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…
Hi! Yeah happy to explain more or answer questions over DM that pertain to your specific circumstances.
What you wrote summarizes exactly my overall stance on Codesmith and also what Formation is trying to do so I'm happy you pieced that together from your experience and from my posts.
I really admire Codesmith leadership for scaling the program that they have, they just don't have the experience needed in the tech industry to really solve the right problems that the industry needs, and if they did, maybe they would be more on the right track instead of the rabbit hole they've gone down focusing on going through the motions to put things like a "tech talk" (which are big jokes among students) on your resume.
At Formation, we think we need to get the most experienced people in the industry who are passionate about mentoring to answer the question of what it means to be a truly great…
1. The reports are audited annually after the fact
2. The CPA who signed the last audited report said "Direct request of confirmation from Graduates regarding Employment outcomes andobservation of LinkedIn profiles" [Link](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20Angeles%20Full-Stack%20Software%20Development%20Audited-AUP%20H2%202020.pdf)
So sure it's audited but it's also self reported by people and uses LinkedIn as a source to see if people have jobs or not. The auditing is to make sure humans put the right numbers in the right boxes, not to audit that people's salaries are what they say they are.
Read through the entire [CIRR Standard](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/aa1e118858a548ec9484b7b714e694c6/1/CIRR%20Standards%202021%20%28rev%202020-07-07%29.pdf) and it's extreme…
Hack Reactor is a relatively good program that has scaled pretty well post-acquisition where a lot of other programs that scale have lost some of their steam. I think their size and parent company growth pressures have resulted in them have a lower entry bar than Codesmith in order to take on more people, but they keep a reasonably high bar and the result of a lower graduation percentage (\~75%) and they have kept the outcomes for graduates strong.
The people I've worked with from Hack Reactor and Codesmith are all fairly ambitious, hard working, driven people where ultimately any of the top programs might have good enough for them.
If you look 3 to 5+ years down the road, there are many many Hack Reactor alumni at top tier and FAANG companies in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th jobs. I think this is a result of them being San Francisco focused pre-COVID where once you get your first job in person…
Codesmith is one of the top programs with arguably the top outcomes of any bootcamp and is entirely taught by former students. The lead instructors are all former students who were instructors for a few years. The instructors are students hired back full time. The TAs are people who just graduated and do a 3 month contract. The part time advisors are almost all students who now work in industry. Other than the founders and the investors who help out, every instructional staff except one went to Codesmith.
So that doesn't mean it can't work.
I'm not a recent grad so won't answer the question, but zooming out, why to do you get more confused the more research you do?
If you feel like you can see yourself as a good fit in either, then either route will probably be great. One is not objectively better than the other.
A lot of high level outcomes and marketing is great for narrowing down your choices, but at this stage in the decision I would go with the only you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like is the right call... i.e. your gut.
Some warnings I've seen others do:
1. Don't compare exact outcome salaries or placements rates obsessively.... too much wiggle room here, just use them to narrow down in the first place.
2. Curriculum on paper. Don't obsess over every line of the curriculum and compare program to program and/or think that a curriculum with more things is better
3. Don't worry about the stack or lang…
This still feels like you graduate and go in "support mode" where some other students/graduates (edit: graduates can be employed SWEs or not yet employed) hired as coaches (i.e. peers) check up on you. It's a wonderful and amazing community but it's still peer based. At Formation.dev we have a bunch of people who are/have been Codesmith coaches or mock interviewers and they are just graduates themselves without jobs or with minimal work experience. So the support is more like "enhanced peer support" and not the full weight of Codemsith behind you. Maybe over time it will be stronger as graduates many years into their jobs give back.
Codesmith experimented with a DSA course for alumni and they charged them for it at a heavily discounted rate so I would expect them to charge for any true future support.
At Formation we give people lifetime access to our version of slack and to some commu…
I was looking at one of the OSP's that got a lot of buzz relative to the others (I think, I can't tell if it's real or just the people working on it promoting) called "Svelvet" https://www.linkedin.com/company/svelvet/
Only 2 out of 18 people listed have jobs now :(
So I think H2 2022 might be a really really bad placement year. The only redeeming factor though is if the market improves and it's now June 2023, no one will care about poor H22022 and it will be explained away as the market is now better! If the market remains this tough though and placement rates are 50% or less, I think people will stop going to bootcamps that require them to put their lives on hold and drop everything to attend.
