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…
Here is an analysis of my commentary purely about Codemsith "sporadic but consistent"
"Here’s an unbiased summary of Michael Novati’s commentary on Codesmith over the past few years—covering the topics he addressed, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe:
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Topics & Themes
1. Curriculum Stagnation & Slow AI Integration
Michael pointed out that Codesmith’s curriculum has remained largely unchanged over the years. For example, in early 2024 he noted:
> "Codesmith's curriculum has been the same for YEARS but in Feb 2024 they added 5 lectures on AI… This is 'not changing'… 12–14 weeks of the same structure they did 5 years ago… I guess they think it's enough to raise prices to $22,500 this year."
---
2. Deteriorating Placement Outcomes
He emphasized a steep decline in graduate outcomes. He shared CIRR-based figures showing that six-month placement dropped from ~90% in 2021 to…
In case anyone is curious, here is what AI said about my last 3 years of Reddit activity:
"Here’s an unbiased summary of Reddit commentary by Michael Novati over roughly the past three years (from mid‑2022 to mid‑2025), covering common topics, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe:
---
Topics & Themes
1. Bootcamps & "Learn to Code" Critique
Skeptical of the bootcamp model. Novati has been notably critical of coding bootcamps—and especially the broader "Learn to Code" ideology. He highlights structural issues like oversupply of CS graduates, declining outcomes, and economic realities often overlooked by bootcamp marketing .
For instance, in /r/codingbootcamp he wrote:
> “The tech unemployment rate now exceeds the national average…” and argued “Learn to Code… ignored basic economics (oversupply depressing value/wages)” .
He has also raised doubts about data reporting by entiti…
Launch School Capstone announces cutback from 3 cohorts a year to 2 cohorts a year starting in 2026. Acknowledges tough job market, longer job hunts, and new changes to help people get real work experience though internships and open source commitments to to Firefox and large projects.
[Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1moix9n/capstone_changes_announcement_for_2026/)
Note this is unofficial, personal commentary and opinions on these changes:
**SUMMARY OF CHANGES:**
* **Schedule change:** Moving from 3 cohorts/year to 2 (Spring & Fall only) to focus more resources on each group
* **AI Engineering expanded:** Now 2 full weeks dedicated to AI Engineering (model selection, evaluations, ingestion/retrieval strategies)
* **More experience opportunities:**
* Expanded Open Source Initiatives (OSI) - last cohort got everyone patches into Firefox
* New internship op…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
Here is what AI says to the question: "Is Formation Fellowship a paid job"
"No — Formation is not a paid job, nor does it offer employment. It’s a paid fellowship/training program (focused on interview prep and career coaching), not a salaried position."
Here is what it thinks about Codesmith: "are oslabs engineers paid?"
"Yes - OSLabs does pay engineers in at least one of its key programs"
Like I don't think you'll find anything anywhere that would make a reasonable person think Formation Fellows are paid roles - but acknowledge that edge case people might be confused because of the multiple definitions.
But in Codesmith's case like everything is blatantly twisted to appear that way.
This discrepancy is one of the 3 primary reasons I've been going after Codesmith.
Dictionary definitions aside, what the leaders of these companies do and stand for and their integrity matte…
I'm restarting my comment:
Formation is not a bootcamp or generally competing with Codesmith. Codesmith has marketing adds explaining what a for-loop is and assuring you that even if it's too confusing Codesmith is for you. You can't join Formation without industry work experience as a SWE. The closest overlap is the AI program because we're offering AI productivity courses soon and they offer AI leadership courses. But there is very little overlap.
We are harmed if Codesmith declines because because 75%+ of Codesmith grads that join Formation like Formation a lot and it's a wonderfully complementary service.
There's a difference between continuous demonstration of incompetent engineering practices, tons of security issues and such.
I meant that this was the last straw about engineering practices because I had been privately telling them all kinds of problems for a while now and th…
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…
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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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.
Alina is more capable of running the company for sure but it's too little too late honestly.
She needs a capable team around her and almost everyone has left.
