I think you mean this link: [https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/01/tech-layoffs-2023-list/](https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/01/tech-layoffs-2023-list/)
But yeah a lot of layoffs aren't SWEs, but there has been an increase in SWE layoffs in 2023 as well.
I was at Will Sentance's talk yesterday about the market in 2024 and I strongly disagree with the narrative that SWE jobs are changing. His premise was that Non-tech companies are hiring laidoff FAANG engineers to bring the same engineering bar to the non-tech companies, resulting in a ton of SWE jobs moving to traditionally non-tech companies.
Just not seeing that whatsoever. I'm seeing CODESMITH GRADS go to non-tech companies because they can't get hired at top tier companies in this market (because of the market, not because of Codesmith).
I'm seeing tech companies hiring very reasonably right now in mid level, senior and higher roles a…
Codesmith has been asking alumni to write reviews over the past two weeks, resulting in 14 reviews in the past 2 weeks after having 2 reviews in the 3 MONTHS prior.
Can you DM me with more information about who is choosing between Codesmith and Formation? I think you have a super wrong view about what Formation is and does. If you don't want to reach out to clear this up, please refrain from misrepresenting Formation.
**12 out of 14 mention they were career switching and 2 don't say either way. ZERO of these alumni would have been admitted to Formation when they started Codesmith. 100% of them might be admitted to Formation now as alumni and moved on. And our new data (to be published Friday) shows that we helped engineers who placed in 2024 so far increase their first year total comp by** [**$109K**](https://formation.dev/terms#outcomes)
**So if anything, Codesmith + Formation would…
Wow what's with the tone? I think the biggest criticism of my view is that I was there 2009 to 2017 and left like 7 years ago now so I have an old view, but it's not a wrong view so I don't appreciate the attacking tone this is coming across as.
I did 450ish interviews. I trained interviewers on the ground. I attended dozens of hiring committee meetings and packet reviews with Shrep and Jay and Boz and the execs.
The amount of details they consider in those reviews is crazy. They look at the exact questions asked, and the interviewers history asking that question and their interviewers feedback history, etc...
It's not just like you memorize 50 questions and pass. I assure you that it's theoretically possible pass that way, and I assure you that's not the right way to do it.
I don't want to talk about this much because it seems like product placement, but I professionally mentor peop…
1. "I know people from Codesmith"... yes but if you look at all the Codesmith students you see that it is a very small number of people compared to the "3500+" alumni. Outside of Capital One, Amazon is a highest with a couple dozen, Apple, Google, Intuit, Square are single digit-ish special cases.... out of 3500 people. I'm not making any comments about Codesmith here, like if it can get 5 out of 100 people amazing outcomes then that's notable, but anyone who portrays that as the norm is misleading people as to how Codesmith works - that's my point. If I think you have a very strong chance of being one of those people, I will 100%, no strings attached, recommend you go to Codesmith, and I actively try to do that.
2. 100% agree Codesmith does NOT encourage any lying. It's almost awkward how they tell you so upfront "don't lie". But I thoroughly agree with this. That said, I cought the Di…
I don't know what to say other than facts are facts and making up your own story based on your imagination doesn't hold up.
1. We don't compete with Codesmith. I've asked Codesmith to stop telling people that because it makes people like you think we do when it doesn't hold up in any capacity. The people that teach Codesmith do Formation, not the students, and maybe that is confusing but it shouldn't be.
2. "Often over 150 or 160k" is wrong and because you referenced CIRR earlier and should know that data. Their 2022 FTRI had about 780 starts, 732 grads. 708 job hunting. 574 had placements in 360 days. 499 had salaries and 121 had salaries over 140K. That is 15% of starts for 140K+ which is more people than make 150K, which is fantastic but it's not the norm.
Codesmith is an amazing choice for the right people and I tell those people to go to Codesmith, but portraying it as something…
1. I've explained numerous times why Formation doesn't publish CIRR or similar outcomes and that we aren't a coding bootcamp.
Since you seem to know Formation better than I do, explain to me what "graduation" means at Formation? This is the core principal of all bootcamp outcome standards that I can't figure out what that means for us.
