Codesmith is down and they can't access their AWS because of incompetence. I've had enough of their claims to go from "zero to mid/level senior engineers" when they repeatedly demonstrate lack of engineering competence (this isn't the first incident)
No excuses for this and it's the last straw for me. I've privately reported a number of engineering issues to their team, and they have continued to try to gaslight me that their team is "extremely talented" and other claims.
I apologize that my tone and wording comes across direct but people need to wake up to this.
I've had enough of bootcamps marketing themselves in ways that in my opinion mislead people to reality and I hope these situations show you what's going on if you don't see through the marketing words.
https://preview.redd.it/l07ritvw3pdf1.png?width=1246&format=png&auto=webp&s=f944dff9e23eaca40bec9bb3b9ea50a8e630510b
http…
I have someone recently who told me that he submitted bogus dates to Codesmith on his OSP and Codesmith signed a letter the next day and handed it to him without checking anything. He believes they are committing fraud that just signs off on whatever people tell them.
Now, this person himself lied. But he didn't use the letter for anything and was testing the system instead so he wouldn't get in trouble telling his story.
I plan on pressing on this more in the future but don't have time now.
If you are a Codesmith grad and want to confidentially send me letters Codesmith signed for bogus OSP dates, my DMs are open and I will not share your name or identifiable info.
If there is systemic fraud and Codesmith didn't verify information intentionally to have an excuse to blame the students for lying to them, then they are in huge trouble.
I don't care about getting them in trouble but I…
Well if you have the facts to back up your claims then you should have infinite courage because the truth should always win at the end of the day. Codesmith isn't accepting the facts and is trying to gaslight me about them and I'm not having it. The people there have no integrity in my opinion and am not backing down until they acknowledge the truth, make changes, and apologize.
If you frame a 3 week long bootcamp project as a year of experience and then ask your bootcamp for a letter of reference and they give it to you without fact checking it can help.
It's why you see recruiting banning Codesmith, but even the people that ban it admit that people fall through the cracks every now and then.
Codesmith doesn't know anything about this though and denies this happens... so they won't tell you this is how it works.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I suspect you'll get messages from Codesmith people telling you I'm crazy, all you have to do is ask how many people were placed in 2025. They were very upfront about that number in 2024 and they currently list 102 offers between August 2024 and January 2025. Ask them how many offers that have reported in 2025 and if they won't give you a number, don't give them your dollars.
Just look at their own data carefully, look at the "percentage of people not reporting salaries" spiking on their reports. Look at the dropping salaries.
By all objective measures the data is falling off a cliff - and this data is trailing reality.
They know very well what's going on internally and it's offensive to me that they gaslight the public to the contrary in my opinion by still quoting old data combined "recent placements at Amazon and Meta" (yes, like 4 people... and most had tangential experience). Don…
You should look into extensive detail on your own as these are my opinions, but you also shouldn't just trust their market and their branding etc... The ask people to write Course Report reviews, etc.. (which most bootcamps do too) but you have to try to dig deeper for how the sausage is made.
There are still a handful of people for whom Codesmith could work, and you might be one of them, but you have to go into it knowing all the baggage and problems and choose it for the right reasons.
My overall argument is that the fact that they don't admit the baggage (I've heard 'that was just a misake' so much that it's not just a mistake) and are gaslighting people and spinning the narrative TO ME is a huge red flag and I would never tell anyone to go there anymore, but that's my opinion.
I would do a masters over any bootcamp. Or consider Launch School.
Codesmith and Merit America are entirely different options with no similarities so I would also spend more time trying to understand deeply how these things work if you don't cross them off entirely.
So my personal opinion is to avoid Codesmith at all costs. You can read my history and I'm intimately familiar with their workings for years. I used to recommend people go there all the way up until they had about 50% layoffs and in Feb 2024 shrunk about 75% in their offerings. I was curious then and paused recommendations to see how they adjusted.
