Stats are real but there's more to the stats. For example, CIRR doesn't include equity and bonuses which means the numbers are actually only equal to or HIGHER than in the reports.
The key thing here is "median", i.e. the 50th percentile.
20% of people make under $110K and 20% of people make over $140K.
An “average" is most useful when you have a normal distribution and this data certainly is not. A “median”, which is used often for data sets to remove the influence of outliers, is, but it loses a lot of information in the calculating. Let’s say one bootcamp has 3 alumni with salaries 0, 100, 200, and the other 100, 100, 100. Same median, same average, completely different stories.
Which is why you have have to look at the outcomes for people who are starting with a background like yourself.
It's very likely that people with zero experience and a few months of CSX before joining a…
I can add some info about Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder, not bootcamp, not an option for people with no experience). Each Fellow has a continuous conversation in their private job hunting channel containing 5+ team members. Each Fellow has a dedicated human (their Fellow Manager) to talk to and who checks in with you constantly. You have career team members who are constantly trying to find you opportunities for referrals at good companies. You also have ongoing continuous scheduled training and practice that never ends to you keep getting stronger and stronger as you job hunt.
This isn't the right forum as we compete with Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco, so apples to oranges. I'm commenting this because just because the bar for bootcamps is so low that even if the above commenter's story sounds like strong support, there is a bar 100X beyond that that exists if you look…
The summer isn't slow no... there are a lot of hiring freezes right now that are reducing the number of options but it certainly isn't slow anymore than the fall, especially since COVID turned everything upside down, and you should be interviewing regularly, even if some of them aren't your top choices.
Hi, I'm the co-founder of a competitor to Interview Kickstart, called Formation.dev, so obviously I'm extremely biased but if you are looking at them, you should also look at us, Outco, Scaler Academy and Pathrise.
I can talk about this bucket of program more generally and where these companies fit in the bucket because I don't like talking directly about competitors on here. You should talk to people 1-1 who did a program to get their sense of the day to day and if would be a good fit for you.
So this bucket is generally called "career accelerators" rather than schools or bootcamps. The programs don't really focus on being the world's more brilliant lecturers on underlying concepts but they focus on training and practice to prepare for real interviews and jobs. They tend to leverage their staff and mentors practical experience to get feedback from the people you aspire to work with.…
So if you aren't aiming for top tier companies with heavy DS&A interviews, and you don't have any internship experience, then I would consider a bootcamp or career accelerator. If you did a lot of DS&A in school, have an internship or two and want a leg up in the competitive environment, then definitely career accelerator and not a bootcamp.
It depends on which school you went to and what experience you had (i.e. internships) and what your goals are. If you have very strong fundamentals and are having a hard time getting interviews because of a lack of interviews and you want to work at a non-tech centered company (e.g. an agency or maybe a bank), Codesmith could be useful but purely as a job hunting strategy because you'll add this OSP project to your resume that's branded as professional experience in order to help you get past resume screens (this is fairly controversial with people on both sides of the ethics of it, but it works). If you did a CS degree, the project is the size and scope of a semester long 4 person group project, however many alumni market it like they worked at a company for a year, and that helps you get initial interviews and sometimes even mid-level roles at 3rd tier companies.
The alumni connection…
Yes but when people search for Formation on Reddit they find your top level comment and ask me what your problem is with Formation. The comment is so utterly false and damaging to the company, and hence defamatory. You might not see the damage from calling a company "predatory" but it's why I have to continuously comment on this thread when it comes up.
It's not personal, I would love to help give you personally advice in your job hunt and you seem like a nice person, but I also have to defend the company from trolling and anonymous baseless attacks and those two things are separate.
To add to this. At Switchup.org, the ["Write a Review"](https://www.switchup.org/write-review) page says I can win one of six Amazon Gift Cards for submitting a review, but it's said the exact thing since JANUARY 2020: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200109162505/https://www.switchup.org/write-review](https://web.archive.org/web/20200109162505/https://www.switchup.org/write-review) and every snapshot since then still has 6 gift cards available.
Apparently no one has won them, or they perpetually refresh the gift card pool and you have a random chance of winning, and then they just refresh the pool again.
Second, the ["Complete our additional 10 minute outcomes survey to be entered to win a $500 Amazon Gift Card!"](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YMTFNWK)
It's from 2020. So are they still collecting data the rigorous survey data for 2020? And who won this gift card?
