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…
There are definitely way more jobs than developers. The economy is very volatile so there are hiring freezes at some companies, and layoffs at others, but overall there are a lot of jobs and more engineers needed than there are engineers.
The problem is that not all engineers are the same and needs are the same. Senior engineers can have 10X, 100X impact over junior ones, but cost maybe 2-3X a junior engineer, so the demand for them is even higher. Whereas there is kind of a log-jam of bootcamp grads with very little experience, ready to contribute 1X for a reasonable salary, all vying for the same junior spots, and on paper all look the same. So it's more like a traffic jam where things aren't moving just because of too much traffic!
My advice right now for bootcamp grad (I'm bias, Formation works with a lot of Bootcamp grads) is to keep working on fundamental skills so that you can b…
Anecdotal salaries do more damage than good. You shouldn't be basing any decisions off of anonymous one-off salaries, especially when most programs publish some amount of aggregated data.
Someone at Formation got a $550K offer a few weeks ago, that doesn't mean Formation is the best for everyone or for you.
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…
We are raising venture capital to hire the best people in the industry to help us build the best training platform in the world. We are building something incredibly unique and complex and I would love to share more about as we grow, but it's not easy or cheap and takes large investment with long term returns.
We have several engineers with \~10 years FAANG experience. All of our recruiters are 5+ year ex-FAANG and our head of recruiting was 10 years at FB running the internship program. Our director of career services ran career services at Triplebyte and several bootcamps.
We pay these people competitively and also with stock that will grow in value over time as they build and contribute value to Formation.
When you start from scratch, raising VC funding is a great way to seed the funding needed to accomplish this, and if you are going to raise funding, why not aim for the best inve…
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…
Yeah Codesmith's negotiation advice is to come in with a high ask "Just always ask them for $150K" as a way to also set the stage that you are a more senior engineer than you appear on paper... combined with exaggerating OSPs as work experience, is one of the ways SOME (not ALL) people get higher starting salaries at less strong non-tech companies.
It's very effective though and not judging. Like this is a great outcome compared to almost every other bootcamp!
Salaries and compensation will vary wildly based on: location, experience, how people do the math for their offers (trust me... people use different math for stock, bonuses, and benefits and it can be all over the place), and of course: a splash of luck.
I've said this many times now but your salary out of a bootcamp means nothing about your career in tech. The canonical example I give is that a $100K Dropbox Ignite apprenticeship is much better than a mid level job at an agency or bank, and possibly even an entry level job at a top tier company (I would still take entry level FAANG for the highly motivated people).
Let's say you have no experience. An apprenticeship at Dropbox, or another FAANG, will teach you very strong fundamental skills for how to work day to day as an engineer. Then you can apply all your hustle to crushing it, converting full time and loving your job and feeling…
Can you define "strong presence at FAANG"? I look at HR alumni in LinkedIn and see pages and pages of FAANG employees a few years down the road. I've found maybe two dozen Codesmith alumni at full time FAANG SWE positions.
Regarding salaries, not making this point about Codesmith or HR, but advice generally for those listening. If you want to make more money, your first salary out of bootcamp is very irrelevant in terms of you career income in tech. 90K apprenticeships at FAANG are infinitely better than a 120K job at a 100 person atartup with a team of 10 engineers. You'll be making way more money in just a couple of years. So judging just based on that the immediate salary alone is missing the forest for the trees.
Engineers at Facebook are not ranked by salary, and compensation varies by performance. A new grad with a $130K base salary will make between $140K and $300K based on th…
I work with many ex-FAANG recruiters directly on my team and many more in the industry. I also did 400+ interviews at Facebook, and work with colleagues that have thousands. So I can give my view, which is obviously biased by that background, but is hopefully useful for that perspective.
1. Many recruiters do immediately ignore bootcamp grads. But the reason is the same as why they ignore a lot of COMP SCI GRADS resumes. They all look the same and they can't figure out how to differentiate them. We would go to a recruiting fair at a college and we would get 300 internship resumes, having to choose 20 people for interviews then next week. All the resumes have the SAME projects, SAME courses, so what do you do? How would you differentiate. There's no time to go through everyone's portfolios. So you look for referrals, look for past internship experience, look for grades sometimes when all…
It's in their CIRR report. 20% of graduates who get jobs make over $140K and 20% who get jobs make under $110K or so, and not including all the poeple who don't get jobs make zero.
