Hey, fewer than Codesmith, can't generalize any patterns other than they have all been similarly hard working, professional, collaborative people and their outcomes at Formation were no different (not statistically significant, but qualitatively).
I actually spend like 5 to 10 mins a day connecting with \~20 bootcamp grads on LinkedIn from all different programs, as my network is super Facebook-heavy and I want to connect more with junior devs and see what they talk/care about (also why I'm here haha). Despite Codesmith's reputation, HackReactor has quite a plethora of alumni who down the road end up a top tier companies. Granted they are larger than others, but many more than Codesmith. I have a strong stance that if you have the life circumstances to do so, you want the RIGHT job out of a bootcamp to kickstart your career in the right direction, not the HIGHEST PAYING job, so you shou…
I have the same questions and the distributions based on experience, but I can give objective answers to some of those other questions.
1. 120K is the median, not the average, so it doesn't mean you are likely to get this salary. It means of all the people who join there is a 50/50 shot making over 120K and a 50/50 shot making under 120K. But it's more important to narrow it down by people of a certain background. Like I know at Formation, the average first year TC for people with 0 experience is $134K and for 1 - 2 years is $181K, so I have to hypothesize that people with less experience are on the lower end, but need data to test that.
2. The Codesmith numbers in CIRR do not include any kind of options, bonuses, etc... they are just base salary. This is a criticism of CIRR, but it's also very hard to compute TC fairly. At Formation, we EXCLUDE all TC that is not objectively measurabl…
I personally talk about Formation all the time on here and also agree with your points that people can just choose to ignore the top level post if they want and don't think the post itself is a problem IMO. As long as the rules are the same for everyone I don't have any problems.
I think there's a maybe a slight problem if ~~a member of the~~ EDIT: an employee of school is a moderator of the forum as is the case. I also find it crazy that everyone talks about Codesmith and Rithm here and like 10% of current Codesmith students are on Reddit talking about it haha and it comes across like there are no other options out there. But if you are close to your next cohort deadline and the moderator ~~starts shutting down Codesmith threads~~ (EDIT: mod explained they were trying to help and not shut down conversation) ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/x7sx97/lets\_hear\_it\_fro…
Based on their info sessions, they want you to take the prep courses to see what Codesmith is like and if it's a good fit for you. Knowing you aren't a good fit at the CSPrep level, helps keep their bar for immersive high and their outcomes high.
I agree with your reflection that you might have been better off starting another program sooner. It's great that Codesmith is hard to get into and waitlisted, but it means that you spend months preparing, 2 months waiting for your start date once you get in, and then months job hunting at the end. A lot of people would be better off starting sooner at another program, getting a foot in the door job doing anything programming related, and then working towards leveling up to a better job. (Disclosure: co-founder of Formation.dev and we help a lot of bootcamp grads make that second jump, so I'm bias in this opinion).
The biggest problem with th…
Hi, disclosure, I’m the co-founder of Formation.dev, which isn’t a bootcamp but a career accelerator focused on practice and feedback and not on lecturing/teaching.
I believe data structures and algos are extremely important but not just to practice them because they are interview questions. A lot of Codesmith alumni I work with are able to solve problems but lacking a bit in the underlying fundamental concepts.
If you believe DSA are important to you for interviews, learning CS fundamentals for months (not a week) and applying them to DSA is the way to go, rather than whack a mole trying to just solve problems for the sake of solving interview problems.
I can add some info about Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder, not bootcamp, not an option for people with no experience). Each Fellow has a continuous conversation in their private job hunting channel containing 5+ team members. Each Fellow has a dedicated human (their Fellow Manager) to talk to and who checks in with you constantly. You have career team members who are constantly trying to find you opportunities for referrals at good companies. You also have ongoing continuous scheduled training and practice that never ends to you keep getting stronger and stronger as you job hunt.
This isn't the right forum as we compete with Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco, so apples to oranges. I'm commenting this because just because the bar for bootcamps is so low that even if the above commenter's story sounds like strong support, there is a bar 100X beyond that that exists if you look…
Hi, I'm the co-founder of a competitor to Interview Kickstart, called Formation.dev, so obviously I'm extremely biased but if you are looking at them, you should also look at us, Outco, Scaler Academy and Pathrise.
I can talk about this bucket of program more generally and where these companies fit in the bucket because I don't like talking directly about competitors on here. You should talk to people 1-1 who did a program to get their sense of the day to day and if would be a good fit for you.
