McDonalds sells hamburgers and STK sells hamburgers but it doesn't mean all hamburgers are the same.
Covering a topic so nuanced as DS&A doesn't mean anything.
At Formation, we do Interview prep and we don't teach anything so it's not a direct comparison, but people tend to spend months just on data structures and algorithms alone to get to a top-tier company bar. So a bootcamp that has a module that is even a week doesn't mean that you're checking off the box that you are good to go for a data structures and algorithms.
Hey /u/[8um8lebee](https://www.reddit.com/user/8um8lebee/),
Yeah, I mean very bluntly, you're not alone and we (my company) works with a lot of people like you - experienced engineers who need help navigating, preparing for, and interviewing at top tier FAANG-ish companies that ask DS&A, SD, etc... In 2024, everyone who has started has 1 to 30 years of industry experience, typically around 5 to 8 right now.
There are a class of programs that focus on interview prep that aren't bootcamps but help you prepare specifically for interviews. They are good options if you are getting interviews on your own and not passing. Formation is my company, Interview Kickstart is our main competitor and both of us prepare you comprehensively for top tier companies, and Interviewing.io and Hello Interview focus JUST on mock interviews.
You will get iOS topics as well but 75% of your interviews will be…
I agree with most of this, two comments:
1. I completely agree when you zoom out, 12 week Coding Bootcamps make absolutely no sense to make you think you'll get a job. For every 10 bootcampers that get a job, I estimate that 8 out of 10 have problems keeping it. Could be an unstable company, could be you are in over your head, could be you fake it until you make it and leave before not making it. It keeps me employed because bootcampers tend to have a lot of problems later on... and we only focus on interview skills - one part of the problem.
It's questionable when bootcamps like Codesmith tell people they have the "capacities" to be a "mid level or senior engineer" with ZERO work experience just by going through a 12 week program.
If you fall for the marketing and believe it, you should watch some MLM videos, crypto scam videos, and cult documentaries about areas you aren't familiar…
In a last hope to survive, bootcamps are going all in on "Gen AI" programs aimed at their own alumni - 3.5 major bootcamps pivoting to Gen AI courses (Codesmith, BloomTech, App Academy, Deep Atlas (original Hack Reactor team)). AA and BT have PAUSED all SWE programs as of today (Opinions Inside)
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal opinions based on my observations as a self-proclaimed industry expert in the top-tier SWE industry and in the bootcamp industry. My company offers interview prep mentorship for generalist SWEs with experience. We are not offering Gen AI programs at this time and aren't working on it at this time, and I do not consider that a conflict of interest.
I noticed today that App Academy's SWE courses are all "waitlisted" now and no longer enrolling. For me that was the impetus for this post, which has been a month or two in the making.
First, summarizing the state: b…
Yeah I would at least apply and talk to someone to see more.
Signals of strong fit:
1. you are getting interviews already and failing them or feeling lost (would expect subscription or shorter time at Formation)
2. you know you need to practice leetcode, system design, etc... but you have no idea where to start and you are busy and want to be efficient about it (would expect 3-8 months)
Hi, I can answer with my Formation hat on. It's a good question because there isn't anything else that operates like it, even competitors like Interview Kickstart are also super different.
In one sentence, we're an interview or and mentorship platform. Our focus is job hunting and preparing you for your upcoming interviews.
So philosophically we are based on the idea of mastery and helping you efficiently get form where you are to where you want to go. This means we try to spend your dollars efficiently by giving you the type of session we think you need at the right time.
If you want to hire an Open AI engineer who makes $1M to be your tutor, it would cost you hundreds of a ton and they wouldn't even be able to give you the time you need.
Instead, we give you mocks with those totes of people when you need it - usually when preparing for specific upcoming interviews, and when you don…
I can speak for Formation. We are not an alternative to bootcamps at all and not even an option for CS grads who don't have SWE work experience yet. If you have SWE work experience and are considering a bootcamp, then we might possibly be an option, but even then, not a slam dunk and I might still recommend a bootcamp depending on your situation.
We have a very small team and we don't have a lot of online presence, so want don't want people to misunderstand what we do.
