Codesmith put down months of work experience as a Software Engineer at "CS Engineering" that Codesmith provided background checks for? Yes.
People who got these job…
It's been 7 months now and based on the people that have pinged me on and from this thread (not sure if it's circulating with a cohort) the placements haven't changed much and these cohorts were described as a ghost town and worse than ever placement rates - some saying they don't know anyone placed in their cohort.
**You knew at the time of posting that 2023 cohorts had been doing half as good as 2022 cohorts (40% 6 month placement rate) and you knew how the earliest 2024 cohorts were doing and terrible things were.**
I saw an ad last week saying that 2024 was great for outcomes and "you could be next".
Historically they never did that though as far as I know so I would t assume but this is awfully suspicious given then anecdotal evidence and the massive increase is ghost placements demands at least a clarification. like if it was legit I don't see why they wouldn't say Michael. this is absurd how we do even suggest this, we obviously are not committing fraud like that, and they haven't acknowledged it.
There was a bit of an issue because their CA 2023 report originally had 20% placements for 2023 grads which they updated to 42% by adding in like 40 to 60 people who didn't report salaries and were verified by LinkedIn.
I asked them about it and they didn't respond (while they responded to other questions, so it wasn't due to lack of receipt).
Apparently a contractor/advisor did the report so I asked them if it's possible all of those LinkedIn verifications were ACTUALLY OSP PROJECTS PORTRAYED AS WORK and not actual jobs, and they didn't reply to that either.
I started doing some analysis but I'm way too busy because I'm working on so many crazy AI features that are so exciting and cool I just doing have like an hour to do the actual number crunching, but I really want to know what's going on.
It's impossible the leadership doesn't know about these problems no? Like how could they mi…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
This came up in my Youtube queue: [https://youtu.be/yZomz9vPqjg?si=QJ0DHU\_PrGEMMdHP&t=683](https://youtu.be/yZomz9vPqjg?si=QJ0DHU_PrGEMMdHP&t=683)
Apparently the CEO totally is transparent that it's not that he's "not a very good engineer" but he's "barely one at all" and that "the stuff I was teaching \[\] I was learning as I go", "when I was making my hard parts workshops I didn't know how a map function works"
So I guess it's not really a secret that he new practically nothing about engineering when starting Codesmith and he actually considers it a strength.
But he does claim that he made the Hard Parts from scratch. Which was late 2010s, so even if it's true that the original materials were copied, it seems he entirely changed to a first principals approach at some point long ago such that any recent Codesmith student went through original curriculum.
Great example here: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc\_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c\_03](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c_03)
"From conducting orchestras to software engineering"
1. The person's LinkedIn says they had 11 months of SWE experience prior to Codesmith and then 1.4 years of open source experience "software engineer" experience during Codesmith.
2. Then you read the blog post there and find out the person was an orchestra conductor with no experience prior to Codesmith
3. Then you ask a recruiter at Capital One that says to clear a background check for a "Senior Associate" role (which is not a Senior Software Engineer role there - which requires 4 years of experience), you need to have 2 years of verifiable SWE experience to get hired...
So something…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
Does doing your research include looking at reports and asking critical questions and then interpreting answers?
Question: the ghosting rate for placements went from 15% to 65% from 2022 grads to 2023 in CA reports, what happened there? Why are alumni not responsive and is there a problem continuing in 2024?
The problem, whether you think I have biases or not, is that I **do my research** and I show it to people. When things are good, I publish good.
There has been nothing good in the past 2 years, no silver lining, nothing. There have been anecdotal one off success cases.
Codesmith added 5 lectures of AI to their curriculum that are already dated and worse than the free stuff from Andrej Karpathy on Youtube... and they intentionally chose to go all in on an AI curriculum that they knew was changing daily and they didn't have any unique expertise in teaching.
