The $895 was meant for people that did the new SWE immersive because it's the same as the old + the 4/5 AI lectures now. So the $895 would be for the Saturday discussions I guess? I'm not super sure but I get the vibe they are trying to leave the door open for heavily discounted alumni rate because they originally said loud and clear that Codesmith will give you everything you need to be hired for LIFE and by backtracking on that to extract money from alumni, it's a bad look, so maybe if you watch the 5 free alumni lectures you can ask them to qualify for the $895.
I don't want rub salt in a wound, but an alumni could organize their own thing, like slap a calendar invite on your calendar to all watch a lecture recording every week and then discuss it with each other, and then do a project together.
You'll get 85% of the value for free.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took.
Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards.
It's just a pile of garbage.
Launch School Placement Date - Q4 2024 Cohort, ~70% placed within six months - similar to previous cohort. Lower salaries at $100K mediums - indicating role shifts. Very strong results given the market but very small program so hard to extrapolate.
Results [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort\_2405\_salary\_outcomes\_6months/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort_2405_salary_outcomes_6months/)
2024-2025 saw major changes to top bootcamps. Codesmith - arguably the top program alongside Launch Schoo - is down about 80% of it's staff and the founder seems to be moving on to writing a book about AI Ethics and doing a new Front End Masters course while the remaining Codesmith students are taught by recent graduate 'lead instructors' with no SWE experience that their website calls 'engineering industry experts' - most recent 6 month placemen…
oh yeah don't get me started on the patterns. I reported suspicious date patterns and also didn't care about that.
Codesmith gave people giftcards and they got like 20 reviews in a month and then nothing for months and months and months, then out of no where 3 reviews on the same day. Like WTF they are clearly asking people to write reviews.
Which on it's own isn't the worst thing in the world, but Course Report doesn't acknowledge that people are gaming the system and defends themselves.
Feedback for anyone reading this - if you get critical feedback from a competent industry leader and the feedback is delivered in a way that makes you defensive - accepted the feedback and give that person feedback on how you feel. By defending a bad product you are going to kill your product.
I don't say no one, but I do say that it's not systematic anymore - every placement feels like a one off case. Launch School Capstone is small enough that historically each person was a one off case and it never relied on patterns.
Larger programs had hiring partners and common places where alumni pass down back channel referrals and cover up the fact that all the people have zero experience and then help the people ramp up. For example Codesmith -> Capital One is this.... people scheming to lie on resumes and get through interviews and then help each other not get fired after starting.
I'm not a Peter Thiel supporter (and not a not-supporter either, just centrist) but Gawker is no more after they slighted him.
I can't speak for others but for me it's not personal in any ways whatsoever. I could pick up the phone and have a conversation with Will Sentance anytime.
This might sound crazy grandiose but I don't need to work for the rest of my life so I do what I do out of a deep belief that humanity will better if each person is contributing (work or otherwise) to humanity doing what they are both passionate about and good at. So people doing jobs that they don't like drive me to figure out how that person can move to a place where both THEY are happier AND they are contributing more to humanity.
If you have a scam product and scam marketing that bothers me a lot less.
When you have a pretty good, mediocre product like Codesmith has that refuses to see how it can be BE…
Other programs are bad too but Codesmith confirmed to me that they paid some guy on Upwork. And that person coincidentally (Codesmith claims that no one currently employed there asked them to) posted garbage about me and tried to get me banned from Reddit.
I asked them to apologize and they declined so any company that behaves like this deserves to be called out in my opinion. I'm sure others do it to but I can prove this about Codesmith and I'm not going to drop it, no.
Launch School is doing ok because its model protects against the market to some degree and the market impact is less severe.
1. You do Core for months so then only people who are perfect fits for Capstone get in
2. The founder is hands on doing most of the work, so there aren't many people to pay. He could personally take lower income for some time to survive. Codesmiths founder uses your tuition money to go to conferences and write books and make lectures for Frontend Masters and students complain they never see him. Fine but you have to pay more people to run the program and when most of those people leave and you are still MIA - math doesn't work out.
3. Launch School's very small, like 20 capstone at a time, 60 a year. Codesmith had like 1000 people in 2023. The founder knows everyone by name and helps them try to get jobs individually.