For example, a non trivial percent of people come BACK to Formation in the future and pay the full amount to do the same thing AGAIN. This is a good example showing how completely different it is than a bootcamp... it would be like doing the full Codesmith Immersive for $22,500 twice two years apart... makes no sense.
Second, we don't teach anything or have any classes. This is SUPER important because people should not…
There isn't a home for those (add Pathrise, Interview Kickstart and Outco to the list).
I'm the co-founder of Formation, and we call ourselves 'interciew prep and mentorship' rather than a career accelerator.
So the discussion here tends to be from bootcamp grads later on in their careers.
The discussion in CS majors is mostly about Headstarter and Coachable because this appeal more to that demographic.
Pathrise is big with people on Visas.
Interview Kickstart in is India and bigger in those areas.
Interviewing.io and Hello Interview are more a la carte Interview Prep and more in the Leetcode sub. Formation is also mentioned in the Leetcode sub sometimes.
Very bluntly, there are all entirely different programs and audiences with a lot of overlap between various ones, but no single gome really makes sense. People tend to be looking at 2 or 3 of these and which 2 or 3 are differen…
Speaking from Formation, we've been seeing increasing interview activity since July but we're calling this the 'new normal'. We expect to see more layoffs and more hiring in Q1 2024 and uncapped hiring surges like in 2021-2022 mid COVID... efficiency is the new normal.
Also no one should say anything until after the election settles. Things could change really quickly!
There are a couple more nuances too that aren't on the website.
All of the details change a lot as we try to create a wide range of configurations to support more people, while being fair and rational about the options. So they are all in our contract and post application flow but not on the website.
1. We have a few bundles if you want to commit to 2 or 3 months at a discount
2. If you were eligible for unlimited and chose to do the month to month, there is a cap right now too, kind of around the average of what the unlimited package might cost.
All of that said,.there is an entrance bar to month to month because we have a fairly focused thing we do.... it's a super waste of money otherwise... we need to be effective and work more often than not to get positive word of mouth and support. So we strongly discourage anyone from doing month to month who isn't doing it for the right reaso…
I can reply with my thoughts, thanks for sharing yours as well. We aren't a perfect program and because of the adaptive nature, no two people will have the same experience, so we rely on critical feedback to make improvements.
Overall, we move absurdly fast, we make changes very fast, and we try to incorporate feedback fast. We aim to fix bugs within minutes or hours. We aim to acknowledge feedback within minutes or hours. And we discuss a lot of feedback internally for how we can incorporate it.
1. I won't comment on the cost. Formation isn't cheap by any means, but the average placed Fellow increases their first year total compensation by an average $127K right now, so it's extremely worth it for them. If you struggle to get a job and on the job hunt much longer than expected - we don't go anywhere and we still by you, but I very much understand that the cost could be weighing on you…
Hey, I personally feel like the conflict, if any, would be that people who come here and appreciate my advice, do whatever they do (bootcamp, or CS degree or whatver), then think of Formation in a **few years** and consider it. I tried to pull up data on where people come from and Reddit as a whole is a fairly small source, and we don't have data more granular - but anecdotally a lot come from Leetcode sub where I give Meta interview advice. Now we're only 5 years old, so maybe in a couple years tons of people will come pouring in to Formation because of my involvement in this sub. It's also not a corporate strategy and I'm here personally... my team would prefer if I post more on LinkedIn.
But I'm very open to talking about this and I appreciate the challenge.
In 2024, we're not talking people without 2+ years of experience. If you don't believe me, try applying and see for yourself.…
To clarify, I'm concerned about any program that is trying to TEACH Gen AI stuff right now. I did a survey of top tech engineers and around 90% of people said they don't look for Gen AI skills in engineers. So I'm not sure how you can invest in a curriculum yet, or know what to teach. What I'm seeing is that anyone with broad engineering skills is expected to learn how to use Gen AI without the need for explicit training.
Formation doesn't offer any kind of mentorship, practice with Gen AI at this time. We will add it when companies interview for it.
We USE AI to build our platform, make mentorship better AND more efficient. We use AI to help you figure out what to practice next, and to schedule hundreds of dynamic sessions every week. Very different!
