I don't know what to say other than facts are facts and making up your own story based on your imagination doesn't hold up.
1. We don't compete with Codesmith. I've asked Codesmith to stop telling people that because it makes people like you think we do when it doesn't hold up in any capacity. The people that teach Codesmith do Formation, not the students, and maybe that is confusing but it shouldn't be.
2. "Often over 150 or 160k" is wrong and because you referenced CIRR earlier and should know that data. Their 2022 FTRI had about 780 starts, 732 grads. 708 job hunting. 574 had placements in 360 days. 499 had salaries and 121 had salaries over 140K. That is 15% of starts for 140K+ which is more people than make 150K, which is fantastic but it's not the norm.
Codesmith is an amazing choice for the right people and I tell those people to go to Codesmith, but portraying it as something…
1. I've explained numerous times why Formation doesn't publish CIRR or similar outcomes and that we aren't a coding bootcamp.
Since you seem to know Formation better than I do, explain to me what "graduation" means at Formation? This is the core principal of all bootcamp outcome standards that I can't figure out what that means for us.
If you can't explain "graduation" accurately then just back off and stop spreading nonsense about us. If you can thoughtfully read the specs and propose what it means for us, then we can talk keep talking about it productively about why I agree or not.
2. We advertise all over Reddit and we re-target people who visit our website. Drawing false conclusions is not fact. Raw data is fact. So asking "Why do I see ads for Formation in this sub?" and getting a completely open and transparent answer is exactly what I'm talking about being open and transparent…
Rithm, Launch School, and Codesmith are the three I always suggest looking at as a wide range of styles and types of learning. I'm currently NOT recommending Codesmith because they had 1/3 to 1/2 layoffs, and announced a number of changes and I want to let those settle in before resuming recommendations. I've heard that instruction is stabilizing as those laid off depart, but it will take a bit more time.
I appreciate the clarification about your personal feelings.
1. I don't think this is fair that you say above:
>The AMA is something I’ve done on my own volition as Codesmith’s Director of Outcomes, to provide an open space to talk about our CIRR reports, reporting standards, and graduate outcomes
Yet this was advertised by your CEO and in you CSX Slack in a giant image as an ["Official Reddit AMA" ](https://files.slack.com/files-pri/T7X3836NN-F06SK9BNY9W/ama.png)
I genuinely feel bad about the personal feelings, but unfortunately you are also the Director of Outcomes who was doing an Official Reddit AMA.
2. Similar to another commenter, I was also offended by this, in my personal opinion:
> Please all - go have a great weekend! Get outside, read a good book, spend time with family and friends.
I stayed up until 1am doing a super important infrastructure upgrade at Formation. The…
I mean it wouldn't surprise me at all if people are showing up at Codesmith and saying that they want to join Formation soon? and should they do Codesmith at all? But that doesn't mean that we are an alternative to that program. And people aren't choosing to do Formation VS Codesmith and comparing their options and outcomes the way Annie portrayed above. If someone is doing that it's because they misunderstand.
On our side we actually encourage those people to do Codesmith and come back later. On their side if they encounter confused people and are portraying Codemsith and Formation as similar options then they are not helping at all in getting people to the right place at the right time.
I can state officially that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the time and choosing between them.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that wouldn'…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…
I stay told to not comment on the AMA, but my questions weren't critical. they were just hard questions. They are looking at data intelligently and asking questions from it. I saw a Launch School AMA where all of the questions were like that and they were extremely strong supporters of the program that asked them.
I was super concerned that the Codesmith poster also expressed concern that she feels like I'm ever present in her work and I have no idea where that came from and I've never seen her before until the call yesterday that they had where I was present camera on with my full name.
Codesmith shares so much student and user information, code, content widely that if she is unaware of that I think that that's on them to figure out and not to blame on me. But now I see where this attitude comes from. If a leader feels like that, it tells me they have absolutely no clue whatsoever how…
I mean if you look at what we do and IK does and Pathrise does, it's a really completely different way of operating.
Bootcamps are human-centric business. Codesmith has almost no actual code, the engineers work on their Main website and CSX website.
