I have seen a number of people in this position who have gone both ways. Note: I'm the co-founder of Formation, which you mentioned, that works with people with 1+ YOE as a SWE, you are the target demographic but I'm not commenting to talk about that and I'm purely trying to give you advice based on your post and wanted to preface with that before I get accused of ulterior motives. Genuinely trying to help here and I hope I have some useful insights.
Overall advice: don't quit your job, but what you are experiencing likely isn't just you and is indeed a long term consequence of crammed/12 week bootcamps that focus on getting a job over fundamental skills (this is a bias statement but my opinion).
\- having at least exactly 1 YOE or more at a single company is a good sign for recruiters that you weren't fired within that time so it's a sign you are a decent performer, so that's one good…
It's based on the experience level and how much work we think you need based on your benchmark. The longer you are at Formation, the more money we spend mentoring you, so if you need more work, the fee is higher.
I need to reiterate emphatically that Formation is not a "program" and what you do will be different from what everyone else does (like the same topics and skills, but completely different pacing and focus areas).
So we want the fees to be based on how much delta we think you have to getting to the top-tier bar and to pay a fair amount based on what others with similar background and starting point are paying.
Generally speaking if you have several years of SWE work experience, maybe an interview or two on the horizon, you'll be on the lower side and less than a year of contract/internship/freelancing on the higher side - most people in the middle. We only take people with un…
"FAANG canonical levels" are just the leveling system that the majority of TECH industry currently adopts. So if you want to be an engineer in the tech industry, you should be familiar those levels or you'll have trouble navigating the industry, even if you use other names yourself. Other industry use other words, like in the banking industry you can be a "Vice President Engineer" which is a tech industry "senior". But if want to be in the tech industry and you insist on a vice president title you'll struggle to navigate (from what I've seen for exactly the Vice President case while I was at Facebook)
My advice has been extremely consistently to get a an appropriate job for your experience and skills and then over-perform and have steady career growth from there. The levels don't matter, it just so happens that no bootcamp gives you the experience needed to go beyond entry level. If yo…
Formation is not me doing mentorship. We have a team of two dozen people who are building a platform and product that supports dynamic mentorship by giving you practice, benchmarks, and 3-5 person or 1-1 sessions with over 200 industry mentors (who are individual engineers and recruiters, many of whom are seniors plus engineers).
We have thousands of tasks you can do, hundreds of sessions across dozens of types, over a dozen mock interview types.
I'm not involved in the actual technical skill side nor do I run sessions, I build the platform and I help people that typically have senior or staff FAANG interviews with advice on preparation and helping navigate the job hunt process.
This reply is mostly for other people reading it to clarify what Formation is and that it has very little to do with me. Sophie is the founder who steers the direction of the company, she's just not on Reddit…
Hi, I wrote a more through reply about Formation on the thread but didn't answer these questions yet, so I'll do my best here:
\- How many paying customers ever? I don't want to give the exact amount for competitive reasons, nor do I have it right now, but it's the high 3 figures / low end of 4 figures of people who have been accepted and joined
\- It takes people about 6 to 8 months (it's gotten longer in the weaker 2023 market) on average to find a job, but the range is very large because of these factors:
1. We work with people who usually have 1+ years of SWE work experience but it varies from 0 to 20+ and people with 0 come in with no interviews in sight and the people with 2+ or more come with with interviews lined up.
2. People do Formation part time on their own schedule and put in whatever time they can, so it takes people variable amounts of time to find a job based on thei…
Hi I can comment, I'm one of the co-funders and heavily involved day by day, so my answer is super biased, but I can tell you about what we do and why we do it.
First off, we're not a bootcamp and we don't have a curriculum or teach anything. We're a mentorship platform to practice, benchmark, and prepare for interviews and become a stronger engineer while doing it. Everyone does different things with us and the personal trainer analogy below is pretty good imo... we help you get from A to B with your job hunting goals and your path to get there will look unique to you.
