So the way I see it, again this is my personal opinon and I don't have any formal relationships with any bootcamps, is that the smaller, founder-led programs: Rithm, Launch School, Codesmith, some others, tend to be smaller, higher bar to get in, more expensive, and a lot of positive qualities. App Academy and Hack Reactor fall in the more "big business" bucket of companies that are run like real companies. With that comes some amount of accountability in that they have legit lawyers to review stuff, career professionals doing finance, HR, etc... With that though you lose some of the personal touch of the founders.
I'm currently not recommending Codesmith because they appear to me to be imploding. Bunch of pro-Codesmith accounts, including two moderators of their sub, got suspended from Reddit, a couple more staff left, they are going all in on "the modern engineer" and losing focus. I…
I don't want to throw OSPs under a bus at all, I want to be reasonable about describing what they are and what they aren't
But question: I try to be quite vocal about that, but why did you think they were so good before Codesmith? Was something misleading about their explanation? Did alumni misrepresent them? Did they just seem impressive and you didn't know any better?
Thanks for sharing.
Based on my broad experience with Codesmith I would +1 the recommendations there on who should go.
I like how you also broke up successful people into two buckets: those who needed Codesmith to get there and those who would have done well anyways. This is a key thing to directing what a program offers. It's something at Formation we think about all the time - what would people do without out and what value are they getting, and we constantly need to give people VALUE to justify our existence. We're not perfect but we spend all of our time trying to do this to and will keep doing so. And we've seen incredible results in a hard time as a result. If you aren't generating true value, then you get hammered in a tough market.
RE: OSP reviews. It's sad to me to hear you still aren't getting reviews. A few months ago right around the layoffs a number of groups asked me t…
Scam is a blurry word haha. You can argue that any kind of "marketing" is trying to sell you on the program so it's at a minimum biased, but whether it's a scam is a higher bar.
Nucamp isn't fantastic but it's cheap. The materials are similar to much cheaper courses, but you have live instructors and code reviewers to get feedback and that's very useful.
Coding Dojo is a classic bootcamp and most of them have been struggling in this market. I don't recommend going to any classic coding bootcamps right now and would recommend going as cheap as possible, then re-evaluating. If you have a natural ability and you are 100% committed to becoming a SWE no matter how long it takes, then a top bootcamp (generally the $20K+ ones like Codesmith, Rithm, Launch School Capstone, etc...) could be justified. It's still quite hard to get a job even at those programs, which is why it's important to comm…
+1, that's my argument.
That's why at Codesmith for example, YOU are the product and the community is the product. You are paying for a community and they are using your money to build a "cult-like" (for lack of better term" following in their community. Really smart people make fake accounts to promote Codesmith, get all the accounts suspended, and then still feel in the right and that I'm a terrible person for reporting all this to Reddit and making up a narrative that I'm breaking the rules and getting away with it... the product you paid.
I heard that comment twice myself about his son.
I spend all my time with silicon valley people and he comes across like a lot of founders.
Everything is always going great, fake it til you make it.
Problem is this isn't a game of a photo app... we're talking about people's lives and we're talking $22K tuition and people need to have better.
Yeah I think Eric is good intentioned, he just doesn't have the top tier, best of best experience he portrays in public sessions. He has good negotiation advice, but it's off the shelf stuff that is the basics in the top tier tech industry. From the people I've worked with navigating more complex offers, he hasn't had strong advice.
One of his alumni had an offer pulled because they negotiated a non-negotiable offer. I don't know everything myself but I have enough industry experience to gently steer people through these conversations and try to help people not just negotiate an offer now, but make a plan for the next few years.
RE: "selling his company to Disney". That is correct, he didn't sell it and shouldn't be portraying it that way. He in fact helped the final engineer transfer out his prized asset Coolspotters to a 3rd party that wasn't Disney and he's well aware Disney had no…
I don't know why the website went down, but I know some people who were part of it and it's kind of a fundamentally flawed idea.
