BloomTech is formerly Lambda School and changed names as a result of a trademark lawsuit. Their founder, Austen, is a natural marketer and grew the school way too fast. I have thoughts here but they are just opinions and not relevant. BloomTech in its current form is nothing like Lambda School so the past reviews and bad press are somewhat irrelevant.
CourseReport is a supporting member of CIRR and accepts payments from bootcamps to promote them. Switch Up makes money by referring people to specific bootcamps. Career Karma also pays fees to refer people to specific bootcamps. So all three are biased as their success depends on the bootcamp industries success and you have at their content through that lens.
CIRR is another irrelevant source nowadays because no one is in them. If a bootcamp takes part in CIRR you can trust the numbers they report to CIRR. But CIRR's most recent standard…
Formation isn’t a bootcamp with lessons and instructors. Our Fellows do 2 to 6 hours long sessions a week in groups of 3 to 6 people (or 1-1 mocks) and those are led my industry mentors who are mostly independent senior, staff, and principal engineers from top tier companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, over 100 mentors likes this. The sessions are scheduled every week just for you from scratch and on specific topics you need to work on, or 1-1 mock interviews run exactly like real interviews.
Our mentors are well respected engineers and most are doing it to help with our mission of helping people from non tradition and underrepresented backgrounds level up.
Their about page has a list of all employees. All engineering fellows are former students. All the full time, senior, and lead instructors went to Codesmith and never worked in industry. All the part time instructors are former students with full time jobs. They recently hired someone outside, who worked at Coding Dojo.
Don’t make assumptions and also don’t just trust what I say. Look through the employee list and look at their LinkedIns…
I think they are generally similar yeah in that the materials are similar and they move at similar paces, and you should look at the day to day. Codesmith has a very tight community of awesome people as it's a bit smaller than HR. HR has a fantastic alumni network as well and it's much larger than Codesmith's but I feel like Codesmith alumni really "stay in the family".... just look at how many alumni come back in some capacity to teach or help out... almost every instructor at Codesmith WENT to Codesmith. People aside, Codesmith has really figured out the resume/job hunt process that works and has scaled to like 150-200 simultaneous students or so. Launch School's Capstone is in my opinion stronger but they take like 30 people at a time.
When it comes to HR vs Codesmith I often ask people's timeframes and their goals because both are solid options. Codesmith is slightly better if you…
What are you using to judge that Codesmith is the clear #1? Have you looked into smaller programs like Rithm and Launch School Capstone. Rithm has very small class sizes directly taught by seasoned instructors. Launch School Captone projects are very similarly designed but blow Codesmith OSP out of the water in terms of time spent.
Depending on what you are looking for Codesmith is likely a contender for the top choice, but curious what "consensus" you are basing that statement off of. Reddit is full of anonymous people who come and go. Codesmith currently has 50+ previous students on staff as Fellows and many more as instructors, and how do you know a bunch of "alumni" on here aren't also on payroll and leave that out?
Starting a real open source project is honestly really hard. Almost all of the biggest ones were either made by large corporations, or have employees of large corporations as the primary contributors. It's vastly different from what it looks like at first glance.
Otherwise, the people who start new projects are generally very experienced engineers and they have a reason to do so, and they are doing them under a company name.
For example Apollo, Dagster... even Material UI for React. So the Material spec is a DESIGN spec from Google. Material UI is a React library implementing that spec inside React. 1. It's a for-profit company. 2. The founding team is experience engineers.
A real open source project is in many ways HARDER than building software for a company, because you have to have clearer code architecture built from the beginning with the intention of people working on top of thi…
I don't know the scope of the project, but work on something you are already passionate about. Here are some past examples I've seen:
1. A former wine buyer for a restaurant built a cellar tracking app for restaurants
2. A former professional musician built a machine learning sheet music generator
3. A college student built an iOS game like guitar hero but novel in a few weeks having never know iOS before
Some of the projects I built when self-teaching web development:
1. An "auto-voter" website for a reality TV show competition
2. An itinerary generator for Walt Disney World that told you which rides to go to when based on your group, intensity, ride characteristics and wait times, etc...