Finally, the copyrig…
I haven't heard of them before but I can walk through how I would look into a program you are unfamiliar with. This is information gathering, not about making judgements each step of the way.
1. Who runs the program/owns it/and why did they make this program? It doesn't matter if it's for-profit/non-profit more so than the reasons it exists. A good start here is to try to find the corporation/company's legal name. If you can't find it, that's not a good sign. You can usually find out quickly if the legal owner is a startup, a giant company, an individual person, etc... and helps paint a picture of where it's coming from. Giant company !== bad, just painting the picture. Often times you can find this on the Terms and Conditions page or Privacy Policy on their website.
2. Google '<program name> scam'. Now any kind of big program probably has some disgruntled former people who claim it's a…
Unbiased?
"We make money through inquiry generation. This means that bootcamps pay us to appear in various advertising placements across our site (marked with the word "Advertisement or "Ad") and if a user clicks on an advertising school, they will have the option to submit a form requesting that a representative of the school contact them with more information. Submitting this form creates an "inquiry", which the school pays us for, since inquiries can turn into future enrollments at these bootcamps." [https://www.switchup.org/advertising](https://www.switchup.org/advertising)
In Summary: "We get paid for lead generation by bootcamps who advertise with us".
They could make money with Google/Facebook ads but choose instead to make money from the bootcamps they feature on their site.
They might be trying to do things right, but not unbiased. Their business model is entirely based on b…
You won’t learn enough in a bootcamp to gain true expertise any stack, so as long as you aren’t learning like a new stack every week it doesn’t matter thaaaat much. Both Hack Reactor and Codesmith are solid choices. Check out Rithm too. All of these are intense… Codemsith is 11 hour days, so making sure the day to day is a good fit is far more important than the stack.
It depends on the experience and people have different points of view here even WITHIN FORMATION haha, it's very personal and depends on how your job hunt is going.
Like bootcamps have a fixed curriculum and templates for each step so they steer you towards one resume, one way of doing things. I would start with this approach/way of doing things as the first attempt.
Then if you aren't getting traction you can can start being more creative. For example, my brother got a job at Riot Games 10 years working on LoL - he was playing so much day in and day out and this was his dream job, so he wrote a cover letter describing him as a new "Champion" in the game with a cute character image and stuff and he got the job! A new grad engineer from Canada with with an analyst role at a Game thousands of miles away.
So if you have a passion and unique take on things, even if you are delivering Doo…
Yeah alumni do spend a lot of time cranking Leetcode, and giving back to Codesmith, by teaching and doing random things to boost experience, and if it takes 3 MORE months to get a job I think that time can be spent more efficiently. Which I need to disclose my extreme bias here, because Formation (disclosure, co-founder) works with numerous Codesmith alumni to more efficiently and effectively prepare for top tier interviews after Codesmith and then refer them and help them find pathways to solid matching companies. It's really a win-win-win IMO (despite two leaders at Codesmith badmouthing me, and being accused of stealing students). Also note, we are backlogged right now for people with zero work experience so if you are reading this, you likely have to wait a bit to start.
Sorry u/Swimming_Gain_4989, I have to disclose that as the co-founder of Formation.dev I have a following on here and I try to answer questions more broadly for everyone and sometimes a too broad lol.
So the CIRR data is audited and Codesmith follows the process. Now CIRR is a business league non-profit, and auditors are not perfect, there are some small loopholes in CIRR but I don't think it's enough to invalidate the results.
I think some of it is perception. People who get jobs before graduation might be out the door and it feels like for SIX MONTHS it's the same old crew trying to get jobs.
That said, Codesmith cohorts have fairly consistent sizes and they have been "fully booked" for a long time. Yet the number of people included in each report doesn't add up to 36 \* a whole number +/- some wiggle room, it's been like all over the place. Now Codesmith countered this with "cohort…
I can give some thoughts on this, TLDR: CIRR results are real and Codesmith has very high outcomes on paper, but there are two sides to everything yes, nothing is perfect. I talk often to Don (disclosure, Formation.dev, company I co-founded, has sponsored one of this videos - as he doesn't accept bootcamp sponsorships, this is one of the only non-bootcamp sponsorships he's ever done but it could be a bias)
So first of all, I believe it was hard for him to find Codesmith alumni for a few reasons:
1. People don't list it on their LinkedIn's often because Codesmith suggests people exclude it from their history so their skills can shine, rather than any credentials.
