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…
People can and do study on their own yeah, there isn't one solution for everyone.
So I can only speak for Formation which is even unique amongst those competitors. But the reasons it adds value are:
1. Every week we create a schedule of 3-5 person or 1-1 sessions and tasks (pulled from thousands we have created) that is all based on your progress and what you need to work on that week. We asses you with tests, mentor feedback, self-reporting, etc... and create a new plan every week. Most of our people who get jobs at Google don't cram LC and study very efficiently.
2. Extremely strong mentors. You get to work directly several times a week, in 3-5 sessions or 1-1 sessions with staff engineers at Airbnb, principal engineers at Reddit, and dozens of people like this. Most of the competitors have recorded videos and sessions with 150 people that are not intimate at all.
3. Network, referr…
The ones I mentioned are all similar in that they tend to work with people who have jobs (or are "employable" already) and help them get better jobs.
Whether it is needed or not is a personal decision based on your goals and motivations and what works for you. For many it's not needed.
I don't know Scalar specifically and how they work internally, so maybe it's not as good as Formation, but I feel like Formation is very valuable if you need the services we offer. I use the "personal trainer" analogy a lot for fitness and getting in shape. For some people it's useful and some it's not. At Formation, we're building out a platform and methodology that we think will work for a very wide range of people, and eventually different price points. If we can't deliver value to people, our company shouldn't exist.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Hi there, I'm the co-founder of Formation, and feel free to ping me with your name/email if you want some more advice on areas to work on. Our bar is high and our assessment process is hard and you shouldn't feel bad. I want to reiterate that most people we work with (70%+ as of our last count) have worked for at least a year in SWE jobs so it should be expected to be hard as a bootcamp grad.
Our assessment is not an objective test so much as it's meant to help us pattern match you against other people we've worked with. We want to get a baseline of where you are at, and based on a meeting about your goals, if we can get you to where you want to go. If you got a perfect score you might not even need our help!
Anyways feel free to reach out regardless with maybe your LinkedIn and a little more info and I can try to give you some more advice!
Hi, I lived in Regina for four years so stopping by to say hello! I have an engineering degree, went to Facebook in the US out of school in 2009. I know a lot about American bootcamps, not so much about Canadian bootcamps, but I can try to help.
Since you have an CS masters you should be able to get a TN visa status and work anywhere in the US as an individual contributor engineer.
Another route could be working for "FAANG" in Canada first and transferring.
It's a bit of a wonky time to only target FAANG but it's certainly possible to get a FAANG job in the USA with a CS masters if you can get interviews and then pass the interviews (which are hard)
I wouldn't do a bootcamp at this point unless you basically forgot everything from school, I would look at more career accelerators (disclosure: I'm co-founder of Formation.dev which is one such thing) like Outco, Interview Kickstart, S…
Just FYI and for anyone else reading this, we are working on publishing more numbers so we have been crunching different stats, and around 7% of people have 0 experience (no bootcamp or no CS degree), and 70%+ have at least 1 year of professional full time SWE work experience already. We are friendly with most bootcamps and some Fellows teaching at their former bootcamps (not just Codesmith, but several). We have friendly chats with bootcamp founders about collaborations.
We also work with people for an indefinite amount of time, adjusting people's work week to week, people can pause, resume, ramp up or ramp down. A bootcamp is short, intensive, structured and that is not what Formation is at all.
So yeah, not a bootcamp and not trying to advertise to people who want to go to them.
Hi, we work with a lot of bootcamp alumni (something like 40%, close to but less than half have been to bootcamps in the past) so I thought this might be applicable to alumni or soon to be alumni.
Our advertising is similar focused and not advertised towards people looking for bootcamps. If you visit our website you might also get ads as well. Or do you mean me talking about Formation at all. You can look at my entire comment history and Formation is mentioned a lot but most responses don't mention it at all.
But point taken for sure, and will add a +1 in the remove category haha
For those interested, Formation is hosting a panel on FAANG engineer levels (junior/mid/senior/etc...) tomorrow
Hi all, some of you know me as an active commenter in this sub, I wanted to share an event Formation (disclosure: I am a co-founder) is hosting tomorrow at 8pm EST online. I'm not sure if everyone is interested but I know some people here are either on the job hunt now, or have graduated from bootcamps in the past and might find this perspective on levels, career progression, and how to approach job levels interesting. It's a topic not often talked about and we're hoping to share valuable information and answer questions directly.