Unfortunately they didn't adjust well and instead of just removing my recommendation I changed it to actively recommend not going in fall 2024
The short reason is that they are imploding in my opinion. They have a skeleton crew of full time staff left. All of their full time i…
Tell Codesmith leaders this. Every frickin day I see posts on my LinkedIn grasping at every possible straw, any possible value prop that will stick with people:
(Paraphrasing actual daily posts):
\- AI generated images for Rubber ducks/"array functions in javascript", etc...
\- Do this free course you might even get a job without paying anything!
\- People lie that you need a CS degree! Tech is for everyone!
\- We are a program for people with 10 years of experience! If you have a CS degree we're for you!
\- This is how you do a FOR...LOOP, if you want more come to Codesmith!
\- Do our free courses like "your first webpage!"
\- AI is scaring engineers, but if you are an experienced engineer who wants to learn AI with 10 years of experience, Codesmith is for you!
\- Here's an alumni video clip from 3 years ago saying something random!
\- Here's an alumni making $150K from IT sup…
I would qualify that to say that in 2021 you had a shot if you did a bootcamp for the right reasons. And now even if you go to one of the former-best bootcamps that hasn't closed yet and you go for the right reasons, you have maybe a 50/50 shot within a year (accounting for graduation, placement, etc...), and at Codesmith for example, salaries have been going DOWN EVERY YEAR by like $10K - indicating that people aren't exactly taking as good jobs even if they do get placed.
2/2 Fullstack - they have traded hands from Zovio to SimpliLearn so it's really a front on top of SimpliLearns business. I don't know enough about it but I suspect similar to Hack Reactor it's kind of like floating around with most of the below-surface running generically within SimpliLearn.
Flatiron - they spun back off WeWork and I haven't heard anything either.
General Assembly - they actually are still chugging along and they are focusing more on B2B upskilling than. You can read more about their parent [https://www.adeccogroup.com/investors/annual-report](https://www.adeccogroup.com/investors/annual-report) and they actually ARE mentioned often as a potential business boom. But not as a bootcamp, as a B2B upskilling platform.
Launch School - yeah the only actually honest bootcamp left that discloses 6 months after a cohort graduates how each student is doing and has still done t…
Alright these are my well informed PERSONAL OPINIONS UNLESS FACTUAL DATA IS EXPLICITLY MENTIONED BELOW:
Codesmith is the worst of the worst and their "transparent" data is smoke and mirrors and everyone needs to be cautioned about it. I'm taking a hit to my reputation calling them out so aggressively but I'm so morally against what they are doing I can't stand silent. Share with your friends and carefully review my arguments your self - don't listen to them without doing so.
Hack Reactor - they have been fully rolled into Galvanize with Tech Elevator, which was fully rolled into Stride Learning. My understanding from people there is that Stride Learning isn't putting that unit high on the priority list and it's kind of a drag on the company. You can read the investor updates here and see what you think: [https://investors.stridelearning.com/events-and-presentations/default.aspx](https…
Yeah nothing negative invalidates individual experience - good and bad.
But far too many people are looking for confirmation bias and latch onto an individual success story as justification to do a bootcamp they want to go to.
Bootcamps prey on this, because as you said, you referred someone because it worked for you, and this is a strong strategy. It's why every bootcamp asks for referrals for friends.
But you have to zoom out and look at the market right now:
1. Market disappeared for bootcamp grads
2. Failing bootcamps are cutting back and providing worse services (be in Springboard or even a top three like Codesmith and Rithm (shut down).
3. Almost everything about the programs are equal or worse ( when the students need BETTER support.
4. They don't have the cash to invest in making things better so anything marketed to you as a major change is smoke and mirrors - the "change" wa…
I'm seeing similar cuts at Codesmith (in my opinion in judging their staff disappearing and cost cutting measures implemented) and am equally concerned of an implosion.
I'm not sure why these bootcamps don't just wrap up on good terms and call it a day and resort to cutting back so much to survive.
