Launch School is experimenting with Launch School Core Live, which is entirely free and might have prompted Codesmith to discount CSPrep.
Launch School works well for specific people, just like Codesmith still works for a dwindling number of specific people.
The main advantage Launch School has if it's smaller. They run 4 cohorts a year or so, and then the founder is more directly involved in the day to day, keeping costs way down. As a result they have a decent placement rate in this market.
So I am recommending Launch School but only if it's the right place for you and you can explore their free options to try to figure that out.
Numerous new warning flags at Codesmith. Concerned they are grasping at straws (Personal Opinion)
Hi all, over the years I've developed a decent sense of the bootcamp industry from both the inside and the outside. For better or worse I have developed quite the insight into Codesmith. As one of the more controversial bootcamps (known in the boom-times for placing people with $137K median salaries who will fight to the bitten end for Codesmith, with others who aren't buying the 'Codesmith way' on the opposite side. "Polarizing" is a good word and the most innovating things in the world are polarizing.
Over the past month I've been pretty quiet as a number of current and former students and staff have contacted me to chat about things and shared their views.
I've organized this post into clear sections.
Just a disclaimer, I'm a moderator of this sub and I supported my founder in startin…
Outco is a competitor to my company so I'm super biased about talking about them.
Personally, I thought they were shutting down because their website is half broken and doesn't let you apply, some founders moved on to new things, and they are threatening to sue a bunch of people (search Reddit) who didn't get jobs in a year and thought they were getting their money back.
I would compare Outco to Formation (my company), Interview Kickstart, and Pathrise.
These are all different approaches and entirely different day to day, but all are focused on helping you get interviews and pass them.
I have always had pretty fair assessments on here despite my bias, so I'll give my PERSONAL OPINIONS trying to be as fair as I can be:
Formation: dynamic and adaptive mentorship, unique, unlimited mocks, small group sessions (3 to 6 people), 3 dedicated non technical support team members, only focused…
Someone reached out who attended this talk and I now actively encourage no one to go to Codesmith...
Any alumni who attended - this doesn't seem like a system design talk but rather Will trying to learn about a system he doesn't understand well.
Did he talk about pros and cons of different approaches?
Did he talk about the decision process for each piece?
Was the system large scale and in need of complex decision making?
Are the APIs between components discussed in great detail?
Are the schemas and data model decisions discussed in great detail?
Was there any discussion of a technically challenging problem solved and how they overcame it?
Did the system make sense and were good decisions made? Like if someone reviewed it and thought it would just be one service instead that would be a no hire or fire.
So if you graduated from Stanford, the market seems great. If you are considering senior top tier tech companies, the market seems pretty good.
It's not going to improve for bootcamp grads unfortunately until we see what happens with AI.
The market right now is looking for top 50% engineers (illustrative number, not a fact), like good CS grads and experienced engineers who have done pretty good on the job.
AI is going to create a lot of jobs but unclear yet what they will be.
I'm very nervous about bootcamps like BloomTech, Codesmith, and others focusing so much on generative AI skills. These are skills that we see in headlines, but talk to hiring managers at top tech companies and no one knows what AI-skills they will be looking for. These companies have super consistent and careful hiring processes and they will over a couple years operationalize for AI and the skills they look fo…
What credible employment reports are you going off of?
The only recent one I know of is Launch School, which while still has a 75% placement rate it has dropped from 100%. So clearly things are not the same anymore there.
Codesmith has a CIRR for people that graduated 1.5 to 2.5 years ago which is useless. The six month placement rates I'm seeing for 2023 abysmal. Codesmith won't let us know the official numbers until March 2025 and we won't see 2024 numbers until March 2026. So people who graduated 6 months ago in Jan 2024, even though Codesmith knows their 6 months placement rate and could give a great heads up to people about the changing market, they won't say even one hint of it until March 2026, almost two years from now.
That's absolutely garbage and they need to do better if people like you are relying on these reports to judge the market.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I'm sorry to hear but this is what people have been telling me and it's causing tremendous distrust because in the middle of that window Codesmith updated marketing to explain how 53 offers were accepted in April-May, appearing to cover up that 6 months placement rates could be in the 15 to 20% range, in your case maybe lower.
