One more question? How much interaction do you have with Codesmith staff.
I was running the unit economy of the program. If Codesmith has two dedicated instructors and one program coordinator for 6 months, that's about $200K. If they have a fraction of other people's time for outcomes, program coordination, grading etc... that's another 100K.
So if the program costs Codesmith $300K, I'm curious if this is a philanthropic program if the city of New York would pay $900K for everyone's tuition to enroll in Codesmith.
Seems kind of weird if Codesmith profits a huge amount from the program to subsidize its other programs.... like the City of New York shouldn't be keeping the lights on haha.
So just curious if you can list out the staff jobs (NOT PEOPLES NAMES) you work with in the program to do the math.
Thanks for the update!
Do you have a sense of how important job hunting is going to be yet? or an emphasis on preparing to get a job at the end and references to that?
Also just want to confirm you haven't started working on the OSP project right? I want to make sure in the end people don't list 6 months of work experience on their OSP when it wasn't close to that haha. Codesmith normally advise to put the entire time at Codesmith for their OSP on their resume.
Launch School is experimenting with Launch School Core Live, which is entirely free and might have prompted Codesmith to discount CSPrep.
Launch School works well for specific people, just like Codesmith still works for a dwindling number of specific people.
The main advantage Launch School has if it's smaller. They run 4 cohorts a year or so, and then the founder is more directly involved in the day to day, keeping costs way down. As a result they have a decent placement rate in this market.
So I am recommending Launch School but only if it's the right place for you and you can explore their free options to try to figure that out.
I have to be fair, both to sleep at night for my own values, and because I have a following on here that expects me to be fair and reasonable.
I don't know Will Sentance and why he does what he does. But the sad thing is that we're approaching scam or incompetence. One is illegal, and one is career ending. So even with the benefit of the doubt, I don't think I'm being too kind here.
I do believe though deep in my heart that everyone at Codesmith would like nothing more than to see their grads succeed in incredible jobs and I stand by that too.
Numerous new warning flags at Codesmith. Concerned they are grasping at straws (Personal Opinion)
Hi all, over the years I've developed a decent sense of the bootcamp industry from both the inside and the outside. For better or worse I have developed quite the insight into Codesmith. As one of the more controversial bootcamps (known in the boom-times for placing people with $137K median salaries who will fight to the bitten end for Codesmith, with others who aren't buying the 'Codesmith way' on the opposite side. "Polarizing" is a good word and the most innovating things in the world are polarizing.
Over the past month I've been pretty quiet as a number of current and former students and staff have contacted me to chat about things and shared their views.
I've organized this post into clear sections.
Just a disclaimer, I'm a moderator of this sub and I supported my founder in startin…
Yeah that sounds good. It doesn't hurt to do Leetcode problems, just do them following a problem solving methodology like I suggested in another comment and not just flailing until Leetcode tells you you passed the question.
The how is much more important than the what.
I would also recommend spending significant time. just understanding the basic data structures and algorithms. The bootcamps that cover them spend like a few days on them and it's just not enough time. for me personally, I had to go over the same cost that several times before they clicked over several years.
I worked with a number of people from a formerly top bootcamp Codesmith, where people do a problem a day during what they call "hack hours" and I saw the pattern a lot of people who didn't really understand the underlying data structures and algorithms and were just kind of trying to get the problems right. I'm…
Outco is a competitor to my company so I'm super biased about talking about them.
Personally, I thought they were shutting down because their website is half broken and doesn't let you apply, some founders moved on to new things, and they are threatening to sue a bunch of people (search Reddit) who didn't get jobs in a year and thought they were getting their money back.
I would compare Outco to Formation (my company), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise.
These are all different approaches and entirely different day to day, but all are focused on helping you get interviews and pass them.
I have always had pretty fair assessments on here despite my bias, so I'll give my PERSONAL OPINIONS trying to be as fair as I can be:
Formation: dynamic and adaptive mentorship, unique, unlimited mocks, small group sessions (3 to 6 people), 3 dedicated non technical support team members, only focused…
Sorry I should clarify the recommendation is because Codemiths system sounds like a HubSpot website with API integration and they don't seem remotely aware of any of the massive problems with their service and apparently Will doesn't seem to understand the architecture himself in detail.
