Hi, yeah there just aren't that many of us around because it's kind of a new idea. We compete with Pathrise and Interview Kickstart directly. Interview Prep or Career Accelerator maybe?
The idea of getting like a "personal trainer" for your career is kind of new and some people are still shy about sharing that they went to these places.
As you pointed out it's crazy different to have like 10+ year Google hiring managers who have really seen a lot and genuinely have insights advise you than at a bootcamp where an alumni who worked at Google for a year is advising you who hasn't interviewed anyone yet, neverless managed, or done dozens of hiring committee reviews, etc...
On the recruitment side, it's not super lucrative yet for these companies. There are still so many people applying naturally big tech doesn't really need to partner with anyone and there has to be a reason. Will these c…
I appreciate this discussion! I have my real name on here so that we can have this discussion! If you have anonymous accounts it's hard to track people's backgrounds and biases and that's even more concern for manipulation than people being transparent.
As other people pointed out, Formation isn't a bootcamp - we are an interview prep, practice, mentorship, and mock interview platform. Our acceptance bar varies with the market and right now we are taking mostly mid level senior engineers and a surprising number who formerly worked as senior engineers at FAANG companies.
I don't know why Codesmith people think we compete with them, including their Director of Outcomes stating that in their AMA. The most recent 20 reviews on Course Report: ALL 20 speak to either how they had no experience prior to Codesmith or they didn't say anything about it, but more generally how they recommend it f…
I can't speak for all companies, but I am very confident in how the FAANG-level companies see this.
These companies don't make hiring decisions based on your resume.
They have interview types (e.g. system design, and technical behavioral) to test your practical experience and compare it to what they need for that position at the company.
You could say you have 10 years as a "Vice President Software Engineer at Goldman Sachs" (this is a real job title) and be leveled as a mid-level engineer at Meta.
Sadly the whole point of these interviews is to test real experience and you can't fake it. If you have the experience, you can fail because of lack of preparation and practice, but if you don't you can't magically get it without having it.
Unfortunately it's the job market and people aren't hiring junior engineers right now so there really isn't too much you can do.
The Codesmith strate…
Hmm it sounds of all the bootcamps Codesmith might be a good choice.
If you have been doing the tech consulting for a few years, consider career accelerators. I'm the co-founder of Formation but I don't think we would accept you with your background - need more direct SWE experience, but others are Pathrise and Interview Kickstart - to compare and see what's out there options wise.
I would also consider a CS masters - a bit slower and more expensive but a good option if you want it to go the honest and traditional route.
For example, if you go to Codesmith you might end up calling your consulting work Software Engineer on your resume and push to get senior jobs at non tech companies. And if that feels good, definitely do Codesmith, if not, maybe do a masters.
If your current job is not in programming and you want a part time bootcamp, Codesmith is the only top one that has part time. Launch School Core is self paced and part time but the immersive capstone is not.
If you are already an engineer, look at Pathrise, Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart for levelng up your career.
I think this is a really good interview. Elie is extremely transparent that the market is bad and it's impact their business, even vaguely suggesting that Rithm wouldn't be able to continue forever if people continue to not sign up and attendance is way down because the market is rough.
Meanwhile Codesmith's CEO is [tweeting](https://twitter.com/willsentance/status/1785384627378508272) about how unbelievably incredible Codesmith's outcomes are. Leaving out the fact that offers in general offers are down this year, he presents an uncharacteristically strong week as if it's the norm that happens from the Codesmith approach of applying for jobs.
Then look you lookup the person who got an Amazon job and see they have a ton of experience and are coming back from a very long career break. **Which is fantastic and I might recommend someone in that position GO TO CODESMITH TOO.**
It's extrem…
The resume itself would get through to an interview, and a recruiter or hiring manager at a big tech company would definitely figure it out during the interview.
I think this is why Codesmith grads who do this approach specifically typically end up at smaller companies. By the time they get the interview, if they do well, the companies is more open to taking a chance at that point... and like you said, they don't always do or care about background checks.
At Meta, the hiring committees will grill your resume too and it's just not possible to get through without having several errors take place. It's why if you look carefully at the Codesmith alumni at Meta, most were TEMPORARY CONTRACTORS FOR A CONTRACTING COMPANY!! and didn't work there, one or two were in non-SWE roles, and almost all of them are no longer there.
So short answer - it works at smaller companies and that's why Codesm…
Both CIRR and Codesmith's Director of Outcomes stated that they want or are considering expanding CIRR to work for interview prep platforms.
