Short answer yes. But long answer - Launch School still publishes detailed reports exactly 6 months after the cohort finishes and Codesmith published garbage reports to cover up their collapsing results.
I would put Codesmith worse than the ones that don't publish reports because it's been misleading the public in my opinion and that is worse than if they didn't say anything at all. They keep saying how "transparent" they are and it's a giant performance and bull shit from people with no integrity.
I spoke directly to one of their leaders on a phone call and I really just don't think they understand how messed up their own data is, or they won't admit it publicly because their company is collapsing and this is the nail in the coffin for them.
More details on what that why I feel this way.... I'm a very centrist person and I have been centrist with Codesmith for 3 years. I used to reco…
I specialize in interview prep, check out my background at Meta, and this is the method we propose for solving DS&A problems: https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/
Note that Formation is a paid service but that blog post is entirely free with no strings attached and I'm not trying to sell you anything, just check out the blog post and try following those steps when solving problems.
Well it's a great time to learn how to use AI tools because they are completely changing the day to day faster than anything else before!
I have a background with top tier tech (Meta) and top tier interview prep (Formation) so this is my advice through that lens:
1. Everyone has gaps no matter what your background or experience. If you have INTERVIEWING GAPS (e.g. System Design and DS&A and struggle to perform) - those are one set of skills to work on. If you have gaps day to day and just feel behind - part is imposter syndrome and part is lack of work experience. Most people with CS degrees have a lot of internships and 4 years of CS that make you actually behind in work experience.
2. If you are trying to interview - which is sounds like you aren't, do DS&A like NeetCode, and SD like Hello Interview or other free and cheap options.
3. If you are just trying to level up on the job,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
All programs have seen much lower enrollment in 2024/2025. The only solid numbers I have are Launch School - which publishes cohort by cohort data and their cohorts dropped below 20 people at the end of last year.
Codesmith has been downsizing for 2 years now. They mega expanded during the end of COVID to almost 50 cohorts a year because everyone Google 'best bootcamp' and chose the first one.
Now that's not the case and they are down to like 10 or maybe less cohorts a year - which is still shockingly high.
People might be dabbling with code but they aren't paying $22.5K for likely nothing.
And as of late Codesmith is seeing fewer and fewer show up to those free learn to code sessions.
So as others said, SWE bootcamps really ended in 2024 and this is the tail end.
Absolutely!
1. We spent literally 5 years building a platform from scratch where people can practice anything and do dynamically scheduled mentorships sessions on anything. So we're adapting in real time to AI. We've added a dozen new AI features in the past few months. We've increased the experience bar for people to work with. We're paying very very close attention to interview changes that are happening with AI out there.
2. We're introducing our first AI-specific tracks shortly and started offering one off sessions to iterate on those within our platform engine. The goal of this is to help people become more efficient engineers on the job and keep up with AI.
3. It's entirely possible that AI will crush a lot of SWE industry. It's not a guarantee but a possibility we have to prepare for. In that world, competition for the top SWEs is even more and we'll play a role helping those p…
It's not about getting the role, it's about the next 5 years and what AI is going to do with that.
Codesmith's results were from people exaggerating resumes and Codesmith looked the other way.
AI will replace you if you were lying and getting by by sheer hustle. AI works 24/7. AI can parallelize 1000 tasks.
The only think AI can't beat yet is the taste that comes through SWE experience.
IMO, there is no alternative right now, just don't change careers and learn programming for free on the side slowly over a couple of years.
I'm very confident in the next 5 to 10 years
1. We'll know what all the new jobs AI created are
2. We'll be able to train people for those jobs quickly with bootcamps - but the demographics might look different than bootcamps today with smaller deltas each time around and people aren't becoming "programmers", they are Accountatns becoming like AI Accountants.…
Launch School Placement Date - Q4 2024 Cohort, ~70% placed within six months - similar to previous cohort. Lower salaries at $100K mediums - indicating role shifts. Very strong results given the market but very small program so hard to extrapolate.