Their lead engineer left and I don't think anyone does. I chatted with someone who corroborated this.
Like I would not be comfortable giving them any personal information personally based on my judgment.
Someone reached out who attended this talk and I now actively encourage no one to go to Codesmith...
Any alumni who attended - this doesn't seem like a system design talk but rather Will trying to learn about a system he doesn't understand well.
Did he talk about pros and cons of different approaches?
Did he talk about the decision process for each piece?
Was the system large scale and in need of complex decision making?
Are the APIs between components discussed in great detail?
Are the schemas and data model decisions discussed in great detail?
Was there any discussion of a technically challenging problem solved and how they overcame it?
Did the system make sense and were good decisions made? Like if someone reviewed it and thought it would just be one service instead that would be a no hire or fire.
I'm surprised your big tech company is allowing you to reach as a W2 part time employee of a bootcamp. I would run that by the conflict of interest team first.If you are a contractor with that much influence over the curriculum, I would double check the contractor / employee relationship in your state and the state the bootcamp is in to make sure it's not being violated.
Not paranoia but serious. Like if you work at FAANG and you are doing to teach people under any kind of IP agreement with the bootcamp, you have a conflict not to reveal any IP of the company and unintentionally transfer that IP to the bootcamp. You also might unintentionally transfer that IP to students who go and work at competitors in the future.
Sounds crazy but you can get insta fired at some companies so be careful and make sure your relationship with the bootcamp is clear.
Codesmith was telling everyone their o…
I didn't want to share but I found that too and was like what Stealh Startup is public on GitHub and called "Stealth Startup" haha.
Do you have evidence the person was fired from a real startup?
I think it's reasonable for people to not make it for all kinds of reasons, even if they lied about their background and couldn't make it at the level they were expected.
But I think it's offensive and absurd to portray those situations as successed to be celebrated. I've seen potential students who don't know any better asking a "senior engineer" representing Codesmith at an official event questions about hiring and management, that the person was NOT QUALIFIED to answer but answered anyways with bull shit answers... and the potential students were impressed and appreciative. It does such harm to those people to keep the charade going.
It catches up to you and that's what we're seeing now. A…
I'm currently recommending Launch School but only for the right people and you should do their free stuff to see if they are the right school.
The other best ones I'm no longer recommending for various reasons. Codesmith I'm suggested to not go to. App Academy, Hack Reactor, I'm more neutral on. Tech Elevator was amazing when they had in person partnerships but those have been dwindling.
These are just my opinions. There isn't a correct answer for everyone though. Happy to talk through based on your own background.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
Hey! Thanks for the update.
Do you have more comments about the group of people? One of my concerns is people who used to make a lot of money, like someone was a Medical Doctor, but who left their jobs, would be considered a low income student. Any insights on the backgrounds of other people?
Also do you feel like people truly have no programming experience and are starting at similar places?
So if you graduated from Stanford, the market seems great. If you are considering senior top tier tech companies, the market seems pretty good.
It's not going to improve for bootcamp grads unfortunately until we see what happens with AI.
The market right now is looking for top 50% engineers (illustrative number, not a fact), like good CS grads and experienced engineers who have done pretty good on the job.
AI is going to create a lot of jobs but unclear yet what they will be.
I'm very nervous about bootcamps like BloomTech, Codesmith, and others focusing so much on generative AI skills. These are skills that we see in headlines, but talk to hiring managers at top tech companies and no one knows what AI-skills they will be looking for. These companies have super consistent and careful hiring processes and they will over a couple years operationalize for AI and the skills they look fo…
What credible employment reports are you going off of?
The only recent one I know of is Launch School, which while still has a 75% placement rate it has dropped from 100%. So clearly things are not the same anymore there.