I co-founded one of the 3 main interview prep platforms (5 if you count interviewing.io and hello interview)
So if someone adamantly believes that my company should be reporting to CIRR then they could see this as not impartial.
I explained emphatically why we have never even considered reporting to CIRR and why it doesn't make sense for us (can't speak for all interview prep companies but I imagine Pathrise would feel similarly given the over a dozen types of jobs it supports and the drastic difference in junior.vs senior outcomes)... that this kind of thing just doesn't work.
So I feel impartial in my head.
I explained this above that our primary competitor is interview Kickstart and they have similar numbers on their website and a lot of people ask us and then we try to explain to them why it doesn't mean that much. but since it comes up from people that are casually comparing us and Interview Kickstart we decided to put it there with multiple paragraphs of detail on how it's calculated.
We're going to updating it soon with our new highest offer with someone who really wants to put it up there for whatever reason.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why)
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term.
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our number…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary"
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead.
RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…
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.
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'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…
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…
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…
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…
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.
I'm personally very far on the don't tell people they are senior engineers side on this one but I've had many debates with people that "know someone that got a senior job out of Codesmith" who adamantly believe in Codesmith's stance on this.
I would argue with them why a program branding itself as a top tier program preparing people for jobs in the TECHNOLOGY industry should be using the canonical definitions of the top tier TECHNOLOGY industry companies.
Codesmith does this "how to get hired in 2024" talk that I saw most of yesterday and they aren't just saying this anymore, but the CEO spent almost 2 hours straight in the talk convincing people that using - what in my opinion - are incorrect arguments:
1. Argument: the 2024 market has changed and companies that didn't previous prioritize technology - like banks - are hiring laid off FAANG engineers to build the same level of produ…
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…
So I agree with the part about the person with the right skills and most capabilities should get the job and credentials shouldn't matter as a surface level criteria.
BUT the interview processes are not perfect and they are super fast to try to evaluate these things. They rely on people having the experience they say they do. It's not like just that X got the question right so they are qualified. It's X got this question right that someone with 2 years of experience is expected to get right and therefore this question validates that they have that experience. System design interviews are the best example of this. If you don't have experience, you shouldn't be passing a mid level or senior system design interview flat out, and if you lie and game the system so you are violating the interview process. Passing the interview doesn't mean you are qualified for the job.
Hey, feel free to DM me if you want me to look into your specific case, it's hard to generalize what happened or if there was a miscommunication perhaps.
To give some more info:
- There is no fixed schedule or fixed materials. Every week you get a new schedule of small group sessions, practice and benchmarks to work on based on how you did the previous week, and eventually you'll get to real mock interviews to sign off that you are at the top tier performance bar. A small caveat is no two Fellows will have the same experience or materials and our job is to sign off that you are at the top tier interview performance bar as efficiently as we think we can get you there, rather than by exhaustively covering fixed materials. That's why the time it takes, the time per week, etc... are all very ambiguous and fuzzy because we don't want to mislead you into thinking there is anything fixed abo…
I don't think it's super secret but I don't know if I can say because Netflix might have to sign off too, but there were a significantly large number of applications, so it will be tough. The recruiters are going through every single application and making sure they get read, but the number of slots is much smaller than the number of applications. If you get an interview though that's good though, because the ration of interview -> accepted will be much higher.
Hi, I would mention it in the interview yeah. It may be possible it could work but it's not ideal timing wise. I'm not sure what the minimum is, but there could be some important onboarding sessions you would miss.
Just generally speaking, the program isn't just something to put on your resume and it takes time and it's also why it's really valuable and effective :). So if the team doesn't think you'll benefit properly it might just not be a good fit, and you don't want to push it because you won't get the most out of it. So I would be transparent and accept the decision if we can't support it.
Hi! I believe our team members dedicated to reviewing applications are still thoroughly going through and interviews are expected to begin at the posted date of March 6th. I believe interviews will happen through the interview period, so not hearing back by March 6th doesn't mean you won't get one necessarily. I will say that the team reported a very large number of applications and thank you to everyone for taking the time to apply and make a video! But many great candidates, naturally, many will also not get interviews unfortunately.
There's no progress tracker for the program this year but it's something we would like to add in the future and appreciate the implied feedback that that would be useful.
Codesmith (due to declining enrollment) shutting down NYC in-person, merging remaining full time remote cohorts into one. But also alludes to new Future Code program, co-working spaces and announces new changes! See my line by line commentary and personal opinions.
