Worked at Facebook for 8 years a principal engineer, did hundreds of interviews and looked at thousands of resumes. My team has 3 engineers with similar backgrounds. My team has 4 ex-FAANG 5+ year recruiters who have seen tens of thousands of resumes and done high thousands of interviews.
We have seen a heck of a lot. I think it’s worth hearing all sides as none of us have attended Codesmith. But what we see on a weekly basis on the outside is very clear and i’m presenting that view.
It’s very possible that we see more of the exaggerated resumes because they make it through the other filters, so I will admit that bias.
So I’m just basing this of the hundreds of LinkedIns I documented and the dozens of people I’ve worked with directly or indirectly from Codesmith. Things change, but you need to survey your whole cohort to kind of counter this rather than one case. You can always do whatever you want on your resume. It’s pretty frustrating to have super diligent data and people tell me I’m wrong because of one off cases. I’m not sharing the spreadsheet because it’s a privacy violation in my opinion but I’m happy to share the methodology and you can repeat it on your own.
Similarly. At Formation, the majority of people we work with are experienced industry engineers and we worked with them 10 to 20 hours a week as they have full time jobs elsewhere. Yet just because we have a small number of people with no experience at all - either no bootcamp or straight from bootcamp - and combine with the fact that…
1. People practice how to talk about OSP in depth without lying and without identifying it as a it is. This public video describes what I've heard from alumni and staff members, and what I've seen in alumni that I've interviewed myself, and specifically who talk to Erik Kirsten (a senior board advisor) as well: **"there's this one guy in particular his name is eric kirsten uh and this guy has a silver tongue and he will teach you how to say anything like you know you tell him hey um this is my background how do i present it to an employer to where it doesn't look like i just decided to switch careers because you want to avoid that stigma and he will give you a great way to say it you know"** 33:03 from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s)
2. I totally agree there should be additional checks and bounds to catch people m…
Well Formation is a Delaware Corporation, but you have to register in any state you are physically located in (and in some cases if you just have customers or employees in!). So just physically living in California means we have to have register here and pay taxes. People do try to avoid these things with "stretching" the laws, but we are trying to run things by the books.
My wife had a CA LLC in the past which is why I know a lot about that.
On a weekly basis, in my personal experience only, people are mistaking these resumes for experienced engineers. The blame might be entirely on the people making these mistakes, but I'm stating that I'm seeing it happening almost all the time.
I would like to emphasize what I repeatedly said in the past, MOST people working on real, legit Open Source projects ARE PAID for it. So Open Source !== not a real job and instantly make something that looks like a company not a company. Anyone reading, happy to talk more what Open Source really means because there is a lack of understanding in this sub about it.
In auditing 200 GitHub commit histories, over 75% of people had 2-3 weeks of commits on their projects, far less than even 1 month, never-mind multiple months. I have a nicely organized Google sheet from around May when I did the analysis. This is not two sides, it's a continuous spectr…
I agree that some things are a result of limitations of LinkedIn. This is not one of them. People might not be doing this with bad intentions, but someone, somewhere, is aware of this as a strategy to stand out from other bootcamp grads.
I agree that how people portray their personal profiles is up to them But I pulled over 200 Codesmith alumni profiles and over 2/3rds of them have almost the exact same descriptions and representation of that experience as ambiguous work experience.
I really need to emphasize that I'm not saying anything personal about people that do this. Again, I support people doing this case by case, but the fact that the vast majority of students do it is a fact to note as no other bootcamp has this characteristic.
It's often listed as "experience" and portrayed somewhat like a job.
This is a sample Codesmith project that looks like a real company that produces open source software and you can see how the students list their experience if you look at the "employees" profiles. It says nothing about Codemsith and instead redirect to a non existent entity called Open Source Labs (this isnt registered in any state I could find and is just run by Codesmith)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/vaasdev/
EDIT: Some people didn't like me sharing one of the OSP company pages in particular. I randomly chose it from the recent announcements and you can choose any of them! As open source projects they are all public and easy to find and easy to document the commit histories of what people are actually doing.