You don't need a degree or even a bootcamp certificate to get a good job. Having relevant experience of any kind does help, but even something like accounting can be a good bridge.
The thing with Codesmith CIRR results are they have an interesting distribution curve with bunch of people on the low side, and a bunch of people on the high side. Their low side is still good, but there are many people who do Codesmith and make under $100K as well. That could still be a solid first job even if it's not the flashy too-good-to-be-true numbers people share.
The other problem with CIRR is it excludes stock and bonuses. A lot of those higher paid engineers are even HIGHER than they appear on CIRR because of that. On the other hand, Codesmith has a lot of alumni placed at Capital One and Amazon over the past year, which are very heavy on base salary and the bulk DOES show up in CIRR.
Anyways if…
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…
I'm a bit sour from someone who was claiming I was trying to steal Codesmith students and that Codesmith offers the same thing Formation does and then blocked me and the person has quite a good reputation on Reddit (not a fake account). But that kind of job hunt support is nowhere near what we offer. We continue technical training indefinitely until you get a job, 2 to 6 sessions a week with mentors, continuous practice tasks and benchmarks, ongoing mock interviews with senior engineers and recruiters. A team of 3 non-technical people and a private channel to talk with them about your strategy and progress, and they keep on top of your work if you are slipping.... all until you get a job, as long as you don't proactively stop doing your part.
Anyways... unrelated haha, thanks for the context as always!
What is Codesmith doing about the 50% of people disappearing?
I have a few notes about this from my CIRR analysis:
1. In 2021 some cohorts had a fairly high percentage of people placed who did not report salaries. This was explained as people that auditors can confirm are employed by LinkedIn but who ghosted and won't report salaries to Codesmith. The reason this is important is that if the hardest working and most ambitious people hang around and get super high salaries to make the medians higher and then the overall placement rate appears high because of this LinkedIn loophole, if can look like more people are placed and making high salaries, when it's not the case.
2. I know Codesmith doesn't offer a job guarantee and is transparent about that, but it feels kind of crappy to shoot you with a firehose and then just leave you be with minimal check in. Leaves people dazed and confus…
Thanks for helping the community by sharing your experiences.
One word of caution is that everyone changing careers has a different path and there isn't just one way to get there.
For example, I work with a few people that feel scammed by Revature. They were overqualified and interviewed there thinking it was a dream job, only to find out it's a bootcamp that is free but that you pay back indirectly by being placed in a job where you are being underpaid by about $40K per year for a 2 year contract (and leaving early means you have to pay a $30k penalty), while Revature makes a ton of profit on your contract.
However, for someone with no training, and a lot of hustle, putting in 2 years, aiming to get bought out earlier, at a legit job isn't so bad! Heck Codesmith has like a 3 month wait time, you have to study for 3 months before then, program takes 3 months, being a fellow adds 3 mo…
Lots of people here with no industry experience and bootcamp grads with very little industry experience.... after working with hundreds of people from bootcamp backgrounds and from top tier CS backgrounds, and from conducting hundreds of interviews myself I feel like I have a valuable perspective to share in this sub. I spend anywhere from 5 mins to 30 mins a day on Reddit, mostly commenting on push notifications I get while on the go, so I don't "live here" 🤣
Also, while 11% of people at Formation graduated a bootcamp and hadn't found a job that way, more than half of the people have a non-CS degree background, so I also want to connect with people who might come to Formation years in the future.
Finally, we are a for-profit technology company, and some day we're going to expand and offer more options for more people and it's useful to keep a pulse on the bootcamp community in genera…
Zooming out here, most people's goal is to become a strong software engineer and make an impact on the world. For others, it's to build a better life and do more interesting work day to day to get there. All I'm warning against here is tunnel vision that only Codesmith can provide this outcome and you must do months and months of Codesmith prep to prove you are worthy. There are many paths for many people and for a lot of people Codemsith might be the best path, but don't lock yourself in until you know that for yourself.
Depends on the misdemeanor but if it shows up on background checks it could be a problem yeah. You can try a few paths. One is freelancing and contracting. The other is try to find programs for people with records that are kind of like apprenticeship-type programs and have partners who are willing to hire.
It really depends on the conviction though and what you did since then. For example, was it a drug related crime that you had rehab for and have long since forgotten. Was it something related to your life circumstances that you have since received counseling for? Was it as DUI and you have been volunteering for years to rectify your wrongs? All of those things matter and can make a difference.
