AI hasn't changed the interview FORMATs yet, but it's starting to change how people are interpreting them. For example, someone can (and always could have) cheat on coding interviews with AI, so it's making engineers focus really hard (and companies train engineers to conduct interviews this way) on the coding process and demonstrating strong coding thinking and understanding and not just writing code and calling it a day.
I'm not sure at Cap1 but at big tech, there is a bit more weight on behavioral and SD. Not a complete change. But let's say someone got a 'weak hire' on SD, and hire on all others, that might have been more obviously a hire in the past and maybe we take a deeper look into the SD now for why it was a 'weak hire'.
Cap1 has always had a more fixed process, I think they ask one of four SD questions all the time haha, so I suspect they won't be weighting things differentl…
Hi, three things:
1. Maximize your current job assuming you have one. You want to show that you have longer tenure at fewer companies, and career progression at your job, rather than too much job hoping. So focusing on getting promoted at your job might help more than job hopping to a higher title or salary.
If you have been job hopping or don't have a job right now I would have to look at your resume more personally to try to build the strongest narrative you can to show signs of the above \^\^\^. Like if you had a job where you weren't promoted but you grew in influence or scope, you can show that clearly on your resume.
2. With 5 YOE you should apply to FAANG "mid level" or smaller company senior roles yeah. Apply you strengths, not what you want to learn. If you want to learn full stack, go for front end roles that play to your stengths and then try to learn full stack stuff on th…
Hello! Good observation.
The junior market isn't completely gone or being completely replaced by AI. The top tech companies are hiring INTERNS from the top schools and those people are getting entry level jobs and progressing.
The thing that changed is instead of it being like 5 juniors : 2 mid levels : 1 senior, the ratios are more like 2 juniors: 2 mid levels: 1 senior.
And I think AI makes those ratios work rather than just flat out replacing the juniors.
It's all money at the end of the day - junior engineers LOSE MONEY at top tier companies, but the reason they got hired is that the 2 year investment to get them productive broke even and paid off afterwards.
AI can both help and hurt that. It can help by making juniors progress FASTER and be break even SOONER. But it can also empower mids and seniors to be more productive themselves and raise the bar of what "break even" expect…
👋 AMA: I’m Michael - ex-Meta Principal Engineer + #1 code committer, now co-founder at Formation.dev + interview expert. 📌🎈💥 AI popped the Bootcamp & LeetCode bubbles. Ask me anything about how tech careers have changed in 2025, how to stand out, and what still gets you hired. No 🍬🧥. No 🐂💩
# TUESDAY APRIL 15th, 10AM PT/1PM ET: ADD QUESTIONS ANYTIME
Hey everyone, I'm Michael Novati - a friendly moderator of the sub, former Principal Engineer and the #1 code committer at Meta, and now co-founder and lead engineer at Formation.dev. I've done hundreds of technical interviews at Meta, built some big stuff, and even had an industry archetype called "Coding Machine" modeled after my work.
Here's the blunt truth: The hiring landscape in tech has drastically shifted in 2025. The bootcamp-to-job pipeline and the LeetCode grind have both been heavily disrupted by AI. These changes broke…
Yes, I said "did something" because their LinkedIn has two other SWE jobs during the time he was at Hyperloop and one Data Scientist job that overlaps that timeframe as well.
He also says he was driving for Uber but his LinkedIn he was an "analyst" at Uber for 3 years.
Like all in all this is a good path but there seems to be a heck of a lot more to this story than he said in the video.
Which is what I see very commonly with Codesmith grads. Their stories on these blogs and videos don't match what these people say on paper.
Same with the Capital One one you are sharing. Great outcome but something in the story is not adding up.
I feel like everyone at Codesmith cares more about making up a story that looks like Codesmith helped these people get mid level and senior level jobs instead of acknowledging the reality of how it happens when it does happen.
1. Launch School Captsone 75% in 6 months in overlapping window.
So I disagree!
2. But even Launch School is upset at the decline from like 95% to 75% and acknowledges that as market impacted.
The thing is that paying $22.5K to go to Codesmith with a 43% chance of getting a job within 10 months from now, like it makes you ask if now is the time, if this will even work, etc...
No one is forcing anyone to do a SWE bootcamp and they might just not be rational anymore.
Like Codesmith was like $17K a few years ago and had like a 90% placement in 6 months. The math is ENTIRELY different than $22.5K and 43% chance.
