We run ads for our program (not a bootcamp but have experience with ads)
Honestly, with good quality ad targeting it's impossible to know. It might FEEL like a company is spending millions of dollars and you see the ads every place you go.... inescapable... but the company might be spending very little and just optimized how to target you or their audience very well and not waste money on irrelevant people.
So it's possible that the more you see a company, the better their marketers are. It's also possible they are spending a ton of money. You'll never really know though and advertising is the main way companies find customers so almost everyone does it.
The ones that don't spend money, hire people to create public content and "free" workshops. They end up spending MORE MONEY on those people's salaries and running those than they would on advertising.
Codesmith is a good example, a…
Choosing a program based on outcomes is extremely dangerous. Outcomes should be used as a way to identify a small number of "legit" programs, but it's **extremely important** to look at outcomes of people with a background similar to yourself.
I chat with so many people that want to go to Codesmith or X because they like all the conversations with alumni from X but that Codesmith has the "best outcomes". For people who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, PMs, mechanical engineers, CS grads, I say sure because those outcomes are representative of people with your background. For people who have no "office work experience" you are better off finding a lower paying job that's a really good fit and Codesmith's methods are harmful to your development for most people - pushing someone whose never sat at desk before to get a mid level job and reject an entry level offer is not the right approac…
I wouldn't recommend a bootcamp right now. Codesmith is a program that markets to CS grads and people with more experience and even their placements rates as reported from recent alumni have dropped drastically since last reported.
I have a few recommendations to look at... what works for you is ultimately a personal choice, but just things to consider:
1. Consider career accelerators: Formation.dev (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, Scaler, are main ones to look at. These are all very different programs but they focus on fine tuning and enhancing existing skills and focus entirely on the job hunt. They pick up where bootcamps end basically.
2. Consider doing volunteer work at places like Hack4LA, or other Code For America branches. This is a way to get more realistic "volunteer work experience" that is a notch above a group project that you…
I commented this above but copy pasting because it's important, I agree with the qualitative arguments, just an important note for the CIRR data:
Standard disclaimer: several people are mentioning average salaries, it's super important with CIRR data to recognize that the numbers at NOT averages, they are medians, and they are NOT the "average Codesmith grad" it is the median salary of PLACED CODESMITH GRADS, not ALL CODESMITH GRADS.
So it's the 50th percentile base salary of the 80% of people placed of the 95% of people that graduated. If you put $0 for the other 20% that didn't get jobs, the "average Codesmith grad" is making FAR less than this and the median would be shifted down to about 100 to 110K based on the CIRR distribution.
Just important to note, because I'm constantly on top of people who misrepresent CIRR outcomes.
CIRR outcomes don't include stock and bonuses so the…
Standard disclaimer: several people are mentioning average salaries, it's super important with CIRR data to recognize that the numbers at NOT averages, they are medians, and they are NOT the "average Codesmith grad" it is the median salary of PLACED CODESMITH GRADS, not ALL CODESMITH GRADS.
So it's the 50th percentile base salary of the 80% of people placed of the 95% of people that graduated. If you put $0 for the other 20% that didn't get jobs, the "average Codesmith grad" is making FAR less than this and the median would be shifted down to about 100 to 110K based on the CIRR distribution.
Just important to note, because I'm constantly on top of people who misrepresent CIRR outcomes.
CIRR outcomes don't include stock and bonuses so the actual median and average compensation is probably a lot HIGHER than what CIRR says, so I'm not saying this to bash Codesmith, I'm saying it to pro…
I think their representation on CIRR doesn't jeopardize the reliability of their data, but rather it's a conflict of interest because the specification itself is written by the people who have a vested interest in their data looking the best possible. And the issues with CIRR lie in the lack of clarity in the spec and reporting requirements that mask things (i.e. reporting percentages vs absolute numbers, lack of clarity on gathering salary data).
I think the bigger conflict of interest is with OSLabs - which is a legit-donation-accepting charity that offers letters of reference for students that make it look like they were involved with a separate entity without disclosing that the student was PAYING to do said work for CODESMITH's immersive program.