But it's definitely an uphill battle as some companies might just pull back offers without asking questions. You don't HAVE to legally but if the above apply, you can try disclosing EARLY in th…
I think Codesmith's results will continue to be better on paper than most bootcamps even though they will be lower than the 2021 outcomes. We won't know until at least June 2023. I expect H1 2022 to be fairly strong, especially in terms of compensation with so many people going to Capital One and Amazon... two companies that compensate mostly in cash compared to other high comp companies.
Several people have noticed that they seem to have 6 fellows per cohort now (BootcampBen disputed, but I'm going off the 56 fellows on their website) and that might help slow the drop in placement percentages as well.
I also think if their results tanked it wouldn't change much about how people feel about them. It's not like they can control the market and are failing at it. The only thing that would change that is if they had a loophole that only works in good markets and not bad and people turn on t…
The head of outcomes at Codesmith says almost quote unquote in Codesmith job hunting lectures that Codesmith has proven to be better than Harvard and Stanford. I'm assuming he's referring to a biased survey (from Switchup - which is sponsored by bootcamps) from several years ago regarding placement rates. Stuff like that doesn't help anyone in the industry on how bootcamps are perceived.
My non-data-backed hunch based on anecdotal reporting is it's around 50% within six months for recent cohorts. Every 3 fellows hired per cohort could boost that by \~10% and the way they describe fellows as being hired is completely invisible to CIRR (based on their explanation in their blog post about CIRR)
Their salary stats could be much higher if only experienced people are getting placed at high salaries. Salary stats are only based on people hired and don't account for all the $0s from people not hired. You could have a 1% graduatio rate if 1 out of 100 people graduates and a 100% placement rate if the person is placed and a $500,000 median salary if that was the person's base salary.
EDIT: I have no problem with CIRR or Codesmith using CIRR. But I'm very concerned when people tout it as a "gold standard", "only trustworthy source", "independent audit" or other statements on Redd…
I feel like a lot of people don't read CIRRs actual spec word for word. CIRR doesn't require audited results before reporting. They required you to audit your reports once a year after they are submitted. I assume most people audit them before, but let's not throw the word "audit" out there like it's a gold standard. FTX was "audited" as well.
The CIRR spec also makes you promise to only use specific numbers in marketing, and those numbers are maneuvered to look in the best light possible, like the placement rate within 180 days of graduating. BloomTech has a 90% placement rate, but around a 50% graduation rate. One of those numbers is in giant letters all over the place - but it's manipulatable. (EDIT: BloomTech is not in CIRR, but I'm stating an analogous point based on their audited results. And it's not in giant letters, but it's in their main banner on their homepage.)
Codesmith u…
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…
CIRR has ways to be manipulated. For example, Codesmith hires back a small number of their students for a fixed 3-month contract and they have publicly stated that they push back the graduation date for those people but don't count them as placements. So what that does is it lets them hire back whatever number of people they want to push back those people's graduation dates and give them three more months of job hunting while they're doing this contract.
The less sketchy way that CIRR itself makes numbers look better than they are is that the only absolute numbers are the number of graduates included in the report, and then everything else is a percentage. So first the percentage of people that graduate on time, but without having the total number of people who enrolled. Then the percentage of people who graduated on time who got jobs within time frames. But the percentage of people who…
Yeah I'm pretty sure after 2023, FAANG as a term is going to end and we'll see something else arise from the turbulence. There will always be some hot place to work that has tremendously interesting and impactful work, and compensates at the top of market.
That said, even now, at Formation, we see many people chose companies over traditional FAANG on a weekly basis. We tend to call all these companies "top-tier companies" and the bar is very high, and often higher, for some of these other companies.
Not to sound too condescending but it's a lot of the "not knowing what you don't know" coming into play. Like a typical person in America who dreams of going to Hollywood, probably thinks of blockbuster movies and household-name actors. But the reality is that it's a complex industry where being in a leading role in a blockbuster movie might not be the best outcome for you. Maybe you are…
From what I've observed it's the following reasons, some good, some bad, and not in any order:
- Recent grads just went through the curriculum and might relate more to the struggles you went through. It's additionally good practice for those grads to reinforce their learnings.
