There was a bit of an issue because their CA 2023 report originally had 20% placements for 2023 grads which they updated to 42% by adding in like 40 to 60 people who didn't report salaries and were verified by LinkedIn.
I asked them about it and they didn't respond (while they responded to other questions, so it wasn't due to lack of receipt).
Apparently a contractor/advisor did the report so I asked them if it's possible all of those LinkedIn verifications were ACTUALLY OSP PROJECTS PORTRAYED AS WORK and not actual jobs, and they didn't reply to that either.
I started doing some analysis but I'm way too busy because I'm working on so many crazy AI features that are so exciting and cool I just doing have like an hour to do the actual number crunching, but I really want to know what's going on.
It's impossible the leadership doesn't know about these problems no? Like how could they mi…
Does doing your research include looking at reports and asking critical questions and then interpreting answers?
Question: the ghosting rate for placements went from 15% to 65% from 2022 grads to 2023 in CA reports, what happened there? Why are alumni not responsive and is there a problem continuing in 2024?
The problem, whether you think I have biases or not, is that I **do my research** and I show it to people. When things are good, I publish good.
There has been nothing good in the past 2 years, no silver lining, nothing. There have been anecdotal one off success cases.
Codesmith added 5 lectures of AI to their curriculum that are already dated and worse than the free stuff from Andrej Karpathy on Youtube... and they intentionally chose to go all in on an AI curriculum that they knew was changing daily and they didn't have any unique expertise in teaching.
Like I wish I had more…
I don't think I could disagree more.
I work on an interview prep platform, which is unrelated to boot camps, but we've shipped hundreds of changes in the past year. we're going to start announcing a bunch of changes publicly because we want people to see just how insanely hard. we are trying to help people navigate the market, read how we continuously challenge our most basic assumptions and redo things and rethink things to match what's needed. week to week and once a month.
and yes, it's absolutely a rough market and a lot of people are having a hard time but if people are paying a lot of money then it's your job as a company to really give it your all.
so like I said, if the CEO is more interested in spending more so his time writing a book right now about AI ethics, that is nothing to do with software engineering placements. then I don't think that they deserve your money.
But why is it taking longer just because supply is low.
I reiterate, If there's nothing that codesmith can do about this because of the market, then they shouldn't exist right now
So I'm trying to open the door for them to be able to do something within their control to produce the placement numbers that could justify paying $22,000 for.
If they've made all the changes they can and they don't think there's anything else then they're done right?
Their CEO is off writing a book about ai and inequality and doesn't seem interested to be spending 12 hours a day on the ground with every single alumni helping them in whatever way they can.
So maybe that's a sign that they've tried everything they can and these are the best the results are going to be and if that's the case, they're not good enough to justify their existence right now or at least their cost.
There are a bunch of bootcamps that have pivoted to AI and started to abandon/pause/not improve their SWE support like App Academy, BloomTech, Codesmith, and there are new AI-only bootcamps popping up.
The problem is that no one is an expert in AI tools yet and they change literally week to week. First it's Devin, then Cursor, now it's Windsurfer. It's co-pilots, its about data protection, it was about giant context windows and now it's about reasoning models, like.
I'm going to post top level in a sec about this.
Yeah I'm really curious what's working for entry level jobs. I have a very good handle through Formation on FAANG-mid-level and FAANG-senior.
As you know, I keep a close eye on Codesmith as the largest 'top 3' bootcamp, and placements are still terrible there and half the people placed have over a year of "work experience" on their LinkedIn which is their 3 week long project. I had some AI analyze that and it didn't do a good job to publish, but it was ridiculous to see maybe half the placements relying on framing a 3-4 week project as 12+ months of experiences only because they put "X - Present" on their LinkedIn and have been job hunting for 12+ months.... A bunch of the people also worked at Codesmith as a teaching assistant and they delay their clock by the time they worked there. So someone who graduated 2 years ago, was a part time assistant for 6 months, has 1.5 years at their gr…
Wow that's a lot of hustle to try to find paths for grads and I think it's really the only way for bootcamps to survive right now.... by dedicating 150% of your time to trying to find any nook and cranny of advantage for your grads in a market so bad that each partnership puts only a small debt into the problem and you find something deep inside to keep on going.
