Hi, welcome! There are no bootcamp that prepare you for true top-tier mid-level positions, they all prepare you for entry level positions. If you want to work really hard I would consider Codesmith yeah. I worked at FB for 8 years, interviewed hundreds of people, observed hiring committees, help train interviewers, etc... and Codesmith's definition of "mid level" isn't consistent with the top tier bar. Case and point: a "mid level" FAANG engineer has a base salary of at least $150K and most are \~$170K and 80% of Codesmith's outcomes - according to their CIRR data - are under $140K base salaries.
Codesmith grads with no experience who get top tier jobs, get entry level top tier jobs, not mid-level. People can get fairly high paying "mid-level" jobs at smaller companies or non-tech focused companies and the titles get mixed up with the salaries in their marketing.
So TLDR; don't rule t…
\+1 to making sure you have some basic coding skills before going to a bootcamp, even if they will accept you regardless.
I comment all the time about CIRR, because Codesmith people adamantly defend CIRR as the "mic drop" answer and I strongly believe anyone should look at many factors, INCLUDING CIRR.
Getting the highest salary out of a bootcamp is not necessarily better for your career. Getting a lower paying $100K apprenticeship at a top tier company is much better than a $125K job at an agency for example.
Hi, I've found this subreddit has a tremendous amount of support for Codesmith, many people claiming right off the bat that it's the top bootcamps, in a league of it's own, etc... but the concrete reasons tend to come down to CIRR reports.
Launch School's capstone has extremely strong outcomes as well and I feel like you are fairly transparent about them in your Twitter updates.
Myself, I think there is a right program for the right person so I don't pick a favorite and quite frankly Formation does well if all bootcamps do well, but while you're here do you have anything to say about what types of people looking for a top bootcamps might be good for Launch School over other programs?
So I think this is a bit unfair and please don't post everything about individual people. Sure LinkedIn is public, but the students themselves are following guidance and shouldn't be called out in my opinion and nothing good will come of that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm particularly upset that a leader told Codesmith alumni that Formation is a scam 1-1 and that people claiming an affiliation with Codesmith have personally insulted me and Formation on Reddit repeatedly claiming that I'm conspiring to steal Codesmith students. I hope these people aren't actually affiliated with Codesmith and are just trolls (you never know on Reddit) because that kind of behavior isn't the amazing community Codesmith, and all of the hard working students and employees, stand for from what I've seen.
Why I think you are being unfair:
1. All of the alumni I have worked with are very hard working, pleasant, p…
Yeah tell me about it. At Formation we were trying to do this and decided to excluded private stock and options that had no primary or secondary market value in our numbers - which obviously lowers them, but in Codesmith's "Where are they now" report (which is not CIRR based) says they include all that in their numbers ("signing/annual bonus, stock options, equity, and relocation expenses") so presumably they have a way.
But I totally agree it's impossible for early stage private equity and options. The outcome is a range of probabilities and maybe they have some consistent way of calculating a mean.
Disclaimer, the following might appear critical of Codesmith, but I want to focus on the HOW IT HAPPENS instead of the WHAT HAPPENS. I also need to reiterate that it's a great program with great outcomes and a heck of a lot of fantastic alumni who are are hard working, professional and gr…
I think that's a good question to ask a bootcamp that isn't. "Why aren't you in CIRR" and if they don't explain something that makes sense or checks out, that would be a flag to me.
One of the big problems with CIRR results are that they don't break down people by prior experience. I think this is really important for people to identify what "someone like them" might do in the program. Some bootcamps target specific backgrounds in specific geographic locations and might have low outcomes compare number to number, but strong outcomes for the bar they are starting with.
A lot of bootcamps went remote during COVID and took in people from all over the country. Salaries in tech are almost always location-based so location is now an important factor. For example, Rithm used to be in person and is now online. They are shifting from people in downtown SF to people all over the country. It's…
Hi, yeah to be very clear, I'm not doubting the CIRR results or the integrity of the CIRR process, nor am I criticizing Codesmith, I'm just think it's something notable to be aware of: that CIRR has pros and cons like anything else.