[https://formationenglevelspanel.splashthat.com/](https://formationenglevelspanel.splashthat.com/)
We are going to chat about things like: what are engineering levels, why companies have them, how you are leveled during interviews, strategies for…
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "advanced" and how advanced you mean. A lot of the top bootcamps do have fairly challenging entrance tests, e.g. Codesmith tests on recursion just to get in. So like if Codesmith, Hack Reactor, App Academy, all seem too easy then you can look into the career accelerator group of program.
The more "career accelerator" type programs are roughly the same cost as bootcamps but focusing on people with "employable skills" get jobs, rather than teaching people things from step 0 or 0.1. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev which is one option and then other other programs are Interview Kickstart, Scaler, Pathrise, and Outco. At Formation, most people we work with have 1-3 years of experience already (and the other programs are similar) and we work with you for as long as it takes to get a job you love (with most people targeting truly top tier companies).…
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…
I would try contacting people on LinkedIn that recently graduated Hack Reactor and ask these questions - they are great questions btw. This sub reddit has a lot of Codesmith people in it and leans that way so it's great to get those answers for Codesmith.
I agree with the other comment here that Codesmith is super intense (9am-8pm M-F/9am-3pm S) and has great outcomes and if you are super ambitious, hard working, and ready to hustle, it should be a top contender.
RE: outcomes. So with hiring freezes and the direction of the economy, I wouldn't hold any past outcomes going forward and would choose based on the answers you get to the questions above and as the other commenter stated, go in with reasonable expectations.
(I can talk more about the hiring market based on my observations and experience, but I don't want to derail the thread)
If I understand correctly you want to do a bootcamp without the intention of getting a job? If you are just starting college, you want to focus on getting top internships each summer as your goal and set yourself up to have the best fit company for you upon graduation lined up.
A lot of bootcamps are very focused on getting a job, so most wouldn't be a good fit. Like Codesmith, for example, is one of the top bootcamps for getting a good job, but you spend most of your time building out stuff that is meant to look good on a resume, which won't help. Similar with other bootcamps focused on getting a job.
I might consider something like Launch School, where you can work through things at your own pace and ramp up or down.
Or maybe just get a head start with some Coursera courses? Google and Facebook have some courses through Coursera. Or work through FreeCodeCamp, OdinProject.
If yo…
Hi, depending on what you mean by coding experience and what your goals are with this job, we might be able to help at [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (disclosure, I'm a co-founder). We help people get jobs at top tier companies (for example, 25% of people placed are at literally the five F, A, A, N, G, excluding Microsoft, people turning down FAANG, and other FAANG-level or better companies) and we typically work with engineers with 1-3 years of work experience to level up. We have a smaller number of people with no work experience (self taught or came from a bootcamp) but a high enough skill level to have a path to top tier companies.
I need a lot more info to help assess if Formation makes sense, but we have some alignment. We work with you with our full support for as long as it takes to get a job you love, whether it's 2 months or 10 months. Whether you have a rough job hunt…
I mean this is Reddit after all and everyone is anonymous so you should always talk to people who went to the Bootcamps and try to see how people similar to yourself progressed. Focus on the "how" and not just qualifiers like "awesome, supportive, depth", like "how" does the day to day work and really get in there. There are some very good Bootcamps that are never even mentioned here as well!
1. Codesmith has a high bar of entry, and is very intense, but if it's a good fit for you, they have very solid outcomes and very solid placement rates. They really have the process down for being competitive on the job market.
2. Rithm School is good for an intimate bootcamp with lots of instructor access. You do a mini internship with a real company/client/project.
3. Hack Reactor is fairly well rounded, hard to get into, rigorous, strong network.
4. Launch School is a monthly self paced approach…
I probably wouldn't quit entirely right now given the economy.
You mentioned Leetcode so I'm going to give options for DS&A focused top tier companies. But if that's not your goal, ignore all this!
If you want to go the unpaid/cheap route, I would look and practice the Blind 75 after hours. When you are feeling good, do a mock at Interviewing.io and see how you do and then re-evaluate your options.