Results [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort\_2405\_salary\_outcomes\_6months/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1kzrkyv/cohort_2405_salary_outcomes_6months/)
2024-2025 saw major changes to top bootcamps. Codesmith - arguably the top program alongside Launch Schoo - is down about 80% of it's staff and the founder seems to be moving on to writing a book about AI Ethics and doing a new Front End Masters course while the remaining Codesmith students are taught by recent graduate 'lead instructors' with no SWE experience that their website calls 'engineering industry experts' - most recent 6 month placemen…
I don't say no one, but I do say that it's not systematic anymore - every placement feels like a one off case. Launch School Capstone is small enough that historically each person was a one off case and it never relied on patterns.
Larger programs had hiring partners and common places where alumni pass down back channel referrals and cover up the fact that all the people have zero experience and then help the people ramp up. For example Codesmith -> Capital One is this.... people scheming to lie on resumes and get through interviews and then help each other not get fired after starting.
Launch School is doing ok because its model protects against the market to some degree and the market impact is less severe.
1. You do Core for months so then only people who are perfect fits for Capstone get in
2. The founder is hands on doing most of the work, so there aren't many people to pay. He could personally take lower income for some time to survive. Codesmiths founder uses your tuition money to go to conferences and write books and make lectures for Frontend Masters and students complain they never see him. Fine but you have to pay more people to run the program and when most of those people leave and you are still MIA - math doesn't work out.
3. Launch School's very small, like 20 capstone at a time, 60 a year. Codesmith had like 1000 people in 2023. The founder knows everyone by name and helps them try to get jobs individually.
So yeah Launch School ends up with like a 70…
During the boom times of 2021-2022 it had like a 95% graduation rate and 90% placement within 6 months.
Now in 2024 they have like a 90% graduation rate and 40% placement within 6 months.
HOWEVER, people list like "X to Present" for these fake listings. The bootcamp has like a 60-70% placement within 12 months now and as people hit like 1 year post bootcamp these fake listings look like 1+ years of work experience and help people start getting jobs.
So the TLDR - no - Codesmith is falling apart and I would recommend running for the hills - they are down to a skeleton crew of staff, half of who are looking for work.
The best bootcamps have closed down or pivoted.
Rithm closed, App Academy closed SWE, General Assembly pivoted to B2B according to their annual report, Bloom Tech closed SWE, Turing shut down, Launch Academy shut down, Code Up shut down, Episcodus shut down. Tech Elevat…
Both App Academy Open and Codesmith CSX are not good now.
App Academy Open: AA paused their SWE program so it doesn't seem actively maintained. The only good thing is that it's the entire AA curriculum and not just an introduction trying to upsell.
Codesmith CSX and workshops, I have a lot more to say about this.
CSX:
- it's an introduction to JavaScript only and their goal is to upsell you to Codsmith by the end. They don't have enough money to dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars to building a free platform of unique content that doesn't do.
- their coding editor CSBin isn't even HTTPS and my browser won't let me open it anymore... I don't see how anyone can take this seriously nowadays.
- it also hasn't been updated that much. They could at least run their curriculum through ChatGPT in 5 minutes to improve what they have now. But substance isn't the priority... spend more time…
Yeah that's part 2 and it's tough. Layoffs happen for all kinds of reasons. At Formation (not bootcamp), we see people occasionally get laid off and a number of people come back and pay again (with a discount) to do Formation again and do us this is a very strong sign of those people finding value.
It's very hard to have data about it though. Codesmith has a 'where are they now' report that is really not useful. I think it said 100% of respondents got promotions in 5 years - but who exactly did they send this to? What defined a promotion? I know for a fact people also got laid off, so how was that factored in?
Like not to be too harsh, like it's just a hard problem because when people leave, there's only so much you can do.
But +1 to the journey just BEGINNING with a job post bootcamp, and there will be lower lows and higher highs to come.
I do wish there was a better way though for…
RE: Problem solving methods, so we're on the same page:
I'm not trying to promote anything so I'll share the one that my company developed that I think is good (because I'm biased) and another one as well.
[https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
[https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview](https://www.enjoyalgorithms.com/blog/steps-of-problem-solving-for-cracking-the-coding-interview)
The idea is even higher level than specific approaches, and instead more about the logistics that people often overlook and rush through problems under pressure and crash and burn when they go down the wrong path.
\-----
The specific techniques you are mentioning I call 'tools' and my view on those is you want to be an expert at using a few simple tools. The most experience handy-perso…
Well for Formation, the average placement **increases** their first year total comp by over $100K (see our website for how that's calculated).