Second off, the vast majority of people we work with have 1+ YOE as SWE (often more) and are currently employed and doing Formation part time on the side. Our platform supports you ramping up or down your commitment every week, so people practice at their own pace and it tends to take people about 6 months or so before…
Yeah it has contributed to the YOE bar for entry level roles going up and companies dismissing all bootcamp resumes without a deeper look.
But it's clearly for these 52 people this is working though and they are choosing their own paths over all of their peers from other programs, and no one is doing anything about it so 🤷♂️.
There was [a post](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/17m0fis/codesmith_graduate_2023_experiences_job_offer/) where someone said
>Students who hustled like crazy, pushed themselves to the limit, and embraced the resume/interview tactics. This is hard to do. It is admittedly pretty shady, but any Career Coach or resume course is gonna have you embellish pretty hard. So I don't think Codesmith's hiring portion is necessarily worse or different than any other field's... but it definitely is ethically uncomfortable if you've never done it before. It…
Thanks for sharing, if comfortable to you mind sharing when you graduated (or approximately). A year ago or two so I would here this kind of thing more often, and I interviewed a number of Codesmith grads that were very uncomfortable with how they presented their projects and we spent the interview more therapy-like about why they were doing this and trying to explain they didn't have to do it that way. Someone said a mock interviewer at Codesmith told them their problem was practicing their buzzwords and their first response when I told them I wanted to pause the interview to chat about something, was 'sorry, my buzzwords are not up to par yet'.
Needless to say, these very unique situations over the years absolutely brought Codesmith onto my radar, and aren't representative of all cases but happened two or three times. I was interviewing people that needed extra support so presumably…
I'm sorry you feel that way but respect your opinion.
I've been here day in day out, giving people advice on all kinds of things and I'm sorry if you feel my tone has changed, but when I was first around - I had some way more intense conversations with some Codesmith alumni who claimed I was "stealing here with the secret motivation of stealing studetns to Formation".
I am here to provide a unique lens of industry perspective + bootcamp perspective (having worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads from many programs but also interviewed 450 people at Facebook, built interview programs, observer of hiring committees, work on peformance review tooling,, etc...)
Quick story. There was a period of time when I had a goal of connecting with 10 grads a day from 20 different bootcamps on LinkedIn and I was accused of "Tracking down Codesmith students and trying to steal them to go to Formation…
I appreciate your challenges and it gives me a chance to explain how things work instead of one offs and generalizations.
1. Just like Codesmith we give guidance on Formation and you can see that below, copy pasted from our notes (I think it can be improved but that's as of 12/7/2023) and I don't think this is misrepresenting in any way what Formation is or tricking anyone into thinking it is something else.
2. Adults are adults, we are not responsible for anyone's LinkedIns just like Codesmith isn't responsible for them. The reason I did my post was because it was a pattern of 92% of recent Codesmith placements.
3. If someone said that 92% of Formation placements were listing Formation as a fake job and people were all not following our advice and going rogue by presenting Formation some kind of full time software engineer job experience, and that was the reason they were getting jobs…
In all seriousness, the reason for Codesmith alumni's heavy, anonymous presence on Reddit is becasue people [exaggerate to get jobs](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/) and if they out themselves on LinkedIn or somewhere else or give more details about who they are, they risk getting "found out" by colleagues and losing those jobs. I talk to my friend at a recent hiring and asked them if they knew a specific Codesmith grad the company just hired a few weeks ago had no experience (obviously friendly and off the books) and they said no idea from the resume or interview. So it's totally in people's interest to not share their success in any way that might reveal who they are, if it's based on stretching the truth.
At Formation, we had someone start at Meta this week and she happily participated in a blog post about her job…
This is a common problem with the Codesmith approach (not the majority, but it's a common thing to happen) and there's a number of people at career accelerators like Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... as a result.
The Codesmith approach can really throw off your mental model of the industry because you hustle into roles many people are not ready for or the right fit for, and have a hard time understanding what to do next. It works if you keep the hustle going until you land a solid legit tech job, but it doesn't handle the other cases so well.