Hello friend, you asked for tough questions, so I'll throw out some of the tough ones since you are an employee, I expect you might not be able to answer them but you've repeatedly asked for tough questions so I'll try!
EDIT: just want to make sure that I disclose that I'm the co-founder of mentorship and training program (that is not a bootcamp or direct competitor to Codesmith, but we tend to work with a number of people who graduated from borocamps at some point in the past) to be transparent about biases.
Hard Questions:
1. How does Codesmith staff handle when a resident gets called out for OSPs not being real work, e.g. in the offer process or during interviews? Or phrased differently, is there a stance internally on how to handle students that have issues with their OSPs during interviews?
2. How do background checks work for OSP projects and how does Philip Troutman get away…
Oh yeah it's absolutely a factor in your decision making. To rephrase my point, you should not perceive the outcome you will get as proportional to the cost. i.e. I'll go for the $10K bootcamp to get a $70K job because I can't fork over $20K for a bootcamp to get a $120K job. Someone who goes to Codesmith and gets a $120K job will probably get a similar job from any legitimate bootcamp.
The cost of Codesmith doesn't have anything to do with the success rate. It's not like you can spend 15K and have an ok outcome and $20K to get a slightly better one.
Codesmith's outcomes are because they have a very high bar, let in people likely to succeed and then nurture them. Getting in is the major factor, not paying more because it's more expensive than others.
We now have more upfront options including loan with partners, deferred loans (until you get a job, up to certain time limits), interest-free loans (if you qualify), and are working on more income-based deferred options.
Our mission is to help improve diversity in tech and we want to be accessible so we are doing the best we can to offer more pricing options so people can find one that works for them.
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation!
So there are a range of competitors you can look at. Honestly the session structure where dynamically create your ideal schedule every week is completely unique so if that is the most appealing thing, I haven't seen another program offer that, but if you want to have structured practice here are some other options:
Interview Kickstart: I think it's similarly priced but a few thousand dollars less. More structured program, not unlimited support
Outco.io: shorter, peer mock interviews, cheaper, has unlimited support
Pathrise: focuses almost exclusively on the job hunt side and probably isn't a good option for you, it's also generally much more expensive.
Coachable: a very small program run by a few people but focuses on DS&A, more individual practice and less community vibe. Also similarly priced or more than Formation.
Interviewing.io: pay as yo…
Excellent point! For me, the most important thing is for you to understand the range of options, set a goal, and then work towards that goal - adjusting if needed, and for many people that's not FAANG.
So pre-layoffs, FAANG usually meant literally the 5 companies, or adjacent companies.
These are some of my criteria for what adjacent means:
1. Similar compensation, including stock based compensation as a meaningful portion of an offer
2. Engineering/product driven culture. Meaning that engineers and product managers, designers, etc... have an equal seat at the table as business people.
3. A popular, widely used product. No specific numbers here but a product or service that has significant SCALE and BREADTH where you will learn how to scale something infinitely, and how to build for a variety of people.
4. Reputation for high talent bar. This is fuzzy but generally you'll see "high…
From what I've heard it's solely DEFENSIVE not offensive. Which is why you see a ton of random people come out of the woodwork with almost no history on Codesmith-specific posts. I carefully check the comment history when I get attacked and numerous accounts only post and comment about Codesmith and then attack me about Formation. Kind of odd for an account with almost no history to know me so well to make detailed attacks and simultaneously only comment and post about Codesmith.
The other problem is so many people are hired back as fellows, career support, instructors, that a lot of people who talk about being an "alumni" don't disclose that they were/are also an EMPLOYEE! Codesmith has 80 to 100 (depending on when you count, changes frequently) former students currently on staff in some capacity on their Website.
My hunch is the outcomes are stronger than reported because people who go missing don't tell cohort mates anything, but might report to Codesmith and they can only be higher than anecdotal reports. But how much higher? I still think 50% is reasonable and hopefully around 60%.