They would hire alumni to work on projects. the only project I've heard spoken about is some kind of negotiation bot possibly in relationship with a team at Harvard and possibly with the data science and machine learning initiative.
The fundamental flaw though is that these alumni have busy jobs and their jobs are their priority. many of them just started their jobs and they want to do well. so spending some of their free time on contract projects. they're just not going to do their best work on those projects as good work as they're doing on their job. and if you're going to hire a team, you want to hire a really good team to work on a project. not like a bunch of people who are doing this on the side.
Second really strong tech companies. don't let you moo…
I can give my 2 cents. I know a lot about both programs. Very different options.
I'm currently not recommending Codesmith (in my personal opinion/capacity - I need to mention this because it's in my company's interest for more people to go there) for three reasons, but you might feel differently:
1. They had large layoffs and promised coworking spaces, more curriculum and more three months ago and haven't done any of that, other than add 5 ML lectures (of which only 2 I think have been done)
2. They have a subreddit that is full of propaganda. I asked Reddit Corporate to look at our subreddit here and theres, and roughly 10 prominent accounts + 1 moderator were suspended from Reddit. I don't know if this was just one person or a coordinated effort but those people were working with Codesmith for "official AMAs" so whatever was going on it, Codesmith has visibility of this behavior jus…
Don The Developer: "Coding Bootcamps ARE Still Viable in 2024".... with caveats 😉
Don released this video today with a realistic take on Coding Bootcamps. Despite the title coming across as "pro bootcamp", it's a balanced take on bootcamps in 2024.
[VIDEO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIFd5nuhvhs)
Would love to discuss in the comment!
SUMMARY OF DON'S ARGUMENTS:
1. **Coding Bootcamps' Viability**: Don believes coding bootcamps are still a viable option in 2024, despite their mixed reputation. They can effectively prepare individuals for entry level developer jobs, provided that students have the right preparation (many months) and timeframe expectations (\~2 years).
**2. Misleading Marketing**: Don believes many coding bootcamps have a bad reputation due right now due to continued misleading marketing that promises unrealistic outcomes and makes it seem like you will get a job…
If people were getting jobs then bootcamps wouldn't be shutting down/laying people off
1. [Launch Academy ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/)(indefinite pause)
2. [Epicodus](https://www.epicodus.com/blog/epicodus) (shutdown)
3. [CodeUp](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2024/01/09/codeup-shuts-down-suddenly-leaving-students-staff-frustrated/) (shutdown)
4. App Academy ([layoffs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmIBwP6tBh4), [ceo step down](https://www.appacademy.io/blog/mari-nazary-joins-app-academ))
5. Codesmith ([shrinking](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech) - left out was 1/3 layoffs and reducing from 4+1 cohorts to 1+1 cohorts since 2023)
6. Tech Elevator ([merge](https://www.galvanize.com/blog/galvanize-and-tech-elevator-announce-operational-conso…
All of the above haha:
1. It's not just the market but if the market was still amazing for entry level, bootcamps would benefit too and sentiment wouldn't be so negative.
2. They won't become valuable again in their current form anytime soon. If the market improves they may return to some of their previous reputations. But there is far too large of a over supply of bootcamp grads and new grads to be corrected over night even if the market warns. Bootcamps have scaled back A LOT, so they will produce fewer bootcamp grads. As the over supply either get jobs or go leave the industry, then we might see it be a viable pathway for a small number of people in the future.
3. I have yet to see a curriculum that is worth the cost. I haven't seen a bootcamp curriculum that isn't better than a Udemy course. What you DO GET, is HUMANS to help you - keeping you accountable and helping explain and a…
We got H2 2022 results by subtracting out H1 2022 outcomes from full year 2022 outcomes.
The 6 month results were not good compared to H1 2022, with the 6 month placement rate going from 80% -> 60% and with a surge in people who ghosted and were counted as a placement because it looked like they had a job on LinkedIn (20% of the outcomes were this case in H2 vs 6% in H1)
I see this account was suspended so I suppose the point is moot. But warning to all, yelling loudly doesn't make misinformation true.