So this bucket is generally called "career accelerators" rather than schools or bootcamps. The programs don't really focus on being the world's more brilliant lecturers on underlying concepts but they focus on training and practice to prepare for real interviews and jobs. They tend to leverage their staff and mentors practical experience to get feedback from the people you aspire to work with.…
It depends on which school you went to and what experience you had (i.e. internships) and what your goals are. If you have very strong fundamentals and are having a hard time getting interviews because of a lack of interviews and you want to work at a non-tech centered company (e.g. an agency or maybe a bank), Codesmith could be useful but purely as a job hunting strategy because you'll add this OSP project to your resume that's branded as professional experience in order to help you get past resume screens (this is fairly controversial with people on both sides of the ethics of it, but it works). If you did a CS degree, the project is the size and scope of a semester long 4 person group project, however many alumni market it like they worked at a company for a year, and that helps you get initial interviews and sometimes even mid-level roles at 3rd tier companies.
The alumni connection…
Yes but when people search for Formation on Reddit they find your top level comment and ask me what your problem is with Formation. The comment is so utterly false and damaging to the company, and hence defamatory. You might not see the damage from calling a company "predatory" but it's why I have to continuously comment on this thread when it comes up.
It's not personal, I would love to help give you personally advice in your job hunt and you seem like a nice person, but I also have to defend the company from trolling and anonymous baseless attacks and those two things are separate.
You won’t learn enough in a bootcamp to gain true expertise any stack, so as long as you aren’t learning like a new stack every week it doesn’t matter thaaaat much. Both Hack Reactor and Codesmith are solid choices. Check out Rithm too. All of these are intense… Codemsith is 11 hour days, so making sure the day to day is a good fit is far more important than the stack.
It depends on the experience and people have different points of view here even WITHIN FORMATION haha, it's very personal and depends on how your job hunt is going.
Like bootcamps have a fixed curriculum and templates for each step so they steer you towards one resume, one way of doing things. I would start with this approach/way of doing things as the first attempt.
Then if you aren't getting traction you can can start being more creative. For example, my brother got a job at Riot Games 10 years working on LoL - he was playing so much day in and day out and this was his dream job, so he wrote a cover letter describing him as a new "Champion" in the game with a cute character image and stuff and he got the job! A new grad engineer from Canada with with an analyst role at a Game thousands of miles away.
So if you have a passion and unique take on things, even if you are delivering Doo…
Yeah alumni do spend a lot of time cranking Leetcode, and giving back to Codesmith, by teaching and doing random things to boost experience, and if it takes 3 MORE months to get a job I think that time can be spent more efficiently. Which I need to disclose my extreme bias here, because Formation (disclosure, co-founder) works with numerous Codesmith alumni to more efficiently and effectively prepare for top tier interviews after Codesmith and then refer them and help them find pathways to solid matching companies. It's really a win-win-win IMO (despite two leaders at Codesmith badmouthing me, and being accused of stealing students). Also note, we are backlogged right now for people with zero work experience so if you are reading this, you likely have to wait a bit to start.
Sorry u/Swimming_Gain_4989, I have to disclose that as the co-founder of Formation.dev I have a following on here and I try to answer questions more broadly for everyone and sometimes a too broad lol.
So the CIRR data is audited and Codesmith follows the process. Now CIRR is a business league non-profit, and auditors are not perfect, there are some small loopholes in CIRR but I don't think it's enough to invalidate the results.
I think some of it is perception. People who get jobs before graduation might be out the door and it feels like for SIX MONTHS it's the same old crew trying to get jobs.
That said, Codesmith cohorts have fairly consistent sizes and they have been "fully booked" for a long time. Yet the number of people included in each report doesn't add up to 36 \* a whole number +/- some wiggle room, it's been like all over the place. Now Codesmith countered this with "cohort…
I can give some thoughts on this, TLDR: CIRR results are real and Codesmith has very high outcomes on paper, but there are two sides to everything yes, nothing is perfect. I talk often to Don (disclosure, Formation.dev, company I co-founded, has sponsored one of this videos - as he doesn't accept bootcamp sponsorships, this is one of the only non-bootcamp sponsorships he's ever done but it could be a bias)
So first of all, I believe it was hard for him to find Codesmith alumni for a few reasons:
1. People don't list it on their LinkedIn's often because Codesmith suggests people exclude it from their history so their skills can shine, rather than any credentials.