I'm going to make a call now and you can tell me if I was right in 6 months. I think we're going to see a fairly high placement rate on the next CIRR report, like 60% maybe even 70%, but we're going to see an increase in "% of people not looking for employment" and in "% of people not reporting salaries". One of the CIRR loopholes is that employment can be verified via LinkedIn if a person goes missing, but their salary will be excluded. So if someone gets a job in a completely unrelated field, but is "employed" on their LinkedIn, then they count a placement in the percentage placed. I think they will work a lot h…
Codesmith's outcomes are absolutely legit and it's one of the best programs out there.
There are some caveats but their outcomes are very strong on paper, 100%. Notes about outcomes "under the hood":
1. The distribution of outcomes is more spiky than most programs, meaning there is a spike at < $120K and > $140K. People who make more, TEND to have experience already or success in another professional field prior. People who make under $120K TEND to be people who have zero experience and almost no technical experience. Now making $90K for someone in this demographic is an amazing outcome, but you shouldn't come in expecting $150K if you did community college as an x-ray technician, did that for a year, then did CSX for 3 months and think you'll make $130K after Codesmith..... you might, but it's less likely.
2. The outcomes are the median salaries of people who graduate, get a job in 18…
Here is my 2cents having worked with a number of Codesmith grads anywhere from during Codesmith, immediately after, or down the road, for a variety of goals, from just wanting to get a job, to wanting to get a top tier job.
Overall Codesmith is a great program, an incredible community of amazing people. Every one I've worked with is professional, hard working, and great.
It's great for people who are super ambitious and work hard but it's not magic. So I try to help people choose to go for the right reasons and look beyond the on paper results.
I have the same 3 issues you do and comment about them often.
I also have a different perspective with these issues because as an industry engineer who knows literally several thousand other FAANG/ex-FAANG engineers, the dozen or so peers I've asked have had reactions to Codesmith resumes ranges from "omg that's sketchy" to "this is blatant fr…
This is another problem with CIRR, it's not crystal clear on layoffs, promotions, job changes, etc... that could happen in the six months. It assumes people just get one job and they don't specify any requirements on how salaries are collected.
So if I was Codemsith I would
1. Include anyone who got a job, regardless of layoffs
2. If people got multiple jobs or promotions, use the highest salary within the six month period.
Here is my detailed analysis, neutral look at the data (some points might seem boring, but just writing it up thoroughly). I tried to put the more controversial points first as I doubt people will read all of this.
# SUMMARY: Not much change from H2 2021, slight downshift in salary buckets, but overall very similar numbers.
# 1. Median salaries continue to be super misleading because of multiple cutoff points (a CIRR issue I describe often is pronounced here)
So the part time program exemplifies these the best, explaining via example.
37 people included in report. 10% of people were excluded because they said they weren't job hunting when starting Codesmith.
Now 31 people were placed. 21 people salaries, and 3 people did not report salaries. So of the **\~40 people who started, 21 people reported salaries and the median of those was $137K**.
For the full time program, 301 people…
u/ludofourrage might have some comments about NuCamp, which relies on satisfaction and effectiveness ratings over placements outcomes.
I feel pretty strongly that bootcamps shouldn't be judged by job outcomes and should be judged by education quality value for the cost. It will improve the quality of education, which is what most of the employees at the bootcamp work on.
CIRR encourages bootcamps to be judged purely by placement rates and salaries and I think that not in a great direction. I think it's a piece of the puzzle and useful information, but not the sole way to judge a program.
I also think bootcamps play a part in this by having the "wall of logos" on their websites and advertising the placements in bold. Stanford doesn't have salary numbers of graduates on their homepage in giant numbers like BloomTech does.
I don't think career accelerators like Pathrise, Outco, Intervie…
I'm familiar with Coachable but full disclosure, I co-founded a program for experienced engineers called Formation that partially competes with Coachable (we work mostly with experienced engineers and are not a good fit for most new grads).
So there are no shortcuts or secret pathways to jobs right now. You are paying to have a coach work with you to improve you odds and to leverage their experience.
