I don't have one answer for everybody.
1. I would consider a bootcamp if you have the time and finances to go all in, e.g. 12 hour days for 3-4 months (or part time where you have no free time outside of work and bootcamp). However, in this climate it's far from a sure bet that it will lead to a job quickly.
2. Consider lower-end apprenticeships/work to hire type programs
3. Do volunteering for non-profits like Hack4LA
This is an extensive set of resources from Vanessa Vun, who learned self-taught but by diligently participating in many different organizations: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vanessas-tech-resources-faq-vanessa-vun](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vanessas-tech-resources-faq-vanessa-vun) (disclosure: while this resource has dozens of things, it does mention the program I co-founded Formation so I want to disclose to avoid it appearing self-promotion)
Hi, so I can speak to changes we've made at Formation, which is not a bootcamp and was engineered to be dynamic and flexible, these are the things I remember in the past 6 months off the top of my head in the 3 mins I timeboxed to writing this:
1. Redid job hunt reference materials twice
2. Redid async resume review process so people can get reviews faster in general
3. Created 5 new group and mentor led session types around job hunting, networking, job hunt office hours, storytelling, and specially check-ins
4. Created dedicate peer referrals channel, which isn't working too well because of the market
5. Added dozens of industry recruiters for mock interviews and responses in chat
6. Created a book a recruiter call on demand flow self service on our platform for people in interviews
7. Added on platform referral request flows for people who are a good match for companies to request re…
Sorry I don't :(. I work/have worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads later on in their careers and most come from Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Rithm, Fullstack Academy, General Assembly, Hackbright, and some other ones that are escaping my memory, but not Coding Temple. There are a surprisingly large number of Codesmith STAFF, students and alumni on here who have over time contacted me as a well which gives me a lot of insight into their program more than any other.
UPDATE: 2023 Predictions check-in and updates!
Hi all, it's halfway through 2023 and I wanted to quickly revisit my predictions from this post to give some updates based on how the industry is doing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp\_predictions\_for\_the\_rest\_of\_2023/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp_predictions_for_the_rest_of_2023/)
# New: What's left for 2023?
The main thing I want to add is that outcomes for H2 2022 are going to go off a cliff. At first when we saw H1 2022 CIRR results come out they were better than expected, however Codesmith restated their numbers after audit and they were notably lower than originally posted for placement rates and high end salaries ([https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/14341x7/codesmiths\_newly\_posted\_audited\_version\_of\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/co…
It doesn't sound like you are making the most of your experience and using the resources available and it's our fault if you aren't making the best use of them or aware of all of your options so I really want to make sure you have all the support you are looking for. The premise of Formation is that there are tens of thousands of hours worth of free content out there and you are paying us because we consistently help people get to a top tier skill level efficiently and without having to think what to do all the time. We don't think you should pay a lot of money for content alone. So again, you should talk to someone internally about how sessions can be better. We can make all kinds of adjustments. You are paying for the engineers who built a highly adaptable system and to have a team of three full time support people in your dedicated channel and for check-ins and if you aren't communica…
If you're already in Formation, ping me internally! I can give you more qualitative estimates based on other people with similar backgrounds right now. Like since the end of 2022, people with no experience are taking a lot longer to place at top companies, but are getting jobs are less strong companies. People with a few years experience have started getting FAANG-level offers in the past monthish, and even earlier to today, but overall are taking longer because of the lull in late 2022/early 2023. So it's really a personal conversation I'm happy to have based on your specific goals and background.
If the real timeframes don't align you have a team of people who are around to help you figure out what kinds of changes you can make to accelerate based on new company goals, or to help you get motivated, or to help figure out what's not working. The more you give the more you get at Formati…
Thanks for sharing thoughts!
Placement times range from 3 weeks to 18 months and counting.
One of the main reasons we don't publish time to placement data right now is because people don't understand what Formation "is" yet and we don't want people to look at numbers that would compare us to a bootcamp or even our competitors, like Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Coachable, Scaler (all of which don't publish much data).