Hi, This sub stil has a lot of activity and has grown 5X over the past couple years in membership. BUT the tone is a lot more negative.
First: why no success stories?
The top bootcamps have had lower placements rates for 2023 grads. The odds of getting a job are lower, and the odds of getting a SWE job, rather than a SWE-adjacent job, have gone down as well.
So if you are one of the lucky ones, it's likely you had an arduous journey and it's likely may of your cohort that you found just as talented as you are seriously struggling to get a job, and you aren't going to Reddit to brag about your job.
To make it worse, I've been seeing more layoffs of bootcamp grads down the road, compared to CS grads. So just getting a great job out of a bootcamp isn't the end, but the base of a taller mountain.
... and those a few years out and in good shape, graduated in the boom times and it's hard…
I work with a lot of people who are desperate to find really good engineers. so if this is gatekeeping then we should try to explore why? it's so hard for people without CS degrees to get through.
It's easy to say on Reddit that it's unfair and have a pile on, that's not going to help anybody navigate the system.
The reality is that there are far too many bootcamp grads that look the same on paper. Codesmith grads coming out with one year of experience on their 3-week long project that all look the same. some of those people are pulling exceptional and some need more time to get there, but it's impossible for a human resource person, a recruiter, a hiring manager to figure that out.
imagine your hiring manager and you see a thousand resumes in front of you and 600 of them are bootcamp grads and they all look basically the same. there's just no reasonable way to distinguish between t…
No, I did a general engineering program and self taught web programming by doing a startup in college.
I worked with a large number of bootcamp grads now later on in their careers, mostly from Codesmith, Launch School, Rithm, Hack Reactor, Full stack Academy, App Academy, Hackbright, and more, so I see a lot of common challenges bootcamp grads face later on. We generally work with engineers later in their careers so these are people that made it. But a couple years ago we worked with people who just graduated from bootcamps too.
On the hiring side, at Meta we had tried to work with bootcamps to hire and the people just didn't make it. Only a handful made it and their careers were slower than others so it just wasn't a viable pipeline for new grad hiring.
Finally, I talk to a number of bootcamp founders and know a lot about their goals and pedagogies and have a good pulse on that side.
I honestly have no idea. I don't seen bootcamps battling with each other, but rather bootcamps just trying to stay alive right now.
I'm giving industry wide commentary and I often talk about Codesmith because while other programs acknowledge the struggles, Codesmith continues to double down on marketing such that I am frequently presenting a balanced view of that marketing.
My commentary has been well received and even helped people decide to go to bootcamps like Codesmith and Launch School knowing what they are getting into...
Yeah sorry, I could make it more explicit or clear. Like I had a thread of two anonymous accounts: one got AI-collapsed by Reddit, the other suspended by Reddit, both were making false claims but Reddit PROACTIVELY took action, so clearly some really weird stuff is going on in the sub. There's nothing remotely like this for other programs.
🏛️ Get to know a moderator: Michael Novati
Hi all, I thought it might be a good idea to share more about myself as one of the three moderators on here and one of the most active members. It might be a surprise but I spend way more time writing code and helping Fellows at Formation than on Reddit. Here's my GitHub as evidence 😝 [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati)
I just wanted to share a little more about who I am and where I come from so you can work with me better in making this subreddit a better place.
There's no advice or lessons in here, it's all biographical, but I'm happy to answer questions in the comments.
# FOUR FUN FACTS
1. Meta created the "Coding Machine" archetype for me when promoting me to Principal Engineer.
2. I've met Taylor Swift. In fact I couldn't convince Mark Zuckerberg to meet her too at the time and played a prank on him by hanging…
Thought experiment.
So if we take it as fact that the Codesmith mods are banning people from their sub that have never interacted there. So far this is just a conjecture from the OP that I haven't seen evidence for, so I talked to OP privately about it and I feel it's likely true, but with the door open for someone to disprove it. For example if the Codesmith mods came to me and said they have never banned someone who hasn't posted something violating their rules in their sub then I might have to take action if it at my discretion that is more credible.