So yeah Launch School ends up with like a 70…
I believe that when an engineer is working on something and it "just works" without knowing why - some day you will have to understand why. Maybe not right away but some day in the future.
Similarly I believe that about integrity. Integrity doesn't mean being nice or friendly or a good leader or friend. Integrity means acting honestly, transparently, and with good faith towards others.
If you lack integrity and lie to one or more people to get a job, it's going to catch up with you and you will have to pay the price some day.
In Codesmith's case they never taught anything technical of value. All of the teachers and instructors are former students who follow a script and don't have any / much real engineering experience. They lie about the nature of that work. A lead instructor who claims to be a senior engiee= at Codesmith has hardly any commits on GitHub because they are actually a t…
Surprisingly I was actually quite neutral until mid last year. I gave the pros and cons fairly and genuinely was in the middle. Recommended a number of people go there.
They didn't see things that way and paid that dude who went on Reddit and literally straight up defame me with lies... and no more neutrality until they apologize which they refuse to do and thought it was a joke that I asked for that.
It does get screened and you get a "unverified" for that section - and many companies don't care and ignore it.
Just remember that selling your soul has a price and it will catch up to you some day. Maybe it will take 10 years.
Look at how great Codesmith felt taking in $20M a year and feeling like the kind of the world.... changing the industry.... creating the leaders of the future.
All bullshit built on lies and when people figure it out, reputation is gone, money is gone, and you are worse off than when you started.
I've been trying to talk to them privately but it's too hard. Too many lies and I can't trust anyone there. I talked to them in good faith and they did nothing.
I tried to extend the smallest olive brand and they did nothing.
They told me they care about fixing the problems I talk about but I think the only thing they care about is keeping me quiet. No changes except half of the staff left since I stsrted talking to them.
They have a rotten seed there and until the seed is removed nothing will ever change.
I dont think this tone is great but it's worse than that.
First, the stats were wrong because they only included people who responded to reach out and submitted salary information at first. The "adjusted numbers" included all the people who never responded but appeared to have jobs somewhere on LinkedIn and count as placements who "did not respond" boosting the rate to 42%.
But the reason it is worse is because the newest numbers don't make any sense.
They published unofficial 12 months numbers but the 2022 numbers are copy paste from the 6 months report so the drop of 2023 12 month from 2022 six months doesn't look as bad.
On top of that, they had to check everyone's LinkedIn to count them as a placement so they are fully aware that all those grads are exaggerating and lying about their experience.
Finally, I proved they paid someone to post on Reddit - a person who posted bullshit…
During the boom times of 2021-2022 it had like a 95% graduation rate and 90% placement within 6 months.
Now in 2024 they have like a 90% graduation rate and 40% placement within 6 months.
HOWEVER, people list like "X to Present" for these fake listings. The bootcamp has like a 60-70% placement within 12 months now and as people hit like 1 year post bootcamp these fake listings look like 1+ years of work experience and help people start getting jobs.
So the TLDR - no - Codesmith is falling apart and I would recommend running for the hills - they are down to a skeleton crew of staff, half of who are looking for work.
The best bootcamps have closed down or pivoted.
Rithm closed, App Academy closed SWE, General Assembly pivoted to B2B according to their annual report, Bloom Tech closed SWE, Turing shut down, Launch Academy shut down, Code Up shut down, Episcodus shut down. Tech Elevat…
Codesmith is the SWE place where 80%+ of graduates do this by stretching their resumes.
How people get away with it all?
1. Companies not verifying employment
2. The person putting friend's contact info and the friend verifies
3. They use fake pay stuffs or offer letters to verify
4. The bootcamp lies for them for background checks
5. They list group projects as work and have peers from the group project do the background checks
6. The list a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn to get recruiters attention but they don't talk about it to the engineers and they don't include it on the background check.
Both App Academy Open and Codesmith CSX are not good now.
App Academy Open: AA paused their SWE program so it doesn't seem actively maintained. The only good thing is that it's the entire AA curriculum and not just an introduction trying to upsell.
Codesmith CSX and workshops, I have a lot more to say about this.
CSX:
- it's an introduction to JavaScript only and their goal is to upsell you to Codsmith by the end. They don't have enough money to dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars to building a free platform of unique content that doesn't do.