2. To remain unbiased he won't include people who reach out to HIM first wanting to be on his podcast.
3. There are a lot of vocal Codesmith supporters that have worked either part time or full time at Codesmith in some capacit…
Thanks for sharing, that's definitely interesting. And cool that you were a chef!
We have history, you don't like me, but nonetheless, I have some advice given that! I don't think you need a degree to get a job and if you have a strong history in the fine dining industry it would be cool to leverage that to get a job.
I know Toast is hiring a lot of people, generally senior, but like need to hire dozens of people and there could be a path there. Doordash is also hiring a ton of engineers, but they do have a fairly high bar leaning senior. OpenTable is also hiring a ton of people and is also super relevant for how a dining room is run.
Anyways I would double down on that experience. You might have insights into food-adjacent tech companies that can help land that role. I would make a resume that highlights this experience and have a good mini cover letter ready and send it to some rec…
So the 90% placement rate is of people who graduate, but about 95% of people graduate as well, so the actual placement is a little lower.... this is one of the downsides of CIRR, that it breaks apart the two, but nonetheless, Codesmith's results are strong.
So there was a Course Report talk a few years ago where an exec, Philip Troutman, said 'a third of people have a degree or relevant experience' but I also would love to hear concrete numbers. Codesmith pointed this out recently as well, but showing results by background is really important missing information.
If you look at CIRR, 20% of people make under $110K and 20% over $140K. So I would suspect the people making over $140K have relevant experience and under $110K don't.
Hi, if you've done any scripting, or even Verilog, I think you'll pick up programming fast. So I think going to a bootcamp depends on your goals. Codesmith is certainly one of the top programs for getting a job at the end, and wouldn't be a bad choice. But you likely don't need a bootcamp either, as your friends have said. If you can work on the CS fundamentals (e.g. CS50) and get really good at solving general data structures and algorithms programs, you can probably get a job on your own.
If you are gunning for a top tier/FAANG-level job, I would look more at career accelerations (e.g. Interview Kickstart, Outco, Formation.dev (see disclosure)) that focus on getting you interview ready. Codesmith/a bootcamp would be a good option for getting a solid first foor in the door job as a SWE.
Disclosure for any biases: I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev so I'm fairly biased to focus on th…
Take a look at Formation.dev, I dont want to market it so look on your own. We work with a very small number of people with no bootcamp or prior experience but they fall into the bucket you describe. We are also backlogged right now so you might not even be able to get in... but it's worth taking a look and considering the full spectrum of your options.
Another thing you can try is applying to top tier apprenticeships, like Dropbox Ignite and Asana Up and LinkedIn Reach. They have high DSA bars and might be a path to accelerate.
I partially agree with another commenter on here that referrals at FAANG mean you are putting your own reputation on the line.If you consistently refer good people, your referrals are trusted more and if you don't they are not trusted. That said, here are three counter points.
1. Some FAANG companies have different pathways for people without experience, like apprenticeship or internships. Having inside connections can help refer you to the right program and maybe get you noticed, as these pathways are every competitive.
2. There are smaller companies run by ex-FAANG engineers that are super strong and have similar interview processes. These might be more approachable for someone with less experience if they have the resources to ramp you up. It can be hard to hire great people at the less known awesome companies and they are sometimes willing to invest a bit in ramping up someone with…
That sounds like a very stressful situation, but it also sounds like a Lambda School problem.
Some ISAs (like Pathrise and Formation) explicitly only look at BASE salary on a new job to prevent this kind of thing from happening because its awful.... especially to take the money without any heads-up or warning. As you said, because there is no regulation, an ISA is just a contract between two people, and some people can be trusted more than others, and you are ultimately banking on your trust with the specific program.
Sorry this happened to you :(
Your account is 8 days old and some of the things you reference reminds me of several accounts from alleged Codesmith students/alumni that have attacked me in the past and then been eventually deleted from Reddit. So I will be choosing to not engage. Sorry if I'm completely off the mark here I just don't have time to for this to keep going on if that is the case.
Anyone reading this, please read my comment history, it's public, and decide for yourself what you think of my advice and my disclosures.
I accept the feedback that I need to be very careful about disclosures and it will continue to be top of mind in my comments in this subreddit and across similar subreddits.