This is right in my wheel house and I can give my broad personal advice. Note, disclosure that my company is in the interview prep bucket of expensive options for helping prepare: Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. I'm given this answer with my personal advice.
Step 0:
- I agree, I'm effectively self-taught because I taught myself programming at a fairly young age, and taught myself all practical programming. My degree was a broad engineering degree and I did a ton of CS courses that helped me in my career, but getting the basics too a lot of grit. Re-learning the SAME THINGS like 5 times over many years before things started to click one by one. Making a lot of mistakes and banging my head against the wall, only to find a one line erorr.
Step 1:
- I recommend JavaScript equally now too
Step 2:
- Following Step 0, it takes time and I recommend learning and relearning DS&A m…
I haven't seen a concrete trend myself. The instructors haven't worked in industry (only a handful ever had but all but one were return Codemsith alumni) and Codesmith's codebase can best be described as a big OSP project and in some cases, some OSP projects have had more people touching their code than the Codesmith codebase. Based on the problems with some of the largest OSP projects which have their history plain for all to see, you can imagine the problems with Codesmith's codebase.
I haven't seen Codesmith's codebase but just heard casually from people who worked on it and from people who saw this system design talk and approached me about it.
If you've talked to alumni about the big OSPs you'll hear about how each new group tends to fail to understand the existing codebase and instead just builds something new. For example, a project containing 2 primary UI frameworks because a n…
I'm fairly familiar with this and can offer my 2 cents, in no particular order:
1. I heard that instructors, mentors, and fellows (TAs) were listing Codesmith as their recent job, but it was becoming less effective, because people recognized it as a bootcamp and it makes sense that people would perceive "Senior Software Engineer at Codesmith" as really just a bootcamp STUDENT embellishing their resume. It wasn't made clear to me who's idea this was, but someone came up with the idea of creating a "CS Engineering" brand that these people could list to differentiate their REAL jobs from coming across like a student.
2. In all fairness, I think that's reasonable because people actually had jobs with Codesmith that they should get credit for. My opinion is the need for "CS Engineering" as a brand is a very clear sign of the problems of appearing to work at a bootcamp and how you get writte…
If you are quite senior, become a mentor on an online platform. Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Interviewingio, Hello Interview. You have absolutely zero risk, and you can do as much mentorship as you want with whoever you want and get paid a reasonable amount to live off of if you spend all your time doing it.
If you aren't super experienced and want to start a bootcamp, I don't have other options. You might be the most gifted teacher in the world but it will be hard for you to help junior people navigate the industry without experience too.
I'm going to ask Brian how he heard about us, it wasn't me reaching out and it will sure be embarrassing if it was Codesmith alumni or employee that recommended it haha. I would strongly guess it was a peer who realized Brian had already self taught to Codesmith grad level and wanted interview prep.
I don't discuss people's individual cases but I'm general, if someone is joining and Formation is not 100% good fit, we'll have that conversation. These are extremely case by case and some people join for different reasons and some people will not join for different reasons.
I'm happy to answer this factually on the record, I don't know where this is coming from but keep asking and I'll keep giving the answers.
I would like to know more specific examples of this to clarify because I don't know what you are talking about from your post.
1. I was in Codesmith's CSX Slack until I was banned and I have respected that ban since and not stepped foot in it and have not stepped foot in a Codesmith event since.
2. I have never messaged, promoted, or mentioned Formation to my recollection in CSX Slack ever. My interactions that I recall were limited to:
a) Messaging one or two OSP groups that their projects were leaking passwords publicly
b) Answered a couple of technical questions, like 5 maybe?
c) Helping the Codesmith Team understand what happened when a different Codesmith posted job postings improperly affiliated with Codesmith LLC and they thought it was…
1. I don't make a personal income and haven't for 5 years
2. About a third or so people at Formation did a bootcamp in the past, it's far from the majority right now.
3. Are you able to prove that I DM'd you and promoted Formation and told you to go there? I've done it very rarely - like 2 or 3 times, while I've had 100s of conversations telling people to go to bootcamps like Codesmith (which I no longer do), Launch School, Rithm, grad school, Tech Elevator, etc... based on their circumstances. If I DM'd you from my account and out of the blue told you that you need Formation, then that was a one off that rarely happens, was probably a very legitmate reason to do so, and I probably mentioned other options too like Interview Kickstart rather than just saying "go to Formation", it was probably like "you should consider interview prep programs because you have a lot of experience alrea…
We do not compete with you. Our marketing and recruiting team have not mentioned a single person that they can remember in the past year even mentioning considering Codesmith, but many are asking about Interview Kickstart and Pathrise. Do you guys think you compete with Pathrise and Interview Kickstart as well?