Your program is truly unique to you, the person who is still here after 18 months has done hundreds of sessions, almost a thousand tasks, a few dozen mock interviews, and keeps chugging along. Some people even do contracts and part time jobs and ramp down Formation and then ramp back up again when the contract ends (I can't comment on specific people, but it might contribute to the people who have been here longer).
I completely agree that someone looking at Fo…
How would you answer that given the above restrictions? I would love to answer it but we just can't in a way that is actually clear and transparent?
100% of people adjust their schedules and time commitments throughout Formation (at least once, the majority adjust every week) so what would you do if someone goes on parental leave? What about if they go on a lot of vacation? How do you compare the time it takes for someone training 50 hours a week vs someone training 10 hours a week and the majority of people change their workload several times throughout? If someone is stressed and needs a mental health break, or needs a physical health break, that will impact their training time and unlike a bootcamp we don't kick you out or "defer" you for these cases. As I said, the majority of people fall under these kinds of situations so it's not an edge case that will get averaged out in placeme…
Hi, Formation isn't a bootcamp, doesn't have "graduation", doesn't have cohorts or start dates, doesn't have a expected amount of time you will spend in it, doesn't have a curriculum or topic list you will study. In addition, most people train in Formation part time and have jobs, and ramp up or down their commitments to suit their own needs rather than along our fixed timeframe. Finally, people come from all kinds of backgrounds and start at different places, so it's very hard to look at data and guess what your time and outcome might be like.
So in conclusion, CIRR makes no sense for us at all and we can't even answer basic questions like "how many people graduated" because the question itself doesn't make sense for us.
We have published average outcomes and a list of companies placed at in 2022: [https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/](https://formation.dev/blo…
From my experience, people are very happy and proud to drop their names in the spreadsheet and cheer on their peers outcomes... and a lot more reluctant to talk about how hard it is on the job and the failures that come with it.
I think this is the reason you see so many Hackbright and Hack Reactor and App Academy alumni at FAANG companies 5 years down the road, and while you see a good number of Codesmith alumni at FAANG too there is a greater number 3 jobs in as "senior engineers" at unknown non-tech companies pushing $200K. A mid-level Google offer though is $300K and I reiterate that an appropriate first job -> FAANG mid-level is a much better outcome down the road than what most Codesmith students do.
I lot of bootcamps incorporate DS&A practice into the programs, AA, Hack Reactor, Codesmith, for starters.
That said, I don't know of any bootcamp that actually teaches fundamental problem solving with DS&As. Codesmith spends under a week on all the theoretical concepts for DS&As and even though they assign you a problem a DAY they don't actually teach you how to solve them. I've worked with numerous Codesmith grads that can flail through a LC Medium problem but wouldn't pass a Facebook-level interview because the thought process demonstrates a lack of deeper understanding.
I'm the co-founder of Formation, which is a program for experienced engineers that focuses on DS&A, SD, and behaviorals, and it typically takes most people - including graduates of HR and CS - 2 to 5 more months of pure DS&A focus to get to the top tier bar.
So it takes the entire length of time you spent in a boot…
1. +1 the Lifetime career services at bootcamps aren't helpful because they are meant to help bootcamp grads get jobs. When you have a job and want to get a better job, they don't support you as much as you could. I've heard people say "\[my bootcamp's career services\] helped me negotiate my next offer and it's a gift that keeps on giving".... but what they don't realize is that if they sought help from others that specialize in experienced engineers (disclosure: co-founder of Formation which helps and hence I'm very biased) that you might have made wayyyyy more. The average person placed after Formation increased their first year TC by $96K (see website for how we calculate). So if you are super thankful for "free" help to you increase you compensation by $50K, you could have paid $10K to make almost $100K more... Anyways, this isn't an ad for Formation - Formation has lots of concerns…
Hi, my partner and I both have many years as staff, principal SWE's at FB and Nextdoor. My partner left Nextdoor and ran a free coding bootcamp for a year or two. After seeing how good intentioned people were trying over and over to "fix bootcamps" but had numerous quality issues, she wanted to do it better. She did, and the people she worked with have great careers now, but it didn't scale beyond a number of people she could train herself (\~10 at a time). What she realized though is that the brokenness of bootcamps was resulting in tens of thousands of new engineers who were employable but lacking fundamental skills needed to grow in their next career step. So we joined forced to start Formation - which is a personalized and dynamic coaching and training program for experienced engineers.
