PART 7
1. How do you reconcile your position as a Reddit moderator for [r/codingbootcamp](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/) with your financial interest as co-founder of Formation, a direct competitor in the same industry (at one time, at least)?
My company is not a direct competitor and was founder after our founder ran an actual bootcamp and say more opportunity helping bootcamp grads from all bootcamps instead of competing. We in fact have positive relationships with Codesmith's direct competitors Rithm (now closed) and Launch School (who recommends us to their grads).
1. Have you disclosed this conflict of interest to Reddit administrators or the community you moderate?
I'm transparent about who I am on here, I use my real name, and I was very active here for a year or two with the same content I have now before I became a mod.
1. Between 2024 and 2025, you posted hundr…
In observing bootcamp can't market and seeing all and knowing a bunch of people in the industry, there are some really good things and some really bad things and I feel like the marketing does not align with what I saw in reality and I want to moderate that thanks.
This sub isn't for or against bootcamp, it's about discussing them.
I need a blog post of equal length to explain that and am deciding if I should or not.
Formations's founder Sophie started a bootcamp in 2017.
In 2019 I joined her to start Formation after deciding bootcamps are not a good business model and we wanted to build an interview prep platform to help bootcamp grads land better jobs later on, rather than compete with bootcamps.
The explicit goal and reason we raised funding was to NOT BE A BOOTCAMP.
PART 6
* Independent data from the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) verifies Codesmith’s student outcomes, showing around seventy percent of graduates securing relevant employment within one year and median salaries of approximately $110,000.
CIRR is not independent. It's a 501 6c business group/like a lobbying agency. It's charter is to represent bootcamps.
* Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct prohibits moderators from using their position for financial or competitive advantage.
I don't believe I am competing with Codesmith and my commentary hasn't changed from before and after being mod.
* As a co-founder and equity holder of Formation, Novati stood to benefit financially from reputational harm caused to a rival institution. This represents a direct conflict of interest and a potential breach of the moderation code.
I don't agree with this at all. We work with boo…
PART 5
* Prospective students withdrew applications after encountering the negative threads on Reddit.
* Codesmith’s revenue declined by approximately eighty percent, with about half of that attributed directly to the sustained Reddit campaign.
I can't comment on the number of applications because I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm curious how many this actually is.
The article grossly overstates the impact of Reddit on their funnel and understates the impact of the market. Their main competitor entirely shut down and their other main competitor is scaling back. For all I know all the talk about Codesmith kept their numbers UP when they would have shut down otherwsie.
* The company’s headcount fell from seventy to fifteen employees.
I believe this is true and the entire industry has experienced huge layoffs of similar magnitudes - and entire shutdowns.
* Founder and former C…
PART 4
* Formation students have been shown to list their own training in a similar fashion on their CVs, which undermines the basis of Novati’s criticism.
They do not in general. The example used was from 5 years ago when someone who did project based work at Formation that hasn't been offered for a while. Of the small number of people that list Formation, the vast majority, it's clear from the descriptions what it is. Codesmith students are crafted to appear like jobs and it's so bad we had to train our team to recognize Codesmith experience and not count it.
* Across numerous threads, Novati used overlapping or contradictory accusations to generate confusion and impede fact-checking.
This is a generalization. I protect the individuals that talk to me so I don't show their DMs.
* He deleted comments, including his own, to distort the visible record of conversations and to suggest…
PART 3
* He made repeated allegations of nepotism against a Codesmith employee after discovering that the employee’s wife had completed a one-time contract with the company and that their son later enrolled as a student.
I made that claim once or twice.
* Novati researched the son’s LinkedIn profile, referred to him publicly in Reddit threads, and contacted Codesmith executives directly by email to repeat his allegations.
This is not correct no. A GitHub project I saw just happened to have the person on it that I recognized the last name of and I looked at their LinkedIn. I then emailed executives about it because his dad is the lead career/negotiation advisor and I figured it he likely looked over his son's resume and LinkedIn that contained significant exaggerations.
* He subsequently advanced claims that Codesmith students were falsifying résumés through their participation in “o…
PART 2
* From that position, Novati began posting extensively about a direct competitor, Codesmith. Over a period of 487 days, he published 425 negative comments or posts referencing the company—an average of almost one per day.