- their coding editor CSBin isn't even HTTPS and my browser won't let me open it anymore... I don't see how anyone can take this seriously nowadays.
- it also hasn't been updated that much. They could at least run their curriculum through ChatGPT in 5 minutes to improve what they have now. But substance isn't the priority... spend more time…
I wouldn't do a bootcamp no, it's probably a waste of $5 to $10K given you are in college.
If you can't get an internship, try volunteering for a professor/lab at school and if you can't do that, try volunteering for a startup. It's better to be paid $0 for as summer of real work than to pay $10K to do a Udemy-type course with human mentors.
I've brought it up directly to their leaders a couple of times now and I'm not getting a response or acknowledgement on it. I'm not being mean, I'm trying to give them a strategy that recognizes the value they create and focuses the energy on that value.
They have been losing staff members left right and center and hardly have anyone left anymore, and I really feel like if they don't change their tune they will cease to exist soon enough.
But they have been pushing mid level and senior for 10 years now and it might just be the hill they are willing to die on - would rather not exist than focus on entry level placements.
Yeah that's part 2 and it's tough. Layoffs happen for all kinds of reasons. At Formation (not bootcamp), we see people occasionally get laid off and a number of people come back and pay again (with a discount) to do Formation again and do us this is a very strong sign of those people finding value.
It's very hard to have data about it though. Codesmith has a 'where are they now' report that is really not useful. I think it said 100% of respondents got promotions in 5 years - but who exactly did they send this to? What defined a promotion? I know for a fact people also got laid off, so how was that factored in?
Like not to be too harsh, like it's just a hard problem because when people leave, there's only so much you can do.
But +1 to the journey just BEGINNING with a job post bootcamp, and there will be lower lows and higher highs to come.
I do wish there was a better way though for…
RE: Problem solving methods, so we're on the same page:
I'm not trying to promote anything so I'll share the one that my company developed that I think is good (because I'm biased) and another one as well.
[https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
[https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview](https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview)
The idea is even higher level than specific approaches, and instead more about the logistics that people often overlook and rush through problems under pressure and crash and burn when they go down the wrong path.
\-----
The specific techniques you are mentioning I call 'tools' and my view on those is you want to be an expert at using a few simple tools. The most experience handy-perso…
Hi!
1. Internships are like 5X the next point so it really is the biggest tip. But other tips are: network with past alumni as they might be able to help refer you, pay attention to companies or recruiters that come on campus (IRL or digitally) to recruit, try to be willing to move anywhere and consider jobs absolutely everywhere.
2. A MISTAKE was I was not remotely self aware of my communication in meetings and it was very bad, like absurdly bad. Like I was not good at energy and jumped too quickly to solutions without giving a chance for people to explore.
A MISCONCEPTION was that work would be really academically hard and raw intelligence was most important. Things weren't complicated but they were complex and success was about understanding and navigating the complexity. A corollary was that you I learned you could do just as well as the smartest people by our working them.
I wis…
No not at all, even non profits in this space have tuition, but you want to make sure it's transaprent. Like nothing in life is free so if something offers a money back guarantee for example - that sounds too good for you. Do 5 months of free classes! Like someone has to pay the bills and if that's the case, the success cases have to pay enough to cover all of the failure ones and are overpaying.
There are also "VC funded programs" where the program raised outside funding from venture capitalists and loses a ton of money per student in an attempt to grow larger and eventually make a profit.
These ones might be the best deal because you are actually getting a deal and the program is losing money.
The flip side is that the programs have pressure to grow so they might cut corners too soon as well.
Everything has pros and cons and transparency is key so you know what those are.
Apprenticeships are the IDEAL way still in my opinion but a lot of them were operating under DEI budgets.
Like from a recruiting point of view, the amount of money spent on these programs didn't make sense.
So many got budget allocated from DEI buckets (e.g. corporate branding, initiatives to increase diversity at the company).
With major DEI budget cuts as a result of government changes, programs have becomes a lot smaller (operating under recruiting) or shutdown.
There have been placements, but they keep shedding staff so it could be another thing falling through the cracks.
There certainly aren't a lot of placements.
And a couple placements I've seen and really embellished and made up LinkedIns it's almost like an insult or a joke.
