Hi, sure, happy to respond with thoughts.
RE: Formation. It is absolutely harder to get FAANG interviews right now than in the past. The goal of Formation is to increase the chances of passing these interviews and to help you get these interview. When the companies are hiring, it's easier for us to send over some profiles to a recruiter and get you in the pipeline. When recruiter jobs themselves are at risk it's harder to do that. But we help you find the right path to companies given the market, and occasional one offs happen and occasionally a recruiter will respond to you.
RE: OSP. Honestly the projects are not good and everyone knows it. They are open source and anyone can look at the code! Non functional, commented out code, reviewed and mentored by someone who just graduated Codesmith and has no experience. I know the vision of the projects is much greater, but in reality they ar…
I'm extremely biased, but I would recommend looking at Career Accelerators, which focus more on practicing than teaching. Some to look into are: [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (I'm the co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar, Coachable, and then also [Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io) for one off interview-practice.
I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev which obviously I would recommended looking at. About 1/3 of people we work with have no full time SWE experience, and of those 1/3 are self taught. We work on filling in a lot of fundamental CS knowledge that's missing and get it up to a top tier bar.
Anyways, I don't want to promote Formation too much here, but look at those options above to at least consider this kind of approach because it might be a better fit.
If you have really good data-engineering experience to talk about, you should highly look into some career accelerator options like [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (I'm the co-founder), Outco, Pathrise, Interview Kickstart, etc... These options are more part-time. Formation is completely scheduled around your availability. Most people we work with have day jobs and take about 6ish months to find a new job. If you have decent fundamentals already, transitioning to a SWE, or at least a SWE-like-data role is feasible at Formation at least. I can't speak to the other options for this, e.g. Pathrise is focused more on staying in the same vertical, but maybe Scalar would be useful too. Anyways look at these options as well to compare and constrast.
I post criticizing using CIRR as the "gold standard" often :D. But you should trust their reported numbers as reliable.
The issues lie more in 1. the way the data is presented and trying to understand the outcomes for someone like you versus someone with work experience already. 2. they borderline sketchy ways people can be excluded... however these are edge cases and not the bulk of the data. 3. data is too slow -> need more real time data on outcomes
All of that said., the reports trail graduation by 6 months, so the next report will be for H1 2022, which was a GOOD HIRING HALF. H2 2022 -> present has been terrible. Amazon has stopped hiring and Capital One has slowed down hiring for and those accounted for a large chunk of the > $150K salaries you see on there.
We won't know the implications of that until June 2023 at the earliest and you'll be done Codesmith by then! From people i…
This question has been coming up a lot more often recently. I would suggest looking into interview prep and career accelerators instead of bootcamps.
I'm the co-founder of Formation (.dev), which is one option, and other things to look into are Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar, Exponent, Coachable....a lot of very different options here!
Specifically at Formation, 11% of engineers who got jobs in 2022 were CS grads with no experience, so it's a smaller case for us but a reasonable option.
The idea is to work on bringing your fundamental skills to the top tier tech bar through adaptive practice, benchmarking, several sessions a week with senior engineers and tons of feedback, and mock interviews.
All of these programs cost the same as a bootcamp but are much more useful IMO than doing a bootcamp. I work with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds, many who did…
We have this guide that collects resources for different topics and was curated by three engineers on our team (myself included) with over 40 years of top tier industry experience running interviews at Facebook, Microsoft, Nextdoor, etc...
https://formation.dev/guide/
Disclosure: Formation is not a bootcamp but we work people to level up their careers later on. Only 11% of people we worked with who got a job in the past year we're bootcamp grads without a job so I want to make it clear that I'm sharing this to help and not to solicit you to look into the training, as you sound a bit too early in your career.
And yes they are fairly common at larger companies. As companies become larger they want to standardize their interview processes which means having really consistent topics and types of interviews. Data structures and algorithms interviews are about as general problems as you can…
I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev and I would strongly suggest looking into it as an option, alongside other career accelerator type programs, rather than bootcamps. For example, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise and Outco, maybe Scalar and Coachable.dev. All of these don't start at the beginning and rather are focused on getting you interview ready and finding a good job. Most are part time as well.
