Well 3 people in the group say they worked on theos for 2 or 3 months on LinkedIn and it's listed as a Software Engineer job at a company so clearly people think this.
And I have a couple of emails from alumni to the effect of 'how dare you contact anyone in the Codesmith community about Formation, we don't need you and leave us alone, we are already mid level and senior engineers'
Of course people make mistakes and then they have to figure out how to fix that by rewriting the git history and changing all the credentials. In this case the credentials are all over the place and not just one bad commit.
The project is not close to any production code I've seen and is blatantly being portrayed as so.
Codesmith OSP code review: numerous "unbreak now" security vulnerabilities discovered after spending 5 minutes reviewing an "advanced security tool". Not the mid-level or senior engineering work it is claimed to be.
I'm not going to share direct links because I don't want to pick on just this project or the people that made it. I circulated this post amongst a couple of Codesmith alumni to make sure they were ok with it as well.
What is the "OSP"? The OSP is the capstone project at Codesmith. You work in groups of 4-5 people, supervised by engineers. Codesmith claims it to be the key in making you a mid-level or senior engineer. It's the highlight of most alumni's resume and the main talking point in interviews.
I feel jerkish in posting about this widely instead of privately contacting the team that worked on it. But I've observed Codesmith's CEO, outcomes advisor, admissions staff,…
Yeah for the right people the mid-level senior thing is interpreted rationally and you can get by.
I don't know if you have seen any info sessions or heard their outcomes person Eric do a talk, but if you did I think you get a sense of the vibe. It's not like 'we aim for mid level and senior' it's 'this is codesmith, it's obviously only for mid level and senior, so it's offensive to call it a bootcamp', you'll even see the leaders arrogantly chuckle if you call it a bootcamp, like 'ha ha, we don't like that work around here because we only make mid level and senior engineers'. If you've heard Eric K talk about his background, and then you've actually dug into and asked around, it tells a much different story... but he's fantastic at turning anything into something that sounds amazing! An alumni described him as having a "silver tongue who can make anything sound good".
.... again, if…
Yeah I've done deep dives on MLMs in the past and deep dives on Codesmith's info sessions.
Codesmith is absolutely not an MLM by any definition, people pay for lectures and education, and they get those. Alumni and students don't get bonuses or paid based on how many other people they convince to join.
The Codesmith vibe has the isolation aspect - everyone starts at zero and is trained using MLM - like techniques of consistency and status to "brainwash" (for lack of better word) people into absorbing desired materials quickly.
I think the behavior we see is actually defensiveness - a lot of people I talk to feel uneasy - but only in private - about how they present themselves in the Codesmith-way and I think some people feeling a bit uncomfortable double down on defending it so they feel less guilty for what they did themselves - I'm not a psychologist, but I bet a lot of these peopl…
Neither are amazing right now and the market continues to evolve day by day so no one will be able to give you a definitive answer, but I can share some opinions.
1. Hiring is picking up for people with 2+ YOE SWE. This is genuine SWE work experience and not "programming experience" or "open source projects". Specifically 2+ years. I work with engineers in this bucket and a number were hired by Meta in the past few weeks or an doing onsites and it's definitely a change in pace!
2. Hiring is NOT picking up for bootcamp and new grads and it's getting more stressful and more intense. University recruiting teams were decimated in the layoffs and are using the resources they have for new grad hiring right now in the fall at the most reliable top tier schools, instead of broad entry level hiring that was happening in the past. This is making it much harder for bootcamp grads and grads of no…
I can give my pros and cons fact based answer. It's funny that when I do this for Codesmith people say I'm "trying to take down the great things they have done" and when I do it for BloomTech I'm accused of "supporting a scam" but 🤷♂️, I'm just trying to give balanced views.
1. Bloom Tech rebranded from Lambda School because of a trademark lawsuit with Lambda Labs. They spent over a million dollars (unverified) on legal fees to defend the lawsuit and even acquired a company in Florida called Red Lambda to try use that company's trademark defensively. But instead they settled and changed their name.
2. They have undergone massive changes in the past 2 years, not necessarily good ones, but they are trying to make a sustainable business that works. They let go of a large number of their staff and moved to a more self-service model based on their platform. the platform is some in house an…
Yeah I feel so strongly about this I will not stop talking about it haha, but I appreciate people sharing all sides because definitions aren't important, helping people become happy and impactful engineers is and that's all I really care about at the end of the day.