Launch School Capstone had 75% placement within 6 months, so no these aren't fantastic. 6 months is an insane amount of time. That's $55K of opportunity cost as these salaries!!! So a drop is not good.
Codesmith has undergone turmoil to say the least internally but I think they have kept the instruction relatively consistent, so this could be more about the market than Codesmith.
But there is another option - no bootcamp, so doing the best they can in a bad market doesn't mean it's worth $22.5K
Carlos received a Senior Analyst Role, which corresponds to high entry level/low mid level at top tier companies compensation and scope-wise. "Senior Software Engineer" at Capital One is a different level and corresponds to Prinicipal Associate that he was promoted to.
I know at least one Codesmith grad who got a Senior Software Engineer role but he lied on his resume to show 4 years of work experience to get the job.
Similarly Carlos in that blog says he had zero experience yet his LinkedIn showed a large amount of experience, I think as a freelancer or something last I checked.
The biggest reading between the lines problem - which they also directly confront but the consequences re less clear - is that in 2022 - like a good 60% of people got jobs in 180 days AND reported salaries to Codesmith, whereas in 2023 - it's like 25% of people who got jobs in 180 days AND reported salaries.
So like imagine having a room full of 800 people and in 2022 you look around and people more likely than not had a job and was still in contact with everyone. In 2023 that number is like tanked.
So one level past the raw placement number is this concerning sign of disengagement, mass staff turnover, etc...
I think Codesmith is trying to navigate that and we'll see where they end up but I do think they need (and are) making a lot of changes and these 2023 results are not an affirmation that everything is working and it's JUST the market.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
I seriously think your a troll and I try really hard to treat everyone without assumptions, but like Reddit keeps flagging like ALL of you comments as 'may be from a spammer or someone likely to break rules'
I've repeatedly directly answers to you about what Formation is and what we do and why we don't have a concept of a placement rate so I can only assume you are a troll at this point.
CA 180 day was 42% or so and this is 43% or so, so they align really well.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/
Been following since then and the same problem - arguably worse now as more people are placing after 12 months of job searching.
There are certainly people who believe the ends justify the means and don't have a problem with this but my problem is just be honest about how it works and don't present a facade of bullshit about creating mid level engineers out of nothing and being insanely defensive about it.
Just look at their blog that they released yesterday. Fantastic human being who had a life-changing transition that is undeniably a great outcome for the person.
but the story is presented in a completely misleading way. trying to make it seem like this person is crushing it in the industry based on how well codesmith prepared them.
Reading between the lines, it looks like the per…
When things were good this sub was full of "I got a $150K job, AMA" and people patting everyone on the back.
I think it's fine that this sub reflects reality and that's healthy.
I know how hard it is for people to break into the industry and if someone does - having a positive and supportive environment helps.
But quite frankly - almost everyone who is considering that change right now probably shouldn't. Positive vibes and pats on the back won't get you jobs like they used to.
The bootcamp OP mentioned, Codesmith, is struggling with this right now, because it's a positive and supportive place. The CEO said in a video recently that students are basically paying to have unconditional "you can do it support". This worked so well for new people, who had low confidence in their coding, and a lot of potential. It's not working now at all, and even people who want that environment aren't s…
The program is motivated by trying to support people from diverse backgrounds, which is why not only the score matter, but the soft-skills, motivation, and demonstrating Netflix values.
It's subjective and I totally understand as a student and not having worked at Netflix that it's hard to self-evaluating those aspects either, but those are equally important - we've been doing this program for a few years now and we want to make sure we select/recommend people who **we see signal** of a path to getting hired there
I've only seen recent data from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps were ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I've only seen recent days from Launch School and Codesmith, two other top bootcamps.
Launch School is holding it together with around 70% placement rate for 2023 (down from 90s).
Codesmith only released CA data and those fell off a cliff to 42% in 2023.
The best bootcamps we're ready for a 8.0 earthquake and survived 2023+2024 but some have sever structural damage. Makes them question whether to demolish what's left and possibly rebuild form scratch or keep using the damaged bridges and road, hoping they don't collapse.
Rithm closed shop. App Academy indefinitely paused SWE.
Rigorously question any bootcamp trying to get you to drive across a damaged bridge because you don't want to be on the bridge when it collapses.