Pathrise, IK, and Formation are all platforms with a bunch of proprietary technology to help people prepare for interviews and job hunts.
It would be like a small fine dining restaurant changing to selling food in the grocery store.
It's possible, but it's not as obvious as it sounds.
Yeah interviewing.io is great for doing 1 to 3 mock interviews.
There are a few newer competitors that you can look into like hellointerview.com
I'm the cofounder of Formation, we don't officially support the UK, but we do on a one off basis, and our competitors are Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and you can look into those as well. All of these options are the many thousands of dollars range of cost but more consistently fill in the the last 20%, but are way more time commitment and way more expensive than just a few mock interviews.
All these options are worth looking into to see if something feels like a good match for what you think you need.
It's extremely condescending for you to think you know who I am better than me and what my company does better than me. It's fair game to ask me questions and challenge my answers, but not to personally attack me and who I am.
If you think I spend a lot of time on Reddit, then you should see how much I get done at Formation, it's 100X more. Just imagine what an engineer that prolific can accomplish. If you don't believe me, that's on you, you've seen my GitHub and comments about how responsive I am 24/7 to Formation Fellows as the priority over Reddit and other people.
I'm exceptionally good at what I do. I was THE number ONE code producer at the ENTIRE COMPANY of Meta. I left 7 years ago and I'm still in the top 30 or something - that's how far ahead I was even when I left.
You have absolutely no right to judge me and what I do just because your imagination is limited to what you can…
Consistency and integrity always triumph over trolling so I'll keep doing my thing.
My priority is Formation's Fellows. We are approaching 10 Meta offers in 2024 and a few of them were in the 7 figures with their stock, so trolls be trolls and I'm busy with more impactful things and trying my hardest to make a difference in people's lives, not warming the heart of a Reddit troll. All I have is my integrity and I stand up for my integrity.
Are you saying that people should be pressuring schools to join CIRR or pressuring them to be more transparent? Or are you implying that CIRR is the only source of transparency?
Rithm School and Launch School are best of the best bootcamps and both have a similar vision of providing transparent data and choose to not be in CIRR because of they have different views on transparency than CIRR does.
If CIRR is going to put efforts in lobbying to try to brand themselves as the only transparent source of bootcamp data, it's not surprise no one wants to be a CIRR member and don't reply to your emails.... the spec is full of issues and problems.
I don't even want to help fix those because you aren't open and transparent about how the spec is managed. You said you had a meeting to adopt the spec AND approved the results at the same time? and the new spec was published alongside results instea…
I completely agree and support correcting the time windows for CIRR and also observe a lot of people mistaking them, but it's also true that this period is for the very last graduate on Dec 31st, 2022.
The first graduate who started Codesmith in Sept 2021, graduated in Jan 2022 and wrapped up the job search by Dec 2022 took 1.25 years to show up in public data here.
Rithm School criticized this this morning as well, that the annual reporting cycle causes a 6+ month delay in getting that data from earlier people, even the 360 day data, not just the 6 month one! And they don't like that and do their own standard as a result.
No drama when people are boringly transparent and don't have a single thing to read between the lines: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith's CEO just says straight up like Launch School's founder did, people had low morale and started ghosting from Codesmith and it was devastating blow to Codesmith's culture and one of the reasons they shrunk down 70% (est. 1000 alumni in 2023 vs on pace for 300 in 2024) so they can re-focus on a tighter and more supportive group of residents, then that's FANTASTIC.
All of the alumni from BEFORE this "ghost era" who had that great culture should cheer on that kind of change instead of misleading prospective students that everything is still fine because Cod…
+1 it can go both ways for sure and I didn't comment on salaries at all.
That said, there are always people who ghost salaries every half, and it's generally a smaller number, but it REALLY tanked this half and I think something else is going on. Like combining all of this, 25% of people are ghosting in some way in H2 versus hardly anyone in H1 and the market only got worse in the rest of 2023 for H1 2023 grads.
It should be zero surprise that sentiment on this sub is bad and that enrollment tanked 70% in end of 2023 and it's certainly not me pointing this stuff out that's causing it. Smart engineers making $130K salaries can figure this out by talking to these alumni and hearing about this stuff from them.