SOURCE: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech)
DISCLAIMER: The following is my top to bottom analysis and personal opinions. I always disclose this and hopefully it's not boring. These are my personal opinions. I've not new to the sub and I have been giving my opinions on bootcamps for almost two years now, daily, from the FAANG angle, and also having worked with hundreds of bootcamps grads. I'm the co-founder of an interview prep mentorshi…
I would love to interview you and see how much of the "workings of React" you absorbed in a bootcamp.
I've interviewed a bunch of people from Codesmith one of the top bootcamps, with a Facebook-level technical behavioral interview, and within 5 mins their technical abilities fell apart, all of them.
What I observed was the people were learning how to appear to understand things for an interview but people didn't actually understand things the way they portrayed they did.
People would have been better off portraying less understanding and actually having that understanding than portraying a deeper understanding that they don't have.
It's nothing against bootcamps, it's just true expertise takes a lot of time, and takes different paths for everyone. A fixed length bootcamp where you absorb as much as you can in the allotted time just isn't an environment conducive to expertise and is…
Codesmith posted an "Early Look" into 2023 outcomes w/ 2022 comparisons. My personal opinions and anlysis. Notable to me is both that median salary was $130K in 2022 and that it was $115K in 2023. Placement rates are missing, but I would guess much lower, for a double whammy 🥺
SOURCE: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/early-look-2023-outcomes-and-analysis](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/early-look-2023-outcomes-and-analysis)
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal opinions about the data. I'm human and I make mistakes, but I'm giving my quick personal thoughts and opinions the most open and transparently I can, comments and corrections with sources are appreciated. I have a long history of being around this sub and giving my opinions from the FAANG angle, and the bootcamp angle (having worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads from all kinds of bootcamps over the years). I'm the co-founder of an…
The SDE 2 role at Amazon is for people.with generally 2+ YOE as an SDE 1 or equivalent so you are much better off posting somewhere else.to get advice because most people here haven't been to a bootcamp yet, nevertheless worked already in industry.
Now if you want SDE 2 onsite advice, I'm quite qualified to provide that.
1. Your coding interviews are standard LC style,.usually medium to hard questions and occasional touching on very hard topics like DP. At Formation, we benchmark and practice exactly what you need to know for this but outside I would say you should be able to solve any LC Medium you haven't seen before in 25 minutes or less with a very clean solution.
2. Ping me if you get an offer for negotiation,.so I can compare that to other SDE 2 offers I've seen at Formation this month and let you know.exactly what to ask for. They are unique offer structures. Don't trust Blind o…
I have a ton of questions about this because I've seen similar numbers before:
1. What tools does Codesmith track to know conversion rates? Do they have a central tool that you have to log all applications in and what type of application it was? I work at a job hunting and interview prep platform and I know for a fact that people don't love logging all of their applications and tend to start logging them after the interviews start rolling in, so it could appear that conversions are higher but it's a lack of information. We have a completely custom in house built centralized platform for this and it's still hard! So I'm curious how people log the applications and how this data is collected.
2. This is really granular data, so what are the placement rates for people, I'm assuming they shared this if they shared that detailed data? Median time to offer is useful for one aspect, but if 100%…
Definitely good questions. We stand by what we do but we also don't do everything and I fully support making sure you know what we do and know it's a good decision for you.
Overall I would say we are good for half of what you mentioned.
The SD and technical behavioral practice the explanation part. Technical behavioral is about talking about your past work in the best way possible. SD is about connecting your big scale experience with more general concepts and applying those as tools to discussing general systems problems.
Anyone can read a solid systems design book for general materials and we're focused on actually applying the tools and communicating well in group and interview settings (and getting feedback) so you can successfully pass system design interviews.
We don't do any hands on projects or capstone projects and we don't do anything that builds your resume. It's somethin…
We don't cover CICD or DevOps and we also don't have mentors I would say who could do mocks overing those topics specifically. We have some mentors which an do iOS and Android mocks, so while we don't cover those skills either day to day, there's at least some practice available.
There's no fixed curriculum and you'll do different things at different paces. But the overall areas we cover are:
1. CS fundamentals/DS&A, up to all the topics needed for the hardest interviews (including DP, advanced graphs). How much you do will vary by your goals but you can go all the way up to the hardest of the hard.
2. System design. This is full stack system design preparing for top tier company system design interviews.
3. Technical Behavioral. Preparing your resume, pitch and practice hiring manager interview and things like the Amazon Bar Raiser
4. Minor areas: frontend (practice and mocks), softwar…
Hi, I'm happy to answer questions and always like to hear what others have to think. I'll list just a couple of shorter comments to help answer, but feel free to me, I'm very open with people about if I think Formation is a good option to consider or not, and ultimately you have to decide.