Their admissions contract can't me shared but if you singed one or have an offer, they are obligated to disclosure certain numbers and outcomes and the numbers don't add up to CIRR without further explanation.
Don't get scared about this but if you get an offer... spend 20 minutes doing the math between CIRR and the contract your are signing.
So one of the downsides to Codesmith is that most of the day to day teachers are senior students, Fellows, alumni hired as full time instructions, and none of them have worked in industry yet. What Codesmith does well though is they propogate their "way of doing things" through the staff very well and consistently. So it's a little like "just trust the Codesmith way and do it our way" vibe.... and it works pretty well, but there ARE other ways of doing things haha and if their way doesn't work for you then go to a different program that does and don't feel bad about ruining your application streak :D
There are too many cases to go over all of them but some factors to evaluate for each offer before being able to compare are:
1. Company's engineering reputation
2. What team you will be on/department/team matching process
3. Who will be your manager, if it's known
4. Career trajectory paths at the company. e.g. Microsoft requires like 2-3 promotions for every 1 promotion at Google. e.g. Can you progress as an IC in your career or will you be "forced" into management to grow as the only option.
5. Base salary
6. Signing bonuses
7. Performance bonus targets
8. Equity, type, amount, and vesting schedule (equity is most complex to understand usually)
9. Other benefits/perks that are impactful for you
10. Startups: need to be evaluated on
11. Leadership has 5+ years of FAANG-level strong career experience
12. Investors are "top 10"/"top tier"
13. Understand the funding stage and how much fu…
Hey, fewer than Codesmith, can't generalize any patterns other than they have all been similarly hard working, professional, collaborative people and their outcomes at Formation were no different (not statistically significant, but qualitatively).
I actually spend like 5 to 10 mins a day connecting with \~20 bootcamp grads on LinkedIn from all different programs, as my network is super Facebook-heavy and I want to connect more with junior devs and see what they talk/care about (also why I'm here haha). Despite Codesmith's reputation, HackReactor has quite a plethora of alumni who down the road end up a top tier companies. Granted they are larger than others, but many more than Codesmith. I have a strong stance that if you have the life circumstances to do so, you want the RIGHT job out of a bootcamp to kickstart your career in the right direction, not the HIGHEST PAYING job, so you shou…
I have the same questions and the distributions based on experience, but I can give objective answers to some of those other questions.
1. 120K is the median, not the average, so it doesn't mean you are likely to get this salary. It means of all the people who join there is a 50/50 shot making over 120K and a 50/50 shot making under 120K. But it's more important to narrow it down by people of a certain background. Like I know at Formation, the average first year TC for people with 0 experience is $134K and for 1 - 2 years is $181K, so I have to hypothesize that people with less experience are on the lower end, but need data to test that.
2. The Codesmith numbers in CIRR do not include any kind of options, bonuses, etc... they are just base salary. This is a criticism of CIRR, but it's also very hard to compute TC fairly. At Formation, we EXCLUDE all TC that is not objectively measurabl…
Based on their info sessions, they want you to take the prep courses to see what Codesmith is like and if it's a good fit for you. Knowing you aren't a good fit at the CSPrep level, helps keep their bar for immersive high and their outcomes high.
I agree with your reflection that you might have been better off starting another program sooner. It's great that Codesmith is hard to get into and waitlisted, but it means that you spend months preparing, 2 months waiting for your start date once you get in, and then months job hunting at the end. A lot of people would be better off starting sooner at another program, getting a foot in the door job doing anything programming related, and then working towards leveling up to a better job. (Disclosure: co-founder of Formation.dev and we help a lot of bootcamp grads make that second jump, so I'm bias in this opinion).
The biggest problem with th…
cc u/InTheDarkDancing, I commented on this today elsewhere and adding here for consistency.
I also appreciate the blog post explaining how Codesmith supports CIRR. I don't have a problem with Codesmith's position on CIRR, but what I have a problem with is people blindly supporting Codesmith as the "best bootcamp" because of their CIRR outcomes and regurgitating their marketing as unwavering fact. These are smart people, who want six figures jobs levering their problem solving and critical thinking abilities and regurgitating marketing without thinking critically about it is not demonstrating that ability.
