BREAKING: IRS $118M BPA for Hiring and Training - 3 more companies including Gauntlet AI added to join FedStack and Lantec/Codesmith. More companies coming soon.
SOURCE: [https://orangeslices.ai/treasury-dept-ocio-awards-118m-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bpa/](https://orangeslices.ai/treasury-dept-ocio-awards-118m-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bpa/)
Some news broke earlier this year with a press release from Codesmith: "Codesmith Selected for $118M IRS Contract" and a number of people felt this meant that Codesmith received a check for $118M. That's not the case.
The $118M is a ceiling for training and hiring for the IRS, and the IRS just added three more partners to the contract, with more expected to be added.
Super interesting to see the pie being split up and fought over by competing companies and it seems they want as many contenders as possible.…
BREAKING: IRS $118M BPA for Hiring and Training - 3 more companies include Gauntlet AI added to Joining FedStack and Lantec/Codesmith. More companies coming soon.
SOURCE: [https://orangeslices.ai/treasury-dept-ocio-awards-118m-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bpa/](https://orangeslices.ai/treasury-dept-ocio-awards-118m-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bpa/)
Some news broke earlier this year with a press release from Codesmith: "Codesmith Selected for $118M IRS Contract" and a number of people felt this meant that Codesmith received a check for $118M. That's not the case.
The $118M is a ceiling for training and hiring for the IRS, and the IRS just added three more partners to the contract, with more expected to be added.
Super interesting to see the pie being split up and fought over by competing companies and it seems they want as many contenders as possible.…
Well I can give my personal opinion on that and I have been researching for a while.
I think Will is a gifted explainer. He said he wrote the Hard Parts originally because he didn't really know how to code well. I think he said in an interview he didn't know what a JS "Map" was when he wrote them. He has additionally said that he does talks when he wants to learn something because it forces him to learn in order to then present it to people as an expert.
So given that it's absolutely fascinating how well he can explain things he literally just learned.
He has additionally said that he never wanted to teach, but both his parents are teachers and he said that as a kid he would force his sisters into doing classes on the weekends at home where he would lecture to them on things....
So it sounds like he's a gifted lecturer and it's just his superpower.
My opinion is the situation is qui…
I have to disclose bias because my company works with engineers later in their careers to help prepare for interviews and about 1/4 of people were bootcamp grads in the past.
But I'm very curious how you even came up with the idea of going to App Academy because they sold their brand to Coding Temple and it's their course now as of about a year ago, so anything you heard about App Academy before then is completely irrelevant.
If you are asking if you should go to a bootcamp in general, there are a very small number of people who have industry experience that go to bootcamps and my opinion is that placement depends more on you than the bootcamp. Meaning the people that get placed didn't need the bootcamp, they needed a self confidence boost that the bootcamp gave them... like doing a 3 week project and framing it as 2 years of work to help get interviews and feeling confident in framing…
Mid-level roles could be an option if you have a network that can push for referrals.
In the old bootcamp days, you would get referred by previous alumni, you get an interview, they don't really care about your experience at that point, and you get the job if you prepared well and got coached by the alumni who referred you.
Now a days there is a bigger emphasis on hiring manager calls that dig deeper. Not just for red flags but for green lights, and if you don't have big tech mid level experience it will be hard to get a mid level role in big tech.
Meta had this "rotational engineer" program exactly for this case to transition you but, they stopped it and shut it down last year.
So that's why right now I recommend the adjacent engineer path if you can align something with your background.
Alternatively a mid level role at a smaller company that is hyper aligned with your pre-bootcam…
I can't disclose what Formation makes but I can say that we have hundreds of engineers doing interview prep at a given time and several thousand ever. But we're really not making that much money in revenue if you ballpark it and we have losses since day on.
I personally make $0 salary, have made $0 from equity, no sketchy backchannel compensation, and even put more money into the company when I can. I do it because I feel like the world will be a better place if people land the right role for them and everyone is more impactful than they were.
One of my hobbies is studying scams and fraud, and if all those scammers spent their energies on something value add for the world, we would be so much better off. If the bootcamps spent more energy with people getting outcomes then figuring out how to "creatively market" their poor outcomes, it would be better off. So I call out this behavior a…
Hey, I'm very familiar with this area, the transition (note, my company started because we saw gaps in people with non traditional backgrounds so that's how I know a lot about this, but we **do NOT accept bootcamp grads with no experience and I am not recommending at all to you).**
I have a FAANG lens and that's my bias, 400+ interviews conducted at Meta, trained interviewers, helped create interviews, candidate review, recruiting trips, juniors, interns, seniors, directors, etc.....