I know a number of Codesmith grads that get roles beyond their experience and fight tooth and nail to hang on, and I know a lot more that have a wake up call during interviews OR get laid off or struggle on the job because of they started at the wrong level.
Like it's great to make a $140K out of Codesmith and post you celebratory humble brag Reddit post and load up your DMs with people asking you how to get into Codesmith, but a year later, a number of those poeple are a little lost when a layoff hits, or you are being outperformed by more junior employees and you don't know what to do to keep up and don't feel comfortable…
Shutdown:
- Ada (possibly temporarily)
- Kenzie Academy
- Make School
- Juno College (no longer SWE)
- Bloc.io (was acquired but still running, could be consolidated)
Consolidated:
- Full Stack Academy
- Tech Elevator
- Codesmith (recently got rid of CTRI and unofficalg layoff reported)
- BloomTech (eliminated a ton of staff)
- App Academy (eliminate a number of TAs)
- Trilogy (rebranded to Edx)
- Episodes (unofficial layoffs)
We're waiting on CIRR results but Codesmith has provided some info in a report last week and in info sessions.
The placement rate was down from about 80% to "in the 60%s", and the salaries were down about 10% or so to the "$120Ks"
I've also heard anecdotally that they are trying harder to to track down alumni and get every last person into those CIRR reports.
But 60% ish still isn't that bad. It's significant if you are planning your life around a bootcamp right now - might not be the best idea to make any assumptions on outcomes - but it's not like it's ZERO placement either.
Sadly this is common with Codesmith grads :( and we get people applying to Senior Engineer roles requiring 5 to 10 years of experience at top tier companies, and the entire resume is 12 weeks of Codesmith, OSP takes up 1/3 the page, 3 other projects take up 1/3, then a tech talk, then skills + education etc...
But it does work sometimes!
The CEO has said that their goal is to make people 'realize how exceptional they are and convey that in non-technical interviews because once they get to technical rounds they do really well but they just have to get the chance'
But I've seen a lot of the documents and nothing explicitly says to lie, in fact they say explicitly NOT to lie. So it's one of those things that might be a disconnect between what leadership THINKS is happening and what's ACTUALLY happening.
Those people can CALL themselves senior engineers, their resume can certainly say that if they want, I would encourage people to do so when reviewing their resumes, but it doesn't make them senior engineers.
Do you not believe I've worked with a couple dozens Codesmith alumni later that have trouble with this?
The typical case is someone with a "Senior" title and 1 to 2 YOE on their resume. Depending on the company, but they will likely get a lot of interviews because of the Senior title, and then they hit the hiring manager interview and they get rejected.
I've seen some truly heart-wrenching cases - people passing the coding bar but the HM doesn't have any junior or midlevel headcount to downlevel and it's much more pronounced in this current market than it was before.
I then have to help the person apply to top tier mid level and junior engineering roles and sometimes the people p…
1. To sue someone you have to have damages in most states. First, someone would have to show that they joined Codesmith to become a mid level engineer and that they didn't AND that a reasonable person would have also believed they would become a mid level engineer seeing the same marketing. Second, they have to show that their outcome was worse and then somehow try to figure out how much they were overcharged given their outcome. If you raised your compensation by $25K, but didn't get a senior job, how "harmed" were you? It's really hard and not many people would want to deal with this kind of thing unless they felt really truly screwed over as a last resort.
2. There aren't any legal definitions of "mid level and senior engineer" and they could argue it's their opinion and that it's backed by the high salaries earned by graduates compared to competitors. Even if it's more of a gray are…
No, it is not. I worked at Facebook for 8 years and now have thousands of acquaintances at pretty much every company. This has come up a few times in conversations when I've asked people their opinions and responses ranged from laughter to this is fraud.