One started working at Codesmith as a TA prior to starting Codesmith as a resident.
One claimed their 3 weeks of commits on their OSP were 1 year 8 months of experience and got a job recently.
I flagged both of these cases to them.
Like I believe one person there is trying to fix things but it's just not really fixable.
Every day people hit me up with their personal experiences there and their engineering system seems like a giant scam now and I'm super annoyed.
Like TAs and instructors who migrated libraries from one React library to another in 20 places and then put down 1 year of SWE experience as a senior…
I was highly recommending Codesmith back in the day, and encourage a bunch of people to go there in 2021-2022. Sadly the market is falling apart and not a single person is still on their full time instruction team since then, literally about 20 instructors left and the longest serving one joined at the very end of 2022. And a number more joined since then and left. There are only 2 lead instructors AFAIK right now. Nevermind a number of directors (4 I count) who left and haven't been replaced.
Every day I get their LinkedIn posts touting 'you could be next', 'now's the time', and all these conferences their CEO is going off to and speaking at and it's really making me sad.
Then there are all these sketchy accounts on Reddit promoting them. Like I caught this account pretending to be a student who was sharing promotional links all over Reddit for CSX with UTM tracking params to trace th…
Sure.
Remote roles are fewer than they used to be and return to office is a real thing.
What I'm seeing is a lot of hybrid roles though. They might even be posted as in person roles but where the manager or team works remote most of the time.
It's complicated because you have to be ready to work in person and meet the requirements, but many companies seem to give people who are performing well some leeway to stretch that a bit.
There are still 100% fully remote roles that are good companies though and they are competitive yeah, but not necessarily a higher bar to get the job, just a higher bar to get through the resume and recruiter screens because of supply and demand.
Well for Formation, the average placement **increases** their first year total comp by over $100K (see our website for how that's calculated).
Now granted most people are non-FAANG ->FAANG and FAANG -> FAANG is different.
But if you are a little lost or struggling on your interviews, then paying like roughly $10K to be handholded through the preparation process and then handholded through negotiations to increase your offer by more than $10K typically can be mathematically sensical.
The reason we don't charge $100K is because it's impossible to know what the same people would do on their own and presumably they can get prepared for free or cheap too, so how much of that is attributed to Formation? I don't know, that's up to you, but if they typical increase is THAT much and the negotiation support pays for it, it's definitely not a scam or insane to do it.
It's more a personal choice…
Hi, thanks for sharing details. The L4 -> 5 promotion in 2 years is good trajectory that should be helping you in job hunting.
1. Yeah, I feel like the life of the engineer for your entire career is just not knowing stuff and figuring it out haha. I theorize that engineers sometimes are so opinionated about odd things because it's what they know - and they shy away from things they don't know, but acknowledging you don't know a lot of stuff is better for you than trying to pretend you do or putting pressure on yourself to.
2. I'm surprised and first tip is to show your career progression on your resume instead of bundling all of Amazon into one item. That progression is the checkbox for FAANG "mid level"/Meta E4 bar. Amazon does have some negative signal some places right now and I haven't dug into why, but it might just be a flood of people looking for jobs from RTO - but I'm not sure…
If that's not the case then maybe bootcamps shouldn't put hiring stats in their prime hero spots.
I just just checked and Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Tripe Ten, Tech Elevator, General Assembly, all have placement or salary info in the hero banner on the homepage.
Fullstack doesn't.
I was in the camp of people need to think about this as paying for school and not paying for a job. When the market crashed and many programs had layoffs and staff reduction it became absolutely absurd to pay $20K for this stuff.
Like at Codesmith now after their cut backs, you pay $22.5K and your cohort has 1 lead instructor with no/little experience, 1-3 mentors who are former graduates of Codesmith with no experience who were TAs that stayed full time as mentors, and then a bunch of fellows/TAs etc... who are part time recent graduates who haven't placed yet or recent graduates who mentor here and there.…
Hi,
1. Master's is the most stable path but it's not guarantee either.
2. If you are truly self-taught and have gotten to an employable skill level on your own, I might consider doing some freelance work and trying to land FAANG contractor roles and taking about 3 to 5 years to land a permanent role.
3. Working and transitioning - I've seen it in two ways, but it's not common because these companies are so high performance there isn't a lot of time to explore.