CIRR is strictly based on base salary only and Codesmith alumni with good jobs have stock and bonuses that are completely excluded so their real numbers are better than CIRR reports.
If I was Codesmith, I would try to get a more wholistic view of TC into CIRR. Which yes might benefit them, but also might make CIRR more accurate. Lots of ways of looking at things!
To answer the question though, I'm interested in it because a lot of people rely on CIRR as the source of truth as there's nothing else to go off of, and I want to help people make the right choice for the right reasons and ultimately help people find their right starting point in their careers.…
CIRR board member shakeup, four people out, Codesmith in, anyone know anything?
Hi all, I keep tabs on CIRR as it's a very interesting organization trying to standardize bootcamp outcomes. It's a 501c6 business league that was founded by Ascent Funding (who provided student loans for bootcamps) and it is made up of bootcamp representatives who have been trying to standardize outcomes in the industry.
It has it's pros and cons, which I've talked about extensively and aren't part of this post, but someone pointed out to me that in the past month or so the following board members **left CIRR**:
* Erin Frazier, Senior Director of Operations & Marketing, The Software Guild
* Joseph Kozusko, Chief Growth Officer, Ascent Funding
* Lesia Harhaj, Director of Career Success, Fullstack Academy
* Sharon Wienbar, Independent Director, former coding bootcamp CEO
And the following board members **w…
Codesmith is not a board member but yeah CIRR is a business league/lobbying group. Nothing wrong with that, but people have gone on giant rants about how CIRR is the only thing that can be trusted and it's cult-like misdirection. It's reliable but you need to understand how it works, like any other source of information you rely on.
There aren't any secret conspiracies, but yeah the "standards" are created by bootcamp leaders and they are designed to help bootcamps highlight their strengths. They hide the results by adding levels of data - so first they fork off people who graduated and then they fork off people who have jobs - and then they show all their salary data.
For example, at Codesmith somewhere around 85% +/- 5% of people graduate on time and get jobs within six months, but their 125K median is only of THOSE PEOPLE and does not factor in the people who didn't get jobs or did…
Uhh so this one is kind of funny but it is part of it. They obviously ask to confirm salaries and offer letters but they do check LinkedIn.
This is direct from the 2020 LA CIRR Report for Codesmith:
>Direct request of confirmation from Graduates regarding Employment outcomes and observation of LinkedIn profiles (the population was divided based on reported Salary quartiles, parameters were linked to stats which make up the report and students with salaries falling in a range determined to significantly affect stats whether directly or indirectly were included in sample).
[https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20Angeles%20Full-Stack%20Software%20Development%20Audited-AUP%20H2%202020.pdf](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20A…
I just took a peek at these sections of the CIRR standards and even if they can't "contact someone" (and they have to try FOUR TIMES to classify as non-responsive) then they can't be removed from the report, they just count as not contactable. So people who are not asked to fill out the surveys should still be included in the report.
The school has to submit a list of students on day 3 to the auditors to avoid students being removed from the lists later on.
So if this is is happening, my hunch is these people are just considered "not graduated". One of the weaknesses of CIRR is that the salaries are based on PEOPLE WHO ARE EMPLOYED. So the median of $125K is of the people who reported and are employed. The 20% of other people at $0 salaries who either didn't graduate OR didn't get a job, are not included in that stat.
So my hunch is there isn't something fraudulent going on and that t…
Hi! Sorry which figures are you referring to?
The numbers I mentioned above are for Formation, which isn't a bootcamp and is a personal trainer/career accelerator (in the same bucket as Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar). But it was meant as an example to show how much experience matters.
So I can speak for Formation that we work with people aiming for truly top tier companies that compensate very highly. [Levels.fyi](https://Levels.fyi) has some examples, and most people we work with are at the E3/E4/E5 level for FB/Google ([https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer)).
