u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I replied with direct numbers to backup my claims from CIRR reports and I don't appreciate you trying to gaslight me in public and ignoring that data.
While a lot of what I state is a personal opinion, I clearly labelled my CIRR analysis as fact and if I made a mistake in my analysis, it was unintentional and I'm open to correcting, but I feel like those facts are clear that H2 2022 outcomes tanked from H1 2022.
And I have strong evidence tying someone named "Will S." to paying for someone on Upwork to comment on Reddit who said negative things about me/my company on Reddit under the same account name. I would call those facts too, other than proving "Will S." is Will Sentance the Codesmith CEO and not another Will S, and I do not have evidence of who "Will S." is on Upwork.
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…
Codesmith's 2023 CIRR report showed tanking H2 2022 results (but they were averaged into a full year) so I expect their 2024 report to be equally tanking, unless CIRR changes the rules again.
Their 180 placement rate absolutely tanked and people post 360 days are excluded from the reports.
Codesmith randomly shared outcomes from a carefully chosen window of April 2024 to August 2024 in violation of CIRR and haven't updated that, and even those were really bad, so I can't imagine the outcomes are good right now.
Now they are adding in alumni's future jobs in their Slack reporting making some of those jobs look like first jobs to boost morale as the number of people getting first jobs within 6 months is very poor.
\+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…
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…
Hard question: can you comment if CIRR's original spec was trying to be transparent, but also "rounding up" (in those definitions, as you described) to present bootcamps in the best light possible, while maintaining that transparency. For example, the number that should be used in marketing according to the spec loses a lot of the nuances above, where definitions alone could have a +/-10% variance in the examples you provided.
You've made a case for why salary shouldn't matter in your writing. I generally agree with that assessment and the right job is much more important than the highest paying one. Being the worse player on an NBA team is generally better than being the best player in the European pro leagues (and a small number of people might disagree based on their own choices but I would argue that even if you get paid more in the other European leagues).
Why do you think salary…
yeah 3-6 months post graduation is quite fast right now. if someone was starting today how much time would you recommend they budget and account for?
totally understand the challenges when someone takes a part time job to pay the bills - it's very good idea for the person, but challenging for DATA lol.
I'm crazy busy right now, might have more q's, but one more question is how engaged are alumni during the job hunt and how confident are you you are hearing from all of them when they get jobs etc... This is a problem with CIRR right now. We saw in the recent Codesmith report that there was a spike in H2 2022 grads who were non-responsive and placed via their LinkedIn's listing a job.
Which is fine, a placement is a placement, but I'm just curious about that more personally. If there are things you do post graduation to keep people engaged, etc...
My understanding is they exclude people hired by Codesmith. I'm very confident people hired short term as TAs (fellows) are excluded as they are not considered placements for CIRR. I'm reasonably confident that it excludes instructors. But if it did, the number of instructors hired in that time is 2 and wouldn't impact this data.
Numerous new warning flags at Codesmith. Concerned they are grasping at straws (Personal Opinion)
Hi all, over the years I've developed a decent sense of the bootcamp industry from both the inside and the outside. For better or worse I have developed quite the insight into Codesmith. As one of the more controversial bootcamps (known in the boom-times for placing people with $137K median salaries who will fight to the bitten end for Codesmith, with others who aren't buying the 'Codesmith way' on the opposite side. "Polarizing" is a good word and the most innovating things in the world are polarizing.
Over the past month I've been pretty quiet as a number of current and former students and staff have contacted me to chat about things and shared their views.
I've organized this post into clear sections.
Just a disclaimer, I'm a moderator of this sub and I supported my founder in startin…
What credible employment reports are you going off of?
The only recent one I know of is Launch School, which while still has a 75% placement rate it has dropped from 100%. So clearly things are not the same anymore there.
Codesmith has a CIRR for people that graduated 1.5 to 2.5 years ago which is useless. The six month placement rates I'm seeing for 2023 abysmal. Codesmith won't let us know the official numbers until March 2025 and we won't see 2024 numbers until March 2026. So people who graduated 6 months ago in Jan 2024, even though Codesmith knows their 6 months placement rate and could give a great heads up to people about the changing market, they won't say even one hint of it until March 2026, almost two years from now.
That's absolutely garbage and they need to do better if people like you are relying on these reports to judge the market.
Codesmith resident is a student
Codesmith fellow is a student hired back - they expend their graduation dates for CIRR which violates the rules but no one seems to care.