\- Leveraging internal support - i.e. doing part time masters, or internal classes and then interviewing for lower tier or entry level roles that are the same company with the safety of staying in your role. Amazon had an internal apprenticeship to do just this, but it shut down.
\- Doing your job and doing a part time masters paid for by the company and then potentially changing companies once it's done and not counting on t…
My stance is in those days was that bootcamps worked for extremely ambitious young professionals with lots of savings. People that were successful in life already in various ways (ivy league, other career, naturally brilliant and doing well but had tough circumstances holding them back) and wanted to transition to SWE.
This is not a perfect analogy but I visited slums in Mumbai expecting the people there to be really struggling to get by without any jobs and such.
Instead I found out that the slums are like mini factories and people in the 'top tier slums' are actually extremely ambitious people - generally the 'breadwinner' of the family coming from all over India and staying there temporarily to make money. The work they did was like melting plastic and toxic stuff that is definitely bad for people's health, but they were there hopefully as a stepping stone to better jobs by saving e…
I don't think predatory, but on the "delusional" aspect, it's probably too mean of a word.
Like I think Turing had arguments for believing they could finish out 2025, and the changes in the economy made that not possible.
Should they have known that a President who has said the word "tariffs" over and over for about 40 years might introduce tariffs? Yes.
Do they have a crystal ball to tell the future? No.
My centrist stance on this is that bootcamps have to be absurdly transparent right now into what is going on.
I'm absurdly hard on Codesmith more than Turing because they live in an alternate reality on this stuff and don't acknowledge anything publicly. Like if all your instructors turned over except for 1 in less than a year, something is absolutely, fundamentally, stop the presses wrong and you need to pause immediately and just rebuild or reset and come back in the future. But…
Thanks for sharing. Yeah I'll +1 that March was particularly strong for Formation in the mid-late career stages, FAANG offers of every logo color of the rainbow.
And I got really nervous that if bootcamps saw similar bumps in entry level, they would promote stronger March without any acknowledgment of what's going on in the market.
I'm absolutely shocked that CIRR can't even keep their website up while they transition it to a new page and comes back without even explaining what is going on.
When the economy changed in the other directly and was super hot, it wasn't "the economy's fault" that Codesmith and others had such amazing placements right? It was the school's pedagogy and curriculum and community and network. Times are shit, 'not my fault, can't do anything about it'.
It's indeed a good lesson for all these leaders. The bootcamps are not going to make it but whatever they do…
Codesmith is pumping out marketing about their most recent outcomes as exceptional outcomes, even though they tanked - and while they acknowledge the market they pat themselves on the back still. Internally almost all their lead instructors quit or were laid off except for one - who is now leading two entire tracks (as of two weeks ago) - and one person who has been teaching for a few months was promoted to be a lead instructor as well.
I'm exhausted with leaders, like Turing too, who want to pour their heart and soul into something with such good intentions but seeing all of that passion make people delusional - desperately trying to keep the thing alive without realizing the industry is burning down.
I admire Launch Academy for pausing gracefully, and a few others that explicitly opted to 'preserve their legacy' (their words) and shut down instead of taking the industry's credibility…
I don't know enough about Design bootcamps to give a very confident response.
Designers in general are also impacted by AI - both positively and negatively. AI lets engineers build pretty good designs using AI without a designer but AI also lets designers build out more stuff without engineers.
So the job isn't going away. The bar is very high though.
Like if you are a junior engineer being replaced by AI, the same thing applies to designers - if the designs are just textbook off the shelf HCI 101, then AI can do that too better than you.
I would enter design right now if you have extremely good 'taste'. Designers with good taste are just as valuable as senior SWEs.
AI hasn't changed the interview FORMATs yet, but it's starting to change how people are interpreting them. For example, someone can (and always could have) cheat on coding interviews with AI, so it's making engineers focus really hard (and companies train engineers to conduct interviews this way) on the coding process and demonstrating strong coding thinking and understanding and not just writing code and calling it a day.
I'm not sure at Cap1 but at big tech, there is a bit more weight on behavioral and SD. Not a complete change. But let's say someone got a 'weak hire' on SD, and hire on all others, that might have been more obviously a hire in the past and maybe we take a deeper look into the SD now for why it was a 'weak hire'.