Now granted most people are non-FAANG ->FAANG and FAANG -> FAANG is different.
But if you are a little lost or struggling on your interviews, then paying like roughly $10K to be handholded through the preparation process and then handholded through negotiations to increase your offer by more than $10K typically can be mathematically sensical.
The reason we don't charge $100K is because it's impossible to know what the same people would do on their own and presumably they can get prepared for free or cheap too, so how much of that is attributed to Formation? I don't know, that's up to you, but if they typical increase is THAT much and the negotiation support pays for it, it's definitely not a scam or insane to do it.
It's more a personal choice…
If that's not the case then maybe bootcamps shouldn't put hiring stats in their prime hero spots.
I just just checked and Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Tripe Ten, Tech Elevator, General Assembly, all have placement or salary info in the hero banner on the homepage.
Fullstack doesn't.
I was in the camp of people need to think about this as paying for school and not paying for a job. When the market crashed and many programs had layoffs and staff reduction it became absolutely absurd to pay $20K for this stuff.
Like at Codesmith now after their cut backs, you pay $22.5K and your cohort has 1 lead instructor with no/little experience, 1-3 mentors who are former graduates of Codesmith with no experience who were TAs that stayed full time as mentors, and then a bunch of fellows/TAs etc... who are part time recent graduates who haven't placed yet or recent graduates who mentor here and there.…
Thanks for sharing. Yeah I'll +1 that March was particularly strong for Formation in the mid-late career stages, FAANG offers of every logo color of the rainbow.
And I got really nervous that if bootcamps saw similar bumps in entry level, they would promote stronger March without any acknowledgment of what's going on in the market.
I'm absolutely shocked that CIRR can't even keep their website up while they transition it to a new page and comes back without even explaining what is going on.
When the economy changed in the other directly and was super hot, it wasn't "the economy's fault" that Codesmith and others had such amazing placements right? It was the school's pedagogy and curriculum and community and network. Times are shit, 'not my fault, can't do anything about it'.
It's indeed a good lesson for all these leaders. The bootcamps are not going to make it but whatever they do…
Codesmith is pumping out marketing about their most recent outcomes as exceptional outcomes, even though they tanked - and while they acknowledge the market they pat themselves on the back still. Internally almost all their lead instructors quit or were laid off except for one - who is now leading two entire tracks (as of two weeks ago) - and one person who has been teaching for a few months was promoted to be a lead instructor as well.
I'm exhausted with leaders, like Turing too, who want to pour their heart and soul into something with such good intentions but seeing all of that passion make people delusional - desperately trying to keep the thing alive without realizing the industry is burning down.
I admire Launch Academy for pausing gracefully, and a few others that explicitly opted to 'preserve their legacy' (their words) and shut down instead of taking the industry's credibility…
Hi, a lot to dive into here!
There is a back and forth because of bootcamps marketing and because of disgruntled students who flip a table and doom and gloom.
The reality is in between, but sadly it's closer to doom and gloom right now.
I don't know if you saw, but Turing School is abruptly shutting down as of this morning and transferring students elsewhere and we see some of the best bootcamps shutting down left right and center.
This isn't a back and forth, or a sign of hope, and the "back and forth" you see is remaining bootcamps grasping at straws to try to not have a similar fate.
I have insider connections at many bootcamps and the ones surviving are NOT doing well internally. Either cutting back, losing employees, or the 'bootcamp division' is being neglected by a parent company. Launch School is the only program I know that is basically run by the founder and their cohort n…
Hey, I'm not hear to talk about Formation so you can DM me and I can give more specific advice. In general, Formation helps people with 2+ SWE YOE prepare for generalist interviews, or the generalist portion of top tier tech interviews. It is costly, and not everyone thinks it's worth it, but our surveys and feedback forms show that most people who do it, do find it's worth it (either a little or a lot) so I would look into it and see if you are a good fit and then consider the cost carefully.
One advice and only one advice: HUSTLE FOR INTERNSHIPS.
\- If you can't find any, volunteer for professors or for school organizations doing SWE work to try to get something on your resume for next year
\- Look into industry programs for college students that are like 'pre-internships', Google Scholars, Netflix X Formation, Meta U. A lot of these shut down unfortunately.
\- Relentlessly apply for internships all over the country and message recruiters just trying to get into the pipelines wherever you can.