3. An internship review website
4. An app for assisting you to draft a minor league hockey team (I'm from Canada, this was common lol)
I also think Codesmith and Launch Schools projects of making a…
Formation hasn't worked with or talked to any Launch School Capstone grads because so I can't compare. They have very small cohorts and are less frequent.
Launch Schools projects though are way more in depth than the Codesmith OSPs (anyone from Codesmith check them out and don't trust me!) but mostly because they spend a long time on them.
\-This is an example: [https://tailslide-io.github.io/#landing](https://tailslide-io.github.io/#landing)
\-Note the pages and pages of proper documentation
\-An entire GitHub company for the project with 10 repos.
\-An extremely thorough case study with pages and pages of well organized write up!
I agree with your response that people make their own resumes and each person does what they want to do. But there are many projects that don't disclose this that are brand new. The more mature a project gets, the more obvious it seems to get and I think this is the students decision, not Codesmith telling them to do it.
Out of the newest \~8 projects, these alone don't say a thing about open source affiliation to Codesmith directly (10/17/202 9:18am PST)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/devdux-extension/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/devdux-extension/)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/jesterapp/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/jesterapp/)
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/zurau-kafka/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/zurau-kafka/)
This one says "Product developed under tech accelerator OSLabs" which again, you can Google OSLabs, but it sounds like it's a real "product":
[…
Hi, the ISA is based on eligibility to work yeah so I don't know if/when that would change, but our mission is to have training that works for everyone just no timeframe I can give.
We don't rely on special relationships necessarily for jobs. We help you find the best path we can for companies to meet your goals. Sometimes that is referrals and sometimes we just help people apply to the right places. But we don't have specific pipelines that you automatically get placed in with specific companies. Referrals also don't guarantee interviews always, and referrals come in many shapes and sizes as well. Targeting most companies in Canada that have a presence or connections to the USA (which is a lot of the top companies) is reasonable. We are less connected with Canadian specific companies.
Yeah for all those who criticize my comments about Codesmith, I'm honest to god just capturing this sentiment from many alumni who feel this way too but don't talk about it often because of the fear of being ostracized from the Codesmith network. And if you see how some people attack my (in my intention) neutral pros and cons comments about this, you can see why those people feel that way.
I agree with most of what you are saying about how your skill and impact drive your trajectory once you get a job (and also the strong Codesmith alumni network who stay involved) - and I also add that many people can accelerate their careers by seeking outside training to increase that skill.
One key thing I disagree on, which is that the blatant exaggeration harms those with similar experience who don't exaggerate. I gave the example before, but I did a four month long entire semester college thesis project that involved hours and hours of running around Toronto doing scientifically correct user research, building a prototype, repeating, launching a product, hundreds of pages of writing. If I don't create a facade to make this look like this was a company and work experience to boost my resume, I'm being harmed by those people that are doing that for less significant projects.
At the…
Yeah so my understanding is that Phil confirms the information you provide him about the specifics of what you told the company, and doesn't openly add additional context about Codesmith and what it is etc... or correct the dates/role you claimed.
When I do reference calls for Fellows, which is rare, I always explain what Formation is and people find a lot of value in me comparing someone to the hundreds and thousands of people I've worked with across my career and they don't care at all if the person has a specific number of years of work experience.
Like if a Formation Fellow was like "Michael, I told ABC that I did this OSP for 3 months from Jan to March and I was the lead", and the person worked on this OSP for 6 weeks but I confirmed that... it would be unethical to me and I would never do that. Even if the information was correct, I would feel a duty to check the information firs…
Good question, this is what I'm talking about discussing sources and quality of information in questioning conclusions so that the overall body of knowledge gets better and better.
I can't give more info about the sources without DOXing (which as someone pointed out, is against Reddit ToS and also against my personal ethics), which limits the credibility... like an article based on off-the-record sources only.
The information provided was that at some point in time Phil did/does reference calls for people and confirms the information you provide him when giving a heads up that you need a reference call (there is a process for requesting a reference call that I also don't want to go into in case it would DOX people involved). What I don't know is if anyone checks that self-provided information's accuracy or not.
I don't have any idea whatsoever what the people say on these calls, and I…
This is not me \^\^. I only post from my real account with my name on it. I have access to Formation's account for ads, and I have one throwaway account to follow people who troll me and then block me (hence I can't see their posts) so I can identify patterns in their posts but I don't post from it. I've also said this many times and if you were around here for long enough you would believe me.