If the wheels are falling off the bus and the driver is blasting Taylor Swift music and singing along distracted and not acknowledging wheels, people want to get the heck off the bus... If the driver knows the wheels are falling off the bus and intentionally distracting away from the situation to fill up the bus, people will shout at you to stay the heck off the bus.
Codesmith resident is a student
Codesmith fellow is a student hired back - they expend their graduation dates for CIRR which violates the rules but no one seems to care.
Codesmith mentor used to be a Fellow hired full time - they eliminated this position for cost savings, increasing the work load for instructions
Codesmith instructors are mentors promoted to be the primary teacher for a cohort
Codesmith lead instructors are instructors that get promoted to run a cohort.
I can try to make a diagram, it's like a pyramid shape.
"shit ton" doesn't matter if more people aren't getting jobs. It means it's theoretically.pososnle to get.s job out of a bootcamp.
But right now it's an edge case and not a reproducible outcome.
I also have audited Codesmith students later in their careers and at least 10% (rounding down a lot to account for error) that got jobs don't currently have a SWE job anymore (or any job) according to LinkedIn... so there's more to it than just getting that job, there is keeping it. A lot of people who do have jobs have a very jumpy early career moving from job to job, unlike CS grads.
Bootcamp grads don't just have a hard time getting jobs but they have a harder time progressing once the pure grit and hustle wears off and gaps become apparent. Some do extremely well but most don't.
With flat rate unlimited (which is still offered but unlisted on the site right now) there is no timeframe yeah. We have a small number of people with us for quite a long time and still going as a result.
With the performance based unlimited (our main option right now) there is a 15 month cap (which can be extended because of personal circumstances if approved).
This is why we might not accept you if you only have like two companies you're targeting or will only accept an offer at a very small number of companies. We don't know what the market's going to be like in a year and if we did our part and prepared you for all the interviews and your passing all of the mock interviews and doing great and those companies just aren't hiring. there's nothing we can do about it but we did our part.
So maybe I should emphasize that you're primarily paying to confidently get your skills and intervi…
Typically around 5 companies yeah, but you have to be open minded and.not limited to just them, because we have no control over the market. We can prepare you the best we can for those companies but if you interviewed at them all and didn't get an offer and you give up then you can leave Formation, but you won't get a refund.
If you are targeting just 5 companies I would recommend the 3 months package we currently offer. It's the month to month subscription with a discount if you pay for 3 months upfront for $6000 (as of July 2024). We prepare you the best we can during that time and then you either get an offer and leave or you leave and wrap up your job hunt on your own.
Hi, thanks for the question, We don't support people only looking at one or two companies. we do support you if you have a small number of dream companies, but are open to taking a good offer that you're happy about at a different company as well. You could be the most prepared possible and due to factors beyond your control just not pass and our job is to get you the most prepared possible, but no one can guarantee that you'll pass a specific interview.
NEWS: Code Fellows has ceased operations and shut down. Ending an 11 year legacy.
Source: https://www.codefellows.org/
The message they shared is really bittersweet and you can see the passion and impact they had over the years but they just couldn't make it work as the market has permanently changed.
They tried to adapt and innovate but at some point it's time to look elsewhere to have impact the world because the market is the market.
"Achieving greatness at the scale we’ve reached at Code Fellows requires exceptional people working together tirelessly toward a shared mission, under shared values. It has been a privilege and an honor to be part of this journey and to witness the incredible outcomes of our mission-driven work. From the beginning, our mission at Code Fellows was to provide transformative, career-focused education that opened doors for people from all backgrounds. Our…
NEWS: Launch School Official 2023 Outcomes: 75% placement in 6 months but time to placement almost double peak year at 14 weeks (still blows away competition). Impressive transparency. Described changes in response to market in detail and their impact 👏
DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions and feelings, when I state numbers or data, it is based on the source provided or other data that I have internally to inform my comments, by I'm human and not perfect, and welcome any corrections.