I edited to add Launch School. Believe it or not, I respect that Codesmith at least tries to publish consistent data on a consistent cadence and I didn't want to put it side by side with Launch School which makes Codesmith's placement rates look way worse.
The problem this is Launch School has every single graduate accounted for and a ghosting grad isn't included. Codesmith includes LinkedIn verified ghosters in their data.
What would you recommend I do, just only publish Launch School's in this case?
1. This person was not in Formation, they did a different program , a Netflix program. They have a certificate from Netflix, signed by Netflix, showing this on their profile.
2. We don't hire Fellows as Teaching Assistants, we don't have Teaching Assistants at Formation and we don't have classes or lectures or courses or anything. Fellows is the name of engineers we work with to level up. It's a vague and ambiguous word so I understand the misunderstanding, but you also should be trying understand our language that we use consistently because this is a word that doesn't mean job universally and in our industry it's the standard word for our customer that places like Pathrise use as well. Like if you visit another country and insist on speaking English and being upset people don't understand you... it's your job to understand.
3. The industry standard is for students to put "pathways" p…
We have people who have been with us for a long time and our bar used to be any SWE work experience in 2019 to 2022, then was 1+ year 2023 -> and then 2+ years in 2024.
I was replying to a comment about the current state of Formation that someone was criticizing.
There can be edge case people people from a long time ago that place that have less experience and we also have a handful of people we accept now with less than 2+ years of experience.
You're right I shouldn't say "only take". We only market to and and only consider people with 2+ years since 2024 and reject others, and we have exceptions and edge case for one off reasons who come back and make a case or explain their circumstances on a call.
We also have partnerships with Netflix and Waymo where we prepare interns for their corresponding interviews. And those people are not paying $2500 a month, are not paying anything, and…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads.
It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad.
The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system.
Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they…
Thanks for sharing, that would help explain why they had 65% of placements 'non response but verified via LinkedIn' for 2023 grads in CA.
Questions:
1. Are these people getting SWE roles or taking adjacent jobs?
2. If people are not responsive to Codesmith, how do you know the cohorts have 60% placement rates? Are you using LinkedIn yourself or are you using the unofficial channels.
(I ask because the alumni that have messaged me in the past few weeks have universally called their alumni channels "ghost towns" (they are 2024 though!)
3. Why do you think so many people are no longer responding to the emails compared to in 2022?
ELABORATED ANSWERS:
1. No one is falling for it:
a - Applications and enrollments to bootcamps have absolutely tanked. I can't give too much away in my sourcing here but I have hot off the press anecdotes and it seems to be falling off a cliff from already painful numbers.
b - I don't know any company that his historically hired bootcamp grads that is knowingly hiring them (i.e. they aren't faking it and getting fake letters of reference) other than apprenticeships and the anti-DEI shift has diminished or ended a lot of those.
2. Market cooled:
a - it cooled for entry level SWE roles from 2020-2022 and particularly bootcamp grads
b - agencies don't hire for level and they hire for specific skills so I expect agency hiring hasn't changed much and wouldn't push back on that.
3. No one is hiring bootcamp grads:
Ok sure "no one" is too harsh. It's extremely rare to see job postings w…
Bootcamps had 3 eras:
2015 to 2020: a lot of success stories, bootcamps had high bars and only let in people who had a high chance of success. They worked on at a small scale
2020 to 2023: COVID - bootcamps and remote work exploded and the successful bootcamps scaled over night and completely failed. Lambda School was the canary here - it showed us bootcamps can't scale by just multiplying their staff but schools did anyways. Instead of reflecting and strengthening during these boom times they just scaled and failed.
2023-Present: market cooled bootcamps reputations destroyed, no one is hiring bootcamp grads, no one is falling for it.
I follow Codesmith closely and look at the California official placement rates for six months post graduation: 2021 - 90%, 2022 - 70%, 2023 - 42%.... and they raised prices this year anyways despite knowing these numbers before doing so.
>Our team is very focused on the bigger picture, being a rigorous and accessible pathway for a new gen of technologists able to help meet this moment (arguably the 4th industrial revolution)
Your team should spend more time on the ground with students and less time with the bigger picture. If you want to only work on the bigger picture, go into academia or politics.
Otherwise don't take peoples' $22.5K and use that money to fund your "bigger picture" explorations and ideas, or to fund the creation of new AI/ML programs.