This market is making Codesmith grads learn quickly that you are not a mid level or senior engineer at top tier companies. So you get stuck with not getting these interviews, not knowing why, and then failing the mid-level/senior top tier interviews you do get. (This is the pattern I've seen).
With the exaggerations seen in most r…
I don't know what "support" means but.I can list out what I've seen people do. Codemsith adamantly claims to not help people lie so I assume they'd re not helping with most of this but it's possible they are and that is "support"
1. Stretch things, turning fast food-like jobs into technical jobs
2. Go back to school
3. Work at Codemsith itself, either as an instructor or another role
4. Be a fellow and stretch the length of time on that
5. Do unpaid internships or contracts that aren't documented as placements I told they can neither convert or get another job
6. Work on projects independent of Codemsith
7. Do another paid program afterwards, like an interview prep or career accelerator
8. Follow Codemsith networking advice
Codemsith will help any time with career support conversations so they offer those to all these people, but there isn't anything tangible that they do specifically f…
This is one of the reasons why I so adamantly believe that people need to get appropriate first jobs out of a boot camp. what that means is different for each person but getting an entry level FAANG job that pays not as high as potentially some other jobs achieved through exaggerating resumes and pushing really hard, can be the path rapidly accelerating your career.
If Codesmith was really the ivy league like grad school for bootcamps they claim to be. they should be striving to place people in incredible entry-level rules that result in them making $600,000 in a few years and instead they are dismissive of those roles and pushing people to these exaggerated mid-level senior looking roles and pushing people to make the highest compensation they possibly can right out of the program.
I think they know that this is pretty much impossible because they can't reliably get people these jobs…
Analysis of 52 most recent Codesmith offers LinkedIns and trends on who is getting a job right now and why. Summary: an average of 11.7 months of experience claimed for 3 week long projects (lacking evidence of additional time spent). Majority claimed to have prior SWE-adjacent experience.
Hi all, I was recently made aware of the 52 most recent reported Codesmith placements (not saying when this was provided to protect identities, but it's from a window within the past couple months) and did a summary of how those people present themselves on LinkedIn. Please note that this is an UNOFFICIAL ANALYSIS based on an ordered list of placements during a 2 month time window. I won't be DOXing anyone on the list, and because this is just my personal analysis and not an official study, you should use this information for illustrative purposes only. There are numerous ways you can try to reproduce…
It's Formation ([formation.dev](https://formation.dev)). It's for people with 1 year or more SWE work experience (and typically MUCH more) but a lot of people we work with are doing their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job transition. We're not a school or education program or teach anything, rather it's practice and mentorship experience to get interview ready at top tier companies.
It really depends on you and your timeframe. If you have a longer timeframe, I would consider first self teaching, then doing a more intense self-paced online program/course, and then doing open source contributions or starting a company/building a product from scratch. You can put that 20K into hiring some freelancers and registering an LLC and building something for real.
There is simply no program that will get you there.
There's a saying going around that if you can get accepted by Codesmith on the first interview, run for the hills and save your $20K because that means you are pretty much ready to go and just need a little connecting of the dots to get there.
Happy to chat more if you want to share more personal background for more specific advice, it's hard to generalize.
I'm extremely bias because I'm the co-founder of one of these, but based on everything you should look into career accelerator/interview prep programs and see if you think they would be worth it for helping out. I'm fairly confident this type of thing would help, but they are all expensive and it's a personal decision if you think they are worth the cost for you.
Formation.dev, Pathrise, Interview Kickstart are the three biggest ones left standing right now. They are generally a bit cheaper than bootcamps but roughly the same price but solely focused on all the areas: brushing up on CS concepts, strategizing for the interviews, legit mock interviews, building robust problem solving skills, system design etc...
I can go into more about all these if interested, but first just check them out and see if they would help you or not.
Yeah a bootcamp could be appropriate. Look into the top ones and see how they work and which approach is right for you.