So first off, almost all bootcamps promise 'career support' and all these words on their websites, that basically we're not accurate. I got into many Reddit arguments 3 years ago with staff from a particular bootcamp that insisted it provided all the support you need for your lifetime (where the people conducting the mock interviews were mostly recent grads with minimal or no work experience).
The fact is…
BREAKING: Gauntlet AI (BloomTech, f/k/a Lambda School) launched Government Training Program, free program to prepare you for government AI/SWE roles.
SOURCE: [https://gfa.gauntletai.com/](https://gfa.gauntletai.com/)
I'm sure this will get a lot of popcorn because BloomTech had some past issues but Gauntlet seems to be a lot clearer on what it does, how it does it, etc... it takes top 2% IQ people, trains them for 80 hours a week for 12 weeks, and gives them $200K job and there aren't really any catches (at this time) and it's free because companies pay hiring fees.
It works because they transparently filter for top 2% IQs, makes sure they have the hustle needed through 80 hour weeks, and there is a huge demand for productive engineers.
They are launching a program to prepare you for government and they have a very transparent explanation for what it is. Four steps, very clear.
Gau…
BREAKING: Launch School Capstone 2024 Outcomes
SEE ORIGINAL: [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024\_capstone\_salary\_data/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1q2cvsx/2024_capstone_salary_data/)
Launch School is one of the remaining top programs, that announced a small cutback from 3 to 2 cohorts in 2026. These outcomes are very strong though still.
Overall for 2024 grads they had 66% placement rate for ALL ENROLLEES in six months (74% if you exclude non-job-hunting)
Early 2025 cohorts have a lower placement rate but a little above 50% so far.
Overall this is a good sign as the only CIRR reporting school that competes directly with Launch School is Codesmith and their 2023 data had a 42% placement rate (excluding non job hunting) in 6 months, which is almost HALF that of Launch School.
This isn't magic, Launch School's program takes a long tim…
PART 10
1. Given your ongoing ownership in Formation, do you accept that your actions could reasonably be viewed as financially motivated?
I don't accept that whatsoever no.
1. Has Formation’s pivot away from bootcamp training coincided with your campaign against Codesmith, and if so, is this related?
Formation never had a bootcamp training model, and never pivoted away from it. We've had the same platform since day one. The target audience has shifted more and more senior. We used to years ago have like 1/3 people bootcamp grads post graduation without work experience, 2/3 of people experienced software engineers. Now we have 99% of people with 2+ years of work experience. Nothing has actually changed internally, same platform, same interview prep, same mentors.
1. How do you respond to the observation that Formation students list their own training on LinkedIn in the same way you…
I need a blog post of equal length to explain that and am deciding if I should or not.
Formations's founder Sophie started a bootcamp in 2017.
In 2019 I joined her to start Formation after deciding bootcamps are not a good business model and we wanted to build an interview prep platform to help bootcamp grads land better jobs later on, rather than compete with bootcamps.
The explicit goal and reason we raised funding was to NOT BE A BOOTCAMP.
PART 1 (there are comment length limits so going to reply in pieces)
HISTORY:
* Novati left Facebook in 2017.
In 2009, Novati joined Facebook as a software engineer, progressing rapidly to the level of Principal Engineer (E7). He has publicly recounted a story about a game of Risk in which he deliberately betrayed Mark Zuckerberg, framing it as an example of “strategic thinking.” The anecdote offers an early insight into his competitive approach to professional relationships.
The Risk story is true. I don't agree with the characterization.
* Novati left Facebook in 2017.
True.
* In 2019, he co-founded the coding bootcamp Formation with his wife, Sophie Novati, who assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer. Novati became Chief Technology Officer.
Not true. Sophie started a free coding bootcamp in 2017 called Buildschool. She realized that coding bootcamps were not a scalable bus…
The courses are $1500 each (currently a discount offered)
Formation interview prep? You can get a $2500 a month membership, or you can pay $5000 upfront and an additional fee from $0 to $15000 depending on the increase in base salary over your current (or previous) base salary. The variable fee is currently structured so that if you don't get a job at all and leave, you don't pay anything extra, and the typical person is paying around $5000 additional (i.e. $10K total).