Cap1 has always had a more fixed process, I think they ask one of four SD questions all the time haha, so I suspect they won't be weighting things differentl…
Hi, It's going to be very hard imo. I would take as many programming classes as you can in college and then I would try to get an "analyst" job that is not programming, but involves data crunching and systematic thinking and then try to make the jump on the job (by doing part time training on the side OR being trained internally at the company).
Sorry to hear that and I understand the deflated feeling.
I would next look into SWE adjacent jobs that leverage your past experience.
For example, if you were customer facing - Solutions Engineer or Support Engineer. If you were on the business side of things Partner Engineer or Business Engineer.
You might still have a hard time though and you can lean even more into your past experience. For example being a customer support agent at a big tech company might give you a pathway to becoming a Support Engineer internally. Or working in IT Operations might give you a path to Business Engineer.
Getting into a really good tech company in any role really.
I even know someone who went from working in an Apple Store to doing corporate training-type work at Apple to then doing that job at Google.
Hi, I have a few ideas but would want to get to know you more personally to give better advice.
1. You can downplay your "senior titles" and just put them as "Software Enegineer" and produce a resume that fits more a canonical FAANG "mid level". Having a FAANG mid level resume might give you a senior title at startups too without having "senior" on there.
2. The DS&A/problem solving coding interview expectations though do NOT DEPEND ON LEVEL! At Meta, the bar was the same from intern through senior (and was even a bit lower for senior :S). So if this is your blocker, you have to practice things like NeetCode and Blind75. And the super important thing right now is to not just check off the boxes alone in your room/office, but to develop stronger problem solving muscles so you can consistently communicate a clear problem solving process in those interviews. It sounds like you are all ove…
Hi, a lot to dive into here!
There is a back and forth because of bootcamps marketing and because of disgruntled students who flip a table and doom and gloom.
The reality is in between, but sadly it's closer to doom and gloom right now.
I don't know if you saw, but Turing School is abruptly shutting down as of this morning and transferring students elsewhere and we see some of the best bootcamps shutting down left right and center.
This isn't a back and forth, or a sign of hope, and the "back and forth" you see is remaining bootcamps grasping at straws to try to not have a similar fate.
I have insider connections at many bootcamps and the ones surviving are NOT doing well internally. Either cutting back, losing employees, or the 'bootcamp division' is being neglected by a parent company. Launch School is the only program I know that is basically run by the founder and their cohort n…
Hi, I said this in another comment, but I would try to get a longer stint at one company and show career progression. If you can do that then you'll have an easier time making the next jump.
Rather than being concerned about a stack or technology, I would focus on getting to a leading edge company building technology you excited about and then learning from them on the inside. It's more efficient and you'll get more out of it than trying to beef up your resume with stacks to check of boxes.
If you aren't employed or you don't have a long enough stint at a company, I would prioritize trying to to that at a less "exciting" company first and then transitioning later.
Hey, I'm not hear to talk about Formation so you can DM me and I can give more specific advice. In general, Formation helps people with 2+ SWE YOE prepare for generalist interviews, or the generalist portion of top tier tech interviews. It is costly, and not everyone thinks it's worth it, but our surveys and feedback forms show that most people who do it, do find it's worth it (either a little or a lot) so I would look into it and see if you are a good fit and then consider the cost carefully.
Well Bill Gates was writing the first software for Microsoft 40/50 years ago and while EVERYTHING has changed, NOTHING has changed at the same time.
I read his new biography and the grit, curiosity, obsessive problem solving, are all human traits that were relevant then and are relevant now and will be relevant in 40 years.
40 years ago though CS degrees barely existed, and it was called an offshoot of "Math" at the time.
So 40 years from now, we're going to have "computer-adjacent gritty, curious, problem solvers" but I highly doubt we'll call them software engineers anymore.
I'm not a futurist or economist and I don't know what the problems humans we'll have in 40 years. I can imagine and guess - everything from we'll be interplanetary to we'll be extinct. But if we have problems, we'll have engineers.
It's not going to happen overnight, so I can maybe think a little sooner, like…
One advice and only one advice: HUSTLE FOR INTERNSHIPS.