Not true. I posted about Codesmith extensively prior to becoming a mod. I don't have a count, but a number of the comments are on spiraling threads with dozens of comments. I think the heat map of commenting on a given day is more telling.
* Approximately ninety percent of his statements concerning Codesmith were negative in sentiment.
I don't agree with that. I write multi paragraph comments with lots of sentiments in them. My overall tone has been increasingly negative since September 2024.
* Threads originating from r/codingbootcamp subsequently began ranking highly on Google searches for “Codesmith,” often displaying titles such as “Codesmith is an enorm…
PART 1 (there are comment length limits so going to reply in pieces)
HISTORY:
* Novati left Facebook in 2017.
In 2009, Novati joined Facebook as a software engineer, progressing rapidly to the level of Principal Engineer (E7). He has publicly recounted a story about a game of Risk in which he deliberately betrayed Mark Zuckerberg, framing it as an example of “strategic thinking.” The anecdote offers an early insight into his competitive approach to professional relationships.
The Risk story is true. I don't agree with the characterization.
* Novati left Facebook in 2017.
True.
* In 2019, he co-founded the coding bootcamp Formation with his wife, Sophie Novati, who assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer. Novati became Chief Technology Officer.
Not true. Sophie started a free coding bootcamp in 2017 called Buildschool. She realized that coding bootcamps were not a scalable bus…
1. Thanks for clarifying the relationship with him, I will drop that. Do you know why he didn't request a comment? Journalism ethics 101.
2. You are seriously wrong about the "removed by moderator" thing. Many posts don't even show up in the mod queue. Once they do, they show internally removed by a moderator in addition, but publicly they all show the same message all the time.
The moderator is Reddit AI I guess.
There was a fake account on LinkedIn liking all their stuff that is now suspended as well.
With my moderator hat on, I'm being accused of bias while actively protecting Codesmith from the consequences of their own marketing decisions. I approve posts that should probably stay filtered. I give them more leniency than other bootcamps. I've consistently tried explaining how Reddit works and how to fix their reputation signals.
On my criticism of their program:
Yes, I've been critical of specific Codesmith practices since 2022 - whether bootcamp grads should present 3-week projects as "4 months of mid-level experience" or market themselves as "mid-level engineers" with zero professional experience. I have strong opinions backed by outcomes data and CIRR reports.
But that has nothing to do with how I moderate. I've been equally critical of other bootcamps like TripleTen, BloomTech, App Ac…
1. I spend most of my time coding not on Reddit: github.com/mnovati
2. Copied over first response
I'm going to focus on the MODERATION ACCUSATION first since that seems to be the main issue.
What moderating r/codingbootcamp actually looks like:
I don't own the sub - I report to the owner who asked me to help after I'd been one of the most active and helpful contributors. The coding bootcamp industry is absolutely infested with astroturfing. Brand new accounts, manufactured conversations, fake testimonials. It's constant daily spam trying to manipulate people making $15K-20K decisions.
My job is to support authentic discussion. We have above-average Reddit AI filters. We generally don't review flagged content because we can't tell who these suspicious brand new accounts are. Occasionally we approve legitimate posts caught in filters.
The accusation that I delete Codesmith's posts:…
A dozen or two in 1-1 conversations?
I didn't liken Codesmith to a sex-cult. I likened the statement that a person made 'go because X changed my life and the lives of many others' to the language used by people about joining cults in general.
I stand by that. I would never tell someone to go to Codesmith because "it will change your life".
You should have gone (until 2024) if you were extremely ambitious, successful in your previous job, a good communicator, and had a natural affinity to coding.
I can't summarize here because it's long and I have like an 8 page press briefing doc lol but you're right that there is more to the story. Like how they hired a Reddit hitman and the guy got dozens of accounts suspended. All of their instructors are a pyramid of graduates from the school itself. They lost their AWS root phone number and their website and email were down for 3 weeks. And dozens of other relevant facts.
There are two sides to every story and both sides should be heard.
Bootcamps are failing. Codesmith did very well in the good times but their grads were systematically exaggerating their Codesmith projects into average of 11 months (my Nov 2023 analysis of 50 grads). I still recommended people go there during those times, but I was cautioning the 'right people' should go there who know how it works and what they are in for.