Like I wish I had more…
You would think it's that obvious but Codesmith explicitly tells people the opposite. They say that you are a mid/senior because Codesmith nurtures your capacity to be a mid/senior engineer and that gatekeepers in the industry are unfairly preventing you from getting the change you deserve, so their job is to make you realize your ARE a mid/senior and build your confidence believing that so you demonstrate that in interviews
This is what they have directly said almost word for word numerous times.
They have a chart of your "perceived capacity" vs "actual capacity" and they the problem is that people ARE mid/senior and just don't perceive themselves to be.
Comes across like an MLM pitch... you are "triple diamond status" you just don't know it yet. Give us $20,000 and work really hard and you'll see that soon enough!
Do you know for sure that he intentionally copied Hack Reactor? As in his strategy was "I'm going to copy Hack Reactor's material and teach it better" or was it "I'm going to start a school, all bootcamps are the same, I'm just going to follow the curriculum Hack Reactor did because it doesn't matter"
Both are wrong, but one is criminal and one is a civil lol.
I've seen two groups of people
1. People who want to be "honest" (their words) and none of the career support engineers are helping them do that and they all push the "Codesmith style resume" templates and check lists that indirectly guide you to exaggerating your experience (which Codesmith says is unintentional)
2. People who genuinely think they are mid-level and senior - generally ambitious and intense people - successful in other careers - well connected - ivy league background - and they really think they have the grit and smarts to make it, but can't seem to pass the interviews. These people are definitely heading places but you just can rush things. In 2021 these people were getting jobs and doing okay, but in this market they are competing with their clones who also have CS degrees and actual SWE experience and they just can't cut it.
A lot of people in the second bucket unde…
I don't think I could disagree more.
I work on an interview prep platform, which is unrelated to boot camps, but we've shipped hundreds of changes in the past year. we're going to start announcing a bunch of changes publicly because we want people to see just how insanely hard. we are trying to help people navigate the market, read how we continuously challenge our most basic assumptions and redo things and rethink things to match what's needed. week to week and once a month.
and yes, it's absolutely a rough market and a lot of people are having a hard time but if people are paying a lot of money then it's your job as a company to really give it your all.
so like I said, if the CEO is more interested in spending more so his time writing a book right now about AI ethics, that is nothing to do with software engineering placements. then I don't think that they deserve your money.
But why is it taking longer just because supply is low.
I reiterate, If there's nothing that codesmith can do about this because of the market, then they shouldn't exist right now
So I'm trying to open the door for them to be able to do something within their control to produce the placement numbers that could justify paying $22,000 for.
If they've made all the changes they can and they don't think there's anything else then they're done right?
Their CEO is off writing a book about ai and inequality and doesn't seem interested to be spending 12 hours a day on the ground with every single alumni helping them in whatever way they can.
So maybe that's a sign that they've tried everything they can and these are the best the results are going to be and if that's the case, they're not good enough to justify their existence right now or at least their cost.
A lot of people say that but what do you think that means?
Like does it mean that people need to continuously apply and they finally get lucky at month 12?
Or do they need to do more supplemental work and then job hunt when they have more experience?
Are they waiting for a local maximum in hiring to get into a job?
Are people fishing interviews from competitiveness?
And whatever the factor is, why isn't Codesmitb addressing that factor to strengthen grads in the areas slowing them down?
Codesmith's CEO loud and clear said that Codesmith style applications have a 20% response rate so why the heck would it take so long.... someone could spend an ENTIRE DAY doing a Codesmith style application and get a response a week.
They don't seem to understand the market or how to navigate it and keep telling people that the same old same old works, gaslighting alumni, not making enough changes,…
The thing Codesmith leaders won't accept is that even if they have good intentions and even if they built a great community, they can't beat the market and the market says they shouldn't exist anymore.
Instead they have raised prices to $22,500.
I bet you went it was $18,000 and 80% got jobs making $125K in six months.
Now it's $22,500 and 40% of people in that time frame get jobs making $110K.