I don't think I portray Codesmith as a whole as shady. All of the people I know personally who work there or went there are fantastic people. They also say how hardworking and awesome the staff is on the ground running the day to day.
I'm pretty sure since I've been around here for like 8+ months, Codesmith has longer lines than ever, and several people credit me with the reason they chose it, so sorry if this was offensive, but overall I want to have balanced pros-and-cons.
Sorry if it comes across that way, I work with Codesmith alumni daily to sort this out and they will attest how complex and case by case this is, and how middle road I am... I work with people to help them get the best outcome and sometimes they use their Formation resume and sometimes I advise them to use their Codesmith resume for a role.
It's a controversial point but they do officially suggest to exclude it. The reasons they tell you are that: 'you did Codesmith and it's an elite school so you don't want to disadvantage yourself by coming across like a bootcamp grad. you have done projects that are at a mid or senior level and you want to be recognized for your accomplishments so you should emphasize those'
I don't agree with this reasoning but that's what they tell people.
EDIT: Want to clarify a few things because saying "officially" might be misleading
1. The official documentation doesn't tell you to exclude it but tells you to include it as experience and doesn't tell you to include the word Codesmith in describing that.
2. People are told the above not in writing but have reported being told it verbally during a standard resume lecture
Capital One's "Senior Associate SWE" is equivalent to the Google entry level L3 and Facebook entry level E3.
"Principal Associate" is more like Google mid level L4 and Facebook mid level E4.
The bar is higher but Capital One doesn't evaluate people like top tier companies do, they are a little more recall and study based.
Capital One right now has a super broken process that Codesmith alumni are exploiting so try running with it while you can! We've had Codesmith grads be honest about their experience and not pass the recruiter screen for ANY role there, and others who do what Codesmith told them to say who get these interviews... but each person does their own thing.
I would just be careful about over-leveling if you have no experience and are interviewed for this role. In the current economy low performers at higher levels who are overpaid go first in layoffs.
I'm bias but I would self-teach and then do Formation :) but that's because even though I have a degree, it was a broad engineering degree and I self taught myself web programming and started a web-based company in college that forced me to self-teach with real users.
Bloomtech's results were not great unfortunately :( I don't want to judge but by moving to the flex, much fewer people graduate now.
58% of full stack web people "graduated" and 90% of them got jobs.
They used to have 75% of people graduate with 75% job placement.
So of the people that sign on day one, it remains to be about 50% of them getting jobs at the end within 6 months of graduating.
The median salaries haven't changed much.
There aren't any program bootcamps that cover theory sufficiently with your Computer Science hat on.
Some programs, like Hack Reactor and Codesmith spend a week or two on DS&A, and both have ongoing DS&A practice. But it's firehose-style crammed in DS&A focused on passing interviews, not DS&A to learn fundamental patterns and ways of thinking about how computers work.
If you've already done a course, then you'll find even at these bootcamps, 90% of your time will be doing practical work and then the DS&A you do will be you helping the more junior people that don't know the basics.
What are your goals? If you want to get a top tier CS job, then I would consider Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Outco, Interview Kickstart, Coachable, and other "career accelerators" as they are designed possibly more for your case. If you feel you need a lot of practical skills too, and you just want…
I've worked with several 42 alumni, and their former operations manager worked at Formation after leaving 42.
The long story short is having a free school with free housing doesn't really work here and people take advantage of it for all kinds of reasons, from homeless people, to non-work authorized people, etc... At the same time, they were extremely low-staffed in person, as their platform was all online, even though the physical campus and dorms were in-person. So people would show up and sit at the computer doing online work all day, where they didn't really need to be there.
So you have these really hard operation challenges of running an in person school with in person dorms, with extremely low staff, and add the fact that it's free and people from all over are trying to exploit that.... makes it really hard to maintain.