I'm not sure if you are delusional or have incompetent internal communication processes but I explained in detail to Eric Kirsten on your team via email a number of months ago.
I full on recommend Launch School at this time. Do you consider them a competitor? Why would I recommend them if I'm here to take down competitors?
As usual you all are big on words and small on details and execution.
RE: Reducing Prices
That's a fair argument to make it more accessible. Why didn't you make it more accessible in 2022 or 2023 and why make it accessible now then?
Launch School Core Liv…
1. I do so for bootcamps because I work with a bunch of bootcamp grads later on in their careers and feel like I can combine that with my FAANG experience to give solid advice to peple looking at bootcamps. Formation isn't a bootcamp. If you are going to keep putting in that bucket despite my repeated attempts to explain the difference then that's on you, but I see no problems talking about BOOTCAMPS that have nothing to do with what I do.
2. Yeah we could come up with some kind of aggregated 'amount of time to get a job' data I think, but we have to account for week to week workload adjustments people meet (which is very frequent, vacations and pauses, offer times vs interview times, which topics people were working on and weren't at which times, time to first offer versus time to offer accepted (since people can get multiple offers and intentionally DELAY THEIR JOB HUNT to create a co…
They also have "company interview guides" that sound equally authoritative. It's for raw SEO. I mean I know a lot of people there, I know the founders second hand, I think they have good intentions and don't overpromise anything and are fairly reasonable. We just have a different opinion on what the gaps are preventing people from getting jobs.
Their opinion is optimizing your resume and recruiter pitch in the job hunt funnel, our opinion is you need to have a strong technical toolbelt full of tools you know how to use well to step into your interviews. As a result, Formation is weaker on the raw job hunt funnel optimization side, and Pathrise is weaker on interview prep.
PART 2:
2. Yeah I comment on those. I'm aware of two Reddit posts. One is a person who left and ended up going out of SWE for their career and it was the right thing. The other person I don't know who they are but I do know someone who commented on that thread in support of the primary person recently tried to come back to Formation a second time, so maybe their opinion changed haha, but I want to go through the points.
**MOST IMPORTANTLY - we make hundreds of changes (literally) a week and Formation today is not Formation a few months ago, is not Formation a year ago.** I'm going to answer these as they would be TODAY, and I stand by my previous comments on those posts at the time they were posted.
-------------------------
1. "**Don't be blinded by their marketing**...". We absolutely have people that are still with us and very low morale. There are a number of people who joined us…
Happy to keep discussing yeah, we're not perfect and some of our reasons might not be good enough but I can at least explain what those reason are directly from one of the founders 🙂.
PART 1:
1. I hear you on clarifying what "guaranteed means", because there are qualifiers that I explained, and maybe there is a better one liner for it. The support is guaranteed until you get a job is how I would respond/state it given your framing.
RE: " lifetime career support, job hunt help", my gosh some bootcamps promise this and it's not remotely the same as what any of these four programs offer and not nearly the same as what Formation offers. I don't want to write paragraphs here but to put it one way, a number of "DS&A career support engineers" at a top bootcamp like Codesmith have come to Formation themselves to work on their skills and get their next job.
Years ago I had debates on people…
I'm the co-founder of Formation so I'm really biased.
I would say that none of these are boot camps, so the perspective you get from here is probably skewed to boot camp grads that then went to some of these programs. Which could be really useful if you're also a boot camp grad but less useful if you're not.
All of these are really different.