Now I have inside info here that end of last year, Instructors were asked to text and reach out to alumni to try to get placement info out of them via whatever means they could to…
From the interview prep company point of view, like Pathrise, Formation, Interview Kickstart, these places aren't schools and aren't 'education' and I can't see why they would join CIRR (personal opinion)
It might end up bing a waste of time to come up with a standard you think will work for these companies by observing from the outside without getting to know how they work first.
I know for Formation, it would be like making a standard for Personal Trainers for how good they are at being a personal trainer based on analyzing all of their clients. Some people are overweight and want to just lose weight. Some people are in good shape and want to get ripped. Some people want to get skinny. Some people want to run a marathon. Some people want to be a sprinter. Some people are recovering form injuries.
Like weight lost, muscle gained all misleading metrics. Some people want to lose weight…
I think you're trolling me so I'm going to link to my recent answer about this too: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bm94be/comment/kwdvx3n/)
And my most recent post before the CIRR one today was about Launch School: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch\_schools\_2023\_capstone\_outcomes\_commentary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1blhhh0/launch_schools_2023_capstone_outcomes_commentary/)
If Codesmith did what Launch School did in that AMA and presentation, then there wouldn't be a discussion because it was just all super clear and transparent about what was going on in the market cohort to cohort and month to month.
I'm on Reddit representing myself.
RE: Formation, I've explained here fairly recently why CIRR or CIRR-like reports don't make sense in advancing open and transparent understanding of what Formation does. Maybe some other standard would but until we get to a point where Pathrise, Interview Kickstart and us need a standard, we publish information on our blog about outcomes: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1bhvmzf/comment/kvi0wyz)
I see this post getting downvoted so I'll just add that I had nothing to do with this post, had no idea it was coming and got a push notification like anyone else, but I do know who this person is based on the trajectory.
The bootcamp they are talking about indeed doesn't exist but was around in 2017 to 2019. It was Sophie's company where she single handedly ran an in person iOS bootcamp for 0 to 1. It was free and had an expensive office in downtown SF and was intended to be a small business that broke even. I worked on the learning platform (which is now a toy project some Fellows work on at Formation to practice SWE skills) and the back office stuff.
VC funding presented itself and she considered it so she could hire a team but we had to focus on a larger market than bootcamps. So we decided to pick up where bootcamps leave off, and that's what Formation is. While there are a ton of…
A couple of Codesmith alumni are constantly on my case and claiming that I'm trying to put down Codesmith and get people to go to Formation instead. Now I don't really want to talk about Formation but I'm going to try to use this as an example of my constant points about this and I hope this doesn't seem like an advertisement.
(Apologies to the commenter that I used this comment as an example)
But this trajectory is not that uncommon and in fact it can be improved beyond this for those that want to prioritize work and want to work at big tech, and that's what FORMATION does. We help at that 2021/2022 mark in this trajectory to get to the E4 mid-level $300K job at top tier tech companies. We are NOT designed to help with the 2020 first job like Codesmith does.
Now not everyone wants to do that, but for people that do, you pay around $10K to Formation to hopefully make that 2023 jump to…
Whole range, canonical E4 (FAANG mid)/E5 (FAANG senior) is the most common, skewing E4. The most senior placement was a FAANG staff level. In the current market the majority of people who have joined in the past few months are high mid or senior as well.
This is an example of a more senior person and hopefully we'll have some public examples soon (a couple of people right in that 6 to 8 year bucket who got senior Meta roles): [https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/](https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/)
The mentors range as well. We have those super senior managers and principal engineers - generally for specific 1-1 mocks. And we have more mid level mentors that run small groups sessions who are really good at coaching or specific technical topics.
In comparing to [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) - we want the equivalent of those "expensive"…
Very different things. I think we are somewhat competitive but we're more directly competitive with Interview Kickstart than Interviewing.io.
**Interviewing.io:**
- Good to do one or two interviews if you have an upcoming interview and have no idea if you are prepared
- Good for benchmarking - you know how close to the bar you are.