Codesmith mentor used to be a Fellow hired full time - they eliminated this position for cost savings, increasing the work load for instructions
Codesmith instructors are mentors promoted to be the primary teacher for a cohort
Codesmith lead instructors are instructors that get promoted to run a cohort.
I can try to make a diagram, it's like a pyramid shape.
I agree with all of this about the industry and appreciate your transparency here! Thanks for sharing.
Number 2 is the biggest problem with the whole bootcamp industry. Codesmith's a good example of becoming desperate because their entire reputation is about six figure outcomes. They loudly published 53 offers accepted in April-May 2024 and even added that stat to their official curriculum docs... That number is already far under pace from their recent CIRR outcomes but June-July 2024 is looking to be half that! If they don't give us an updated June July numbers, and leave up that cherry picked sample set - which is already worse than previous numbers, it's graping at straws and extremely misleading that will push away students who know better.
TLDR: if you bet the house on outcomes and the market is against you, you give up control over your destiny.
Number 3 is a hard one for progra…
I can give my 2 cents. I know a lot about both programs. Very different options.
I'm currently not recommending Codesmith (in my personal opinion/capacity - I need to mention this because it's in my company's interest for more people to go there) for three reasons, but you might feel differently:
1. They had large layoffs and promised coworking spaces, more curriculum and more three months ago and haven't done any of that, other than add 5 ML lectures (of which only 2 I think have been done)
2. They have a subreddit that is full of propaganda. I asked Reddit Corporate to look at our subreddit here and theres, and roughly 10 prominent accounts + 1 moderator were suspended from Reddit. I don't know if this was just one person or a coordinated effort but those people were working with Codesmith for "official AMAs" so whatever was going on it, Codesmith has visibility of this behavior jus…
⚠️ WARNING: Codesmith subreddit is mostly propaganda (resharing Codesmith content without full context and boosting with positive comments from accounts that mostly post about Codesmith only). Challenges and negative comments are called "lies" and you get banned. BE SMART AND THINK CRITICALLY.
NOTE: I'm not saying the content itself isn't true or that it's bad intentioned, but I am saying that it's marketing material that missing context and it's likely the people sharing it don't even realize this. I've accumulated a lot of information over the years and while I see a **A LOT OF GOOD THINGS CODESMITH IS DOING,** the outcomes have changed dramatically in 2023-2024 and these materials are not reflecting that.
**DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions using publicly available information and my own insights.**
**MODERATOR NOTE: any comments talking about my own company will be delete…
Line by Line Rebuttal to Codesmith CEO dodging question about placement rates in a challenging market
**DISCLAIMER: these views are my personal opinions as I see them and they don't represent anyone but me.**
u/WillSen If you call yourself the best of the best, you need to hold yourself to that bar and respect others who are holding you to that bar too by responding with facts and arguments to every challenge rather than ban people who point out things you don't want to answer. I'm unable to reply in the Codesmith subreddit because I'm permanently banned.
Anyways, someone asked the Codesmith CEO in an AMA today [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1dofj3a/comment/la9fv9w/)
>There has been a large share of skepticism towards the results that Codesmith claims to produce with job acquisition rates, salaries, etc. since the company does not share its raw data, e.g., claimin…
FACT: I stated this for the public record: I asked the team and we do not and have not as far as they are aware, bid on any Google search keywords containing the word "bootcamp", other than "formation bootcamp" (as we bid on many phrases containing formation as it's a Beyonce song and common term)
I don't know all of the job offer details people are getting no, but if it was shared to the public intentionally I would see no problem using it in theory. But no, I don't know all of the job offer details.
I key part of this analysis is that CIRR 2022 data is out, so if I run a less perfect analysis on 2022 data and compare to CIRR, I can do the same analysis on 2023 data and adjust the output based on that + other factors (like that 2023 cohorts were on average smaller according to the public record, APPROX: 30ish H1 2023 and high 20s in H2 2023.)
I'm allowed to pay attention to details,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hi, where in the post did you see the quote: "People becoming SWEs today are aware of tough market, but persevere because they're truly passionate about coding"?
I read "People that are becoming engineers now are definitely passionate about coding. More so than when the iron was hot and everybody was just talking about how amazing it is to have a tech job"
I agree with Kim's comment that a far smaller number of people are considering bootcamps now BUT they are far more passionate and committed and know what they are getting themselves into.