2. To remain unbiased he won't include people who reach out to HIM first wanting to be on his podcast.
3. There are a lot of vocal Codesmith supporters that have worked either part time or full time at Codesmith in some capacit…
Hi, if you've done any scripting, or even Verilog, I think you'll pick up programming fast. So I think going to a bootcamp depends on your goals. Codesmith is certainly one of the top programs for getting a job at the end, and wouldn't be a bad choice. But you likely don't need a bootcamp either, as your friends have said. If you can work on the CS fundamentals (e.g. CS50) and get really good at solving general data structures and algorithms programs, you can probably get a job on your own.
If you are gunning for a top tier/FAANG-level job, I would look more at career accelerations (e.g. Interview Kickstart, Outco, Formation.dev (see disclosure)) that focus on getting you interview ready. Codesmith/a bootcamp would be a good option for getting a solid first foor in the door job as a SWE.
Disclosure for any biases: I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev so I'm fairly biased to focus on th…
Take a look at Formation.dev, I dont want to market it so look on your own. We work with a very small number of people with no bootcamp or prior experience but they fall into the bucket you describe. We are also backlogged right now so you might not even be able to get in... but it's worth taking a look and considering the full spectrum of your options.
Another thing you can try is applying to top tier apprenticeships, like Dropbox Ignite and Asana Up and LinkedIn Reach. They have high DSA bars and might be a path to accelerate.
I partially agree with another commenter on here that referrals at FAANG mean you are putting your own reputation on the line.If you consistently refer good people, your referrals are trusted more and if you don't they are not trusted. That said, here are three counter points.
1. Some FAANG companies have different pathways for people without experience, like apprenticeship or internships. Having inside connections can help refer you to the right program and maybe get you noticed, as these pathways are every competitive.
2. There are smaller companies run by ex-FAANG engineers that are super strong and have similar interview processes. These might be more approachable for someone with less experience if they have the resources to ramp you up. It can be hard to hire great people at the less known awesome companies and they are sometimes willing to invest a bit in ramping up someone with…
That sounds like a very stressful situation, but it also sounds like a Lambda School problem.
Some ISAs (like Pathrise and Formation) explicitly only look at BASE salary on a new job to prevent this kind of thing from happening because its awful.... especially to take the money without any heads-up or warning. As you said, because there is no regulation, an ISA is just a contract between two people, and some people can be trusted more than others, and you are ultimately banking on your trust with the specific program.
Sorry this happened to you :(
Your account is 8 days old and some of the things you reference reminds me of several accounts from alleged Codesmith students/alumni that have attacked me in the past and then been eventually deleted from Reddit. So I will be choosing to not engage. Sorry if I'm completely off the mark here I just don't have time to for this to keep going on if that is the case.
Anyone reading this, please read my comment history, it's public, and decide for yourself what you think of my advice and my disclosures.
I accept the feedback that I need to be very careful about disclosures and it will continue to be top of mind in my comments in this subreddit and across similar subreddits.
EDIT: and I'm blocked... the classic "last word" long text + block strategy I was alluding to in the patterns above happening yet again. I use my real name here to be transparent. If I wanted to have a secret campaig…
I co-founded a technology company called Formation.dev but we are building a technology platform to train engineers that's nothing at all like a school.
We offer ISAs as a choice to engineers who train on our platform to pay for that training, yes, but it's fairly irrelevant, it's a choice people wanted and we are indifferent. As long as you put in the work, we work with you for as long as it takes to get a new job you love, so people like the ISA model to wait until that transition to pay.
I've worked with a lot of (10+) Codesmith alumni who come to Formation and can comment on some trends where I think the DS&A bar is at.
Most have a good starting DS&A, not quite at the top tier bar. Most get through the basics relatively quickly compared to other bootcamp grads but most people need some reinforcement/relearning in one or more areas. They then spend a similar amount of time as everyone else on the intermediate (and advanced) concepts that are needed to consistently be at the FAANG bar.
In general, bootcamps are not the best environment for teaching DS&A because of the fixed timeframe and fixed curriculum structure. These aren't just problems to pass an interview, but it SHOULD be about learning abstract concepts and patterns that be applied to solve complex real world problems. People learn these at different paces and have different degrees of and areas of interest. S…
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…
Since Launch School has a mastery based learning model without any fixed time-frames I would probably start it sooner and sink the $200 a month because it will give you a head start. Keep in mind that core is meant more for learning and the capstone is the program with strong job results, that is much more selective and small.