If you want to go a paid route, I know this is going to seem like a giant ad, but I'm also the co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) and you should seriously look into it if you are aiming for FAANG-level companies in Canada (we support Canadians). You can prepare part time and not waste time. Don't want to say much because it will come across scammy but check it out and do your own research, and it's not cheap but it works.
Other paid programs you can look at are [Outco.…
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…
Hi! I'm combining my take on things into a top level comment. I started working at Facebook in 2009, right during the end of the great recession. I started interviewing and doing university recruiting in 2010, shortly after the great recession. I know some some people might have also lived through that time, but I can share my view working in tech during that time. I also have hundreds of colleagues and former colleagues who worked through both that recession and the dot-com crash of 2000. I also work with a lot of experienced engineers now, helping them get jobs at top tier companies and am very familiar with the market, and know people at almost all the top companies.
I know a lot of people have opinions in the other comments, I'm just presenting my perspective for a different point of view for anyone reading.
1. Tech is not going away. The efficiency improvements to all aspects of l…
This got downvoted and I'm not sure why. But I ran some numbers this evening as we are trying to figure out how to explain our numbers and one stat stood out showing the differences more: 25% of placed Formation Fellows accepted jobs at LITERALLY the five FAANG companies - Facebook/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Google (this doesn't include Microsoft, which is another chunk, and doesn't include some additional people who got FAANG offers and turned them down, or all the people at top-tier/FAANG-level companies as well).
Just for anyone else reading this because my first stab might not have hit the mark on the difference in audience.
Hi, we worked with someone that had a similar background at Formation (CogSci -> dropout -> HackReactor -> back to school -> Formation -> Job) and you can try reaching out them about their experience as a cog sci breaking into the industry. [https://formation.dev/blog/fellow-spotlight-carlitos-willis/](https://formation.dev/blog/fellow-spotlight-carlitos-willis/)
It really depends on you. Since you have a degree and took some CS courses, you can get a foot in the door without a bootcamp. But if your skill gap is really large then a bootcamp could be good.
If you get a six figure job at a top tier company the relative cost of different programs might not matter. The time variance it will take to get a job is so unpredictable that the lost/gained revenue between 1-3 months at a top tier company, would be the cost of a five figure program.
My advice would be to reach out to people from a…
Just to clarify for other people reading this. Codesmith vs Formation is not a choice for most people. The vast majority of people are Formation are working as engineers and doing it part time, or have worked for 1 - 3 years and taking a pause). We have one person I currently know of that felt Formation was a better fit than Codesmith, and 10+ Codesmith alumni at various points in their careers. Most of these alumni come in at a middle of the road junior DS&A skill bar, slightly above the minimum we are confident working with but still clearly in the middle junior bucket and that is our lowest experience bucket. So the vast majority of people before Codesmith aren't choosing between the two. I recommend Codesmith to a lot of people who have no experience a couple times a week in DMs.
I do believe there are a very small number of people at Codesmith (I heard recently one or two in each c…
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I understand and acknowledge that there's a reason/"agenda" for me to be active on this sub. My life's mission is to help software engineers from non-traditional and underrepresented engineering backgrounds break into the top tier impactful roles. I was at Facebook for 8 years, from 2009 to 2017 and saw such hard working people were building products for billions of people but lacking a more diverse set of voices in doing so. This is an industry wide issue. Sophie first created a free bootcamp called Buildschool to help people get their first jobs. In getting to know bootcamps and meeting their founders, she realized that the broader bootcamp industry has already helped tens of thousands of brand new engineers, from diverse backgrounds, get started in their careers with their first jobs, but most lacked fundamentals, rigorous practice, and interaction with t…
From what people have told me there is a paid one (that is 75% off for alumni) and there is a like self service guide an alumni made (which I've read). There is A LOT of content, guides, opinions out there (some paid, some free) to get ready for DS&A interviews and these are honestly are fairly similar on par.
Obviously I'm bias, but we (Formation) have people who live and breathe 24/7 how to train people on DS&A, SD, etc..., thousands of tasks, hundreds of assessments, dozens of mock interviews with senior+ engineers people who have done hundreds of interviews, all the stuff is living and breathing and changing daily. So I have a high bar for DS&A courses because we are creating something magical here.... but we're very expensive and it takes everyone a different amount of time. Most of these courses above are a few weeks and static.
I wish there was a simple answer to this because I get asked a lot.