Source: https://public.launchschool.com/salaries
Video: https://youtu.be/_v1fccQ7OGM?si=s-Utxc4kdJVHkq7S
Launch School has great transparency so I don't really need to interpret things.... just read the data and see what happened to every person. It's like one of those farms where you can track the carrot you ate from seed to table lol.
Commentary:
1. Placement rate within 6 months is crushing at…
I commented below, but yeah it's not a "bootcamp" so happy to talk more about how it works day to day as well. But the people that have posted in here that I've seen, are people who went to bootcamps in the past and were more junior. I don't know the identifies of all of them, but the ones I can tell from their posts.
If you our blog here: [https://formation.dev/blog/outcomes-report-first-half-of-2024/](https://formation.dev/blog/outcomes-report-first-half-of-2024/), you can see we do have less experienced people (... 0 YOE can include contract work, internships, etc... so it's not necessarily NOTHING, but it's "junior".
Every single Meta placement was Senior or Mid-Level and you can see a ton of them in that post as well, and it's help boost those 3+ YOE numbers.
A senior Meta offer is in the ballpark of $500K first year TC and we have a number of those in there. Based on your Linked…
Yeah a minor gift is fairly common and I have no problem with it IF DONE PROPERLY.
1. Only one of the people disclosed the "gift". All of them should have.
2. Not everyone appears to have gotten the email. Vast majority of the reviews during April and May mention being placed at some point in the past months to years.
Thought Experiment: If I posted saying any Codesmith grad who didn't get a job, post a review on Course Report and send me a screenshot and I'll Venmo you $50. (THIS IS NOT AN OFFER - IT'S A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT)
Does that sound fair and reasonable? If not, why is it ok the other way around.
🚨BREAKING NEWS: Course Report (bootcamp review website) acquired by Career.io - a job hunting platform and placement service.
Course Report is now owned by a job search conglomerate "Career.io" ending an era of it running as an independent bootcamp review website.
I'm breaking this news and have not reached out yet to Course Report or Career.io for comment on this matter.
DISCLOSURE: This post is my personal opinions and does not reflect the views of my company. I have not heard of Career.io before but their services to overlap with my company (specifically "interview prep services") so I might have a conflict of interest discussing them but as of this post I have no idea who they are an first heard of them in discovering they now own Course Report.
# Background Story - How I discovered this, and the decline of Course Report:
# 1. Codesmith Paying for Reviews
I have been watching…
I agree with all of this about the industry and appreciate your transparency here! Thanks for sharing.
Number 2 is the biggest problem with the whole bootcamp industry. Codesmith's a good example of becoming desperate because their entire reputation is about six figure outcomes. They loudly published 53 offers accepted in April-May 2024 and even added that stat to their official curriculum docs... That number is already far under pace from their recent CIRR outcomes but June-July 2024 is looking to be half that! If they don't give us an updated June July numbers, and leave up that cherry picked sample set - which is already worse than previous numbers, it's graping at straws and extremely misleading that will push away students who know better.
TLDR: if you bet the house on outcomes and the market is against you, you give up control over your destiny.
Number 3 is a hard one for progra…
Not App Academy student and no information right now, but this wouldn't surprise me whatsoever.
The CEO stepped down [four months ago in March](https://www.appacademy.io/blog/mari-nazary-joins-app-academy)
To me this was a signal that the promises the CEO made needed to be reset, and a new new 'business-focused' CEO was needed.
Mari, the new CEO, comes from BloomTech. Her LinkedIn, as of 7/13/2024 says the following for Bloomtech:
>Revolutionized the product and learning experience by introducing a proprietary platform and digitizing all learning materials and touchpoints, resulting in a significant reduction of the cost per learner from $15K to $1K.
So I presume that was a reason she was hired by App Academy - if she can reduce the cost per student from $15K to $1K all over again!
How do you reduce costs? Well people are the number one cost of most bootcamps so you have to remo…
There are absolutely success stories for H1 2024 grads
The problem is that anecdotal success stories should not be used to judge any bootcamp.