- Okay/but less good at levelling up - you can buy interview packages and get 1-1 feedback, but it's limited to coaching sessions and there isn't day to day or broader job hunting support
- Not good if you need 5+ mocks with senior people as the cost will be closer to Formation cost and Formation gives you a ton more value.
**Formation:**
- Ultimate goal - get you the highest chance of passing top tier interviews and identifying and getting you whatever mentorship and practice you need to get there
- Very broad coverage - DS&A, SD, technical behavioral…
For the past year we don't accept anyone without a year of SWE experience, and literally a handful of people who appeal to come in with say 6 months of experience but are clear on their goals and aligned, so no one recently does them back to back.
We've had way more people come back to Formation twice and pay us twice (or three times) than we have people who have done Formation immediately after graduating Codesmith.
The fact that people come back to Formation multiple times and pay us each time is a very clear indication we are not remotely anything similar to Codesmith. We don't teach anything.
The personal trainer analogy is much stronger. Hire a personal trainer, get into shape, good for a few years, have new training goal, get into better shape again, good for a few more years. Have a kid, need to make routine changes, get into shape again.
\`I think it is very difficult to obje…
Talking out loud and whiteboarding-style prep are two big ones to practice, that is very different from crushing through LC problems in your room alone.
This is very bias and not meant to be an ad at all, but I highly recommend following a "problem solving process" rather than just trying to solve a problem based on ones you've seen before. This is the one I helped create: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/) <- I'm commenting here as an individual and not on behalf of my company
There's always a chance you'll get a new problem and you don't want to fail the interview because you spent 6 months memorizing a list. Not only that Meta doesn't want those people, they want people who can solve problems. The same approach works with Google interviews as well.
Finally, SD and the technical behavioral round are also important…
The problem I have with Codesmith alumni is that I'm not in fact attacking Codesmith or defaming them. I'm reporting on the facts, some are good and some are bad. But the WORST of all is the market for entry level jobs, which Codesmith has absolutely no control over, and that's the primarily reason people aren't going to bootcamps right now, not anything that Codesmith is doing poorly.
Formation isn't a competitor to Codesmith but I'm happy to tell you how we are doing. You can read it on our blog. Our 2023 offers tanked and people's average first year total comp increase dropped from $100K to $80K. Our top tier placements tanked from 75% of all placements to 50%. This is on our blog since December 2023. In 2024, which is not published anywhere, top tier placements are back up to 75% and average comp increase is $117K. We don't have any placements rates because it doesn't make sense the…
We aren't a school, don't teach anything, and don't educate. What we do is unique and the closest competitors are IK and Pathrise and we're still unique amongst then. It's on us to explain what we do in our marketing and materials, but we haven't figured it out yet so I'm here telling you directly from the source of truth to try to help.
I would love if you actually listen and ask questions to clarify and talk to me about what Formation does and then I don't have to write essays.
Which competitors am I discrediting? Our competitors are Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco (before they kind of went MIA) and I never say anything to discredit them on Reddit or anywhere and I've even ENCOURAGED people to go TO SPECIFIC ONES in specific situations, e.g. for Product Management - which we don't help weith.
Our recruiters talk day in and day out with people considering between these options (or only considering Formation) and these are our competitors.
It comes up like ONCE a month that someone is considering a bootcamp OR Formation and the recruiters escalate to see if the person is experienced enough for Formation. The bootcamps vary from Codesmith to Springboard and the majority of the time if the people don't have experience we tell them to go to a bootcamp.
If someone has legit SWE experience for 1+ years they should not go to a bootcamp in almost all circums…
What information have I refused to release? I've explained extremely transparently what information we have and don't have, and why we do what we do. You can see an entire list of every single placement's company on our blog.
If you think that CIRR would work for Formation, you don't understand what Formation is and how it works, and coordinated downvoting my comments doesn't make you all understand what Formation is better than I do.
If you want me to give you a CIRR report you have absolutely no idea how Formation works and you should not be signing up whatsoever until you understand what it is and what you are getting.
We very transparently explain the average compensation gain of a placement which tanked last year from $100K to $80K and will hopefully be much higher in 2024. We were also transparent about how top tier placements tanked from 75% of outcomes to 50% (which is back u…
Just to be clear, this post was a personal opinion and not one of Formation and not about Formation.