At Formation, we don't teach anything lecture style, it's purely practice, benchmarking, small group problem solving sessions with mentors, feedback from a wide range of senior industry engineering mentors, mock interviews. Every Friday, all your practice tasks and sessions for the next week are selected based on how you've been doing so far and based on your schedule and availability for the next week.
A lot of these programs will support you until you get a new job in some fashion as well.…
So Formation isn't a school or bootcamp because we don't have a curriculum, we don't teach anything like lectures/presentation or tutorial style, and it's kind of a more unique type of training. It's all practice based from day 1. The sessions with senior engineer mentors are 3-6 people and highly collaborative around going through a problem together. You are given problems to work on and then various resources to help unblock.
There are infinite problems to solve and really you could train for anything on Formation in theory, but it's currently focused people with work experience (and in some cases, people with prior education but no formal work experience yet).
So if you don't have any work experience, you have to be able to have some decent understanding of fundamentals, like arrays, strings and be able to solve "LeetCode Easy" level problems as a benchmark and maybe dabble in hard…
I'm not sure about bootcamps specifically, but at Formation we have seen more people than expected interested all across the spectrum in the past month. I think it makes sense that people who are more experienced and nervous about their job, or were laid off, or are trying to get a leg up in the super competitive market would come... that one's easy. But we're also seeing more people who are already at a LeetCode "Easy" level of DS&A problems, asking about Formation INSTEAD of going to a bootcamp (i.e. forgoing our 'we work with you until you get a job' promise and paying much less than a top tier bootcamp in return).... it's something we are pondering.
We are WAY TOO SMALL to generalize from, but I do think a lot of people just really like programming and didn't realize it until later in their careers, and if they have the passion, stick with it, they will get jobs eventually. Life's a…
We just went through a period of time where some companies with extremely high cash-compensation and low equity and performance bonus compensation (i.e. Amazon and Capital One) were hiring people left right and center if they had a pulse, no criminal record, and could solve Leetcode Medium problems under pressure.
Codesmith got a lot of credit for their 2021 outcomes on Reddit, based on how well they optimize the job hunting strategy for those companies above. And I suspect they will also be hit very hard in their outcomes with the 2nd half of 2022 and be overly blamed on Reddit as "Codesmith falling apart". It will be a whole year from now before we'll see those results though! which is far too long IMO.
As I learned at Facebook: when there is good press about you, things are never as good as people say, and when there is bad press things are never usually that bad. Codesmith as a sc…
Hi, someone tagged me as I'm the co-founder of Formation, which is a program for experienced engineers to help them work on fundamentals and prepare for interviews.
So the topics you mentioned, we cover System Design in general, which is high level architecture and API design, and several of our competitors, like Interview Kickstart, also cover this topic. We don't go into specific hands on practice in specific tools because typically experienced engineers will learn that on the job in some way, and the more important things to learn is fundamental abstract thinking around these systems. Most companies have such complex internal frameworks that knowing specific tools is less useful for experienced engineers.
I'm not sure if Formation is right for you or not, but I'm fairly sure a bootcamp isn't. Some bootcamps will flash those words around, like Codesmith for example, but the depth is…
\+1 to everyone else. If you have a legit CS degree then you probably don't need a bootcamp. You'll be much more advanced then everyone else, and mainly benefit from networking, and the confidence boost that you'll get from basically unofficially teaching all your peers.
Codesmith is the most prominent bootcamp that attracts people some people with degrees and experience and I hear the above \^\^\^ as the primary issue. But some people are so lost in the job hunt post graduation that having a network and community might be extremely valuable and worth the cost, it's a personal call.
Also look at career accelerators. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev (we tend to work with people with 1+ years professional experience, so might not be a good fit, but look into it!) as well as Outco.io, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, and Scalar. These programs might be way more inline wit…
Definitely not. You can always exclude the bootcamp from your resume if it was harming it, so focus on what skills you are missing from your next step and if how a specific bootcamp will address those.