Codesmith has a CIRR for people that graduated 1.5 to 2.5 years ago which is useless. The six month placement rates I'm seeing for 2023 abysmal. Codesmith won't let us know the official numbers until March 2025 and we won't see 2024 numbers until March 2026. So people who graduated 6 months ago in Jan 2024, even though Codesmith knows their 6 months placement rate and could give a great heads up to people about the changing market, they won't say even one hint of it until March 2026, almost two years from now.
That's absolutely garbage and they need to do better if people like you are relying on these reports to judge the market.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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 not sure how you feel about this, but I talk to a range of alumni for various reasons and contexts, and people are not appreciating these minimal efforts being portrayed as 'all you need to succeed'-vibes.
It's creating distrust, like people believed that when they went to Codesmith 2 years ago and got a job, but now they see it for what it is and it breaks trust.
I know I'm bias because my company helps people specifically with system design, and it's offensive to me when Codesmith tells people it's SD is all you need, when it's absolutely not all you need. It's not even an overview of all you might need.
Anyways here's a great free resource from a semi-competitor to us that is 10X better than the Codesmith materials I've seen on SD: [https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction](https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduct…
My 2 cents as someone who knows a lot about Codesmith.
I wouldn't not go because of shady practices. It's a fake it til you make it and if you subscribe to that philosophy it might be a good thing.
I wouldn't go because they have demonstrated an inability to adapt to the market. They have been hit with layoffs and lower enrollment and don't seem to have to budget needed to invest in all of the changes they want to, or to that quickly enough. They promised a bunch of improvements 5 months ago, and we haven't seen most of them, or some people who perceive ones they might have done on paper as underwhelming.
In this market you need someone fighting for you. Launch School's Founder in that recent video said that he has personally had to refer and vouch for students way more than ever else to help them get jobs. We're also seeing Turing's Founder pushing hard for individual people.
Codes…
Yeah I was excited to see the changes proposed and I made a post about it. Then I got flack from alumni for temporarily pausing my recommendation to go to Codesmith to see how those things play out and make sure that they get implemented.
So now I'm giving them a chance to show that they've implemented all these things in a very long amount of time to do it so that I would even consider restoring my recommendation. but if they haven't actually done anything other than add 5 lectures on AI, then I'm not going to. I might even actively discourage people from going there now sadly if that's the case and the concern about layoffs and cutbacks not giving them enough horsepower to make the positive changes people need to succeed in this market came to be.
Like I went from recommendation to a neutral no recommendation and now I might tell people to not go there actively and I've given a comp…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
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.
It's not a pyramid scheme because you are paying for services and people are aiming to get jobs outside of the pyramid. People don't go to Codesmith aspiring to move up the pyramid and get to lead instructor, they aspire to get out and get a job.
The pyramid shape is more about control.
One thing Codesmith did well that no one else did was keep fairly consistent as they scaled like 5X in a year (now they are smaller than before they scaled but because of the market). The consistency came from having this unprecedented control over this instruction hierarchy. Almost all instructors worked as SWE outside and so they followed what the people above them told them. The handful that went to work on the outside and came back didn't last too long because they brought new perspectives on things. They realized that 'correction sessions' to fix someone's bad attitude and turn it positive, were ma…
Codesmith resident is a student
Codesmith fellow is a student hired back - they expend their graduation dates for CIRR which violates the rules but no one seems to care.
Codesmith mentor used to be a Fellow hired full time - they eliminated this position for cost savings, increasing the work load for instructions
Codesmith instructors are mentors promoted to be the primary teacher for a cohort
Codesmith lead instructors are instructors that get promoted to run a cohort.
I can try to make a diagram, it's like a pyramid shape.
Current Codesmith residents/recent alumni: how has Codesmith delivered on promised improvements announced earlier this year?
Hi all, I've been talking to a couple of residents recently and wanted to get a broader view on how Codesmith is doing towards it's suite of announced improvements from February (five months ago).
At the time I said I would revisit how they did in a few months and time flies, it's already been five months!!