Like is it a game for their replacement execs to show that they can turn around a falling business to boost their resumes? App Academy didn't make it after trying the new CEO approach.
Bootcamps are expensive and impact people's lives... it's not a $100 Udemy course and it's not a $50 Kickstarter... like these are huge time commitments that mess up people's lives.
Anyways thanks for sharing some perspective.
NuCamp has never been known for being the best quality, it's affordable and their pitch is like do the same materials that you do for $20K for 1/10th the cost.
But because of the relatively lower price point, their community isn't as strong and committed.
I talked to a Codesmith grad this week that theorized that because it costs so much, people want to stick it through and lie on their resumes to get something out of it instead of complaining about it and admitting they wasted $22,500.
Whereas as $2000, NuCamp has way more people testing the waters.
Anyways, the premise of these Vibe Coding course is ridiculous.
Like if you are curious about vibe coding and don't expect anything out of it... nothing wrong with it.
But bootcamps need to stop making people feel like they will be successful over night.
Running a tech company is brutal and only naive and crazy people should do it. T…
1. I'm a mod of this sub (and I was made a mod by people I don't know)
2. My company requires several years of work experience as a SWE, we don't accept new bootcamp grads or CS grads struggling to get jobs.
3. I make it clear when I'm commenting on behalf of the company (which is rare) and I make it clear when I'm commenting personally if there is some kind of confusion or questioning.
I take your feedback that it can be more clear because it's important to know who you are talking to.
I'm completely not-anonymous to help people judge who I am - this sub has a track record of people using anonymous new accounts to promote bootcamps with attempts to produce "organic content" that is super sketchy. Better to be able to judge than rely on new accounts you have no idea who they are.
My entire life mission is about supporting people bettering themselves. I'm trying to HELP people. A f…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Shame on you OP - according to Codesmith's website, you work there on staff and didn't disclose that anywhere in your post or comments.
This is an ad for Codesmith and it's really not cool to manipulate people like this. Everyone reading this, please don't fall for this kind of fake-organic advertising.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
# ⚠️ SCAMMER ALERT
This thread is full of Codesmith planted questions that are not disclosed.
**Your LinkedIn is full of lies - you apparently already have 3 years of "software engineering experience".** So you are lying there or you are lying here.
Sounds like you are just like the majority of Codesmith grads who lie cheat and steal your way to a SWE job.
Check out all the recent alumni who get jobs, open each of their LinkedIns and see how many months or years of experience are listed for their 3-4 week long project.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I used deep research and deep research sources some reddit threads but I feel like "serious allegations of unethical practices" is a bit extreme, the content was:
1. discussing outcomes
2. discussing resume practices and applying for jobs for people
I'll update the screenshot - I honestly only looked at the IK column and didn't read the others, including Formation hahaha, I'll give it a look and update in a few mins
This has been up for a while but I feel like Outco is dead anyways. Like I think the founders moved on to something else. A number of people have been sued by them (and threatened to be sued) for not paying them after they thought they were eligible for the job guarantee refund and the collectors they talked to didn't seem that organized.
Pathrise also shut down.
I have a business principle that you ruthlessly have to focus on delivering value to people for what they are paying you or you shouldn't exist.
More bootcamps, interview prep programs, immersive, mentorship communities should follow this advice because far too many offer like a $50 Udemy course, add on recent alumni as mentors/teachers, add on intangible benefits like 'community' and charge $20,000.
You might get by if people get really good jobs and credit the intangibles.
But if you aren't trying to deliver value and are…
Yeah it's very small but they have a few mentors who did Coachable earlier on, legit mentors yeah.
Formation is less 1-1 on demand and we don't have 1-1 on demand technical mentorship. You have 4 dedicated non-technical support members on our team, and you do 1-1 mocks, office hours, but most sessions are 3 to 6 person small group sessions.