We've seen a similar level of trying creative angles at Launch School (e.g. open source mentorships on Firefox and such).
Others give up and try to pivot to AI, like App Academy completely stopped its SWE program and only does AI - same with BloomTech. Launch Academy paused entirely.
Some of the larger ones like General Assembly and Galvanize are somehow keeping the lights on and I would like to know more about them.
I'm very nervous about Codesmith, which was arguably the top bootcamp based on outcomes until 2023, and which…
Hi, a lot of people that go into Codesmith have non-technical degrees from pretty good schools and doing a CS masters can be an option. This is the best all around for brand, quality, cost: [https://omscs.gatech.edu/](https://omscs.gatech.edu/)
To clarify though there are two aspects to this post:
1. Codesmith hasn't degraded or gotten worse in the educational experience, it's the same it's always been + 5 new AI lectures. So comparing Codesmith to other bootcamps, it might still be one of the better ones. **BUT best of bad options doesn't mean you should choose it, it just means you probably shouldn't choose another bootcamp instead if Codesmith was the one for you.**
2. The lack of integrity (my opinion) / "carefully selected marketing" (fact) on their side (both in how they didn't tell anyone about this in Feb 2024 - when half of their students already hit the 6 month post grad ma…
I'm seeing a lot of bootcamps pivoting to AI in a cash grab, many paused their SWE programs while they do so.
I'm REALLY nervous about bootcamps trying to exploit their alumni for cash like Codesmith is with their AI/ML Leadership course.
I've reviewed the course and this free YouTube video from an industry leader with 10+ years of AI experience across two of the top research labs + OpenAI + Tesla Director of AI: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xTGNNLPyMI)
I feel for Codesmith - their AI course is taught by some awesome individuals, but they have like 1 year of SWE experience each and it just doesn't stack up in any way to Andrei and Andrei's course is 100% free.
I quite frankly don't really know what anyone at Codesmith can do to catch up to someone like Andrei in teaching AI directly now that Andrei started a company to teach people AI…
Here's my analysis:
Based on my close view of the market for the past 5 years, I would guess 2024 students will have similar placement rates to 2023 students.
Based on the anecdotes people share with me from Codesmith, there are hardly any placement and hardly any alumni engagement - specifically in the second half of 2024.
Codesmith itself loudly touts a CIRR-violating salary outcome and placement number on their website of 168 offers between March and August 2024 that we can also factor in.
1. Salaries they reported were DOWN from peak about 10% - when inflation ran rampant and salaries have gone up, this tanking salary shows that more people are taking non-SWE jobs, going back to their old jobs or taking temporary jobs as part of a longer term plan.
2. It's possible that people taking non SWE jobs and worse jobs instead of waiting for their dream SWE job will result in a higher…
Definitely not a lot, they had a lease paying like $70K a month in NYC, and they laid off the majority of staff at this point.
But $5M gives you raw resources to try to cut back and invest in AI and new programs that you wouldn't be able to do if you paused the program instead.
Some respectable bootcamps paused and pivoted to AI because I think it's the more ethical thing to do.
But delusionally continuing with SWE can backfire if the outcomes are too terrible and it destroys the brand instead and that's what we're now seeing here.
My view now is firmly in the camp of SWE bootcamps are dead as a scalable business model. SWE bootcamps will survive that are small, founder led, and they are able to select and find a tiny number of edge case people for whom the bootcamp will work well, and then most of those people get jobs -realizing that their situation is not reproducible for everyone.
And then a new wave of AI-for-non-engineers-to-be-better-at-their-jobs will pop up. Some from the ashes of SWE bootcamps, some brand new ones.
I can give my thoughts
1. Layoffs aren't a huge factor, but the entry level market is returning to the pre-COVID environment that focuses on top tier computer science grads, internships -> full time, etc... So if you want to be a SWE at a top tech company, get a CS degree at a top school.
2. I think there is going to be a ton of jobs created that use AI that are NOT SWE roles but are just non-engineer roles + AI. E.g. Lawyer + AI and Accountant + AI and Nurse + AI, and Doctor + AI, and all the creative fields (writing, music, etc....) we will need a lot programs for NON ENGINEERS to level up using AI and technology. I think this is where Codesmith is going to eventually, they just aren't cutting off the SWE part out of pride and because as I said in my post - it makes $5M despite terrible outcomes and that $5M can be used to build AI before admitting to those people they don't have muc…
Hi, I'm a co-founder of Formation and can give my opinions from what I've seen.