Please comment (or DM me uncomfortable to comment and I'm happy to need your messages confidential) if you have insight into if any of the following have happened:
(From [source](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech))
1. Are in-person co-working spaces available in NYC and SF?
2. TypeScript integration into the curriculum?
3. Next.js integration into the curriculum?
4. AI copilots…
Congrats! So Future Code NYC isn't normal Codesmith. The day to day is similar but the program is meant for people with very minimal programming experience at all, and not the same bar as normal Codesmith. If they told you that then I would be very concerned.
So I would expect to aim for much lower and adjacent-SWE jobs than people in the immersive. I would be very concerned if they tell you you can expect the same outcomes as normal Codesmith because those outcomes are not doing well right now and their strategy isn't working as well in this market and those people generally have more programming experience than you should have.
I would also expect them to have hiring partnerships setup with the city of NY and that will be key in this market.
If they don't have partnerships setup and they are telling you you will get a similar job to the immersive, then I would seriously consider lea…
Hi, the reputation filters use AI so it's not so much people who have no history, but people who perhaps us the same computer to have a number of accounts that are all used to vote etc... It looks like your comment went through.
Congrats! So Future Code NYC isn't normal Codesmith. The day to day is similar but the program is meant for people with very minimal programming experience at all, and not the same bar as normal Codesmith. If they told you that then I would be very concerned.
So I would expect to aim for much lower and adjacent-SWE jobs than people in the immersive. I would be very concerned if they tell you you can expect the same outcomes as normal Codesmith because those outcomes are not doing well right now and their strategy isn't working as well in this market and those people generally have more programming experience than you should have.
I would also expect them to ha…
Where am I pumping out my company exactly? Where are any recent examples I was promoting not in response to someone asking?
You know Reddit wiped out a dozen pro Codesmith suspicious accounts and two moderators of their sub, and a lot of the threads where I talked about it were in response to those accounts attacking me or my company. Hasn't happened in weeks since those accounts were permanently suspended by Reddit.
"shit ton" doesn't matter if more people aren't getting jobs. It means it's theoretically.pososnle to get.s job out of a bootcamp.
But right now it's an edge case and not a reproducible outcome.
I also have audited Codesmith students later in their careers and at least 10% (rounding down a lot to account for error) that got jobs don't currently have a SWE job anymore (or any job) according to LinkedIn... so there's more to it than just getting that job, there is keeping it. A lot of people who do have jobs have a very jumpy early career moving from job to job, unlike CS grads.
Bootcamp grads don't just have a hard time getting jobs but they have a harder time progressing once the pure grit and hustle wears off and gaps become apparent. Some do extremely well but most don't.
There are no explicit requirements or quotas and the rule in the contract is broader that you have to be actively job hunting and intending to get a new job.
We are so adaptive to each person, having exact quotas doesn't make sense.
We see our role like a coach or personal trainer and we need to have a trusting partnership with ways. Meaning if you are seeing Formation as a transactional way to get a job for the lowest cost you can, it's not the right mindset. You have to trust us and our advice that we are trying to help you achieve your goal, and we have to trust that you are showing up and working with us.
If you aren't ready to interview we don't want you applying to jobs. If you are ready we want you applying to jobs. The advice depends on you and your progress, traction, strengths and weaknesses, feedback etc....
With flat rate unlimited (which is still offered but unlisted on the site right now) there is no timeframe yeah. We have a small number of people with us for quite a long time and still going as a result.
With the performance based unlimited (our main option right now) there is a 15 month cap (which can be extended because of personal circumstances if approved).
This is why we might not accept you if you only have like two companies you're targeting or will only accept an offer at a very small number of companies. We don't know what the market's going to be like in a year and if we did our part and prepared you for all the interviews and your passing all of the mock interviews and doing great and those companies just aren't hiring. there's nothing we can do about it but we did our part.
So maybe I should emphasize that you're primarily paying to confidently get your skills and intervi…
You could leave (at the $500 a week refund policy rate).
You could target new companies and keep going.
So our process has two parts. First, you go through a number of challenges to practice and benchmark until your raw skills are at the top company bar. Second, as you get real interviews, we help you do mocks for the types you have and strategize for the process (e.g. push out interviews if you aren't ready).