The whole industry is changing and the teaching style and pedagogy at Codesmith is dying out and you don't have a team left to invest in building out.AI ways to learn. You have to flip your company on its head. But you don't have the money and you don't have the talent to build that.
Even if Alina has a vision, the team is delivering garbage code (as her and I both know the quality of) and people there isn't even realize it. They celebrate the heroes of the past - who themselves really didn't know what they were doing either.
Will needs to leave the company entirely, which it sounds like might be over time and he floats to academia - where maybe he should be - because he just doesn't have the experience to forge software engine…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I didn't say anything about you. I was responding to that person about the typical grad behavior for why many Codesmith grads defend this behavior.
I had a rant that I deleted because it was not coherent. But time will tell and the truth is catching up with them.
Most people have already figured it out and apparently many remaining staff are one foot out the door.
Maybe the CEO steps down and Alina takes over and maybe brings in some funding to buy out the company for cheap and they try to build something new and sell it off for a profit later on in a consolidation of remaining bootcamp brands?
Kind of like what happened at App Academy. The founder finally left, the new CEO replaced everything with he own AI platform. They stopped doing SWE and kind of floating around as a completely different version of the program before.
Codesmith will probably follow that path and they really sh…
Yes good point. I'm enraged right now and very upset at them.
They just posted on LinkedIn about how a grad went to Codesmith and got a $150K job at Twilio right away.... the grad went to Codesmith in 2018, got a job at Virgin and then Twilio in 2021....
They have a Dog Bot responding to me on Reddit now that is an incompentant use of AI or an idiot pretending to be AI.
But I'm losing it and sorry if I'm unprofessional about it now. I am a transparent and authentic person.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Please keep demonstrating more incompetent use of AI and defending it... it looks terrible for the program you are the lead of shows why no one should go to it... the person in that video is the Lead Instructor for the FTRI and it's not taken down.
Seems like you know nothing about the IP situation.
Review the internal Microsoft procedures for conflict and review and submit this for review through the internal tools. Don't ask your manager. You aren't contributing to education, you are are the primary person responsible for a for profit private companies AI product. What the f... you are playing with fire here.
Yes please commenting using garbage AI integrations because it's proving my point how no one at Codesmith is qualified to teach AI or SWE - and everyone gets to see what happens when graduates of Codesmith with very little or no industry experience portray themselves as experts and pat each other on the back doing it.
Like this clip from a LEAD INSTRUCTOR who has ZERO SWE WORK EXPERIENCE talking about AI who clearly has no idea about AI tools in their response: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/evDsJlN3Mms](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/evDsJlN3Mms)
I'm glad you don't have the capability of managing Reddit and teaching at the same time. I have 8000 commits in the past year, respond within minutes to all my Fellows feedback, bugs, questions, etc... (which anyone reading this will back me up on) and I reply to Reddit quickly too.
Just because you aren't capable of doing this and I am, I…
Well it's a great time to learn how to use AI tools because they are completely changing the day to day faster than anything else before!
I have a background with top tier tech (Meta) and top tier interview prep (Formation) so this is my advice through that lens:
1. Everyone has gaps no matter what your background or experience. If you have INTERVIEWING GAPS (e.g. System Design and DS&A and struggle to perform) - those are one set of skills to work on. If you have gaps day to day and just feel behind - part is imposter syndrome and part is lack of work experience. Most people with CS degrees have a lot of internships and 4 years of CS that make you actually behind in work experience.
2. If you are trying to interview - which is sounds like you aren't, do DS&A like NeetCode, and SD like Hello Interview or other free and cheap options.
3. If you are just trying to level up on the job,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I really hope Will isn't actually the lead instructor for this program for long because this is one of the worst uses of AI I've seen and thank you for proving my point that he is not qualified to be leading with curriculum development and teaching of this course. I don't want to discourage people from learning AI and I wouldn't be remotely hard on Will if this was a student learning AI, not someone branded as an industry leader in AI leading teaching a $4600 for 4 week course.