Unfortunately even in 2024-2025 those tactics…
That's a fair point that I should dig more into the person, I accept that.
I was originally quite pissed off he wrote a piece entirely about ME PERSONALLY and didn't even ask me for comment.
This is Journalism 101 ethics to do that.
There are two sides to every story and I think Reddit is better off if I'm transparent about who I am. That opens up people guessing at my intentions, but they really should just ASK ME instead of making it up.
Just imagine the manipulation from anonymous mods that you have no idea what their biases and motivations are and I think that's worse.
Like for what! Salaries = what people in the jobs have told me. Future Code = public records with NYC and people who worked on it said the same numbers.
I'm being vague because I don't want on the record how much I know and the guy who wrote this really should have talked to me to hear my side. It would make for a better piece.
Codesmith absolutely has a right to defend themselves against critcism and we both play by the same rules. The problem as I see it is that their defense is weak, they can't accept reality, can't adapt fast enough, and are trying to scapegoat me.
Codesmith had numerous accounts suspended, flagged, etc... and that's all on them for their behaviors, not me. I use just one account, in excellent condition for 10+ years.
You clearly participated in this post because there are internal emails and metrics that only you could have provided them. so if it if you're saying you have no relationship with this individual, any of his companies, any of his brands and it's completely unrelated, then the person never once asked me for comment and to post such a extensive piece and then block me everywhere so that I can't comment is authoritarian censorship and I won't stand for it.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith gives away all of their CSX content in a single JSON file so you can turn it into anything with AI trivially.
The fact that they haven't updated it when I can grab this and improve it with AI in minutes is major incompetence.
Other places have open source content you can grab too.
But that fact is also why you won't get anywhere doing it yourself either.
It just goes to show you why bootcamps are failing and not even doing anything about it.
Icing on the cake is Codesmith is producing all these high production value marketing videos and patting everyone on the back for them and entirely missing the point....
We do lose some people who can't afford upfront but we have solutions to mitigate. You can split up the payments of the upfront portion, or get loans (sometimes interest free). This reduces the lost customer problem to a smaller set of people. But honestly, some people can afford it and only want to sign up if they can defer because they just don't want to pay anything upfront and those people tend to be ones that don't job hunt as intensely and aren't a good fit because they aren't serious about the job hunt to begin with.
We thought that if we give you a team of 4 staff members constantly checking in on you and pushing you along that people would keep the momentum going but if power didn't pay anything upfront it's very easy to be like "meh I'll apply to more jobs in two months after A, B, C happens".
We don't line people up with guaranteed jobs. We have a strong network and great co…
I'm a moderator of the Coding Bootcamp sub and things have gone very sour there too.
Supply and demand.
When demand for engineers exceeded supply, no other source of supply could respond faster than bootcamps. During COVID, they produced coders in 12 weeks while Stanford took 4 years.
But bootcamp grads were always at the bottom of the barrel. They took longer to ramp up and even if their raw smarts were higher than someone else, the lack of experience set them behind and it would take years to catch up.
Many bootcamp grads eventually found their place and many others jumped job to job and had a very very hard time.
Many bootcamps shut down or scaled back and It's immoral to me that some remaining are marketing the success cases trying to convince you that now is still the time to do it.
Codesmith is one of the top bootcamps that exemplifies the rise and fall. It's now down to a t…
I'm not backing down from anonymous accounts personally criticizing me using the same language and tone. That's for sure personal at least.
Codesmith doesn't have to shut down to make me happy. The other option is for Will and Eric to leave the company entirely and let Alina try to fix it without being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Will tries to approach things from first principles... the way he thinks it should be is the only way and is not distracted by or listening to others to change his mind.
The problem is that when called out for getting something wrong, he seems completely incapable of acknowledging it (at least in public) and instead either ignores it, or defends against it instead of addressing it.
Some of the best builders have this attitude but it only works when you are actually right at the right time.
Will has been wrong about too many things now and the com…
The courses are $1500 each (currently a discount offered)
Formation interview prep? You can get a $2500 a month membership, or you can pay $5000 upfront and an additional fee from $0 to $15000 depending on the increase in base salary over your current (or previous) base salary. The variable fee is currently structured so that if you don't get a job at all and leave, you don't pay anything extra, and the typical person is paying around $5000 additional (i.e. $10K total).