The first part is like getting in shape at the gym. The second part is like practicing a race before the final race.
So if you change your targets it's really the second sort you have to keep doing and adjust and not the first.
Typically around 5 companies yeah, but you have to be open minded and.not limited to just them, because we have no control over the market. We can prepare you the best we can for those companies but if you interviewed at them all and didn't get an offer and you give up then you can leave Formation, but you won't get a refund.
If you are targeting just 5 companies I would recommend the 3 months package we currently offer. It's the month to month subscription with a discount if you pay for 3 months upfront for $6000 (as of July 2024). We prepare you the best we can during that time and then you either get an offer and leave or you leave and wrap up your job hunt on your own.
Hi, thanks for the question, We don't support people only looking at one or two companies. we do support you if you have a small number of dream companies, but are open to taking a good offer that you're happy about at a different company as well. You could be the most prepared possible and due to factors beyond your control just not pass and our job is to get you the most prepared possible, but no one can guarantee that you'll pass a specific interview.
Yeah It's very intense community, I think because they spend so long in the ecosystem and then they see it working so they believe. Codesmith is a similar kind of community. It's extremely powerful when the results are really good, but then the community will fall apart when the results are not good and ultimately it's what the graduates see in their own cohorts and their previous cohorts and how the company explains that to them and presents themselves.
Launch school's outcomes have gone down a little bit, but the way that the team has explained it has maintained trust with the students.
Codesmith is losing their students right now from the people that I talk to who are either current or recent alumni and people aren't buying the message. They have no visibility into outcomes and are judging based on their cohort and the previous cohort they work with.
Ironically the Codesmith CEO…
NEWS: Code Fellows has ceased operations and shut down. Ending an 11 year legacy.
Source: https://www.codefellows.org/
The message they shared is really bittersweet and you can see the passion and impact they had over the years but they just couldn't make it work as the market has permanently changed.
They tried to adapt and innovate but at some point it's time to look elsewhere to have impact the world because the market is the market.
"Achieving greatness at the scale we’ve reached at Code Fellows requires exceptional people working together tirelessly toward a shared mission, under shared values. It has been a privilege and an honor to be part of this journey and to witness the incredible outcomes of our mission-driven work. From the beginning, our mission at Code Fellows was to provide transformative, career-focused education that opened doors for people from all backgrounds. Our…
I mean they outline every single person who started and what happened to them.
In 2020 and 2021, one person each year didn't graduate.
Codesmith's graduation rate is like 95% too, doesn't seem that unreasonable, if you have a program that people spent months and months preparing for and preparing their entire day to day life around so that they can make it work.
The only reason people might drop is unexpected chronic illness or unexpected military deployment and maybe there are cases to exclude those from the denominator?
cc u/cglee. Nice thing about the Founder being here is you can just ask haha.
Yeah having to complete Core first is akin to people doing CSX first for Codesmith, but even higher bar. It helps Launch School Capstone be very sure about the people they let in. Core isn't free, but it's also a lot cheaper than if you went straight into a bootcamp.
Definitely need to understand the whole picture, no shortcuts in the bootcamp world.
NEWS: Launch School Official 2023 Outcomes: 75% placement in 6 months but time to placement almost double peak year at 14 weeks (still blows away competition). Impressive transparency. Described changes in response to market in detail and their impact 👏
DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions and feelings, when I state numbers or data, it is based on the source provided or other data that I have internally to inform my comments, by I'm human and not perfect, and welcome any corrections.
Source: https://public.launchschool.com/salaries
Video: https://youtu.be/_v1fccQ7OGM?si=s-Utxc4kdJVHkq7S
Launch School has great transparency so I don't really need to interpret things.... just read the data and see what happened to every person. It's like one of those farms where you can track the carrot you ate from seed to table lol.