1. Coachable is run by someone who has a few years at Google and has a dozen coaches or so who went through Coachable and came back as coaches. Their approach is very aggressive: exaggerate your resume, aggressively message recruiters with messages they help write, and hope that something lands. Some people find this approach of exaggerating a little sketchy, some find it a means to an ends. Ultimately it's up to you but the key here is to ask for HOW it works instead of just looking at th…
We don't force you to take any job and if you want to work at FAANG, **no one is kicking you out and I challenge you to leave Formation and find another path to FAANG right now.** We never promised how long it would take, and we work with people as long as they want as long as they do their part and keep intending to job hunt.
We've had a jump in placements in the past three weeks and people gave very high satisfaction ratings despite more people choosing to take non-FAANG jobs, like Chegg, Citibank, and others. For example, one person chose to change their target away from FAANG companies and was thrilled with how Formation supported them doing that and thrilled with the job they received.
I think this is very fair and is a top reason people come to Formation. If you really want to work at FAANG, you can come to Formation, don't expect to get a job on any timeframe (which I believe we…
Everyone's Favorite time of the half-year! H1 2022 CIRR Reports are starting to roll out! TechElevator, CodeUp and LaunchAcademy are live, Codesmith not live yet. First look at 2021 vs 2022 hiring climate stats and things don't look good :S
(will update as more results released)
IMPORTANT EDIT. See Tech Elevators comment below about an error on their CIRR worksheet that resulted in lower placement percentages. They claimed the percentages are actually very similar from 2021 to 2022 and the CIRR report has now been updated officially. I've stated numerous times about flaws with CIRR, for example that results are not audited before posting, or that auditors make mistakes.
**OVERALL: After Tech Elevators data correction, placement rates for H1 2022 are holding up and didn't crash that much yet! I expect H2 2022 to be much more impacted and we'll see in October.**
Notable changes Tech El…
More thoughts and random points /u/Independent-Tear3960, also /u/BudgetSense8077 and /u/InTheDarkDancing as I commented some of this on your thread and then deleted to move here. **I think point 4 is most important to the OPs questions**
1. The hiring market is partially to blame because it changed so quickly. One week Amazon was hiring, the next week they were laying off. People started bootcamps in a great environment and the carpet was pulled out underneath them.
2. I'm also not seeing bootcamps meaningfully adapt their program and strategies fast enough. Codesmith still tells people "taking a junior job is the worst thing you can do for your career". Now this is super bias, but I believe the way bootcamps are structured make it very hard to change everything overnight. At Formation, we are feeling the market pressure as well, we have much fewer opportunities to refer people to top t…
Codesmith's placement rates from people who have graduated recently seem to hover around 50% (some lower, some higher) within 6 months versus their prior 85%.
It's the market though and nothing changed about Codesmith that I know of.
It doesn't sound like they are adapting much to the market or making changes, so hopefully things turn around soon, because I strongly believe the strategy of aiming for mid level and senior roles in this market is not going to work
A couple more things we do. Top level OP had several complaints about these, but according to our collective feedback the vast majority of these go very well and these mentors are often nominated as the 'most impactful mentor of the week' awards we do.
1. Everyone does at least one extensive resume review with a FAANG/ex-FAANG recruiter (and more on-demand as needed). Most have many many years of experience. The OP didn't have a good experience with their reviewer, but you can always work with different people if you are not on the same page with a recruiter. Even if you aren't on the same page with several, you can keep trying.
2. Everyone does at least one recruiter-call mock phone screen with a FAANG/ex-FAANG recruiter (as many as you need until you pass). Simulating a real mock phone screen. And unlimited more as needed.
3. Most people will do technical behavioral group sessions and…
Hi there, I'm happy to give more info and my thoughts. Ultimately we want you in the right place and if that's not Formation, we're happy. I've responded a lot in other comments that might be useful as well and feel free to message me directly with more info about yourself if you want me to give more personal advice.