Now let's I really actually hated Codesmith, and wanted to attack them.
Why wouldn't I do the same? Why not just ban you all, delete all your comments. Wipe every positive trace of Codesmith on here. I'm responsive all the time, I could easily act on things super quickly and no one would see anything.
That's what I've personally exper…
I don't really know what to say, you seem down conspiracy theory lane and it's just all not true.
This post wasn't held up for review.
I said very clearly for the record that no accounts have been banned from this sub by me, temporarily or permanently.
What's your deal? Do you have questions thoughts?
As someone pointed out, a major part of the problem is no-one from Codesmith or otherwise never discusses or refutes the things I say with facts, it's all just made up stuff and bullying. A year or two ago people used to, and then I talked to those people and they say what I do and then they disappeared and we keep in touch on LinkedIn every so often.
I meticulous document, screenshot, capture, record, collect anything that I reporting facts on to show my work.
if you want to mudsling and play games you haven't seen the half of what I know.
And this why INTEGRITY is important, becau…
Want to know the best defense to bullshit trolls... INTEGRITY. No matter how much I get poked I play by the rules and I have integrity.
I have one account and I hope anyone making fake accounts to manipulate discussion gets banned for life.
I HAVE NOT BANNED A SINGLE PERSON FROM THIS SUBREDDIT.
If you can't fathom someone who is as responsive and productive as me then put yourself in a better network of people before this kind of bullshit.
Codesmith has consistently raised prices every year, but I agree that in my opinion, that raising them this year with tanking outcomes is a bit arrogant, but I don't know their marketing strategy.
They just lowered the prices of JSB and CSPrep SIGNIFICANTLY like 75% off for CSPrep, so maybe they changing their view.
Launch School lays out their outcomes here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLKHZYX8D78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLKHZYX8D78)
Unsurprisingly if you are transparent there isn't any drama. When your outcomes are tanking, your alumni believe in you like a religion, and you don't acknowledge it publicly then you get drama.
Rithm School sadly is really small right now, running a small cohort every few months, so I still think it's a great place if you want high touch, high access learning. But their outcomes aren't that meaningful right now due to size.
Again, I'm not collapsing any comments, and I've turned on "crowd control" on THREE POSTS EVER for LEGITIMATE REASONS.
Reddit has added more AI capabilities recently that more aggressively diminish the posts of people suspected of being bad actors.
Given how many new/low history/anonymous accounts come at me on here, I'm not surprised whatsoever that they get flagged as people "likely trying to break the rules". Reddit knows who everyone is based on their fingerprints and IDs. There are five so accounts that have been suspended from Reddit with similar posting patterns so when those people/person come back with new accounts... Reddit knows.
If it means anything, I was in a similar talk in the past and made comments about other people too, because they were placed like a year ago and I didn't think that was "recent".
They ignored that comment and added dates to the newer version of the slides.
People who worked there talk to me and I think it's very passive aggressive to not ONCE contact me, ONCE (other than Eric Kirsten) and yet to post blog posts and videos, and wording to respond to the things I'm saying.
I'm more than happy to talk to people about this non-defensively and openly, and this conversation is great to have madhouse!
This is correct, it's now more common for SENIOR engineers to join, competing and trying to get a leg up in the market. There are indeed a very small handful of edge case people without much experience who have joined in the past year (literally a handful - under 5) and each case was after many conversations and trying to convince them of other options. Just like there are a handful of engineers with experience who go to Codesmith. But that overlap isn't competition, it's an edge case.
Both the statements are wrong haha:
1. We're not a competitor. We would be amazing partners in another world where Codesmith acknowledged us not as a competitor haha.
2. I don't spend much time on Reddit no, I know it looks that way, but it's just the way I am, I am always on and one of the most responsive people - if not the most responsive - out of anyone I've ever worked with. It's not fair for people to tell me who I am and what I do when they see 1/50th of what I do and make up their own narrative portraying it as 1/4 of what I do.