Your case is borderline and it depends on your Data Engineer experience and your goals. If one of your goals is to be a Data Engineer at Netflix or Meta (where it's a distinct job but very SWE-adjacent/related and compensated the same) and then convert internally at those companies, then I would say MAYBE. We have a handful of people in that bucket and we can help, but we don't do any data-specific interview prep. We have a handful of mentors who are Staff+ Data Engineers at FAANG but we don't have any practice materials for it.
If you strictly want to be a backend engineer, then I have more questions. If you are already getting INTERVIEWS at some solid tech companies on your own and need a boost or help preparing for the interviews then 100% yes.
If you are struggling to get interviews then I would recomm…
CIRR 2025 Standards out - does not close loopholes to force transparency, only change is one that extends the list of reasons to exclude people from the data and increase placement rates on paper - I don't think anyone cares anymore though :(
CIRR Standards for 2025 are out [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zuNf-58OcxVyY1KnTxnfqhfftiNexb6S/view?usp=drive\_link](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zuNf-58OcxVyY1KnTxnfqhfftiNexb6S/view?usp=drive_link)
In a year where bootcamps are disappearing left right and center and pivoting to AI programs and abandoning SWEs, I would have wanted CIRR to tighten up a number of the loopholes in their standard that schools get to exploit.
Here is a list of issues I pointed out last year: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bug0lv/linebyline\_critique\_of\_cirr\_standard\_document/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bug0lv/li…
If I disregard AI then I would say that nothing at all would change and it's the new normal. And it's likely the new normal from "traditional SWE" roles.
I think schools like Launch School that are very small and take a very long time to get into will produce exceptions to the norm and that's about it.
I'm more optimistic in AI creating a ton of new jobs that are tech-adjacent but not tech jobs. And that people will need to transition from their non-tech job into these roles. E.g. accountant -> AI enabled accountant. Kind of like how accountants BEFORE Microsoft Excel had to learn Excel and now it's just a given. A ton of accountants will have to learn AI-enabled tools and it will be a given.
Now SWE bootcamps might be done and over with, but maybe AI bootcamps that **VERY CLEARLY IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AS TRAINING YOU FOR ADJACENT JOBS AND NOT SWE JOBS** might be able to help people ge…
Thanks for sharing. In my opinion, this is the key sentence: "I don't think any of them can live up to their promises reliably"
Who is to say those people, e.g. who worked on wall street, couldn't have gotten jobs on their own or for far cheaper?
Bootcamps that cost like $22K for 13 weeks is crazy expensive, if the correlative factor to getting a job is luck + background. Maybe paying for a network increases your luck, and when it works, is worth $100K, but $22K just averages that out across 5 people - one of whom gets lucky and the rest are ripped off.
The AI programs rolling out, like the one at Codesmith is $4600 for ONE MONTH at 15 hours a week! Even more expensive per hour...
**Anyways, my point is that the bootcamp model is broken and doesn't work anymore because most don't deliver fundamental value for their cost.**
If you take all the harvard grads who want to switch to SWE,…
Can you clarify if you are saying H2 2022 outcomes did not tank from H1 2022 outcomes?
Because Codesmith published an official H1 2022 CIRR report and a FY 2022 CIRR reports it's simple math to deduce the H2 2022 outcomes and they decreased no? Are you saying I'm wrong and need to correct that and made a mistake?
Showing a large increase in people ghosting post placement for H2 who were confirmed via LinkedIn as appearing to get a job and their salaries weren't included?
Anyways, in a market where App Academy has paused, Turing plans on shutting down in 2025, Launch Academy paused, BloomTech paused, Launch School has lower enrollment but surviving and discussing its challenges openly, Code Up shut down, Epicodus shut down, Hack Reactor has massive layoffs and is unrecognizable.
Codesmith is the only one that keeps delusionally telling people everything is okay and people aren't fall…
Yeah exactly, that's why people tell me this stuff, they need the support and aren't happy about it.