I don't think that's a complete answer necessarily but happy to explain more!
The numbers I mentioned for Codesmith are available here: https://cirr.org/data
Specifically:
https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328…
hey! so this gets way too complicated to comment on Reddit, you can pull things out of context but this is like the topic of a multi hour long seminary or something. Let me throw a couple of things in here:
1. Having a good fit in your job and being at a very strong company will have more impact on your career than getting paid more in your first job. If you are choosing between a 2nd tier and 3rd tier job and one pays more, that difference in company is less important than going to a top tier company.
2. So once people are in a job there's a lot more going on that can impact trajectory, more training, more programs, more friends, etc.... so you can get the data, but it doesn't mean much. I haven't seen career tracking data other than Codesmith published a report of "where are they now" that has salary data from like 60 or something people from 3 to 5 years ago. The methodology didn'…
There is no best or second best bootcamps objectively. You should talk to people at the bootcamps to figure out what is the best fit for you and how people of similar backgrounds do.
1. Codesmith. Great for ambitious people who work hard. People come in at a high bar. Alumni network is strong and supportive.
2. Rithm. Great intimate experience where the founders and leadership strongly believe in directly teaching students rather than scaling and growing.
3. Launch School. Self paced month to month and aiming to get into the Capstone path, which is more intense with strong outcomes.
4. Hack Reactor. Strong all around. Very strong alumni network of people a few years down the road.
5. Hackbright and Ada Academy: these focus on specific demographics. Tech is fairly male-dominated and some people might learn better in a more diverse environment.
Now separate topic, CIRR results because it…
Oh to me this is a more of a paperwork/marketing type discussion, individual results vary and Codesmith is one of the top bootcamps undisputedly so you shouldn't freak out. You should always talk to people who did and are doing the program and make sure the day to day is a good fit and that your goals are aligned.
Like Codesmith people get jobs and they get good jobs compared to the other bootcamp options, like I cannot fathom that a significant number of people are excluded from CIRR and that there is a big secret coverup.
I just want to know the mechanics of this because I love diving into CIRR and working the numbers. I'm a person who memorized cereal box nutritional labels and baseball card stats and stuff as a kid :D
Wait so they can choose to "not ask you to fill our their CIRR", as in they like "accidentally forget to email you" wink-wink?
I mean to be completely transparent, I've heard of some sketchy things that OTHER BOOTCAMPS do, but the threats, personal insults, and backchannel badmouthing I've gotten from Codesmith employees, alumni, and students when I even talking about the pros and cons of the CIRR results is pretty crazy if this is the case and it's systematic.
Are you sure this isn't a one-off or anecdotal? Or if you have any proof or evidence can you DM me? Or report it to CIRR possibly would be a better action.
Can you explain the CIRR thing a bit more? I've heard this thing about Codesmith excluding people from CIRR for failing tests from three people now but the people didn't fully explain or know the details. CIRR doesn't have provisions for excluding people for not passing tests). I did notice that their "graduates included in reports" on CIRR is lower than number of cohorts graduating times 35 (I don't know enough about their logistics and could be wrong here but people have said every cohort is full and waitlisted) but it did seem like people are missing, but they could also be people dropping out right or not choosing to answer the CIRR questionnaire?
I know a lot of recent grads and grads a few years later and can list some observations.
1. This sub has a ton of people looking into Codesmith and currently in Codesmith. As it should because it's on of the top bootcamps. I have seen a few alumni pop in every now and again, typically when Codesmith is directly mentioned in the original post. I don't think alumni frequent this sub otherwise.