First off, we take every piece of feedback seriously, investigate and discuss it, so I don't want to come across as dismissive, but the majority of people have a great experience and recommend us to friends. Not a single person on this thread has responded to our team or reported anonymous/untraceable feedback despite open arms from everyone on the team. In terms of feedback, so far this evening there have been 7 pieces of explicit feedback (i.e. text feedback, supplemental to numerical ratings) given, 6 were glowing positive reviews about the impact the mentor(s) had, 1 wa…
I think one major con as you said in another post, that almost all instructors and TAs of are in India, about half of the cohort mates are in India, all the current job partnerships are in India, and every placement listed on their website testimonial was in India. The company itself is also based in India.This is not clear from their marketing and is fantastic if you are located in India but not as good of you are located elsewhere.
Comment from OP:
"Yes they are available in the US now(launched 7-8 months back iirc). Instructors are based in India. Some are American. Teaching assistants are all based in India. Hiring partnerships are mostly with Indian cos. Not sure about outside India. I am still in month 2 , so job portal is not yet open for me. It's a mix of American and Indian learners. Probably 60-40. My mentor is based out of India. He is an SDE2 at Adobe. Not sure if there are…
Hi, I wanted to comment directly since in reviewing the thread I realized your questions weren't answered.
1. I don't think OPs experience are growing pains, or at least not the way they were portrayed. Behind the scenes, our scheduling and matching algorithms actually get better and better the more people we have and create more opportunities for better session matches. We have chosen to grow much slower than we can, and investors want us to, to prioritize experience over growth and making sure everything is great in practice and not just in theory. I said this in another comment but it's not uncommon for 5 out of 6 people in a session to have great feedback and 1 to feel like it was a terrible session. We are fully aware that Fellows are paying a lot of money and expecting a lot, so one bad experience needs to be investigated and improved, but that one experience is also not represen…
I can share my thoughts on these questions.
1. Everyone has a different experience at Formation by nature, and has different goals and starting points coming in. So if you already put in the work to apply and get signed up, you get 7 days with a full schedule before deciding if you want to stay so I would recommend doing that and judging for yourself. It might genuinely not be a good fit for you but you can make the most of that first week even if you are not a good fit.
2. One part of the "special sauce" is how we efficiently get you through topics and objectively evaluate how you are doing. So if you've already done 1000 LC problems and feel like you really understand the concepts, you might move through the topics very quickly and spend less time on them. Some people consider that poor value for your money, and some people consider saving your time valuable, depends on what you value…
Your post from two months ago that was auto-deleted: "all of those reviews online are from formation employees, this novati dude is a huge sleazeball"
Please stop following me and defaming the company with provably false statements.
We have really strong reviews because the majority of people have a great experience overall, get great placements, find a new job making significantly more in salary, and recommend us to their friends. A smaller number of people understandably do not. We are a fast moving startup but that doesn't mean the experience should be compromised and it's not an excuse, it's expensive, most people feel like they get good to great value for their experience and we want nothing less. If someone joins for the wrong reasons, doesn't have the experience they wanted and wants to leave, we want them to leave positively and feeling like they got value for their time. Every…
It sounds like you aren't on the same page about the value and reasons to do Formation, for example, we try to be very clear that we feel that there are hundreds of thousands of hours of content out there already that you can get for free and having original content is not a large value add - you shouldn't have joined for that reason. My offer remains open to personally and confidentially handle the refund on your ISA and remove you from the program to take responsibility for the misunderstandings that are ultimately our fault.
Otherwise if you don't want to leave and want to make the best of it, you have Daniel, Danielle, Selena, Sophie, ALL of the FMs, all with open arms wanting to talk to you and support you and help you keep chugging along in this challenging job market until you get a job - we all genuinely care.
Like I said, no hard feelings and no judgement if you want to turn t…
Hi, we severely limit the number of people with zero experience (hence waitlists or rejections) and you can see in our recent placement data that about 1/3 of people had no full time experience and that was equally split amongst: bootcamp grads, CS grads, self taught/other degree: [https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/](https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/)
I would argue that CS grads have fundamentals, some bootcamp grads do if they self studied post bootcamp, and self taught is the real wildcard where we would only admit people who meet the bar and just happened to do it themselves - typically over many years.