This is a completely defensive comment about one of five points and it doesn't even address the point whatsoever... it defends the legitimacy of the music band - which I never disputed - and instead I was attacking Will for posting like a dozen promotional comments for the band that didn't disclose he actually was in the band at the time. Your comment is defending that behavior - defending manipulating Reddit wit…
Absolutely!
1. We spent literally 5 years building a platform from scratch where people can practice anything and do dynamically scheduled mentorships sessions on anything. So we're adapting in real time to AI. We've added a dozen new AI features in the past few months. We've increased the experience bar for people to work with. We're paying very very close attention to interview changes that are happening with AI out there.
2. We're introducing our first AI-specific tracks shortly and started offering one off sessions to iterate on those within our platform engine. The goal of this is to help people become more efficient engineers on the job and keep up with AI.
3. It's entirely possible that AI will crush a lot of SWE industry. It's not a guarantee but a possibility we have to prepare for. In that world, competition for the top SWEs is even more and we'll play a role helping those p…
It's not about getting the role, it's about the next 5 years and what AI is going to do with that.
Codesmith's results were from people exaggerating resumes and Codesmith looked the other way.
AI will replace you if you were lying and getting by by sheer hustle. AI works 24/7. AI can parallelize 1000 tasks.
The only think AI can't beat yet is the taste that comes through SWE experience.
IMO, there is no alternative right now, just don't change careers and learn programming for free on the side slowly over a couple of years.
I'm very confident in the next 5 to 10 years
1. We'll know what all the new jobs AI created are
2. We'll be able to train people for those jobs quickly with bootcamps - but the demographics might look different than bootcamps today with smaller deltas each time around and people aren't becoming "programmers", they are Accountatns becoming like AI Accountants.…
I'm seeing top 10 university grads getting internships and if they perform very well, getting jobs. I think that's the only path to a canonical entry level SWE job.
I think we're going to have a ton more tech-adjacent jobs coming up with AI but that's not what you pay $22,500 to go to a SWE bootcamp for.
Codesmith marketing campaign: "you’re not late to tech". Unfortunately you likely are, and this kind of thing is tone deaf and misleading. Instead of making changes in their program structure they are marketing a 10 year old program structure as if it still works and please don't fall for it.
Codesmith sent out a mass email campaign today that I found offensive.
>If you’ve been thinking, *“Is it still worth trying to break into tech right now?”,* you’re not alone… but we will let our latest data speak for itself.
Yes, let's the data speak for itself. For 2021 grads about 80% got jobs within 6 months of graduating, and for 2022 about 70% and for 2023 grads about 40%. We don't know what it is for 2024 grads but word on the street is it's about the same as 2023 grads or worse.
The trend is falling off a cliff so let's let the data speak for itself and run for the hills.
>Despite layof…
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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
Hello! Good observation.
The junior market isn't completely gone or being completely replaced by AI. The top tech companies are hiring INTERNS from the top schools and those people are getting entry level jobs and progressing.
The thing that changed is instead of it being like 5 juniors : 2 mid levels : 1 senior, the ratios are more like 2 juniors: 2 mid levels: 1 senior.
And I think AI makes those ratios work rather than just flat out replacing the juniors.
It's all money at the end of the day - junior engineers LOSE MONEY at top tier companies, but the reason they got hired is that the 2 year investment to get them productive broke even and paid off afterwards.
AI can both help and hurt that. It can help by making juniors progress FASTER and be break even SOONER. But it can also empower mids and seniors to be more productive themselves and raise the bar of what "break even" expect…
Hi, I didn't co-founder a bootcamp so I don't know. My partner started a bootcamp in 2017 and it closed in 2019 and we together started Formation to help people in the industry already prepare for interviews and level up, rather than trying to do 0 to 1.
I agree that bootcamps aren't working right now. Just this morning Turing School announced they are shutting down abruptly. Codesmith has lost most of it's staff and instructors and they say they aren't going anywhere, but things clearly aren't good. App Academy and Launch Academy are both still paused for all SWE programs.
To me, the bootcamp era is over and I agree with you.