If you can't explain "graduation" accurately then just back off and stop spreading nonsense about us. If you can thoughtfully read the specs and propose what it means for us, then we can talk keep talking about it productively about why I agree or not.
2. We advertise all over Reddit and we re-target people who visit our website. Drawing false conclusions is not fact. Raw data is fact. So asking "Why do I see ads for Formation in this sub?" and getting a completely open and transparent answer is exactly what I'm talking about being open and transparent…
Line-by-Line Critique of CIRR Standard Document. Opinion: good intentioned organization but spec is not rigorous and robust and I point out all of the problems that make it one of the weaker specifications I've read in my opinion.
There have been numerous discussions around CIRR lately and there are too many words being thrown around, along with ad hominem attacks, and no one other than me seems to be reading the standard - even the CIRR board misquoted it.
I refuse to debate anyone further on here until they acknowledge this post and read it because any counter arguments not based on a thorough analysis of the spec are garbage conversations that don't belong on here. Thoughtful debates over lines of the spec are appreciated.
This is long and thorough and if it's too boring for you to read the whole thing then don't share your opinions about it.
If someone calls CIRR "**rigorous"**,…
1. This is a completely different thread about CIRR and you didn't give any context, didn't give any feedback privately or on that other thread, and are bringing it up here on a thread about Codesmith - all without any context. **I absolutely copied that comment from that person from CSX Slack in that thread,** and I don't apologize for it at all. Anonymizing a comment from a 20,000 public Slack community that anyone is invited to join is not morally or ethically wrong.
2. She said she was new to the community and then that "we" (without clarifying) started the Codesmith sub for "especially those who are new to Codesmith like me!"... to me that implied that all the people who started it were new to the community. I agree this could be ambiguous, and I think I should have stated something like 'I am interpreting this to mean that it was started from people only new to the community for p…
I explained this above that our primary competitor is interview Kickstart and they have similar numbers on their website and a lot of people ask us and then we try to explain to them why it doesn't mean that much. but since it comes up from people that are casually comparing us and Interview Kickstart we decided to put it there with multiple paragraphs of detail on how it's calculated.
We're going to updating it soon with our new highest offer with someone who really wants to put it up there for whatever reason.
I can state officially that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the time and choosing between them.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that wouldn'…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can state officially on behalf of Formation that I am not aware of anyone in the past 12 months who received an offer/acceptance from Formation to join the Fellowship that stated to us they were considering going to Codesmith or Formation at the same time.
There are people who apply to Formation who we tell to go to Codesmith first and the come to Formation in 1-2 years but we reject them. So maybe they are telling you they are considering Formation but it's actually not an option for them in reality?
I am aware of one person in the past year who was advised to go to this path that got a job instead of going to Codesmith and then came to Formation after 6 months or so of that SWE job.
I am very much aware of the highest Codesmith offer and that person was not a SWE and had 8 years of very good experience in their field and received a role in the field at that company, so that would…
I mean this is another flaw of CIRR. The data for it comes from the survey that bootcamps do at the end and they really don't need that much evidence for anything included in the results. The Most complex part of the specification is the documentation requirements for outcomes and there go through a lot of different cases for if someone gets a job or doesn't get a job etc. but the key thing is that they say that things like a text message counts as documentation as long as it includes the offer date or start date of the job, the type of job - e g. full time job, and that the person accepted it.
The data is audited but No auditor needs to check that the original data was provided is correct. the auditors are checking that you followed the process. so if you have a text message, the auditors check that the text message is documented following the process, but nowhere does it say how a sal…
There is no standard to publish that no. I think an increase in compensation is a really good metric though because it puts a dollar value on before and after to compare to the cost of the program.
Calculating it is hard. There isn't just one way to do it. The two options are 1. someone comes up with a reasonable way and then makes a standard that others agree on and use. 2. You calculate it however you want and then explain very clearly exactly how so people aren't misled.
I would LOVE to just share raw results per person, but you have to find a way to do it without people being able to figure out a person's identity.