Outco, I got the vibe was shutting down or isn't really running because you can't apply on their website and their founders seem to have moved on and there's been a number of people being threatened to be sued by them who didn't get jobs within 12 months. I haven't heard firsthand from the company directly so I can't say anything definitively but I'm not really considering them right now when I talk about competitors.
Pathrise, they publish some annual stats and the number of people who go there as a software engineer is has been decreasing s…
Hi, yeah off topic but I can answer:
- we take data engineers and data scientists but with SEVERE WARNINGS. We don't do any data-specific preparation or practice, so those people come to us for DS&A and System Design, networking, resume stuff, negotiation, etc... and not for any data specific stuff. At the FAANG-level companies the data loops are fairly similar to SWE with 1 or 2 unique interviews that we don't prep for, so some people think it's worth it. We strongly don't advise it though and these people tend to think hard about and come back to us on their own.
- we take people on different visas case by case, depends on the visa and the amount of time before it expires. Generally existing H1B is ok, TN (Canada/Mexico) is ok, F1+OPT with 2+ years left and a backup plan is generally ok.
I think they have far too much price to drop tuition. I expect them to raise it again in January like they did this year despite tanking placements and outcomes.
If anything they will start to give out "scholarships" to effectively lower the cost but maintain a high sticker price.
Following the ivy League model. Stanford is $60K a year but most people (who don't come from rich families) pay much less or nothing.
So taking a step back....
Codesmith, like Launch School, is for a certain person. There aren't magically more of those people in the world who just aren't going because of the cost. If it's the right program, the cost is irrelevant because the long term impact will be so much more than anything.
So lowering the cost won't do anything at all.
If they relied on anyone with a pulse paying them whatever spare change they have, then lowering the price would result in more people…
Yeah that sounds good. It doesn't hurt to do Leetcode problems, just do them following a problem solving methodology like I suggested in another comment and not just flailing until Leetcode tells you you passed the question.
The how is much more important than the what.
I would also recommend spending significant time. just understanding the basic data structures and algorithms. The bootcamps that cover them spend like a few days on them and it's just not enough time. for me personally, I had to go over the same cost that several times before they clicked over several years.
I worked with a number of people from a formerly top bootcamp Codesmith, where people do a problem a day during what they call "hack hours" and I saw the pattern a lot of people who didn't really understand the underlying data structures and algorithms and were just kind of trying to get the problems right. I'm…
Outco is a competitor to my company so I'm super biased about talking about them.
Personally, I thought they were shutting down because their website is half broken and doesn't let you apply, some founders moved on to new things, and they are threatening to sue a bunch of people (search Reddit) who didn't get jobs in a year and thought they were getting their money back.
I would compare Outco to Formation (my company), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise.
These are all different approaches and entirely different day to day, but all are focused on helping you get interviews and pass them.
I have always had pretty fair assessments on here despite my bias, so I'll give my PERSONAL OPINIONS trying to be as fair as I can be:
Formation: dynamic and adaptive mentorship, unique, unlimited mocks, small group sessions (3 to 6 people), 3 dedicated non technical support team members, only focused…
Someone reached out who attended this talk and I now actively encourage no one to go to Codesmith...
Any alumni who attended - this doesn't seem like a system design talk but rather Will trying to learn about a system he doesn't understand well.
Did he talk about pros and cons of different approaches?
Did he talk about the decision process for each piece?
Was the system large scale and in need of complex decision making?
Are the APIs between components discussed in great detail?
Are the schemas and data model decisions discussed in great detail?
Was there any discussion of a technically challenging problem solved and how they overcame it?
Did the system make sense and were good decisions made? Like if someone reviewed it and thought it would just be one service instead that would be a no hire or fire.
I'm not sure how you feel about this, but I talk to a range of alumni for various reasons and contexts, and people are not appreciating these minimal efforts being portrayed as 'all you need to succeed'-vibes.
It's creating distrust, like people believed that when they went to Codesmith 2 years ago and got a job, but now they see it for what it is and it breaks trust.
I know I'm bias because my company helps people specifically with system design, and it's offensive to me when Codesmith tells people it's SD is all you need, when it's absolutely not all you need. It's not even an overview of all you might need.