The interview prep does not 'teach' anything so you have to come in with already hirable skills and it's purely focused on preparing you for job interviews to increase your pass rate by practicing on our platform and by getting mentorship and feedback from our hundreds of industry mentors.
So just want to make sure everyone reading this doesn't mistake what we do for a bootcamp alternative given the context. We make mo…
My company doesn't offer training or education.
Our main product is an interview prep platform to help you receive practice and mentorship for your upcoming engineering interviews.
We also offer short and cheap AI training courses for existing experienced engineers.
The typical flow would be Person -> Bootcamp -> Job -> at least 2 years -> Formation.
They have a B2B program for $30K that has no IQ requirement.
I'm watching closely to see if that works.
I have to give them credit for testing and broadcasting the quality of the program so publicly.
If the $30K B2B doesn't result in great outcomes and ROI because the engineers are not in the top 2% and the program doesn't really do enough to justify the cost but relies on people with top 2% IQs as the main reason the people end up with good outcomes.
Their previous program was $5K and didn't work too well so I'm watching really closely.
\---
If I zoom out, $30K for six weeks is just too expensive long term. If it works amazingly, competitors will figure out how to undercut them to see if they are offering anything innovative at all, or if they are just doing things anyone can teach.
Technology and IP are value and if you have those you can build brand value too.
Brand value wit…
Hi, thanks for sharing a well thought out argument.
\- Lying on the resume is a tough topic and some blame goes with with the people hiring. The snowball of "6 YOE for entry level jobs" is kind of the result of both sides. Hire a bootcamp grad with no YOE for a job needing 0 to 2 YOE, get burned, list 2YOE+ next time, bootcamp grad lies more, increase again to 4YOE, etc...
They are getting burned because the hiring process inherently is flawed and requires some amount of honesty, but there cost of mis-hiring is you fire the person and move on and it's a rational market. If it was too costly to fire someone, they would spend more vetting the people.
So the way I see it - both sides are optimizing for their market conditions and Codesmith grads lying just enough to get through and doing just good enough on the jobs to not trigger the snowball is the market trying to balance everything o…
Codesmith asks people when they started job hunting and I wouldn't be surprised if they change thier metric to "12 months from starting your job hunt" instead of "12 months from graduating"
If your numbers suck change the goal posts!
Until it's such a joke your alumni turn on you.
Word of mouth is number 1 source of people and no one will recommend a program that changes goal posts to trick the public.
It's important to note that Hack Reactor and Tech Elevator and Galvanize are brands that consolidate all under Stride Learning. And this has happened over the past two years so it's really hard to judge anything about the past.
My understanding is that enrollment is not good at all of them and that all of them are fairly low priority for Stride.
Codesmith is not a viable option right now. It's down to like 4 core staff members and then can't even consistently spell their founders name right in blogs and marketing anymore. It's turned into a joke.
Launch School has maintained its team and quality but even they are cutting back a bit in 2026 cohorts and their most recent placements have been lower than historical highs.
But of all the options Launch School is the only one I consider viable right now.
My opinion is you are making a financially irresponsible decision paying $22,500 for…
That was a marketing trick :(
Codesmith doesn't spend money on marketing because they instead put money into paying staff to run free courses and run the pre courses at a loss.
The goal of these programs is to get you bought into the Codesmith ecosystem for free or minimal cost and once you do it, if the Codesmith way of thinking works for you then you'll pay $22K for the bootcamp.
Codesmith wasn't "hard to get into", rather it was extremely selective for the "type of person" they were looking for: a smart, ambitious, good communicator with low self confidence in their coding ability.
If you were that they thye want you to fail a few times to confirm you have low self confidence and high grit so that when you are let in you are ALL IN on Codesmith.
If you didn't get accepted it was becaue you weren't a good fit.
Some brilliant people who saw through this wouldn't get let in no matt…
Yes look at my account history please. Are you delusional? I had three different independent AI engines analyze my entire account history for the substance I talk about and it's all aligned with my representation of myself.
Some Codesmith people are so brainwashed they only see Codesmith stuff and these 100 comment back and forth threads that I refuse to back down on, and completely miss the substance of what I talk about that actually gets VIEW COUNTS.