I don't have explicit list of who is paying how much, but this is what I have:
1. They are on the "featured schools" list: "Schools may compensate Course Report for featured placement."
2. The mention sponsorship tiers here: [https://www.coursereport.com/connect](https://www.coursereport.com/connect)
3. I follow their Youtube and they release videos there (and on their blog) from the same list of bootcamps, that they also publish "weekly events" for on their socials. And all of them are "featured schools" on their website.
I wish they were more transparent about all this, it's not easy to tell.
I did report a review on there from an alumni who listed their name, so I found their LinkedIn and that they worked at the school they reviewed and didn't disclose that in the review. Course Report said it was totally fine and didn't remove it.
The marketing team was all laid off, correct. They hired a former student to write blogs and post in CSX Slack.
But this has always been their marketing strategy - they don't pay anything on display ads anywhere. The closest thing is sponsoring Course Report.
I think this kind of marketing is fantastic use of money and it's also more organic than seeing blatant ads like we do.
But it IS marketing, correct, and the person who ran it is a career long director of marketing. So if people think it's all fun and great community - it both is great community AND it's marketing, but anyone who thinks it's purely one or the other is choosing sides.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
(Reposting my answer to the question because my previous one was removed and I'm not sure why)
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary" without any asterix or adjacent explanation of that term.
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our number…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
/u/[annie-ama](https://www.reddit.com/user/annie-ama/): I talk on Reddit a decent amount about data, and I'm a fan of all data with scientifically reproducible methodologies so people can tell where it came from and evaluate it. CIRR's standard is full of ambiguous or not well defined sourcing requirements as well. Still a decent standard and I like that it requires enough info so people can calculate certain important things on their own.
I mean Codesmith website wrongfully says that $127,500 is the "Software Engineering Immersive Grads Median Annual Base Salary"
The actual number is the "median annual base salary of graduates that placed and reported salaries" not of all graduates.
I'm much more concerned about that than our numbers, because we explain in paragraphs of fine print how the numbers are calculated so no one is mislead.
RE: highest total compensation - I don't think it'…
1. Why was there such an increase in people not reporting salaries between H1 and H2 2022 data? It jumped about 14%, meaning that 14% more of the outcomes in H2 2022 did not have a reported salary (e.g. were verified by LinkedIn) compared to H1 2022.
2. How does the "Where Are They Now" data normalize for people who don't respond or cannot be reached? For example, CIRR requires you to verify the outcome of EACH graduate, whereas this data appears to be based on whoever replies to the survey. CIRR requires EACH graduate to be verified so that people who don't do as well, maybe leave the industry, etc... are counted, but in the "Where Are They Now" if people didn't do well and disengaged from the community, how are they accounted for?
3. Can you give preliminary six month placement rates for H1 2023 full time grads? Based on the CIRR reporting process, there should be a preliminary estim…
Codesmith people think this sub has become "toxic" becuase it's not full of positive posts about Codesmith.
The CIRR results finally showed the cause of this and it's that there is an unprecedented drop in placement rates - and we haven't seen 2023 data yet - and a unprecedented spike in ghosting.
The market is bad.
Do you think all those people not getting placed and dropping out of the community are positive supporters? Or do you think they anonymously go to Reddit and complain or generally have a sour attitude.
I push people to present evidence and facts and thoughtful opinions. You can agree and disagree but it doesn't have to be done through anonymous accounts, insults and flippant personal attacks.
Anything I say on here I would say directly to Will and Eric K to their faces.
Y'all using anonymous accounts to attack me and people using anonymous accounts to attack Codesmith a…
Well CIRR's specification allows any text message sent from a graduate, without any kind of verification, as long as it has the start date, that it was accepted, and the job type (i.e. full time, part time, permanent, contract) to be used as the "gold standard".
There is ZERO specification for how to verify salaries, ZERO. The only rule is the salary has to be base salary and correspond to the job used for the start date, but absolutely ZERO rules for how it has to be collected or verified and auditing doesn't have to verify salaries either.
Are you saying that people should be pressuring schools to join CIRR or pressuring them to be more transparent? Or are you implying that CIRR is the only source of transparency?
Rithm School and Launch School are best of the best bootcamps and both have a similar vision of providing transparent data and choose to not be in CIRR because of they have different views on transparency than CIRR does.