EDIT: and I'm blocked... the classic "last word" long text + block strategy I was alluding to in the patterns above happening yet again. I use my real name here to be transparent. If I wanted to have a secret campaig…
I co-founded a technology company called Formation.dev but we are building a technology platform to train engineers that's nothing at all like a school.
We offer ISAs as a choice to engineers who train on our platform to pay for that training, yes, but it's fairly irrelevant, it's a choice people wanted and we are indifferent. As long as you put in the work, we work with you for as long as it takes to get a new job you love, so people like the ISA model to wait until that transition to pay.
I've worked with a lot of (10+) Codesmith alumni who come to Formation and can comment on some trends where I think the DS&A bar is at.
Most have a good starting DS&A, not quite at the top tier bar. Most get through the basics relatively quickly compared to other bootcamp grads but most people need some reinforcement/relearning in one or more areas. They then spend a similar amount of time as everyone else on the intermediate (and advanced) concepts that are needed to consistently be at the FAANG bar.
In general, bootcamps are not the best environment for teaching DS&A because of the fixed timeframe and fixed curriculum structure. These aren't just problems to pass an interview, but it SHOULD be about learning abstract concepts and patterns that be applied to solve complex real world problems. People learn these at different paces and have different degrees of and areas of interest. S…
Hi, welcome! There are no bootcamp that prepare you for true top-tier mid-level positions, they all prepare you for entry level positions. If you want to work really hard I would consider Codesmith yeah. I worked at FB for 8 years, interviewed hundreds of people, observed hiring committees, help train interviewers, etc... and Codesmith's definition of "mid level" isn't consistent with the top tier bar. Case and point: a "mid level" FAANG engineer has a base salary of at least $150K and most are \~$170K and 80% of Codesmith's outcomes - according to their CIRR data - are under $140K base salaries.
Codesmith grads with no experience who get top tier jobs, get entry level top tier jobs, not mid-level. People can get fairly high paying "mid-level" jobs at smaller companies or non-tech focused companies and the titles get mixed up with the salaries in their marketing.
So TLDR; don't rule t…
\+1 to making sure you have some basic coding skills before going to a bootcamp, even if they will accept you regardless.
I comment all the time about CIRR, because Codesmith people adamantly defend CIRR as the "mic drop" answer and I strongly believe anyone should look at many factors, INCLUDING CIRR.
Getting the highest salary out of a bootcamp is not necessarily better for your career. Getting a lower paying $100K apprenticeship at a top tier company is much better than a $125K job at an agency for example.
Since Launch School has a mastery based learning model without any fixed time-frames I would probably start it sooner and sink the $200 a month because it will give you a head start. Keep in mind that core is meant more for learning and the capstone is the program with strong job results, that is much more selective and small.
I think if you were to do Springboard, you would do it right after college and if would be fine for aiming for am entry level job on the lower compensation side. Springboard has fairly rigorous requirements for their job guarantee but if you follow them they have fairly good placement rates. The salaries though are much lower than Launch School capstone.
Hopefully others can fill in some gaps with outcomes for Launch School core if you were expecting a job straight from there.
If you are going to do Springboard full time and go all in, I would also consider the…
So I don't know 100% but the spouse of a co-worker has worked on running the Amazon Tech Academy at Amazon and we (Formation.dev - disclosure I am co-founder) worked with someone in ATA to help them convert faster.
My understand of ATA is that you have to work at Amazon for some time first (1+ year), and then are eligible to apply to it. It's a fairly small and competitive program and still very early stages - even though Amazon is enormous. At the end, you can interview immediately for SDE 1 and if you pass you're done, if you don't you do an internship at Amazon and get another shot (this was \~1 year ago, might not be true anymore). My understanding is not EVERYONE got jobs immediately after the ATA but the person we worked with was in the first cohort I believe(?) and did.
Now Kenzie and BloomTech offer a program that teaches the same curriculum as ATA, but you have to pay them dir…
Codesmith doesn’t prepare people with zero prior experience for mid level and senior roles.
I know they say they do, and edge cases do happen, but they are not using the canonical FAANG leveling system when they say 70% of people get mid level jobs and 25% get senior roles. According to their audited data 80% of people make under $140K and a mid level FAANG engineer is making at least $150K base and likely $175K…. so clearly they are using different definitions here.
Sorry, Friday was busy, I’m here! Unfortunately Formation can’t help if you have zero experience. We take on a small number of people which zero experience case by case but they have significant amounts of self studying or previous programs that have brought them to a hirable bar.