Interview Kickstart has even larger group sessions and then has some 1-1 thrown in there.
All very different.
Yeah Formation is costly if you are in Canada, so that makes sense and I think it could be an option but it's not a slam dunk if you are very FE oriented (because I think our SD prep is very strong and it's less relevant for FE). You could try it on the 1 week free trial and see but I would only consider if you are focused on the FAANG-level.
Hi, I'm the founder of Formation and Coachable is a competitor so I want to disclose that bias but I'm trying to answer without considering that.
So first off, Launch School you have to do Core first - which is meant for people starting out generally - and THEN you do Capstone.
It's more of a bootcamp model + a long rampup period.
If you feel like your FE work is like Web 1.0 web-dev or 'shopify store' dev then I would consider Launch School.
If you feel like your FE work was real work (which it sounds like it is) then I would consider an interview/career-accelerator like Coachable.
If Coachable is an option, Formation is an option too and I can explain more about it. Interview Kickstart is the third option. Pathrise used to be an option but it closed down.
All three are different.
If you want to stick to Frontend then I would consider Formation only if you want to do FAANG-Fronte…
A few reasons:
\- For flag 7 - when it comes to exaggerating your experience, you'll commonly see things along the lines of. like a hotel marketing manager who ran their website -> "Web Developer". Mechanical Engineer -> "Systems Engineer". Accountant -> "Data Engineer". Account manager -> "Project Manager"
For grads at places like Codesmith the vast majority reframe their non-technical experience as experience and it's a key part of the high outcomes in the past and if you can lie like this, you won't be getting those mid level jobs with zero experience that they love to advertise without telling you how it happens.
If the job was at a big company and some kind of information-related job, this is a lot easier to do without completely flat out lying.
\- If you don't want to lie to that degree and hope for the best, then more generally - there are more transferrable skills in "desk j…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh ok yeah for sure, people can also get temporary jobs too, I'm just seeing right now people who don't go all in on SWE for the entire job search time having a harder time - it's such a difficult job search that people are just going back to their old jobs.
Talking Codesmith again since I know them so well, they had a huge spike in placements that 'ghosted' and their placement was verified by their LinkedIn instead of officially.
This is a sign of people giving up and going back to their old job or a tangential old job and giving up and not reporting it back as a placement because it's not a full blown SWE job.
Let's look at Codesmith for example. The schedule for part time is:
9 Months:
Monday – Thursday: 8:00 pm–11:00 pm ET
Saturday 12:00 pm–6:00 pm ET
So if you work full time you have hardly any time for anything else. You can Sundays and Friday nights off I guess?
Let's say you have two young children and normally leave at 7:30am to drop the kids off at preschool and then go to work. And then pick them up and come home at 6pm and then cook dinner and then go to class and spend otherwise ZERO time with your family.
Like you need a support system. A partner who can help out significantly to support you.
It's really not at all easy.
I've heard it both ways. People who have savings and a support system think part time can work, others thing it only works if you are single and unattached.
Either-way, the longer and slower you do it part time, the longer it will take you to eventually…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hopeless but not impossible yeah.
So look at Codesmith's stats since we're talking about them and they release numbers.
2021 grads: about 90% of grads placed within 6 months
2022 grads: about 80% of grads placed within 6 months
2023 grads: about 40% of grads placed within 6 months (and very notable that there was a huge double digit percentage increase in people who ghosted Codesmith and got counted as a placement because of LinkedIn
2024 grads: no data yet, but based on Codesmith's little bits of data there have been about 250 offers in h2 2024 -> h1 2025, which covers some 2022 grads, 2023 grads, 2024 grads, and then 2024 grads.
Now enrollment has declined because they cutback from 4+1 to 1+1 cohorts in Feb 2024 so it's hard to tell what the placement rates are but they definitely aren't good.
Codesmith also should have plenty of information about 2024 grads now that i's 6 mon…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I agree with this point as of June 2025.