VC, loans, and outside funding is meant for investing the future. Your students are paying to get jobs, not paying for developing future programs and so the team can go to conferences like Davos and write books.
I haven't made a penny of salary or compensation from my company in 5.5 years since day 1, and we have never had a profit, because every penny given to us is…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
CIRR is dead and deserves scrutiny because Codesmith's marketing of it has mislead hundreds of people to pay them $21,500 in 2024, it is indeed worthy of scrutiny.
When Codesmith had like 12ish cohorts in 2024 and 2-3 of them say that they only know about 1 person placed in 6 months, that's not a fact by any means but it raises flags and warrants questions.
Codesmith's response has been to entirely evade the question.
They clearly have 2024 data of some kind that they are publishing, but they aren't publishing H1 2024 placement rates - which they obviously have preliminary versions of or they can't publish the offer data they have.
Even if they don't have or want to publish placements rates they can say "warning, placement rates are down, we want to double down on finding and supporting the RIGHT people for Codesmith so if you want to become a SWE, work with us and we'll be honest wi…
The person who signed letters is Phil Troutman who was Codesmith's Head Instructor for 10 years and left recently.
Codesmith's placement staff "help coordinate" letters for you if you have trouble.
And OSLabs phone number is intended to go to Phil.
The instructions presented to me offer support for "work verification", "background checks", and more and indicate that Phil is the primary person who does background check calls.
**The board members on the site, look into them:** one is Codesmith's lawyer, two I beleive are Codesmith alumni who don't advertise it much but show up on alumni lists.
The "director" is not affiliated with Codesmith but I'm not sure if she works there, last I chatted with her she was "on leave" and she reported some security problems I had to Annie - Codesmith's Director of Outcomes and Admissions who is present here on Reddit.
Finally, OSLabs tax records sho…
It's a rolling window, so the team is reviewing all the applications and if they choose to move forward with someone they will offer an interview right away, which they continue to review more applications.
I would expect the first pass to be complete this week or next week with initial wave of interviews offered and as we see how many people pass interviews and meet the qualifications (graduation dates, etc...)
Formation isn't a school and doesn't teach any concepts like that. We are a place to practice problems, get feedback, benchmark, enhance your job hunt and do mock interviews.
We believe there are tens of thousands of hours of excellent materials out there and we try to help you navigate that.
All of our efforts are out towards our product and you can see form our launches blog how much effort that is.
Codesmith doesn't have dynamic scheduling of 500 sessions a week, source thousands of job posts a week and provide personal recommends and network outreach, provide a job tracker tool that helps you prepare for upcoming interviews through personalized practice and interviews automatically, collect and read about a dozen feedback points per person every week, provide a personal algorithmic feed of things to work on, provide a custom built on platform collaborative coding environment suppo…
It's been 7 months now and based on the people that have pinged me on and from this thread (not sure if it's circulating with a cohort) the placements haven't changed much and these cohorts were described as a ghost town and worse than ever placement rates - some saying they don't know anyone placed in their cohort.
**You knew at the time of posting that 2023 cohorts had been doing half as good as 2022 cohorts (40% 6 month placement rate) and you knew how the earliest 2024 cohorts were doing and terrible things were.**
I saw an ad last week saying that 2024 was great for outcomes and "you could be next".
Great example here: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc\_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c\_03](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/codesmith-llc_programmer-coding-codingbootcamp-activity-7303912379589820416-c_03)
"From conducting orchestras to software engineering"
1. The person's LinkedIn says they had 11 months of SWE experience prior to Codesmith and then 1.4 years of open source experience "software engineer" experience during Codesmith.
2. Then you read the blog post there and find out the person was an orchestra conductor with no experience prior to Codesmith
3. Then you ask a recruiter at Capital One that says to clear a background check for a "Senior Associate" role (which is not a Senior Software Engineer role there - which requires 4 years of experience), you need to have 2 years of verifiable SWE experience to get hired...
So something…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Don't get me started on this because I've been hounding them for literally years on this and it's been happening since 2019 https://www.reddit.com/r/TechLA/comments/b7xl98/codesmith_coding_bootcamp_scam_beware/
Every time I significantly push back you'll see like a blog post about someone who got a senior job right out of Codesmith, and they just adamantly adamantly believe this to the bitter end.
So I don't think they are lying but instead are delusional.