If you are graduating and don't have internships, I would consider doing a masters or extending a yearto buy more time.
Hi, I didn't co-founder a bootcamp so I don't know. My partner started a bootcamp in 2017 and it closed in 2019 and we together started Formation to help people in the industry already prepare for interviews and level up, rather than trying to do 0 to 1.
I agree that bootcamps aren't working right now. Just this morning Turing School announced they are shutting down abruptly. Codesmith has lost most of it's staff and instructors and they say they aren't going anywhere, but things clearly aren't good. App Academy and Launch Academy are both still paused for all SWE programs.
To me, the bootcamp era is over and I agree with you.
That said, even though the bootcamp MODEL doesn't work, there are INDIVIDUALS that are gifted or have the work ethic to outwork 99% of their peers to succeed and those people don't need a bootcamp to transition into tech, but they just need something small to…
Hi,
Mistakes people make:
* Jumping around too much based on what they read online. i.e. jumping from certifications -> projects -> open source -> courses.
* Rushing through things thinking they understand it. I find people have to review the same concept a number of times patiently over time before it sticks and that's GOOD.
* Putting too much work into looking superficially good on paper over the substance of what you do (i.e. building a portfolio you think will look good)
* Lying on resumes to get the first job
How to avoid?
* Focus - do a breadth first search to find what path is likely to be good for you (i.e. certifications -> consulting, or open source -> open source companies, or leetcode/fundamentals focused -> top tier company), and then stick to it to the end. If you were wrong, you'll struggle, but you have a higher chance of making it over someone who does 25% of every…
I'm not selling anything and responding personally and because this is a community I moderate and am most active in. I put something in the disclaimer but I can edit that to make it clearer.
Formation is an interview prep mentorship program for SWEs with 2 years of experience and not a bootcamp or a product for bootcamp grads. So there is some overlap, but I'm not planning on answering questions about that or talking about it in my responses.
👋 AMA: I’m Michael - ex-Meta Principal Engineer + #1 code committer, now co-founder at Formation.dev + interview expert. 📌🎈💥 AI popped the Bootcamp & LeetCode bubbles. Ask me anything about how tech careers have changed in 2025, how to stand out, and what still gets you hired. No 🍬🧥. No 🐂💩
# TUESDAY APRIL 15th, 10AM PT/1PM ET: ADD QUESTIONS ANYTIME
Hey everyone, I'm Michael Novati - a friendly moderator of the sub, former Principal Engineer and the #1 code committer at Meta, and now co-founder and lead engineer at Formation.dev. I've done hundreds of technical interviews at Meta, built some big stuff, and even had an industry archetype called "Coding Machine" modeled after my work.
Here's the blunt truth: The hiring landscape in tech has drastically shifted in 2025. The bootcamp-to-job pipeline and the LeetCode grind have both been heavily disrupted by AI. These changes broke…
1. Launch School Captsone 75% in 6 months in overlapping window.
So I disagree!
2. But even Launch School is upset at the decline from like 95% to 75% and acknowledges that as market impacted.
The thing is that paying $22.5K to go to Codesmith with a 43% chance of getting a job within 10 months from now, like it makes you ask if now is the time, if this will even work, etc...
No one is forcing anyone to do a SWE bootcamp and they might just not be rational anymore.
Like Codesmith was like $17K a few years ago and had like a 90% placement in 6 months. The math is ENTIRELY different than $22.5K and 43% chance.
Launch School Capstone had 75% placement within 6 months, so no these aren't fantastic. 6 months is an insane amount of time. That's $55K of opportunity cost as these salaries!!! So a drop is not good.
Codesmith has undergone turmoil to say the least internally but I think they have kept the instruction relatively consistent, so this could be more about the market than Codesmith.
But there is another option - no bootcamp, so doing the best they can in a bad market doesn't mean it's worth $22.5K
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I seriously think your a troll and I try really hard to treat everyone without assumptions, but like Reddit keeps flagging like ALL of you comments as 'may be from a spammer or someone likely to break rules'
I've repeatedly directly answers to you about what Formation is and what we do and why we don't have a concept of a placement rate so I can only assume you are a troll at this point.
CA 180 day was 42% or so and this is 43% or so, so they align really well.