We (speaking for Formation now) use a ton of AI for helping people practice and off the shelf ChatGPT is not perfect for learning right now. We have a lot of unique product applications of AI specifically tuned for helping people have effective practice and feedback and fortunately there's enough judgement and taste and nuance in that that it justifies our existing right now haha.
Do Codecademy, consider Launch School Core, and drop Codesmith and get your money back unless your goal is to go through the $22,500 version with dwindling hope of actually getting a job according to their own data.
The primary goal of it is to get you to show up to more Codesmith sessions so that they can indoctrinate you and get you to join the expensive one.
Their former CEO said in a podcast that these sessions were their marketing funnel and that they didn't run ads at the time (now they inundate you with ads as well).
Not a bad idea to put advertising dollars into courses that offer some value! But they are ads for Codesmith that you are paying for.
That's a fair point so I won't attribute you to claiming you are an industry expert and world class industry, but I will attribute Codesmith to saying it about you.
If you don't think it's true and you are employed by Codesmith than you have a responsibility to tell them because they might be false advertising and they should correct it.
My point about the quality. Formation has 200 or something mentors in the system and some are industry legends.
If you think the program's value is collaboration with those people then come on down to Formation because you'll collaborate with a huge range of people, far larger than in that program.
I posted above, but I was infuriated by your Dog's account and I was very mean about the AI program and I'm going to be more cool headed about it because it's not terrible, I'm just critiquing it like I would critique my own work and I want my comments to…
1. Agree the core team/admin team and the instructor team is hardworking, no question there. But Codesmith's codebase is apparently a giant mess that looks like the largest OSP project - which isn't surprising because the people that work on it just graduated Codesmith. I would say the team has tremendous POTENTIAL but the technical people lack the experience to be called talented. Based on some alumni talk that someone told me about where Will tried to explain the Codesmith architecture (in an attempt to learn it himself) and it literally sounded like the worst code I've ever heard of for a 10 year old company that calls itself a tech company, something like deploying the entire codebase to 32 microservices that each ran one of them???
I know this sounds mean but it's just being real. Like every instructor I know that sees Codesmith defend the quality of the code or the legitimacy of…
I still think we're talking about different things here.
I'm not attacking YOUR background. I'm attacking it being marketed as "world class instructions" and "industry experts"
And calling yourself an "industry expert" with 3 years of experience and minimal professional AI experience is what I'm calling the peak Dunning Kruger by definition.
If you don't think you are a world class instructor and industry expert, ask Codesmith to stop marketing you that way.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The leaders that have left are the ones that stopped believing or were laid off. I wouldn't be surprised if Annie also left and moved on.
I spoke to Alina and she's a much more reasonable person and open to criticism, but she's in a very tough place with Codesmith imploding and trying to pivot to AI - which many programs have struggled with.
Alina: if Will, Annie and Eric all left the company I would definitely be open to talking, but with them there there is too much baggage of low standards and lack of diligence.
That's not what I said, I said it would be wasted money because we can't think of a "report" that would be useful.
So we spend even MORE MONEY person by person going over these things.
I think that is better but if you don't then you can call it a scam and not join, thats totally fine if that's your opinion.
We are very diligent about feedback and actioning it and people wanting data is on the list, and the way we are working on that and have worked on it is by providing them more data.
We have a bunch more data but it's only for people who apply and we get more info about you to provide you with more relevant data.
That's how it should be - deliver the best product, not superficial garbage CIRR reports so that we APPEAR legit. We actually BEHAVE legitimately with integrity the best we can and over time that compounds into trust.
If you behave sketchy and focus on superficial you e…
I'll try to summarize haha:
1. I used to be on them like anything else, pros and cons, and I recommended people go there with Rithm and Launch School.