I see a "Codesmith." comment and it's a top one or consider but look into how it works. Most people said things like "it changed my life" but don't explain how it works... it only works for certain people that will stretch the truth in their resumes (even most people here who say they went there and didn't do this often "stretched the truth")
If time is not an issue I would also look at Launch School. similarly it's a solid program but look into hired it works and see if that's good for you.
Also look at "career accelerators": Formation, Pathrise, Interview Kickstart. these are typically for people with SWE experience already so I probably would not recommend at all in this market, but you should look at them to compare "how it works" to how bootcamps work.
FWIW, PhD grads at Meta entered at the "mid level"/E4 and I think still do. assuming you did a number of legit internships or published research throughout.
It's hard to tell, but a large amount is in the interview process and asking THEM the right questions. But ultimately companies are companies and things change and there's a bit of luck involved.
It's much easier to decide between FAANG for example that have well known patterns and publicly communicate their cultures. Each FAANG is SOOOOO DIFFERENT, it's massively important to choose the right one if one were given that opportunity (which is obviously not common), but if you dont' have that opportunity, at least understanding the culture enough to know the areas you should focus on and the areas you'll be weak at.
For example, Meta values getting work done over overthinking things. So if you overthink things, you can try to change…
1. They do fire them, I do think most survive but I know peopoe fired too
2..There is a range here. Capital One hired like 50 Codesmith grads in the boom. Senior Associate is like below FAANG entry level and Senior Engineer is like FAANG entry level. They comp all cash so that Senior Associate pays like 140K ish total and that Senior Engineer 160K ish.
In some ways so many people going to Capital One messed up the stats because of the title inflation and all cash compensation. And the interview process that asks the same 4 questions for one of the interviews that all the Codemsith people shared and practiced with each other.
I interviewed someone who said his "manager was Philip Troutman" and he was "selected to work on this by his acquaintance and didn't have to interview for the position" and that "he hasn't gotten any performance reviews yet" and that it was a "not a W2 full time relationship"
That's what you call not lying?
That's a Codesmith line and the lies continue to the interview.
The policy is to not proactively bring up that it's unpaid and only explain that if explicitly asked. I've interviewed a number of Codesmith people who dance around this and come across incompetent in the first 10 mins until the truth finally comes out and makes the previous 10 mins feel like lies.
So you practice and practice how to talk about the project to both: 1. not get caught in the first place while not saying it was paid work, and 2. if you do get called out, how to handle that smoothly to clarify instead of the interview falling apart.
Presumably the people I talk to need more help because I wouldn't talk to them otherwise, but they all said that's how Codesmith mock interviewers told them to do it.
So something a lot of people don't realize is that Open Source !== free/unpaid work. Look at this resume: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/feross](https://www.linkedin.com/in/feross)
People who contribute legit open source work often work at companies who pay them to do it, or they have some kind of grants/support to do it.
People who do one off contributions here or there, or on the side, do not list that as "work experience" and they do not list it for 4X longer time then they spent on it. So you lied on your resume and you might not even realize you did.
Amazon is the most gamable FAANG but you are doing it wrong by trying to game the interviews. My entire life now is teaching people how to be better engineers and helping them pass interviews by investing in becoming better engineers instead of investing in gamifying the interview.
I know all the Codesmith alums at Amazon and Capita…
Me, I'm a non-anonymous member who has been here for 2 years and comment a lot.
My background is I worked at Meta from 2009 to 2017, grew from new grad to E7 principal engineer, did 400+ interviews of all shapes and sizes, participated in calibrations and interview offer panels, and was the number one code committer at the company when I left.
After I took a break, I joined my partners company which helps engineers with experience level up their careers. We work with a lot of bootcamp grads later on in their careers so I know about and hear about just about everything with bootcamps.
Codesmith caught my interest about 2 years ago when I was interviewing people to join Formation for leveling up and they had these really weird jobs at "OSLabs" that made no sense, and were being nervously vague about them in the interviews. I then went down the rabbit hole and found out that OSLabs was (…
That sounds like you had a solid interview experience where they took the time to get to know you and your code, and that's not what people typically do. Phil at Codesmith repeatedly tells residents that "no one looks at your code" in a way to justify the exaggerations.