If you want my advice - be ready to run a company and not to create a coding bootcamp. Almost all…
I see people interviewing at all stages of companies at Formation (disclosure: co-founder) and they haven't changed much recently. Larger companies that have complex proprietary technology continue to do generic, stack-agnostic, problem solving (i.e. "Leetcode") problems. Smaller and less tech-focused companies that expect you to show up on day 1 and contribute in a more generic stack continue to have more practical questions, realistic work.
Rent is crazy expensive despite super high vacancies. Rithm School was in person with a great office in the heart of SF and might be able to comment on this, but it's prohibitively expensive.
That said, my partner used to run a free bootcamp in the heart of SF that we paid rent for from our savings and some people got remote jobs anyways, but some people just met random engineers in person, which led to networking + jobs and it did help, but you can always just move to SF while doing a remote bootcamp and get a similar benefit.
Codesmith opened a NY in person program but the enrollment appears to always be lower/fills up slower as they have repeatedly pushed back application deadlines for it almost until a week or two before the program start.
Posting salaries is really not useful and it's all anecdotal. I have an non-CS engineering degree and I made more money in a year than most Americans earn in a lifetime in my first job at Facebook.... does that mean everyone should do a 4 year non-CS engineering degree because it worked for me? Obviously not! Just because someone went to Hack Reactor or Codesmith and got a job making $120K, it means nothing. You will be mislead if you do something because a small number of people comment on Reddit about it.
I wouldn't recommend a bootcamp right now. Codesmith is a program that markets to CS grads and people with more experience and even their placements rates as reported from recent alumni have dropped drastically since last reported.
I have a few recommendations to look at... what works for you is ultimately a personal choice, but just things to consider:
1. Consider career accelerators: Formation.dev (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, Scaler, are main ones to look at. These are all very different programs but they focus on fine tuning and enhancing existing skills and focus entirely on the job hunt. They pick up where bootcamps end basically.
2. Consider doing volunteer work at places like Hack4LA, or other Code For America branches. This is a way to get more realistic "volunteer work experience" that is a notch above a group project that you…
Dynamic and self paced is the way to go. You have to be in the driver's seat the whole time but there can be different routes to get from A to B! A bootcamp is like driving from NY to SF and there is one road you must drive down at EXACTLY the speed they tell you to, rather than choosing the path you like the most. Maybe you love southern food and want to swing by the south. Maybe you want to hit up Canada. Maybe you want to take the shortest route possible and speed excessively. maybe you want to avoid highways and go super slow, maybe you want to hit all the national parks along the way, maybe you want to try to cross as many states as possible.
Some programs that are self-paced let you go down that single path at your own speed - which is just one tiny small step towards the amazing, creative world we want where you can get to the same destination on your own journey!
Sorry, super…
One of the problems with this though is it is very non inclusive. /u/-procrastinate- I'm not sure if you have comments on diversity but it takes someone who is reasonable successful in a prior to job to have the money and/or support system in place to do 11 hour days + saturdays + extra study time for 3 months. Sure the people who put in the effort get rewarded, but statistically those people tend to be less diverse demographically and this kind of approach can make tech LESS DIVERSE long term. For example, mothers are still more often primary caregivers to their children, and with these hours it's very hard to be a primary caregiver and do Codesmith (or Hack Reactor) without savings for childcare, or a supportive family to help.