Anyways here's a great free resource from a semi-competitor to us that is 10X better than the Codesmith materials I've seen on SD: [https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction](https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduct…
Current Codesmith residents/recent alumni: how has Codesmith delivered on promised improvements announced earlier this year?
Hi all, I've been talking to a couple of residents recently and wanted to get a broader view on how Codesmith is doing towards it's suite of announced improvements from February (five months ago).
At the time I said I would revisit how they did in a few months and time flies, it's already been five months!!
Please comment (or DM me uncomfortable to comment and I'm happy to need your messages confidential) if you have insight into if any of the following have happened:
(From [source](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech))
1. Are in-person co-working spaces available in NYC and SF?
2. TypeScript integration into the curriculum?
3. Next.js integration into the curriculum?
4. AI copilots…
There are no explicit requirements or quotas and the rule in the contract is broader that you have to be actively job hunting and intending to get a new job.
We are so adaptive to each person, having exact quotas doesn't make sense.
We see our role like a coach or personal trainer and we need to have a trusting partnership with ways. Meaning if you are seeing Formation as a transactional way to get a job for the lowest cost you can, it's not the right mindset. You have to trust us and our advice that we are trying to help you achieve your goal, and we have to trust that you are showing up and working with us.
If you aren't ready to interview we don't want you applying to jobs. If you are ready we want you applying to jobs. The advice depends on you and your progress, traction, strengths and weaknesses, feedback etc....
With flat rate unlimited (which is still offered but unlisted on the site right now) there is no timeframe yeah. We have a small number of people with us for quite a long time and still going as a result.
With the performance based unlimited (our main option right now) there is a 15 month cap (which can be extended because of personal circumstances if approved).
This is why we might not accept you if you only have like two companies you're targeting or will only accept an offer at a very small number of companies. We don't know what the market's going to be like in a year and if we did our part and prepared you for all the interviews and your passing all of the mock interviews and doing great and those companies just aren't hiring. there's nothing we can do about it but we did our part.
So maybe I should emphasize that you're primarily paying to confidently get your skills and intervi…
Hi, thanks for the question, We don't support people only looking at one or two companies. we do support you if you have a small number of dream companies, but are open to taking a good offer that you're happy about at a different company as well. You could be the most prepared possible and due to factors beyond your control just not pass and our job is to get you the most prepared possible, but no one can guarantee that you'll pass a specific interview.
🚨BREAKING NEWS: Course Report (bootcamp review website) acquired by Career.io - a job hunting platform and placement service.
Course Report is now owned by a job search conglomerate "Career.io" ending an era of it running as an independent bootcamp review website.
I'm breaking this news and have not reached out yet to Course Report or Career.io for comment on this matter.
DISCLOSURE: This post is my personal opinions and does not reflect the views of my company. I have not heard of Career.io before but their services to overlap with my company (specifically "interview prep services") so I might have a conflict of interest discussing them but as of this post I have no idea who they are an first heard of them in discovering they now own Course Report.
# Background Story - How I discovered this, and the decline of Course Report:
# 1. Codesmith Paying for Reviews
I have been watching…
Yeah happy to give answers, these are to the best of my knowledge on the spot here and I didn't ask around to my team, but can if there are followups.
I don't know how closely we monitor Reddit specifically but it falls under "Socials" and isn't notable enough to stand out as its own source as far as I know. And we do not track down to the subreddit in our attribution models that I'm aware of.
Anecdotally, people who found us on Reddit surprisingly came more from the Leetcode sub where people are preparing for interviews and asking for help and they have referred to that as how they found us, or that they saw my official Reddit-sanctioned AMA that is aging now. Anecdotally a couple people have told me that they saw my posts in this sub and those people have been experienced engineers later in their careers, but they didn't mention discovering or being woo'd by them generally. The excep…
🏛️ Get to know a moderator: Michael Novati
Hi all, I thought it might be a good idea to share more about myself as one of the three moderators on here and one of the most active members. It might be a surprise but I spend way more time writing code and helping Fellows at Formation than on Reddit. Here's my GitHub as evidence 😝 [https://github.com/mnovati](https://github.com/mnovati)
I just wanted to share a little more about who I am and where I come from so you can work with me better in making this subreddit a better place.