RE: Sessions. People get dynamically scheduled for sessions based on the skills and difficulties they are working on right now, so generally speaking, you should be in sessions with people around your level. We have a lot of improv…
Thanks for sharing your feedback and opinions about your experience. Regardless of the tougher job market making it harder to get interviews, making sure you feel supported is one of most important internal goals that we constantly monitor with a magnifying glass and I'm sorry that the support you aren't receiving isn't meeting your expectation.
I respect your opinions and won't comment on everything you mentioned that I might personally disagree with. For others reading, I'm going to add some responses to specific statements that I feel will be helpful to clarify.
1. We don't let in everyone who wants to join and we only accept a fraction of people who apply. Acceptance is based on three things: 1. a benchmarking assessment that gauges your starting skill level and has a complex evaluation model that is not akin to "passing a test". 2. your past experience. 3. your goals, timeline,…
I'm obviously biased! But seriously, it really depends on you, your current skill level, and your goals. It is objectively good? How can you tell haha? I think we operate with integrity, we listen to feedback, we try to be fair, me and my co-founder have not made a penny of salary from Formation in the past 4 years, and we genuinely care about what we do.
If you want to give more info about your background and goals, I can say if I would suggest it or suggest something else instead.
You do not get paid, no, but if you were to train with Formation on your own, you normally have to pay up to $24K (15% of your first year base salary). So if you are selected for this program, Netflix is paying all the fees for you, essentially, so you don't pay anything.
It's limited to 20 spots, that's correct, because this is the launch/first instance of the Netflix specific program.
Yeah +1 to others, it's not super relevant that Will went there, and yes it's true: [source](https://www.coursereport.com/blog/founder-spotlight-will-sentance-of-code-smith)
Hack Reactor was acquired by Galvanize in 2018, and then K-12 acquired Galvanize in 2020. And then K-12 restructured as Stride Learning at then end of 2020.
So whatever experience he had back then it is certainly a little different from the experience now.
The only think that's relevant to some degree is that Codesmith's instruction staff all come from Codesmith alumni who become TA's, get hired full time, get promoted to leads, etc... and they are lacking like real industry experience in the ranks. Their main investor has many startups, is mostly known for film, but did an SAT prep company, and their head of outcomes did a startup as a product-person many years ago and then wrote movies as well. There on and off…
100% agree a motivated person can get an excellent outcome at any of them. You are in HR and sounds like you are doing well, so you probably fall in that bucket.
I know a lot of people who have no idea if they are "motivated" but they think they might be. Some people are and have tremendous imposter syndrome and some people aren't and feel "tricked" thinking that a bootcamp will connect the dots to a six figure job, but really they shouldn't have gone there to begin with. Hitting the bar of acceptance is a good sign, but some people will need a lot more time to get to that job than others.
It's really not cool for a self-taught chef with no college degree to think that Codesmith will get them a $140K salary because that was the median in New York for H2 2021. It might be cool for a electrical engineer who has 2 years of experience writing python scripts to think that they will get thos…
I disagree frequently that Codesmith's outcomes speak for themselves. They are unlike most programs in that there's a peek of people on the high end and a peek of people in the low end and they don't break out results by experience level. So people with more experience or a stronger background who end up making more money might not be realistic for someone who is maybe from a completely unrelated industry with no even vaguely related skills, like basic math, and I don't think that that's clear from the results.
In addition, I've worked with several Codesmith alumni who got fantastic jobs after the 6-month window but pretty close to it that they report on and those people don't even show up in their results. So there's a lot more going on than just what outcome say on paper. both good and bad.
It depends a lot on you personally, how far along you are, and what kind of environment you want to learn in. As with almost any program, you have to do the work and get the job. No program will give you a $100K+ job... you get paid that kind of money because of the impact you have in generating more value than that for the company.