Codesmith people, go "under the hood" instead of being so superficial.
Like i said in the other comment, entrenching on the Codesmith side without talking to me just makes me shake my head. You'll see in the future when you wake up.
Many alumni have and it's one of the reasons their community has completely and utterly fallen apart. The only Codesmith people I hear from now are on payroll in some capacity. Your alumni are gone because…
I feel like I'm transparent about it, but I will summarize here my arguments that have been consistent for a period of time. I'm extremely transparent about these reasons, so either people think I'm lying or they think that there's some like secret motivation. I don't know.
Codesmith thinks I have all kinds of motivations that they are just incorrect about, and believing them is only harming them even more and making their situation worse. So I don't really know why they're doing that, but it might make them feel better than accepting the truth.
I have been consistently clear that Codesmith was one of the top bootcamps, that their number one strength was in helping ambitious and driven people build self-confidence in their programming abilities, and that they had three things that I didn't like.
1. They were consistently marketing placements as mid-level and Senior roles, and in my op…
Maybe Codemsith brainwashed you to think otherwise but it's the truth. If Codemsith was a good fit for people I recommended they go there and a number of people went. Some check in with me later.
With all the layoffs and cutbacks I couldn't in good conscience recommend them anymore because people were upset and I lose my credibility recommending a program that was falling apart. Hence the pause to wist and see.
You can clearly see my Reddit posts from both early 2024 when I paused and later 2024 when I stopped.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can't disclose exact things nor do I proactively reach out to people about it. From what people told me the numbers aren't good.
They removed all their highest paid employees and pay very low now. They fired the most expensive people and hired people in their place and paid them a lot less for the same job.
Codesmith is $22,500 so if you have 10 people every 8 weeks, thats $225,000 or about $100,000 a month.
Their staff right now:
1 instructor: $10,000 (they are paid a lot less now)
3 mentors/combined fellow: $30,000 (fellow is multiple people part time)
1 coordinator: $6,000
1 admissions: $6,000
1 outcomes: $6,000
Marketing/Career Support: $6,000
Overhead = 20% $13,000
Total: is like $80,000 or so?
I think this is why they are clinging to life, they convince loyal alumni to work for a fraction of what they should be paid... like those MLMs that run off of the labor…
Checking in on Codesmith a year later. After recommending Codesmith for 2 years I stopped recommending them a year ago because of massive staff loss, program cutbacks, and tanking outcomes. A year later, things are even worse 😭.
I'll try to summarize some history briefly and then get into the updates. I've been following Codesmith (and a handful of other programs) very closely for years now. I've spoken to dozens of students, staff, alumni, their CEO and have a very good idea what's going on. Codesmith doesn't like me. I've offered to help them, I've reviewed their students projects, I've pointed out security flaws, etc... but they see me as a "jealous competitor". I'm the founder of an interview-prep platform that has nothing to do with Codesmith and works with a bunch of Codesmith ALUMNI in the FUTURE job searches - all of whom thing we are very complementary. But nonetheless, I have…
Yeah currently yes, things change quickly though. Launch School takes a long time and isn't a quick-bootcamp, but it could be a viable alternative for career switchers with lots of time to transition. Other bootcamps could still make sense in specific situations, but even the former best ones are falling apart, like I can't recommend Codesmith under ANY circumstances at this point in time.
50% of Codesmith and Launch School grads get jobs within 6 months to 1 year old graduation so people get jobs.
I think the more unique thing about you Is that you were a truck driver and didn't have professional desk job experience before.
I would guess that the percentage of truck drivers that go to bootcamps that then get a job after within 6 months is probably quite low. but I do think that if they have the same persistence you have, they probably would get a job and the percentage of anyone who has that persistence is also quite low.
Depends on how much experience. But Meta is strict on YOE requirements because of regulations and such (even though internally they don't care much about YOE). New grad jobs go to interns and aren't accessible anymore. Mid level jobs require 2+ years of YOE.
They use to have this rotational engineer program ("pathways") for mid level adjacent jobs for people with nontraditional experience that wasn't quite FAANG-level. It still required 2+ years of experience but it could be any kind of SWE experience.
I've seen some people from Codesmith straight lie about their experience to qualify for that program, someone saying he worked at Codesmith as a job, before he even started going to Codesmith as a student.