I've only seen recent data from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps were ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've only seen recent days from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps we're ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
I edited to add Launch School. Believe it or not, I respect that Codesmith at least tries to publish consistent data on a consistent cadence and I didn't want to put it side by side with Launch School which makes Codesmith's placement rates look way worse.
The problem this is Launch School has every single graduate accounted for and a ghosting grad isn't included. Codesmith includes LinkedIn verified ghosters in their data.
What would you recommend I do, just only publish Launch School's in this case?
Yeah, I would say anyone at FAANG, heavily involved in hiring entry level talent, during the early 2010s would have a similar view for those eras.
The 2020s I think I have a bit more of a unique perspective by working with bootcamps from tons of bootcamps (specifically: Hack Reactor, FullStack Academy, Codesmith, Launch School, General Assembly, Flatiron School, Lambda School) I have a lens into a bunch of different programs and the strengths and weaknesses of people from bootcamps compared to degrees. As well as a unique view to compare bootcamp grads later in their careers VS cs grads.
1. This person was not in Formation, they did a different program , a Netflix program. They have a certificate from Netflix, signed by Netflix, showing this on their profile.
2. We don't hire Fellows as Teaching Assistants, we don't have Teaching Assistants at Formation and we don't have classes or lectures or courses or anything. Fellows is the name of engineers we work with to level up. It's a vague and ambiguous word so I understand the misunderstanding, but you also should be trying understand our language that we use consistently because this is a word that doesn't mean job universally and in our industry it's the standard word for our customer that places like Pathrise use as well. Like if you visit another country and insist on speaking English and being upset people don't understand you... it's your job to understand.
3. The industry standard is for students to put "pathways" p…
We have people who have been with us for a long time and our bar used to be any SWE work experience in 2019 to 2022, then was 1+ year 2023 -> and then 2+ years in 2024.
I was replying to a comment about the current state of Formation that someone was criticizing.
There can be edge case people people from a long time ago that place that have less experience and we also have a handful of people we accept now with less than 2+ years of experience.
You're right I shouldn't say "only take". We only market to and and only consider people with 2+ years since 2024 and reject others, and we have exceptions and edge case for one off reasons who come back and make a case or explain their circumstances on a call.
We also have partnerships with Netflix and Waymo where we prepare interns for their corresponding interviews. And those people are not paying $2500 a month, are not paying anything, and…
How do we benefit from the bootcamp industry being ruined exactly?
I've told you time and time again that people on LinkedIn are a small edge case group of people about formation and you have zero idea and it's completely confidential who actually goes there so it is impossible for you to know the demographic better than I do.
so unless you think I'm blatantly lying to you in public then I'm not too sure what the argument is that you're making.
The three eras to me are defined not necessarily by dates but by bootcamp trends.
The dates in my original post don't align super well and I have to spend more time thinking of the dates if they matter at all.
1. Era 1: super intense in person bootcamps for super smart people that had to prove themselves to get it, worked crazy hard, and got very good outcomes.
This was very non-diverse, a lot of young single professionals with a lot of savings and no families or who could pack up their lives to move to SF.
This is where bootcamps came from when they started out.
The canonical one here would be the earliest days of Hack Reactor.
Big tech was hiring these people if they passed interviews. There weren't a lot of grads for a broad trend but some made it through!
2. Era 2: DEI. Big companies realized that non-traditional sources of talent could help increase diversity because CS grad…
ELABORATED ANSWERS:
1. No one is falling for it:
a - Applications and enrollments to bootcamps have absolutely tanked. I can't give too much away in my sourcing here but I have hot off the press anecdotes and it seems to be falling off a cliff from already painful numbers.
b - I don't know any company that his historically hired bootcamp grads that is knowingly hiring them (i.e. they aren't faking it and getting fake letters of reference) other than apprenticeships and the anti-DEI shift has diminished or ended a lot of those.
2. Market cooled:
a - it cooled for entry level SWE roles from 2020-2022 and particularly bootcamp grads
b - agencies don't hire for level and they hire for specific skills so I expect agency hiring hasn't changed much and wouldn't push back on that.
3. No one is hiring bootcamp grads:
Ok sure "no one" is too harsh. It's extremely rare to see job postings w…
It depends on the person but in the current market if you have 2+ years of real SWE experience we can generally help you. We do a lot of job hunt and resume work but I completely agree that we can't beat the market - we used to take more people right out of bootcamps with minimal experience (like working at the bootcamp itself, or contracts, some people faked their work experience and go through) and we increased that threshold in the bad market.