But I'm specifically talking about SWE work experience and canonical top tier tech roles. There could be tech jobs where you leverage former backgrounds to get a better offer or better fit, **if you have zero SWE experience you are a junior engineer no matter what your title is and recognizing that is important for your career growth and trajectory.**
More importantly, I'm speaking about trends at the level of dozens/hundreds/low thousands of people AND over one's entire career, and not individuals at a point in time. There are always exceptions and one offs and everyone's journey is unique.
We don't have that many Canadians but they are definitely all over the place and typically lower than in the US.
Some points:
1. The market in Canada is MUCH LOWER COMPENSATION than in the USA, the salaries are maybe 30 ro 40% lower and don't increase as rapidly as you get promoted.
2. We're see a combination of people getting FAANG-level jobs in Canada, working for startups in Canada, and doing remote jobs in the USA, but I don't see any clear patterns or trends (too few people overall), and I don't think anyone can come in expecting any specific outcome.
3. My typical stance is that you should come to Formation and pay to be able to **confidently** walk into a Google interview and feel good about your performance (in DS&A, System Design, Behaviorals) and I feel comfortable saying that in ANY MARKET we as-close-to-guarantee-that-as-legally-possible that if you meet our entry bar, we c…
I don't run or own a bootcamp. I'm extremely open about the mentorship platform I do work on (using my real name, one account, and being very transparent), but it's a **mentorship platform** for people with at least 1 year of SWE WORK experience and it's not competing with bootcamps at all. We don't teach anything, have a curriculum, we don't have teachers, so anyone considering a bootcamp wouldn't consider Formation... unless you actually have SWE work experience already and were still considering a bootcamp.
We compete with Interview Kickstart and Pathrise and I never see them mentioned here whatsoever. We in fact work with a lot of bootcamp grads later on their careers and not INSTEAD of a bootcamp so I don't see how trashing bootcamps would be in my business interests at all.
80% in ONE YEAR vs 80% in SIX MONTHS is very different.
Imagine people went to an interview prep program after and got a job from that, all within the 12 months... Codemsith still gets credit. The longer the time period the more people do on their own afterwards that contributes to their job than. And the portion any bootcamp would claim for the success of failure at that point is lower and lower. That's my point here, not that it's not a good point that people are getting jobs but just taking longer.
I actually explicitly removed Outco from the list because they seem to have shut down and aren't taking applications and numerous people I've talked to said they have been non responsive to them :S.
Obviously I'm extremely bias but I would say that:
Formation is a completely different world from Outco, I know some people that did Outco and came to Formation and can connect you. For example, you get a team of three dedicated support staff, an adaptive platform, mocks with actual senior engineers and recruiters who actually work at FAANG companies, personalized prep for upcoming interviews, a custom platform built from the ground up for your progress, scheduling, feedback, job hunt tracking, etc...
Interview Kickstart is a little more structured than Formation and not adaptive to your progress and needs, but it's consistently been ok for preparing for interviews. Similar to Formation th…
I'm bias because I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform/career accelerator, but I would consider this type of option if you already have work experience - [Formation](https://Formation.dev).dev, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable (all of these have deferred payment options as well). These are all very different but they are all built to prepare you in different ways for the job hunt.
Since you already have legit work experience a bootcamp probably isn't what you want to do because the majority of people you work with be much further behind. **You will have way more exerience than most of the instructors who teach you.** And you don't actually learn much raw skills. If you do want to choose a bootcamp, Codesmith is probably the best option for you if you want to hustle your way into the next job and get all the support you need doing that, but I wouldn't go there to actually…
It reads more like 1-2 years of experience, and most companies that hire Codesmith grads are smaller non-tech companies OR contract roles that don't really know or check.