RE: Formation, I take that as feedback for sure, I don't think the 750K number is really effective too, but it's accurate and it's what our competitors do, so we took the easy there as we focused on other parts of our website.... Which I think is the fundamental reason we're on such different pages here, Formation isn't a bootcamp and CIRR-type data makes no sense. We've tried to cut numbers with artificial time windows for banks and loan providers and all those people love them and support us strongly, but we don't share them publicly because they used for math for finance people and don't help an individual understand their journey and likely would only mislead them because of the unique commitment and path that each person takes.... the timeframe is largely up to the person.
Not all…
NuCamp, Springboard, BloomTech are ones I know of that take experienced engineers as part time mentors.
The interview prep platforms like Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise also have industry mentors and pay more, but typically more experienced ones. 4 years at FAANG might be sufficient for some of the options there. I could look at your background and give more advice if you share it with me.
The challenge of posting here is they will be directly confronted by me - with my personal hat on, not moderator hat and not Formation hat - in a neutral territory about the three topics I have person opinions on:
1. Constant, loud statements that they product mid-level and senior engineers with zero experience
- I think this is the one we can debate well, because it's a definitions issue, and a debate over what definition Codesmith should use to communicate accurately to the public
2. OSP representation. I would never accuse them of explicitly telling people to lie because there is only evidence of the contrary. But I would not accept any other comments on anything without an explanation as to why they let the majority of people who get jobs exaggerate their experience and if they weren't aware, what they will do about it now that they are.
- I think this one would be scary for Code…
No worries, was just answering very literally like a log-like answer hahaha
But yeah I've known Don for a long time now.
Formation sponsored one of his videos about 2 years ago, and Daniel and Sophie from Formation did a couple of collaborations on mock interviews with him around then.
I used to go to his live streams so that's why he was responsive and knew me in the video and we know other's personalities pretty well.
This is my personal recommendation, not trying to sell you anything:
- If you have multiple interviews at "big tech"/FAANG-ish companies lined up that are about 1-3 months away, I would consider joining for 1 month, 2 months ($4500) or 3 months ($6000). The key is "multiple" becuase, as a I said, joining thinking you are paying a ton of money to pass one specific interview is not the right mindset to have. Lets say you didn't get any of those, we want you to leave feeling like you are still ready and feeling good about more interviews and that you got your money's worth. For people with offers, negotiation help alone can pay back 10X those costs, for others, feeling like they can pass DS&A, SD, hiring manager/technical behavioral/jedi/bar raiser interviews is worth it enough.
- If you are actively job hunting and 95% looking for a new job within the next year, but don't have any schedu…
1. No back of the envelope calculations. A lot of people are worried about that when this comes up, it's primarily used to help you identify which part of a system will break first under different usage patterns and that you should be able to do, math or no math.
2. I'm sure you'll find a ton of resources while Googling but two more I like that are:
The video archives from Meta's official conference website (specifically the product related ones about how core systems work) https://atscaleconference.com/
The author of Blind 75 has a website focused on product SD that has some free stuff too https://www.greatfrontend.com/
I should disclose that someone mentioned in the comments about Formation and I'm the co-founder - which is also why I know a lot about this because we help people professionally to pass these interviews. You should NOT join just to pass one single interview with one…
Yeah I agree with this but I'm really bias because of Formation so this is obviously a skewed position that I have.
Like I personally worked with someone to increase an initial offer by $200K first year TC and how much is that worth?
It's a really odd industry compared to most because the amounts of money thrown around a "typical" FAANG senior, staff, etc... engineer is not just like 8% per year compounded, but like 5X a junior engineer.
The amount of work on my side it takes to help that super senior person negotiate is less time, but a lot more extremely nuanced expertise that took years of exposure and observation to build.
It's a lot more natural to try to associate the cost with "what services am I getting, how many sessions, how many projects", etc...