It can make people feel like they have to pay for this AI course to continue to get people's attention.
I stand by my opinion that if they have the resources to build this AI course, those resources should first make sure their SWE immersive is in good shape first. The instructors working on AI should be doing these career services.
Again, I see the argument for abandoning alumni and going all on in AI stuff - which is the trend - they just can't in the same breath say that SWE students are getting a world class best experience.
\+1. I should have maybe talked about this more, but I think AI will create a ton of new jobs that don't exist at the intersection of tech and other fields.
I actually think Codesmith is philosophically most aligned with me on this of the 4 but they are going about it in a really weird way for marketing it haha, which is an artifact of this pivot.
They can't say overnight "all you 3500 SWEs that paid us $70M over the past 10 years.... we're no longer making SWEs and we're instead making prompt engineering lawyers"
They can do the following over the course of 2 years though:
1. redefine SWE as the "modern engineer", someone who is less coding focused on has broad capacities to solve any problems
2. re-target the definition of the "problems" to "legal prompt engineering"
3. most of these "SWEs" start getting these "X prompt engineering" roles.
4. they remove the word SWE and call th…
In a last hope to survive, bootcamps are going all in on "Gen AI" programs aimed at their own alumni - 3.5 major bootcamps pivoting to Gen AI courses (Codesmith, BloomTech, App Academy, Deep Atlas (original Hack Reactor team)). AA and BT have PAUSED all SWE programs as of today (Opinions Inside)
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal opinions based on my observations as a self-proclaimed industry expert in the top-tier SWE industry and in the bootcamp industry. My company offers interview prep mentorship for generalist SWEs with experience. We are not offering Gen AI programs at this time and aren't working on it at this time, and I do not consider that a conflict of interest.
I noticed today that App Academy's SWE courses are all "waitlisted" now and no longer enrolling. For me that was the impetus for this post, which has been a month or two in the making.
First, summarizing the state: b…
Yeah Rithm was fully in person before COVID and was a pretty cool office.
I don't know any that are left honestly. Office space is still to expensive, despite being very empty and no one wanting to work downtown.
You could maybe just get a co-working space membership for $500 a month and go there to do remote lessons, you'll probably make friends with engineers and learn some stuff they are doing and working on haha. Maybe work your way into an internship.
All of the bootcamps you mention are having struggles :(
**THESE ARE MY PERSONAL WELL-INFORMED OPINIONS HERE**, do your own research too:
App Academy recently downsized yet again a few weeks ago and is allegedly cutting back part time programs. It's relying more and more on "AI helpers" and it's all untested and hard to know if it will work. After some extremely loud and angry employee departures, I think it's risky to go because…
Yeah I see this kind of thing often. I started doing an analysis of bootcamps grads trajectories and if they still had their first job a year out. I didn't complete it, but it was a shockingly high number of people who changed jobs or didn't have a job within a year or so after their first one.
The job is just the beginning. Bootcamps sell you the job as the end because for them that's when they advertise you everywhere and call it a day.
There's even a bootcamp Codesmith that after promising support for life after, just launched a cash grab AI followup course for $900 for alumni. A completely untested gamble and having the audacity to charge alumni for it. In all fairness, they don't charge for the classroom part of the course as they offer that in their bootcamp now and retroactively give that to alumni for free, so you are paying $900 for 4 Saturday workshops and a monthly "leadersh…
Hi, I can answer with my Formation hat on. It's a good question because there isn't anything else that operates like it, even competitors like Interview Kickstart are also super different.
In one sentence, we're an interview or and mentorship platform. Our focus is job hunting and preparing you for your upcoming interviews.
So philosophically we are based on the idea of mastery and helping you efficiently get form where you are to where you want to go. This means we try to spend your dollars efficiently by giving you the type of session we think you need at the right time.
If you want to hire an Open AI engineer who makes $1M to be your tutor, it would cost you hundreds of a ton and they wouldn't even be able to give you the time you need.
Instead, we give you mocks with those totes of people when you need it - usually when preparing for specific upcoming interviews, and when you don…
Some alumni have talked to me about the materials yeah. They said they only received the 5 lectures but that the projects weren't done yet. I think the people starting Codesmith now will get the real material for the first time in abouf 2 months. Which is why it's insane to me they are charging $3200 (discounted for the first cohort in Jan) instead of making it free. They both have to iron out the bugs and also have no idea how useful this course will be.