It really depends on you. How do you learn (e.g. by reading, by doing, with people, alone)? What are your starting skills and how much programming have you done? What kind of job do you want? Where do you want to work?
For a high school student who has the opportunity to go to a top 10/20 CS/engineering schools, I would almost always recommend going the college route and doing top tier internships each summer. 1. you get to try working at different places and find the BEST job for you and not just A job. 2. you meet a lot of other people who will go one to other top companies and in other areas as well.
If you are going to go to a less well respected college just to get a degree on paper, I don't know if it's always worth it over other things, like bootcamps. This is where it becomes more personal. Codesmith is 9am to…
Hey, it's Formation.dev We do mentorship and training for people from non traditional and underrepresented backgrounds with experience to help them level up to top tier roles. Strong bootcamps grads are the most junior starting point to work with us and most people have 1 - 3 years of experience already. But we have a lot of people who have done bootcamps in the past and I know a decent amount about some of the top ones.
I haven't done Codesmith but can answer the question from working with Codesmith alumni.
With Codesmith you get lifelong support in their community. After you officially graduate, you get continued check-ins, practice, access to the community for support and referrals, and ongoing lectures for interviewing and negotiation. While normal Codesmith is 9am to 8pm every day, this phase is way more hands off and on your own.
I cant answer when it ends. Around 90% of people get a job within 6 months of graduating. The 10% that don't, someone else can hopefully answer.
From what I've observed, most Codesmith people are ambitious and hard working and a lot of people find jobs. At Formation we've worked with a range of alumni from those who need extra help to find any job to those who are really solid but need extra support to achieve top tier jobs.
One downside of the job hunt support is…
Yeah in my opinon, Nucamp is a good alternative/competitor to Udacity and alternative to a weaker bootcamp (especially for the cost), where M-F are self-taught and Saturdays you do a multi hour live session with an instructor to fill in gaps and get feedback.
If you know nothing about coding, get started with a good Udemy course, like a Colt Steele intro series. Don't worry about absorbing everything but just follow along to see if you even like programming and if you like React/frontend or if you like data engineer, etc...
Then after a few months, I would consider if quitting your job makes sense and which program is right for you. If you advanced quickly you might be a candidate for some of the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, Rithm, HackReactor, etc... which require a very basic level of understanding to join, or if you want to Nucamp first while you work, to re-evaluate bootcamps a…
Thanks for this candid feedback! I appreciate it a lot.
Lot of stuff I will reflect on and try to incorporate into my responses. I got feedback I didn't disclose Formation so maybe I went too far haha.
I'm extremely thankful you gave that example of the two quotes because I didn't realize that came across that way.
Yeah I don't know what to say but I'm here to help people. I joined Facebook in 2009 and my stock 100x'd so I originally semi-retired a few years ago. The lack of diversity and people from nontraditional backgrounds in tech is such a huge factor contributing to the problems that big tech is facing today, so I came back with Sophie to give 150% on helping solve this problem. I have made $0 from Formation (no salary) and while I'm a partial owner, we lose money every month right now.
I want to help more people get into the industry and find the right path for them. This is…
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…
No, Formation is not a bootcamp, we have a handful of people with no experience and 80-90% of people have worked for one to many years. That is an example. I've been criticized for not disclosing Formation, if you feel this is promotional, that's good feedback, I guess I can't make everyone happy, but I can try. I edited to give an example of what I mean, it's a little off topic now but 🤷♂️
This is one of the dark secrets of bootcamps. Some basically let anyone in and that means people who they shouldn’t of let in might have a bad experience and don't get a job, which lowers their outcomes on paper. So the bootcamps that are more selective have more success cases and have stronger outcomes on paper. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the education is better or worse it’s just one factor. At Formation.dev we haven’t published these kind of outcomes because of this (like a staff engineer making $400K TC isn't really relevant for a bootcamp grad who has contracted and aiming to make $150K TC at a solid company, and aggregating these numbers into medians and averages isn't that useful imo). HackReactor is a great example of this where they are owned by a big company and have pressure to hit numbers and their outcomes for qualified people are actually really good and they ha…
The title is a overgeneralizing. Open Source projects vs Short Internship is different than Codesmith's projects vs Rithm's internships.
The one liners are that Codesmith's projects are curated learning experiences branded as work-like experience. Rithm's internships are real work, but tends to be understated on resumes, and people get hit or miss experience.