- Some programs count people who are hired by the program as "placed" to boost their placements stats. Codesmith is bootcamp that hires back a lot of grads, currently about 50 to 60 of the 150 or so staff are former grads but they explicitly do not count these people as placed. They do however not consider them graduated either so they don't count at all on the CIRR stats until their 3 months contract is done. Most other bootcamps hire people back indefinitely while they are job hunting, which might result in them leaving suddenly and is a bad experience.
- If there are too many former students teaching, you do…
I believe they include that same information in their enrollment agreement as well and a few people have pointed that out to me, that it seems much worse than CIRR and that the it forces them to show salary buckets under $100K and that they go pretty low below $100K whereas in CIRR "under $100K" comes across as a higher amount.
So my understanding is that this is a result of different standards. I constantly say this and constantly get attacked by throwaway accounts, but CIRR HAS FLAWS. It's setup by bootcamp insiders to have a common and clear standard, but it's also setup with little small nuances to make the top level reported numbers look the best possible and in the best light.
The regulatory information probably has stricter guidelines because people can be heavily fined for not complying, but it might not tell the full story behind the numbers either. For example, they regulato…
On a weekly basis, in my personal experience only, people are mistaking these resumes for experienced engineers. The blame might be entirely on the people making these mistakes, but I'm stating that I'm seeing it happening almost all the time.
I would like to emphasize what I repeatedly said in the past, MOST people working on real, legit Open Source projects ARE PAID for it. So Open Source !== not a real job and instantly make something that looks like a company not a company. Anyone reading, happy to talk more what Open Source really means because there is a lack of understanding in this sub about it.
In auditing 200 GitHub commit histories, over 75% of people had 2-3 weeks of commits on their projects, far less than even 1 month, never-mind multiple months. I have a nicely organized Google sheet from around May when I did the analysis. This is not two sides, it's a continuous spectr…
Sorry if it comes across that way, I work with Codesmith alumni daily to sort this out and they will attest how complex and case by case this is, and how middle road I am... I work with people to help them get the best outcome and sometimes they use their Formation resume and sometimes I advise them to use their Codesmith resume for a role.
I'm bias but I would self-teach and then do Formation :) but that's because even though I have a degree, it was a broad engineering degree and I self taught myself web programming and started a web-based company in college that forced me to self-teach with real users.
Bloomtech's results were not great unfortunately :( I don't want to judge but by moving to the flex, much fewer people graduate now.
58% of full stack web people "graduated" and 90% of them got jobs.
They used to have 75% of people graduate with 75% job placement.
So of the people that sign on day one, it remains to be about 50% of them getting jobs at the end within 6 months of graduating.
The median salaries haven't changed much.
Sure, so people are reporting the entrance bar getting more selective. For example, basic recursion is required, and OOP is required.
So there are a fixed number of slots, and presumably more applicants than can fit, so they are choosing stronger and stronger applicants.
They have added an in person cohort and have 4 cohorts now on a 7 week cycle. So they have been adding capacity, but presumably not as fast to server everyone.
So what this means is the incoming people will be more experienced and stronger than in the past, and will get better outcomes - both speed to outcome and compensation.
I agree that I should be more precise and appreciate the pushback and I did a deeper dive. A larger problem is most big tech do not allow you to have another W2 job in the tech field because their contracts cover all your IP created in the tech space and the OTHER W2 job usually has a similar contract and hence the conflict.
Agree on 52 Fellows, 3 months W-2 @ $1K per week.
17 prep instructors who have full time jobs elsewhere (I don't know the compensation, it's not gift cards but I don't what it is and I would somewhat expect it to be something hourly yeah, I shouldn't bucket them into the 50K a year - I just don't know but I didn't think it was equivalent to the full time instructors and have ZERO basis to believe it's lower, just guess)
15 engineering mentors who have full time jobs elsewhere (these are the people who I thought were not paid W-2 but paid with gift cards - or equiv…
CIRR's "percentage employed in 180 days" is accepted offers / graduated, correct. And is 100% misleading not accounting for people who don't graduate.
As I said above, "Percentage of job obtainers who reported salaries" also lets you remove people from the salary counts, which still including them as placed. Why would this happen? I'm not accusing Codesmith of this, but Tech Elevator is 100% and I don't know why Codesmith is missing salaries for people counted as placements. My theory is people who ghost but can be confirmed as employed from trustworthy data.
Ah yes, the CIRR ambiguity and you have to do some math on your own.
So the only hard number is "Number of graduates included in the report: 91"
The rest of the numbers are all percentages and honestly the numerators and denominators aren't specified super clearly in the reports. Even the CIRR spec isn't 100% clear.