1. It sounds like you are somewhat familiar with it at least, but just to clarify that we're not a bootcamp and have no fixed curriculum, lectures, classes, lessons, etc... We are a practice, benchmarking, mentorship, job hunting and mock interview platform. You do practice by yourself in in small mentor-led group sessions, you get feedback in those sessions and through benchmarkings, and you trust us to move you through topics and skill areas at whatever pace you go at, and you trust us to tell you when you are at the top company bar. So you are paying to reliably get your skills (from DS&A to System…
Haha, so Formation isn't a bootcamp or an option to consider instead of a bootcamp and doing so would be a huge mistake. Formation is an interview prep and mentorship platform that doesn't teach any specific skills and instead is about practice - benchmarking - feedback - and mock interviews/job hunt support.
From my best estimates, there are somewhere between 5 and 10% (i.e. 2 to 3 people per Codesmith cohort out of 30+) that might BARELY be candidates for Formation - and only if they understand what Formation is and it's genuinely the right move for them.
In this market that has become rarer and rarer and it might even be almost 0 overlap because the number of people with under 1 year of experience we accept now I can count on one hand, and the people spend a ton of time talking to our team and determining that Formation is indeed the objectively right fit.
\---------
# RE: "CODEMI…
Codesmith's CEO explicitly said publicly several times that Codesmith's application to offer rate is 1 offer for every 50 Codesmith style applications. And he said the main factor in people not getting jobs is that it's hard to do these kind of applications (that involve personal messaging and a ton of reach out). He presents this as a funnel from application to recruiter screen to technical interview to offer and if you do the math it implies 1 offer for every 50 applications.
Do you agree or disagree with that?
I know Codesmith is soliciting feedback from students over the past few days because of a kerfuffle of some kind that people have told me about but I don't know all the details of. So if you disagree it would be good to tell him that.
Interesting. Yeah I work with a number of people at Formation that have 1. done Outco before, 2. mentored at Outco. (Disclosure: Outco is a direct competitor to my company)
I used to recommend people look into Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Outco, and Coachable, (and to some extend Interviewing.io if not looking for a holistic program) as the set of competitors around DS&A and interview prep.
But I removed Outco because they removed their application online and their website is wonky and seems not maintained.... it still says Copyright 2017.
Someone who did Outco recently before Formation also affirmed that in their experience Outco seemed to be running on autopilot with recordings and peer mock interviews and they felt like it wasn't really operating anymore.
I know they are a competitor so I want to triple emphasize this is just what I've observed and heard about Outco in my perso…
Hi, interview prep sounds exactly like what you are asking for. I'm the cofounder of Formation.dev and would recommend looking into Formation and Interview Kickstart if you are aiming to level up to a top tier company. Both are about the same price and take around the same amount of time.
BUT, both are super different day to day so feel free to ping me to ask questions.
I would recommend hoping on an IK info call they have every day to learn about IK and then applying to Formation and talking to a recruiter and then deciding if either, or neither, are a good fit.
Would you be doing this part time? And with 16 years of dev experience you probably have a ton of ability to pick things up quickly that you might not realize.
I would recommend doing a big project in a modern stack like React and Node.js and learning little things along the way as you get blocked.
I know Amazon will pay for a program but this approach would be more effective IMO.
When the time comes to job hunt, I would then look at interview prep programs like Formation (disclosure: co-founder) and Interview Kickstart. Something that recaps CS fundamentals and gets you interview ready.
👋 Hi friends (specifically bootcamp grads), we just launched TIRA by Formation on Product Hunt and I wanted to share it here as a useful free tool and also to get your feedback. It's a dynamic 45 min benchmark to see how interview ready your DS&A skills that you hopefully find useful!
Hi all, I'm sure many of you know me already but I'm a long time group member who comments daily here and I've me a ton of what I would call friends along the way! I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I've done hundreds of DS&A interviews at Meta and a number of people on my team have as well. So we put our minds together and to come up with a solid tool to see how interview ready your DS&A skills are!
I would LOVE to discuss your experience in the comments here, and suggestions to improve the tool.