We have to be very firm about this bar because our program works very well for people with experience, 81% of all people placed have gone to top tier companies, average base salary around $135K. So we are a specific product for a specific market that works very well and not a bootcamp alternative for most people.
Also plus one to Derek’s advice, find a program that is right for you, not that other people
say is the best.
Expecting less from Reddit... like when someone has a preconceived notion of something because they don't like you and they look for any piece information, even if it's provably false, from anonymous sources, and use it out of context to validate their beliefs and say something defamatory like "A former fellow from Formation.dev felt the urge and reached out to me to essentially said it is a predatory practice and inflate their numbers."
You should read all of my comments on Reddit across the board instead of this tunnel vision on Codesmith with a combative win-lose attitude. I'm not here to battle, I'm here to try to give people helpful advice and read all of my comments history to see that.
Springboard licensed its curriculum from Rithm and Colt Steele so while it doesn’t get constant updates like at Rithm the raw curriculum is decent. You learn a little more at your own pace and watch videos rather than attend lectures and work with others. Review is done by industry mentors who are paid to help, which has its pros and cons. Codesmith for example has the senior students mentor the junior students, and the Fellows mentor and teach, and then hires back former students as instructors. Springboard has mentors that work in the industry. Industry mentors have more insight into what is important on the job, but current and former students might be better at actually teaching. Rithm is in the middle, small classes, experienced and good instructors, solid curriculum. I would say Springboard is more akin to Launch School than the other two options.
Thanks for the offer, I have worked with many (10+) Codesmith alumni, instructors, interviewed some myself, reviewed many resumes, etc... and thank you for being diplomatic in your post!
I don't doubt Codesmith's numbers at all. I also think Will Sentance is a fantastic teacher and is a brilliant person.
I have two completely valid criticisms of Codesmith that are not meant to mean the whole program is a giant scam and evil, they are very valid criticisms:
1. I strongly disagree with their definition of mid-level and senior jobs. I have brought this up to many people with 5+ years of industry experience and people have had much harsher things to say that I do about this.
2. I don't like how people, like yourself on your LinkedIn, list the OSP work as software engineering work at a company. Yours listed 4 months of experience but you had 14 commits over 21 days. I spent 2 mins looking…
You are correct, it's incredibly hard and competitive, and you likely won't get one, but that's the most broadly approachable level of FAANG job from a bootcamp if you have no experience. On a case by case basis you might be able to get an entry level FAANG job as well, so I would need to give personal advice. I know a bunch of people at Codesmith, App Academy, and Hack Reactor, spend significant amounts of time studying Leetcode on their own to aim for entry level FAANG jobs, but I'm specifically talking about the preparation that the programs themselves provide.
It's an acronym that stands for Facebook (or Meta) - Apple - Amazon - Netflix - Google.
Some people use it to mean those five companies (knows for strong engineering cultures, high compensation, and impactful technology), others use it to mean top tier companies in general, such as Microsoft, and others.
Generally companies that have the top engineers working at them, have engineering and product driven cultures, have the highest compensation, and have jobs with the largest impact.
Not everyone wants to work at companies like this, or they don't want to work there for their first job. Others do. Others want to work there first, and then want to move on to other companies.
But in the current market, most people see having these companies on your resume at a minimum as a golden ticket to open doors and extremely high compensation that can be life changing.
I use a Hollywood analogy s…
There are two cases I've seen frequently with open source:
1. Hack Reactor people list a section under "experience" called "Personal Projects" that is a list of their personal projects on GitHub
2. Codesmith people list a section under experience called "Open Source Projects" which are personal projects similar to Hack Reactors and not really open source. Most people separately list a larger group open source project as "software engineer experience" for a "company". These projects aren't really open source projects as almost all have no outside contribution and are not worked on after Codesmith (you can look at the GitHub histories for all of them yourself). The projects are great group projects but they aren't paid and slightly controversial... I know a lot of people on the hiring side that fell for this trick in a resume screen and thought the people had paid work experience and real…
Hi, I have some comments that I'll kind of put in bullet form to be a bit more succinct
* A lot of people move from accounting and music into tech, some of the abstraction in doing books comes in handy!
* If you are still working full time as an accountant and are not in a rush, a part time masters at top 10 CS school could be good and open up "new grad" opportunities via the school. If you really have like 1-3 years, and get get into a truly top tier masters program, this might be a good option.