Bloomtech publishes diversity numbers and 75% of graduates identify as Male. Codesmith doesn't publish diversity numbers but I've hear they are dominated Male…
I have push notifications turned on for every single post in this subreddit yeah and I'm an inbox zero person where anytime, anywhere I try to check push notifs ASAP of all kinds (and I aggressively manage them so they aren't spam)
My day job is coding and the green boxes are the proof http://github.com/mnovati
My priority is helping Formation Fellows with advice, bug fixes, and new features and managing my team and I spend about 10 to 30 mins on Reddit a day (depending on the day)
I'm actually glad you asked, because a leader at Codemsith just assumed because I'm so on top of things on Reddit that I'm a 'dark disturbed individual who spends all day on Reddit trying to take down Codesmith' and it's always better to ask instead of assuming and making such strong conclusions.
I'm familiar with Outco (disclosure, they are a competitor to my company Formation, and both of us are not bootcamps or directly comparable to bootcamps) and have also had some peope at Formation get super confused by their recent marketing thinking Outco was offering them a job, rather than coaching and mentoring that they were already doing with us.
I would give them the feedback that their new marketing campaign is sketchy. They are a very small company with only a few full time people, they don't have investors, and I don't think this is intentionally trying to be offensive. That said, I'm not saying anything about the quality of the training because I'm super bias and I don't disagree that it might not be worth $5000 for a lot of people... I can say that for many people having structure, direction, FEEDBACK, and practice are extremely valuable and a catalyst to a new job making \~$…
In general, the bar is set so you kind of have to figure it out on your own. Whether that means leveraging the community, self studying, googling, hours of trial and error, finding pair programming buddies, etc... Codesmith selects for people that can figure it out on their own and it's a trait that will help you succeed as an engineer.
While in Codesmith you have access to more people for support, but oftentimes it's peers and recent alumni who are TAs and many describe it as a firehose of constantly feeling behind (which is what staff say is expected and normal). So if navigating a state of constant confusion isn't for you then it might not be the best program for you... not saying it isn't, just suggesting to consider if it's the right program for you vs wanting to get in because you think it's the best program.
Some possible things to consider for help:
1. Ask in Slack - don't just…
I don't run a bootcamp (Formation is meant for people with existing professional SWE experience) and a Codesmith leader has called me a 'dark and disturbed individual who spends all on day on Reddit with the sole purpose of taking down all the great work Codesmith has done' so I wouldn't say I'm positive about bootcamps.
I feel like I grill them pretty fairly, I'm surprised no one is asking any tough questions on here!
I agree that it does sound a bit like leadership may have directly or indirectly promoted this person to post, or discussed it with employees (which OP is currently) but I also think they disclose the bias which is a good step.
If you leave the program early without a job because you, for example, no longer want to job hunt, or have a major unexpected life change, or you can't commit to the program anymore, or you just don't like it and want to leave early, then you pay a pro-rated amount depending on how long you were in the program.
If you get a job, or are actively interviewing early on, you get access to our full arsenal of support, including 1-1 mock interviews targeted to the types you need (if we support it: i.e. algos, live coding, system design, behavioral, hiring manager, and more) and negotiation support, and you have to pay the full price.
At the end of the day, if the vast majority of people don't get a "return on investment" from Formation than the program doesn't work, so we want to make sure you get your money back and more in value - whether that is cash value in your negotiations, a permanen…
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation!
So there are a range of competitors you can look at. Honestly the session structure where dynamically create your ideal schedule every week is completely unique so if that is the most appealing thing, I haven't seen another program offer that, but if you want to have structured practice here are some other options:
Interview Kickstart: I think it's similarly priced but a few thousand dollars less. More structured program, not unlimited support
Outco.io: shorter, peer mock interviews, cheaper, has unlimited support
Pathrise: focuses almost exclusively on the job hunt side and probably isn't a good option for you, it's also generally much more expensive.