I would need to spend some time chatting with someone, reviewing their LinkedIn, resume, and debrief their entire job hunt, to access the role the bootcamp played in the person's success and without that it's meaningless right now.
I'm really sad with the state of things right now. It's not doom and gloom but just reality. Pretending things are good is extremely harmful to those of you looking to put down 20 or 30K. But for the right people bootcamp are still a good choice... the set of people being the "right people" just being very small now.
I did a six month post graduation analysis for November and December 2023 Codesmith grads because I have decent data sources for them.
I'm not going to quote the placement rate I see in my data because…
Yeah I think Eric is good intentioned, he just doesn't have the top tier, best of best experience he portrays in public sessions. He has good negotiation advice, but it's off the shelf stuff that is the basics in the top tier tech industry. From the people I've worked with navigating more complex offers, he hasn't had strong advice.
One of his alumni had an offer pulled because they negotiated a non-negotiable offer. I don't know everything myself but I have enough industry experience to gently steer people through these conversations and try to help people not just negotiate an offer now, but make a plan for the next few years.
RE: "selling his company to Disney". That is correct, he didn't sell it and shouldn't be portraying it that way. He in fact helped the final engineer transfer out his prized asset Coolspotters to a 3rd party that wasn't Disney and he's well aware Disney had no…
I don't know why the website went down, but I know some people who were part of it and it's kind of a fundamentally flawed idea.
They would hire alumni to work on projects. the only project I've heard spoken about is some kind of negotiation bot possibly in relationship with a team at Harvard and possibly with the data science and machine learning initiative.
The fundamental flaw though is that these alumni have busy jobs and their jobs are their priority. many of them just started their jobs and they want to do well. so spending some of their free time on contract projects. they're just not going to do their best work on those projects as good work as they're doing on their job. and if you're going to hire a team, you want to hire a really good team to work on a project. not like a bunch of people who are doing this on the side.
Second really strong tech companies. don't let you moo…
I can give my 2 cents. I know a lot about both programs. Very different options.
I'm currently not recommending Codesmith (in my personal opinion/capacity - I need to mention this because it's in my company's interest for more people to go there) for three reasons, but you might feel differently:
1. They had large layoffs and promised coworking spaces, more curriculum and more three months ago and haven't done any of that, other than add 5 ML lectures (of which only 2 I think have been done)
2. They have a subreddit that is full of propaganda. I asked Reddit Corporate to look at our subreddit here and theres, and roughly 10 prominent accounts + 1 moderator were suspended from Reddit. I don't know if this was just one person or a coordinated effort but those people were working with Codesmith for "official AMAs" so whatever was going on it, Codesmith has visibility of this behavior jus…
We got H2 2022 results by subtracting out H1 2022 outcomes from full year 2022 outcomes.
The 6 month results were not good compared to H1 2022, with the 6 month placement rate going from 80% -> 60% and with a surge in people who ghosted and were counted as a placement because it looked like they had a job on LinkedIn (20% of the outcomes were this case in H2 vs 6% in H1)
I see this account was suspended so I suppose the point is moot. But warning to all, yelling loudly doesn't make misinformation true.
No, I did a general engineering program and self taught web programming by doing a startup in college.
I worked with a large number of bootcamp grads now later on in their careers, mostly from Codesmith, Launch School, Rithm, Hack Reactor, Full stack Academy, App Academy, Hackbright, and more, so I see a lot of common challenges bootcamp grads face later on. We generally work with engineers later in their careers so these are people that made it. But a couple years ago we worked with people who just graduated from bootcamps too.
On the hiring side, at Meta we had tried to work with bootcamps to hire and the people just didn't make it. Only a handful made it and their careers were slower than others so it just wasn't a viable pipeline for new grad hiring.
Finally, I talk to a number of bootcamp founders and know a lot about their goals and pedagogies and have a good pulse on that side.