I've seen at Facebook what happens when people jump to conclusions and yell loudly about their unsubstantiated beliefs as if they are facts and it was not great around the last elections and with COVID misinformation (which was after I left but was the same patterns).
We need a world where people give sources, evidence, and actual examples so that other people can then discuss the interpretation of the sources if they disagree with the statements, instead of pointless back and forth yelling pers…
Hi! It depends a lot on your experience and two paths:
One option is the career accelerator bucket of programs. Like Formation, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation. At Formation, most people we work with have work experience but have some people with CS degrees (or are graduating soon) who are DS&A heavy and aiming for new grad FAANG roles, and I think it's a good fit for that. Although you should be starting to apply and interview very soon because it's the new grad hiring cycle right now! Formation doesn't have any veteran benefits so it might not be a good fit, but check out these programs.
If you don't have any internships and are not aiming for a FAANG/top-tier company that is CS-fundamentals heavy then I would recommend looking at a bootcamp. A lot of bootcamps start from scratch, so veteran benefits or not, I would consider a program…
I already offered to do a call with you, and suggested you do real research about Formation before defaming me and the company. Instead you are making up things you believe to be true with no evidence whatsoever and yelling more and more loudly about them to make them feel more and more true. Just like this subreddit is a bubble around bootcamps, thought bubbles exist and no one is immune, not me, not you.
What evidence do you have the user was banned from Reddit?
I have a spreadsheet and documentation of 200 alumns and it's pretty clear. Whether they are told to lie or not is seperate, but the raw data is clear. I suggest you do the same exercise before refuting this point.
RE: FAANG I agree there is a problem with inclusivity and that's why Formation's mission is to fix that. FAANG prioritize consistency and calibration. So they are pattern matching you against others to make sure…
Every Codesmith alumni I've worked with at Formation (15+) has been a really fantastic person. Hard working, professional, well rounded, collaborative.
I've spoken to a lot of people and only a handful of loud people on here believe the mid-level senior level thing. They all understand that there is a difference between like mid-level Google vs mid-level Capital One (I think a senior at Capital One is an entry level at Google, and a "Master Engineer" is senior at Google).
They are running through a playbook of "how you create an OSP project", which templates you use for Medium, website, slack posts... everyone knows the "Sponsored talks from Single Sprout" are kind of a joke, but they do what they are supposed to do because they see it work for previous alumni.
Some of the loud people on here are actually just trolls or employees, there are also a small number of people with multiple…
Big thread in CSC sub with range of opinions on framing your bootcamp as "experience" on resumes. CSC is a lot angrier than this sub in tone, but I think it's good to read all sides of this. (Link in body)
While this calls out Codesmith, this discussion is more broadly about people's views on what "lying" means on your resume, as well as comparing CS degrees to bootcamp grads. I think it will shed some light from people in industry on why it's so hard for some bootcamp grads to even get interviews.
Just try to be patient with the tone, some people have pretty aggressive statements on both sides.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/y1klt4/experience/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/y1klt4/experience/)
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith but I know a lot about them and have done a deep dive into 200 alumni profiles. I posted a similar comment in the coding bootcamp sub reddit recently and am reposting here.
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and started coaching and training (potential bias disclosure: this is paid training) to help people from non-traditional backgrounds... so I work with a lot of bootcamp grads and learned a lot about how the top bootcamps work.
**Codesmith:** I do know a little more than most programs.... fun sto…
There is or was someone at Codemsith at a very high level that does background check calls to back up people's experience and a process for doing these checks.
Source: someone inside Codesmith
EDIT BASED ON FEEDBACK: "to back up people's experience" does not mean to confirm lies or anything specific. I'm unaware of what happens in the calls and can't comment either way. My comment is that there is a process for doing background checks where someone backups the information you provide them. From my discussions, IN GENERAL people don't disclose it's not work, unless asked, but will never say that it WAS work. So presumably a background check call would not involve confirming it was "real work" but rather it was some other relationship. Ultimately, I don't know, but I want to make sure it doesn't come across that I was implying that the former.
Yeah CIRR does two things:
1. Sets a standard and set of rules and definitions everyone agrees to follow
2. Requires reports to get audited
CIRR is a business league, founded by SkillsFund (now Ascend) and supported by a Course Report.