The lectures sound laughable as you said. Like RAG and fine tuning spent defining all of these techniques that were invented in the past year but not really being that useful.
There are some excellent free under the hood YouTube series on AI. There is an amazing one I watched part of that is like dozens of lectures for 2-3 hours each that really explains from basics how everything works, and still often says things alike "this is a si…
Codesmith also launched their standalone AI course. 4 weeks part time for almost $5000: https://www.become-irreplaceable.dev/ai-ml-program
I commented on this and will continue to comment it.
The best way to learn AI if you are a generalist SWE is to get a job at a top tier company and learn through their internal materials, confidential research, and thousands of ML engineers.
These are cash grabs capitalizing on fear of missing out, unless you want to be a prompt engineer and not a SWE job. But those jobs haven't solidified at all to justify experimenting on you to try to get you there.
I would recommend no, and I've been consistently recommending against AI/ML bootcamps unless you want to transition to a non-SWE AI role. I posted a poll result here a few weeks ago that shows at the top tier tech companies about 90% of engineers weren't evaluating for AI skills in interviews and had no plans to.
MY STRONG ADVICE TO ANYONE WITH EXPERIENCE WHO WANTS TO DO AI: get a normal SWE job at a big tech company that has a lot of AI product or infra and learn internally. They all have thousands of amazing engineers working on AI, breaking confidential research not released to the public or discussed outside, and many have internal courses on AI... it's like better than doing a course in every way.
In the face of tanking enrollment, a number of bootcamps have added AI/ML standalone options for existing engineers: BloomTech and Codesmith being two of them.
They are popping up as a…
Hmm BloomTech (where the CEO of App Academy used to work) also used Canvas. In all fairness she was able to help them survive instead of completely shutting down so if App Academy was headed for shutdown, maybe she's trying to save it like BloomTech.
In my opinion the layoffs in [March 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmIBwP6tBh4) should have been a giant warning sign to run. I know they promised things would improve and get better, but it was prudent to give them a chance to prove that instead of joining anyways and hoping for the best.
Codesmith had layoffs in 2023 and again in February 2024 where it drastically[ cutback programs](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech). Most of the things promised didn't happen (or didn't happen to the degree stated) and four more employees left in the past few weeks. Yet…
there's a lot in this comment that I think would be relevant at the top level too and really changes my perception.
1. the fact that you got or most of it covered from work is really relevant because it kind of changes the decision. I'm not making a comment on if something is a scam or not. I try to make comments on very specific aspects and not the overall program. generally, if a program encourages you to get your work to reimburse training, then usually the work doesn't really care that much what you're doing and the quality can be lower without impacting as much because you're not as angry or upset because your company paid for most of it and your company doesn't really care because they just have these big pools of money to allocate to these programs.
2. If you're working as a day job then I think it's very hard to do codesmith even part time. they have examples of people that d…
My personally opinion, I currently actively recommend avoiding Codesmith no matter what your background for two reasons. First, because of their morals and ethics and this view has changed in the recent weeks. Second, because a few more long time staff left recently and the haven't delivered on most of their promises in February last time there were layoffs. So I don't take their word to mean anything both morally on a personal level and practically on a deliverables level.
I'm currently only recommending Launch School (but under the caveat that it's not for everyone and has to be a good fit).
Note: I have no affiliations with any bootcamps.
Hiring is back to the way it was back in 2008. Experienced engineers have options in big tech. The only entry level pipelines that are reliable are the top-tier CS school new grad and intern pipelines.
174 isn't haven't a huge impact with big te…
To clarify, I'm concerned about any program that is trying to TEACH Gen AI stuff right now. I did a survey of top tech engineers and around 90% of people said they don't look for Gen AI skills in engineers. So I'm not sure how you can invest in a curriculum yet, or know what to teach. What I'm seeing is that anyone with broad engineering skills is expected to learn how to use Gen AI without the need for explicit training.
Formation doesn't offer any kind of mentorship, practice with Gen AI at this time. We will add it when companies interview for it.