It think all the people I worked with at Formation (and pr…
Coraline gave an amazing answer above/below as well.
People learn differently and at different paces. Bootcamps give you a fixed curriculum "firehose"-style on their accelerated schedule. So it's really not reasonable to expect yourself to absorb everything.
I also agree with Coraline that you (and anyone reading this) should expect to take some time after graduating to fill in gaps, continue projects, find your areas of passion to double down on, etc...
Launch School is one program that calls themselves the "slow way" to learn. The completely opposite of bootcamps is "mastery based learning", where you do the same topic over and over until you "master" it, and then move on, and then you finish the curriculum at your own pace. BloomTech is also moving in this direction of mastery based learning at your pace. Formation (disclosure: co-founder) isn't a bootcamp but we have a hybrid of…
I don't have a list no because it highly depends on a person, their goals, and what type of day to day learning works for them.
I wouldn't give a green light to even the best bootcamps for some people.
In fact, a bootcamp like Codesmith with a super high bar, is actually a very BAD CHOICE for someone who is genuinely not at the bar. If you aren't at the bar, you shouldn't be trying to get in at all costs, because it just won't work.
Pair programming is key. The interview is basically live coding with someone and you have no idea how different things feel when coding with other people hovering around. On the job for real, you don't often do live coding like this, but doing it forces you to confront topics you THINK you understand but you don't actually understand in a way that you can explain to other people haha.,
Why do you think people fail to get in?
Also for that question, if they expect you to pass in an index to an array recursively that doesn't show a strong understanding of recursion and how it would be used to solve complex problems in the future, like DP. So I would barely call that testing recursion. That is just "can you write a for loop recursively".
I hope they properly teach recursion in Codesmith afterwards and hwo to use it to solve complex problems. At Formation, recursion alone is something most people spend two to four or more weeks of intense practice to truly understanding and weild as a powerful tool to solve problems with.
There are a group of people saying that recursion and OOP are.now always tested to get in. We work with Codesmith alumni who still need recursion practice after graduating so that seems like a high bar to me.
If anyone has info on the consistency of the bar, please comment. Does everyone get the same questions/topics?
I can give you the Formation analogy now haha. We put you in the shallow end without floaties (we don't lecture) and stand behind you and continuously push you towards the deep end. How hard we push you keeps changing depending on how much you push back each step of the way and then eventually you are in the deep end all alone. Each person has a completely unique pushing needs/pattern.
I don't know. So the underlying math and practice data sets can be for the right people, but it's hard to simulate the sheer amounts of data people have at top companies. But the way Codemsith students exaggerate a 6 week OSP project into legit work experience, if they are banking on doing the same thing and turning a 6 week project using a public data set into a work like experience well see how it works. I think it's easier to fake it with full stack engineering where there are ten of thousands of stacks people work on. You can't fake PHD level math.
I think there is a lot of value in this model for people that are already strong to make them better, so it's not a waste for these people but it might limit the ultimate breadth of skill levels of people Codesmith can support long term, which might be totally fine. They are expanding to machine learning so if they can just cherry pick the best people in more and more disciplines that can scale too... it just changes the goal from "I want to get into Codemith so they can develop my skills to be successful" to "I want to get into Codemith because it validates I have the traits needed to be successful based on similar people". Both can work.
Surprisingly for all I know about Codesmith, I don't know much about the actual lecture contents... but this sounds really bad. It sounds like it relies on the raw abilities of the people both technically and communication wise with peers to learn.
If someone was really far behind, even with 1-1 peer time via a fellow, how could they possibly catch up with this model?
Sure, so people are reporting the entrance bar getting more selective. For example, basic recursion is required, and OOP is required.
So there are a fixed number of slots, and presumably more applicants than can fit, so they are choosing stronger and stronger applicants.
They have added an in person cohort and have 4 cohorts now on a 7 week cycle. So they have been adding capacity, but presumably not as fast to server everyone.