The results themselves are meant to have high integrity and I trust the numbers. BUT it doesn't mean the whole process and the rules don't have biases in them.
CIRR represents the bootcamp industry, it's a business league with the charter of supporting the industry the members are in. So it's in CIRR's interest for bootcamps to succeed, it's in Ascend's interest for bootcamps to succeed and for students to get loans from them. It's in Course Reports interest for bootcamps to succeed and get page views on their review website and higher valued sponsorships, it's bootcamps interest because more enrollments = more business.
People reading my comments: C…
No bootcamp teaches the level of fundamentals above and I can go into extensive detail how no bootcamp I know of (including Codesmith) teaches these concepts from a fundamentals approach despite what they might say. There is one kind of bootcamp-like program for senior engineers that actually does have like 4 week units on these topics taught but industry legends in those areas but I don't know if they are still operating.
Most bootcamps teach the "what" and some bootcamps go deeper to the "how" (e.g. HOW does the event loop work in Javascript). The CS fundamentals above are on the "why" - why is the abstract theoretical patterns/reasoning that get applied to real situations.
For example. A bootcamp might teach you what SQL is and the basic syntax of some queries. Going one level deeper, one might teach you how relational databases work in general. Fundamentals approach teach you set…
You can look at [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (disclosure, I'm a co-founder). We aren't a bootcamp and we don't explicitly teach classes... we're more like a personal trainer to work with you on your fundamentals and get you in good shape. We have a pretty strict/high bar to make sure people are ready to work on the fundamentals as a pathway to a top tier job and aren't there for the wrong reasons.
And yes, we pay our engineers FAANG-level/top tier compensation and try to attract the top talent mentors in the industry, so that's a good point about having good mentorship and it does cost a lot.
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith. This subreddit is really Codesmith heavy so the topic comes up on a daily basis disproportionately more than any program for it's size. As one of the top program, this makes sense I think. I'll explain the context for why I know so much about Codesmith in particular after given broader context for others reading... how I know so much about Codesmith is an interesting story though!
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and then helped start Formation ([formation.dev](https://formation.dev)) to help peop…
I think the OP is referring to the fact that if you lookup students by those projects to "find them on LinkedIn" (because otherwise it would be hard to find them) that a significant amount of people have no new job after the open source projects. I've also found this the time a few months ago when I audited 200 graduates and the percentage with jobs was low (it's REALLY hard to get start dates for people because people tend to ambiguously list the start as "2021" or "2022" rather than the exact months so I assume most of the people I looked at that appeared to have 6+ months of experience were current students). I've also seen some people entirely scrub their LinkedIn after getting a job and removing all those projects so that makes it further harder.
I think the answer to this is to look at CIRR and trust the graduations rates and placement rates! Look carefully at what the numbers mea…
Sorry to hear about your experiences. I wanted to add some thoughts at the industry level, not to support or attack the post or to defend app academy but just some thoughts comparing them to the industry because I feel like several complaints are industry wide complaints as well.
- The gender ratio in tech sucks. At FAANG it's about 25% female and non-binary.
- Top bootcamps with super long hours make this so much worse and are really non inclusive. HR and Codesmith have 11 hour days. How can a parent not find that intimidating? How can someone living paycheck to paycheck afford to not have any other time to work? They appeal to unattached, ambitious people who have the savings to do them, or people who otherwise have the supportive life circumstances to do it. And this unfortunately is not a represetative bunch of our society.
- A lot of bootcamps that are operated as schools seem to h…
I have worked with several fellows post Codesmith. Corrections are more than welcome!
Some notes:
- The pay is $1K per week as of a few months ago.
- It's a W2 job direct with the company and not a 1099 contractor role. They have fellows in many states, so not sure if all are W2.
- It's 3 months long but some people extend and stay on full time as an instructor and get paid a median engineer salary.
- You can leave if you get a job, but most people expect to stay for the full 3 months.
- You do a lot day to day. Some people have been surprised by the large workload, others have said it's not that large of a workload. The most extreme was "you barely have time to sleep" and the least extreme was "it's a lot of work but you have a lot of down time to apply for jobs and take care of yourself".