Tech Elevator is great in the non tech large cities they focus on. But cast a wide net and consider options. Look at Codesmith, Rithm, Hack Rector, and look at career accelerators like Pathrise, Outco, Interview Kickstart and Formation (disclosure: I'm the co founder).
There aren't any program bootcamps that cover theory sufficiently with your Computer Science hat on.
Some programs, like Hack Reactor and Codesmith spend a week or two on DS&A, and both have ongoing DS&A practice. But it's firehose-style crammed in DS&A focused on passing interviews, not DS&A to learn fundamental patterns and ways of thinking about how computers work.
If you've already done a course, then you'll find even at these bootcamps, 90% of your time will be doing practical work and then the DS&A you do will be you helping the more junior people that don't know the basics.
What are your goals? If you want to get a top tier CS job, then I would consider Formation (disclosure: co-founder), Outco, Interview Kickstart, Coachable, and other "career accelerators" as they are designed possibly more for your case. If you feel you need a lot of practical skills too, and you just want…
Pair programming is key. The interview is basically live coding with someone and you have no idea how different things feel when coding with other people hovering around. On the job for real, you don't often do live coding like this, but doing it forces you to confront topics you THINK you understand but you don't actually understand in a way that you can explain to other people haha.,
Will Sentence, the founder, is more opinionated about pedagogy I believe (never talked to him directly) and is a really smart person who puts a lot of effort into teaching effectively.
But I agree that CSX is pretty weak. It's intended as a "top of funnel" to Codesmith and many bootcamps follow this approach. They want you to join CSX and work with some peers on Slack. Then like it enough to sign up for a few hundred dollar prep course, taught by alumni. Then like that enough to join the immersive.
Most bootcamps have a similar approach to this. CSX isn't really intended to teach people anything as a standalone tool. Most of the people I know who got into Codesmith used many tools including Leetcode "easy problems" to get in. They want you to attend free seminars and pair programming sessions where they can build a relationship and help the right people make their way to immersive and…
I tried to give some reasons above but I don't even like what we have now on the site, because the outcomes vary so so so much by goal and we have to very carefully decide which numbers best represent what we do - which we haven't done yet - so we encourage people to talk to whatever random Formation person they can find with similar backgrounds and chat with them. Like we literally have had 10+ offers over $300K TC in October for whom that is the market rate and we help the people choose between offers. The uniqueness of those situations for those people are not captured in an average salary metric because and we want people to know they are getting a bespoke experience aimed at helping the accomplish their goals.
I've said this before but some of Codesmith's alumni get stock and bonuses as well, excluded from CIRR, and CIRR does not paint an accurate picture of their outcomes as well.…
So there is such a size-able Codesmith contingent at Capital One, they have their own Slack channel and they can refer people to a variety of teams.
Capital One has a variety of positions, but the one most people are getting is "Software Eng - Senior Associate" which pays around $150K a year base salary and total comp. A FAANG entry level is about $200K+ total comp based on performance for comparison.
Reasons how this works.
1. They only have one level lower than this that is very entry level "Associate Software Eng" and it's meant for new grads and kind of like a mini internship. So anyone with any experience would be considered for "senior associate"+.
2. Some of these people at Codesmith have experience already and don't do anything special to be considered.
3. Some of these people at Codesmith list their group projects as "work experience" and mislead the company into thinking t…
Hi! It depends a lot on your experience and two paths:
One option is the career accelerator bucket of programs. Like Formation, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation. At Formation, most people we work with have work experience but have some people with CS degrees (or are graduating soon) who are DS&A heavy and aiming for new grad FAANG roles, and I think it's a good fit for that. Although you should be starting to apply and interview very soon because it's the new grad hiring cycle right now! Formation doesn't have any veteran benefits so it might not be a good fit, but check out these programs.