The interview prep does not 'teach' anything so you have to come in with already hirable skills and it's purely focused on preparing you for job interviews to increase your pass rate by practicing on our platform and by getting mentorship and feedback from our hundreds of industry mentors.
So just want to make sure everyone reading this doesn't mistake what we do for a bootcamp alternative given the context. We make mo…
My company doesn't offer training or education.
Our main product is an interview prep platform to help you receive practice and mentorship for your upcoming engineering interviews.
We also offer short and cheap AI training courses for existing experienced engineers.
The typical flow would be Person -> Bootcamp -> Job -> at least 2 years -> Formation.
Checking in on Codesmith a year later. After recommending Codesmith for 2 years I stopped recommending them a year ago because of massive staff loss, program cutbacks, and tanking outcomes. A year later, things are even worse 😭.
I'll try to summarize some history briefly and then get into the updates. I've been following Codesmith (and a handful of other programs) very closely for years now. I've spoken to dozens of students, staff, alumni, their CEO and have a very good idea what's going on. Codesmith doesn't like me. I've offered to help them, I've reviewed their students projects, I've pointed out security flaws, etc... but they see me as a "jealous competitor". I'm the founder of an interview-prep platform that has nothing to do with Codesmith and works with a bunch of Codesmith ALUMNI in the FUTURE job searches - all of whom thing we are very complementary. But nonetheless, I have…
1 YOE is taking a long time right now overall in the market and at Formation but I don't have exact averages because each person has different commitments and goals and it's not meaningful to average all people.
Additionally, we have people that had 1 YOE that joined like 2 years ago that it took 2 years to get a job... but the market when they joined was different then. So it's even harder to try to average people who started at different time because the market has been changing. It's like a bootcamps touring 2023 CIRR number when they very well know things are different now... I feel that kind of thing is misleading.
So to help advise I would need to know:
1. what is the 1-2 years of experience and what kind of company?
2. have you been promoted yet?
3. are you getting interviews either directly from recruiters or from applications?
If you work at a solid company, commit fully to F…
In case anyone is curious, here is what AI said about my last 3 years of Reddit activity:
"Here’s an unbiased summary of Reddit commentary by Michael Novati over roughly the past three years (from mid‑2022 to mid‑2025), covering common topics, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe:
---
Topics & Themes
1. Bootcamps & "Learn to Code" Critique
Skeptical of the bootcamp model. Novati has been notably critical of coding bootcamps—and especially the broader "Learn to Code" ideology. He highlights structural issues like oversupply of CS graduates, declining outcomes, and economic realities often overlooked by bootcamp marketing .
For instance, in /r/codingbootcamp he wrote:
> “The tech unemployment rate now exceeds the national average…” and argued “Learn to Code… ignored basic economics (oversupply depressing value/wages)” .
He has also raised doubts about data reporting by entiti…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
Here is what AI says to the question: "Is Formation Fellowship a paid job"
"No — Formation is not a paid job, nor does it offer employment. It’s a paid fellowship/training program (focused on interview prep and career coaching), not a salaried position."
Here is what it thinks about Codesmith: "are oslabs engineers paid?"
"Yes - OSLabs does pay engineers in at least one of its key programs"
Like I don't think you'll find anything anywhere that would make a reasonable person think Formation Fellows are paid roles - but acknowledge that edge case people might be confused because of the multiple definitions.
But in Codesmith's case like everything is blatantly twisted to appear that way.
This discrepancy is one of the 3 primary reasons I've been going after Codesmith.
Dictionary definitions aside, what the leaders of these companies do and stand for and their integrity matte…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The official on the record answer - we used the word Fellow because our industry doesn't have many competitors: Interview Kickstart and Pathrise. Pathris used the word Fellows so we copied them and used the word Fellow. So that our customers could compare the two familiarly.
I'm not trying to gaslight you but I Googled Fellow and this is the dictionary definition it presented and not any of them say anything about being paid.
The definition for "Fellowship" has two meanings, none of them saying anything about being paid either (I can only attached one screenshot, but pasted:)
1. friendly association, especially with people who share one's interests."they valued fun and good fellowship as the cement of the community"
2. the status of a fellow of a college or society."she held the Faulkner fellowship"
Formation is not affiliated with education/schools/universities and no where in our…
This has been up for a while but I feel like Outco is dead anyways. Like I think the founders moved on to something else. A number of people have been sued by them (and threatened to be sued) for not paying them after they thought they were eligible for the job guarantee refund and the collectors they talked to didn't seem that organized.