- You do: grading, 1-1 tutoring, mock interviews, interviews with prospectives, live support. M…
Yeah it's a good point that with COVID we've forgotten the intensity of the commute in addition to already long hours. Their in-person cohort had applications opened beyond the deadline so I suspect many people feel this way too.
I'm concerned the staff will want to go in person too. I help run Formation and it's been a blessing we can hire some incredibly talented people across the country to help make Formation awesome. And if we were limited to just San Francisco, it would be very hard to find such amazing people in a smaller pool who also wants to commute every day. Very curious if they end of going hybrid with their staff, while requiring students to be in the office 11 hours a a day. At the end of the day the staff are key... you aren't paying $20K to work with some friends through some online materials.
But they leased a nice office in Manhattan (the most expensive real estate…
Ping alumni and ask! You ideally want to learn about the experiences of people who had a similar background to you and how they felt about the program.
It's really hard to trust any kind of "ratings" overall.
Course Report is a supporting member of CIRR and accepts sponsorships from bootcamps.
SwitchUp has a disclosure that they get paid by bootcamps that they send people to.
Career Karma gets paid by bootcamps to send people there and has sponsorships.
CIRR itself is founded by a bootcamp loan company and supported by a bootcamp review company (Course Report).
Reddit is full of anecdotal experiences from anonymous people without much context.
And bootcamps do all kinds of tactics to encourage positive reviews and discourage negative ones. In fact all businesses do.... like I saw at a bank even: "If we weren't a 10, talk to a manager first to work out any issues you had with your…
I've seen you around a lot, do you have any corrections on any of the things I've said? Or in the future, let me know too.
I've had a few people (3) message me about halfway through Codesmith telling me that my analysis is shockingly accurate and that I seem to understand the workings of the program at a deeper level.
Not saying this to brag, but to say that I really do take pride in trying to be accurate in what I say, so appreciate any corrections!
Yeah! There are a TON of interesting ed-tech companies, Guild, MasterClass, Coursera, Duolingo, just immediately come to mind.
I would look for paths there.
Also, roles at bigger companies leveraging that experience. Like Facebook has a team working on employee education software internally. You might be good for that team. At Facebook you interview generically, so this doesn't work there, but at many companies, finding the right team to approach can help.
Some companies are freezing, but at Formation we're seeing people get hired and interviewing at dozens of top tier companies, so while some of the bigger names are frozen, most are not.
There is more of a shift to experienced engineers, and less risk taking with no-experience people (I've heard from students that are recent grads from Codesmith for example that they are having a harder time getting interviews than students in the past for those with no experience, but the people with experience are getting interviews and strong offers still). At Formation, we are also seeing a bit of a shift. For example, a company might interview someone for senior and they didn't meet the bar, but in the past they would down level to mid-level and now they are just not making an offer at all. So a slight "tightening" rather than full blown freezes.
On the no-experience side, at Formation we're surp…
I don't know them personally, I can't remember if Sophie did back when. So Bradfield is basically two qualified, solid engineers who teach people and they are very small (which is likely a good thing). I think it's only once or twice a year so if you are going to plan your life around their timeline, I would talk to one of the two instructors now and see if it's good for you, and then make that plan. You'll want to have a good rapport with them to move forward.
One minor thing I noted in the past and has not changed, is their website is a little sketchy, in that they call themselves a "School of Computer Science" but don't even have a terms of service or privacy policy, address, any kind of little details that most legit services have. This isn't a giant flag though because I feel like it's just two really solid engineers teaching people out of a passion, so don't get distracted by the…
I agree with most of this, but one additional point is that people who are doing 100Devs are likely on the lower experience end of the spectrum so comparing them to the zero experience Codesmith outcomes would be more fair in the thought experiment.
If someone makes $105K and it takes them 6 months to get a job and they had to wait 3 months to start Codesmith (which seems to be the time you have to apply), i.e. 12 months total.
I would say the fair comparison would be 100Devs to CSX if CSX were to have a full bootcamp curriculum, but they are still very different. I've been following 100Devs since fairly early on and haven't talked about them much because it's a quite unique offering.
Disclaimer: personal opinions based on observations. I don't know Will Sentance or Leon personally to know their long term ambitions with their programs and am commenting on what I see today.