Commentary:
1. Placement rate within 6 months is crushing at…
We don't have any discounts right now. We have a number of ways you can pay that can help defer the cost but not outright discounts or scholarships. We occasionally have small (a few hundred dollars off) discounts for people applying via different organizations like Women Who Code and Techaria, but I don't think we have any active right now - possibly for Taro Premium members).
We have a special program we run for companies where they pay for Formation for people, but that's for current college students preparing for internship interviews.
I commented below, but yeah it's not a "bootcamp" so happy to talk more about how it works day to day as well. But the people that have posted in here that I've seen, are people who went to bootcamps in the past and were more junior. I don't know the identifies of all of them, but the ones I can tell from their posts.
If you our blog here: [https://formation.dev/blog/outcomes-report-first-half-of-2024/](https://formation.dev/blog/outcomes-report-first-half-of-2024/), you can see we do have less experienced people (... 0 YOE can include contract work, internships, etc... so it's not necessarily NOTHING, but it's "junior".
Every single Meta placement was Senior or Mid-Level and you can see a ton of them in that post as well, and it's help boost those 3+ YOE numbers.
A senior Meta offer is in the ballpark of $500K first year TC and we have a number of those in there. Based on your Linked…
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation and can give the company's stance on this but encourage others to share their views and experiences.
Our base case is FAANG senior and mid level engineers - people with 2 to 10 years of experience.
Some recent placements from the past 6 months we wrote up:
https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-how-drew-bartlett-landed-a-role-at-atlassian/
https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/
https://formation.dev/blog/fellow-spotlight-sofie-graham-three-offers-from-faang-companies/
Of the new Fellows who introduced recently in order the last five we have:
- 4 years at Microsoft
- 4 years at Atlassian
- senior engineer at consultancy
- returning Fellow from 3 years ago: mid level / senior
- 8 years at Nordstrom
Now that said, there we do work with people more junior and during the boom times we do more often, so you would interact with mo…
Yeah a minor gift is fairly common and I have no problem with it IF DONE PROPERLY.
1. Only one of the people disclosed the "gift". All of them should have.
2. Not everyone appears to have gotten the email. Vast majority of the reviews during April and May mention being placed at some point in the past months to years.
Thought Experiment: If I posted saying any Codesmith grad who didn't get a job, post a review on Course Report and send me a screenshot and I'll Venmo you $50. (THIS IS NOT AN OFFER - IT'S A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT)
Does that sound fair and reasonable? If not, why is it ok the other way around.
🚨BREAKING NEWS: Course Report (bootcamp review website) acquired by Career.io - a job hunting platform and placement service.
Course Report is now owned by a job search conglomerate "Career.io" ending an era of it running as an independent bootcamp review website.
I'm breaking this news and have not reached out yet to Course Report or Career.io for comment on this matter.
DISCLOSURE: This post is my personal opinions and does not reflect the views of my company. I have not heard of Career.io before but their services to overlap with my company (specifically "interview prep services") so I might have a conflict of interest discussing them but as of this post I have no idea who they are an first heard of them in discovering they now own Course Report.
# Background Story - How I discovered this, and the decline of Course Report:
# 1. Codesmith Paying for Reviews
I have been watching…
I agree with all of this about the industry and appreciate your transparency here! Thanks for sharing.
Number 2 is the biggest problem with the whole bootcamp industry. Codesmith's a good example of becoming desperate because their entire reputation is about six figure outcomes. They loudly published 53 offers accepted in April-May 2024 and even added that stat to their official curriculum docs... That number is already far under pace from their recent CIRR outcomes but June-July 2024 is looking to be half that! If they don't give us an updated June July numbers, and leave up that cherry picked sample set - which is already worse than previous numbers, it's graping at straws and extremely misleading that will push away students who know better.
TLDR: if you bet the house on outcomes and the market is against you, you give up control over your destiny.
Number 3 is a hard one for progra…
This is true but there are some caveats.
1. not a single boot camp has demonstrated the ability to scale. the best boot camps that try to scale have grown by multiplying out their staff and have hit big problems. generally what worked when they were smaller. oftentimes where a founder was personally really involved and carrying a lot of the program, and then that doesn't scale in the program starts doing things like lowering the entrance bar as more people drop out etc.
so if boot camps are consolidated, I don't know if that would necessarily be a good thing. it might be an industry that just needs a lot of small players that each take like 10 to 20 students at a time.