Sure, a bunch of gatekeepers in our towers laughing doesn't sound so good amongst a lot of people here, but this is not based on skill or ability but purely based on "the scale of systems worked on in previous jobs" needed to be at a senior level mostly in the technical side. Like you have to have worked on genuinely large systems with millions of users to build a patina of experience that is what the company is hiring you to be a senior for. They aren't hiring people able to solve big problems with new solutions. They are hiring people who have actually built products for millions of people and get unspoken nuance about that, or build…
They 1000% advertise it aggressively. I've heard it from their CEO, Lead Instructor, 4 admissions people, three outcomes people.
This was posted on LinedIn just on Friday: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc_codesmith-career-support-prepares-grads-for-activity-7111061618699968512-mzvP
"Codesmith career support prepares grads for mid- to senior-level software engineering roles — with resume guidance, mock interviews, salary negotiations, and beyond."
I don't mean to push back because I support you being brave and posting and replying to everyone and appreciate it! But I don't feel like Codesmith keeps it a secret that all the teachers are Codesmith grads, most have never worked in industry. When I've been to info sessions it seems to be something they are PROUD of rather than hide.
I do agree there can be pros and cons, but I think of all the criticisms of Codesmith this is lower on my list so to speak.
The entire week by week schedule and materials are out there if you pay attention (btw we had a Fellow retreat last week with 8 Fellows and hopefully people can attest I spend very little time on Reddit and rarely talk about Codesmith IRL haha)
Ultimately you can't cram an "elite graduate degree" into 12 weeks so if you saw the day by day schedule and materials you would probably think it's crazy, e.g. 2 days on React, but you shouldn't be looking at it expecting it to be what you are paying for.
We have a philosophy that all the materials you need are freely available online, and since everyone learns differently, there are not just all the materials you need, but variations of them in all kinds of styles. So the value add is trying to guide you with the right things at the right time instead of trying to teach. There's less value in the raw materials itself and you aren't paying $20K…
Yeah JavaScript is fine! I'm super bias here because I'm very experienced with more traditional big tech, but companies all have their own stacks and frameworks such that any specific language doesn't help that much. For example, Meta does "whiteboard"-style interviews because they don't care about perfect syntax or compilable code.
If you are trying to get a job at a smaller company, they might want you to have already learned a particular stack so you show up ready to go, because they won't train you as much.
For the later case, I think being broad is still better and JavaScript is SUPER broad (frontend, backend, scripting, etc...) and people tend to get sidetracked with what the "hot language" is, which ends up slowing you down playing whack-a-mole.
At Formation, this is super interesting but all sessions are run in either Python or JavaScript and these are small group interactiv…
Yeah this is the downside with all the fellows, instructors, mentors, lead instructors, lead engineers, even the head of instruction, all going to Codesmith themselves... you lose the ability to get help for things outside of the box. I do think this structure helps them have an INCREDIBLY CONSISTENT experience though that I haven't seen anywhere else.
If the company had layoffs there is likely to be a lot of disgruntled people (not just people laid off) and a lot of internal churn as things get reshuffled or changed. I heard last week that recently the number of instructors/support staff was cut down by 1 per cohort, and things like that have a cost to student experience as well. If they are ending or pausing the CTRI quietly without telling anyone that will also make prospective people confused, and if there are less staff to explain and communicate things to them = more bad sentiment.
Hi, I think this overview is pretty fair from my understanding, and I can summarize what I can corroborate from multiple sources. I have a lot to say good and bad about Codesmith - overall a balanced view, but these specifically are things corroborated by others and the **ALL CAPS BOLD** are my **PERSONAL OPINIONS.**
1. The free lectures and courses ARE the marketing funnel so they are intentionally trying to move people through to the immersive. So they represent a more high touch experience than the actual imersive.
2. I know someone from Oxford who talks about "hard learning" and it's reputation for just meaning "teach yourself" and I think Will is bringing this approach to Codesmith intentionally. That said, it might work for some people - Oxford is a great school and I think their admission process is essentially weeding out people who won't do well in that environment. As a result…
I don't think they lie. I think they have absurdly consistent marketing stances. Everyone from fellows to admissions coordinators to outcomes people, all have extremely consistent talking points and deliver them well.
The talking points aren't lies but just carefully thought out messaging, and I wouldn't expect any less, that's how businesses work!
I have many thoughts but am super busy right now to write them up, will go beyond my 60 second normal timebox for Reddit comments.