We USE AI to build our platform, make mentorship better AND more efficient. We use AI to help you figure out what to practice next, and to schedule hundreds of dynamic sessions every week. Very different!
I'm not deleting or auto collapsing your posts. You have an extremely negative karma score (which is computed by Reddit, not moderators) and everyone with that negative of a score is treated the same by Crowd Control. Not overriding these filters does not mean we are deleting stuff.
I explained that you can increase your score by engaging positively and not doing vote manipulation.
Are you requesting to be treated unfairly? You are asking to override all of the stuff we have in place for everyone else that is in the same boat (which is a lot of people every day).
If you don't accept that, I'm happy to hop on a call and walk you through it all to prove that to you. If you keep pushing back and ignoring my statements and insisting I'm lying, that's on you do take responsibility for.
--------------------
PERSONAL COMMENTS:
1. That link to that video has ONE SLIDE on predictive analysi…
Exclusive ex-Meta Engineering poll results: Almost no one is considering AI skills when hiring software engineers at their companies! Bootcamps pivoting to AI might be marketing a fictional gold rush so that they can sell you an expensive shovel that you don't need right now.
DISCLAIMER: I'm a moderator of the sub and co-founder of a mentorship program for experienced SWEs (2+ YOE currently) to help them prepare for interviews. I don't believe I have any conflicts of interest but I am bias by the fact that my corner of the market is top tier big tech (including top tier small tech startups) and not the long tail of companies hiring engineers right now. The below analysis is my personal interpretation of the poll and reflects my personal opinions and insights on the raw numbers presented.
Note: I might update poll numbers as more votes come in.
I ran a poll with a group a few thousand…
This might be TMI, but someone sent me some completely public but unlisted instructor training videos with no message or commentary that they were secret so I have to assumeI have permission to see (but given they are unlisted I don't think are intended to be searchable publicly)
They were from like 8 years ago, but I was informed upon asking that recent instructors saw these videos. The training was developed by Will Sentance and an instructor who used to be an actor in LA with no SWE experience.
Most of the training was about how to manage people in lectures, like how to get people to put cameras on, introduce themselves, make a comment about each person by name, and then how to handle not knowing the answers to questions you are asked.
Really enlightening. I don't even know if I have the links anymore, this was like a long time ago that I saw them.
But they are/were trained on how…
If you suddenly want to be a medical doctor, it's extremely hard to change your mind and go to medical school later in life. Only a small number of people who have the time, support and savings can.
The path that works is a top tier 4 year CS degree (top 10 schools) and for people who decided early only, like medical school, that CS was for them.
Bootcamps can help the late bloomers in adjacent areas find s path on a case by case basis.
While medical doctors are one thing, being a receptionist at a doctors office isn't or being a lab assistant, or a medical clerk, or x ray technician.
AI is going to create a plethora of new jobs at tech companies that are the "x ray techncian" of the SWE world.
Jobs that pay okay but not SWE level salaries, need a few months long certificate or bootcamp, and don't have the ssme prestige.
Codesmith's narrative of the modern engineer fits in this vai…
I don't know what they told you when you graduated but they are telling new grads that they have "2 to 4 years of functional experience" so they can put that in applications and their resume.
From the materials I've seen, the changes seem irrelevant to getting a job right now.
A couple of people have Gen AI related jobs but most people are getting SWE jobs with zero AI, followed by tangential jobs, like support engineering and technical writers.
If the market rebounds enough for people to get jobs, I'm curious to see if they stay the course with the "modern engineer" or just double down on classic Codesmith techniques.
So I'm not even convinced the changes they made are correcting anything, but I could be wrong, I'm going off my corner of the market. Maybe Mavis Tire will hire a ton of modern engineers while FAANG keeps doing its same old same old.
Codesmith's new model is bullshit. They added 5 Generative AI lectures and are calling themselves an AI immersive. It's unclear if the content is even done yet or just in progress, with the people currently working on it having no AI experience in real life.
There is no "modern engineer". It's a fabricated story in the CEO's head that he's setting up and using alumni to +1 like zombies.
The "modern engineer" is a privileged Oxford/Harvard grad's idea for making the word a better place.
Good idea, but it's not what the market wants right now. If he wants to change the world, he needs to give the market what it wants along the way to get there.