I thank that to places like Reddit helping people be informed about bootcamps so they can join for the right reasons and I'm glad she's seeing that trend too.
I disagree with OP's characterization that people are "persevering" despite the market.
I have a couple of friends who graduated from Codesmith in early 2024 and while it's far too early t…
This is a false narrative. If you think my narratives about Codesmith or Launch School or CIRR are false, you are entitled to methodically poke holes in the arguments with other facts and data, or opinions (stated as such).
1. I have to say we are not a bootcamp whenever anyone calls us one because we are tiny and have little presence so the public is mislead by those false remarks. The question should be why are people accusing us of being one in the first place and not dropping it when I explain so often why we aren't.
2. We spend very little on Reddit ads, we mostly spend ad dollars on Google search keyword ads to appear above Beyoncé's Formation album in results. You probably see the ads because you click on them and engage with Formation, that's how online ads are meant to work!! To target messages to people who engage with Formation for the lowest cost possible.
3. I can see how…
Another CIRR school pauses enrollment due to the market. Bootcamps have to face reality or they will not survive 2024. If you are looking at bootcamp that doesn't warn you about the market for bootcamp grads, run for the hills!
SOURCE: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/)
Selected Excerpts:
>While our graduates are of high caliber, there is a difficult cognitive leap for hiring managers to overcome when comparing our entry-level graduates with established engineers affected by recent layoffs. With such an ample supply of the latter, it leaves the former at a strategic disadvantage. Even with the best available preparation, there is no substitute for work experience.
>
With so much seniority in the job market, it's difficult even for the str…
I would break question apart into part time VS self paced.
I think Codesmith is probably the best part time program. But it's super intense still 3 hours a day + 6 hours saturday for NINE MONTHS STRAIGHT. For example, someone who said they have a job and want to part time but they can't imagine committing to nine months of no Saturdays for their family. So as with Codesmith's general offerings, it's ideal for ambitious single people with a lot of savings. I know some people who did part time even though they didn't have a job, to pace it more.
Now self paced is a whole other bucket. Most self paced programs have very low completion rates and they naturally have less of a community vibe as people start and stop and progress at their own paces. Because they rely more on self-motivation, it's hard to interpret outcomes the same way as a part time fixed program because of a lack of meanin…
1. "I know people from Codesmith"... yes but if you look at all the Codesmith students you see that it is a very small number of people compared to the "3500+" alumni. Outside of Capital One, Amazon is a highest with a couple dozen, Apple, Google, Intuit, Square are single digit-ish special cases.... out of 3500 people. I'm not making any comments about Codesmith here, like if it can get 5 out of 100 people amazing outcomes then that's notable, but anyone who portrays that as the norm is misleading people as to how Codesmith works - that's my point. If I think you have a very strong chance of being one of those people, I will 100%, no strings attached, recommend you go to Codesmith, and I actively try to do that.
2. 100% agree Codesmith does NOT encourage any lying. It's almost awkward how they tell you so upfront "don't lie". But I thoroughly agree with this. That said, I cought the Di…
+1 to the industry needs to stop focusing on outcomes. I push the arguments for this a lot and often and get tremendous pushback from the Codesmith alumni and staff (including a leader that pushed back publicly).
Bootcamps shouldn't be 12 weeks and they shouldn't be about getting jobs only. Those types of bootcamps are done and over with.
They should be about the quality of the experience and education and about marketing to the right people that they think their program will work for.
It's why I push back on CIRR trying to force bootcamps into joining it by asking students to demand CIRR outcomes.
It's not 2021 and people focused on outcomes only are joining bootcamps for the wrong reasons - whether it ends up working or not.
In terms of ISAs though I just think you have to think of it as a loan nothing more. You have 3 options:
1. pay $X upfront
2. pay $Y a month for 4 years on…
I don't know what to say other than facts are facts and making up your own story based on your imagination doesn't hold up.
1. We don't compete with Codesmith. I've asked Codesmith to stop telling people that because it makes people like you think we do when it doesn't hold up in any capacity. The people that teach Codesmith do Formation, not the students, and maybe that is confusing but it shouldn't be.
2. "Often over 150 or 160k" is wrong and because you referenced CIRR earlier and should know that data. Their 2022 FTRI had about 780 starts, 732 grads. 708 job hunting. 574 had placements in 360 days. 499 had salaries and 121 had salaries over 140K. That is 15% of starts for 140K+ which is more people than make 150K, which is fantastic but it's not the norm.