I was very consistently hard on three things:
\- marketing mid level and senior placements for people with zero experience (which I felt was wrong)
\- marketing their OSP projects as 'equivalent of months of full time SWE work' when they were full of junior problems and most people worked on them for 3-4 weeks
\- their instructors all went to codesmith itself and were promoted up the tree in a pyramid shape so they don't have SWE experience
2. Codesmith didn't see things the same way and framed me as a villain - which I completely ignored and kept doing my thing as a public service to offer my opinions through my lens
3. Throughout that time, former staff, current staff, students, etc... have proactively contacted me and told me ab…
It's the exception, not because it doesn't have troubles from the market too but because they are marketing themselves as the "slow path" to becoming a Software Engineer.
More people will try and few will succeed but they won't be mislead or burned with it.
Now because of this philosophy it hyper optimizes for people making it through Capstone that are actually good fits and they actually get jobs, but it's relatively small compared to typical bootcamps.
But the fact that they have a 70% six month placement rate (accounting for every student, down from 100%) that is quite high when somewhere like Codesmith has a 40% six month placement rate (when including ghosters based on LinkedIn) shows why this slow and stead approach works.
Financially though it works because Launch School is small and founder run. Their founder teaches and helps people.
Codesmith has a bunch of directors and m…
We don't have zoomed out data as I've stated a number of times over the years extensively why.
We don't have a way to aggregate date into a consistent "report" that makes any sense and we won't want to spend time making a superficial one that we don't think is useful.
When you apply we show you anonymized before after data based on your background.
We don't have end dates, graduations, or "school" concepts and it's very hard to make some kind of report.
We explain our process in multiple paragraphs on our website.
It's INSANELY more costly for us to discuss outcomes 1-1 with each person that applies and is interested but we think it's the best way to make sure someone is on the same page and we will keep doing that for the Fellowship.
I wish we could have a report that was as effective and clear because it would save time and money.
It's not perfect but that's the transparent answ…
1. Last week you or your bot said that you asked your manager if it was a conflict and that they worked at Microsoft for 25 years and said there wasn't. So if you since then went through the entire internal conflict review process and are confirming that then I will acknowledge that. I've been around the block here and any super senior engineer will warn you on this topic. Some companies don't even let you mentor at bootcamps and consider it a conflict. Instead of seeing this as an attack, see it as advice. I've seen many people get in trouble for conflicts.
2. You said in a public talk about two months ago with Course Report that you weren't using AI on the job and wanted to more and would consider new roles that use AI more internally at Microsoft or at another company. If you are updating this and now saying since then you have extensively used AI the whole time then I will update ac…
That's why integrity is so important.
I have an email chain with Codesmith leaders about literally the math having problems on their California reports on their website and they never responded or acknowledged those concerns and answered other things.
Like if you publish things that were made up for marketing purposes, rushed in a panic because you realized how terrible the numbers were and did a massive LinkedIn profile sprint not so diligently that's fine but don't tell the public that.
If you keep telling everyone your data is audited but you and CIRR don't answer me about where the audited version is (historically CIRR publishes the audit paperwork after they are audited) it's sloppiness.
People make mistakes here and there but almost everything here is a mistake and when I talk to former employees that proactively tell me how clowntown everything is run there... everyone "in ove…
Each week is completely dynamic and unique both to you and week to week.
Every Friday we run the algorithms and crunch a schedule of mentor led, peer based sessions for the next week and then assign them all out in the evening.
What you get depends on:
\- your workload that week
\- your schedule that week
\- your availability that week
\- your job interviews that week if you have any
\- everyone else's availability who need to work on similar problems as you
\- the mentors availability and FAANG-canonical level matching criteria to you and your group.
Then throughout the week you can book 1-1 mocks when eligible, book checks etc.. also join and release sessions.
Then in between you do practice problems, system design practice, benchmarks, etc... on various topics. The topics you work on depends on your progress, your workload etc...
We have some interesting "tasks" like to cha…
Yeah sure for starting in 2025: rough non-binding, reasonable estimates:
About \~250 people starting in 2025 so far, about 15% or so leave in the trial week.