No leader there has a STEM degree, and no leader has been an engineer ever either in industry.
Enough people for $130K jobs in the past they made them believe they and the secret formula to creating mid level and senior engineers out of s bootcamp that it became their identity.
When your identity is attacked, you often defend completely irrationally.
There are a handful of people that have gotten those jobs. and then when you zo…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
The way this has been framed to me:
1. the top couple of students usually get jobs quickly. they aren't on Reddit and they often aren't very engaged because they are in and out. others wonder why these people did Codesmith in the first place. when I've talked them I get a mix of responses: they were misled to believe Codesmith was more senior and they were way to advanced and we're advising the teachers, they needed some kind of structure and peers because doing it alone was emotionally challenging, and some people just wanted to do projects to refresh their skills and were misled that the codesmith projects were like work experience.
I hear people here saying that it wasn't really with it but that they enjoyed the community and didn't think it was a scam or entire waste of money, just probably wouldn't have done it in retrospect.
2. the 2nd tier of students get hired by Codesmith. T…
Does doing your research include looking at reports and asking critical questions and then interpreting answers?
Question: the ghosting rate for placements went from 15% to 65% from 2022 grads to 2023 in CA reports, what happened there? Why are alumni not responsive and is there a problem continuing in 2024?
The problem, whether you think I have biases or not, is that I **do my research** and I show it to people. When things are good, I publish good.
There has been nothing good in the past 2 years, no silver lining, nothing. There have been anecdotal one off success cases.
Codesmith added 5 lectures of AI to their curriculum that are already dated and worse than the free stuff from Andrej Karpathy on Youtube... and they intentionally chose to go all in on an AI curriculum that they knew was changing daily and they didn't have any unique expertise in teaching.
Like I wish I had more…
But why is it taking longer just because supply is low.
I reiterate, If there's nothing that codesmith can do about this because of the market, then they shouldn't exist right now
So I'm trying to open the door for them to be able to do something within their control to produce the placement numbers that could justify paying $22,000 for.
If they've made all the changes they can and they don't think there's anything else then they're done right?
Their CEO is off writing a book about ai and inequality and doesn't seem interested to be spending 12 hours a day on the ground with every single alumni helping them in whatever way they can.
So maybe that's a sign that they've tried everything they can and these are the best the results are going to be and if that's the case, they're not good enough to justify their existence right now or at least their cost.
The thing Codesmith leaders won't accept is that even if they have good intentions and even if they built a great community, they can't beat the market and the market says they shouldn't exist anymore.
Instead they have raised prices to $22,500.
I bet you went it was $18,000 and 80% got jobs making $125K in six months.
Now it's $22,500 and 40% of people in that time frame get jobs making $110K.
Finally, their CIRR numbers have always showed relatively low 90 day placement and very solid 180 day placement, so people weren't getting jobs in a month that often.
What I'm observing is around half of the placements I see... which is not many anymore, take over a year to get packed and their LinkedIn has them 'working at' their 3 week group project (listed as a company) for the entire time... often offer a year.
This looks to the untrained eye like the person has a year of experience and the longer someone is job hunting the more experience this item shows.
So I think it's indeed taking people longer because they need to have a year or more experience to even be taken seriously on the market.
But all that said, their ghosting rate of alumni skyrocketed and that indicates that alumni are not engaged and disappearing after six months so even if they are getting jobs and it's taking longer, they are figuring it out on their own.
I've been calling this out loud and clear and pushing them very hard for being deceptive and manipulative.
Their response: hire people on Upwork to manipulate Reddit and try to dismiss my posts and hire new people to push the brand with a refreshed story.
I'm appalled at their responses to my critical scrutiny.
Their 2023 California numbers showed that 2/3 of "placements" ghosted and were verified by LinkedIn - compare to just 15% the year before - and when I asked them if their contractor could have mistaken misrepresented group projects on LinkedIn at work experience.... no response. Instead they pulled the report and replaced it with an unofficial one using 12 month placement windows instead of 6 months and published these random stats about 102 offers accepted in the past 6 months.
102 offers accepted is a massive decline in offers per day from their previous numbers, $110K is a…
Yeah I've actually seen some Codesmith grads start an LLC for their project. Not sure if the IP paperwork is on the up and up there, but running an LLC teaches you something! haha.