Codesmith is an amazing choice for the right people and I tell those people to go to Codesmith, but portraying it as something…
The only people submitting to CIRR left are: 1. Codesmith. 2. a school with 15 grads in 2022, 3. a school in Jakarta that didn't follow the 2024 guidelines.
Codesmith's outcomes for H2 2022 had a very large and unexplained jump in people who didn't respond tot the survey but accoridng to Codesmith's Director of Outcomes, were verified using "LinkedIn" as placements...
It's not terrible, but "only trusted source" is factually incorrect.
1. I've explained numerous times why Formation doesn't publish CIRR or similar outcomes and that we aren't a coding bootcamp.
Since you seem to know Formation better than I do, explain to me what "graduation" means at Formation? This is the core principal of all bootcamp outcome standards that I can't figure out what that means for us.
If you can't explain "graduation" accurately then just back off and stop spreading nonsense about us. If you can thoughtfully read the specs and propose what it means for us, then we can talk keep talking about it productively about why I agree or not.
2. We advertise all over Reddit and we re-target people who visit our website. Drawing false conclusions is not fact. Raw data is fact. So asking "Why do I see ads for Formation in this sub?" and getting a completely open and transparent answer is exactly what I'm talking about being open and transparent…
Copied:
3 schools left in CIRR: one had 15 students for their entire year of reporting. One didn't even follow the new standard and they decided to let them publish anyways because otherwise you would have just Codesmith and a 15 person school left.
Codesmith and CIRR are tightly coupled. Codesmith is the only school who cares about CIRR and CIRR would be collapsed if Codesmith left
3 schools left in CIRR: one had 15 students for their entire year of reporting. One didn't even follow the new standard and they decided to let them publish anyways because otherwise you would have just Codesmith and a 15 person school left.
Codesmith and CIRR are tightly coupled. Codesmith is the only school who cares about CIRR and CIRR would be collapsed if Codesmith left.
Facts are facts and trolling or mass downvoting doesn't change that.
So the good thing about CIRR is you have to report how many people fall in these buckets, so it's all transparent.
The inadequacies though are that just because it's there, that's not good enough. If it's there but people have to analyze it to understand the real picture, it can be improved. If it's there but then companies just ignore it and tout their top level numbers, and saying that these are rigorous CIRR numbers, the best, trust us! It's leveraging the fact that no one understands or cares about these between the lines details and those are there primarily to make the standard APPEAR more trustworthy.
I'm not putting this one way or the other in this reply, just laying out both sides.
In all fairness their standard says loud and clear that the number of people who reported salaries needs to be listed on the website and I don't see it anywhere on Codesmith's website.
Both CIRR and Codesmith's Director of Outcomes stated that they want or are considering expanding CIRR to work for interview prep platforms.
I co-founded one of the 3 main interview prep platforms (5 if you count interviewing.io and hello interview)
So if someone adamantly believes that my company should be reporting to CIRR then they could see this as not impartial.
I explained emphatically why we have never even considered reporting to CIRR and why it doesn't make sense for us (can't speak for all interview prep companies but I imagine Pathrise would feel similarly given the over a dozen types of jobs it supports and the drastic difference in junior.vs senior outcomes)... that this kind of thing just doesn't work.
So I feel impartial in my head.
Significant\_Wing has been pretty neutral and consistent for a long time, I think they are just asking why I posted such an intense review of this.
Clearly vert few people case because no one showed up to Codesmith's CIRR recap sessions. Very few people commented on CIRRs AMA.
So I think the person is more saying, why bother caring about this because CIRR is largely irrelevant now.
I do it because sometimes it's in the little places that the people get manipulated the most.
Line-by-Line Critique of CIRR Standard Document. Opinion: good intentioned organization but spec is not rigorous and robust and I point out all of the problems that make it one of the weaker specifications I've read in my opinion.
There have been numerous discussions around CIRR lately and there are too many words being thrown around, along with ad hominem attacks, and no one other than me seems to be reading the standard - even the CIRR board misquoted it.
I refuse to debate anyone further on here until they acknowledge this post and read it because any counter arguments not based on a thorough analysis of the spec are garbage conversations that don't belong on here. Thoughtful debates over lines of the spec are appreciated.
This is long and thorough and if it's too boring for you to read the whole thing then don't share your opinions about it.