I'll do a quick Pros and Cons:
Codesmith's Open Source Projects:
PROS:
* They have optimized the heck out of talking about these projects. They look like real work on a resume, they have a lot of buzzwords, it's very effective for getting interviews.
* The projects are almost all tools, which is a great thing to work on in general because it's solving a developer problem.
CONS:
* The actual projects, people spend 6 weeks on and most people commit only a few commits over 2-3 weeks.
* Not many people use the projects outsid…
Not all mentors are created equal.
I strongly believe in the idea that people don't need a single dedicated mentor, but rather need the right mentor at the right time for the right reason.
If you can get this just right yourself while doing a Udacity course, you are essentially outsmarting these expensive programs that you are paying 15K to do this.
Now the reason it's hard to navigate because some programs charge 15K to be almost entirely taught by alumni of the program. Alumni can actually be better a teaching some topics! But there are also very rare times you need a $500 an hour mentor as well.... and most things fall somewhere on between.
When you are starting out, you don't know what you don't know and you just have to trust a program to make good use of your $15K.
At Formation, we actually think about our fees as a fee that you could easily pay to mentors directly on your o…
I basically work 24/7. Believe it or not but I spend most of my time working on Formation's technology and platform and helping Fellows in their job hunt phase and I respond to things on Reddit via push notifications and often times quickly on my phone - doesn't take that much time. Today I've committed 5 fixes/improvements to our codebase and have a larger feature i'm working on right now that I need to ship before Tuesday. I've also talked to a few Fellows, gave a person advice on two offers they are looking at, and am working on accepting a new Fellow because it's a Sunday on a long weekend and most people are off.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Hi there! What kind of job are you aiming for?
In general, having a CS degree without internships/experience can be tough: hundreds of applications and few responses. At FB we would go through piles of resumes and people who didn't have several top tier internships were instantly skipped over (this was when I was involved in 2010). Unfortunately bootcamp grads have it pretty similar, so I don't know how much a generic bootcamp will help at this point.
Georgia Tech Master's is good. The downsides are it will take longer and it won't necessarily help with getting a job. It might reset the clock and you can reconsider new grad jobs and hopefully have more direct access to recruiters is GT is a good CS school.
I would only go to a bootcamp if you feel like your skill level is not at an entry level bar yet. If you have the CS fundamentals to get hired and need job hunt help look at these o…
I strongly recommend just pinging people on LinkedIn, no specific people, just ask anyone!
I have two responses to this:
1. The main reason the outcomes are so great is because the timeframe is variable and the outcome is fixed. I don't know any program/bootcamp/school that is like this, which is why we are our own type of thing. You get the result you want and you get there on your own timeline rather than working on someone else's fixed timeline and getting whatever result you can get. All of the logistics I've already described are 100% accurate and talking to people should confirm that (if it didn't let me know and I will reword something)
2. Our team is legitimately experienced and senior compared to anything else out there. We have 3 ex-principal FB engineers (E7+), we have 3 more ex-senior FB/FAANG engineers (\~8 yrs each) who have done many hundreds of interviews each (Amazon B…
I've had over a dozen conversations in the past two weeks recommending various bootcamps to people so can you clarify what are the "dishonest marketing tactics" you are talking about?
I don't know where these anonymous empty profiles come out of nowhere to criticize me. It's really hard to use my real name here and I don't love randos coming out of nowhere criticizing me for no reason. I only use this account with my name and picture for everyone to see (and have access to Formation's team account for helping to manage Ads). I've only recently started being active on Reddit and the amount of people who have criticized me FROM throwaway accounts and accusing other people of BEING my throwaway accounts (that aren't) is really weird... this sub at least has really great discussion for the most part and y'all are spending too much time trying to play games that no one else is playing.
Lambda changed it's name because of a trademark lawsuit. They were fighting it for 2 years or so (another company has a Lambda trademark and was being negatively impacted by bad press and reviews around Lambda School - which didn't have a trademark). They even bought this company in Florida called Red Lambda (which has a trademark) to try to fight back. They settled the suit after depositions and changed their name.
I'm surprised no one talks about this story! A chunk of thir $120M of finding probably went to this.
Regarding fundraising. So two things in general.