So what this means is the incoming people will be more experienced and stronger than in the past, and will get better outcomes - both speed to outcome and compensation.
That's an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. I didn't realize that would push people away from the industry.
Codesmith has a bit of a cult-like following and branding (that is also pushed internally constantly - always told the curriculum is perfectly optimized, the resume process is perfectly fine tuned, etc...) and I guess that comes across on the outside too - 'this CSX course is perfectly prepared for beginners and do it to get into codesmith and since codesmith is the best, then....'
It's definitely not that the best. Their content team is working on a story about people who do CSX and get "junior roles" immediately without doing Codesmith, as opposed to the "mid level and senior" roles you get at Codesmith. So I think they internally think highly of CSX if they think CSX is equivalent of 'other bootcamps'. Watch out for that blog post haha.
I agree that I should be more precise and appreciate the pushback and I did a deeper dive. A larger problem is most big tech do not allow you to have another W2 job in the tech field because their contracts cover all your IP created in the tech space and the OTHER W2 job usually has a similar contract and hence the conflict.
Agree on 52 Fellows, 3 months W-2 @ $1K per week.
17 prep instructors who have full time jobs elsewhere (I don't know the compensation, it's not gift cards but I don't what it is and I would somewhat expect it to be something hourly yeah, I shouldn't bucket them into the 50K a year - I just don't know but I didn't think it was equivalent to the full time instructors and have ZERO basis to believe it's lower, just guess)
15 engineering mentors who have full time jobs elsewhere (these are the people who I thought were not paid W-2 but paid with gift cards - or equiv…
I'm including alumni who do part time instruction in there too, and alumni who do mock interviews for free or gift cards (that number might be much higher actually)
Going off the about page. But there are also several people on LinkedIn who claim to work at Codesmith not on the about page so no idea how large this number is.
I think it's very unlikely they will sell. They have a good thing going and are printing money right now because it's 100% upfront. They have about 80 former students on staff who are paid like 50K a year or with gift cards and have scaled that very well.
I think the only risk is if they scale too large or too broad.
They benefit from being very selective and their weaker students don't have as much success. So they will either have a cap on how many people meet their bar, or they will have to invest in training people beforehand to get them to the bar.
I also think it's a risk that someone catches on to the exaggerated work experience issue. I haven't talked to one non Codesmith industry person who thinks that's ok and if they get large enough and people catch on it may not work anymore. I know this is controversial.
They are experimenting with a machine learning cohort and we'll se…
CIRR's "percentage employed in 180 days" is accepted offers / graduated, correct. And is 100% misleading not accounting for people who don't graduate.
As I said above, "Percentage of job obtainers who reported salaries" also lets you remove people from the salary counts, which still including them as placed. Why would this happen? I'm not accusing Codesmith of this, but Tech Elevator is 100% and I don't know why Codesmith is missing salaries for people counted as placements. My theory is people who ghost but can be confirmed as employed from trustworthy data.
Ah yes, the CIRR ambiguity and you have to do some math on your own.
So the only hard number is "Number of graduates included in the report: 91"
The rest of the numbers are all percentages and honestly the numerators and denominators aren't specified super clearly in the reports. Even the CIRR spec isn't 100% clear.
"Graduates included in report" in their worksheet is based on a column "Included in placement data?" which is an AND formula of 1. intended to get new job within 3 days of starting program and 2. has work authorization 3. "effective" graduation date was within the six months window of the report. So I'm interpreting that this actually means someone graduating late, might be included in a later report.
So my formulas above are estimating when someone signs a contract what percentage graduated on time and then getting a job within the expected 180 days. Basically trying to…
It means that a lower percentage of people were placed within 180 days compared to last half. It's more reflective of the job market I think than Codesmith because it's not that much different.
What it does mean is the salaries are of the people getting placed only. So higher salaries across a smaller number of people.