If someone calls CIRR "**rigorous"**,…
1. This is a completely different thread about CIRR and you didn't give any context, didn't give any feedback privately or on that other thread, and are bringing it up here on a thread about Codesmith - all without any context. **I absolutely copied that comment from that person from CSX Slack in that thread,** and I don't apologize for it at all. Anonymizing a comment from a 20,000 public Slack community that anyone is invited to join is not morally or ethically wrong.
2. She said she was new to the community and then that "we" (without clarifying) started the Codesmith sub for "especially those who are new to Codesmith like me!"... to me that implied that all the people who started it were new to the community. I agree this could be ambiguous, and I think I should have stated something like 'I am interpreting this to mean that it was started from people only new to the community for p…
I appreciate the clarification about your personal feelings.
1. I don't think this is fair that you say above:
>The AMA is something I’ve done on my own volition as Codesmith’s Director of Outcomes, to provide an open space to talk about our CIRR reports, reporting standards, and graduate outcomes
Yet this was advertised by your CEO and in you CSX Slack in a giant image as an ["Official Reddit AMA" ](https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T7X3836NN-F06SK9BNY9W/ama.png)
I genuinely feel bad about the personal feelings, but unfortunately you are also the Director of Outcomes who was doing an Official Reddit AMA.
2. Similar to another commenter, I was also offended by this, in my personal opinion:
> Please all - go have a great weekend! Get outside, read a good book, spend time with family and friends.
I stayed up until 1am doing a super important infrastructure upgrade at Formation. The…
I can state officially that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the time and choosing between them.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that wouldn'…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…
I mean this is another flaw of CIRR. The data for it comes from the survey that bootcamps do at the end and they really don't need that much evidence for anything included in the results. The Most complex part of the specification is the documentation requirements for outcomes and there go through a lot of different cases for if someone gets a job or doesn't get a job etc. but the key thing is that they say that things like a text message counts as documentation as long as it includes the offer date or start date of the job, the type of job - e g. full time job, and that the person accepted it.
The data is audited but No auditor needs to check that the original data was provided is correct. the auditors are checking that you followed the process. so if you have a text message, the auditors check that the text message is documented following the process, but nowhere does it say how a sal…
No definitely not. They have good intentions and they try. I've read every word of the standard document five times and it's just not robust.
I could spend a day rewriting it to fix numerous ambiguities and gaps.
They just updated it too and didn't fix any of this stuff.
Like if you read the G.R.A.D standard document from Galvanize it reads like a properly written legal specification.
The CIRR spec reads like a marketing brief. No numbers sections, no clear definition of terms, ambiguities in the worksheets that don't match the spec.
Many people with good intentions don't do a good job executing and this is one of these cases.
CIRR changed the standard to go from 180 day reporting to 360 day reporting.
So there are H1 2022 numbers published from the old standard and full year 2022 numbers from the new standard.
I did the simple math to estimate H2 2022 numbers based on those two reports.
The fact that they tanked in H2 and we had to wait 6 months longer than usual to get the results is my biggest complaint about the process.
That and Codesmith said a couple times now they had an H2 2022 report six months ago they didn't share because of these last minute changes.
It's marketing.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why)
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term.
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our number…
There's a campaign against me right now since I criticized CIRR yeah. It happens every time I criticize CIRR.
That's why I'm here day in day out for 2+ years now and have a strong long term reputation.
There are some alumni that REALLY love Codesmith and some that REALLY DON'T love Codesmith, and it is what it is.... on both sides, anonymous people who have very little history making rude, angry, or personal comments.
I have nothing against Codesmith overall and up until their recent changes recommended a lot of people go there (and might again once things stabilize).
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary"
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead.
RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…
1. Why was there such an increase in people not reporting salaries between H1 and H2 2022 data? It jumped about 14%, meaning that 14% more of the outcomes in H2 2022 did not have a reported salary (e.g. were verified by LinkedIn) compared to H1 2022.
2. How does the "Where Are They Now" data normalize for people who don't respond or cannot be reached? For example, CIRR requires you to verify the outcome of EACH graduate, whereas this data appears to be based on whoever replies to the survey. CIRR requires EACH graduate to be verified so that people who don't do as well, maybe leave the industry, etc... are counted, but in the "Where Are They Now" if people didn't do well and disengaged from the community, how are they accounted for?
3. Can you give preliminary six month placement rates for H1 2023 full time grads? Based on the CIRR reporting process, there should be a preliminary estim…
Yeah I can't share much because people send me stuff in confidence, and since I can't share the evidence, you can't value that statement either, so I understand.