I have no idea why the person left and I didn't imply anything, but it was just a factual statement that the person isn't there anymore.
Was it necessary? Probably not yeah. But as with all my other comments it was just a statement and wasn't bad intentioned and didn't warrant a public humiliation.
I told one person about it who called it yelling, another called it not yelling but a stern tone.
A current Codesmith student say this session and messaged me to apologize because they thought it was yelling and they were disturbed by it and felt bad for me.
The video was since removed so I don't think I can share anything from it, have to look up the rules and laws.
I don't want to fan any flames. Regardless of what he said in the video there are clearly some frustrations outside the context of the actual speech and sharing it would require full interpretation. I'm a rule follower and they have the right to remove me from their communities if they want for whatever reason and I have to respect that ban.
My message goes both ways and I have asked corporate Reddit to look into both subs to try to advise on the situation. It's really bad for the Reddit ecosystem and both sides are claiming about violating the rules, so hopefully corporate Reddit can sort this by looking at who all the people are and seeing if there are disingenuous actors on either side they can remove or if there is anything else they can do to help increase the integrity of discussion.
I attended an event recently and this is what I said in the chat throughout the entire event.
1. Early in Will was talking about one of my long time friends as the "founder" of React and "co-founder of Vercel". Maybe I misheard but I said in the chat that I know that person well and he doesn't call himself the founder of React and co-founder of Vercel.
Will responded to that with 'Tom said gest things about you, that you were one of the best engineers ever at Facebook'
2. Will suggested someone talk to a specific alumni and I said how awesome that alumni is.
3. Will mentioned the B1M YouTube channel and I said how awesome that channel is.
Then suddenly I got an email saying I was permanently banned from Codesmith's subreddit.
4. I commented that I was just banned from their subreddit and won't be able to participate in the AMA after. Their was no response.
5. Shortly after Will w…
I didn't ask for formal comment no. I can't remember but I think it was either a codesmith account on Reddit, a comment on LinkedIn thread, or that I commented on or it was in a live stream over the past few months as they have been showing slides with Alex Zai giant face teasing the upcoming AI/ML.
It wasn't for official comment no and I wouldn't say that I asked formally enough or clearly enough to expect them to reply though.
I am banned from Codesmith's community, Slack, events, entirely so I have limited avenues as I intend on fully respecting their ban. Although they started sending me emails inviting me to events so I'm not sure anymore haha. The whole operation just has so many issue in executing the details you know and I'm always confused if they are intentionally sharing so much data (which common sense says they shouldn't) but then they acknowledge the problems.
Rithm has max 20 people per cohort and a dedicated super experienced teacher. It's more like having someone with more experience than Will Sentance (both teaching and in industry) being the primary instructor for your cohort.
The content itself is a little different and it's a little longer I think.
It's also 9am to 6pm every day instead of 9am to 8pm.
A bootcamp choice is very personal to your circumstances. If you don't really need to learn anything and are going for networking and support, education doesn't matter. If you want to learn how to program, it matters more.
We had someone join us who wanted to do Formation with no experience. I told them to go to Codesmith and come to Formation in a year or two. Instead they got a role at a startup in another country and came to Formation after 6 months. Person just got a job at Google in a SWE adjacent programming role.
I don't think bootcamps work right now and would love to see something like the above. Training focused apprenticeships for people with zero programming training that are paid for via tax credits to big companies that pay for the person and more. The bootcamps could be more like level up tools to go from that to full time role. The anecdote above was a one off and not reproducible and a special person who is extremely driven with significant tech industry experience.
People getting jobs tend to rely on some creative representation of past work anyways and giving those people real training…
Oh wow that's unfortunate and ouch... like kicking the bootcamp industry while it's down :(
I feel so bad being real about the industry right now, I don't want to be this way, but people looking to spend $20K on a bootcamp need to know how it is before making that choice.