But correct, I have a number of industry friends who have gotten upset at recruiters for wasting their time in the next rounds, and experienced engineers can tell in seconds/minutes of a behavioral interview.
1. They aren't just looking for raw coding skills, but communication, collaboration, improvement, etc....
2. The fact that you care so much means you probably prepared a lot more for the 2nd one and are/will show great improvement.
3. If you get anxious or freeze up, take a deep breathe and focus on clear communication.
4. If you get nervous, or are worried about panicking in the interview, PRACTICE A PROBLEM SOLVING METHOD and stick to it. BIAS, THIS IS MY COMPANY: this problem solving method can be used to solve any problem, helps people pass Google interviews without doing my LeetCode. It's more complicated than it seems to get good at this under pressure, but check it out: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
5. Most of the interviews are friendly and collaborative, but don't be TOO friendly, you want to balance dem…
I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too.
Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue.
They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good.
These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up.
1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including Lin…
RE: Outcomes, I summarized my threads a bit to respond to that. So what has been publicly stated is that average cohort size is down 25% from full capacity, people are being accepted until immediately before a start date, on their first interview, resulting in reported "lower bar" (a handful of reports from more "advanced" students who feel like they are working with more people were let in later, completed an accelerated pre-work, haven't been working for months in the Codesmith ecosystem before, and are struggling to "write basic code" as it was put) I don't have numbers on this but it tracks with the trend that Hack Reactor has done by making a "beginner" track (the 19 week one) as the enrollment of advanced people is down there too.
Placements are at not as strong companies as in the past. Their own data that was shown at an info session, albeit with the caveat of the presenter sayi…
Like I said, I'm confident because facts can't be manipulated and misinformation can't be backed up.
1. Codesmith admissions staff during an info call 2 weeks ago said the average cohort size is down 25% to "25 people"
2. Will Sentance shared data in an info session last week that Q1 2023 median salaries were $110K and Q2 2023 median salaries were $115K, that's a huge drop.
3. They had reported layoffs of up to 10% of staff a few weeks ago. There website staff was updated and you can use the way back machine if you want to compare.
4. The CTRI cohort was cancelled for the rest of 2024 and after the layoffs, it's possible other people are looking for jobs too.
Now about Formation:
1. We don't have any program costing anywhere near $20K, you might be talking about ISAs, loans or interest that hit that much, but the underlying cost is much lower than that. We move fast and things change.…
I used to be more open minded on this based on all the materials I saw that every clearly tell you not to lie.
But there have been some layoffs recently, employees are concerned and some ask/have asked me for advice on what to do because they cannot express their concerns internally.
I don't think it's a mega conspiracy but they are well aware that alumni resumes don't portray what their guidance is internally but they have no control to change that.
The reason I changed my mind is that these placements are celebrated by Codesmith as mid level and senior placements. Not everyone lies and they handpick the ideal alumni to talk about how they didn't lie and got high level jobs, but they are well aware of the ones that are and getting high level jobs and bucketing them all together showing that the handpicked cases are just common examples of the larger pool.
I'm sorry I can't break peo…
This is a not so secret-secret to how a number of bootcamp grads get past resume screens. There are two critical pieces if you do this:
1. You have to practice your narrative and story to not get caught (you can't fake real experience so you won't pass every interview, but you have to get good enough to pass some.
2. Since you'll be in more senior roles than you should be, you have to be ready to fake it on the job to not get fired while also not telling the company the truth about your background and getting the support you need. I've seen some amazing people get fired or let go (and they might not even tell the program they were placed because it happens so fast sometimes). But I've also seen people make it with a little extra sweat, but they make it. Can't give numbers on each bucket, but it's not an easy journey for anybody.
I work with hundreds of people from zero to 20+ YOE and h…
It depends how you define outcomes. Again, since we're not a school or program, we are trying to help people achieve their goals, we take you from A -> B in C time for D cost, and those expectations have to be aligned for it to make sense to join. But everyone's A, B, C, D are different.