Rithm: 9am to 6pm, direct instruction from senior engineers/instructors, capped at 18 people class sizes, mock internships. Focuses on actually learning.
Codesmith: 9am to 8pm + Saturdays, Cohorts are 36 people and instruction is from former students (either new grads, or previous grads who were hired full time). More of a "firehose" style program where ambitious people who power through do well. Entry bar is designed to get people from free sessions -> prep -> immersive and selects and for people who are already strong from self teaching, and communicate w…
I'm the co-founder and lead engineer and have been in the industry for 15 years, 8 years at Facebook and then a break, and then 4 years at Formation. Formation's predecessor, Buildschool, was a free coding bootcamp, and Formation was explicitly founded to not be a bootcamp.
There are a few differences, for which there are no bootcamps that offer this kind of thing:
1. Formation has no length, no curriculum, and no expected time frame that you will be training for. You start training on day one and you keep training until you get a job. We work on things week to week that you need to work on, and constantly benchmark across many skills until we think you are at the top-tier company bar (not just FAANG, but the broad top tier bar). As the OP posted, you might have good weeks or bad weeks, but you are paying for unconditional support until you get a job.
2. The majority of people at Forma…
So almost 1/3rd of the people in H2 2022 have already hit the 6 month window (or fellows from H1 with 9 month window) and from what people have said, the placement rates for those cohorts are hovering around 50% and a number of people have ghosted and disappeared. I'm sure the top 20% will get jobs quickly and proudly fill out this spreadsheets with how great they did, but it's the silent people to watch out for.
When CIRR comes out I'll look with a fine tooth comb because there is one giant loophole: the auditors can use LinkedIn to validate if someone has any job listed and mark the person as placed but not have any salary to report.
So if someone ghosts the program and becomes a salesperson at BestBuy, they can be a placement but not bring down the salary metrics.
The number of people in this bucket has to be reported in CIRR and if we see this number go up from previous cohorts,…
Yeah everything in this thread is truth, not sure why I got downvoted. Whoever is downvoting that comment... show me the numbers and prove otherwise... nothing wrong with a 40% placement rate within 6 months, just be transparent and explain what you do and don't do.
A Codesmith alumni came to Formation and got a true senior job at C1 - due to their own hustle and drive - but it's correct they are not hiring people with no experience at entry level roles right now.
This is pretty spot on, I don't have anything to add!
Edit: actually I have one thing to add...
The fellow program does impact the numbers a bit. You'll noticed that Codesmith's time to placement isn't particularly fast, and about 10% of people become "fellows" (kind of like a TA role) on 3 month contracts, and Codesmith delays the graduation clock for these people. So they are actually job hunting for up to 9 months to be included in the "6 month" window on CIRR.
This combined with number 6 (and to some extent 5 and 3), that Codesmith tends to attract people that had moderate to high success in another career, with substantial savings, and lifestyle support to make the 11 hour days + 6+ month job hunt work, while taking your time only aiming for "mid level and senior" roles.
Edit 2: one more thing.... related to 4.
The medians reported on CIRR are 1. of people placed only, and 2. o…
Sorry, I don't have time to write a lot and will try to come back to it, but two big ones:
1. It tells you the number of graduates included as an absolute number, and that's it. All other numbers are percentages, which can hide the underlying truth. The salaries are only for graduated and for people who report them, and exclude people who did not. So saying that X program has a $120K median salary is great except it's the median salary of the 95% of people who graduated on time and 85% of those people who got a job and 95% of those who reported salaries... the people who are excluded from the salary data are slowly shaved off the numbers.
2. There's no indication of number of people who started the program in absolute numbers.
3. Not everyone follows CIRR properly, Codesmith doesn't follow CIRR guidelines and "fellows" extend their their "clock" on CIRR by 3+ months. Which makes it even…
I've worked with a number of Codesmith alumni and everyone is an adult capable of deciding what approach they are most comfortable with, and we can make that work, but my general advice is:
1. Leverage what's unique about your pre-SWE experience. If you were an accountant, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or something else that you put a lot of time into preparing to be, then you should present openly and try to pull out relevant things from it, rather than hiding it. For example, a doctor who did research in protein folding and was fascinated by the large scale computer systems used for simulations and some day wants to work on such systems to help save lives.