Pathrise also shut down.
I have a business principle that you ruthlessly have to focus on delivering value to people for what they are paying you or you shouldn't exist.
More bootcamps, interview prep programs, immersive, mentorship communities should follow this advice because far too many offer like a $50 Udemy course, add on recent alumni as mentors/teachers, add on intangible benefits like 'community' and charge $20,000.
You might get by if people get really good jobs and credit the intangibles.
But if you aren't trying to deliver value and are…
Yeah it's very small but they have a few mentors who did Coachable earlier on, legit mentors yeah.
Formation is less 1-1 on demand and we don't have 1-1 on demand technical mentorship. You have 4 dedicated non-technical support members on our team, and you do 1-1 mocks, office hours, but most sessions are 3 to 6 person small group sessions.
Interview Kickstart has even larger group sessions and then has some 1-1 thrown in there.
All very different.
Yeah Formation is costly if you are in Canada, so that makes sense and I think it could be an option but it's not a slam dunk if you are very FE oriented (because I think our SD prep is very strong and it's less relevant for FE). You could try it on the 1 week free trial and see but I would only consider if you are focused on the FAANG-level.
Hi, I'm the founder of Formation and Coachable is a competitor so I want to disclose that bias but I'm trying to answer without considering that.
So first off, Launch School you have to do Core first - which is meant for people starting out generally - and THEN you do Capstone.
It's more of a bootcamp model + a long rampup period.
If you feel like your FE work is like Web 1.0 web-dev or 'shopify store' dev then I would consider Launch School.
If you feel like your FE work was real work (which it sounds like it is) then I would consider an interview/career-accelerator like Coachable.
If Coachable is an option, Formation is an option too and I can explain more about it. Interview Kickstart is the third option. Pathrise used to be an option but it closed down.
All three are different.
If you want to stick to Frontend then I would consider Formation only if you want to do FAANG-Fronte…
1. Agree the core team/admin team and the instructor team is hardworking, no question there. But Codesmith's codebase is apparently a giant mess that looks like the largest OSP project - which isn't surprising because the people that work on it just graduated Codesmith. I would say the team has tremendous POTENTIAL but the technical people lack the experience to be called talented. Based on some alumni talk that someone told me about where Will tried to explain the Codesmith architecture (in an attempt to learn it himself) and it literally sounded like the worst code I've ever heard of for a 10 year old company that calls itself a tech company, something like deploying the entire codebase to 32 microservices that each ran one of them???
I know this sounds mean but it's just being real. Like every instructor I know that sees Codesmith defend the quality of the code or the legitimacy of…
Each week is completely dynamic and unique both to you and week to week.
Every Friday we run the algorithms and crunch a schedule of mentor led, peer based sessions for the next week and then assign them all out in the evening.
What you get depends on:
\- your workload that week
\- your schedule that week
\- your availability that week
\- your job interviews that week if you have any
\- everyone else's availability who need to work on similar problems as you
\- the mentors availability and FAANG-canonical level matching criteria to you and your group.
Then throughout the week you can book 1-1 mocks when eligible, book checks etc.. also join and release sessions.
Then in between you do practice problems, system design practice, benchmarks, etc... on various topics. The topics you work on depends on your progress, your workload etc...
We have some interesting "tasks" like to cha…
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,…
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…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took.
Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards.
It's just a pile of garbage.
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…
Hi!
1. Internships are like 5X the next point so it really is the biggest tip. But other tips are: network with past alumni as they might be able to help refer you, pay attention to companies or recruiters that come on campus (IRL or digitally) to recruit, try to be willing to move anywhere and consider jobs absolutely everywhere.
2. A MISTAKE was I was not remotely self aware of my communication in meetings and it was very bad, like absurdly bad. Like I was not good at energy and jumped too quickly to solutions without giving a chance for people to explore.
A MISCONCEPTION was that work would be really academically hard and raw intelligence was most important. Things weren't complicated but they were complex and success was about understanding and navigating the complexity. A corollary was that you I learned you could do just as well as the smartest people by our working them.
I wis…
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…
Hi, thanks for sharing details. The L4 -> 5 promotion in 2 years is good trajectory that should be helping you in job hunting.
1. Yeah, I feel like the life of the engineer for your entire career is just not knowing stuff and figuring it out haha. I theorize that engineers sometimes are so opinionated about odd things because it's what they know - and they shy away from things they don't know, but acknowledging you don't know a lot of stuff is better for you than trying to pretend you do or putting pressure on yourself to.