If you don't have any internships and are not aiming for a FAANG/top-tier company that is CS-fundamentals heavy then I would recommend looking at a bootcamp. A lot of bootcamps start from scratch, so veteran benefits or not, I would consider a program…
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith but I know a lot about them and have done a deep dive into 200 alumni profiles. I posted a similar comment in the coding bootcamp sub reddit recently and am reposting here.
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and started coaching and training (potential bias disclosure: this is paid training) to help people from non-traditional backgrounds... so I work with a lot of bootcamp grads and learned a lot about how the top bootcamps work.
**Codesmith:** I do know a little more than most programs.... fun sto…
No bootcamp teaches the level of fundamentals above and I can go into extensive detail how no bootcamp I know of (including Codesmith) teaches these concepts from a fundamentals approach despite what they might say. There is one kind of bootcamp-like program for senior engineers that actually does have like 4 week units on these topics taught but industry legends in those areas but I don't know if they are still operating.
Most bootcamps teach the "what" and some bootcamps go deeper to the "how" (e.g. HOW does the event loop work in Javascript). The CS fundamentals above are on the "why" - why is the abstract theoretical patterns/reasoning that get applied to real situations.
For example. A bootcamp might teach you what SQL is and the basic syntax of some queries. Going one level deeper, one might teach you how relational databases work in general. Fundamentals approach teach you set…
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith. This subreddit is really Codesmith heavy so the topic comes up on a daily basis disproportionately more than any program for it's size. As one of the top program, this makes sense I think. I'll explain the context for why I know so much about Codesmith in particular after given broader context for others reading... how I know so much about Codesmith is an interesting story though!
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and then helped start Formation ([formation.dev](https://formation.dev)) to help peop…
Yeah! There are a TON of interesting ed-tech companies, Guild, MasterClass, Coursera, Duolingo, just immediately come to mind.
I would look for paths there.
Also, roles at bigger companies leveraging that experience. Like Facebook has a team working on employee education software internally. You might be good for that team. At Facebook you interview generically, so this doesn't work there, but at many companies, finding the right team to approach can help.
Some companies are freezing, but at Formation we're seeing people get hired and interviewing at dozens of top tier companies, so while some of the bigger names are frozen, most are not.
There is more of a shift to experienced engineers, and less risk taking with no-experience people (I've heard from students that are recent grads from Codesmith for example that they are having a harder time getting interviews than students in the past for those with no experience, but the people with experience are getting interviews and strong offers still). At Formation, we are also seeing a bit of a shift. For example, a company might interview someone for senior and they didn't meet the bar, but in the past they would down level to mid-level and now they are just not making an offer at all. So a slight "tightening" rather than full blown freezes.
On the no-experience side, at Formation we're surp…
It's not a single bootcamp, a single stack, a single pathway. That's why there are like 5 posts a day on here asking for answers and unfortunately, the questions have no simple answers.
One of the biggest factors is pre-existing skill. If you look at the top bootcamps, like Codesmith, they are also the hardest to get into. Someone I was chatting with solved Leetcode-easy problems in their interview and got rejected by Codesmith. So if you are an autodidactic person who was able to self-teach to a Leetcode-easy level and get into Codesmith, you probably are employable before going to Codesmith. Someone who has never coded before and wants to get into the industry might come to this subreddit, look for the top bootcamps, and spend months studying to get in. If they have natural talent, they might get in, they might succeed, and they might credit the success to the bootcamp, but the real d…
Hi, I'm sorry you feel that way and hopefully we can continue talking productively and positively. Sophie's life mission is to increase diversity in big tech because for products to work for everyone that have to be represented by everyone and Formation prides itself in having roughly 2/3 of Fellows from backgrounds underrepresented in tech.
I'm more than happy to talk about the reasons for the concerns you brought up, not to counter them, but to add more detail for those reading. Sophie, myself, and our team work constantly on making Formation the best it can be, endless conversations dissecting every detail from the ground up. So when you say we are "hawking a glorified interview prep company" you are personally insulting the thousands of hours we put into our work without a very thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of Formation.
I'm sorry if my tone was miscommunicated but no…
No worries! I would practice the interviews themselves.