1. Even though Lambda had so much funding, they were losing a ton of money. We call this the "VC funded discount". Uber was similar, where they were losing money on every ride so that they could grow by giving people cheap rides. The investors were basically paying for thoss cheap rides. Lambda's case was different. They had…
Hi, I'm the co-founder and I just posted a large comment and 100%++ this. Reach out to any Formation person you can find. Ideally those that have similar backgrounds to yourself and recently went through Formation. Our [https://formation.dev/network](https://formation.dev/network) has people who opted in to being public... some of the best outcomes the people don't want to be, so while that might seem cherry picked, it's a fairly typical representation of the outcomes.
More junior Fellows are more likely to list Formation on their LinkedIns. Most people are working and don't want their employers to know, but they might have posted about Formation after getting their jobs and you can try finding those posts through post search to contact people as well.
We have one Fellow who talked to DOZENS of Fellows and messaged ALL OF OUR STAFF before joining, and I think talking to people is the b…
Hi, yeah I'm the co-founder (Sophie is the CEO and founder) and hang around this sub as Derek said :D. As Derek kind of said as well, Formation isn't a "bootcamp" and roughly 80 to 90% of Fellows (approx) have some kind of professional engineering work experience (typically 1 to 3 years) and are working full time while they do Formation. A lot of people did bootcamps in the past so I took an interest to this sub, and a ton of people have been asking me questions about bootcamps (we have Formation Fellows representing many different bootcamps in the past) and the industry since I became active, so I stuck around to help.
I also highly doubt past Formation Fellows are in this sub, I know a few people in this sub who are doing Formation now and are on the more junior side and they might be able to comment on their experiences to help you get a better picture. Try contacting people on Linke…
I wouldn't recommend choosing a bootcamp based on the languages or the stack. Choose the one that you feel is aligned with your goals. You might not realize it yet because learning programming is hard, but your engineering powers grow 10X every year in your career and years down the road no matter which bootcamp you go to, be it App Academy or Codesmith you'll see how the stack and language don't matter.
Codesmith has very solid instruction, has scaled really well, and is a great choice to get into the field. They have a very strong culture, and if you have friends there and feel like you fit, go for it!
Both Codesmith and Rithm care a lot about their curriculum and their instruction in general. So even though Codesmith has like a hierarchy of former students teaching, they do a good job and have a high bar for sure. Both teams have employees with lots of instruction years of experience and comparatively little industry years of experience. They both prioritize the learning experience.
Codesmith wins handsdown on the job profile preparation. Codesmith grads usually don't list Codesmith on their resume, they post about their projects, their talks, and come across as accomplished industry engineers, etc... Rithm grads post graduation messages proudly stating they graduated from Rithm and are on the job hunt. Very different approaches that show the difference in approaches.
I know the founder of Rithm and they are very focused on quality of education because of negative experiences at other bootcamps. They run very small cohorts with lots of face time. They care a ton about the quality of curriculum and education. I haven't talked to them since they went remote though.
We have a few Rithm alumni who we worked with a Formation.dev and they were a pleasure to work with.
I can't reply to RobSteinsVoice, a current Codesmith student, because they blocked me. But I'll add some notes here.
If you go to Codesmith's website about page, and look at the LinkedIn for all the instructors (junior, mid, senior, lead), they all went to Codesmith. They either graduated and stayed on for sometimes many years, or they worked somewhere and teach part time. I'm not sure if this is what was meant above about hiring back students. From what I understand "Fellows" are hired on…
Yeah you are borderline and I agree you could use either higher starting DS&A skills or more extensive project work to have a higher chance of success with our training. Note: for anyone else who might read this, if you are not at our current overall bar, our training is less effective so we want to make sure you are there before joining, or that we have adapted our training enough to support you (we have people who really want to do Formation, but it's too early in their journey and I don't want them to read your specific case and generalize). When we work with someone it's until the very end, so we have to accept the right people.
So two approaches for you specifically:
1. Keep practicing DS&A. Great growth so far so keep going down that path to get through a good number of LC easy problems.
2. I think a standalone project that's not a personal website is great. Ideally something whe…
That’s not bad. It’s not linear, so even though 1400+ means you are pretty close to ready for the stop tier interview raw skill bar (obviously you need to practice) 700ish is borderline ready for Formation to get there, obviously the low end but depending on your goals it could be sufficient. So you should look into it and see if it could be a good fit for you. The goal would be an entry level job top tier job or apprenticeship and you’re probably looking at 6 to 8 months. It’s very different from a bootcamp but you can weight your options between self teaching more, bootcamp, and Formation.