NY H12021: 94.7% graduation -> 89.4% placed in 180 days = 84.6% people starting getting placed
NY H22021: 92.8% graduation -> 83.6% placed in 180 days = 77.5% people starting getting placed
LA H12021: 94.8% graduation -> 85.2% placed in 180 days = 80.8% people starting getting placed
LA H22021: 91.9% graduation -> 80.9% placed in 180 days = 74.3% people starting getting placed
More CIRR H2 2021 results out! Codesmith included - with a lot to unpack! Overall lower placement rates and much higher salaries of those placed, and a few more fun things!
Where to begin, so much interesting stuff in the part 2 CIRR results, focusing on Codesmith as it's the most interesting to this subreddit.
Overall interesting notes (incomplete but tried to select a few things I found interesting):
* By far the most interesting thing in East Coast (EC, formerly NY), salary growths were super large. Median is up to a WHOPPING $140K but more interestingly in H1: 18% of people had salary $140K+ and now \~52% of East Coast grads made $140K+, that's a massive shift! And similar to FTRI there is a dip to almost zero in $150 to $160K with \~20% in the $140K to $150K bucket and \~20% in the $160K+ bucket. So my hypothesis on this adding in my industry knowledge is that \~10 to 20 people g…
Will Sentence, the founder, is more opinionated about pedagogy I believe (never talked to him directly) and is a really smart person who puts a lot of effort into teaching effectively.
But I agree that CSX is pretty weak. It's intended as a "top of funnel" to Codesmith and many bootcamps follow this approach. They want you to join CSX and work with some peers on Slack. Then like it enough to sign up for a few hundred dollar prep course, taught by alumni. Then like that enough to join the immersive.
Most bootcamps have a similar approach to this. CSX isn't really intended to teach people anything as a standalone tool. Most of the people I know who got into Codesmith used many tools including Leetcode "easy problems" to get in. They want you to attend free seminars and pair programming sessions where they can build a relationship and help the right people make their way to immersive and…
Codesmith is somewhat split on outcomes. There's one contingent of engineers who have experience, don't really need the curriculum and benefit from mentoring others, the accountability, and the network. This group is aiming for top tier jobs. I believe this represents about the under 40% of people who make salaries over $130K.
Then there is another contingent who end up making under $110K which is about 20% plus I would include the people who don't get jobs in 6 months (another 10%) and then the people who don't graduate (5%) (all this based on 2021 CIRR reports). I'm making a BIG ASSUMPTION that the people who don't graduate and don't get jobs are on the less experienced side but I'm sure there are people for whom this isn't the case.
Anyways, that means APPROXIMATELY BASED ON CIRR 35% of people who are weaker or have no experience get jobs under $110K or no jobs within 6 months of g…
These are our last \~30 offers accepted in order (excluded declined offers obviously): Square, Flatiron Health, Amazon, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, WePay, Amazon, Visa, Doordash, Virgin Orbit, <top startup redacted>, UIPath, American Express, <mid size not top tier redacted> Amazon, Square, <top startup redacted>, Amazon, American Express, Zapier, Edelman, Klaviyo, <top startup redacted>, Dialexa, Amazon, Google, Plaid, Sense, <not top tier startup redacted>, <top startup redacted>, Figma, Google.
I think this list demonstrates both consistent top tier placements, as well as the breadth of placements on an individual basis. We still don't have more salary data to give because we don't want to give anything out that we feel doesn't communicate what we're doing.
As stated before, the methodology for the data is in the fine print of that dialog on the website and it's very clear how we compu…
Yeah I totally think the percentages are very clear and the 20% under $110K and 20% over $140K is a lot more interesting than the median in the middle but I meet a lot of people who almost always say "but Codesmith grads make $125K" and the data, which is very different from all other programs that report, looks more to me like people with experience have made $140K+ (which is actually market rate a mid-tier companies for people with experience) and people with no experience tend to make under $110K. Most people in this Reddit have no experience, but they believe they will make $125K. I wish they had data for experienced and non-experienced people but that's not part of CIRR.