The list of recent Codesmith placements is much more of 'intern', 'it analyst', 'program manager', 'technical writer', 'apprentice'. There are still SWE jobs, but people who had committed to a bootcamp a year ago are really struggling and taking whatever jobs they can get. And this is on top of the fact that placement rates are down significantly
The story needs to be told because celebrating the 15% of success cases only is misleading.
I actually think your questions are fine and good to stimulate discussion. But you can't win in this sub. People are suspicious about scams they should be questioning everyone, it's just not a fun place right now now :(
10% fight publicly for it, work there, keep in the community, keep doing talks and calls, etc... and "stay in the family"
Many more are positive or neutral-positive about Codesmith, thought it was worth it because of their outcome but not the content or the advice and they move on after settling into their careers.
I'm also bias there because the people that move on come to be too lol. The largest groups of people coming to me on a weekly basis are current students or recent alumni venting about something, and then older alumni who trust me because they feel like my analysis is spot on and want my advice about the industry.
These are all good questions I'm more than happy to answer.
First, why do we have the average compensation increase and not the average.
we're working with people coming from all kinds of backgrounds and situations and we think the best way to capture their outcome is to show the change relative to where they started.
otherwise we would have to try to bucket people into a bunch of very granular buckets of similar type people and then show some average about how they did in absolute terms. We could try to do that but the buckets change constantly and the people we are working with now are very experienced. the people we worked with a year ago had maybe 1 to 2 years of experience on average and now the people have 5 to 10 years of experience on average. So because these buckets are moving and changing all the time, we don't feel that showing those. give you a pulse for how things are d…
Maybe I'm taking it too literally, but in the exact same font size and UI formatting we have the average outcome right beside the number you're talking about. So to me not acknowledging that fact and stating that
>"I said it was deceptive marketing to show one huge salary number on your companys homepage instead of average results"
Now there could be misunderstandings, or we're not on the same page, but I've said this a number of times and you've said the same thing a number of times - which is why that starts to become harassment.
Do you have more questions about these numbers we can sort out if it's a misunderstanding and not harassment?
⚠️ WARNING: Codesmith subreddit is mostly propaganda (resharing Codesmith content without full context and boosting with positive comments from accounts that mostly post about Codesmith only). Challenges and negative comments are called "lies" and you get banned. BE SMART AND THINK CRITICALLY.
NOTE: I'm not saying the content itself isn't true or that it's bad intentioned, but I am saying that it's marketing material that missing context and it's likely the people sharing it don't even realize this. I've accumulated a lot of information over the years and while I see a **A LOT OF GOOD THINGS CODESMITH IS DOING,** the outcomes have changed dramatically in 2023-2024 and these materials are not reflecting that.
**DISCLAIMER: these are my personal opinions using publicly available information and my own insights.**
**MODERATOR NOTE: any comments talking about my own company will be delete…
I can connect you with some of the people to find out. $2.5K a month is by far the most expensive option and most people choose a package (you can see more options in post-application stage) but the pricing is meant to be a range of pricing for a very very wide range of circumstances. If you are time sensitive you are looking at different options than if you want unlimited support. And if you want unlimited support you can balance between paying all upfront and paying half based on how much we increase your salary.
We're far from perfect but we're working hard to support engineers and we feel we have a good product and experience and we make hundreds of changes every week to adjust to the market and to improve the experience based on feedback.
The main reason though is if you are a senior engineer and super busy, you can just dial into Formation based on your schedule dynamically every…
Here are the most recent placement submission, in order unedited that I grabbed, and redacted tiny companies. Our outcomes are incredibly strong. The time it takes to get them is very long.
Meta
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Amazon
Meta
Atlassian
Paylocity
Disney
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Netflix
Gusto
Amazon
Western Union
Meta
Microsoft
Microsoft
Willow
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Reddit
\[REDACTED STARTUP\]
Microsoft
Strider Technologies
NVIDIA
Meta
Line by Line Rebuttal to Codesmith CEO dodging question about placement rates in a challenging market
**DISCLAIMER: these views are my personal opinions as I see them and they don't represent anyone but me.**
u/WillSen If you call yourself the best of the best, you need to hold yourself to that bar and respect others who are holding you to that bar too by responding with facts and arguments to every challenge rather than ban people who point out things you don't want to answer. I'm unable to reply in the Codesmith subreddit because I'm permanently banned.