Codesmith directly comments about how important equity and bonuses are in compensation. Yet they continue to market their CIRR results (which explicitly only include base salary and exclude stock and bonuses) solely as a marketing strategy to make a claim they are better than other b…
Yeah if someone starts, as long as they have the intention of job hunting after, they are included in the report and impact the graduation rate. The placements rates and medians are all based on the number GRADUATED and not the original number who started. Finally, if someone is unresponsive to CIRR requests but they can confirm they got a job, they person is included in the "placed" count but not in the salary counts. So the way CIRR is designed is it tries really hard to make sure the salary stats are only counting successful people and have the highest medians possible.
This doesn't change the fact that Codesmith has very strong outcomes, but their outcomes don't include equity and bonuses and hence are somewhat meaningless, other than as a marketing tool. They are well aware how important equity is in outcomes and would make their outcomes even better but they support and promote CI…
I can give some thoughts on this, TLDR: CIRR results are real and Codesmith has very high outcomes on paper, but there are two sides to everything yes, nothing is perfect. I talk often to Don (disclosure, Formation.dev, company I co-founded, has sponsored one of this videos - as he doesn't accept bootcamp sponsorships, this is one of the only non-bootcamp sponsorships he's ever done but it could be a bias)
So first of all, I believe it was hard for him to find Codesmith alumni for a few reasons:
1. People don't list it on their LinkedIn's often because Codesmith suggests people exclude it from their history so their skills can shine, rather than any credentials.
2. To remain unbiased he won't include people who reach out to HIM first wanting to be on his podcast.
3. There are a lot of vocal Codesmith supporters that have worked either part time or full time at Codesmith in some capacit…
Thanks for sharing, that's definitely interesting. And cool that you were a chef!
We have history, you don't like me, but nonetheless, I have some advice given that! I don't think you need a degree to get a job and if you have a strong history in the fine dining industry it would be cool to leverage that to get a job.
I know Toast is hiring a lot of people, generally senior, but like need to hire dozens of people and there could be a path there. Doordash is also hiring a ton of engineers, but they do have a fairly high bar leaning senior. OpenTable is also hiring a ton of people and is also super relevant for how a dining room is run.
Anyways I would double down on that experience. You might have insights into food-adjacent tech companies that can help land that role. I would make a resume that highlights this experience and have a good mini cover letter ready and send it to some rec…
So the 90% placement rate is of people who graduate, but about 95% of people graduate as well, so the actual placement is a little lower.... this is one of the downsides of CIRR, that it breaks apart the two, but nonetheless, Codesmith's results are strong.
So there was a Course Report talk a few years ago where an exec, Philip Troutman, said 'a third of people have a degree or relevant experience' but I also would love to hear concrete numbers. Codesmith pointed this out recently as well, but showing results by background is really important missing information.
If you look at CIRR, 20% of people make under $110K and 20% over $140K. So I would suspect the people making over $140K have relevant experience and under $110K don't.
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…
That sounds like a very stressful situation, but it also sounds like a Lambda School problem.
Some ISAs (like Pathrise and Formation) explicitly only look at BASE salary on a new job to prevent this kind of thing from happening because its awful.... especially to take the money without any heads-up or warning. As you said, because there is no regulation, an ISA is just a contract between two people, and some people can be trusted more than others, and you are ultimately banking on your trust with the specific program.
Sorry this happened to you :(
I co-founded a technology company called Formation.dev but we are building a technology platform to train engineers that's nothing at all like a school.
We offer ISAs as a choice to engineers who train on our platform to pay for that training, yes, but it's fairly irrelevant, it's a choice people wanted and we are indifferent. As long as you put in the work, we work with you for as long as it takes to get a new job you love, so people like the ISA model to wait until that transition to pay.
Hi, welcome! There are no bootcamp that prepare you for true top-tier mid-level positions, they all prepare you for entry level positions. If you want to work really hard I would consider Codesmith yeah. I worked at FB for 8 years, interviewed hundreds of people, observed hiring committees, help train interviewers, etc... and Codesmith's definition of "mid level" isn't consistent with the top tier bar. Case and point: a "mid level" FAANG engineer has a base salary of at least $150K and most are \~$170K and 80% of Codesmith's outcomes - according to their CIRR data - are under $140K base salaries.
Codesmith grads with no experience who get top tier jobs, get entry level top tier jobs, not mid-level. People can get fairly high paying "mid-level" jobs at smaller companies or non-tech focused companies and the titles get mixed up with the salaries in their marketing.
So TLDR; don't rule t…
\+1 to making sure you have some basic coding skills before going to a bootcamp, even if they will accept you regardless.