But if you have 2+ years of experience in any legit SWE job you can get into big tech, I see it multiple times a month. It takes longer if your background is less strong, like in the past few weeks we had placements at Meta, Google, and Stripe of people who had been with us for like 2 WHOLE YEARS and wouldn't meet the criteria on this post. If you work with mentors from FAANG-adjacent companies for weeks and weeks you eventually absorb some of…
I've seen a number of bootcamp success stories over the past year (speaking personally, not professionally) across a range of bootcamps and I'm super inspired by the individual stories and journeys. Like almost tear jerker level of impressive grit and determination.
This weekend I felt really sad after hearing a story because the larger problem is these things just aren't reproducible.
Each person has their own story and the mechanics of how it happened are unique to that person.
The common traits are grit and curiosity that stand out as the top 20%.
Meaning if you went to a bootcamp, and there were 20 people in your cohort, you have to have more grit than 16 other people, so if they are working late, you have to work later, etc... If they are digging into "why" something is the way it is, you have to dig further.
If you consistently do that for 6 months post bootcamp you have a b…
Yeah at Formation we support people until they get a job and it's very understandable that some people will change their mind and not job hunt, or change paths.
On a human level, at Formation, if you do 100 mentor sessions, a hundred practice tasks, and you change your mind about job hunting, it's not fair to get your money back or not pay anything. We'll keep supporting you and you are choosing to leave.
Ultimately the contract you sign governs the relationship though and if you owe the money you'll owe the money, so if you don't want to compromise and approach the situation reasonably then you shouldn't expect to not pay anything. You are working with businesses and you are asking all your peers to pay for you if you do that.
For example, if a program offers you a contractual promise that they don't fulfill and the contract says you don't owe anything then you shouldn't pay anything…
1. first try free and cheap online resources and courses until you feel like a couple of things are clicking
2. look at Launch School - it's the "slow way" to becoming a SWE, but it works well if you are a good fit. The reason it works is because it's small and only takes people who are very likely for it to work for
3. consider bootcamps ONLY TO LEARN not to get a job. you might get a job, but you should look into them as a way of learning skills you don't have in an intense way and if that approach will work for you. Codesmith is like $22.5 for 14 weeks so that's like $1500 a week and for some people it's worth that much "just to learn", for many it's not - and the curriculum itself is like not the same as the public content they do - it's more like 2 hour long slide show lectures on a topic + projects.
4. consider an online masters like Georgia Tech OMSCS - this is ideal if you hav…
Formation isn't a school and doesn't teach any concepts like that. We are a place to practice problems, get feedback, benchmark, enhance your job hunt and do mock interviews.
We believe there are tens of thousands of hours of excellent materials out there and we try to help you navigate that.
All of our efforts are out towards our product and you can see form our launches blog how much effort that is.
Codesmith doesn't have dynamic scheduling of 500 sessions a week, source thousands of job posts a week and provide personal recommends and network outreach, provide a job tracker tool that helps you prepare for upcoming interviews through personalized practice and interviews automatically, collect and read about a dozen feedback points per person every week, provide a personal algorithmic feed of things to work on, provide a custom built on platform collaborative coding environment suppo…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
It's not that at all.
They are gaslighting critics of Codesmith hahaha by countering facts with cherry picked numbers and then telling the critics they are wrong.
But the students are genuinely rewiring their thinking to believe they are mid level and senior engineers.
It takes 12 weeks and lots of tactics:
- if you are ever negative you do correction meetings to readjust your mindset to be positive
- You have to emoji like every post and an instructor apparently complained they didn't get enough emoji reactions for example.
- you are told you have imposter syndrome and the solution is to follow Codesmith's resume advice to fix it and to trust them because you have imposter syndrome and aren't thinking properly about your work so you have to trust Codesmith's way as the "reality"
This stuff actually works though! Like people systematically come out thinking this way and when Codesmit…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Apparently someone said there are no support engineers available for March for resume and mock interviews?
It's sad if Codesmith worked for you back in the day but it's imploding right now they don't deserve people's money right now.
I can't believe one of their leaders texted an alumni who was considering Formation and told them 'it's a waste of money and Codesmith will give them all they need for life'
Sure.... 'all they need'.... we have hundreds of mock interview slots available for the next week.