I feel even worse when alumni and staff from Codesmith go after me for telling the truth about this stuff. Coordinated downvoting my comments because they think they are bad intentioned :(
Yeah you know I respect your path too and good luck!
I think things have really changed with the alumni graduating now and late 2023 that talk to me.
I think the layoffs in Q3/Q4 really hit a lot of people hard. Some loyal instructors were let go, a bunch of career support people left too, so there apparently are fewer people to talk to, instructors have an eye on backup plans.
I know I annoy them by expressing my views on all this so openly because I get the vibe Codesmith does NOT want to talk about this stuff.
Our debates 2 years ago are tame compared to the stuff I'm getting now 😞
Congrats on your trajectory! Would love to hear more about how you got the first job. I work with some people self taught and we found that they often have equal or better outcomes than bootcamp grads (NOT ENOUGH DATA TO MAKE A CONCLUSION ON THIS) and it's interesting to me.
I couple of people have told me about weird interactions with Will that resulted in them staying clear of Codesmith, like he had note card of facts about people that he paused and looked up in front of them when he met them?
But I'm an extremely socially anxious person and sometimes a bit awkward and it might just be his personality or sense of humor too.
I would say in general though the second largest anecdotal complaint I get is social pressure to participate is very off-putting if it's not for you. The examples reported to me are:
1. Trying really hard to make people turn cameras on. But passive aggressively…
It quite frankly is, I posted about this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1dpyh7t/warning\_codesmith\_subreddit\_is\_mostly\_propaganda/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1dpyh7t/warning_codesmith_subreddit_is_mostly_propaganda/)
OP was banned from their sub today because of their post HERE.
Common: no, most engineers went to a top CS school
They then looked at the best engineers at Meta, looked at the schools they went to, and then recruited from those schools.
BUT, a number of "best of the best" engineers either didn't have a CS degree or went to a not well known school at all.
The theory was the best of the best will find Meta or Meta will find them through acquisitions or because they like hacked into Meta and were offered a job.
The best way to get in right now without a top CS degree is to get another job for 2 years and then apply for the Rotational Engineer program. At Formation, we've sent maybe 10+ people through there and it's super super ideal for non traditional grads with 2+ YOE at non-top tier companies.
I messaged him after Codesmith declined to comment on if Alex had Zoox's approval to do the curriculum yeah so I put even more work into it. But time-wise very little time.
Yeah doesn't have a problem being connected to his DSML work, he just doesn't want it to be implied that he is currently working on it or recently worked on it as it's fireable and worse at Zoox to create IP relevant to your job without permission.
I sent him all of the links that made it seem like he was more recently involved and Codesmith has since modified those, including the blog you linked to, that was modified as a result of this.
The title of that blog post changed from containing Alex Zai's name, and you can see the remnant in the url.
Jared's name was not mentioned nearly that much in marketing materials it was all Alex Zai and a little James and Jared had significant involvement in DSML.
But the recen…
I have no doubt that's the vision. But they've published stats and only a tiny number of people at Codesmith didn't have a degree (single digit percentage?) and the majority cummulatively went to top public schools or presitigous private schools.
So it's more like a place for Ivy League people who changed their mind and want to quickly go into SWE than Ivy League for everyone.
I could talk for hours about this topic, it's super complicated but if that's the vision, I'm sure he speaks about it and it sounds awe inspiring but it's incredibly impractical and I could rip it apart piece by piece.
The first step to understanding all this is what unpacking what "gatekeeping" means.
It's not a group of privileged people intentionally trying to protect their jobs and culture and exclude outsiders.
Second is to unpack these top 1% jobs. The are paid so highly because it's a free market. If e…
I mean laws and laws and everything in the USA requires interpretation.
But I don't think anyone can possibly say that an institution has integrity if it's paying people to write reviews. And maybe that's why the bootcamp industry is so messed up.
Stanford isn't paying people to write reviews.