I think if you were to do Springboard, you would do it right after college and if would be fine for aiming for am entry level job on the lower compensation side. Springboard has fairly rigorous requirements for their job guarantee but if you follow them they have fairly good placement rates. The salaries though are much lower than Launch School capstone.
Hopefully others can fill in some gaps with outcomes for Launch School core if you were expecting a job straight from there.
If you are going to do Springboard full time and go all in, I would also consider the…
So I don't know 100% but the spouse of a co-worker has worked on running the Amazon Tech Academy at Amazon and we (Formation.dev - disclosure I am co-founder) worked with someone in ATA to help them convert faster.
My understand of ATA is that you have to work at Amazon for some time first (1+ year), and then are eligible to apply to it. It's a fairly small and competitive program and still very early stages - even though Amazon is enormous. At the end, you can interview immediately for SDE 1 and if you pass you're done, if you don't you do an internship at Amazon and get another shot (this was \~1 year ago, might not be true anymore). My understanding is not EVERYONE got jobs immediately after the ATA but the person we worked with was in the first cohort I believe(?) and did.
Now Kenzie and BloomTech offer a program that teaches the same curriculum as ATA, but you have to pay them dir…
Sorry, Friday was busy, I’m here! Unfortunately Formation can’t help if you have zero experience. We take on a small number of people which zero experience case by case but they have significant amounts of self studying or previous programs that have brought them to a hirable bar.
We have to be very firm about this bar because our program works very well for people with experience, 81% of all people placed have gone to top tier companies, average base salary around $135K. So we are a specific product for a specific market that works very well and not a bootcamp alternative for most people.
Also plus one to Derek’s advice, find a program that is right for you, not that other people
say is the best.
Expecting less from Reddit... like when someone has a preconceived notion of something because they don't like you and they look for any piece information, even if it's provably false, from anonymous sources, and use it out of context to validate their beliefs and say something defamatory like "A former fellow from Formation.dev felt the urge and reached out to me to essentially said it is a predatory practice and inflate their numbers."
You should read all of my comments on Reddit across the board instead of this tunnel vision on Codesmith with a combative win-lose attitude. I'm not here to battle, I'm here to try to give people helpful advice and read all of my comments history to see that.
Springboard licensed its curriculum from Rithm and Colt Steele so while it doesn’t get constant updates like at Rithm the raw curriculum is decent. You learn a little more at your own pace and watch videos rather than attend lectures and work with others. Review is done by industry mentors who are paid to help, which has its pros and cons. Codesmith for example has the senior students mentor the junior students, and the Fellows mentor and teach, and then hires back former students as instructors. Springboard has mentors that work in the industry. Industry mentors have more insight into what is important on the job, but current and former students might be better at actually teaching. Rithm is in the middle, small classes, experienced and good instructors, solid curriculum. I would say Springboard is more akin to Launch School than the other two options.
You are correct, it's incredibly hard and competitive, and you likely won't get one, but that's the most broadly approachable level of FAANG job from a bootcamp if you have no experience. On a case by case basis you might be able to get an entry level FAANG job as well, so I would need to give personal advice. I know a bunch of people at Codesmith, App Academy, and Hack Reactor, spend significant amounts of time studying Leetcode on their own to aim for entry level FAANG jobs, but I'm specifically talking about the preparation that the programs themselves provide.
It's an acronym that stands for Facebook (or Meta) - Apple - Amazon - Netflix - Google.
Some people use it to mean those five companies (knows for strong engineering cultures, high compensation, and impactful technology), others use it to mean top tier companies in general, such as Microsoft, and others.
Generally companies that have the top engineers working at them, have engineering and product driven cultures, have the highest compensation, and have jobs with the largest impact.
Not everyone wants to work at companies like this, or they don't want to work there for their first job. Others do. Others want to work there first, and then want to move on to other companies.
But in the current market, most people see having these companies on your resume at a minimum as a golden ticket to open doors and extremely high compensation that can be life changing.