I can give my thoughts on this. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I want to be very upfront that I do not think Formation is a good fit for you yet (we work with experienced engineers to get top-tier roles), but I do have extensive experience with mentoring as a result of Formation and can highlight the pros and cons in my opinion.
**Personal Mentoring**
PROS:
* Goes at your pace
* Focused on your strengths and weaknesses
* Content can change and adapt as you go
* Always have a helping hand
CONS:
* Only get one person's point of view. If you hire an army of mentors it will cost you a fortune.
* Relying on one person's teaching style working all the time
* Different people are good at teaching different things, you are overpaying for some things for worse quality
* It's hard to find a good mentor and hard to judge if they are good, when you don't know what you don't know
**Str…
So they get FLOODED with applications. Which is why that Google recruiter was brave to post the other day haha.
Most of them send out some essay style questions in the application and more importantly a hackerrank or codesignal test. The tests I've seen (second hand through Fellows) are classic DS&A/leetcode and medium-hardish. The problem is because there are so many applications, you basically have to be perfect or very close to perfect to not get filtered out. I've heard of some people cheating (and they detect that too) and trying to really "pass the test" mentality... which is actually the opposite of what these apprenticeships want.... there are just so many applications it's the best they can do to filter.
You can try a sample test we offer at Formation: [https://formation.dev/join/assessment](https://formation.dev/join/assessment)
You'll get your score after completing. Since…
1. Thanks. Yeah just want to help give my perspective on things. It's just one perspective, but so many people in the sub are in bootcamps or choosing bootcamps and it's missing the experienced perspective so I try to comment often.
2. It depends on your goals. You can get an entry level job directly from a bootcamp that is decent. Doing any kind of internship or volunteer work will help. If I were doing a bootcamp I would try to get an apprenticeship at a top tier company. Even the apprenticeships are super competitive right now, but I would try to be a top student and get one of those (e.g. Asana, Dropbox, Twitter).
1. Formation is called a Fellowship, but it's really like having a personal trainer for your technical and career skills and it's not an internship or apprenticeship. Doing something like Formation takes time. Like I said, MOST people at Formation have work experience al…
I think both are strong. Neither will prepare you for a strong chance at passing Google though. Both have a handful of alumni ever that go to Google right out of the program in their first job.
At Formation for example, we work with bootcamp grads, and the vast majority of our Fellows get top tier jobs. With many at Google alone, and many TURNING DOWN Google.
So I've seen the transformation needed for most people post bootcamp to be at that level. I would like to clarify that most people we work with have work experience already post bootcamp, so the number that come directly from a bootcamp is smaller, but I'm including all of these people in one bucket, because presumably people who graduated and worked are farther ahead anyways than new grads.
I might get some comments on here saying that all Codesmith alumni are Google-ready because people get jobs at Google, so I want to emphasiz…
Codesmith is a solid choice in NYC, but isn't cheap, but probably worth it. I heard they are going back in person in NYC ~~soon~~ (edit: by "soon" I meant I heard they were forming plans, but with no specific date)
EDIT #2: App Academy is back in person in NYC now, would also consider
EDIT: sorry, first time for some reason I thought you wanted in person and there aren't many choices right now. Some more questions u/helpmegetrichpls, how much time do do you have? will you be full-time or part-time? What is your starting point? Are you coding already and trying to improve, or are you learning how to code?
Hi all, I've gotten a lot of DMs about my comments asking for more advice. I work with a lot of bootcamp grads a bit down the road in their journeys to achieve roles at the top companies including Google. I probably don't have as many messages as Mike has thought ;) but I'll share some thoughts on here.
1. Google is one of the top companies in the world and has one of the hardest hiring processes and highest bars for data structures and algorithms. This post isn't about a special program for bootcamp grads. This is an opportunity to connect with a recruiter who is supporting the "Early Career" (a.k.a. "New Grad") L3 pipeline. The bar hasn't changed and remains very high.
2. The interview process is the normal L3/Early Career process. You'll do 1 technical screen covering 1-2 medium to hard data structures and algorithms problems, not much talking. Sometimes you'll do a second one if th…