PRAAMP, some Discord channels, are a way to do some free mocks that are not super great, since they are peers and not senior engineers.
[Interviewing.io](https://Interviewing.io) you can pay to do mock interviews a la carte. Definitely not cheap, but cheaper than a more intense program.
Career accelerators like Formation (disclosure, that's me!), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar, are focused on getting interview ready as well and building skills needed to interview - both technical and not.
I wholeheartedly agree with you and spend my time every day helping people find the best companies for their personal goals and situations. This above is general advice for most people that I haven't met and I'm always happy to chat through options with people!
I'm happy to talk about Formation and briefly answer the questions, it's off topic.
You are new here (your account is 2.5 weeks old) so quick introduction, Hi 👋, I'm one of the more frequent contributors to this sub and try to give people the perspective of someone with 8 years at FB, E7 level principal engineer, done 450+ interviews at FB - from interns to directors, was the top contributor of all time when leaving and they created an senior engineer archetype for me, and now I help run a training platform aiming to help increase diversity in tech by leveling the field for people from non traditional backgrounds and have worke…
The Codesmith in person cohort in October looks really interesting. I have ZERO inside info on how it's coming together but if in-person works for you, this might be a great option.
I've also heard about how hard it is for people with zero experience in this recent 2-3 cohorts(?, like the last 2-3 months) to get jobs.
I have many years of industry experience and a deep network across the top companies, and we've been through quite the rollercoaster right now. The end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 were somewhat crazy times where it was fairly easy to get a job and I expect those outcomes to be very high from Codesmith and others. Lots of people talking about how amazing program X or Y was and how everyone got jobs, etc... and then all of those who read these posts and signed up, are not having the same luck.
Right now we are returning to a more normal market with some changes. This…
Bootcamp Alumni: we are doing the first ever free 🎉 Formation Day open house on October 1st and I wanted to invite you all to join!
Hi everyone, I've gotten to know some awesome people on here over the past six months and it's cool to see them already finishing up bootcamps I recommended to them way back when!
I wanted to invite bootcamp alumni to join Formation Day on Saturday, October 1st at 9am PST! It's a **FREE** jam-packed day of FAANG-level interview prep. Our team is putting a lot of work into creating a really useful day for people and we hope you can attend and get a lot of value out of it!
This event is generally targeted at people who are working already and exploring changing jobs, or are bootcamp or computer science graduates who have been interviewing actively. It is unfortunately not meant for people looking to get into bootcamps, but as always, I'm happy to give my 2…
Codesmiths curriculum spends about a week or two on CS fundamentals and then has practice for the rest of the time while doing intense project work.
I also agree it’s not a single bar for what is “cs fundamentals” and that is not meant to gatekeep. Everyone learns and progresses differently.
My point restated is that interviews don’t ask these questions to gatekeep but they are testing understanding of the broad abstractions that all coding is based on. The best way to do well in these interviews is to understand those fundamental abstractions and patterns incredibly well instead of understanding minimally and practicing intensely. Don’t get me wrong, part of understanding intensely IS practice. But it’s practice for the sake of understanding, not practice for the sake of trying to pass an interview if that makes sense.
An example is someone might solve a LC medium problem and techn…
Hi, disclosure, I’m the co-founder of Formation.dev, which isn’t a bootcamp but a career accelerator focused on practice and feedback and not on lecturing/teaching.
I believe data structures and algos are extremely important but not just to practice them because they are interview questions. A lot of Codesmith alumni I work with are able to solve problems but lacking a bit in the underlying fundamental concepts.
If you believe DSA are important to you for interviews, learning CS fundamentals for months (not a week) and applying them to DSA is the way to go, rather than whack a mole trying to just solve problems for the sake of solving interview problems.
I can add some info about Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder, not bootcamp, not an option for people with no experience). Each Fellow has a continuous conversation in their private job hunting channel containing 5+ team members. Each Fellow has a dedicated human (their Fellow Manager) to talk to and who checks in with you constantly. You have career team members who are constantly trying to find you opportunities for referrals at good companies. You also have ongoing continuous scheduled training and practice that never ends to you keep getting stronger and stronger as you job hunt.