Coachable: a very small program run by a few people but focuses on DS&A, more individual practice and less community vibe. Also similarly priced or more than Formation.
Interviewing.io: pay as yo…
I'm in the CIRR is super flawed, why doesn't Codesmith improve it or replace it, but that is' not a fraud camp.
I'm concerned about the OSLabs stuff though. They made an official charity out of OSLabs in the middle of last year that pays mentors to mentor students. If they are collecting money from the charity to pay mentors to mentor Codesmith students only, that may be criminal, or may be a tax law violation. There's no way they aren't smart enough to figure out a way to make this work legally, but it's playing with fire.
Like if I, representing Formation, approached OSLabs about a collaboration to provide mentors and to work on projects or something, would they act in the best interest of OSLabs or would we get rejected because Codesmith leadership hates me? Eric Kirsten was advertising a job posting at OSLabs for the Executive Director saying to ping him if interesting.... I worked…
Thanks for sharing your views and examples. I said this in my '2023 bootcamp predictions' post that we're going to see a lot of people complaining this year, while a lot of bootcamps remain largely the same as they did in <= 2021 and I stand by that. Codesmith was over-credited in the past in a good market for on-paper outcomes and will be overly criticized now, as will many good programs. We're seeing similar sentiment about Hack Reactor and Tech Elevator recently.
I also completely agree on OSP's being misrepresented and I think Codesmith is going in the wrong direction by doubling down on them.
Can you elaborate on sending lawyers after people in private? That seems concerning. I know that protecting intellectual property is super important and I could see that for leaking important content, or confidential business information. But no one should threaten you for stating your opinio…
From what I've heard it's solely DEFENSIVE not offensive. Which is why you see a ton of random people come out of the woodwork with almost no history on Codesmith-specific posts. I carefully check the comment history when I get attacked and numerous accounts only post and comment about Codesmith and then attack me about Formation. Kind of odd for an account with almost no history to know me so well to make detailed attacks and simultaneously only comment and post about Codesmith.
The other problem is so many people are hired back as fellows, career support, instructors, that a lot of people who talk about being an "alumni" don't disclose that they were/are also an EMPLOYEE! Codesmith has 80 to 100 (depending on when you count, changes frequently) former students currently on staff in some capacity on their Website.
Launch School's capstones are the most comprehensive projects I've seen personally. They are similar in spirit to Codesmith OSPs but have a solid level up in terms of the structure of the code, presentation of the projects, etc... They are more similar to "real" open source projects, rather than a group project that was open sourced.
You are just digging a hole for yourself and proving my point. I have nothing against you, but just be nice and make Reddit a better place.
1. Here's my GitHub and clearly code is what I do all day: [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati)
5,435 contributions in the last year
Today for example, while I'm allegedly spending all my time on Reddit: "37 contributions on Friday April 7th".
2. Ask anyone at Formation how responsive I am in channels. Fellows are the #1 priority in supporting.
I know a leader at Codesmith thinks I'm a "disturbed" person spending all of my day Reddit obsessing over them but don't listen to that garbage.
I work almost all the time, absurdly hard, and training and mentoring is my entire life and I'm lucky that my partner is doing it with me so we can spend all of our time doing it.
I think you are reading what you want to read from my more controversial comments. Your entire comment history on Reddit is about Codesmith on Codesmith posts.
I've been here for a year, giving daily helpful advice on all kinds of topics that aren't Codesmith. I've talked to dozens, possibly over 100 people, advising them to go to bootcamps (often Codesmith) based on their situation and goals. I've even advised people to go to competitors to Formation.
Instead, I get Codesmith leadership following my posts, circulating internally, anonymous accounts commenting on my posts, and complaining about me, when they should probably be paying me for helping a bunch of people choose Codesmith who weren't sure about PRIVATELY IN DMs.