Finally, their CIRR numbers have always showed relatively low 90 day placement and very solid 180 day placement, so people weren't getting jobs in a month that often.
What I'm observing is around half of the placements I see... which is not many anymore, take over a year to get packed and their LinkedIn has them 'working at' their 3 week group project (listed as a company) for the entire time... often offer a year.
This looks to the untrained eye like the person has a year of experience and the longer someone is job hunting the more experience this item shows.
So I think it's indeed taking people longer because they need to have a year or more experience to even be taken seriously on the market.
But all that said, their ghosting rate of alumni skyrocketed and that indicates that alumni are not engaged and disappearing after six months so even if they are getting jobs and it's taking longer, they are figuring it out on their own.
I've been calling this out loud and clear and pushing them very hard for being deceptive and manipulative.
Their response: hire people on Upwork to manipulate Reddit and try to dismiss my posts and hire new people to push the brand with a refreshed story.
I'm appalled at their responses to my critical scrutiny.
Their 2023 California numbers showed that 2/3 of "placements" ghosted and were verified by LinkedIn - compare to just 15% the year before - and when I asked them if their contractor could have mistaken misrepresented group projects on LinkedIn at work experience.... no response. Instead they pulled the report and replaced it with an unofficial one using 12 month placement windows instead of 6 months and published these random stats about 102 offers accepted in the past 6 months.
102 offers accepted is a massive decline in offers per day from their previous numbers, $110K is a…
There are a bunch of bootcamps that have pivoted to AI and started to abandon/pause/not improve their SWE support like App Academy, BloomTech, Codesmith, and there are new AI-only bootcamps popping up.
The problem is that no one is an expert in AI tools yet and they change literally week to week. First it's Devin, then Cursor, now it's Windsurfer. It's co-pilots, its about data protection, it was about giant context windows and now it's about reasoning models, like.
I'm going to post top level in a sec about this.
I agree that the world is changing and SWE bootcamps haven't adapted, but at the same time the SWE market isn't tiny and it has trends and well the world is changing, there are tons of SWE jobs still and they are going to top CS students.
I'm using that to judge specific bootcamps marketing and claims that say otherwise.
Stanford CS is like 200K plus 4 years plus effort to even get in the first place.
So there's an argument that a boot camp could accelerate something in a shorter period of time, but it is not getting you to the same destination.
therefore, my view on this is that bootcamps are competing for the wrong SWE jobs.
It's irrelevant that the market changed, all that did was expose the above fundamental facts.
When I see bootcamps like Codesmith just yesterday advertising incredible 2024 outcomes (like they did throughout 2023 and 2024) they are absolutely delusional abo…
Yeah I've actually seen some Codesmith grads start an LLC for their project. Not sure if the IP paperwork is on the up and up there, but running an LLC teaches you something! haha.
Before I did Formation, we ran a company called Buildschool that WAS a free bootcamp, where senior engineers did paid contracting projects and the students learned by shadowing those projects and some became paid contractors on them later on was a really good model and a lot of those people placed and have great jobs.
The problem is the projects don't scale. Each one is different and unique. But like I keep saying, if you stay smaller and hands on focused on placement, it could work.
Yeah for sure, I've also seen probably every permutation of representation under the sun haha.
Ultimately people are responsible for their individual choice. If they over-represent and perform poorly, then it makes companies never want to hire bootcamp grads again (which is one thing that has happened a number of times). If they over-represent and do well, do the ends justify the means? A lot of this is blurry for sure.
The thing I have a major problem with at Codesmith is the majority of people have the exact same looking experience on their resumes, and grads have told me it's the only way the career support engineers advise doing it (as an explanation as to why -as Codesmith denies telling people to do this) - and then their 'sister company' OSLabs signs letters of reference for background checks backing whatever people tell them they did.
Codesmith's CEO has stated explicitly that…
Yeah I'm really curious what's working for entry level jobs. I have a very good handle through Formation on FAANG-mid-level and FAANG-senior.