"Graduates included in report" in their worksheet is based on a column "Included in placement data?" which is an AND formula of 1. intended to get new job within 3 days of starting program and 2. has work authorization 3. "effective" graduation date was within the six months window of the report. So I'm interpreting that this actually means someone graduating late, might be included in a later report.
So my formulas above are estimating when someone signs a contract what percentage graduated on time and then getting a job within the expected 180 days. Basically trying to…
More CIRR H2 2021 results out! Codesmith included - with a lot to unpack! Overall lower placement rates and much higher salaries of those placed, and a few more fun things!
Where to begin, so much interesting stuff in the part 2 CIRR results, focusing on Codesmith as it's the most interesting to this subreddit.
Overall interesting notes (incomplete but tried to select a few things I found interesting):
* By far the most interesting thing in East Coast (EC, formerly NY), salary growths were super large. Median is up to a WHOPPING $140K but more interestingly in H1: 18% of people had salary $140K+ and now \~52% of East Coast grads made $140K+, that's a massive shift! And similar to FTRI there is a dip to almost zero in $150 to $160K with \~20% in the $140K to $150K bucket and \~20% in the $160K+ bucket. So my hypothesis on this adding in my industry knowledge is that \~10 to 20 people g…
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…
These are our last \~30 offers accepted in order (excluded declined offers obviously): Square, Flatiron Health, Amazon, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, WePay, Amazon, Visa, Doordash, Virgin Orbit, <top startup redacted>, UIPath, American Express, <mid size not top tier redacted> Amazon, Square, <top startup redacted>, Amazon, American Express, Zapier, Edelman, Klaviyo, <top startup redacted>, Dialexa, Amazon, Google, Plaid, Sense, <not top tier startup redacted>, <top startup redacted>, Figma, Google.
I think this list demonstrates both consistent top tier placements, as well as the breadth of placements on an individual basis. We still don't have more salary data to give because we don't want to give anything out that we feel doesn't communicate what we're doing.
As stated before, the methodology for the data is in the fine print of that dialog on the website and it's very clear how we compu…
You are straight up wrong about CIRR. The median salaries are of people who reported salaries and got jobs only and exclude everyone else. So drop off 1 is the graduation percentage. People who don't graduate are not included in the median salary calculation. Then there's people that don't get jobs. They are not included in the median salary calculation. And then outside sources can be used to confirm employment for percentage employed but without a salary to include the median calculation. You said you do a lot of research so read the CIRR and it's very clear in the Excel worksheets they provide... complete with examples showing exactly this
This is exactly what I'm talking about how CIRR has built in vagueness to make this happen and help paint programs in the best light.
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.…
Again, not a school, no graduates, no end of program, no curriculum and we can’t be compared to a bootcamp head to head. All good questions to ask and also exactly why we can’t possibly report CIRR like metrics.
I think you have a big misunderstanding about what Formation is and it might be helpful to research more instead of trying to make us for your mold for what you think we are.
I feel personally attacked because I repeatedly tell you we don't have a school and we are running something different, and you repeatedly call Formation a school or a bootcamp and repeatedly ask for data the schools and bootcamps offer. You seem so fixed on the fact that you believe we are a school and I've offered at least once to do a call with you to explain what we are. Yet you keep saying it and the I have to keep correcting it.
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…
Yeah it has solid cash compensation too, I think it's a great first job for someone with no experience.
Oh one followup: "Senior Associate" there is like "Early Career L3" at Google. and "Master Engineer" or "Lead Engineer" is what Google calls Senior Engineer... just showing the level names being meaningless as it's a good example of that.
I don't think anyone here is an idiot, no.
Remember all those sports card price magazines and pokemon card price magazines and beanie baby price magazines, that are all gone... they only survive if the underlying thing survives, and many of them have been accused of inflating the value of the cards and of the beanie babies to keep the hype going.
According to Crunchbase (I can't disclose confidential non-public info): Rithm is backed by Slow Ventures and Codesmith is backed by a serial entrepreneur, film producer, and investor Chad Troutwine.
We publish some salary data of outcomes on our website and have for a while.
Happy to try to answer these questions, they are extremely reasonable questions:
“average percentage of students that finds a job within 3-6 months of program”
\- I'm not sure what this means. Of STARTING Formation or of when? Everyone starts Formation at a different…
BloomTech is formerly Lambda School and changed names as a result of a trademark lawsuit. Their founder, Austen, is a natural marketer and grew the school way too fast. I have thoughts here but they are just opinions and not relevant. BloomTech in its current form is nothing like Lambda School so the past reviews and bad press are somewhat irrelevant.