I comment all the time about CIRR, because Codesmith people adamantly defend CIRR as the "mic drop" answer and I strongly believe anyone should look at many factors, INCLUDING CIRR.
Getting the highest salary out of a bootcamp is not necessarily better for your career. Getting a lower paying $100K apprenticeship at a top tier company is much better than a $125K job at an agency for example.
Since Launch School has a mastery based learning model without any fixed time-frames I would probably start it sooner and sink the $200 a month because it will give you a head start. Keep in mind that core is meant more for learning and the capstone is the program with strong job results, that is much more selective and small.
I think if you were to do Springboard, you would do it right after college and if would be fine for aiming for am entry level job on the lower compensation side. Springboard has fairly rigorous requirements for their job guarantee but if you follow them they have fairly good placement rates. The salaries though are much lower than Launch School capstone.
Hopefully others can fill in some gaps with outcomes for Launch School core if you were expecting a job straight from there.
If you are going to do Springboard full time and go all in, I would also consider the…
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…
Sorry, Friday was busy, I’m here! Unfortunately Formation can’t help if you have zero experience. We take on a small number of people which zero experience case by case but they have significant amounts of self studying or previous programs that have brought them to a hirable bar.
We have to be very firm about this bar because our program works very well for people with experience, 81% of all people placed have gone to top tier companies, average base salary around $135K. So we are a specific product for a specific market that works very well and not a bootcamp alternative for most people.
Also plus one to Derek’s advice, find a program that is right for you, not that other people
say is the best.
Thanks for the offer, I have worked with many (10+) Codesmith alumni, instructors, interviewed some myself, reviewed many resumes, etc... and thank you for being diplomatic in your post!
I don't doubt Codesmith's numbers at all. I also think Will Sentance is a fantastic teacher and is a brilliant person.
I have two completely valid criticisms of Codesmith that are not meant to mean the whole program is a giant scam and evil, they are very valid criticisms:
1. I strongly disagree with their definition of mid-level and senior jobs. I have brought this up to many people with 5+ years of industry experience and people have had much harsher things to say that I do about this.
2. I don't like how people, like yourself on your LinkedIn, list the OSP work as software engineering work at a company. Yours listed 4 months of experience but you had 14 commits over 21 days. I spent 2 mins looking…
It's an acronym that stands for Facebook (or Meta) - Apple - Amazon - Netflix - Google.
Some people use it to mean those five companies (knows for strong engineering cultures, high compensation, and impactful technology), others use it to mean top tier companies in general, such as Microsoft, and others.
Generally companies that have the top engineers working at them, have engineering and product driven cultures, have the highest compensation, and have jobs with the largest impact.
Not everyone wants to work at companies like this, or they don't want to work there for their first job. Others do. Others want to work there first, and then want to move on to other companies.
But in the current market, most people see having these companies on your resume at a minimum as a golden ticket to open doors and extremely high compensation that can be life changing.
I use a Hollywood analogy s…
Hi, I have some comments that I'll kind of put in bullet form to be a bit more succinct
* A lot of people move from accounting and music into tech, some of the abstraction in doing books comes in handy!
* If you are still working full time as an accountant and are not in a rush, a part time masters at top 10 CS school could be good and open up "new grad" opportunities via the school. If you really have like 1-3 years, and get get into a truly top tier masters program, this might be a good option.
* There are no bootcamps that have a high success at placing a MANGA. There are people here and there, but they are a fairly small percentage right out of bootcamps. People do tend to make it to FAANG in a couple years+ and that's a more realistic goal. Mid-tier and lower-tier companies are the most common outcomes. At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, NOT recommending for you,…
I mean I spent two hours a few months ago making a spreadsheet of 200 alumni after a bunch of people applied to Formation with the same resumes and the fake work experience. I didn't realize it wasnt work experience until talking to people and asking questions with weird answers, e.g. what were your goals, how were your hired, what non engineers did you work with, who set the team direction, how do you make money, etc... Then I learned about OSLabs, discovered it wasn't even a real organization, and did the deep dive above. I captured the work experience from LinkedIn profiles and the GitHub commit history of the people and discovered the average person claimed 12 months of work experience and had 3 weeks of commits on the corresponding proejct.