Anyways, someone asked the Codesmith CEO in an AMA today [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/codesmith/comments/1dofj3a/comment/la9fv9w/)
>There has been a large share of skepticism towards the results that Codesmith claims to produce with job acquisition rates, salaries, etc. since the company does not share its raw data, e.g., claimin…
2024 Bootcamp Predictions [MIDYEAR CHECKIN AND UPDATES!]
The past two years I've been making bootcamp predictions and [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18ivago/2024_bootcamp_predictions_mega_post_revisiting_my/) is a link to my 2024 ones from six months ago.
I want to share my background for context in the spirit of openness and transparency. I try to write the best content I can, but everyone has biases and it's important to evaluate ones biases for every post you read.
BACKGROUND: I co-founded a mentorship platform and work with many bootcamp graduates as they progress in their careers and I'm a heavy contributor (and moderator) of this sub. Before this, I was at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I grew from intern to E7 principal engineer, conducted over 450 interviews, and participated in hiring committees. I keep in touch with hundreds of my former colleagu…
I started a mod thread about this and was encouraged to ban all of you, which I'm not doing because I think that's wrong.
But seriously get it together and stop making stuff up, just ask and believe my answers or discuss them without making false accusations. If you don't trust me and I'm a moderator and you don't like this place, leave and go spend your time more effectively elsewhere.
I got banned from the Codesmith sub, from Codesmith CSX Slack, permanently banned from all Codesmith events, for pointing out an alumni placement they were highlight is no longer employed at the company they said he was.
Not all communities are for everyone and if this one isn't for you, you can leave!
FACT: I stated this for the public record: I asked the team and we do not and have not as far as they are aware, bid on any Google search keywords containing the word "bootcamp", other than "formation bootcamp" (as we bid on many phrases containing formation as it's a Beyonce song and common term)
I don't know all of the job offer details people are getting no, but if it was shared to the public intentionally I would see no problem using it in theory. But no, I don't know all of the job offer details.
I key part of this analysis is that CIRR 2022 data is out, so if I run a less perfect analysis on 2022 data and compare to CIRR, I can do the same analysis on 2023 data and adjust the output based on that + other factors (like that 2023 cohorts were on average smaller according to the public record, APPROX: 30ish H1 2023 and high 20s in H2 2023.)
I'm allowed to pay attention to details,…
Got long, TLDR: agree a bootcamp should do what it needs to to help you get your first job, including career services, but ultimately you are paying a bootcamp to teach out and not paying for a job and that has the following consequences.
-----
I have had super intense arguments with Codesmith people about this who adamently INSIST their lifetime mock interviews are amazing and any other service (like [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) or my company) are a waste of money.
There is a massive difference in a mock interview run like a real interview with a former Google engineer who has interviewed people on the job recently, than an alumni or teacher doing a mock interview and giving you feedback.
Notice I said "DIFFERENCE" and not that one is better or worse, both are good. The bootcamp should do what it does because it's super helpful to have multiple points of view and types…
1. It's free for you so that's amazing, you are basically getting Codesmith's immersive and more for free.
CONCERNS
1. The job market is terrible right now and this program requires you to have zero experience to get in. Unless they have hiring partners guaranteeing jobs, I would be cautious about planning to get a job at the end, just like any bootcamp.