I use a Hollywood analogy s…
There are two cases I've seen frequently with open source:
1. Hack Reactor people list a section under "experience" called "Personal Projects" that is a list of their personal projects on GitHub
2. Codesmith people list a section under experience called "Open Source Projects" which are personal projects similar to Hack Reactors and not really open source. Most people separately list a larger group open source project as "software engineer experience" for a "company". These projects aren't really open source projects as almost all have no outside contribution and are not worked on after Codesmith (you can look at the GitHub histories for all of them yourself). The projects are great group projects but they aren't paid and slightly controversial... I know a lot of people on the hiring side that fell for this trick in a resume screen and thought the people had paid work experience and real…
Hi, I have some comments that I'll kind of put in bullet form to be a bit more succinct
* A lot of people move from accounting and music into tech, some of the abstraction in doing books comes in handy!
* If you are still working full time as an accountant and are not in a rush, a part time masters at top 10 CS school could be good and open up "new grad" opportunities via the school. If you really have like 1-3 years, and get get into a truly top tier masters program, this might be a good option.
* There are no bootcamps that have a high success at placing a MANGA. There are people here and there, but they are a fairly small percentage right out of bootcamps. People do tend to make it to FAANG in a couple years+ and that's a more realistic goal. Mid-tier and lower-tier companies are the most common outcomes. At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, NOT recommending for you,…
The Launch School CEO explained this in a different thread but basically it's not possible to learn a CS degree worth of concepts in 12 weeks (or a master's degree worth as one bootcamp says). So their approach is to have you work through concepts at your own pace and actually learn stuff, but it takes much longer time and can't be accelerate with long days.
At Formation we have a mastery approach too and it takes the average person maybe 8 to 12 weeks (varies wildly) to get their data structures and algorithms fundamentals alone to a solid place. And it's not because our program sucks. It's because people learn at different paces and most don't learn at a bootcamp pace.
The people that learn at a bootcamp pace and actually absorb more quickly are edge cases and they might learn even faster with a different approach. As the Launch School CEO says, the better programs select for these p…
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?
Highly recommended advice for bootcamps grads and the job market from Gergely (The Pragmatic Engineer)
Full post released today is a goldmine of great advice: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/advice-for-junior-software-engineers/
Transparent Disclosures: I am not affiliated with Gergely, I’ve briefly chatted with him and I have contributed to a piece about Facebook work culture and engineering levels. He mentions Launch School and I am not affiliated with them either. I am the co-founder of Formation.dev which could introduce bias as we help people
with 1 - 3 years experience get top tier roles, and we work with a smaller number of bootcamp grads to get jobs and hence we help people overcome the challenges Gergely describes.
I don’t want to steal his thunder so read the post but some additional points I would like to call out… these might not make sense without reading.
1. I disa…
I mean I spent two hours a few months ago making a spreadsheet of 200 alumni after a bunch of people applied to Formation with the same resumes and the fake work experience. I didn't realize it wasnt work experience until talking to people and asking questions with weird answers, e.g. what were your goals, how were your hired, what non engineers did you work with, who set the team direction, how do you make money, etc... Then I learned about OSLabs, discovered it wasn't even a real organization, and did the deep dive above. I captured the work experience from LinkedIn profiles and the GitHub commit history of the people and discovered the average person claimed 12 months of work experience and had 3 weeks of commits on the corresponding proejct.
Since then have been keeping my ears open, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and tech talks for now, want to know this all works but try to re…
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…
1. Read my entire comment history. It's long. If you don't have time then don't criticize me after only reading Codesmith-related comments
2. I have a personal goal of making LinkedIn connection with 10 to 20 people a day who are bootcamp grads (FROM ALL BOOTCAMPS) with some post bootcamp work experience. If current Codesmith students get caught in that it's almost certainly the fake work experience that I'm missing and thinking is post bootcamp work-experience. I have not once pitched Formation to any of those connections unless they've talked to me to ask me about it, nor do I include a message in my LinkedIn connection outreaches even mentioning Formation. There is world outside of Codesmith, take your head out of the sand.
3. Disclose yourself and prove that I pitched Formation to you or leave me alone.
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…
I'm here with my real name, my one account, giving people advice day in and day out and I'm sure some of those people will back me up. I'm here consistently being helpful and reasonable in all my discussions about all kinds of topics and not once have a not given genuinely helpful advice to someone.
**On the other hand, you work at Codesmith on the side (or worked recently), do not disclose it, and keep defaming me and my company when I talk about Codesmith in any way that is perceived negatively. EDIT: the person denies they worked/work there and claims this is false.**
Responses to statements for other people reading this:
1. Formation doesn't cost at least $20,000+. I don't know where you are getting that number or if you know how ISA caps work. We have several paths and several payment options. Only one pathway, if paid with an ISA, can exceed $20K and it certainly is not the mini…
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…
Hi, I don't like quoting one-off results as proof or evidence because everyone has a unique job hunt with different goals. Like maybe that person's goals were different and that was the 2nd best outcome even if their compensation sounds impressive on paper.