Since then have been keeping my ears open, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and tech talks for now, want to know this all works but try to re…
Yeah tell me about it. At Formation we were trying to do this and decided to excluded private stock and options that had no primary or secondary market value in our numbers - which obviously lowers them, but in Codesmith's "Where are they now" report (which is not CIRR based) says they include all that in their numbers ("signing/annual bonus, stock options, equity, and relocation expenses") so presumably they have a way.
But I totally agree it's impossible for early stage private equity and options. The outcome is a range of probabilities and maybe they have some consistent way of calculating a mean.
Disclaimer, the following might appear critical of Codesmith, but I want to focus on the HOW IT HAPPENS instead of the WHAT HAPPENS. I also need to reiterate that it's a great program with great outcomes and a heck of a lot of fantastic alumni who are are hard working, professional and gr…
Hi, yeah to be very clear, I'm not doubting the CIRR results or the integrity of the CIRR process, nor am I criticizing Codesmith, I'm just think it's something notable to be aware of: that CIRR has pros and cons like anything else.
CIRR is strictly based on base salary only and Codesmith alumni with good jobs have stock and bonuses that are completely excluded so their real numbers are better than CIRR reports.
If I was Codesmith, I would try to get a more wholistic view of TC into CIRR. Which yes might benefit them, but also might make CIRR more accurate. Lots of ways of looking at things!
To answer the question though, I'm interested in it because a lot of people rely on CIRR as the source of truth as there's nothing else to go off of, and I want to help people make the right choice for the right reasons and ultimately help people find their right starting point in their careers.…
I'm here with my real name, my one account, giving people advice day in and day out and I'm sure some of those people will back me up. I'm here consistently being helpful and reasonable in all my discussions about all kinds of topics and not once have a not given genuinely helpful advice to someone.
**On the other hand, you work at Codesmith on the side (or worked recently), do not disclose it, and keep defaming me and my company when I talk about Codesmith in any way that is perceived negatively. EDIT: the person denies they worked/work there and claims this is false.**
Responses to statements for other people reading this:
1. Formation doesn't cost at least $20,000+. I don't know where you are getting that number or if you know how ISA caps work. We have several paths and several payment options. Only one pathway, if paid with an ISA, can exceed $20K and it certainly is not the mini…
Codesmith is not a board member but yeah CIRR is a business league/lobbying group. Nothing wrong with that, but people have gone on giant rants about how CIRR is the only thing that can be trusted and it's cult-like misdirection. It's reliable but you need to understand how it works, like any other source of information you rely on.
There aren't any secret conspiracies, but yeah the "standards" are created by bootcamp leaders and they are designed to help bootcamps highlight their strengths. They hide the results by adding levels of data - so first they fork off people who graduated and then they fork off people who have jobs - and then they show all their salary data.
For example, at Codesmith somewhere around 85% +/- 5% of people graduate on time and get jobs within six months, but their 125K median is only of THOSE PEOPLE and does not factor in the people who didn't get jobs or did…
Hi, I don't like quoting one-off results as proof or evidence because everyone has a unique job hunt with different goals. Like maybe that person's goals were different and that was the 2nd best outcome even if their compensation sounds impressive on paper.
Overall 81% of placements are at top tier companies (FAANG, big tech, top tier startups, decacorns, etc...).
We also don't have enough "direct from bootcamp" results to be significant either, but I can give some general common groups of people that have bootcamp backgrounds:
1. Bootcamp, foot in the door job (or better) for anywhere from six months to a few years, Formation, job. This is the most common case, vast majority, and people generally have good practical skills and need to work on fundamental CS concepts like data structures and algorithms.
2. No bootcamp, self study, direct to Formation. The average base salary i…
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…
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…
Uhh so this one is kind of funny but it is part of it. They obviously ask to confirm salaries and offer letters but they do check LinkedIn.
This is direct from the 2020 LA CIRR Report for Codesmith:
>Direct request of confirmation from Graduates regarding Employment outcomes and observation of LinkedIn profiles (the population was divided based on reported Salary quartiles, parameters were linked to stats which make up the report and students with salaries falling in a range determined to significantly affect stats whether directly or indirectly were included in sample).
[https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20Angeles%20Full-Stack%20Software%20Development%20Audited-AUP%20H2%202020.pdf](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf2047/r/eb6e615ccddf47e9a891a9c69f223025/1/Codesmith%20Los%20A…
I just took a peek at these sections of the CIRR standards and even if they can't "contact someone" (and they have to try FOUR TIMES to classify as non-responsive) then they can't be removed from the report, they just count as not contactable. So people who are not asked to fill out the surveys should still be included in the report.