2. I think that there's a possibility that not even the best will survive. Codesmith - one of the previous best bootcamps - when they announce downsizing 4 months ago, they said that they're going to be making changes…
NEWS: Rithm School is shutting down - the doom and gloom is real - and it pains me to say so 😢. An update on bootcamp closures as of July 2024.
An update on recent closures, layoffs, and pauses.
This is not a doom and gloom post but a wake up call to realize that things are not running smoothly right now and to be cautious about dropping $20K on a bootcamp because they told you things are great.
Marketing might be slick, CEO's might promise a rebounding market, but the fact of the matter is that clearly bootcamps are not doing well. Course Report can no longer be trusted - doesn't want to do anything about evidence of reviews being paid for.
Those that are surviving are questioning if it's the thing they want to do with their lives. The Codesmith CEO's dream is to become a [Lego Youtuber](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O8XsX7YCbM) for example. The long item App Academy founder an…
Not App Academy student and no information right now, but this wouldn't surprise me whatsoever.
The CEO stepped down [four months ago in March](https://www.appacademy.io/blog/mari-nazary-joins-app-academy)
To me this was a signal that the promises the CEO made needed to be reset, and a new new 'business-focused' CEO was needed.
Mari, the new CEO, comes from BloomTech. Her LinkedIn, as of 7/13/2024 says the following for Bloomtech:
>Revolutionized the product and learning experience by introducing a proprietary platform and digitizing all learning materials and touchpoints, resulting in a significant reduction of the cost per learner from $15K to $1K.
So I presume that was a reason she was hired by App Academy - if she can reduce the cost per student from $15K to $1K all over again!
How do you reduce costs? Well people are the number one cost of most bootcamps so you have to remo…
Codesmith had about 60 to 70 graduates in March and about 4 months post grad, I see 5 to 8 offers? Would you agree that's a reasonable estimate or disagree?
My main argument below is that for those handful of people, Codesmith was probably a very good decision. If we could identify those people beforehand and try to get them to to a tiny specialized Codesmith program, that would be amazing.
For a random person reading this subreddit though, they need more insight into what's going on, and if the bootcamps don't provide it and aren't here to engage and talk about it, then I feel the need to help you all.
Codesmith published a report and included it in their official curriculum docs showing 53 offers accepted in "April-May 2024".
So they clearly have more data insights into the struggles people are having they aren't sharing.
A coupke of people who work/worked there and have agreed,…
Yeah happy to give answers, these are to the best of my knowledge on the spot here and I didn't ask around to my team, but can if there are followups.
I don't know how closely we monitor Reddit specifically but it falls under "Socials" and isn't notable enough to stand out as its own source as far as I know. And we do not track down to the subreddit in our attribution models that I'm aware of.
Anecdotally, people who found us on Reddit surprisingly came more from the Leetcode sub where people are preparing for interviews and asking for help and they have referred to that as how they found us, or that they saw my official Reddit-sanctioned AMA that is aging now. Anecdotally a couple people have told me that they saw my posts in this sub and those people have been experienced engineers later in their careers, but they didn't mention discovering or being woo'd by them generally. The excep…
There are absolutely success stories for H1 2024 grads
The problem is that anecdotal success stories should not be used to judge any bootcamp.
I would need to spend some time chatting with someone, reviewing their LinkedIn, resume, and debrief their entire job hunt, to access the role the bootcamp played in the person's success and without that it's meaningless right now.
I'm really sad with the state of things right now. It's not doom and gloom but just reality. Pretending things are good is extremely harmful to those of you looking to put down 20 or 30K. But for the right people bootcamp are still a good choice... the set of people being the "right people" just being very small now.
I did a six month post graduation analysis for November and December 2023 Codesmith grads because I have decent data sources for them.
I'm not going to quote the placement rate I see in my data because…