If CIRR is going to put efforts in lobbying to try to brand themselves as the only transparent source of bootcamp data, it's not surprise no one wants to be a CIRR member and don't reply to your emails.... the spec is full of issues and problems.
I don't even want to help fix those because you aren't open and transparent about how the spec is managed. You said you had a meeting to adopt the spec AND approved the results at the same time? and the new spec was published alongside results instea…
"In this day and age, LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else"
Which is fine with me, if people just know this and understand that in interpreting CIRR results, but this obviously introduces weaknesses if people are exaggerating or optimizing their narrative on LinkedIn.
OFFER LETTERS are gospel, not LinkedIn and an auditor speaking with a board member of CIRR, and Codesmith advisor, all agreeing on LinkedIn being gospel... gives me a darn good right to call that out so people are aware, no?
You can argue if you agree or disagree, but calling that out shouldn't warrant attacks and defensiveness. Like I said, I think LinkedIn should be used but want to discuss the documentation mechanisms and details on how so that it's transparent.
+1 it can go both ways for sure and I didn't comment on salaries at all.
That said, there are always people who ghost salaries every half, and it's generally a smaller number, but it REALLY tanked this half and I think something else is going on. Like combining all of this, 25% of people are ghosting in some way in H2 versus hardly anyone in H1 and the market only got worse in the rest of 2023 for H1 2023 grads.
It should be zero surprise that sentiment on this sub is bad and that enrollment tanked 70% in end of 2023 and it's certainly not me pointing this stuff out that's causing it. Smart engineers making $130K salaries can figure this out by talking to these alumni and hearing about this stuff from them.
Now I have inside info here that end of last year, Instructors were asked to text and reach out to alumni to try to get placement info out of them via whatever means they could to…
Codesmith's Unofficial/Reverse Engineered H2 2022 CIRR Report - NOTABLE OPINIONS: concerning increase in number of ghosters on salaries (that still counted as job obtainers !!), 180 day placement rate of 63% (a little higher than expected)
CIRR finally published 2022 outcomes! They aren't as bad as expected at first glance, but I'm not a fan of the change to 360 day reporting period. Three schools reported, one of them had only 15 graduates in all of 2022, another published H2 2022 outcomes instead of full year 2022 outcomes.
So I reversed engineered some of the the H2 2022 outcomes for Codesmith.
DISCLAIMERS:
1. See Methodology for how to reproduce what I did yourself.
2. This may contain errors or misunderstandings, please check the numbers yourself and point out corrections and I will update anything incorrect.
3. These are illustrative examples based on the **reports and the me…
I see this post getting downvoted so I'll just add that I had nothing to do with this post, had no idea it was coming and got a push notification like anyone else, but I do know who this person is based on the trajectory.
The bootcamp they are talking about indeed doesn't exist but was around in 2017 to 2019. It was Sophie's company where she single handedly ran an in person iOS bootcamp for 0 to 1. It was free and had an expensive office in downtown SF and was intended to be a small business that broke even. I worked on the learning platform (which is now a toy project some Fellows work on at Formation to practice SWE skills) and the back office stuff.
VC funding presented itself and she considered it so she could hire a team but we had to focus on a larger market than bootcamps. So we decided to pick up where bootcamps leave off, and that's what Formation is. While there are a ton of…
+1 to number 2. Stanford and Berkeley did a lot of work to vet and evaluate people at a high bar for 4 years, and if a company hires those grads and those grads tend to do really well at the company, it creates a cycle of reinforcement.
FOLLOWUP: **Why don't bootcamp grads have that reputation**? Like if people hire HR or Codesmith grads and they out perform Stanford grads, wouldn't that want to make the company go back and hire more HR grad? From my observations at Meta the Stanford grads just flat out outperformed on the job and it took bootcamp grads a lot longer to settle in and find their place. It's why apprenticeships became a thing.
A couple of Codesmith alumni are constantly on my case and claiming that I'm trying to put down Codesmith and get people to go to Formation instead. Now I don't really want to talk about Formation but I'm going to try to use this as an example of my constant points about this and I hope this doesn't seem like an advertisement.