There's no advice or lessons in here, it's all biographical, but I'm happy to answer questions in the comments.
# FOUR FUN FACTS
1. Meta created the "Coding Machine" archetype for me when promoting me to Principal Engineer.
2. I've met Taylor Swift. In fact I couldn't convince Mark Zuckerberg to meet her too at the time and played a prank on him by hanging…
These are all good questions I'm more than happy to answer.
First, why do we have the average compensation increase and not the average.
we're working with people coming from all kinds of backgrounds and situations and we think the best way to capture their outcome is to show the change relative to where they started.
otherwise we would have to try to bucket people into a bunch of very granular buckets of similar type people and then show some average about how they did in absolute terms. We could try to do that but the buckets change constantly and the people we are working with now are very experienced. the people we worked with a year ago had maybe 1 to 2 years of experience on average and now the people have 5 to 10 years of experience on average. So because these buckets are moving and changing all the time, we don't feel that showing those. give you a pulse for how things are d…
I think all three of those programs mentioned are very different and can co-exist rather than fight. Rithm is very small right now and I don't think they are fighting anybody haha. Launch School is heavily run by the founder Chris and is also small and capped size, and I think they will get by.
Right now, from my estimates (no hard numbers) Codesmith is about the enrollment numbers of Launch School (maybe 1.5X larger because of part time) but from my estimates has 5X more full time staff. So I'm most concerned about Codesmith surviving without more layoffs or without a major pivot.
Codesmith is the only one going big on AI, however there isn't any signal from the industry what AI skills they want, and interview processes haven't adapted to test for AI skills either, so they might be betting on 'Web3 blockhain' like Lambda School did. It's entirely possible that the AI skills companies…
⚠️ WARNING: Codesmith subreddit is mostly propaganda (resharing Codesmith content without full context and boosting with positive comments from accounts that mostly post about Codesmith only). Challenges and negative comments are called "lies" and you get banned. BE SMART AND THINK CRITICALLY.
NOTE: I'm not saying the content itself isn't true or that it's bad intentioned, but I am saying that it's marketing material that missing context and it's likely the people sharing it don't even realize this. I've accumulated a lot of information over the years and while I see a **A LOT OF GOOD THINGS CODESMITH IS DOING,** the outcomes have changed dramatically in 2023-2024 and these materials are not reflecting that.
**DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions using publicly available information and my own insights.**
**MODERATOR NOTE: any comments talking about my own company will be delete…
No one should be choosing Formation over a bootcamp at all.
a
We work with people to support their goals. Right now we have observed very clearly that there is no systematic way for people with no experience to get jobs and we therefore don't take new people with no experience. We still have people with us with under a year of experience for 1.5ish years because of our indefinite support promise.
We had three ex Facebook senior engineers start recently, current Google Manager, like these are not people considering Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Springboard, etc...
Or are you saying they are? That a staff engineer at Meta is choosing between Codesmith and Formation? They are choosing between Interview Kickstart and Formation.
I don't really know how to explain this more clearly, but I'll keep trying because I don't want anyone coming to us for the wrong thing, it's a waste of everyone's tim…
Line by Line Rebuttal to Codesmith CEO dodging question about placement rates in a challenging market
**DISCLAIMER: these views are my personal opinions as I see them and they don't represent anyone but me.**
u/WillSen If you call yourself the best of the best, you need to hold yourself to that bar and respect others who are holding you to that bar too by responding with facts and arguments to every challenge rather than ban people who point out things you don't want to answer. I'm unable to reply in the Codesmith subreddit because I'm permanently banned.
Anyways, someone asked the Codesmith CEO in an AMA today [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1dofj3a/comment/la9fv9w/)
>There has been a large share of skepticism towards the results that Codesmith claims to produce with job acquisition rates, salaries, etc. since the company does not share its raw data, e.g., claimin…
2024 Bootcamp Predictions [MIDYEAR CHECKIN AND UPDATES!]
The past two years I've been making bootcamp predictions and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18ivago/2024_bootcamp_predictions_mega_post_revisiting_my/) is a link to my 2024 ones from six months ago.