This isn't the right forum as we compete with Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco, so apples to oranges. I'm commenting this because just because the bar for bootcamps is so low that even if the above commenter's story sounds like strong support, there is a bar 100X beyond that that exists if you look…
Hi, I'm the co-founder of a competitor to Interview Kickstart, called Formation.dev, so obviously I'm extremely biased but if you are looking at them, you should also look at us, Outco, Scaler Academy and Pathrise.
I can talk about this bucket of program more generally and where these companies fit in the bucket because I don't like talking directly about competitors on here. You should talk to people 1-1 who did a program to get their sense of the day to day and if would be a good fit for you.
So this bucket is generally called "career accelerators" rather than schools or bootcamps. The programs don't really focus on being the world's more brilliant lecturers on underlying concepts but they focus on training and practice to prepare for real interviews and jobs. They tend to leverage their staff and mentors practical experience to get feedback from the people you aspire to work with.…
It depends on which school you went to and what experience you had (i.e. internships) and what your goals are. If you have very strong fundamentals and are having a hard time getting interviews because of a lack of interviews and you want to work at a non-tech centered company (e.g. an agency or maybe a bank), Codesmith could be useful but purely as a job hunting strategy because you'll add this OSP project to your resume that's branded as professional experience in order to help you get past resume screens (this is fairly controversial with people on both sides of the ethics of it, but it works). If you did a CS degree, the project is the size and scope of a semester long 4 person group project, however many alumni market it like they worked at a company for a year, and that helps you get initial interviews and sometimes even mid-level roles at 3rd tier companies.
The alumni connection…
Yeah alumni do spend a lot of time cranking Leetcode, and giving back to Codesmith, by teaching and doing random things to boost experience, and if it takes 3 MORE months to get a job I think that time can be spent more efficiently. Which I need to disclose my extreme bias here, because Formation (disclosure, co-founder) works with numerous Codesmith alumni to more efficiently and effectively prepare for top tier interviews after Codesmith and then refer them and help them find pathways to solid matching companies. It's really a win-win-win IMO (despite two leaders at Codesmith badmouthing me, and being accused of stealing students). Also note, we are backlogged right now for people with zero work experience so if you are reading this, you likely have to wait a bit to start.
Hi, if you've done any scripting, or even Verilog, I think you'll pick up programming fast. So I think going to a bootcamp depends on your goals. Codesmith is certainly one of the top programs for getting a job at the end, and wouldn't be a bad choice. But you likely don't need a bootcamp either, as your friends have said. If you can work on the CS fundamentals (e.g. CS50) and get really good at solving general data structures and algorithms programs, you can probably get a job on your own.
If you are gunning for a top tier/FAANG-level job, I would look more at career accelerations (e.g. Interview Kickstart, Outco, Formation.dev (see disclosure)) that focus on getting you interview ready. Codesmith/a bootcamp would be a good option for getting a solid first foor in the door job as a SWE.
Disclosure for any biases: I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev so I'm fairly biased to focus on th…
I partially agree with another commenter on here that referrals at FAANG mean you are putting your own reputation on the line.If you consistently refer good people, your referrals are trusted more and if you don't they are not trusted. That said, here are three counter points.
1. Some FAANG companies have different pathways for people without experience, like apprenticeship or internships. Having inside connections can help refer you to the right program and maybe get you noticed, as these pathways are every competitive.
2. There are smaller companies run by ex-FAANG engineers that are super strong and have similar interview processes. These might be more approachable for someone with less experience if they have the resources to ramp you up. It can be hard to hire great people at the less known awesome companies and they are sometimes willing to invest a bit in ramping up someone with…
I've worked with a lot of (10+) Codesmith alumni who come to Formation and can comment on some trends where I think the DS&A bar is at.
Most have a good starting DS&A, not quite at the top tier bar. Most get through the basics relatively quickly compared to other bootcamp grads but most people need some reinforcement/relearning in one or more areas. They then spend a similar amount of time as everyone else on the intermediate (and advanced) concepts that are needed to consistently be at the FAANG bar.