However, I would look at this report for something more comprehensive: [https://carta.com/blog/startup-compensation-h1-2023](https://carta.com/blog/startup-compensation-h1-2023)
My number one biggest concern that **needs to be called out because it wasn't called out in the report:**
**The report is based on "date of offer" and not placement date.** So this doesn't tell us anything about placements. This isn't a criticism or comment about the numbers themselves, just the methodology.
\- These salaries could be mostly people job hunting for a year. so they were job hunting for a year AND got lower paying jobs than the people who used to job hunt for 6 months and get higher paying jobs. We don't know because it's not mentioned at all. The opportunity cost of…
Hi thanks for sharing your experience. I hear this often from Codesmith grads in DMs and what you said isn't thaaaaaat bad in my opinion. This is a balanced comment so read the whole thing.
I feel like I'm a broken record on here about how important it is to understand how Codesmith works and make sure it works for you before just giving them $21K because of their CIRR reports and strong supporters (a number of whom I know and worked there as fellows or continue to work there part time).
They are very transparent that every single teacher, TA, instructor, lead all went to Codesmith and it's almost a point of pride, so I don't think you can criticize them for that if you expected something else.
Having fellows 6 weeks ahead of you sign off on your resume actually gives them a lot of hierarchical control over the product. It's why almost all Codesmith resumes look the same.
Regarding p…
So it depends on the role but most of the ones I saw were Facebook contractors for anywhere from 3 months to 12 months.
I would have to write an essay haha.
So at Facebook most contractors are "Software Developers" and while paid $150K run rates the role has zero path to SWE and you have to interview like anyone else.
Other companies are different but the common threads are:
1. Higher than normal base salary
2. Lower or no bonus
3. No equity
4. Worse benefits / none of those sweet full time benefits
5. Generally worse vacation policies
6. First to go when there are re orgs or budget cuts
7. Typically let go suddenly with zero notice and it's quite frustrating - even if you are performing well.
Would I take one of these hours of a bootcamp - HECK YEAH! But when you talk about it on Reddit it's just a completely different job than even a full time job at a worse company and no one on…
A lot of commenters don't believe this is real, I do, but I have a lot of words of caution and OP's post is potentially irresponsible in this community because the result is not reproducible at scale and broadcasting it to 33K people without any context doesn't help anyone figure anything out.
1. 1 year ago was Sept 2022, meaning you got he job before then and started then. Amazon was still hiring their last remaining hires in Sept 2022. The hardest time to get hired was the very end of 2022 and H1 of 2023.
2. "Total Compensation" needs clarification. What's the base, what's the signing bonus, what's the performance bonus, how are you valuing the stock, are you including relocation or other benefits in that?
3. Tell us more about the job. I know people who graduated Codesmith with $150K **contractor** role and that's much different than a full time role.... many of those people are not…
Formation probably isn't good for you in this market,. I would recommend trying to get a math-y tech internship actually.
I would try to line one up in the fall during internship season (literally RIGHT NOW) - when you are technically still in your PhD program and eligible, maybe go on leave instead of dropping out. And then try to convert the internship into a full time role and "drop out" of the program then.
If you have no experience at all, internships are key right now.
Now if you don't agree and want to look at different supplemental options...
Consider a bootcamp like Codesmith if you are an ambitious hustler and want to produce a nice looking resume that is optimized to get through recruiter screens. You won't absorb that much actual skill but if you are the right personality it might be the most effective way to get a job for you.
Consider Formation if you want to fill in…
Hi, you can trust that CIRR numbers are what they are because the auditing process makes sure the numbers are recording and calculated correctly. But the standard itself was written by Bootcamp marking people to promote bootcamps and it's not legally sound paperwork. For example, there's not description of how salaries are collected, other than they are base salaries, but no description of evidence needed or mechanics of it.
They also have a worksheet with formulas in it that are not explained in the specification clearly, which leads to errors. Codesmith's auditors files the wrong numbers and had to issue a correction!
Some data came out from a Codesmith grad that showed 70 recent placements and the people's starting salary. The median starting salary BEFORE CODESMITH was 70K+ and 20% of people were making 90K+. So the target audience is not the same as programs that have people maki…
Hi! I'm happy to clarify and thanks for being transparent on your views. There are definitely some misunderstandings.