I've said many times that we don't have that many direct-from-bootcamp alumni and we actively waitlist many or out right reject, this is not our target demographic…
For Formation, we don't typically take people directly after a bootcamp, but sometimes we do. It's a really hard market right now so we don't take people who are struggling to get a job and expect us to hand them a job. On the opposite end, if you graduate and immediately want a FAANG job, it's not an ideal time to join unless you have a very long time.
The bootcampers we would consider taking right now are people that have a lot of time, want to fill in fundamental CS gaps that no bootcamp covers, and see the cost of the program as paying for that skill boost, and are aiming for the best job they can get in whatever the market is. We also have different capacity of different experience levels and as it takes longer for these engineers to get jobs, there are fewer slots.
We don't have any behind the scenes deals or partnerships to feed you to companies. We have dozens of staff and men…
Looking into a career accelerator. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev, and other ones you should look into are Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Outco, Scaler, Coachable. All of these programs are very different day-to-day and focus on different things, but they help people with step 2, 3, 4, etc... of your career.
If you have a solid year of experience, you probably aren't missing any practical skills for big tech. Big tech expects to train you in their own stacks, which are so complicated even experienced engineers need training.
You are probably missing the DS&A fundamentals, interview practice, system design, and behavioral training to talk about your 1 YOE effectively, and these are the things the above work on \^\^\^\^
If you can't stomach another $5 to $15K on a new program, then consider a la carte Interviewing.io sessions. If you are super lost, try to leverage your network, D…
Hi, it's a bit off topic but I'll answer since based on your history you seem to be asking legitimately and not trying to troll me with new accounts haha.
First, overall we're focusing on top tier companies broadly. We always meant FAANG as "FAANG-level" companies, and we're adjusting communication to make sure people don't come expecting a LITERAL FAANG job - since most aren't hiring right now.
Second, we work with people for no fixed time period, so how people are responding to the market is very personal - some want to wait it out (and we support you for as long as it takes if you keep showing up and doing the training) - some are focusing on other top tier companies - some are casting wider nets. Some people are frustrated with the job market and giving up. Some people are taking the change to level up so they are ahead of the pack. We liken ourselves to a personal trainer, so we'r…
Making you grind Leetcode like that is an inefficient use of time. The fact that you feel barely able to breathe means you aren't absorbing the materials and it's even more of a waste of time.
There's nothing special about Leetcode problems, anyone can just do them for free online, it's about HOW you do them that you should expect a program or bootcamp to help you with.
At Formation we train you to learn problem solving methods rather than raw grinding LC. We have hundreds of years of FAANG engineering experience in our ranks and this is an almost universal recommendation.
This is a simplified version of the approach we work through and every mentor problem solving session you work through these steps and get feedback: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
Even though a method like this sounds simple, it's really hard…
I would suggest looking at career accelerators if you are considering another bootcamp and it's probably more inline with what you need. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev, which is an option that focuses more on technical skills gaps and job hunting. Other options to look at are Pathrise, Outco, Coachable, Interview Kickstart, Scaler and each one is different cost, time commitment, style.
The 20 placements? It's out of date now since there have been about 10 more since then so including all the recent placements, the distribution follows a similar pattern to the recent data on our blog, about 1/3 had no experience, 1/3 had 1-3 years and 1/3 has 3+ years.
I don't have aggregated info of who was employed or not already but anecdotally I also feel like it followed the similar trend of 2/3 working 1/3 not working. The typical Formation demographic would not be in this subreddit and probably doesn't know it exists, so you lose that point of view here.
A huge factor in these people's success is showing up and chugging though every day, staying as positive as they can, and appreciating advice and feedback - even if they don't always agree. People that have turned more negative to the job hunt and rejecting feedback are definitely struggling more in the job hunt right now.
We…
u/ludofourrage might have some comments about NuCamp, which relies on satisfaction and effectiveness ratings over placements outcomes.
I feel pretty strongly that bootcamps shouldn't be judged by job outcomes and should be judged by education quality value for the cost. It will improve the quality of education, which is what most of the employees at the bootcamp work on.