Before I did Formation, we ran a company called Buildschool that WAS a free bootcamp, where senior engineers did paid contracting projects and the students learned by shadowing those projects and some became paid contractors on them later on was a really good model and a lot of those people placed and have great jobs.
The problem is the projects don't scale. Each one is different and unique. But like I keep saying, if you stay smaller and hands on focused on placement, it could work.
Yeah for sure, I've also seen probably every permutation of representation under the sun haha.
Ultimately people are responsible for their individual choice. If they over-represent and perform poorly, then it makes companies never want to hire bootcamp grads again (which is one thing that has happened a number of times). If they over-represent and do well, do the ends justify the means? A lot of this is blurry for sure.
The thing I have a major problem with at Codesmith is the majority of people have the exact same looking experience on their resumes, and grads have told me it's the only way the career support engineers advise doing it (as an explanation as to why -as Codesmith denies telling people to do this) - and then their 'sister company' OSLabs signs letters of reference for background checks backing whatever people tell them they did.
Codesmith's CEO has stated explicitly that…
Yeah I'm really curious what's working for entry level jobs. I have a very good handle through Formation on FAANG-mid-level and FAANG-senior.
As you know, I keep a close eye on Codesmith as the largest 'top 3' bootcamp, and placements are still terrible there and half the people placed have over a year of "work experience" on their LinkedIn which is their 3 week long project. I had some AI analyze that and it didn't do a good job to publish, but it was ridiculous to see maybe half the placements relying on framing a 3-4 week project as 12+ months of experiences only because they put "X - Present" on their LinkedIn and have been job hunting for 12+ months.... A bunch of the people also worked at Codesmith as a teaching assistant and they delay their clock by the time they worked there. So someone who graduated 2 years ago, was a part time assistant for 6 months, has 1.5 years at their gr…
My 2 cents is relative outcomes are important and as long as a bootcamp is consistent in it's measurement and explains the trends then we're good.
It's not good if see something like Codesmith where they change the goal posts (e.g. 12 month placements instead of 6 months - conveniently changing in a terrible market when their placement rate tanked) and trying to post metrics and numbers that look good, while insulting you by calling it rigorous transparency - that's scam behavior.
I expect Turing to continue to publish the numbers they have been and explaining the trends proactively.
I don't think Turing's recent struggles have been hidden or misleading anyone.
I would push on what 'market turning around a little bit in 2025' means.
I'm not seeing anything turn around for entry level roles and there are two possibilities:
1. The partnerships they are making are helping some people…
Wow that's a lot of hustle to try to find paths for grads and I think it's really the only way for bootcamps to survive right now.... by dedicating 150% of your time to trying to find any nook and cranny of advantage for your grads in a market so bad that each partnership puts only a small debt into the problem and you find something deep inside to keep on going.
We've seen a similar level of trying creative angles at Launch School (e.g. open source mentorships on Firefox and such).
Others give up and try to pivot to AI, like App Academy completely stopped its SWE program and only does AI - same with BloomTech. Launch Academy paused entirely.
Some of the larger ones like General Assembly and Galvanize are somehow keeping the lights on and I would like to know more about them.
I'm very nervous about Codesmith, which was arguably the top bootcamp based on outcomes until 2023, and which…
Haha Formation is far from perfect but we have an advantage to scale for sure because of our dynamic scheduling engine that gets better the more people we have. We match people up through hundreds of mentorship sessions every week, all scheduled for scratch based on what topics people need to practice, availability, and seniority level. So the more people we can match from, the better the matches end up being!
BUT! The downside is that with such a dynamic schedule, it's more likely for a mentor to have to reschedule or for people in a group to have to drop out. So to make it work, we have to have layers and layers of product and algorithms to handle these cases and make them as least abd possible.
Another aspect of scaling is our mentors. Because Formation doesn't teach anything or have any curriculum and instead we facilitate mentorship and practice: you might like or dislike a mentor…
I don't disagree at all that some people from bootcamps had good outcomes but I also strongly believe this view is why in the past 3 years people ran to bootcamps as a magical path to get a $100K+ job in 12 weeks that was very much not the case.
Take Codesmith for example, which in 2021 had a median $130K salary or something. Out of thousands of graduates ever, something like 100 placed at the canonical FAANG companies. Almost all of the Meta placements were contractors who left within a year.