You can potentially get a contractor job there, but those never result in full time employment after and put a hole on your resume.
My advice (that I advise a number of people) get a…
It's wrong to look at it that way because your odds can be narrowed based on your background.
Again Codesmith because I know so much about it... like a seasoned professional data analyst that has written scripts on the job but never done software engineering, will be able to get a Data Engineer role or SWE role at a data-related company. A line cook with no degree and no professional desk job experience will have a much harder time to impossible time, even if they have a natural aptitude - it will take years and a degree is better.
The problem is that a lot of people reading this subreddit saw a TripleTen ad on YouTube or something and are more likely in the later bucket, not the former.
The former bucket is like 75% chance right now and the latter like 10% chance.
Codesmith's Future Code program for people with zero technical background who make under $55K a year in New York City gr…
It's the only place I recommend but it's largely because the process to get into Capstone involves such an extensive vetting period that they have a track record of only admitting people it's likely to work for. If other bootcamps did that, then I would be more open to recommending.
People used to talk about how hard Codesmith was to get into and now they have reduced the number of steps and people get in much more quickly... and I have seen hardly any placements in my analysis in the past few months.... amazing how quickly quality degrades when you lower the bar.
So if Launch School lowered the bar significantly and outcomes dropped more then I would be equally concerned. Right now they are on the border of 50% so they are getting close.
Bootcamps aren't an alternative to college because most bootcamp grads have college degrees (just in different areas). Codesmith's data they shared in a public talk maybe 1.5 years ago or showed that the vast majority of people had college degrees and most went to pretty good colleges to, like the UC system in California, etc...
Second, when I go to Codesmith's homepage I see a giant $110,000 as the first thing I see and a a banner of where people got hired 6+ months ago.
When I go to Stanford's homepage I see a photo of Stanford, followed by it's mission and news.
Different goals and vibes.
One is luring you in with big numbers and then having terrible placement rates. The other is luring you in with brand and prestige and being a part of an elite community and delivering on that to every single student.
We have some Codesmith and Launch School data.
Codesmith: 2021 grads -> 80% in 6 months, 2022 -> 70% in 6 months, 2023 -> 40% in 6 months, 2024 -> unknown but I estimate (not fact) 25% in 6 months
Launch School: 2021 grads -> 95% in 6 months, 2022 -> 88% in 6 months, 2023 -> 75% in 6 months, 2024 -> \~50-60% in 6 months.
Clearly some people are getting jobs, and you can argue Launch School is still 'more likely than not' getting a job.
It's like going to the hottest restaurant in town from two years ago that was always fully booked. Now you go and the staff all turned over, quality degrading, no one is there, and you are showing up as if it's the best restaurant in town.
Maybe it's still your favorite restaurant, but you have to acknowledge the party has moved on.
Yeah that's also a good point and on my Codesmith comparison, they have been silent in 2025 and my estimates show worse numbers than 2024. So we'll see at the end of the year...
If Launch School's updated project and internships model is working then that would be great to see concrete changes result in better placements.
So bad we've heard a lot of hot air from bootcamps about their changes but haven't seen many changes improve placements.
I mean it's not bootcamp VS CS degree, the only other comparison is other bootcamps.
And yeah I work with a bunch of Codesmith grads too and it's crazy how they all come in with IDENTICAL RESUMES AND PITCHES and I work with them as individual humans and each one has their own trajectory.
It's one of the reasons I know so much about Codesmith, like some of these people are like shocked... like you have no idea how DIFFERENT AND UNIQUE each person is and their path is entirely unique. Some don't work out too. It's not magic, it's just applying extensive experience, judgement, and taste to give advice to people and it works out more often than not.
Codesmith treats all the people the same, there is one option, and every single of the dozens and dozens of resumes I've seen are almost the same.
Maybe this worked back when it was exploiting a market inefficiency, but it's embarrassing now.…
It's not when they told you the 2021 number of 80% in mid 2022 when you signed up for a 2023 cohort . Or they told you the 70% 2022 number at the end of 2023 when you signed up.
When they knew very well that the first half of 2023 grads were trending to be half that at that point but said they couldn't comment because they have to 'wait for the full picture' - i.e. April 2025.