We had fairly robust starts in January, then tariff threats in particular caused a lot hesitation, and then May -> June things picked back up again.
I would estimate about 5 to 10 people start in a given week?
The number of people in Formation isn't super relevant because the nature of the program scales up and down dynamically - including all of the mentorship.
So this sounds insane but your session matching is BETTER the MORE people there are.
Our team works on the practice content, benchmarks, etc... but the mentors themselves are contractors and we have a very complex algorithms to manage all of this dynamically without much humans.
So more people, better level matching, better time matching, etc...
All of our full tim…
To be contrarian, I think they - specifically Will - should get credit for doing one thing well, which is building an organic community through sheer will (no pun intended). I think they figured out how to take high potential people with low self-confidence/low confidence in their SWE abilities and increase their self-confidence (which is not an easy feat).
But everything else about the company I'm extremely critical on and have been puzzled for years why the heck they wouldn't take my feedback.
For years, defending, defending, defending. Even Alina when she joined posted something about how how I'm 'reddit competitor' going after them - trivializing my feedback and mischaracterizing it.
If they friggin listened to the friggin feedback they would have had a better shot andit's too late now because they have zero engineering talent (they might have potential, but no serious talent) an…
Yes that's also correct. For 2024 placements, early career = harder, Compensation increase = higher.
Our demographic has been shifting and in 2025, only 3 placements have under 1 year SWE experience.
I believe we're going to do an H1 update as H1 finishes up and we'll be able to comment on the latest.
Read the fine print for the official full details but as a partial note, these calculations we are using YOE prior to starting Formation, full time SWE work experience only, excluding internships, contracts, and adjacent experience.
So someone with 1 year as a SWE might have been a contractor for 2-3 years and if they weren't a W2 type situation and were "contracting" that doesn't count in these calculations.
It's like the opposite of embellishing resumes and really holding a firm tight bar on the definition of experience.
If you don't have 1-2+ years of this kind of SWE experience,…
Do you mind giving her the documented evidence of Codesmith confirming they paid a guy on Upwork to post stuff on Reddit and then that same person posted shit about me and tried to get me banned?
Do you want the messages Codesmith posted to their CSX community of 20K people lying to them that I was on Slack with multiple aliases contacting people to try to get them to go to Formation - which never happened.
Those messages are libelous and I asked Codesmith to apologize which they declined to.
I'm furious at Codesmith and I'm justified in being angry and upset about it and I'm playing by the rules of the game in expressing my anger.
That stat is correct and it's about 45% so far in 2025 so close but a bit lower.
The average YOE for 2025 placements so far is (full time SWE experienceprior to Formation): **5.5 YEARS**
This means that people had bootcamps, self taught, and other degrees, worked for 5 years, came to Formation, and then got a better job.
What is wrong with that?
Here are the 10 or so most placement companies : Udacity, Amazon, Gurus Solutions, Meta, Meta, Meta, Headspace, Stripe, AppleCart, PayPal, Applied Intuition, Meta, NVIDIA
These are stronger placements than 2024.
What is wrong with that?
**I'm happy to take feedback to improve our marketing so please give it but I want to make sure it's clear that the stuff on our website is accurate for starters.**
Will is faking his background yes - he has never really been an engineer ever - and then he spent 10 years focused on superficial appearances…
I have no problem with your background or your efforts. I have a problem that you and Codesmith aren't marketing it for what it is and I think it's doomed to fail from a business point of view.
You just said you are working on AI stuff at Microsoft and your work at Codesmith is a conflict of interest - like seriously submit the internal conflict clearance ticket and get sign off before you get fired for it. Microsoft doesn't screw around with this stuff.
Second, it's all defensive. I'm not attacking your background, I'm attacking the marketing and pricing you are using based on your background.
You can't change your background, there is absolutely zero you can say because you don't have the experience, there isn't some program you did or some credential or some project. Zero.