I don't know what's happened since the CIRR stuff came out but lots of accounts came out of nowhere that were a lot meaner.
Until the recent changes Codesmith underwent, I recommended it to a lot of people 1-1 for whom it was a good fit, and I'm pretty sure that some of their leaders know that. I still talk to those students while they are in Codesmith and then afterwards.
It's not so cut and dry, and I wish the people jumping straight to attacks would give me more wiggle room to present both sides. I'm not perfect, but I'm very fair. I was invited to be a moderator because I'm seen as a disciplined, high integrity person who is very responsive.
Codesmith people think this sub has become "toxic" becuase it's not full of positive posts about Codesmith.
The CIRR results finally showed the cause of this and it's that there is an unprecedented drop in placement rates - and we haven't seen 2023 data yet - and a unprecedented spike in ghosting.
The market is bad.
Do you think all those people not getting placed and dropping out of the community are positive supporters? Or do you think they anonymously go to Reddit and complain or generally have a sour attitude.
I push people to present evidence and facts and thoughtful opinions. You can agree and disagree but it doesn't have to be done through anonymous accounts, insults and flippant personal attacks.
Anything I say on here I would say directly to Will and Eric K to their faces.
Y'all using anonymous accounts to attack me and people using anonymous accounts to attack Codesmith a…
Yeah sorry, I'm replying for everyone who reads this, I got a lot of rando accounts all over my comments on this CIRR stuff and don't know who is who.
It's why my responses are so long and repetitive, but I feel it's what I need to do.
If you want to chat 1-1 DM me and I'm way different way of writing lol
Well CIRR's specification allows any text message sent from a graduate, without any kind of verification, as long as it has the start date, that it was accepted, and the job type (i.e. full time, part time, permanent, contract) to be used as the "gold standard".
There is ZERO specification for how to verify salaries, ZERO. The only rule is the salary has to be base salary and correspond to the job used for the start date, but absolutely ZERO rules for how it has to be collected or verified and auditing doesn't have to verify salaries either.
Are you saying that people should be pressuring schools to join CIRR or pressuring them to be more transparent? Or are you implying that CIRR is the only source of transparency?
Rithm School and Launch School are best of the best bootcamps and both have a similar vision of providing transparent data and choose to not be in CIRR because of they have different views on transparency than CIRR does.
If CIRR is going to put efforts in lobbying to try to brand themselves as the only transparent source of bootcamp data, it's not surprise no one wants to be a CIRR member and don't reply to your emails.... the spec is full of issues and problems.
I don't even want to help fix those because you aren't open and transparent about how the spec is managed. You said you had a meeting to adopt the spec AND approved the results at the same time? and the new spec was published alongside results instea…
I completely agree and support correcting the time windows for CIRR and also observe a lot of people mistaking them, but it's also true that this period is for the very last graduate on Dec 31st, 2022.
The first graduate who started Codesmith in Sept 2021, graduated in Jan 2022 and wrapped up the job search by Dec 2022 took 1.25 years to show up in public data here.
Rithm School criticized this this morning as well, that the annual reporting cycle causes a 6+ month delay in getting that data from earlier people, even the 360 day data, not just the 6 month one! And they don't like that and do their own standard as a result.
"In this day and age, LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else"
Which is fine with me, if people just know this and understand that in interpreting CIRR results, but this obviously introduces weaknesses if people are exaggerating or optimizing their narrative on LinkedIn.
OFFER LETTERS are gospel, not LinkedIn and an auditor speaking with a board member of CIRR, and Codesmith advisor, all agreeing on LinkedIn being gospel... gives me a darn good right to call that out so people are aware, no?
You can argue if you agree or disagree, but calling that out shouldn't warrant attacks and defensiveness. Like I said, I think LinkedIn should be used but want to discuss the documentation mechanisms and details on how so that it's transparent.
No drama when people are boringly transparent and don't have a single thing to read between the lines: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith's CEO just says straight up like Launch School's founder did, people had low morale and started ghosting from Codesmith and it was devastating blow to Codesmith's culture and one of the reasons they shrunk down 70% (est. 1000 alumni in 2023 vs on pace for 300 in 2024) so they can re-focus on a tighter and more supportive group of residents, then that's FANTASTIC.
All of the alumni from BEFORE this "ghost era" who had that great culture should cheer on that kind of change instead of misleading prospective students that everything is still fine because Cod…