I was the #1 committing engineer at Facebook when I was there and I got a heck of a lot done and I still do. I spend extremely little time on Reddit and Codesmith relative to my day job. I'm on the ground helping and responding to Fellows all day, fixing bugs as fast as humanly possible, and building new features and technology. And my Fellows will back me up on that.
You are also 100% correct that the more Codesmith grads there are the more Formation customers there are in 1 to 4 years from now... it's a bias I try to disclose but I have Codesmith grads insisting I'm still trying to steal Codesmith students or get people to go to Formation instead of a bootcamp... which couldn't be farther from the truth.
I actually recommend a lot of people go to Codesmith 1-1 and he…
So there are a three ingredients, Will Sentance has talked about this in public talks, and I have a hunch Launch School would agree re: their Capstone as well (but don't take my word for it!!)
1. Be a strong engineer to begin with/lots of potential. Good bootcamps test for this by having a challenging acceptance process. People prep for Codesmith for months and often fail their first interview. People have to complete Launch School Core for many months before applying to Capstone.
2. Build raw technical skills. A program has to train these and it's very very hard to do in 12 weeks. A project is one way to apply technical skills, and both of these programs focus on multi-week long group projects that are the highlight of your experience.
3. Be able to communicate and talk about your experience confidently to non-engineers. This includes your resume and recruiter outreach to be impressive…
Last year's came out mid September for the first wave and first week of October for the 2nd wave.
For Codesmith, Will Sentance said in a public talk this week that the numbers are somewhere 'around $120Ks but need to be audited still and will come out soon'. (No source, but credible)
I personally don't care what the salary numbers are and am more curious about the placement rates themselves, but I know a lot of people care about the salary numbers.
On the other hand, Codesmith describes itself as "Codesmith is a team dedicated to democratizing elite education for a new era - the outcomes of an elite grad school but online and for 1/10th of the cost" [Source](https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Codesmith-EI_IE1093972.11,20.htm). And I know that elite school new grads I work with are getting about $155K base salaries right now at FAANG-level companies (and $200K+ with equity)…
Thanks for sharing, out of curiosity, what makes you think they teach computer science fundamentals? I'm curious if that's something they told you, like just your opinion, or if it's something new.
When I reviewed Codesmith's entire classroom materials I don't believe they teach any "computer science fundamentals". They have a few lectures on DS&A that were like lecture 1 of CS 101 for me in college (and I took 24 more course with 12 to 36 lectures each), and they assign daily coding problems, but they don't actually teach any of those problems under the hood.
I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm just curious because I keep a super close eye on Codesmith and wanted to know where that comes from.
Congratulations on getting a job, that's super exciting!
The contract is that we keep doing our part you until you get a job as long as you keep showing up to sessions, generally doing the stuff we give you, communicating with your team, and intend on job hunting.
We have only removed a small number of people and they fall under the second part:
\- People no-showing too many sessions/'disappearing' without trying to reschedule or notifying anyone after repeated warnings
\- People who are too busy in their day jobs or in their lives and they aren't doing anything on their weekly schedule. We try to work with people to adjust their schedules but if they just can't make the minimum 10 hours work then we'll have to remove you if we can't find a way to make it work.
\- People who aren't a good fit. This is really rare, but this is a bucket of people that do not want to follow the way we do things (i.e. they want to memorize instead of learning…
I do think it's a fair question/comment yeah. It's also one of the reasons we don't publish "CIRR-like" outcomes.
I see day in - day out on here how people just programs strictly by outcomes and the fundamental problem is that a randomly selected person doesn't just get accepted into program X and it's a free ride to $Y salary.
Formation is VERY hard work, so it's not about selecting great people, they get great jobs and we get the credit. But it is both ways. If we select people who we know Formation is more likely to work effectively for, then we're more likely to have more amazing experiences, which might attract more people who it might not work for. I think that's fine if we are honest with individuals when they apply if we think Formation is good or not and that people trust that assessment.
Believe it or not, Formation is NOT good for people who have done all the LC Hard probl…
I've heard people outside of Formation who think we 'gamify the interview process' but I don't know where that comes from and I think it's a weakness in our public content and website if people feel that way.