SIMILARITIES:
* Like any teaching style, Leon has a unique teaching style and it works for a lot of people. Will Sentance has a unique style that works for a lot of people. You can't argue objectively what is better and I don't want to start an academic argument about pedagogy. Objectively, 100Devs is certainly at least comparable to another complete online web-dev course and could be better depending on you.
* Very loyal community. Both c…
Which sentiments are misleading are why? Sorry for pushing you so much, it's not personal, but just because someone yells loudly "this is misleading", "this is fake", "this is misinformation" it doesn't make it so, and yelling more and more loudly doesn't make that more and more true.
It would be more useful for everyone to go through point by point, provide evidence, provide sources, challenge me and ask me what my sources are and why, etc... I'm very open to debating details of anything you think is misleading and we could have a great discussion about that on the thread.
Sophie makes it a point to have investors and advisors that staunchly disagree with each other on our team at Formation because having productive debates and looking at things from different angles can help the team get to the best conclusions.
I'm not just Googling and declaring my feelings on here... my sources…
Also I think you asked good questions around the OSP projects! I have one criticism of the OSPs that while they are well run group projects and are fantastically done, they are really just group projects where the team breaks up things into tasks themselves, runs scrums themselves, does all the code review themselves. However, Codesmith staff call these projects the 'equivalent industry experience of a mid-level or senior software engineer', and that statement is so mind-boggling wrong I feel the need to constantly correct. They are fantastic projects for what they are, like arguably the best of many bootcamps!
P.S. I'm going to get super downvoted because I always talk about the OSPs this way and a group of Codesmith people follow me and downvote me when I do :(
Yeah +1, I think this is a really great system that is really win-win for Codesmith. It's a structured employment relationship so that the fellows don't just leave the second they get a job, which is a problem with other bootcamps that employ graduates. It's perceived as a program for solid students (like the solid ones that don't get outside jobs right away out of Codesmith) and something aspirational to do to beef up your resume before job hunting.
The downsides are that it's paid very lowly, "around $52K a year" (was the last quote), and it extends your program by 3 months (like a 12 week bootcamp turns into a 7 month program).
One of them is employed by Codesmith itself as one of 50+ graduates who are also employeed by Codesmith after they finish, and the other was also employed by Codesmith in the past.
/u/techrally: how do you feel about a conflict of interest if people reviewing a bootcamp are/were also W2 employees of said bootcamp? I'm kind of on the fence and don't necessarily think it's a problem but curious your thoughts or if you aware fellows are fully signed W2 employees and even just contractors?
Yeah I think Codesmith prepares you for entry level roles very well yeah. My definition of entry level is a full-blown SWE job where, while you have support, you are an independent valuable contributor with no strings attached.
I know some people call "entry level" or "junior roles" more like training like roles, and maybe Codesmith calls "mid level" what I call "entry level"?
All I know is they said 75% of graduates get mid level roles and 20% get senior roles (note: this has been removed from their LinkedIn, not sure if they still claim this), yet only 20% of people make over $140K base. All of the mid-level roles I know about in solid tech companies have starting salaries of at least $140K base right now. So my hunch is that it's a different definition of midlevel and senior, etc...
Regardless, the short answer is yes, they prepare you very well for a legitimate role as a programme…
RE: Outcomes. Combo of all three yeah and with a fourth important factor.
1. NY + SF matters, remote salaries have been good too but this still a factor
2. Roughly "a third" (Codesmith's words) of people have prior experience such as a CS degree or industry experience. Yes this matters a lot. Especially those with prior experience.
3. Alumni network isn't so much "better" but more committed. Hack Reactors is fantastic, Hackbright's is also fantastic, but their network is very engaged. 50+ of their current employees are people who just graduated Codesmith and they have a fervent following and support from alumni that is possibly unmatched. Very helpful and caring alumni!
4. The exaggerated work experience + "just ask for "$150K" negotiation strategy. This is very effective at helping people land higher salaries. Many companies recognize Codesmith projects on resumes and put them in the…
There are definitely way more jobs than developers. The economy is very volatile so there are hiring freezes at some companies, and layoffs at others, but overall there are a lot of jobs and more engineers needed than there are engineers.