It's a racket in my opinion. I heard of people asking for their money back and it wouldn't surprise me if that starts cascading soon.... things have gotten worse and worse in terms of placement numbers.
Codesmith very well knows that H1 2024 grads had a FULL YEAR OF JOB HUNTING ALREADY and could easily tell us the placement rate for those people but they haven't. They could tell us the FULL 2024 PRELIM SIX MONTH PLACEMENT RATE NOW.
But they keep quoting 70% 2023 12 month placement rate.
Students aren't idiots,…
Launch School H2 2024 grad outcomes. Placement rate within 6 months is lower than 2023 grads (50% versus 75%). Note that the denominator is all people who start, so will do comparisons in the body.
Resharing the original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1n8s8mr/cohort\_2408\_salary\_outcomes\_6month/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1n8s8mr/cohort_2408_salary_outcomes_6month/)
**As usual Launch School is very clear and transparent about their analysis so I really don't have to read between the lines, you should read their original post.**
**INDUSTRY COMMENTARY:**
In the bootcamps world, Launch School and Codesmith are the two remaining bootcamps with consistent six figure outcomes over a decade, so it's really the main comparison.
Codesmith hasn't given any numbers for a while so we'll extrapolate there's based on the patterns.
**Also note that C…
Good question. I don't know anything extra, but it appears they acquired App Academy's "brand" and not the company. The entire website is just a wrapper on Coding Temple and it's entirely managed by them now.
Now how is Coding Temple surviving?
1. PRICE POINT
It's notable that the most expensive bootcamps are the ones that closed, because people aren't paying $22,500 to go to a bootcamp right now. Those expensive bootcamps survive off a small number of people - dozens - joining and paying that and they spend a lot of time woo'ing those people to win them over.
TripleTen, CodingTemple, Springboard, NuCamp, are cheaper programs, people are less upset if it doesn't work, and people who were going to pay App Academy $20K are instead paying CodingTemplate $5K-$9K.
2. CHANGING PROGRAMS
The surviving programs pivot faster to the latest headlines. These places all offer "cyber security" pr…
Well the strategy isn't even working for $22K though. Tanking outcomes.
In 2021, about 90% of people placed within 6 months of graduating, in 2023 it's like 40%. In 2024 only Codesmith knows and they aren't telling us anything other than saying that 70% of their grads get jobs within a year.
40% in six months is not bad, but that's a massive collapse and this model doesn't work anymore.
Companies caught on and a 3 week project can be vibecoded in an hour now and companies don't care.
there isn't any universally recommended boot camp and there never was for me personally at least.
I used to recommend three rithm, codesmith and launch school.
Rithm closed. but it's the program I recommended most broadly because it was pretty well-rounded for most people.
Launch School still doing okay, A cohort cut back but generally they have the resources to keep making improvements. They have a different philosophy, their website talks about being this low way to career change and if you're the right person then it remains the best place for that fit.
Codesmith is like falling apart with like hardly any staff left complaints of disorganization. they just advertised for one of their projects on their LinkedIn page and the sign up is completely broken and I can't even try it out and when I point that out they delete my comment instead of actually fixing the problem. it's like fal…
Everyone has bias but I don't think the channel is biased against bootcamps.
During the boot camp boom every other post was someone with a $100K job telling everyone who would listen to go to a bootcamp.
Now it's the same people telling everyone to not go to a bootcamp.
I personally told tons of people to go to Rithm, Codesmith and Launch School during the peak because the market was open to giving bootcamp grads a job.
I'm bias but I'm just following the data and facts and trying to advise accordingly.
I feel like a lot of bootcamps say that. ' Our program is 70 hours a week and it's so intense it's like a year of school'
Codesmith's former head of instruction would tell people in their career prep lecture that their "open source product" that they spend 3-4 weeks on was 'so intense' it was the equivalent of '4 months of mid level engineering work'. A student told me someone challenged him on this during the lecture and the instructor got so offended and upset he ranted for 10 minutes and then had to 'take a break' before resuming.
It's absolutely wild what these programs are telling people and it should be called out for discussion in the open so both sides can be heard, because I wouldn't assume the bootcamps are doing this to scam people, they might just be delusional and out of touch with reality... many bootcamp instructors haven't worked in industry and don't even know!