You are straight up wrong about CIRR. The median salaries are of people who reported salaries and got jobs only and exclude everyone else. So drop off 1 is the graduation percentage. People who don't graduate are not included in the median salary calculation. Then there's people that don't get jobs. They are not included in the median salary calculation. And then outside sources can be used to confirm employment for percentage employed but without a salary to include the median calculation. You said you do a lot of research so read the CIRR and it's very clear in the Excel worksheets they provide... complete with examples showing exactly this
This is exactly what I'm talking about how CIRR has built in vagueness to make this happen and help paint programs in the best light.
I tried to give some reasons above but I don't even like what we have now on the site, because the outcomes vary so so so much by goal and we have to very carefully decide which numbers best represent what we do - which we haven't done yet - so we encourage people to talk to whatever random Formation person they can find with similar backgrounds and chat with them. Like we literally have had 10+ offers over $300K TC in October for whom that is the market rate and we help the people choose between offers. The uniqueness of those situations for those people are not captured in an average salary metric because and we want people to know they are getting a bespoke experience aimed at helping the accomplish their goals.
I've said this before but some of Codesmith's alumni get stock and bonuses as well, excluded from CIRR, and CIRR does not paint an accurate picture of their outcomes as well.…
You’re asking to compare people that get jobs within 90 days of starting so you can compare it with people who get jobs within 90 days of FINISHING. Makes no sense. You are asking to compare people that do 50 hours a week to 10 hours a week. Makes no sense. You are asking to compare people with a goal of getting a job in 8 months with those who want one ASAP. Not everyone wants a job ASAP at Formation. People often get several offers and keep training until they get one they like. All of this makes adds to why it makes no sense to give those CIRR numbers.
I agree with your ask though. I would love to provide better data that can help people estimate how long it might take to get a job given their unique circumstances across over 5 dimensions. So far it hasn’t been a big ask and people talk to current Fellows to get an idea of how it works. Quite frankly we are doing ourselves a disserv…
I keep saying the same things but everyone comes in at different skills. We have someone with literally zero experience who got a job af Amazon entry level and a staff engineer with 6 years of experience. Aggregate times don’t make sense. They make sense if everyone is starting at the same point like a bootcamp or school. They take you from A to the best B possible. We take you based on your B goal and if we think we can get you there from wherever your A is. It’s seriously nothing like a bootcamp or anything remotely similar.
Im here to give people advice because I work with so many past bootcamp grads and see a lot of misunderstandings. I’m sorry if my involvement here is confusing but I would ask you try not to read into it.
Again, not a school, no graduates, no end of program, no curriculum and we can’t be compared to a bootcamp head to head. All good questions to ask and also exactly why we can’t possibly report CIRR like metrics.
I think you have a big misunderstanding about what Formation is and it might be helpful to research more instead of trying to make us for your mold for what you think we are.
I feel personally attacked because I repeatedly tell you we don't have a school and we are running something different, and you repeatedly call Formation a school or a bootcamp and repeatedly ask for data the schools and bootcamps offer. You seem so fixed on the fact that you believe we are a school and I've offered at least once to do a call with you to explain what we are. Yet you keep saying it and the I have to keep correcting it.
Oh so all your projects are under one section? Like a single top level item “Open Source” with your OSP and your all projects all as equal sub bullets? That’s my recommendation as well yeah. Very curious to see why the majority of resumes end up with OSP as a separate item! Let me know if you get any insight why.
Always appreciate good discussion Ben and Triathlete!
So this might sound very subtle. So assume that no one will read the bullet points and the key trick is having the following
OSP:
-bullets
Open Source Projects:
1. solo
2. refine
3. enhance
By putting your other projects under a single "open source" bucket it tricks someone into thinking the OSP is likely work experience (even if it says open source somewhere.... people don't read it)
Yeah actually I do. The world is very large. These companies are very large. People see hundred and hundreds of resumes.