**It's a lot harder to think of paying as an investment that will hopefully offer a return. Increasing comp by $200K first y…
Yesh same for Rithm and Launch School. The main difference in grads is how they present themselves and not in their skill sets or experience levels. I tend to see a little more adjacent tech experience at Codesmith but not enough to target higher level jobs. That experience though could maybe explain why Codesmith grads who really frame that adjacent experience as technical coding experience, can get $130K jobs at less tech focused companies. But no reason a Rithm grad could do the same strategy.
Yeah I try to explain Formation over and over and each time I have to repeat things not because I'm being annoying but because people might not have seen previous answers and not familiar.
If you are curious how we are doing now, because we have an adaptive mentorship platform model we can adjust in real time and we've therefor adjusted more senior and seen very good placements in February and March so far, this is unedited list other than < 10 person startups removing the name for privacy, and there are a couple Meta and Microsoft offers that haven't been signed yet!
||
||
|Scale AI|
|Google|
|Oracle|
|<STARTUP TOP TIER>|
|JP Morgan Chase|
|Atlassian|
|Meta|
|Meta|
|Netflix|
|JP Morgan Chase|
|<STARTUP 2ND TIER>|
|Google|
|CoreWeave|
|Arista Networks|
|Doosan|
|Withe|
Everyone at Formation has a different timeline, does different things, has different needs, and it's very hard for us…
Hi, I looked this up, and I don't feel like I was super involved in that post or thread, but sorry you feel that way. I do indeed participate in a lot here, which I hope encourages and stimulates productive discussion more than discouraging people from participating.
I have absolutely zero intention or standing (moderator or not) to doubt or question your personal experience as you see it. I have full intention and full right, just as a user, to question extrapolations and statements beyond personal experiences. So saying something like "I feel like I learned all the DS&A I needed at Codesmith" is not something I would question. Saying "Codesmith absolutely teaches you all the DS&A you need for any job" would be something I would absolutely question, because I have a examples that strongly counter that. This might be subtle but I think it's a huge difference that I take very seriously.…
Good question, it doesn't matter at all skills-wise how much experience you have to benefit technically from Formation, and you can do Formation for a fixed length of time if you are at the minimum skill bar (which it sounds like you might not have been yet on the benchmark) but don't have enough experience.
We just don't want you to think we have a magic formula to get you a job, and nor can we afford to pay more to mentor you than you pay us (which can happen if you are here for like 1-2 years) :P
Internship + Formation isn't quite enough experience right now for the unlimited Fellowship. We are actively exploring different shapes and sizes for different people though, because there is a lot of demand from people we currently don't support and that's where are month to month and short term packages come into play right now.
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation and before I got to the part about you applying I was going to say it's not a good fit if you don't have any experience yet, but it would be an excellent fit once you get your first job to level up to your next job.
Now in terms of advice/questions:
1. Yeah entry level FAANG is basically internship conversions + new grads via top tier CS schools right now and we'll see in the fall if that changes. Apprenticeships are extremely competitive. Contract to hire might be the only possible option and still not likely.
2. I think that's a good idea, getting a real product in the app store with real users can count as experience but I would give it say 6 months of real work-equivalent full time contributions to really make it count.
3. Real 40 hour a week experience on a single company/project can trump credentials yeah, but you need an equivalent amount o…
Yeah I think all that is fair. I just don't see how the person in that post would know I became a moderator unless they were on here very recently and noticed that I happened to be a moderator.
And yeah I mean I don't expect Eric K to ever like me, and I think if I had switched up the language a bit when I talk to Formation Fellows about a startup that closed down 10 years ago, and someone was just harping on that, it would be a bit irritating. I would probably message them and be like hey, this is what went down, and I was trying to summarize the experience maybe too casually and I'll be careful with how I talk about it in the future.
Anyways, I don't have anything personal against Eric K, maybe it's like politicians debating, who co-exist professionally but don't really see eye-to-eye.
I also don't think my personal treatment matters whatsoever and I'm not going to discourage anyone…
The raw evidence I've seen shows Codesmith on paper discourages people from lying about their experience - almost awkwardly directly - like it's said early on in the resume process and said firmly, so I think it's important to call that out to lay the pieces out there.