Does doing your research include looking at reports and asking critical questions and then interpreting answers?
Question: the ghosting rate for placements went from 15% to 65% from 2022 grads to 2023 in CA reports, what happened there? Why are alumni not responsive and is there a problem continuing in 2024?
The problem, whether you think I have biases or not, is that I **do my research** and I show it to people. When things are good, I publish good.
There has been nothing good in the past 2 years, no silver lining, nothing. There have been anecdotal one off success cases.
Codesmith added 5 lectures of AI to their curriculum that are already dated and worse than the free stuff from Andrej Karpathy on Youtube... and they intentionally chose to go all in on an AI curriculum that they knew was changing daily and they didn't have any unique expertise in teaching.
Like I wish I had more…
Do you know for sure that he intentionally copied Hack Reactor? As in his strategy was "I'm going to copy Hack Reactor's material and teach it better" or was it "I'm going to start a school, all bootcamps are the same, I'm just going to follow the curriculum Hack Reactor did because it doesn't matter"
Both are wrong, but one is criminal and one is a civil lol.
There are a bunch of bootcamps that have pivoted to AI and started to abandon/pause/not improve their SWE support like App Academy, BloomTech, Codesmith, and there are new AI-only bootcamps popping up.
The problem is that no one is an expert in AI tools yet and they change literally week to week. First it's Devin, then Cursor, now it's Windsurfer. It's co-pilots, its about data protection, it was about giant context windows and now it's about reasoning models, like.
I'm going to post top level in a sec about this.
Yeah I've actually seen some Codesmith grads start an LLC for their project. Not sure if the IP paperwork is on the up and up there, but running an LLC teaches you something! haha.
Before I did Formation, we ran a company called Buildschool that WAS a free bootcamp, where senior engineers did paid contracting projects and the students learned by shadowing those projects and some became paid contractors on them later on was a really good model and a lot of those people placed and have great jobs.
The problem is the projects don't scale. Each one is different and unique. But like I keep saying, if you stay smaller and hands on focused on placement, it could work.
Yeah I'm really curious what's working for entry level jobs. I have a very good handle through Formation on FAANG-mid-level and FAANG-senior.
As you know, I keep a close eye on Codesmith as the largest 'top 3' bootcamp, and placements are still terrible there and half the people placed have over a year of "work experience" on their LinkedIn which is their 3 week long project. I had some AI analyze that and it didn't do a good job to publish, but it was ridiculous to see maybe half the placements relying on framing a 3-4 week project as 12+ months of experiences only because they put "X - Present" on their LinkedIn and have been job hunting for 12+ months.... A bunch of the people also worked at Codesmith as a teaching assistant and they delay their clock by the time they worked there. So someone who graduated 2 years ago, was a part time assistant for 6 months, has 1.5 years at their gr…
Wow that's a lot of hustle to try to find paths for grads and I think it's really the only way for bootcamps to survive right now.... by dedicating 150% of your time to trying to find any nook and cranny of advantage for your grads in a market so bad that each partnership puts only a small debt into the problem and you find something deep inside to keep on going.
We've seen a similar level of trying creative angles at Launch School (e.g. open source mentorships on Firefox and such).
Others give up and try to pivot to AI, like App Academy completely stopped its SWE program and only does AI - same with BloomTech. Launch Academy paused entirely.
Some of the larger ones like General Assembly and Galvanize are somehow keeping the lights on and I would like to know more about them.
I'm very nervous about Codesmith, which was arguably the top bootcamp based on outcomes until 2023, and which…
Haha Formation is far from perfect but we have an advantage to scale for sure because of our dynamic scheduling engine that gets better the more people we have. We match people up through hundreds of mentorship sessions every week, all scheduled for scratch based on what topics people need to practice, availability, and seniority level. So the more people we can match from, the better the matches end up being!
BUT! The downside is that with such a dynamic schedule, it's more likely for a mentor to have to reschedule or for people in a group to have to drop out. So to make it work, we have to have layers and layers of product and algorithms to handle these cases and make them as least abd possible.
Another aspect of scaling is our mentors. Because Formation doesn't teach anything or have any curriculum and instead we facilitate mentorship and practice: you might like or dislike a mentor…