The core approach to DS&A follows this method: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
And all of the practice is in applying that and getting feedback and practicing it in 1-1 mocks.
That link is free \^\^\^\^ so clearly it's not as easy as it sounds to apply it if people pay us a lot of money, and some people - even some new Fellows who signed up - have an instinct to fallback to memorization or trying to game the system - and for them the hard part is re-learning how to solve easy problems!
If you try to game the system and go into interviews, it's highly risky - you'll either crush it or fail miserably. That'…
I think that's a different program. We don't have any fixed length whatsoever and you have no syllabus or guaranteed curriculum you'll work on.
The topics individual people cover will vary based on their gaps, but post people cover:
\- Problem Solving (via DS&A, from basic concepts to graphs and DP)
\- System Design
\- Technical Behavioral/Hiring Manager preparation
\- Resume/Recruiter call preparation
\- Job Hunt tracking tools and job sourcing (up to 5 matching jobs a day sent to you)
\- Dedicated support team of 3 team members to make adjustments and respond to your needs (it's highly dynamic)
I definitely agree partially here. We are not selling false hope to new bootcamp grads who are struggling to get jobs and we don't work with them very often in this market. In a good market we've had pretty good success helping bootcampers in the middle of the pack fill in gaps... but it's crazy expensive to do back to back with a bootcamp and I don't recommend that.
If we accepting all of these people we would be a giant company right now, we unfortunately turn them down so we can try to have experiences like the OP instead.
But I firmly believe the evidence shows that there is a target audience we genuinely help for.
I can say that I had nothing to do with this post, nor did anyone at Formation, have no idea who the OP is and haven't talked to them on Reddit before, but what they say is pretty detailed and aligns with how the day to day is.
The OP didn't say Formation works on those things you mention.... we don't teach anything... we do pretty much as the OP said 'peer and group problem solving sessions'.
The bootcamp market has produced hundreds of thousands of engineers who - firehose style in 10 to 20 weeks - learned basic programming concepts and then have been learning practical skills on the job for a couple years and many hit a wall when trying to level up to top tech jobs because of being rusty, or never properly learning, more fundamental CS concepts.
There are thousands and thousands of people who feel this way and it's not unbelievable or something to shame someone about.
Yeah a few things. It is a very very solid 3 week group capstone project. And they put a lot of effort in the presentation, like if you click that link it looks super buttoned up and legit in the writing and imagery and overview, etc...
But the problem I have (again, my opinion only) is that that 3 weeks gets represented as months of 'experience' - framed as an ambiguous job on LinkedIns and resumes. Many grads talk about it exclusively in interviews, for dozens of minutes talking about people-problems and technical-problems and all kinds of things from these projects that's really just squeezing them for more they they have in them. I've interviewed Codesmith grads myself and 'talk about a conflict with a non engineer' and people just make stuff up because they didn't work with non-engineers... like that didn't "come from the OSP" it came from practicing TALKING ABOUT the OSP over and…
Sorry, my bad, I'm a person of pros and cons and don't present my opinions often, except my strong opinions on this one: it stands for "Open Source Product". It's a 3-4 week phase of Codesmith spent on building an open source project, like this one [https://github.com/oslabs-beta/anago](https://github.com/oslabs-beta/anago)
Not OP, can't speak for them, but I think both are a problem haha,
a) is a problem with Codesmith - even though I've seen materials that clearly say not to do it, I've seen other materials that clearly guide people to do it without telling them to do it... It's like DO NOT LIE!!!!! Use this example though of how we recommend doing it: <link to example that exaggerates 6 months of experience>
So many people message me about this, I get the vibe that all of the staff at Codesmith GENUINELY feels the OSPs are a magical project that is GENUINELY worth month and months of senior engineer experience that they do this on purpose, but this is just proposed to me in theories. One person said a staff member went on a rant and had to pause the session to cool down after someone asked if OSPs we're being exaggerated and you'll see in the tone of many Codesmith employees in public talks an arroga…
A couple of notes. They are "legally" associated with OSLabs, a completely separate charity that seems to have a lot of ties to Codesmith but is not Codesmith. OSLabs signs the letters of reference for these people (it's a Codesmith employee too, but he's also a Board Member of OSLabs).