* There are no bootcamps that have a high success at placing a MANGA. There are people here and there, but they are a fairly small percentage right out of bootcamps. People do tend to make it to FAANG in a couple years+ and that's a more realistic goal. Mid-tier and lower-tier companies are the most common outcomes. At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, NOT recommending for you,…
The Launch School CEO explained this in a different thread but basically it's not possible to learn a CS degree worth of concepts in 12 weeks (or a master's degree worth as one bootcamp says). So their approach is to have you work through concepts at your own pace and actually learn stuff, but it takes much longer time and can't be accelerate with long days.
At Formation we have a mastery approach too and it takes the average person maybe 8 to 12 weeks (varies wildly) to get their data structures and algorithms fundamentals alone to a solid place. And it's not because our program sucks. It's because people learn at different paces and most don't learn at a bootcamp pace.
The people that learn at a bootcamp pace and actually absorb more quickly are edge cases and they might learn even faster with a different approach. As the Launch School CEO says, the better programs select for these p…
Hi, I've found this subreddit has a tremendous amount of support for Codesmith, many people claiming right off the bat that it's the top bootcamps, in a league of it's own, etc... but the concrete reasons tend to come down to CIRR reports.
Launch School's capstone has extremely strong outcomes as well and I feel like you are fairly transparent about them in your Twitter updates.
Myself, I think there is a right program for the right person so I don't pick a favorite and quite frankly Formation does well if all bootcamps do well, but while you're here do you have anything to say about what types of people looking for a top bootcamps might be good for Launch School over other programs?
Highly recommended advice for bootcamps grads and the job market from Gergely (The Pragmatic Engineer)
Full post released today is a goldmine of great advice: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/advice-for-junior-software-engineers/
Transparent Disclosures: I am not affiliated with Gergely, I’ve briefly chatted with him and I have contributed to a piece about Facebook work culture and engineering levels. He mentions Launch School and I am not affiliated with them either. I am the co-founder of Formation.dev which could introduce bias as we help people
with 1 - 3 years experience get top tier roles, and we work with a smaller number of bootcamp grads to get jobs and hence we help people overcome the challenges Gergely describes.
I don’t want to steal his thunder so read the post but some additional points I would like to call out… these might not make sense without reading.
1. I disa…
I mean I spent two hours a few months ago making a spreadsheet of 200 alumni after a bunch of people applied to Formation with the same resumes and the fake work experience. I didn't realize it wasnt work experience until talking to people and asking questions with weird answers, e.g. what were your goals, how were your hired, what non engineers did you work with, who set the team direction, how do you make money, etc... Then I learned about OSLabs, discovered it wasn't even a real organization, and did the deep dive above. I captured the work experience from LinkedIn profiles and the GitHub commit history of the people and discovered the average person claimed 12 months of work experience and had 3 weeks of commits on the corresponding proejct.
Since then have been keeping my ears open, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and tech talks for now, want to know this all works but try to re…
So I think this is a bit unfair and please don't post everything about individual people. Sure LinkedIn is public, but the students themselves are following guidance and shouldn't be called out in my opinion and nothing good will come of that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm particularly upset that a leader told Codesmith alumni that Formation is a scam 1-1 and that people claiming an affiliation with Codesmith have personally insulted me and Formation on Reddit repeatedly claiming that I'm conspiring to steal Codesmith students. I hope these people aren't actually affiliated with Codesmith and are just trolls (you never know on Reddit) because that kind of behavior isn't the amazing community Codesmith, and all of the hard working students and employees, stand for from what I've seen.
Why I think you are being unfair:
1. All of the alumni I have worked with are very hard working, pleasant, p…
1. Read my entire comment history. It's long. If you don't have time then don't criticize me after only reading Codesmith-related comments
2. I have a personal goal of making LinkedIn connection with 10 to 20 people a day who are bootcamp grads (FROM ALL BOOTCAMPS) with some post bootcamp work experience. If current Codesmith students get caught in that it's almost certainly the fake work experience that I'm missing and thinking is post bootcamp work-experience. I have not once pitched Formation to any of those connections unless they've talked to me to ask me about it, nor do I include a message in my LinkedIn connection outreaches even mentioning Formation. There is world outside of Codesmith, take your head out of the sand.