(Apologies to the commenter that I used this comment as an example)
But this trajectory is not that uncommon and in fact it can be improved beyond this for those that want to prioritize work and want to work at big tech, and that's what FORMATION does. We help at that 2021/2022 mark in this trajectory to get to the E4 mid-level $300K job at top tier tech companies. We are NOT designed to help with the 2020 first job like Codesmith does.
Now not everyone wants to do that, but for people that do, you pay around $10K to Formation to hopefully make that 2023 jump to…
Yeah attending workshops and full ahead of time counts in my theory haha.
End of 2023 people were being let in like 2 days before and one in particular was absolutely not a good fit and it was not good for them or Codesmith that they got in.
Now that they shrunk down do like 25% of their peak capacity hopefully they will stabilize at a 30 person solid cohort filled up a few weeks ahead of time.
The people I know who work there say that leadership is terrible at forecasting and appears to make changes every few weeks at all hands meetings that are reacting to the current state of things. Like they paid bonuses to admissions people who filled cohorts - which resulted in people getting pushed to their 2nd and 3rd interviews days apart to rush them to get in.
Their website is full of so much randomness now: career accelerator courses, paths to prepare for Codesmith, future code for NYC re…
Whole range, canonical E4 (FAANG mid)/E5 (FAANG senior) is the most common, skewing E4. The most senior placement was a FAANG staff level. In the current market the majority of people who have joined in the past few months are high mid or senior as well.
This is an example of a more senior person and hopefully we'll have some public examples soon (a couple of people right in that 6 to 8 year bucket who got senior Meta roles): [https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/](https://formation.dev/blog/success-story-mike-clarke/)
The mentors range as well. We have those super senior managers and principal engineers - generally for specific 1-1 mocks. And we have more mid level mentors that run small groups sessions who are really good at coaching or specific technical topics.
In comparing to [Interviewing.io](http://Interviewing.io) - we want the equivalent of those "expensive"…
For the past year we don't accept anyone without a year of SWE experience, and literally a handful of people who appeal to come in with say 6 months of experience but are clear on their goals and aligned, so no one recently does them back to back.
We've had way more people come back to Formation twice and pay us twice (or three times) than we have people who have done Formation immediately after graduating Codesmith.
The fact that people come back to Formation multiple times and pay us each time is a very clear indication we are not remotely anything similar to Codesmith. We don't teach anything.
The personal trainer analogy is much stronger. Hire a personal trainer, get into shape, good for a few years, have new training goal, get into better shape again, good for a few more years. Have a kid, need to make routine changes, get into shape again.
\`I think it is very difficult to obje…
What you said here to me is that the people attending Codesmith are awesome. The people graduating are self-organizing to run standups and encouraging each other in the job hunt.
That's all fantastic stuff but is it what you are paying $21K for? Imagine a random person added all those same people to a Discord and they all had self studied and were supporting each other just the same.
Similar arguments are made about going to Harvard Business School - you go to meet the people, not to learn anything special, so it quite frankly might be worth the cost.
I talk to a lot of alumni, and the lowest ballpark I've heard is 30% placed in a year, and the highest is what you just said at 75%.
Given that they had about 1000 students START in 2022, and 550ish offers in 2023, that sounds like a 50ish% placement rate within a year - maybe higher on CIRR because they reduce the number of people in…
The problem I have with Codesmith alumni is that I'm not in fact attacking Codesmith or defaming them. I'm reporting on the facts, some are good and some are bad. But the WORST of all is the market for entry level jobs, which Codesmith has absolutely no control over, and that's the primarily reason people aren't going to bootcamps right now, not anything that Codesmith is doing poorly.
Formation isn't a competitor to Codesmith but I'm happy to tell you how we are doing. You can read it on our blog. Our 2023 offers tanked and people's average first year total comp increase dropped from $100K to $80K. Our top tier placements tanked from 75% of all placements to 50%. This is on our blog since December 2023. In 2024, which is not published anywhere, top tier placements are back up to 75% and average comp increase is $117K. We don't have any placements rates because it doesn't make sense the…
What information have I refused to release? I've explained extremely transparently what information we have and don't have, and why we do what we do. You can see an entire list of every single placement's company on our blog.