CIRR encourages bootcamps to be judged purely by placement rates and salaries and I think that not in a great direction. I think it's a piece of the puzzle and useful information, but not the sole way to judge a program.
I also think bootcamps play a part in this by having the "wall of logos" on their websites and advertising the placements in bold. Stanford doesn't have salary numbers of graduates on their homepage in giant numbers like BloomTech does.
I don't think career accelerators like Pathrise, Outco, Intervie…
The job market right now is putting "the best" to the test.
Many bootcamps have long been pretty poor education experiences that use a high entrance bar to let in people that would succeed without the program but need a little more guidance. In a good job market where you get a six figure job, that "little more guidance" was easily worth any amount of money. In a tough job market people are pulling out the magnifying glass to see exactly what they are paying for, because they aren't getting jobs anymore.
I've seen Hack Reactor and Codesmith's curriculum, and I don't see how people can learn React in a day (literally at Codesmith, it's 1-2 days as of Jan 2023). I worked at Facebook for 8 years, and after leaving it took me months to get really good at React and I'm still not amazing.
I don't think it's fair to entirely blame the programs though because they largely haven't changed in t…
Hi! Sorry, I had answered in other threads but not here and happy to provide more context.We do referrals but they are more limited than before because companies are hiring less and have more rigid criteria (which tends to disadvantage people with less experience). In the very limited scenarios where we do refer people, they remain high hit and effective. We constantly change the website as the market changes.
We are far from perfect, but I think some of the negativity in this thread stems from the market changing suddenly in Fall 2022. A small number of people joined during the hot market when many people they spoke with who did Formation at the time were referred to the canonical FAANG and they expected to follow the same path. They trained hard, got their skill level up and then things changed suddenly and all those pipelines shut off. They are understandably frustrated, which I symp…
Yeah a couple people who went through their program and my partner at Formation spoke to their founder a few years ago.
You should absolutely not trust me though about anything! It might be a great fit for you. Just for any program or coaching you look into you want to know how it works and not just be convinced by the big numbers on a website, even for my own program.
Some things to ask:
1. Ask them to explain outcomes in more detail. Where were the last 10, 20, 30 placements? How do they calculate the numbers on the website? The numbers on their website are clearly inconsistent and you need a more practical picture of the outcomes.
2. What is a typical day or week look like?
3. What kinds of strategies help a Coachable student do better than a random new grad?
4. Ask to talk to alumni who have a similar background as yourself and ask them about their day to day and what is good and…
I'm familiar with Coachable but full disclosure, I co-founded a program for experienced engineers called Formation that partially competes with Coachable (we work mostly with experienced engineers and are not a good fit for most new grads).
So there are no shortcuts or secret pathways to jobs right now. You are paying to have a coach work with you to improve you odds and to leverage their experience.
1. Coachable is run by someone who has a few years at Google and has a dozen coaches or so who went through Coachable and came back as coaches. Their approach is very aggressive: exaggerate your resume, aggressively message recruiters with messages they help write, and hope that something lands. Some people find this approach of exaggerating a little sketchy, some find it a means to an ends. Ultimately it's up to you but the key here is to ask for HOW it works instead of just looking at th…
If you work in the position for long enough and perform well, you can apply for a super competitive internal program where Amazon will pay to put you through a bootcamp-like experience, that has a guaranteed internship, and interview to convert. It was extremely competitive and hard to get into.
One of my co-workers spouse worked on this program and a Fellow at Formation went through this program.
You can read more about it here: [https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees](https://amazontechnicalacademy.com/amazon-employees)
I think a larger problem is that a small number of people joined during the hot market when a lot of people they spoke with at Formation were referred to FAANG and saw no reason why they wouldn't follow that path. They were in Formation long enough to get their skills up during the hot market and are in job hunting mode. Then things changed very suddenly, they currently have no path to FAANG (and few do), and they are frustrated, which I totally understand and sympathize with and a lot of people in this bucket are working with us productively to strategize about what to do.