2. Target entry level roles and apprenticeships at top companies. I time box the time I spend writing replies on Reddit and this one needs it's own essay.
1. A summary for entry level: starting off with right support and expectation…
What true Open Source Software means from my perspective in the industry and how I recommend contributing to it to get your foot in the door (spoiler: it's not what most bootcamps do)
Hi all, I've been having numerous intense debates publicly and privately about open source projects. They have become the cornerstone of the resumes of many bootcamp grads, from Codesmith to Launch School Capstone, to Hack Reactor. But some people are trivializing the meaning of "open source" and I wanted to summarize my thoughts in a post I've been working on on the side for a while. When I did my first SWE job back in 2006 as an intern at IBM, I had a similar gross misunderstanding of open source... so much so I bombed an internal fun competition to create a business plan around a new open source product. I thought I would just share it here or on Quora, but I have a decent following here so here it goe…
It's possible but I highly doubt CIRR would shutdown and go offline without any notice. They would probably keep the website running with the standards documents so that others in the future could continue their work.
I also think the bootcamps remaining in CIRR are the ones most serious about the process and would probably want to continue publishing data even if it's bad. If everyone's data is bad and yours is better, it looks less bad for the best ones... even if overall fewer people go to bootcamps because of the results, the ones that do will be more likely to go to the best ones.
Based on anecdotal evidence from \~10 people at HR and Codesmith, results will indeed tank for H2 2022, but H1 2022 might not be that terrible.
So it might help Codesmith to have H1 2022 published and people might mistakenly think the market is still good. And when H2 2022 comes out and the results are…
I think the bigger point here is the auditing doesn't matter. I don't know where "audited" became synonymous with integrity. The CIRR process auditors just make sure humans input data correctly, and they don't do much investigating to dig into if that data is correct. For example, if a human put Susan's salary as $50,000. They will ask Susan, "was your salary $50,000?" and if she says yes, they are done. The CIRR spec doesn't say much about what auditing means, which is one of the flaws... they just throw the label on their to make it sound more legit... and it doesn't hurt, but it's a flaw. They don't even say clearly how salaries are verified! All they say is that start dates need to be pulled from an offer letter, but they say nothing about salary, so it can be entirely reported by a student incorrectly.
All of this to me is much more important that slapping "audited" on there and ca…
RE: Formation's growth. I might have explained too many details about the growth. From the Fellow point of view you would only perceive more support and improved tasks and sessions. The goal here isn't to automate away but to enhance what humans are capable of doing. The number of live mentor sessions we don't expect to change much as they are some of the most important practice opportunities.
RE: Code reviews. Yes, from experienced engineers on bugs, tasks, and take home assignments we assign you. No, on code review for personal projects (officially, but possibly case by case).
RE: beyond DS&A. We have FAANG recruiters and managers around as well to answer questions and mock interviews and sessions in the job hunt phase (once your skills are deemed at the bar), Formation is far from just technical training alone.
We have hired back two Fellows as full time SWEs. We have 5 senior (l…
Hi!
RE: Update. Things seemed to get worse in October/November, and have since gotten a bit better. Seeing more people getting FAANG interviews again - with generally longer time frames (e.g. scheduling onsites for over a month from now). We've seen mid-level and senior engineers (based on FAANG standards, not Codesmith standards) get hired and get interview more easily. Zero experience people definitely have a harder time with FAANG. We've seen people go to Palantir, Amazon, Bloomberg, but in general having some kind of genuine connection to the company is key. Something about your background that aligns so much better than most other people, that by trying every angle from referrals, to recruiter pings, to networking events, something works to get that interview. Google specifically has hired a few experienced engineers at the L4 level and has slowly resumed some entry level interview…