The school has to submit a list of students on day 3 to the auditors to avoid students being removed from the lists later on.
So if this is is happening, my hunch is these people are just considered "not graduated". One of the weaknesses of CIRR is that the salaries are based on PEOPLE WHO ARE EMPLOYED. So the median of $125K is of the people who reported and are employed. The 20% of other people at $0 salaries who either didn't graduate OR didn't get a job, are not included in that stat.
So my hunch is there isn't something fraudulent going on and that t…
hey! so this gets way too complicated to comment on Reddit, you can pull things out of context but this is like the topic of a multi hour long seminary or something. Let me throw a couple of things in here:
1. Having a good fit in your job and being at a very strong company will have more impact on your career than getting paid more in your first job. If you are choosing between a 2nd tier and 3rd tier job and one pays more, that difference in company is less important than going to a top tier company.
2. So once people are in a job there's a lot more going on that can impact trajectory, more training, more programs, more friends, etc.... so you can get the data, but it doesn't mean much. I haven't seen career tracking data other than Codesmith published a report of "where are they now" that has salary data from like 60 or something people from 3 to 5 years ago. The methodology didn'…
We don't have a curriculum but you get personal weekly training from us until you start your new job (or sign the offer to start that job). Afterwards you get access to chat, your past activity, and invited to some future one-off events. If you want to get another job in the future, you have to start again from scratch based on your new goals and new starting point.
You can apply if you authorized to work in the USA, Canada, Australia currently, including H1B and OPT (if you have 2+ years left). If you don't have an H1B we can't support you at this time.
There is no best or second best bootcamps objectively. You should talk to people at the bootcamps to figure out what is the best fit for you and how people of similar backgrounds do.
1. Codesmith. Great for ambitious people who work hard. People come in at a high bar. Alumni network is strong and supportive.
2. Rithm. Great intimate experience where the founders and leadership strongly believe in directly teaching students rather than scaling and growing.
3. Launch School. Self paced month to month and aiming to get into the Capstone path, which is more intense with strong outcomes.
4. Hack Reactor. Strong all around. Very strong alumni network of people a few years down the road.
5. Hackbright and Ada Academy: these focus on specific demographics. Tech is fairly male-dominated and some people might learn better in a more diverse environment.
Now separate topic, CIRR results because it…
The ones I mentioned are all similar in that they tend to work with people who have jobs (or are "employable" already) and help them get better jobs.
Whether it is needed or not is a personal decision based on your goals and motivations and what works for you. For many it's not needed.
I don't know Scalar specifically and how they work internally, so maybe it's not as good as Formation, but I feel like Formation is very valuable if you need the services we offer. I use the "personal trainer" analogy a lot for fitness and getting in shape. For some people it's useful and some it's not. At Formation, we're building out a platform and methodology that we think will work for a very wide range of people, and eventually different price points. If we can't deliver value to people, our company shouldn't exist.
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…
I know a lot of recent grads and grads a few years later and can list some observations.
1. This sub has a ton of people looking into Codesmith and currently in Codesmith. As it should because it's on of the top bootcamps. I have seen a few alumni pop in every now and again, typically when Codesmith is directly mentioned in the original post. I don't think alumni frequent this sub otherwise.
2. Codesmith has forked outcomes, meaning the people with experience who get 140K or more salaries highly likely are not in this sub because they are already somewhat connected to the industry. The 20% of people making under 110K who have much less experience probably are more likely to be here (or be here as alumni when they get jobs). And the job hunt is not easy for any bootcamp grad so I could see people hunkering down during the job hunt.... why spend time here. I'm sure some people will hap…
I mean this is Reddit after all and everyone is anonymous so you should always talk to people who went to the Bootcamps and try to see how people similar to yourself progressed. Focus on the "how" and not just qualifiers like "awesome, supportive, depth", like "how" does the day to day work and really get in there. There are some very good Bootcamps that are never even mentioned here as well!
1. Codesmith has a high bar of entry, and is very intense, but if it's a good fit for you, they have very solid outcomes and very solid placement rates. They really have the process down for being competitive on the job market.
2. Rithm School is good for an intimate bootcamp with lots of instructor access. You do a mini internship with a real company/client/project.
3. Hack Reactor is fairly well rounded, hard to get into, rigorous, strong network.
4. Launch School is a monthly self paced approach…