It's also a fact that they sign off on background checks for the time that you claim you were involved with your OSP. By default they sign off on your time in Codesmith but they sign off on it under OSLabs and under your main project, and not under Codesmith's name. And if you update a README 6 months latter and tell them you've been active over 9 months, the would sign off on that.
I've talked to two students who refused to exaggerate at all and were struggling on the job hunt and I honestly don't have much advice for them. But when you see how demoralized these people were, you start to piece together how another demor…
Wow 6 core staff and 6 TAs for 30 people seems like a lot actually hahaha.
Formation isn't a bootcamp so I won't try to explain our org chart, the majority of people are engineers, designers, PMs building the mentorship platform, and the next largest group is the Fellowship team that runs the flagship Fellowship we offer.
I know Codesmith pretty well - before all the recent changes: a full Cohort is 36 students. There is:
- 1 Lead Instructor
- 1 Instructor
- 1 Engineering Mentor
- 1 Admissions Coordinator (before you start) + 1 Program Coordinator (after you start) + 1 Outcomes Coordinator (after you finish)
- 2 to 5 fellows (TAs/former students on contract)
Company wide staff involved partially:
- 1 Head Instructor
- 1 Director of Programs
- 1 Program Manager
- 1 Outcomes Manager
- A number of on demand fellows who do things like resume review and code review
So overall 4…
This is also true. Almost all the mentors at Formation are industry engineers and some are great teachers and some aren't. Fortunately, we aren't a school and we don't teach anything, so being a good teacher isn't a requirement, but a mentor who is doing lightweight mentorship can be very polarizing and we have a whole PATENTED system for managing all the engineer <-> mentor relationships. It's crazy hard problem for a group of 8+ year FAANG product engineers to solve haha. I believe Codesmith has one contract product engineer that I know of and if they want industry "faculty" actually teaching as teachers in a school setting, that's even harder in my opinion.
Launch School is a little smaller and has always been smaller, and follows a vaguely similar idea to Codesmith. You spend a lot of time preparing to go to Capstone via the Core. Difference being Core is paid and more committed and CSX is free. Capstone is a little longer and the projects - also open source products - are a little more polished and legit.
So TLDR: depends on what works for you. If you like Launch School Core go to Capstone. If you like CSX and Codesmith public lectures go to Codesmith - although note I would pause and wait to see what's going on with these changes before locking it in. I'm sure everything will be totally find, but just calmly absorb what they tell you and process it, I'm happy to be a sounding board 1-1 if you are nervous about something they tell you to chat it through with an independent rational look at things.
Their goal is to hire you as an intern next summer, but it's fine to do internships this summer.
However, their goal is also to improve people's skills in hiring them and not just hiring people who are already at the bar. Formation is 15+ hours a week meant to improve you as an engineer, so they want people who are all in on that and not appearing to possibly trying to find a shortcut to get to Netflix.
So if you are committed and want to work at Netflix and ready to juggle Formation and an internship it probably can't hurt.
I don't know but Codesmith is one of them, also don't know who the new president is.
If the new president is from Codesmith then it basically makes CIRR a marketing tool to validate their outcomes, just like GRAD for Hack Reactor and Rithm 's own standard. Which is totally fine just have to realize that.
There are no bodies and I don't expect one to happen because CIRR had more force than anyone and failed to get schools on board.
Yeah it's certainly interesting. It's more of an object oriented systems design than bug scale systems.
Netflix historically hasn't hired junior engineers at all so it's relatively new to hire interns and new grads, and I think that is why they look for some of these things - it's a culture biased to senior engineers.
The highest score is 1000 but it's not linear.
hello@formation.dev!
Good question!
Netflix is looking for all kinds of skills beyond just DS&A, such as systems design skills, and you'll work on all of those during Formation.
Second, the assessment is just a gauge your readiness and doesn't have any actual code in it. To have the highest chance possible of passing the interviews you also need to practice other skills for how to work through a problem live with the interviewer, breakdown problems you haven't seen before, communicate well, and right clean code. So all of those things are things you'll work on as well.
Other people might have weaker DS&A but lots of potential and the program works for those people as well and will adapt for the things you need to work on.