Right now he's acting like a con artist, dressing up sly foxes like prized sheepdogs. Telling graduates with 3 weeks of OSP to list that on their resume as 2 to 4 years of "functional experience" because companies don't check (Recent alumni wer…
Yeah they have been working on shifting the narrative. I think they are close but the things you pointed out are crushing deal breakers.
You won't be irreplaceable by doing 5 lectures in AI.... anyone else can do that. I can do that, you can do that and next week we are irreplaceable.
You can't be irreplaceable in 12 weeks for $22K or else anyone else can be irreplaceable in 12 weeks.
I like your idea of a 10 month or longer approach.... you became irreplaceable with time, and you can accelerate a little bit with good direction and advice.
I'm surprised your big tech company is allowing you to reach as a W2 part time employee of a bootcamp. I would run that by the conflict of interest team first.If you are a contractor with that much influence over the curriculum, I would double check the contractor / employee relationship in your state and the state the bootcamp is in to make sure it's not being violated.
Not paranoia but serious. Like if you work at FAANG and you are doing to teach people under any kind of IP agreement with the bootcamp, you have a conflict not to reveal any IP of the company and unintentionally transfer that IP to the bootcamp. You also might unintentionally transfer that IP to students who go and work at competitors in the future.
Sounds crazy but you can get insta fired at some companies so be careful and make sure your relationship with the bootcamp is clear.
Codesmith was telling everyone their o…
So if you graduated from Stanford, the market seems great. If you are considering senior top tier tech companies, the market seems pretty good.
It's not going to improve for bootcamp grads unfortunately until we see what happens with AI.
The market right now is looking for top 50% engineers (illustrative number, not a fact), like good CS grads and experienced engineers who have done pretty good on the job.
AI is going to create a lot of jobs but unclear yet what they will be.
I'm very nervous about bootcamps like BloomTech, Codesmith, and others focusing so much on generative AI skills. These are skills that we see in headlines, but talk to hiring managers at top tech companies and no one knows what AI-skills they will be looking for. These companies have super consistent and careful hiring processes and they will over a couple years operationalize for AI and the skills they look fo…
Yeah I was excited to see the changes proposed and I made a post about it. Then I got flack from alumni for temporarily pausing my recommendation to go to Codesmith to see how those things play out and make sure that they get implemented.
So now I'm giving them a chance to show that they've implemented all these things in a very long amount of time to do it so that I would even consider restoring my recommendation. but if they haven't actually done anything other than add 5 lectures on AI, then I'm not going to. I might even actively discourage people from going there now sadly if that's the case and the concern about layoffs and cutbacks not giving them enough horsepower to make the positive changes people need to succeed in this market came to be.
Like I went from recommendation to a neutral no recommendation and now I might tell people to not go there actively and I've given a comp…
Current Codesmith residents/recent alumni: how has Codesmith delivered on promised improvements announced earlier this year?
Hi all, I've been talking to a couple of residents recently and wanted to get a broader view on how Codesmith is doing towards it's suite of announced improvements from February (five months ago).
At the time I said I would revisit how they did in a few months and time flies, it's already been five months!!
Please comment (or DM me uncomfortable to comment and I'm happy to need your messages confidential) if you have insight into if any of the following have happened:
(From [source](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech))
1. Are in-person co-working spaces available in NYC and SF?
2. TypeScript integration into the curriculum?
3. Next.js integration into the curriculum?
4. AI copilots…
Hi, the reputation filters use AI so it's not so much people who have no history, but people who perhaps us the same computer to have a number of accounts that are all used to vote etc... It looks like your comment went through.
Congrats! So Future Code NYC isn't normal Codesmith. The day to day is similar but the program is meant for people with very minimal programming experience at all, and not the same bar as normal Codesmith. If they told you that then I would be very concerned.
So I would expect to aim for much lower and adjacent-SWE jobs than people in the immersive. I would be very concerned if they tell you you can expect the same outcomes as normal Codesmith because those outcomes are not doing well right now and their strategy isn't working as well in this market and those people generally have more programming experience than you should have.
I would also expect them to ha…
NEWS: Code Fellows has ceased operations and shut down. Ending an 11 year legacy.