In general, bootcamps are not the best environment for teaching DS&A because of the fixed timeframe and fixed curriculum structure. These aren't just problems to pass an interview, but it SHOULD be about learning abstract concepts and patterns that be applied to solve complex real world problems. People learn these at different paces and have different degrees of and areas of interest. S…
So I don't know 100% but the spouse of a co-worker has worked on running the Amazon Tech Academy at Amazon and we (Formation.dev - disclosure I am co-founder) worked with someone in ATA to help them convert faster.
My understand of ATA is that you have to work at Amazon for some time first (1+ year), and then are eligible to apply to it. It's a fairly small and competitive program and still very early stages - even though Amazon is enormous. At the end, you can interview immediately for SDE 1 and if you pass you're done, if you don't you do an internship at Amazon and get another shot (this was \~1 year ago, might not be true anymore). My understanding is not EVERYONE got jobs immediately after the ATA but the person we worked with was in the first cohort I believe(?) and did.
Now Kenzie and BloomTech offer a program that teaches the same curriculum as ATA, but you have to pay them dir…
You are correct, it's incredibly hard and competitive, and you likely won't get one, but that's the most broadly approachable level of FAANG job from a bootcamp if you have no experience. On a case by case basis you might be able to get an entry level FAANG job as well, so I would need to give personal advice. I know a bunch of people at Codesmith, App Academy, and Hack Reactor, spend significant amounts of time studying Leetcode on their own to aim for entry level FAANG jobs, but I'm specifically talking about the preparation that the programs themselves provide.
Great question. So we have a deep bench on staff. I was 8 years FB E7, we have two other ex-FB E7+ engineers, two senior/staff ex-FB/MSFT engineers, an ex-Oracle/Amazon senior engineers, ex-FB 10 year recruiter, and two other ex-FAANG \~5 year each recruiters. We also have top tier investors who have a pulse on the industry behind the scenes too. So through all of these connections and network (and obviously how Fellows are doing on the job hunt) we have a pulse on how things are moving.
We lean very very ex-FB heavy, and while we've been at FB so long we know people all over the place now at pretty much every company, we do have a Facebook-leaning network.
I love that you mentioned probabilities. Some people come to us thinking that they do Formation to "pay for referrals" or asking us to "guarantee they pass their Stripe interview" and that's not how the industry works. Every intervi…
>As the husband of a current CodeSmith student, and a lead engineer, I agree with this description of the program. The tactics can be very surface-level. A tech talk and an open source project (that is made to look like a company on LinkedIn) can make a candidate appear much more senior than they actually are, on the surface, and give someone with no production engineering experience the false impression that they have more experience than they really do. And that is the secret sauce of CodeSmith.
The problem is: Everything is taught so quickly that it's impossible for most students to absorb it, and there is very variable quality beneath the sauce. (For example, a whole semester worth of data structures in an undergraduate course is taught in 2 days during the first week of the program). There's no possible way to do that deeply and well. Furthermore, classes are taught on powerpoint…
Interesting, thanks! Yeah I do know one person who also felt Codesmith was too slow as well and joined Formation (disclosure for anyone that doesn't know, I'm a co-founder and want to be transparent) after meeting the bar and being a better fit. I suspect anyone with work experience already or who is at a "leetcode medium" level Formation is probably better depending on their goals. But I honestly thought this was a small number of people... if it's a larger number this is really useful and explain some of the negative personal comments Codesmith employees and alumni have made about me haha.
I'm glad to hear they are trying hard to support someone falling behind. Despite these personal attacks I wish we could work better together and I think they really do have good intentions and care about each student. We have some fantastic Codesmith alumni at Formation who are highly motivated and…
Hey, the job market is changing a bit right now yeah. For top tier big tech, Facebook is frozen but for the past few months Randstad recruiters on behalf of Google have been talking to thousands of bootcamp grads and they were really ramping up. Amazon was also very approachable for bootcamp grads and their compensation increased significantly since end of last year. Google has a temp hiring freeze to "readjust priorities" and Amazon is slowing down hiring on some teams, but still chugging along.