As you know, I keep a close eye on Codesmith as the largest 'top 3' bootcamp, and placements are still terrible there and half the people placed have over a year of "work experience" on their LinkedIn which is their 3 week long project. I had some AI analyze that and it didn't do a good job to publish, but it was ridiculous to see maybe half the placements relying on framing a 3-4 week project as 12+ months of experiences only because they put "X - Present" on their LinkedIn and have been job hunting for 12+ months.... A bunch of the people also worked at Codesmith as a teaching assistant and they delay their clock by the time they worked there. So someone who graduated 2 years ago, was a part time assistant for 6 months, has 1.5 years at their gr…
My 2 cents is relative outcomes are important and as long as a bootcamp is consistent in it's measurement and explains the trends then we're good.
It's not good if see something like Codesmith where they change the goal posts (e.g. 12 month placements instead of 6 months - conveniently changing in a terrible market when their placement rate tanked) and trying to post metrics and numbers that look good, while insulting you by calling it rigorous transparency - that's scam behavior.
I expect Turing to continue to publish the numbers they have been and explaining the trends proactively.
I don't think Turing's recent struggles have been hidden or misleading anyone.
I would push on what 'market turning around a little bit in 2025' means.
I'm not seeing anything turn around for entry level roles and there are two possibilities:
1. The partnerships they are making are helping some people…
Wow that's a lot of hustle to try to find paths for grads and I think it's really the only way for bootcamps to survive right now.... by dedicating 150% of your time to trying to find any nook and cranny of advantage for your grads in a market so bad that each partnership puts only a small debt into the problem and you find something deep inside to keep on going.
We've seen a similar level of trying creative angles at Launch School (e.g. open source mentorships on Firefox and such).
Others give up and try to pivot to AI, like App Academy completely stopped its SWE program and only does AI - same with BloomTech. Launch Academy paused entirely.
Some of the larger ones like General Assembly and Galvanize are somehow keeping the lights on and I would like to know more about them.
I'm very nervous about Codesmith, which was arguably the top bootcamp based on outcomes until 2023, and which…
Haha Formation is far from perfect but we have an advantage to scale for sure because of our dynamic scheduling engine that gets better the more people we have. We match people up through hundreds of mentorship sessions every week, all scheduled for scratch based on what topics people need to practice, availability, and seniority level. So the more people we can match from, the better the matches end up being!
BUT! The downside is that with such a dynamic schedule, it's more likely for a mentor to have to reschedule or for people in a group to have to drop out. So to make it work, we have to have layers and layers of product and algorithms to handle these cases and make them as least abd possible.
Another aspect of scaling is our mentors. Because Formation doesn't teach anything or have any curriculum and instead we facilitate mentorship and practice: you might like or dislike a mentor…
I have an email thread with all of their leaders, asked them twice about why the ghosting rate (number of included placements who did not report salaries) went from 15% in 2022 to 65% for 2023 data in their government report and while they responded to numerous other questions they completely ignored this question with no response.
I wouldn't say the entire data is a lie but I would agree with you it's 'fabricated' in the sense that it's manipulated, massaged data, that was selected to tell a story, rather than just tell you how things are.
I don't disagree at all that some people from bootcamps had good outcomes but I also strongly believe this view is why in the past 3 years people ran to bootcamps as a magical path to get a $100K+ job in 12 weeks that was very much not the case.
Take Codesmith for example, which in 2021 had a median $130K salary or something. Out of thousands of graduates ever, something like 100 placed at the canonical FAANG companies. Almost all of the Meta placements were contractors who left within a year.
So historically what happened was this (I was there and this is what Is saw):
1. Big tech wants to source more broadly to have more diverse candidates than just MIT and Stanford grads
2. Big tech looked at local bootcamps in Silicon Valley - Hack Reactor, App Academy, and Hackbright are three big ones.
3. Big tech made relationships, sending engineers as mentors and paying to get first crack a…