2. I'm surprised and first tip is to show your career progression on your resume instead of bundling all of Amazon into one item. That progression is the checkbox for FAANG "mid level"/Meta E4 bar. Amazon does have some negative signal some places right now and I haven't dug into why, but it might just be a flood of people looking for jobs from RTO - but I'm not sure…
I don't think predatory, but on the "delusional" aspect, it's probably too mean of a word.
Like I think Turing had arguments for believing they could finish out 2025, and the changes in the economy made that not possible.
Should they have known that a President who has said the word "tariffs" over and over for about 40 years might introduce tariffs? Yes.
Do they have a crystal ball to tell the future? No.
My centrist stance on this is that bootcamps have to be absurdly transparent right now into what is going on.
I'm absurdly hard on Codesmith more than Turing because they live in an alternate reality on this stuff and don't acknowledge anything publicly. Like if all your instructors turned over except for 1 in less than a year, something is absolutely, fundamentally, stop the presses wrong and you need to pause immediately and just rebuild or reset and come back in the future. But…
AI hasn't changed the interview FORMATs yet, but it's starting to change how people are interpreting them. For example, someone can (and always could have) cheat on coding interviews with AI, so it's making engineers focus really hard (and companies train engineers to conduct interviews this way) on the coding process and demonstrating strong coding thinking and understanding and not just writing code and calling it a day.
I'm not sure at Cap1 but at big tech, there is a bit more weight on behavioral and SD. Not a complete change. But let's say someone got a 'weak hire' on SD, and hire on all others, that might have been more obviously a hire in the past and maybe we take a deeper look into the SD now for why it was a 'weak hire'.
Cap1 has always had a more fixed process, I think they ask one of four SD questions all the time haha, so I suspect they won't be weighting things differentl…
Hi, I have a few ideas but would want to get to know you more personally to give better advice.
1. You can downplay your "senior titles" and just put them as "Software Enegineer" and produce a resume that fits more a canonical FAANG "mid level". Having a FAANG mid level resume might give you a senior title at startups too without having "senior" on there.
2. The DS&A/problem solving coding interview expectations though do NOT DEPEND ON LEVEL! At Meta, the bar was the same from intern through senior (and was even a bit lower for senior :S). So if this is your blocker, you have to practice things like NeetCode and Blind75. And the super important thing right now is to not just check off the boxes alone in your room/office, but to develop stronger problem solving muscles so you can consistently communicate a clear problem solving process in those interviews. It sounds like you are all ove…
I don't think the interview processes are broken. There's a saying, 'they are broken but they are less broken than the alternative'.
Anyone criticizing them should try to understand why they are the way they are first before making assumptions.
It's not stupidity and it's not gatekeeping.
DS&A problem solving interviews:
1. abstract away thousands of tech stacks to give everyone an equal footing
2. can be repeated consistently so thousands of candidates can have consistent interview processes
3. allow engineers to demonstrate the problem solving they want to see on the job in a problem that CAN be solved in 25 minutes (what real world problem can be solved that fast).
At Meta, the cost of doing just 1 interview was so high they looked for any reason to shorten interviews. It's why their DS&A are only 45 minutes and not an hour!
**It's all about reducing false positives for the mo…
Hi 👋,
* 3 years of experience as a SWE should line you up nicely for an E4 Mid Level Meta SWE role. You can also consider their adjacent roles like Partner Engineer and Business Engineer if you get rejected from the normal E4 "Product Engineer", "Infrastructure Engineer" roles.
* There is absolutely a bias against bootcamp grads - I've seen it bluntly from close friends who are recruiters. And the reason is because bootcamp grads OVERALL don't perform as well on the job because they are behind in experience. It's not personal and not about potential.
* So I would probably exclude them and focus on your current job, the most important things are
* **1. SHOW CAREER PROGRESSION (if you got promoted, don't just list you highest title, but show the dates and show you progressed quickly up the later)**
* **2. IDEALY DON'T JOB HOP - staying at the same company and progressing is much better…
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…
I couldn't disagree more and this comment demonstrates a lack of understanding of how top tech companies work. Maybe it's how other companies work though. Like I know Capital One, which isn't like a top tech company but is a good company, has a very gamble process. Codesmith has so many people there that feed each other questions to prepare and game the process, specifically the System Design round which is very fact based and a small number of questions there. Codsmith grads have a document that contains these questions and they practice them with previous grads who work there. They also have a channel at Capital One to support each other because most have to lie to get past the resume screen and work with more junior peers who outperform them at first, and they use this channel to support each other.