If you think that CIRR would work for Formation, you don't understand what Formation is and how it works, and coordinated downvoting my comments doesn't make you all understand what Formation is better than I do.
If you want me to give you a CIRR report you have absolutely no idea how Formation works and you should not be signing up whatsoever until you understand what it is and what you are getting.
We very transparently explain the average compensation gain of a placement which tanked last year from $100K to $80K and will hopefully be much higher in 2024. We were also transparent about how top tier placements tanked from 75% of outcomes to 50% (which is back u…
I wish I had a strong answer, but I don't. I think better information would include:
- backgrounds and experience of people before entering
- more clarity on the types of jobs people get
- more satisfaction related qualitative info, i.e. "how much do you credit your bootcamp in getting the job you got"
- histograms on placement times and salaries instead of medians and averages
- including all forms of comp in data, like bonuses, benefits, etc...
- salary increases - i.e. someone leaked data that mid last year the average placed student at Codesmith had a current/previous salary of about 70K - which is higher than the median placed salary at some bootcamps
- more transparency on hiring companies. too many bootcamps show a wall of logos of amazing tech companies, and talk about anecdotal placements there, but what are all of them. e.g. are people making $120K at a design agency v…
I wouldn't say it's the "only objective metric" no. It's a reliable and good signal to use, combined with other data and information.
The outcomes themselves are more indicative of the job market than the programs themselves, so judging a program by it's outcomes alone was never a good idea, even in the good times.
The fact that a CIRR report exists checks off one box of legitimacy, but it's far more concerning that Codesmith and possibly others had H2 2022 outcomes audited and ready for 6 months and won't share them, while they tout H1 2022 numbers in marketing. Even if this was not CIRR data, if that fact was true I would be demanding transparent placement rates before signing an agreement if it was me, but others might have a different bar.
CIRR appears to be done and irrelevant now - Codesmith needs to get off the Titanic before it sinks (Personal Opinion)
As many are aware, [CIRR](https://cirr.org/) started out a business-league from Skills Fund to try to standardize bootcamp outcomes in the early days of bootcamps.
While CIRR's stated goals were to create transparency in the Bootcamps industry, it was ultimately not a charity - and was a business league, like the Chamber of Commerce, whose practical value was promoting and marketing for it's member bootcamps (who pay fees to be members) that did particularly well. So as bootcamps started doing terribly - particularly in 2022 -> 2023, a lot of those backers left.
**You can see this in how important "transparency" was when bootcamps were doing well, and how quickly and efficiently they posted outcomes, and how when outcomes are terrible everything comes to a halt - this…
I went through some of CSX and did some of the materials, and it's fairly light, so you definitely need to supplement. From my experience working with prospective students, current students, and alumni, the universal advice is to leverage the pair programming and live sessions they offer.
Codesmith is looking for students that will ride-and-die with Codesmith and showing up to the live sessions and getting the vibe and fitting in will go a long way to progressing VS banging your head against the wall alone in your room... it's why you see a number of students and alumni so excited when they get in, and so supportive of the program publicly, and if they get a great outcome they will fit to tooth and nail about how Codesmith "changed their lives".
So TLDR: it works if you are the right fit, don't try too hard to BECOME the right fit - because then it doesn't work, and doing live session…
Codesmith offers free lifelong job support i.e. resume reviews, mock interviews, negotiation, etc.... via being able to book calls with alumni dedicated to those things. This isn't so much free but included in your tuition, and it's a great feature to take advantage of. I've heard pay is about $45 session so the weakness and/or way to control costs, is by having a fixed number of slots and it being first come first serve. So if they were pressed on finances they could have fewer slots so you have to wait longer. They have pretty decent availability now, but in the past people have waited two weeks for a resume review for example.
I don't think they ever offered lifelong LEARNING though included in your fees. In fact the CEO said alumni would have to pay to join in new "minors" in ML-for-engineers and others floated around.
As far as I know, the cuts they made were primarily just scal…
I'm personally very far on the don't tell people they are senior engineers side on this one but I've had many debates with people that "know someone that got a senior job out of Codesmith" who adamantly believe in Codesmith's stance on this.