CourseReport is a supporting member of CIRR and accepts payments from bootcamps to promote them. Switch Up makes money by referring people to specific bootcamps. Career Karma also pays fees to refer people to specific bootcamps. So all three are biased as their success depends on the bootcamp industries success and you have at their content through that lens.
CIRR is another irrelevant source nowadays because no one is in them. If a bootcamp takes part in CIRR you can trust the numbers they report to CIRR. But CIRR's most recent standard…
Their about page has a list of all employees. All engineering fellows are former students. All the full time, senior, and lead instructors went to Codesmith and never worked in industry. All the part time instructors are former students with full time jobs. They recently hired someone outside, who worked at Coding Dojo.
Don’t make assumptions and also don’t just trust what I say. Look through the employee list and look at their LinkedIns…
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…
Yeah CIRR does two things:
1. Sets a standard and set of rules and definitions everyone agrees to follow
2. Requires reports to get audited
CIRR is a business league, founded by SkillsFund (now Ascend) and supported by a Course Report.
The results themselves are meant to have high integrity and I trust the numbers. BUT it doesn't mean the whole process and the rules don't have biases in them.
CIRR represents the bootcamp industry, it's a business league with the charter of supporting the industry the members are in. So it's in CIRR's interest for bootcamps to succeed, it's in Ascend's interest for bootcamps to succeed and for students to get loans from them. It's in Course Reports interest for bootcamps to succeed and get page views on their review website and higher valued sponsorships, it's bootcamps interest because more enrollments = more business.
People reading my comments: C…
You can look at [Formation.dev](https://Formation.dev) (disclosure, I'm a co-founder). We aren't a bootcamp and we don't explicitly teach classes... we're more like a personal trainer to work with you on your fundamentals and get you in good shape. We have a pretty strict/high bar to make sure people are ready to work on the fundamentals as a pathway to a top tier job and aren't there for the wrong reasons.
And yes, we pay our engineers FAANG-level/top tier compensation and try to attract the top talent mentors in the industry, so that's a good point about having good mentorship and it does cost a lot.
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…
I think the OP is referring to the fact that if you lookup students by those projects to "find them on LinkedIn" (because otherwise it would be hard to find them) that a significant amount of people have no new job after the open source projects. I've also found this the time a few months ago when I audited 200 graduates and the percentage with jobs was low (it's REALLY hard to get start dates for people because people tend to ambiguously list the start as "2021" or "2022" rather than the exact months so I assume most of the people I looked at that appeared to have 6+ months of experience were current students). I've also seen some people entirely scrub their LinkedIn after getting a job and removing all those projects so that makes it further harder.
I think the answer to this is to look at CIRR and trust the graduations rates and placement rates! Look carefully at what the numbers mea…
I have worked with several fellows post Codesmith. Corrections are more than welcome!
Some notes:
- The pay is $1K per week as of a few months ago.
- It's a W2 job direct with the company and not a 1099 contractor role. They have fellows in many states, so not sure if all are W2.
- It's 3 months long but some people extend and stay on full time as an instructor and get paid a median engineer salary.
- You can leave if you get a job, but most people expect to stay for the full 3 months.
- You do a lot day to day. Some people have been surprised by the large workload, others have said it's not that large of a workload. The most extreme was "you barely have time to sleep" and the least extreme was "it's a lot of work but you have a lot of down time to apply for jobs and take care of yourself".
- You do: grading, 1-1 tutoring, mock interviews, interviews with prospectives, live support. M…
Yeah it's a good point that with COVID we've forgotten the intensity of the commute in addition to already long hours. Their in-person cohort had applications opened beyond the deadline so I suspect many people feel this way too.
I'm concerned the staff will want to go in person too. I help run Formation and it's been a blessing we can hire some incredibly talented people across the country to help make Formation awesome. And if we were limited to just San Francisco, it would be very hard to find such amazing people in a smaller pool who also wants to commute every day. Very curious if they end of going hybrid with their staff, while requiring students to be in the office 11 hours a a day. At the end of the day the staff are key... you aren't paying $20K to work with some friends through some online materials.
But they leased a nice office in Manhattan (the most expensive real estate…