And second, yeah anyone can audit the GitHub projects for OSLabs and see how the vast vast majority have 2-3 weeks of contributions from each member, in these spike patterns following the cohort cycle that you don't see on any real open source projects. One of the projects had console.log(password) in the authentication code - and password wasn't hashed at this point.
But employers - especially the smaller companies that hire Codesmith grads - don't look at this stuff and are just happy to interview people with experience on their resume!
I'll confirm you're not me lol! But I looked up all the people in that screenshot and they all have fairly normal Codesmith-y LinkedIns with exaggerated OSP experience.
Some of those people have a lot of experience before too, that's not super common. I've seen info sessions before and Codesmith is pretty clear that people come from 'a range of backgrounds' and most people haven't worked as SWE's before.
Did they talk about that in the session? I'm sure they chose people that were all saying amazing things about Codesmith was and how they persisted with the Codesmith-way of doing things and it worked, without really saying what that means.
I'm sure Eric K was probably mentioned by everyone too as the reason why they got a crazy high offer. Several people have sent me Eric Ks advice (in various forms from audio/video) and it's very good, standard, bread-and-butter advice you would ge…
I don't want to speak for that person, but that person was thanking THE COMMUNITY ON REDDIT (not Codesmith), they were a member of this community for A LONG TIME and asked a lot of questions and really deliberated the right place to go and for them it was Codesmith, and that's great because they were happy with the outcome. For other people it's not Codesmith!
Interviewing.io is currently the best in place to go if you just want 1 to 3 or so mock interviews and nothing else.
If you plan on paying for 5 or more, I would consider an interview prep program like Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder), Interview Kickstart or Pathrise (I've removed Outco because they haven't accepted applications in a month.
Exponent bought PRAAMP (which is free peer to peer mocks) and they offer paid mocks in a number of areas as an upsell but they don't have as many or as a strong mock interviewers as Interviewing.io or the interview prep programs. If you can get a good deal on them then doing a few there is probably fine.
A number of people might recommend various free options, Codesmith also offers alumni free mock interviews for life, but not all mock interviews are the same. If you aren't doing a mock with a person who has either done hundreds of interviews…
I would make sure the post bacc program is legit and not run by a 3rd party that has a bad reputation.
But in terms of which one is better? It depends on you and how you learn and what's a good fit for you so I would focus on finding a program where the day to day work is aligned with what you feel is effective. For example, I did a degree but practical hands on learning works a lot better for me and the most valuable things I learned were from side projects!
I'm biased from my FAANG-ish background but I think the ideal is still a top tier CS program (top 10 or 20 from US World News). After that I'm not sure because those programs are the sure things where recruiters are lining up to hire people. Anything else and it takes a little bit of luck and determination.
Of the ones you mention, Launch School capstone is the most selective and has consistently strong placement rates.There are a lot of people going to WGU but it's unclear that that will result in jobs or not. People primarily go to get a degree for cheap but I suspect they also do other things and are a part of other programs too to get jobs
I have never led Formation and despite being a co-founder, Sophie is and has always been the founder, president, secretary, CEO and face of the company inside and out and she tells me what to do. But you knew that I guess?
Seriously, you all seem passionate about this and maybe you don't want to be open minded about me but you should give Sophie a chance.
This has all the details: https://www.stridefunding.com/formation. You are better off reading the 4 ways the loan ends rather than me trying to summarize.
The new ISA is directly with Stride so we don't have any say or influence over your terms and you need to get the final answer from them directly.
There is some confusion, but a simple answer. We had an old ISA that we stopped offering a few months ago that was forgiven if you left the program without a job and don't have any job paying over 65K. We replaced that with 3 payment options and one of them is similar to an ISA but is not forgiven unless you leave early and make under 55K for several years.
So there are many people at Formation with the old ISA and the new ISA which understandably causes confusion. Many programs have gone through this transition over the past few months as well.
If you are ever confused, DM me or contact someone on the Formation team because it's really important for everyone's sake that you thoroughly understand the payment method you choose and we have 4 different ones right now!!!
It's here and the disclaimers at the bottom explain the methodology of how everything is calculated: [https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/](https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/)
We're working on a mid year update for 2023. Salaries have been a bit lower lately but we're still crunching the numbers for anything interesting!