2. Codesmith grads tend to portray their group projects and past work experience as close to software engineer work experience as possible in your resumes, many resumes leaving it up to the reader to realize these things are not actually SWE experience because they look like it. I'm going to be watching these people like a hawk because all Future Code people have zero SWE experience and if the majority of resumes indicate otherwise at the end of this program that will be a huge concern and they might get into legal trouble with the Ci…
Unofficial Analysis: a top bootcamp's 2023 grad placement rates APPEAR TO DROP ALMOST HALF from 2022 grad placement rates (from about 80% to 45%). Even the best can't beat the market right now. [Illustrative only, may contain errors]
DISCLAIMER: I'm a moderator of this sub and I'm the co-founder of mentorship and interview prep platform aimed at helping existing SWE's prepare for upcoming interviews and level up their SWE jobs. We do not compete with bootcamps but I have a conflict of interest because we work with a bunch of bootcamp grads later in their careers. More bootcamp grads === more customers in a couple years, so I believe I have a bias to encourage people to go to bootcamps rather than be doom and gloom on the industry like this post largely is. BUT having worked with so many bootcamp grads I think it's imperative people have as much information as possible if they are inve…
I've studied Launch School grads and Codesmith grads side by side here because both do these group projects called "capstone projects" (Launch School) or "OSP" (Codesmith) that are open source, have websites, blog posts, and all kinds of scaffolding around them to brand them as super legit projects.
I did this write up last year of [Codesmith](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I haven't done one for Launch School because they are much smaller and it's easier to find students yourself and look it up.
There are three completely separate issues here:
1. Representation of project as Software Engineer job. Codesmith students often list the project as "Software Engineer". They occasionally add "Open Source" to the title or description and occasionally add "Developed under OSLabs" in the description - both of which don't m…
How do you know you couldn't have gotten that outcome anywhere else?
One of the interesting patterns I've observed is Codesmith students who have low self confidence + high ambition, work ethic and are naturally smart and Codesmith re-programs you to get over "importer syndrome" by building your self confidence.
I think it's incredibly amazing if a program can systematically build self confidence in people - that's like probably worth more money than any bootcamp.
But when I see people who will irrationally fight for Codesmith because it changed their lives, it feels like it's from the above \^\^\^.
The thing to watch out for is that the job is step one. Getting the right first job has a major impact on your career. Codesmith gets many people great first jobs, but more than other bootcamps, I've seen great alumni go to the wrong jobs. They posted on Reddit FERVANTLY, attacked me FERV…
Hi James! I have some tough questions about the logistics. Codesmith markets itself as the best so I have some tough questions I expect answers to from the best :D.
1. How do systematically measure the impact of curriculum updates on placements and outcomes?
2. Related to 1, how do decide what updates to make based on the job market? For example, I have talked to a bunch of the top AI companies and if you aren't being hired for an ML role with a PhD and 10 years of ML experience, they don't actually want or need any AI experienced whatsoever to hire you for product and infra roles. So I'm curious where the decision to add AI/ML comes from if it's not related to getting people jobs.
3. How do you systematically identify and prioritize "best practices across the software engineering landscape"? I'm aware of a survey that's given to alumni and a curriculum panel of 6 or so alumni in in…
Hey, short answer to long prompt but I did read it all and appreciate you sharing your thoughts about it. I think you are trying to pull conclusions from my writing and tying them together and the missing piece is that it's not my job to blanket recommend or not recommend programs. Every program has good and bad things and the larger the program the wider range of experiences people will have there. I actually stand by most or all of the things you quoted.
Codesmith itself (staff and leaders) are strongly against lying. Somehow though most graduates I've seen on LinkedIn end up with embellished resumes.
I have heard numerous theories why, but it's not as clear cut as Codesmith the entity is a bad actor manipulating the industry and some people do go through it feeling like they didn't lie about anything and got a great outcome. So if I think you would be one of those people, go for it…
I don't really think this is a great number but it's far from misleading, it's very clear what the number is and how it was calculated, and that it was the highest reported offer in 2024 up to April 22nd.
We then talk to each person before joining to explain how Formation works and learn about your individual goals and advise if Formation is a good fit or not.
I can't give specifics about that person because it's not public and I haven't asked for permission, but the person placed at Meta in a SWE role and has about 13 years of experience. The person took their time and was currently employed when doing Formation. The offer is very reasonable for everyone at that level and we have a couple of people in Formation now at that level who are looking at changing companies. That number is a bit low for them and we had to talk and explain to them about what their outcome might look like.
At…
Can you block the ads, we genuinely have a low ad budget on Reddit and I don't really want it all going towards you hahaha.