I would argue with them why a program branding itself as a top tier program preparing people for jobs in the TECHNOLOGY industry should be using the canonical definitions of the top tier TECHNOLOGY industry companies.
Codesmith does this "how to get hired in 2024" talk that I saw most of yesterday and they aren't just saying this anymore, but the CEO spent almost 2 hours straight in the talk convincing people that using - what in my opinion - are incorrect arguments:
1. Argument: the 2024 market has changed and companies that didn't previous prioritize technology - like banks - are hiring laid off FAANG engineers to build the same level of produ…
This is my personal recommendation, not trying to sell you anything:
- If you have multiple interviews at "big tech"/FAANG-ish companies lined up that are about 1-3 months away, I would consider joining for 1 month, 2 months ($4500) or 3 months ($6000). The key is "multiple" becuase, as a I said, joining thinking you are paying a ton of money to pass one specific interview is not the right mindset to have. Lets say you didn't get any of those, we want you to leave feeling like you are still ready and feeling good about more interviews and that you got your money's worth. For people with offers, negotiation help alone can pay back 10X those costs, for others, feeling like they can pass DS&A, SD, hiring manager/technical behavioral/jedi/bar raiser interviews is worth it enough.
- If you are actively job hunting and 95% looking for a new job within the next year, but don't have any schedu…
1. No back of the envelope calculations. A lot of people are worried about that when this comes up, it's primarily used to help you identify which part of a system will break first under different usage patterns and that you should be able to do, math or no math.
2. I'm sure you'll find a ton of resources while Googling but two more I like that are:
The video archives from Meta's official conference website (specifically the product related ones about how core systems work) https://atscaleconference.com/
The author of Blind 75 has a website focused on product SD that has some free stuff too https://www.greatfrontend.com/
I should disclose that someone mentioned in the comments about Formation and I'm the co-founder - which is also why I know a lot about this because we help people professionally to pass these interviews. You should NOT join just to pass one single interview with one…
Yeah I agree with this but I'm really bias because of Formation so this is obviously a skewed position that I have.
Like I personally worked with someone to increase an initial offer by $200K first year TC and how much is that worth?
It's a really odd industry compared to most because the amounts of money thrown around a "typical" FAANG senior, staff, etc... engineer is not just like 8% per year compounded, but like 5X a junior engineer.
The amount of work on my side it takes to help that super senior person negotiate is less time, but a lot more extremely nuanced expertise that took years of exposure and observation to build.
It's a lot more natural to try to associate the cost with "what services am I getting, how many sessions, how many projects", etc...
**It's a lot harder to think of paying as an investment that will hopefully offer a return. Increasing comp by $200K first y…
So Codesmith doesn't just hire fellows/TAs, but there is a pipeline - which is extremely disrupted by the recent changes and could very well change
Resident (student) -> fellow 3 month @$50K salary -> lead fellow 3 more months -> mentor (full time paid $80K - $120K depending) -> instructor ($120K to $150K) -> lead instructor ($150K to $180K)
At Codesmith the ENTIRE instruction hierarchy is this except for:
1. One person who was hired as instructor who went to another bootcamp and taught there for two years
2. Two instructors I know of were SWEs in industry and came back to teach. Both of those people are no longer instructors and didn't last long after coming back from industry.
There are a lot of pros and cons to this approach, but just laying out there in this comment for starters, can discuss more.
META COMMENTS:
There's been a lot of suspicious posts regarding Codesmith over the past few days (all over the spectrum, good and bad, and from a lot of brand new accounts, people have gotten banned)
This post is from a brand new account that seems created to write about Codesmith, which is a bit suspicious too.
That said, the factual content about the logistics of Codesmith all reads accurate. I don't work there and haven't gone there, so maybe I shouldn't be the judge of that, but I've seen the entire curriculum, and have private been told of certain little details around "family dinners", the clapping stuff, etc... that either someone is training a on all my public commentary about Codesmith, or this person - if not actually a resident - is pretty close to Codesmith.
OVERALL:
It sounds like you probably shouldn't have chose to go into Codesmith to begin with because your style do…
Hey, I'm the co-founder of Formation and before I got to the part about you applying I was going to say it's not a good fit if you don't have any experience yet, but it would be an excellent fit once you get your first job to level up to your next job.