So historically what happened was this (I was there and this is what Is saw):
1. Big tech wants to source more broadly to have more diverse candidates than just MIT and Stanford grads
2. Big tech looked at local bootcamps in Silicon Valley - Hack Reactor, App Academy, and Hackbright are three big ones.
3. Big tech made relationships, sending engineers as mentors and paying to get first crack a…
I can't tell if you are trolling, not understanding, or just have such a fixed mindset you aren't trying to understand.
How does that work exactly if someone is paying for a month subscription and someone else is paying for an unlimited membership with the goal of getting a job in 12 months.
What would either of those people get from an average placement time?
If someone has a three month subscription, what clock do we use for placement, 12 months from the end of that? What if they have a bundle and pay to extend a month and then get placed? Isn't that worse than if they got placed in the 3 month bundle they were hoping for even though they had a great job.
I believe most of our Fellows have full time day jobs, many do a couple sessions a week and have a long term timeframe and take a long time to place.
On the other hand a bunch of people were engineers who were laid off who are p…
Our full year report has been on our blog since December.
I think I wrote tens of thousands of words explaining our outcomes and there is no question I will not answer honestly.
Our main goals are salary increase and top tier placements because that's what people pay us to achieve.
We don't have a concept of a placement rate because it doesn't make sense for an interview prep program with a month to month membership that allows ramping up and ramping down week to week. It's not useful.
I've explained this to people on your team repeatedly and I struggle to believe you don't comprehend what I'm saying. If you have specific questions I try to elucidate or if you disagree and think we are bootcamp that can publish these things then explain why and I can respond or clarify misconceptions.
Better yet talk to your alumni that have done Formation and find A SINGLE PERSON who thinks Format…
I also agree 110k salaries are great roles!
The part I'm pushing Codesmith on is the trend and the marketing message.
If you tell people they are mid level and senior engineers and the salaries have dropped 130k -> 120k -> 110k, it just doesn't add up.
It's not true and it's misleading.
For example, at Formation, you can see in our 2024 report from December, we had a $110K INCREASE in first year total comp (see the exact calculation mechanism on our blog), increase from 50% top tier in 2023 -> 76% top tier in 2024, and people are getting ACTUAL mid-level and senior top tier roles.
**So the market improved a ton in 2024 from our point of view.**
Codesmith is blaming a bad 2024 market for worse results than 2023, but it's a bad market for **entry level software engineers** not a bad market for all.
**Sorry, this is rambling - but my consistent point for 2-3 years now has been that…
I agree that zero to placement doesn't make any rational sense anymore without having corporate support and potential jobs lined up.
By "you guys" I'm assuming you mean Formation, and Formation doesn't teach any vocational skills, so yes, you have to have employable programming skills coming in and our job is to help you level up to more impactful roles and pass interviews in a competitive market. So our entry bar will always change on paper as it's philosophically "already has hirable programming skills"
I mean do the math... $110K average salary, $55K increase, means that people make on average $65K coming in.
Now $65K isn't a 6'10 high school kid, but it's the median outcome of a lot of OTHER BOOTCAMPS.
I'm not sure if they include $0 in there or if they exclude them - again - no methodology is problematic and legally risky for them - but if they don't then it could be that half the people have no job because they quit and went all in, and half the people make $120K.
This is all speculation and exactly why publishing data is can of worms. You have to public reliable data or it means nothing except for marketing tricks and without disclaimers - legally playing with fire.
Salary increase over previous job is a good metric to use in general because it's demonstrating the value the career change had.
It's not a CIRR metric, it's not audited, it has no rules or guidelines, but it's a good metrics. The problem we have here is presenting that along side audited data can make it seem like all of the data is equally valid. I don't see ANY KIND OF DISCLAIMER EXPLAINING HOW IT'S CALCULATED (which is the non-lawyer legal advice I would give them)
If you map out Codesmith's outcomes from 2021 -> 2024 with public data, you see 6 month placement rates dropping from like 90 -> 80 -> 70 -> 40%, you see salaries dropping like $125K -> $130K -> $120K -> $117K -> $110K
The trend doesn't look good.
BUT some people are getting jobs! The jobs do exist.
However I think it's going to take small bespoke programs working with the right people to get to the right place, and no program will systematically produce results.
These outcomes are the nail in the coffin to to speak because we've flipped from 'more likely than not' getting a job to not getting a job (when comparing apples to apples) so even the 'best bootcamp' can't more likely than not place someone in 6 months.