We currently focus on preparing people for top tier DS&A/SD/classic interview pipelines and if we scale super large then it wouldn't make sense because every top tier job would be competing for Formation Fellows and so many people would want to join, there probably wouldn't be enough jobs.
So the vision for us is to actually figure out what the best company is FOR YOU, help you figure out your best "B" target. And on the other side, we can help companies find the RIGHT people for them. If we can match everyone up with the right jobs for them and help every company find the right people, we have a scala…
lol, the AMA is next week!
It's a harder question to answer than it sounds, but I don't want to misrepresent our size so I'm going to try to answer properly.
First, we are a mentorship platform. We're not a school or educational program or training program or anything comparable so we don't have "students", "curriculum", "classes", "cohorts", or even "programs" (we have an ongoing project this year to try to improve marketing to be clearer what we actually are lol)
We don't have any kind of fixed offerings and we work with people on a 1-1 contractual basis - for as long as it takes to get a job if you do your part - and the cost is based on your skill gaps and work experience, which we bucket into 3 tiers, but we're constantly working on new pricing models. But everyone comes in with different goals and needs. Some people need mock interviews, some need group mentorship, some need c…
Those people can CALL themselves senior engineers, their resume can certainly say that if they want, I would encourage people to do so when reviewing their resumes, but it doesn't make them senior engineers.
Do you not believe I've worked with a couple dozens Codesmith alumni later that have trouble with this?
The typical case is someone with a "Senior" title and 1 to 2 YOE on their resume. Depending on the company, but they will likely get a lot of interviews because of the Senior title, and then they hit the hiring manager interview and they get rejected.
I've seen some truly heart-wrenching cases - people passing the coding bar but the HM doesn't have any junior or midlevel headcount to downlevel and it's much more pronounced in this current market than it was before.
I then have to help the person apply to top tier mid level and junior engineering roles and sometimes the people p…
Yeah JavaScript is fine! I'm super bias here because I'm very experienced with more traditional big tech, but companies all have their own stacks and frameworks such that any specific language doesn't help that much. For example, Meta does "whiteboard"-style interviews because they don't care about perfect syntax or compilable code.
If you are trying to get a job at a smaller company, they might want you to have already learned a particular stack so you show up ready to go, because they won't train you as much.
For the later case, I think being broad is still better and JavaScript is SUPER broad (frontend, backend, scripting, etc...) and people tend to get sidetracked with what the "hot language" is, which ends up slowing you down playing whack-a-mole.
At Formation, this is super interesting but all sessions are run in either Python or JavaScript and these are small group interactiv…
So it depends on the role but most of the ones I saw were Facebook contractors for anywhere from 3 months to 12 months.
I would have to write an essay haha.
So at Facebook most contractors are "Software Developers" and while paid $150K run rates the role has zero path to SWE and you have to interview like anyone else.
Other companies are different but the common threads are:
1. Higher than normal base salary
2. Lower or no bonus
3. No equity
4. Worse benefits / none of those sweet full time benefits
5. Generally worse vacation policies
6. First to go when there are re orgs or budget cuts
7. Typically let go suddenly with zero notice and it's quite frustrating - even if you are performing well.
Would I take one of these hours of a bootcamp - HECK YEAH! But when you talk about it on Reddit it's just a completely different job than even a full time job at a worse company and no one on…
Formation probably isn't good for you in this market,. I would recommend trying to get a math-y tech internship actually.
I would try to line one up in the fall during internship season (literally RIGHT NOW) - when you are technically still in your PhD program and eligible, maybe go on leave instead of dropping out. And then try to convert the internship into a full time role and "drop out" of the program then.
If you have no experience at all, internships are key right now.
Now if you don't agree and want to look at different supplemental options...
Consider a bootcamp like Codesmith if you are an ambitious hustler and want to produce a nice looking resume that is optimized to get through recruiter screens. You won't absorb that much actual skill but if you are the right personality it might be the most effective way to get a job for you.