2. Codesmith has forked outcomes, meaning the people with experience who get 140K or more salaries highly likely are not in this sub because they are already somewhat connected to the industry. The 20% of people making under 110K who have much less experience probably are more likely to be here (or be here as alumni when they get jobs). And the job hunt is not easy for any bootcamp grad so I could see people hunkering down during the job hunt.... why spend time here. I'm sure some people will hap…
There just happens to be a lot of talk about Codesmith in this sub. There is almost zero talk about Hackbright, BloomTech/Lambda School (who I know several former execs and is one of the largest bootcamps in the world), Springboard, all of which I'm fairly familiar with as well. There's a little bit of talk about Rithm, with whom I'm talking to the founder next week to catch up, and I talk about on here very neutrally no different than anyone else. I know a decent amount about CIRR and the early bootcamp founders.
We're early stage, we're relatively new, as the Codesmith alumni chug along through and share their experiences I hope you can have an open mind to figuring out what we are, the painting is not done yet and I am a small part of Formation. We have a crazy awesome team of people working their hardest to help each Fellow achieve and exceed their goals.
Sophie (founder) used to r…
Always reach out to people who did the program and ask for specific details of day to day and specific anecdotal outcomes for people with a similar background to you.
Humans are humans and the adjectives we use to describe things are relative to our experiences. So rather than just "this was amazing" you want to know examples of why it's amazing.
Programing is not magic and an array is an array. So what makes one program better. Why are Codesmith's CIRR outcomes actually better? with examples. Not just "we teach people depth and how to think". Like what is it objectively that makes those outcomes happen. For example, this is more specific ''We test and oberseve what job hunt strategies work for alumni to get jobs and we double down on them and adapt, so we are always teaching people the job hunting strategies that are working and guide students on how to implement fhem'
Sorry for t…
Sorry you feel that way, and I appreciate the candid feedback. I'm genuinely here to help people and give advice.
Having worked with hundreds of people, maybe half or so(?) who have done bootcamps (of all kinds) years ago (and some recently) I do feel like I have a perspective that is useful for people.
Being the engineer at Facebook with the most raw output in the entire company, and being at the principal E7 level (highest leveled 1.5% of engineers at the company) I have a perspective that might be useful for people.
I spend all my time on Formation and certainly have biases, but I also do feel my perspective can be valuable and I'm here with my real name, for open and candid discussions, and I genuinely appreciate pushback and discussion.
I haven't been to any bootcamps myself, that's where I also appreciate hearing other people's perspectives and hopefully together there is a lot…
One thing to watch out for is their CIRR remote outcomes are for their first test cohort and only contain 25 graduates (a typical cohort in person is 36). In their announcement about remote way back when, I felt it was implied they were going to be more selective for the first cohort to ensure the experience met their high bar and outcomes were high. Presumably the quality will continue or they would have stopped, but just something to note as their outcomes in the generally are partially due to having a very high bar to begin with (20% over 140K but also 20% under 110K)
80K is the average INCREASE in compensation for people that had jobs prior. Not the average compensation.
I think that's kind of proving the point, we are not competing with them and there's nothing to be put to rest. A bunch of people have messaged me here about bootcamps and I've recommended they go to Codesmith given their situation, it's not either or. Others have messaged me about Formation. No one has said "I'm choosing between Codesmith and Formation"
Again, people typically talk to us about Outco, Interview Kickstart, Scalar, Exponent, and Pathrise - some of whom don't have pricing on their websites, let alone outcomes, but have had thousands and thousands of engineers go through their programs nonetheless. We're playing different games here and I'm sorry if my involvement in this subreddit is causing this confusion.
This is the best I got for raw outcomes: last 50 offers acce…
Adding this for future reference as well to show how drastically different we are. Codesmith posted a blog announcing their CIRR results that explains the job hunt differences quite well
The TLDR: this reinforces how Codesmith is a bootcamp program to teach people using structured lectures and curriculum and Formation is a program to give you unique "personal trainer"-like development and mentoring.