Anyways, the interview process isn't a game of leetcode and saying what you need to d…
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…
It's a rolling window, so the team is reviewing all the applications and if they choose to move forward with someone they will offer an interview right away, which they continue to review more applications.
I would expect the first pass to be complete this week or next week with initial wave of interviews offered and as we see how many people pass interviews and meet the qualifications (graduation dates, etc...)
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.
I don't think I could disagree more.
I work on an interview prep platform, which is unrelated to boot camps, but we've shipped hundreds of changes in the past year. we're going to start announcing a bunch of changes publicly because we want people to see just how insanely hard. we are trying to help people navigate the market, read how we continuously challenge our most basic assumptions and redo things and rethink things to match what's needed. week to week and once a month.
and yes, it's absolutely a rough market and a lot of people are having a hard time but if people are paying a lot of money then it's your job as a company to really give it your all.
so like I said, if the CEO is more interested in spending more so his time writing a book right now about AI ethics, that is nothing to do with software engineering placements. then I don't think that they deserve your money.
I can't tell if you are trolling, not understanding, or just have such a fixed mindset you aren't trying to understand.
How does that work exactly if someone is paying for a month subscription and someone else is paying for an unlimited membership with the goal of getting a job in 12 months.
What would either of those people get from an average placement time?
If someone has a three month subscription, what clock do we use for placement, 12 months from the end of that? What if they have a bundle and pay to extend a month and then get placed? Isn't that worse than if they got placed in the 3 month bundle they were hoping for even though they had a great job.
I believe most of our Fellows have full time day jobs, many do a couple sessions a week and have a long term timeframe and take a long time to place.
On the other hand a bunch of people were engineers who were laid off who are p…
Our full year report has been on our blog since December.
I think I wrote tens of thousands of words explaining our outcomes and there is no question I will not answer honestly.
Our main goals are salary increase and top tier placements because that's what people pay us to achieve.
We don't have a concept of a placement rate because it doesn't make sense for an interview prep program with a month to month membership that allows ramping up and ramping down week to week. It's not useful.
I've explained this to people on your team repeatedly and I struggle to believe you don't comprehend what I'm saying. If you have specific questions I try to elucidate or if you disagree and think we are bootcamp that can publish these things then explain why and I can respond or clarify misconceptions.
Better yet talk to your alumni that have done Formation and find A SINGLE PERSON who thinks Format…
Formation is an interview prep mentorship program that doesn't teach anything and everyone has a different experience. Our main competitor is Pathrise and with some overlap with Interviewing io and Hello Interview. The key is that engineers who come to us need to be already trained in the practical skills and we help them prepare for interviews and land the job.
Codesmith is a bootcamp primarily focused on people without SWE work experience changing careers, or otherwise with no SWE work experience. Codesmith is training underlying technical skills required by the job based on a fixed curriculum that all students do.
There is a small overlap for atypical cases. We take some people with no SWE full time work experience who have the circumstances where we think we can help. Codesmith takes some people with work experience who don't have underlying employable skills or project experience.
Hi, I'm a co-founder of Formation and can give my opinions from what I've seen.
Your case is borderline and it depends on your Data Engineer experience and your goals. If one of your goals is to be a Data Engineer at Netflix or Meta (where it's a distinct job but very SWE-adjacent/related and compensated the same) and then convert internally at those companies, then I would say MAYBE. We have a handful of people in that bucket and we can help, but we don't do any data-specific interview prep. We have a handful of mentors who are Staff+ Data Engineers at FAANG but we don't have any practice materials for it.
If you strictly want to be a backend engineer, then I have more questions. If you are already getting INTERVIEWS at some solid tech companies on your own and need a boost or help preparing for the interviews then 100% yes.
If you are struggling to get interviews then I would recomm…
I gave the advice somewhere else but staying at one company and showing numerous promotions is a simple way to pass the 20 second resume reviews.
Interview performance, I use a personal trainer analogy. You are asking how to get into shape. You can get a cheap gym membership and do it yourself (Neetcode or Algo Expert membership), you can get a personal trainer (1-1 mentor), you can join a premium gym like Equinox that has classes and trainers and a lot of options but is expensive (Formation), you can learn on your own through books and youtube videos about how to get into shape (which works if you have discipline but might take a lot longer)