The problem is that not all engineers are the same and needs are the same. Senior engineers can have 10X, 100X impact over junior ones, but cost maybe 2-3X a junior engineer, so the demand for them is even higher. Whereas there is kind of a log-jam of bootcamp grads with very little experience, ready to contribute 1X for a reasonable salary, all vying for the same junior spots, and on paper all look the same. So it's more like a traffic jam where things aren't moving just because of too much traffic!
My advice right now for bootcamp grad (I'm bias, Formation works with a lot of Bootcamp grads) is to keep working on fundamental skills so that you can b…
It's not a single bootcamp, a single stack, a single pathway. That's why there are like 5 posts a day on here asking for answers and unfortunately, the questions have no simple answers.
One of the biggest factors is pre-existing skill. If you look at the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, they are also the hardest to get into. Someone I was chatting with solved Leetcode-easy problems in their interview and got rejected by Codesmith. So if you are an autodidactic person who was able to self-teach to a Leetcode-easy level and get into Codesmith, you probably are employable before going to Codesmith. Someone who has never coded before and wants to get into the industry might come to this subreddit, look for the top bootcamps, and spend months studying to get in. If they have natural talent, they might get in, they might succeed, and they might credit the success to the bootcamp, but the real d…
I wish I had time to do an AMA or something but last time I did one it went crazy and took up my whole day. I would love to share my advice for bootcamp grads job hunting right now. Maybe people can comment on here with some questions and topics and I'll try to do quick write up of thoughts targeted towards the questions? I think I'm late to the party on this thread so I don't expect anyone to see this haha.
There is hope! There are people hiring! But there are hundreds of millions of people in the country, thousands of miles apart, and wildly different experiences for everyone (which is why \~five anecdotal comments on Reddit mean absolutely nothing to make decisions off of)
My background: 8 years at Facebook, 2009-2017. Intern -> E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Interviewed \~450 people. Mentored dozens. Number 1 volume code committer of all time (and still going strong https://gith…
\+1. Formation isn't a bootcamp but I use my real name. The Rithm folks also always disclose, as does the Launch School founder. Disclosing and being transparent opens you up for attacks, but I would give a little extra credibility to those putting themselves out there :D (bias: I'm patting myself on the back here hahaha). I get attacked by a lot of new accounts out of nowhere and it's really damaging to the community.
The whole discussion about stacks is quite interesting and adds to my overall zoomed-out advice that languages and stacks are less relevant than understanding fundamental concepts and +1 to that! If you deeply understand them then you can switch between languages and frameworks... and really just everything makes more sense! I'm saying that JS alone is sufficient and others are saying that Codesmith teaches you so many different frameworks as a defensive reaction, but one framework is good enough!
Unfortunately no :(, there's no guarantees in the job hunt because some amount is beyond your control. Our goal is to increase your fundamental skill level so that you can confidently go into top tier interviews with a stronger chance of passing, but it's never 100%.
There are thousands of good companies and hundreds of great companies, and some of them you might not know about! So coming in with the goal of a range of companies, or a range of levels, gives you the most room to find the best company for you. We've worked with people that have turned down offers at their "#1 company" because they received better offers from better companies for them that they didn't know about.
Not at all no! There are two paths for jobs:
1. Smaller company that is looking for existing knowledge of a specific stack. JavaScript w/React (frontend) and Node (backend) is a pretty board coverage for a lot of companies, like agencies.
2. Larger companies that are more language agnostic, because they expect to train you on their stack and frameworks - often because they are so complex and large that knowing a language might not even help much.
So by focusing on JavaScript only you are losing out on non-JS smaller companies, but for this bucket you are better off being stronger in one framework than weaker in two.
I'm here with my real name and my real photo for everyone to see and judge and only comment and post from this account.
I refuse to play games with fake accounts. I worked at Facebook for 8 years and I've see the kind of problems that happen with the world with fake news and all that, and I adamantly believe in being open and transparent and will challenge against any bullies who try to push me around because of it.
I have access to Formation's Reddit account for ad management and I have one new throwaway account I made to follow the accounts that block me to find trends and collect some data for the future... every single one is a Pro-Codesmith new accounts with the same patterns and might even be the same person.... we'll see what the algorithms think after collecting enough data.
I have no idea who the other people here are, even the ones claiming to be currently at Formation 🤷♂️…