THIS IS AN ENTIRE QUOTE FROM SOURCE BELOW WITH INLINE COMMENTS IN BOLD MARKED "FORMATION" TO HIGHLIGHT DIFFERENCES
During Codesmith’s **Hiring Program**, you can expect:
* Tailored Resume Guidance and Feedback
* Residents attend lectures covering resume best practices and are pushed to craft their experiences in a way that is both technically sound and authentic to them. Residents receive three revisions with specific feedback from an engineering fellow to ensure the content and quali…
Ah my favorite topic haha. So one resource is CIRR. It's a business group started by bootcamps to develop standards for reporting audited outcomes that they all agree with.
Unfortunately it's down to only 5 bootcamps reporting in the recent results and has been on the decline each half. Quite frankly, the results other than Codesmith are not great so people have little incentive to keep publishing results as they will probably be used against the bootcamp.
HackReactor and BloomTech publish their own audited reports as well, but just following their own metrics rather than CIRRs.
I have a strong stance on metrics and don't love any of the above reports as they focus on medians and averages.
You want to know what someone with a similar background felt about the program. These numbers get juiced up by people with CS degrees and experience attending and getting high outcomes.
I would…
‼️ CIRR is audited but it's far from unbiased. The board of directors and founders are all affiliated with bootcamps. It's not a 501 3c non profit because that's a conflict of interest. It's registered as a "business league/lobbying organization". Now I'm super middle of the road person, and don't judge those groups, but lobbying groups are not unbiased.
I wrote a long post about Formation's data will paste here because believe it or not I spend most of my time helping Fellows and making Formation great. **We are not a school or bootcamp. We compete with things like Pathrise, Interview Kickstart, and Outco.** Talk to any current Fellow or alumni. We are not perfect, but care about every single outcome, we have by far the most experienced team, we work with people with full technical training as long as it takes to get there, and it works really well.
We are a mission driven organizatio…
Thanks additional info about Fellow Program, that clarified a lot and much appreciated.
Yeah by CIRR being on life support, absolutely not a criticism of Codesmith in any way, it actually could free them to publish more information faster! Their results are great, I'm sure they should want this to be published sooner!
I'm going to write up my free flow thoughts as I'm reading through it. I'll focus on Codesmith because it's the most talked about bootcamp on here and I don't have much time. 5 minute recap!!
1. CIRR is basically dead. Only four schools in the USA reported. Only one school in SF/NY reported.
2. Codesmith's numbers don't including an auditing report. I'm assuming they were audited.
3. Codesmith LA:
1. Similar graduation and placement rates
2. Solid increase in median compensation
3. They changed the buckets but it looks like a $10K increase in salaries across the board.
4. Increased number of graduates by 40 is almost 40% and maintained strong numbers, which is a good sign
4. Codesmith NY:
1. Similar number of graduates from previous report, no growth
2. Large jump in percentage placed within 6 months from 80 to 90%
3. Kept same salary buckets, easier to compare tren…
I haven't attended either, I've coached and mentored alumni from both, either right after or later in their careers.
I hope you get other responses answering your specific questions but just want to pre-emptively discuss outcomes because in the past people have said for similar questions 'Codesmith has the best outcomes choose Codesmith'.
First, will put the best numbers at flagship locations for both.
Codesmith (H2 2020): New York median salary $120,000, 80.2% placed within 180 days (CIRR)
HackReactor (H1 2021): San Francisco median salary $107,500, 73% placed within 180 days (self reported audited)
HackReactor has a slightly lower bar to entry so more people drop out.
I believe both have people with experience attend, but a Codesmith exec reported about "a third" of people at Codesmith have a CS degree or work experience or another bootcamp (source Course Report interview with…
Yeah excellent point! It is by far the best results compared to other bootcamps, and I actually think their program and results are very good (other than the work experience and mid level thing... sorry I have to qualify this every time so this statement is not quoted out of context).
Maybe Codesmith should just go the HackReactor route and publish their own audited results. I don't think they really need CIRR anymore as a stamp of approval. It's kind of like the Olympics where one country keeps winning everything and the other countries don't want to play anymore haha. If all the other bootcamps stopped reporting for example, that's what would happen.