A degree won't matter that much if you can get your foot in the door for an interview.
A lot of Codesmith alumni get their first jobs at a smaller company, or agencies, or banks, a very wide range out of options. They have an engaged network of alumni to help refer you to different places. And even if the economy gets worse, they will be around to help until you get a job.
The only time a deg…
Hi! Sorry which figures are you referring to?
The numbers I mentioned above are for Formation, which isn't a bootcamp and is a personal trainer/career accelerator (in the same bucket as Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Scalar). But it was meant as an example to show how much experience matters.
So I can speak for Formation that we work with people aiming for truly top tier companies that compensate very highly. [Levels.fyi](https://Levels.fyi) has some examples, and most people we work with are at the E3/E4/E5 level for FB/Google ([https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer](https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer)).
I don't think that's a complete answer necessarily but happy to explain more!
The numbers I mentioned for Codesmith are available here: https://cirr.org/data
Specifically:
https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328…
I'm curious to hear CS students and alumni stance on this from the inside.
I can speak to the broader market and economy. It's quite an interesting time. Salaries and hiring were hot for the past 3 months and things are definitely freezing up right now. Two months ago, Google outreached to bootcamp grads inviting them to interview, getting inundated with thousands of applicants, and now Google is freezing hiring and reshuffling priorities and some people think there will be fewer L3 slots - yet to be determined. The companies that are hiring are aware of the "FAANG-Freeze" and are not negotiating as much and they have more leverage. I'm also seeing some interviews get cancelled or offers being "delayed" out of hesitation, and this can be demoralizing if you are super close to a dream offer and it gets put on ice. So regardless of the result - be ready for a potentially rougher time.
Th…
Hi, I lived in Regina for four years so stopping by to say hello! I have an engineering degree, went to Facebook in the US out of school in 2009. I know a lot about American bootcamps, not so much about Canadian bootcamps, but I can try to help.
Since you have an CS masters you should be able to get a TN visa status and work anywhere in the US as an individual contributor engineer.
Another route could be working for "FAANG" in Canada first and transferring.
It's a bit of a wonky time to only target FAANG but it's certainly possible to get a FAANG job in the USA with a CS masters if you can get interviews and then pass the interviews (which are hard)
I wouldn't do a bootcamp at this point unless you basically forgot everything from school, I would look at more career accelerators (disclosure: I'm co-founder of Formation.dev which is one such thing) like Outco, Interview Kickstart, S…
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "advanced" and how advanced you mean. A lot of the top bootcamps do have fairly challenging entrance tests, e.g. Codesmith tests on recursion just to get in. So like if Codesmith, Hack Reactor, App Academy, all seem too easy then you can look into the career accelerator group of program.
The more "career accelerator" type programs are roughly the same cost as bootcamps but focusing on people with "employable skills" get jobs, rather than teaching people things from step 0 or 0.1. I'm the co-founder of Formation.dev which is one option and then other other programs are Interview Kickstart, Scaler, Pathrise, and Outco. At Formation, most people we work with have 1-3 years of experience already (and the other programs are similar) and we work with you for as long as it takes to get a job you love (with most people targeting truly top tier companies).…
I probably wouldn't quit entirely right now given the economy.
You mentioned Leetcode so I'm going to give options for DS&A focused top tier companies. But if that's not your goal, ignore all this!
If you want to go the unpaid/cheap route, I would look and practice the Blind 75 after hours. When you are feeling good, do a mock at Interviewing.io and see how you do and then re-evaluate your options.
If you want to go a paid route, I know this is going to seem like a giant ad, but I'm also the co-founder of [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) and you should seriously look into it if you are aiming for FAANG-level companies in Canada (we support Canadians). You can prepare part time and not waste time. Don't want to say much because it will come across scammy but check it out and do your own research, and it's not cheap but it works.
Other paid programs you can look at are [Outco.…