3. Disclose yourself and prove that I pitched Formation to you or leave me alone.
Yeah tell me about it. At Formation we were trying to do this and decided to excluded private stock and options that had no primary or secondary market value in our numbers - which obviously lowers them, but in Codesmith's "Where are they now" report (which is not CIRR based) says they include all that in their numbers ("signing/annual bonus, stock options, equity, and relocation expenses") so presumably they have a way.
But I totally agree it's impossible for early stage private equity and options. The outcome is a range of probabilities and maybe they have some consistent way of calculating a mean.
Disclaimer, the following might appear critical of Codesmith, but I want to focus on the HOW IT HAPPENS instead of the WHAT HAPPENS. I also need to reiterate that it's a great program with great outcomes and a heck of a lot of fantastic alumni who are are hard working, professional and gr…
I think that's a good question to ask a bootcamp that isn't. "Why aren't you in CIRR" and if they don't explain something that makes sense or checks out, that would be a flag to me.
One of the big problems with CIRR results are that they don't break down people by prior experience. I think this is really important for people to identify what "someone like them" might do in the program. Some bootcamps target specific backgrounds in specific geographic locations and might have low outcomes compare number to number, but strong outcomes for the bar they are starting with.
A lot of bootcamps went remote during COVID and took in people from all over the country. Salaries in tech are almost always location-based so location is now an important factor. For example, Rithm used to be in person and is now online. They are shifting from people in downtown SF to people all over the country. It's…
This is fantastic! I wish the other people on here would have a proper debate about the pros and cons like that post shares. Would love to have a valuable discussion with people about some of those pros and cons.
For example, I still want to know why the other people left, and why Codesmith nominated someone in May instead of in the past, and what they plan on doing with that seat. All reasonable things to talk about without being yelled at.
Hi, yeah to be very clear, I'm not doubting the CIRR results or the integrity of the CIRR process, nor am I criticizing Codesmith, I'm just think it's something notable to be aware of: that CIRR has pros and cons like anything else.
CIRR is strictly based on base salary only and Codesmith alumni with good jobs have stock and bonuses that are completely excluded so their real numbers are better than CIRR reports.
If I was Codesmith, I would try to get a more wholistic view of TC into CIRR. Which yes might benefit them, but also might make CIRR more accurate. Lots of ways of looking at things!
To answer the question though, I'm interested in it because a lot of people rely on CIRR as the source of truth as there's nothing else to go off of, and I want to help people make the right choice for the right reasons and ultimately help people find their right starting point in their careers.…
I'm here with my real name, my one account, giving people advice day in and day out and I'm sure some of those people will back me up. I'm here consistently being helpful and reasonable in all my discussions about all kinds of topics and not once have a not given genuinely helpful advice to someone.
**On the other hand, you work at Codesmith on the side (or worked recently), do not disclose it, and keep defaming me and my company when I talk about Codesmith in any way that is perceived negatively. EDIT: the person denies they worked/work there and claims this is false.**
Responses to statements for other people reading this:
1. Formation doesn't cost at least $20,000+. I don't know where you are getting that number or if you know how ISA caps work. We have several paths and several payment options. Only one pathway, if paid with an ISA, can exceed $20K and it certainly is not the mini…
If you read this thread I'm defending Codesmith by being REASONABLE and trying to understand where the person is coming from. Not everything is one way or the other, there is a middle ground.
Trying to understand where people are coming from instead of jumping on them and attacking them is not an ugly look. Having a throwaway account that only criticizes people and promotes Codesmith is an ugly look.
I have met a ton of people on here that have a similar mindset about being very reasonable about looking at things and have had great productive discussions, often reinforcing to people that choosing to GO TO CODESMITH is the right move for them.
CIRR board member shakeup, four people out, Codesmith in, anyone know anything?
Hi all, I keep tabs on CIRR as it's a very interesting organization trying to standardize bootcamp outcomes. It's a 501c6 business league that was founded by Ascent Funding (who provided student loans for bootcamps) and it is made up of bootcamp representatives who have been trying to standardize outcomes in the industry.
It has it's pros and cons, which I've talked about extensively and aren't part of this post, but someone pointed out to me that in the past month or so the following board members **left CIRR**:
* Erin Frazier, Senior Director of Operations & Marketing, The Software Guild
* Joseph Kozusko, Chief Growth Officer, Ascent Funding
* Lesia Harhaj, Director of Career Success, Fullstack Academy
* Sharon Wienbar, Independent Director, former coding bootcamp CEO
And the following board members **w…