1. Several times a week people on my team mislabel Codesmith alumni as industry experienced based on their LinkedIns. Recruiters spend seconds looking at your resume and they don't read bullet point 15 that says "product incubated under oslabs" and when they do, they aren't pondering what that is and if it's open source
2. I asked some people the other day about this with some examples, industry experienced people and two said expletive laced sentences about this practice.
You can blame it on the recruiters or the companies but things are the way they are because the vast majority of people have integrity in their resumes and don't do this and companies don't build teams of recruiters who are trained and focused only on this tiny edge case.
The problem here is tha…
So there is such a size-able Codesmith contingent at Capital One, they have their own Slack channel and they can refer people to a variety of teams.
Capital One has a variety of positions, but the one most people are getting is "Software Eng - Senior Associate" which pays around $150K a year base salary and total comp. A FAANG entry level is about $200K+ total comp based on performance for comparison.
Reasons how this works.
1. They only have one level lower than this that is very entry level "Associate Software Eng" and it's meant for new grads and kind of like a mini internship. So anyone with any experience would be considered for "senior associate"+.
2. Some of these people at Codesmith have experience already and don't do anything special to be considered.
3. Some of these people at Codesmith list their group projects as "work experience" and mislead the company into thinking t…
Yeah it has solid cash compensation too, I think it's a great first job for someone with no experience.
Oh one followup: "Senior Associate" there is like "Early Career L3" at Google. and "Master Engineer" or "Lead Engineer" is what Google calls Senior Engineer... just showing the level names being meaningless as it's a good example of that.
From my knowledge working with a wide variety of Codesmith alumni I disagree that "they don't teach anything". I see two buckets of people: first are the 2/3 of people with zero experience who self taught enough to get in, and they learn a tremendous amount of practical skills; second are the 1/3 of people with experience who do say things along those lines, and it's likely true because Codesmith's is a bootcamp aimed at helping people with no to little experience. The 1/3 of experienced people probably shouldn't go to Codesmith to learn skills but the 2/3 of not experienced people do find it incredibly valuable.
At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, work with experienced engineers) we have seen a slightly increased demand from bootcamp grads who can't find jobs, and our outcomes remain very strong, but we are targeting top tier companies and it's not for everyone. There…
Oh yeah the average time is somewhere 6ish months from starting (?). And the range is anywhere from 1 month to 12 months. I never said it's fast and depends on a lot of factors. Another major one is part time vs full time. Some people spend 50 hours a week on Formation and some 10 hours a week. People can also usually pause depending on their life. It's really drastically different from a bootcamp and much more like a personal trainer analogy.
I don't think anyone here is an idiot, no.
Remember all those sports card price magazines and pokemon card price magazines and beanie baby price magazines, that are all gone... they only survive if the underlying thing survives, and many of them have been accused of inflating the value of the cards and of the beanie babies to keep the hype going.
According to Crunchbase (I can't disclose confidential non-public info): Rithm is backed by Slow Ventures and Codesmith is backed by a serial entrepreneur, film producer, and investor Chad Troutwine.
We publish some salary data of outcomes on our website and have for a while.
Happy to try to answer these questions, they are extremely reasonable questions:
“average percentage of students that finds a job within 3-6 months of program”
\- I'm not sure what this means. Of STARTING Formation or of when? Everyone starts Formation at a different…
First, SwitchUp's "data" intake form hasn't been updated since 2020 according to [archive.org](https://archive.org) ([https://web.archive.org/web/\*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.switchup.org/write-review)) and still promises a chance to win a $500 / $100 gift card for submitting a review. Who got those and when and how do you have a chance to win them? The Additional Survey they rely on for data hasn't been updated since 2020/2021: [https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK). Their latest major report is from 2018: [https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey](https://www.switchup.org/rankings/coding-bootcamp-survey)
I never once criticized the validity of the content on these sites. I'm saying the sites themselves are biased... you mention VC funding repeatedly... both of these sites…