That said, even though the bootcamp MODEL doesn't work, there are INDIVIDUALS that are gifted or have the work ethic to outwork 99% of their peers to succeed and those people don't need a bootcamp to transition into tech, but they just need something small to…
Hi 👋,
* 3 years of experience as a SWE should line you up nicely for an E4 Mid Level Meta SWE role. You can also consider their adjacent roles like Partner Engineer and Business Engineer if you get rejected from the normal E4 "Product Engineer", "Infrastructure Engineer" roles.
* There is absolutely a bias against bootcamp grads - I've seen it bluntly from close friends who are recruiters. And the reason is because bootcamp grads OVERALL don't perform as well on the job because they are behind in experience. It's not personal and not about potential.
* So I would probably exclude them and focus on your current job, the most important things are
* **1. SHOW CAREER PROGRESSION (if you got promoted, don't just list you highest title, but show the dates and show you progressed quickly up the later)**
* **2. IDEALY DON'T JOB HOP - staying at the same company and progressing is much better…
👋 AMA: I’m Michael - ex-Meta Principal Engineer + #1 code committer, now co-founder at Formation.dev + interview expert. 📌🎈💥 AI popped the Bootcamp & LeetCode bubbles. Ask me anything about how tech careers have changed in 2025, how to stand out, and what still gets you hired. No 🍬🧥. No 🐂💩
# TUESDAY APRIL 15th, 10AM PT/1PM ET: ADD QUESTIONS ANYTIME
Hey everyone, I'm Michael Novati - a friendly moderator of the sub, former Principal Engineer and the #1 code committer at Meta, and now co-founder and lead engineer at Formation.dev. I've done hundreds of technical interviews at Meta, built some big stuff, and even had an industry archetype called "Coding Machine" modeled after my work.
Here's the blunt truth: The hiring landscape in tech has drastically shifted in 2025. The bootcamp-to-job pipeline and the LeetCode grind have both been heavily disrupted by AI. These changes broke…
The three eras to me are defined not necessarily by dates but by bootcamp trends.
The dates in my original post don't align super well and I have to spend more time thinking of the dates if they matter at all.
1. Era 1: super intense in person bootcamps for super smart people that had to prove themselves to get it, worked crazy hard, and got very good outcomes.
This was very non-diverse, a lot of young single professionals with a lot of savings and no families or who could pack up their lives to move to SF.
This is where bootcamps came from when they started out.
The canonical one here would be the earliest days of Hack Reactor.
Big tech was hiring these people if they passed interviews. There weren't a lot of grads for a broad trend but some made it through!
2. Era 2: DEI. Big companies realized that non-traditional sources of talent could help increase diversity because CS grad…
>Our team is very focused on the bigger picture, being a rigorous and accessible pathway for a new gen of technologists able to help meet this moment (arguably the 4th industrial revolution)
Your team should spend more time on the ground with students and less time with the bigger picture. If you want to only work on the bigger picture, go into academia or politics.
Otherwise don't take peoples' $22.5K and use that money to fund your "bigger picture" explorations and ideas, or to fund the creation of new AI/ML programs.
VC, loans, and outside funding is meant for investing the future. Your students are paying to get jobs, not paying for developing future programs and so the team can go to conferences like Davos and write books.
I haven't made a penny of salary or compensation from my company in 5.5 years since day 1, and we have never had a profit, because every penny given to us is…
Formation isn't a school and doesn't teach any concepts like that. We are a place to practice problems, get feedback, benchmark, enhance your job hunt and do mock interviews.
We believe there are tens of thousands of hours of excellent materials out there and we try to help you navigate that.
All of our efforts are out towards our product and you can see form our launches blog how much effort that is.
Codesmith doesn't have dynamic scheduling of 500 sessions a week, source thousands of job posts a week and provide personal recommends and network outreach, provide a job tracker tool that helps you prepare for upcoming interviews through personalized practice and interviews automatically, collect and read about a dozen feedback points per person every week, provide a personal algorithmic feed of things to work on, provide a custom built on platform collaborative coding environment suppo…