There are two things in my opinion about the website though that people who are not at Formation have been referring to:
1. We have adjusted our website over months to the market. The overall structure hasn't changed at all, but it used to have one statement about 'high hit rate referrals' and another about 'getting…
I'm trying to avoid commenting on threads mostly with new accounts that troll and ignore replies from myself or others... been advised by Reddit employees don't feed the trolls. I love to have respectful discourse with established accounts.
Someone had commented a good answer but I think they deleted:
`From what I have heard they do referrals but its more limited than before because companies are hiring less and being more selective. The companies may also want a certain type of candidate, n yrs of experience, college degree, etc.`
To reinforce: people should not have and should not join Formation only to get referrals, we are not a pay for play referral service and if you think your skills are amazing and you want to buy your way into FAANG, it's not the program for you. We work with people that want an efficient way to get you skills to the top tier bar and gain confidence in your s…
Hi, yeah it depends a lot on you and what you need to work on! Some things to keep in mind if you are targeting a larger top tier company
1. Practice a problem solving method instead of practicing just LC problems. A problem solving method will help you get through interviews when you haven't seen the problem before, and removes the need to solve hundreds of LC problems.
2. \+1 to practicing out loud for real - one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking they know how to solve problems because they passed on LC while doing it silently by themselves and that they don't truly understand. As you said, [pramp.com](https://pramp.com) is an option. A wider range of options (cost and effectiveness-wise) are finding peers in a Discord server, [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io), or a more intense career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev), Interview Kickstart,…
I definitely see all kinds of sketchy behavior on Reddit. I have several friends, and Formation alumni, who work at Reddit and hear about things. This subreddit has no minimum thresholds for posting so it's particularly susceptible to bad actors and a lot of the more controversial stuff you'll see is brand new accounts with almost no comment history at all making bold claims out of nowhere, making it impossible to validate. So I tend to read people's histories carefully when I encounter someone new making strong statements.
All of that said, I don't think it's astroturfing and I don't think Codesmith every tells anyone to post on Reddit at scale and most of the anecdotal stories on here are genuine, especially from well established accounts.
This subreddit is a small, nice corner of the world and part of the heavy Codesmith presence is a snowball effect. Lots of Codesmith alumni here,…
Assuming we are talking about Formation here, have you reported your feedback to your FM team about wanting to leave and what did they say? If you haven't can you do so! If Formation isn't the right fit we are more than happy to support you leaving.
Similar to DS&A, we are practice based training with assessment and feedback rather than teaching frontend, so I want to launch an investigation into what you expected, what you received, what worked and what didn't work for frontend so we can both make improvements and also make sure people come in on the same page of what we can do and can't do.
Sorry to hear about that. Can you DM me anonymously here? Report it anonymously on the platform? Or have you given the feedback to you FM team, in weekly feedback forms, or on the session itself?
I see you are a new account posting about Formation in several places and ignoring me. We would love to help and support you if you are not in a great place, and help you exit on a positive note if Formation is not right for you, but we can't do that if you only comment anonymously on Reddit and refuse to talk to us.
There was an incident reported along these lines a few months ago and we did an hour-long call with the mentor to investigate what happened and resolved it and the person has since has strong positive feedback. If this is still happening we want to know!
We don't force you to take any job and if you want to work at FAANG, **no one is kicking you out and I challenge you to leave Formation and find another path to FAANG right now.** We never promised how long it would take, and we work with people as long as they want as long as they do their part and keep intending to job hunt.
We've had a jump in placements in the past three weeks and people gave very high satisfaction ratings despite more people choosing to take non-FAANG jobs, like Chegg, Citibank, and others. For example, one person chose to change their target away from FAANG companies and was thrilled with how Formation supported them doing that and thrilled with the job they received.
I think this is very fair and is a top reason people come to Formation. If you really want to work at FAANG, you can come to Formation, don't expect to get a job on any timeframe (which I believe we…