Consider Formation if you want to fill in…
So there are a three ingredients, Will Sentance has talked about this in public talks, and I have a hunch Launch School would agree re: their Capstone as well (but don't take my word for it!!)
1. Be a strong engineer to begin with/lots of potential. Good bootcamps test for this by having a challenging acceptance process. People prep for Codesmith for months and often fail their first interview. People have to complete Launch School Core for many months before applying to Capstone.
2. Build raw technical skills. A program has to train these and it's very very hard to do in 12 weeks. A project is one way to apply technical skills, and both of these programs focus on multi-week long group projects that are the highlight of your experience.
3. Be able to communicate and talk about your experience confidently to non-engineers. This includes your resume and recruiter outreach to be impressive…
I do think it's a fair question/comment yeah. It's also one of the reasons we don't publish "CIRR-like" outcomes.
I see day in - day out on here how people just programs strictly by outcomes and the fundamental problem is that a randomly selected person doesn't just get accepted into program X and it's a free ride to $Y salary.
Formation is VERY hard work, so it's not about selecting great people, they get great jobs and we get the credit. But it is both ways. If we select people who we know Formation is more likely to work effectively for, then we're more likely to have more amazing experiences, which might attract more people who it might not work for. I think that's fine if we are honest with individuals when they apply if we think Formation is good or not and that people trust that assessment.
Believe it or not, Formation is NOT good for people who have done all the LC Hard probl…
I've heard people outside of Formation who think we 'gamify the interview process' but I don't know where that comes from and I think it's a weakness in our public content and website if people feel that way.
The core approach to DS&A follows this method: [https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/](https://formation.dev/blog/the-engineering-method/)
And all of the practice is in applying that and getting feedback and practicing it in 1-1 mocks.
That link is free \^\^\^\^ so clearly it's not as easy as it sounds to apply it if people pay us a lot of money, and some people - even some new Fellows who signed up - have an instinct to fallback to memorization or trying to game the system - and for them the hard part is re-learning how to solve easy problems!
If you try to game the system and go into interviews, it's highly risky - you'll either crush it or fail miserably. That'…
I think that's a different program. We don't have any fixed length whatsoever and you have no syllabus or guaranteed curriculum you'll work on.
The topics individual people cover will vary based on their gaps, but post people cover:
\- Problem Solving (via DS&A, from basic concepts to graphs and DP)
\- System Design
\- Technical Behavioral/Hiring Manager preparation
\- Resume/Recruiter call preparation
\- Job Hunt tracking tools and job sourcing (up to 5 matching jobs a day sent to you)
\- Dedicated support team of 3 team members to make adjustments and respond to your needs (it's highly dynamic)
A couple of notes. They are "legally" associated with OSLabs, a completely separate charity that seems to have a lot of ties to Codesmith but is not Codesmith. OSLabs signs the letters of reference for these people (it's a Codesmith employee too, but he's also a Board Member of OSLabs).
And second, yeah anyone can audit the GitHub projects for OSLabs and see how the vast vast majority have 2-3 weeks of contributions from each member, in these spike patterns following the cohort cycle that you don't see on any real open source projects. One of the projects had console.log(password) in the authentication code - and password wasn't hashed at this point.
But employers - especially the smaller companies that hire Codesmith grads - don't look at this stuff and are just happy to interview people with experience on their resume!
Interviewing.io is currently the best in place to go if you just want 1 to 3 or so mock interviews and nothing else.
If you plan on paying for 5 or more, I would consider an interview prep program like Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder), Interview Kickstart or Pathrise (I've removed Outco because they haven't accepted applications in a month.
Exponent bought PRAAMP (which is free peer to peer mocks) and they offer paid mocks in a number of areas as an upsell but they don't have as many or as a strong mock interviewers as Interviewing.io or the interview prep programs. If you can get a good deal on them then doing a few there is probably fine.
A number of people might recommend various free options, Codesmith also offers alumni free mock interviews for life, but not all mock interviews are the same. If you aren't doing a mock with a person who has either done hundreds of interviews…