If you want to do this a better way you create a prize with Course Report (anonymously) where a random person who submits any review to any school will be chosen for some kind of prize.
This is an incentive that isn't biased to one school and is an effort by the Platform to increase content on it even if one school secretly funded this because they think they will benefit from some of those new reviews.
Well Codesmith is absurdly selective and creates a community of tight knit people that support each other.
Sounds exactly what he did - simulate the Ivy League gatekeeping model where he is now the gatekeeper and selects the most brilliant people from non-tech backgrounds and gets them into tech.
Nothing wrong with that, it's a good idea that has gotten some exceptional people (I've worked with some of them later on!) into tech much faster and easier than traditional paths.
I'm not a lawyer either and I chatgpt'd to try to analys it in forming my opinion. I think my opinion is reasonable but open for debate and I still don't agree with your interpretation either haha.
But I concede it's not explicitly stated "you cannot be paid directly or indirectly" for reviews.
Zooming out, let's say Course Report says this is totally fine (I reported it to them already). I'm going to post about it, and I don't think it will look good. Someone has to take responsibility for manipulating online reviews whether everyone else does it or not.
I know at my company we have never once offered anyone anything to write a review. We used to indirectly say long ago 'Reviews are important for people deciding on their options, consider writing one on quora' but I felt that was even not good so we removed it. We don't do it, and I'm offended others and everyone can be wrong even if…
The list of recent Codesmith placements is much more of 'intern', 'it analyst', 'program manager', 'technical writer', 'apprentice'. There are still SWE jobs, but people who had committed to a bootcamp a year ago are really struggling and taking whatever jobs they can get. And this is on top of the fact that placement rates are down significantly
The story needs to be told because celebrating the 15% of success cases only is misleading.
I actually think your questions are fine and good to stimulate discussion. But you can't win in this sub. People are suspicious about scams they should be questioning everyone, it's just not a fun place right now now :(
I agree it's not explicitly stated literally as not allowed, but these are two places imo. This is good discussion and I appreciate being asked - I should have shared this first so people can judge from first hand source.
1. "Write a Review" page: https://www.coursereport.com/write-a-review.
"I certify this review is based on my own experience and is my genuine opinion of this school, and that I have no personal or business relationship with this establishment. "
- Being paid to write a review is a relationship IMO
2. TOS: [https://www.coursereport.com/terms-of-service](https://www.coursereport.com/terms-of-service)
"You agree that you will not upload, post, transmit, distribute or otherwise publish through the Site or any service or feature made available on or through the Site, any materials which \[...\] constitute or contain false or misleading indications of origin, endorsemen…
Someone who worked there said they have people good at "finding people" specifying more details, and they try to track you down and correct.
Someone wrote a fairly negative view on here "anonymously", they found the person and offered them a high paying contract job at Codesmith, which the person accepted. This was shared with me by the person themselves and not second hand information. I'm sure the job was actually good intentioned to help someone struggling, but the person perceived it as being paid off.
They're definitely some successful alumni who graduated in 2023 the number of people getting really good jobs from my personal view smaller than in the past but it's not zero.
The people who are getting placed, though are not super keen on broadcasting into the world because they know that some other best friends and people who they were in the trenches with during the immersive didn't get placed and I think that's actually holding them back from talking. I also know some people who wouldn't recommend Codesmith at this time who got pretty good jobs eventually, but wow, it was a rough journey. Finally, I know people who are really exaggerating their resumes and they just don't even care or feel bad about it anymore because they have absolutely nothing to lose and they would just leave the industry entirely otherwise.
... I guess shit show of the market pretty much summarizes all this…
Codesmith paying for reviews was something I knew about and documented but no one has shared with me the exact text.
You might be doxxing yourself with that date and maybe should edit it to XX because they told different people different dates to stagger the reviews and they only sent this to people placed.
Thank you for publicly sharing because this was something people talked about in confidence and I could share yet.
I spent too much time trying to people but if others want to DM about this, I'll do a top level post sometime when I catch up a bit over the weekend.