I want to share my background for context in the spirit of openness and transparency. I try to write the best content I can, but everyone has biases and it's important to evaluate ones biases for every post you read.
BACKGROUND: I co-founded a mentorship platform and work with many bootcamp graduates as they progress in their careers and I'm a heavy contributor (and moderator) of this sub. Before this, I was at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I grew from intern to E7 principal engineer, conducted over 450 interviews, and participated in hiring committees. I keep in touch with hundreds of my former colleagu…
The "Modern Software Engineer": Refuting the "lawyer engineer" and instead an argument for Specialization + Collaboration
Hey everyone, friendly neighborhood moderator sharing my person opinions on this topics for all of you getting into software engineering. My background is started programming with QBasic and Lego Mindstorms when I was 12, worked at Meta from 2009 to 2017 (from \~200 engineers to \~10,000 engineers) and was the #1 code committer when I left. And since then have started a mentorship and interview prep platform for people with several years of experience who are changing jobs or want to prepare to change jobs. NOTE: I have some amount of bias because I work with a number of bootcamp grads later in their careers. While my company doesn't compete with bootcamps directly, I want to openly disclose my background so you can interpret my comments better.
PURPOSE: I'm writing…
Reddit removed your post I think, wasn't me and not sure if my reply will go through, but I'm replying anyways:
1. 100% agree one of the things that comes with being open is that you should be reasonably questioned and that's the critical part to being open. On the other hand, it's not open seasons to anonymously attack me (which you aren't doing Ludo and you aren't anonymous, but others have over the years).
2. I don't know what to say, I logged into our Google Ads account and spent time to confirm myself and the only keyword we are targeting with the word bootcamp in it is "formation bootcamp" and it had 0.2% of all impressions compared to all of our keywords. Google Ads use all kinds of algorithms to display you ads and we are not targeting any other terms with "bootcamp" in it and most of the impressions are for variations of "interview prep".
If you don't think I'm lying on the r…
Got long, TLDR: agree a bootcamp should do what it needs to to help you get your first job, including career services, but ultimately you are paying a bootcamp to teach out and not paying for a job and that has the following consequences.
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I have had super intense arguments with Codesmith people about this who adamently INSIST their lifetime mock interviews are amazing and any other service (like [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) or my company) are a waste of money.
There is a massive difference in a mock interview run like a real interview with a former Google engineer who has interviewed people on the job recently, than an alumni or teacher doing a mock interview and giving you feedback.
Notice I said "DIFFERENCE" and not that one is better or worse, both are good. The bootcamp should do what it does because it's super helpful to have multiple points of view and types…
Unofficial Analysis: a top bootcamp's 2023 grad placement rates APPEAR TO DROP ALMOST HALF from 2022 grad placement rates (from about 80% to 45%). Even the best can't beat the market right now. [Illustrative only, may contain errors]
DISCLAIMER: I'm a moderator of this sub and I'm the co-founder of mentorship and interview prep platform aimed at helping existing SWE's prepare for upcoming interviews and level up their SWE jobs. We do not compete with bootcamps but I have a conflict of interest because we work with a bunch of bootcamp grads later in their careers. More bootcamp grads === more customers in a couple years, so I believe I have a bias to encourage people to go to bootcamps rather than be doom and gloom on the industry like this post largely is. BUT having worked with so many bootcamp grads I think it's imperative people have as much information as possible if they are inve…
Yeah disclosure my company runs an interview prep and mentorship platform to help people get ready for interviews. We don't solve these problems I'm talking about but we help people on the ground who are in the process of changing jobs. So some overlap, I disclose if I was directly promoting my company to someone :P
Teaching AI or using AI?
BloomTech has a B2B $5000 'using AI' course that's 5 months or something fairly detailed.
Codesmith is working on an AI add on package and had the first session this week and someone who went didn't find it very useful yet. (It's early stage)
Most of the companies I talk to don't really need any AI skills yet and want senior product engineers who will figure out AI. Because it's changing so fast there isn't a way for these companies to consistently and fairly test people for AI so it's not really meaningful yet in hiring decisions.
It might matte…