I pointed out some challenges in number 5 above. I think it would fair to publish more data with detailed explanations of what it means.
The motivation is actually the opposite. If we publish data that is misleading it's a much larger risk for us then not publishing data. We can spend 30 min calls one on one going through your personal situation and making sure you are clear on what we do to make up for it. But if we publish averages without a lot of explanation and caveat they might mislead people a lot.
The average comp is so high right now because of a bunch of people that got senior offers at Meta. And it would be absurdly misleading that anyone's starting now gets $300k to $500k offers. hence why we need to be really careful and explain things really carefu…
This is a false narrative. If you think my narratives about Codesmith or Launch School or CIRR are false, you are entitled to methodically poke holes in the arguments with other facts and data, or opinions (stated as such).
1. I have to say we are not a bootcamp whenever anyone calls us one because we are tiny and have little presence so the public is mislead by those false remarks. The question should be why are people accusing us of being one in the first place and not dropping it when I explain so often why we aren't.
2. We spend very little on Reddit ads, we mostly spend ad dollars on Google search keyword ads to appear above Beyoncé's Formation album in results. You probably see the ads because you click on them and engage with Formation, that's how online ads are meant to work!! To target messages to people who engage with Formation for the lowest cost possible.
3. I can see how…
I appreciate this discussion! I have my real name on here so that we can have this discussion! If you have anonymous accounts it's hard to track people's backgrounds and biases and that's even more concern for manipulation than people being transparent.
As other people pointed out, Formation isn't a bootcamp - we are an interview prep, practice, mentorship, and mock interview platform. Our acceptance bar varies with the market and right now we are taking mostly mid level senior engineers and a surprising number who formerly worked as senior engineers at FAANG companies.
I don't know why Codesmith people think we compete with them, including their Director of Outcomes stating that in their AMA. The most recent 20 reviews on Course Report: ALL 20 speak to either how they had no experience prior to Codesmith or they didn't say anything about it, but more generally how they recommend it f…
Another CIRR school pauses enrollment due to the market. Bootcamps have to face reality or they will not survive 2024. If you are looking at bootcamp that doesn't warn you about the market for bootcamp grads, run for the hills!
SOURCE: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/launch-academy-announces-strategic-pause-immersive-pamjc/)
Selected Excerpts:
>While our graduates are of high caliber, there is a difficult cognitive leap for hiring managers to overcome when comparing our entry-level graduates with established engineers affected by recent layoffs. With such an ample supply of the latter, it leaves the former at a strategic disadvantage. Even with the best available preparation, there is no substitute for work experience.
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With so much seniority in the job market, it's difficult even for the str…
Lying on your resume works, but it's kind of like being the person who always "takes a penny" and never leaves one in the "take a penny leave a penny" jar.
If everyone takes a penny, there's nothing left for anyone, including the people who actually need a penny.
RE: Background checks. It will absolutely come up with legit companies that run standard background checks through Hire Right and Checkr, etc...
What will happen is it will come back as "unable to verify" and the consequences are up to the company to decide if they care or not.
Some companies care about date discrepancies and some don't, and the magnitude of the discrepencies matter.
I know a common strategy amongst alum from Codesmith is to exaggerate on their resumes with a footnote that their experience is "developed under OSLabs".
When it comes to the background check, even though it's on the resume, a person can not…
I would break question apart into part time VS self paced.
I think Codesmith is probably the best part time program. But it's super intense still 3 hours a day + 6 hours saturday for NINE MONTHS STRAIGHT. For example, someone who said they have a job and want to part time but they can't imagine committing to nine months of no Saturdays for their family. So as with Codesmith's general offerings, it's ideal for ambitious single people with a lot of savings. I know some people who did part time even though they didn't have a job, to pace it more.
Now self paced is a whole other bucket. Most self paced programs have very low completion rates and they naturally have less of a community vibe as people start and stop and progress at their own paces. Because they rely more on self-motivation, it's hard to interpret outcomes the same way as a part time fixed program because of a lack of meanin…