Source: https://www.codefellows.org/
The message they shared is really bittersweet and you can see the passion and impact they had over the years but they just couldn't make it work as the market has permanently changed.
They tried to adapt and innovate but at some point it's time to look elsewhere to have impact the world because the market is the market.
"Achieving greatness at the scale we’ve reached at Code Fellows requires exceptional people working together tirelessly toward a shared mission, under shared values. It has been a privilege and an honor to be part of this journey and to witness the incredible outcomes of our mission-driven work. From the beginning, our mission at Code Fellows was to provide transformative, career-focused education that opened doors for people from all backgrounds. Our…
This is true but there are some caveats.
1. not a single boot camp has demonstrated the ability to scale. the best boot camps that try to scale have grown by multiplying out their staff and have hit big problems. generally what worked when they were smaller. oftentimes where a founder was personally really involved and carrying a lot of the program, and then that doesn't scale in the program starts doing things like lowering the entrance bar as more people drop out etc.
so if boot camps are consolidated, I don't know if that would necessarily be a good thing. it might be an industry that just needs a lot of small players that each take like 10 to 20 students at a time.
2. I think that there's a possibility that not even the best will survive. Codesmith - one of the previous best bootcamps - when they announce downsizing 4 months ago, they said that they're going to be making changes…
I don't know why the website went down, but I know some people who were part of it and it's kind of a fundamentally flawed idea.
They would hire alumni to work on projects. the only project I've heard spoken about is some kind of negotiation bot possibly in relationship with a team at Harvard and possibly with the data science and machine learning initiative.
The fundamental flaw though is that these alumni have busy jobs and their jobs are their priority. many of them just started their jobs and they want to do well. so spending some of their free time on contract projects. they're just not going to do their best work on those projects as good work as they're doing on their job. and if you're going to hire a team, you want to hire a really good team to work on a project. not like a bunch of people who are doing this on the side.
Second really strong tech companies. don't let you moo…
All of the above haha:
1. It's not just the market but if the market was still amazing for entry level, bootcamps would benefit too and sentiment wouldn't be so negative.
2. They won't become valuable again in their current form anytime soon. If the market improves they may return to some of their previous reputations. But there is far too large of a over supply of bootcamp grads and new grads to be corrected over night even if the market warns. Bootcamps have scaled back A LOT, so they will produce fewer bootcamp grads. As the over supply either get jobs or go leave the industry, then we might see it be a viable pathway for a small number of people in the future.
3. I have yet to see a curriculum that is worth the cost. I haven't seen a bootcamp curriculum that isn't better than a Udemy course. What you DO GET, is HUMANS to help you - keeping you accountable and helping explain and a…
Yeah sorry, I could make it more explicit or clear. Like I had a thread of two anonymous accounts: one got AI-collapsed by Reddit, the other suspended by Reddit, both were making false claims but Reddit PROACTIVELY took action, so clearly some really weird stuff is going on in the sub. There's nothing remotely like this for other programs.
Again, I'm not collapsing any comments, and I've turned on "crowd control" on THREE POSTS EVER for LEGITIMATE REASONS.
Reddit has added more AI capabilities recently that more aggressively diminish the posts of people suspected of being bad actors.
Given how many new/low history/anonymous accounts come at me on here, I'm not surprised whatsoever that they get flagged as people "likely trying to break the rules". Reddit knows who everyone is based on their fingerprints and IDs. There are five so accounts that have been suspended from Reddit with similar posting patterns so when those people/person come back with new accounts... Reddit knows.
I didn't ask for formal comment no. I can't remember but I think it was either a codesmith account on Reddit, a comment on LinkedIn thread, or that I commented on or it was in a live stream over the past few months as they have been showing slides with Alex Zai giant face teasing the upcoming AI/ML.
It wasn't for official comment no and I wouldn't say that I asked formally enough or clearly enough to expect them to reply though.
I am banned from Codesmith's community, Slack, events, entirely so I have limited avenues as I intend on fully respecting their ban. Although they started sending me emails inviting me to events so I'm not sure anymore haha. The whole operation just has so many issue in executing the details you know and I'm always confused if they are intentionally sharing so much data (which common sense says they shouldn't) but then they acknowledge the problems.