If you want to be defensive, then defend the pricing and defend the marketing.
Maybe my pricing is off and t…
A) I meant that Founders can sell off stock in secondaries, instead I bought more with cash
B) The platform is genuinely a unique product not offered anywhere else in the world. That doesn't mean it's GOOD haha, it has a lot of bugs and product issues, etc... and it's why I have to do some work still ;), but it's indeed a unique model that lets us adapt faster to things and it's an advantage in many ways.
AI for productivity is about using AI tools, so you need a background in using AI tools. I can do that one.
I don't have a background in ML or LLMs and I can't do anything personally about ML.
Unlike Will Sentance who thinks he can so much that he did a public Frotnend Master's Course on it, I don't want to bullshit the public with smoke and mirrors. I know what I can do and what I can't do.
The challenge for us with AI for productivity isn't the content, but it's that our 7 years…
A) correct, I have equity as an owner and Formation is venture backed. I have not made a single penny from my equity and I have purchased additional equity, but I do own equity.
B) Excellent question. we spent 7 years building a PLATFORM that is completely unique and patended and built from the ground up to enables us to to configure practice and benchmarking dynamically.
This technology has has a number of people contribute to it over the years and will support the AI and ML people contributing to it as well.
My personal expertise lies in AI PRODUCTIVITY - using AI to replace a number of engineers and using it to make me 5X more productive through 20,000 commits and counting.
So I'm not out of the game by any means but I don't have any ML experience - our first product in this space is focused on productivity using AI tools, which honestly doesn't overlap much with Codesmith's AI pr…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I haven't made a penny of salary for the past 8 years and i'm not selling anything. I'm pointing out how poorly positioned Codesmith's AI program is and how they need to seriously watch out for growing it through milking alumni - who are paying for something that they were promised for free for life.
I've spoken to a number of companies on the B2B side floated different ideas around. The answer - we want our fleet of 100 ML engineers to teach this internally.
Codesmith's AI program is maintained and lead by someone with I think about 2-3 years of industry experience, ZERO prior to Codesmith, has not done AI professionally.
AND IS DOING IT PART TIME WHILE HE WORKS AT MICROSOFT.
There's no way in heck this program can be good. No way.
I'm telling you I will work 16 hours a day to build a much better AI program applying my experience as the number one code committer at Meta and showing…
I hear this about 1-2 times a week. It's frustrating to people as well how delusional their leaders are.
I spoke to Alina directly 1-1 on a call and she seems 50% like a good product leader who tricked into taking this job and is now running a company full of mouse traps, and 50% she was brainwashed by Will as well and perpetuates this bull shit messaging and narratives.
Unfortunately she's not an engineer and while she has more experience than Will did, she still doesn't have the engineering lens to look at things through and her ambition and drive is pushing Codesmith in the wrong direction.
I don't think there's a single thing they can do to save it without throwing Will's goal of an "independent bootcamp" and the rest of their community support into the trash and raising VC funding to build something new OR by getting rid of all of the staff and rebuilding something from the groun…
I think Codesmith's founder wants the Chief AI Officer so that he can go to conferences and throw around the title.
Codesmith is all about appearances, superficial, good words... and zero substance to back it up.
I'm sorry that's offensive to the people who are trying hard to save it, but it's true.
I had the same reaction to Chief AI Officer and called it out. They are pushing this narrative of the "modern engineer" - someone who brings their past experience to SWE and AI and is a unique perspective that makes the industry better.
I agree with the idea but the blocker is that this applies to people with EXTENSIVE SWE WORK EXPERIENCE and not to bootcamp grads with no experience.
They keep trying to push this narrative and come up with random alumni examples and twist them to fit the mould.
Codesmith: you can't force product market fit by just telling stories about how your product meets the market. It might make you feel good because the stories are great, but If it's not there it's not there and you guys are done - hang up the towel and if you want to keep doing this, start over from scratch.