Now in terms of advice/questions:
1. Yeah entry level FAANG is basically internship conversions + new grads via top tier CS schools right now and we'll see in the fall if that changes. Apprenticeships are extremely competitive. Contract to hire might be the only possible option and still not likely.
2. I think that's a good idea, getting a real product in the app store with real users can count as experience but I would give it say 6 months of real work-equivalent full time contributions to really make it count.
3. Real 40 hour a week experience on a single company/project can trump credentials yeah, but you need an equivalent amount o…
The raw evidence I've seen shows Codesmith on paper discourages people from lying about their experience - almost awkwardly directly - like it's said early on in the resume process and said firmly, so I think it's important to call that out to lay the pieces out there.
It's also a fact that they sign off on background checks for the time that you claim you were involved with your OSP. By default they sign off on your time in Codesmith but they sign off on it under OSLabs and under your main project, and not under Codesmith's name. And if you update a README 6 months latter and tell them you've been active over 9 months, the would sign off on that.
I've talked to two students who refused to exaggerate at all and were struggling on the job hunt and I honestly don't have much advice for them. But when you see how demoralized these people were, you start to piece together how another demor…
FWIW you can't have "contractors" be training in a strict style of teaching and force them to teach that way, otherwise they are employees. You can't give contractors mandatory training on how to do something and you can't give them performance reviews and direction on how to do their job.
Obviously there is a massive gray area and a lot of factors play into this, but that's the general overview, but if they are systematically making people contractors and exerting strong control over their work, that might be illegal.
Finally, you mention you "could", that's the key thing here. Very strong industry engineers have complex jobs and can't commit to consistent teaching or projects as "faculty". You need to build a system around managing these people so they can "teach a workshop" every few weeks that makes sure everything is covered. Which my company has patented and built.
Giving back a…
Wow 6 core staff and 6 TAs for 30 people seems like a lot actually hahaha.
Formation isn't a bootcamp so I won't try to explain our org chart, the majority of people are engineers, designers, PMs building the mentorship platform, and the next largest group is the Fellowship team that runs the flagship Fellowship we offer.
I know Codesmith pretty well - before all the recent changes: a full Cohort is 36 students. There is:
- 1 Lead Instructor
- 1 Instructor
- 1 Engineering Mentor
- 1 Admissions Coordinator (before you start) + 1 Program Coordinator (after you start) + 1 Outcomes Coordinator (after you finish)
- 2 to 5 fellows (TAs/former students on contract)
Company wide staff involved partially:
- 1 Head Instructor
- 1 Director of Programs
- 1 Program Manager
- 1 Outcomes Manager
- A number of on demand fellows who do things like resume review and code review
So overall 4…
Yeah +1, my understanding is they want MORE EXPERIENCED alumni and not alumni who just got jobs, etc...
That said, that person was identified as a "Faculty", which has four very important consequences:
1. Since Codesmith is a "school", has important meaning (for regulation) and this person might be more tied now to Codesmith than they think, maybe they are fully aware but I'm curious if all these new "Faculty" will be aware of this.
2. Conflicts of Interest. Companies generally barely allow people to be lightweight mentors and a lot of the top companies block people from being the "Faculty" of a school without disclosure and review for conflicts of interest. I know at Meta this was a major thing and there was a very non-fun conflict review process that blocked a lot of things. So I'm hoping if someone is an alumni and wants to be a "Faculty" or is going to be identified as one, that t…
Codesmith (due to declining enrollment) shutting down NYC in-person, merging remaining full time remote cohorts into one. But also alludes to new Future Code program, co-working spaces and announces new changes! See my line by line commentary and personal opinions.
SOURCE: [https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/community-update-doubling-down-on-remote-learning-timeless-pedagogy-frontier-tech)
DISCLAIMER: The following is my top to bottom analysis and personal opinions. I always disclose this and hopefully it's not boring. These are my personal opinions. I've not new to the sub and I have been giving my opinions on bootcamps for almost two years now, daily, from the FAANG angle, and also having worked with hundreds of bootcamps grads. I'm the co-founder of an interview prep mentorshi…