\- If you can't find any, volunteer for professors or for school organizations doing SWE work to try to get something on your resume for next year
\- Look into industry programs for college students that are like 'pre-internships', Google Scholars, Netflix X Formation, Meta U. A lot of these shut down unfortunately.
\- Relentlessly apply for internships all over the country and message recruiters just trying to get into the pipelines wherever you can.
If you are graduating and don't have internships, I would consider doing a masters or extending a yearto buy more time.
Hey, you might be overgeneralizing AI and you won't be forever 'behind' in AI.
ML specifically - it's very high demand right now. You'll probably be behind the curve for leading edge ML research, but a master's could be a good way to get an Applied ML job or ML Data Engineer role - roles on the border where having ML knowledge helps you stand out amongst SWEs, rather than feeling behind as an ML Researcher/Academic.
I wouldn't see a master's a away of upleveling to Senior though - it's a way to open up breadth of positions at the same level.
You'll have to get to senior ON THE JOB, by gaining experience in complex systems and demonstrating the scope of responsibility and impact that the company wants to see at the senior level.
All things equal I would look at the school and opportunities for industry internships that upper years have been getting that you might be able to get.
CS -> SWE/Design/PM
Math/Stats -> Data Analyst/Data Scientist
Both can -> Data Engineer.
I would probably take overlapping classes to keep your options the most open, but once you get that first internship, assuming you still like it, I would stay in that lane and keep trying to get better and better internships in the same field so you come out strongest as a new grad.
Hi, three things:
1. Maximize your current job assuming you have one. You want to show that you have longer tenure at fewer companies, and career progression at your job, rather than too much job hoping. So focusing on getting promoted at your job might help more than job hopping to a higher title or salary.
If you have been job hopping or don't have a job right now I would have to look at your resume more personally to try to build the strongest narrative you can to show signs of the above \^\^\^. Like if you had a job where you weren't promoted but you grew in influence or scope, you can show that clearly on your resume.
2. With 5 YOE you should apply to FAANG "mid level" or smaller company senior roles yeah. Apply you strengths, not what you want to learn. If you want to learn full stack, go for front end roles that play to your stengths and then try to learn full stack stuff on th…
I don't think the interview processes are broken. There's a saying, 'they are broken but they are less broken than the alternative'.
Anyone criticizing them should try to understand why they are the way they are first before making assumptions.
It's not stupidity and it's not gatekeeping.
DS&A problem solving interviews:
1. abstract away thousands of tech stacks to give everyone an equal footing
2. can be repeated consistently so thousands of candidates can have consistent interview processes
3. allow engineers to demonstrate the problem solving they want to see on the job in a problem that CAN be solved in 25 minutes (what real world problem can be solved that fast).
At Meta, the cost of doing just 1 interview was so high they looked for any reason to shorten interviews. It's why their DS&A are only 45 minutes and not an hour!
**It's all about reducing false positives for the mo…
Hi, fun to think about, millions and millions of lines of code later, all I've seen, but I'm super sentimental and it's fun to think about going back to beginning.
In the USA tech job market, it's a meritocracy (overall, but it's not perfect haha), so whatever you do, you have to be better at it than most other people to succeed at that.
I REALLY wanted to do astrophysics but I'm not good enough at complex math so it's not the area for me. I REALLY wanted to do quantum computing because it sounded cool, but I'm not good enough at raw logic to work on fundamental quantum computing paradigm development.
I'm extremely good at focus and I'm really good at absorbing large systems and connecting the dots within them to get stuff done and turn the gears.
So in talking this out, I guess my advice here is to try to figure out what you are exceptional at early on by trying a lot of things and…
You'll hear people answer this on both sides and the reason is that 'it depends' haha.
It's not a good time to career transition into the career "Software Engineer", but it's an amazing time to learn how to write code because AI is going to give people who can code a leg up in almost ANY job.
In the bootcamp space you see way too much on both sides because you have these programs turning you into a canonical "Software Engineer" which just doesn't work at scale right now, but they might prepare people ok for the second bucket of "learn some code to better at my old job" - which is a completely different marketing goal but might make people thing a SWE bootcamp is still worth it if that's their goal.
So it's confusing for sure and hard to navigate, it's one of the reasons I'm in this subreddit all the time trying to help people navigate.
Finally, there is a very small group of hundred…