The benchmark takes 45 mins and is free, and it will tell you what areas you are strong and weak at, a…
Yeah I mean at Formation people pay us explicitly for interview prep mentorship so you can get resume reviews and mock interviews on demand (when you need them or ask for them), usually within a day, often same day, definitely same week, almost a 24/7 clock of availability across dozens of mentors across a dozen+ interview types. Occasionally people cancel mocks, or resume reviews take longer on rounds of feedback, but that's the bar for "career support" that people should expect if they are being promised career support.
The Codesmith career support is:
1. A handbook with a ton of very good resources, including the 'Codesmith Style Resume' and 'Codesmith Style Application' walkthroughs
2. 8 alumni you can book 1-1 sessions with who have varied schedules, some available in days, some in weeks, some never.
3. 2 alumni you can book for technical algo mock interviews who also have only…
One part of the polarization with Codesmith is that a handful of people do land FAANG jobs, even in 2023. Context matters. Someone got a job at Netflix, but it was a non-SWE job and it was in the field that the person had 8 YOE... which 100% CODESMITH HELPED THE PERSON, but this was not an outcome that anyone should EXPECT, it was a unique situation.
Someone got a job at LinkedIn recently, but the FAANG placements are really rare, because FAANG isn't interviewing bootcamp grads with no experience right now. If someone has experience then you might get a FAANG job.
\+1 to getting a good job at another company, they have a couple placements at Mavis Tire making in the mid six figures.
We (Formation) have formal and informal pipelines with FAANG companies and recruiters, and they are extremely picky about who they interview and I wish they would interview everyone, but they won't in this…
This is correct, I say 2+ YOE myself but maybe it's the definition of "difficult".
It's absolutely more competitive. I know Formation is working with a number of CURRENT OR FORMER FAANG ENGINEERS who are rusty and want to give interviews their best to stand out.
I'm super bias so I would argue that any current engineers benefit from mentorship to various degrees, but I am seeing it more competitive to get the offer.
People doing a great job on interviews but getting rejected is more common than in the past.
But if you have 2+ YOE, eepecially at FAANG, you'll get interviews for sure and you shouldn't have that difficult of a time. If you are come talk to me about Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... because you might benefit from extra mentorship. If you worked at FAANG for 3-6 years, $5-$10K won't be a huge cost from your savings to save a ton of "difficulty" if that's w…
Hi, did you have any internships during school? If so I wouldn't do a bootcamp and would do a career accelerator like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (bias disclosure, my company) Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable, etc... (all different but worth looking into)
If you have a CS degree from a top tier university and are aiming for top tier companies, you need to be good at DS&A, and all of those options above help get interview ready with that, and a bootcamp won't help.
If you don't have any experience or projects of note then I would consider a bootcamp and aim for a non-top tier role. Codesmith is a pretty good option for this bucket for CS grads to get a six figure non-top tier tech role. Rithm, Launch School are other options of good bootcamps that you can research and compare to Flatiron.
Happy to answer more, I'm tight on time and can't right now, but feel free to D…
Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC.
But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing.
Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience.
From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win.
There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself.
Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218…
It might be a conflict of interest because I'm the co-founder of an interview prep platform. I didn't disclose that above because it wasn't relevant and I genuinely wanted to answer with my Meta hat on, not my Formation hat, but I'll disclose here because now it is if we're talking about paid/free interview prep.
Again, see my other comments, I'm very bias and this is my personal opinion, people can upskill their day to day practical skills a lot on the job and this why I believe it's important for people to get the RIGHT job out of their bootcamps (if they have the luxury) and not the highest paying job OR the most prestigious company to brag about.
If more bootcamp grads were able to take the top-tier apprenticeship route (e.g. Airbnb, Dropbox, Asana, Intuit, etc...) they would get the support and ramp up they need to catch up to the CS grads with 3 internships and enter top tier impactful roles as amazing entry level SWEs.
Unfortunately these tend to be 1. paid at like $90K to $100K so top bootcamps like Codesmith steer you away from these and rarely talk about them. 2. they tend to be focused on increasing diversity in tech and promoted in channels focused on those areas and not necessarily…
\+1 to therapy not as a joke but as a tool to strengthen your emotional state.
At the same time though, just like you can have a therapist for your emotional state, a personal trainer for your physical state, a nutritionist for your dietary state, you might also benefit from a personal trainer for your SWE fundamentals.
Again (see my comment), I need to disclose that I'm the co-founder of Formation which was mentioned and I'm bias, but just like some people benefit from help in these areas and others don't, some people benefit from help with their CS fundamenals, be it Formation or Interviewing.io or Exponent or LeetCode Premium, or Structy, or reading a 200 page PDF someone shared on LinkedIn, and others don't, but it's something to consider)