Sorry if I came/or come across harsh on CIRR, I'm like truly very open minded to arguments both sides and love this discussion!
HackReactor is another program with audited results (not following CIRR because of some drama with CIRR, but audited), where some cohorts have six figure medians as well. Other than Codesmith's fake project work framed as months of experience and the whole mid level claim that I can talk about for days, I think Codesmith had better results than HackReactor for a lot of people who haven't done much coding yet.
Formation isn't a bootcamp or school and doesn't have a "program", fixed dates, cohorts, etc... so we haven't figured out the best way to talk about results. The median base salary of the past 12 months (since May 1, 2021) is $138k and TC is much higher when factoring in stock (usually in the tens of k per year) and bonuses (5 or 6 figures). But many people start Formation making a good salary (sometimes 6 figures already) already so apples and oranges. If you want to research, tal…
u/RobSteinsVoice thanks for sharing that well written response! I definitely agree comparing on CIRR Codesmith is by far the best results and at a slightly larger scale.
Good question about Formation. We might in the future actually! The problem is we aren't a school or bootcamp and we work with people for wildly different amounts of time (I've seen anywhere from 1 month to 12 months) and people all do different things. So there isn't a single experience we can summarize.
But the outcomes are extremely strong and we want to figure out how to communicate that better because people assume we cherry pick the best results.
Here the last 20ish offers accepted, in order, no filtering or editing: Bloomberg, Paperclip, Front, Workday, Neato, Microsoft, Bitgo, Amazon, Jelly Fish, GitHub, Microsoft, Toast, Quantcast, Meta, CloudTrucks, Plaid, 1Password, Microsoft, Google, Meta.
This is also an in person bootcamp in Punjab which is a specific market for a group that's primarily US based bootcamps.
I think we're on the same page here about Code Camp, but would love to chat about CIRR audited results seperately because I've seen you post a few time about how important audited results are. The TLDR: it was founded and is run by primarily bootcamp executives and while it's fantastic to have at least some audited data it was also crafted to make you need to do a little extra work to read between the lines. Like Codesmith's report says the median salary for NY on 2020 is 120K. Now if you actually crunch the numbers in the report itself based on graduation rates, number of people who supplies information, and number of people employed, it's not the median salary. It's the median salary of people who graduated, people who got jobs, and people who reported their salarie…
This is probably Codesmith because they make these promises.
I did a deep dive on 200 Codesmith students/alumni that I will repost here. The summary is that 120K is their median salary in NYC from 2 years ago, and that is legit, but that they also mislead people into thinking they can get mid level roles right out of the bootcamp. They base these claim on salary and it’s impossible to get a mid level FAANG role out of a bootcamp with no experience.
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I'm not affiliated with any bootcamps but I work with a lot of people who have gone to bootcamps in the past. I was also an E7 level principal engineer at Facebook, where I worked from 2009 to 2017, and interviewed hundreds of people. I run coaching and training for experienced engineers to help them level, but I've heard a lot of problems with bootcamps from people I work with and started hangout in this subreddit. I can give my asses…
I'm not affiliated with any bootcamps but I work with a lot of people who have gone to bootcamps in the past. I was also an E7 level principal engineer at Facebook, where I worked from 2009 to 2017, and interviewed hundreds of people. I run coaching and training for experienced engineers to help them level, but I've heard a lot of problems with bootcamps from people I work with and started hangout in this subreddit.
I can give my assessment of Codesmith, the good, the bad, the warnings. Overall, for a bootcamp it's think it's a solid consideration, just look for this level of detail in any bootcamps you consider.
GOOD:
1. Instructors are good teachers and care a lot about teaching. They publish a lot of videos and run a lot of free sessions, and they get really great feedback.
2. They've scaled pretty well. Like most bootcamps, recent grads immediately teach the current students, but…