Overall 81% of placements are at top tier companies (FAANG, big tech, top tier startups, decacorns, etc...).
We also don't have enough "direct from bootcamp" results to be significant either, but I can give some general common groups of people that have bootcamp backgrounds:
1. Bootcamp, foot in the door job (or better) for anywhere from six months to a few years, Formation, job. This is the most common case, vast majority, and people generally have good practical skills and need to work on fundamental CS concepts like data structures and algorithms.
2. No bootcamp, self study, direct to Formation. The average base salary i…
Great question. So we have a deep bench on staff. I was 8 years FB E7, we have two other ex-FB E7+ engineers, two senior/staff ex-FB/MSFT engineers, an ex-Oracle/Amazon senior engineers, ex-FB 10 year recruiter, and two other ex-FAANG \~5 year each recruiters. We also have top tier investors who have a pulse on the industry behind the scenes too. So through all of these connections and network (and obviously how Fellows are doing on the job hunt) we have a pulse on how things are moving.
We lean very very ex-FB heavy, and while we've been at FB so long we know people all over the place now at pretty much every company, we do have a Facebook-leaning network.
I love that you mentioned probabilities. Some people come to us thinking that they do Formation to "pay for referrals" or asking us to "guarantee they pass their Stripe interview" and that's not how the industry works. Every intervi…
>As the husband of a current CodeSmith student, and a lead engineer, I agree with this description of the program. The tactics can be very surface-level. A tech talk and an open source project (that is made to look like a company on LinkedIn) can make a candidate appear much more senior than they actually are, on the surface, and give someone with no production engineering experience the false impression that they have more experience than they really do. And that is the secret sauce of CodeSmith.
The problem is: Everything is taught so quickly that it's impossible for most students to absorb it, and there is very variable quality beneath the sauce. (For example, a whole semester worth of data structures in an undergraduate course is taught in 2 days during the first week of the program). There's no possible way to do that deeply and well. Furthermore, classes are taught on powerpoint…
Interesting, thanks! Yeah I do know one person who also felt Codesmith was too slow as well and joined Formation (disclosure for anyone that doesn't know, I'm a co-founder and want to be transparent) after meeting the bar and being a better fit. I suspect anyone with work experience already or who is at a "leetcode medium" level Formation is probably better depending on their goals. But I honestly thought this was a small number of people... if it's a larger number this is really useful and explain some of the negative personal comments Codesmith employees and alumni have made about me haha.
I'm glad to hear they are trying hard to support someone falling behind. Despite these personal attacks I wish we could work better together and I think they really do have good intentions and care about each student. We have some fantastic Codesmith alumni at Formation who are highly motivated and…
Hi, we typically work with people with 1 - 3 years of work experience. We aren't a bootcamp or school and don't "teach" like a school does, but rather more like having a personal trainer to get your skills into shape for interviews and everyone needs different things to work on. If you don't have any experience you'll have to have self-taught fairly strong data structures and algorithms for our training to be effective.
You can try a couple of things:
1. Study Guide for interviews. You need to be able to get through maybe the first few sections: [https://formation.dev/join/](https://formation.dev/join/)
2. Benchmark assessment. You can try this to see how "FAANG-ready" your DS&A skills are at: [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment)
3. 21 day coding challenge. If you want a problem a day to work on and see comfortable you feel. [https://formation.…
Yeah sounds like Codesmith or Rithm or another top bootcamps could be a good fit. If you can do full time, do full time... it will be intense for a few months but you'll get a job much faster than 9 plus 3-6 months.
If the workload and hours are just so bad that it would be detrimental to your personal life, then yeah look at full time with better WLB, like Rithm is a great one.
I also recommend Codesmith to a lot of people (not as the ONLY option but as an option to consider, I think Rithm school is probably the most ethical bootcamp and the founders are just such great people) and I get a lot of flak from the "army of Codesmith supporters" anytime I say anything that could be interpreted negatively. Some of the people are actually undisclosed Codesmith employees too and I ignore it haha... that's what Reddit's all about! But anyways I'll be around with my real name and pros-and-cons points of view.
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'…