This is one of the reasons why I so adamantly believe that people need to get appropriate first jobs out of a boot camp. what that means is different for each person but getting an entry level FAANG job that pays not as high as potentially some other jobs achieved through exaggerating resumes and pushing really hard, can be the path rapidly accelerating your career.
If Codesmith was really the ivy league like grad school for bootcamps they claim to be. they should be striving to place people in incredible entry-level rules that result in them making $600,000 in a few years and instead they are dismissive of those roles and pushing people to these exaggerated mid-level senior looking roles and pushing people to make the highest compensation they possibly can right out of the program.
I think they know that this is pretty much impossible because they can't reliably get people these jobs…
Analysis of 52 most recent Codesmith offers LinkedIns and trends on who is getting a job right now and why. Summary: an average of 11.7 months of experience claimed for 3 week long projects (lacking evidence of additional time spent). Majority claimed to have prior SWE-adjacent experience.
Hi all, I was recently made aware of the 52 most recent reported Codesmith placements (not saying when this was provided to protect identities, but it's from a window within the past couple months) and did a summary of how those people present themselves on LinkedIn. Please note that this is an UNOFFICIAL ANALYSIS based on an ordered list of placements during a 2 month time window. I won't be DOXing anyone on the list, and because this is just my personal analysis and not an official study, you should use this information for illustrative purposes only. There are numerous ways you can try to reproduce…
Yeah I did analysis of how people present themselves on LinkedIn. Codesmith's placement numbers themselves in their CIRR are accurate. The numbers their senior advisor throws around are less so more like mischaracterizing.
My data shows that the average recent Codesmith placement (reported job in past few months) claimed to have 11.7 months of experience on their LinkedIn from their 3 week group project.
So while the outcomes themselves are good, people might be exaggerating or mischaracterizing their backgrounds to get there.
Yeah I do often disclose and hear you on that. I comment all the time in this sub and people tend to know me but that's on me to keep explaining.
The membership is not lifetime, it's unlimited access to Formation until you get a job. Many people pay again again for their next job hunt.
If you have 4 years or more of SWE experience that is the average increased first year total compensation reported.
The methodology is explained in great detail but this is a new calculator that people asked for to understand the long term value of Formation.
Our outcomes are indeed very very strong but I think the weakness is maybe the time it takes because it takes about 6 months of part time mentorship to get there and its no small commitment, you have to be ready and all In.
If you think that is useful then you should definitely check out the above more. The career support engineers at Codemsith are typically Fellows/peers you would have at Formation (at least one I know of has been a Fellow actually) and the mentors are more knowledgeable. For example someone got a Senior E5 Meta offer this week and chatted the next day with a recruiter with 30 years of FAANG level recruiter experience.
But depending on your situation that might not be the support you are looking for and need. I highly encourage anyone to make use of the Codesmith scholarship and get free dedicated help, that's awesome!
If you are answering the check in emails and saying you didn't get a job then they won't count it. If you entirely ghost then they will try to find you and have any friends you had on staff text you to see how life is going and try to get info.
CIRR has two fields to try to counter this:
1. Salary unavailable (so if they count it as a placement because of LI and you ghosted them it would show up in this field)
2. Job placed out of field. The definition is if the skills you learned are needed on the job or not. Codesmith teaches 5 things and only 1 is programming skills, the rest are soft skills, so not sure how they interpret that rule.
Also a +1000 for how often I get similar messages privately to your analysis.... They have marketing efforts to brand it as the solution for anyone great to get a 130K salary but it's really no where near that level of program, it as a bootcamp, it's fantastic.
I wish Codesmith would realize this. Several staff members call their leaders delusional and have left or are leaving shortly but haven't told them yet. Instead of being so delusional that you are creating mid level and senior engineers in 13 weeks, be honest with yourself and be honest with residents, everyone will be better off... go back to why you are doing this to begin with..m
i.e. this https://vimeo.com/42713491
I'm way more middle road than I come across here. People can do whatever they want, and some people are in circumstances where they stretch the truth for personal reasons consciously.
But people who come here are are like "$150K, Codesmith, mic drop" is just very car-saleperson-y that makes people want to go there for the wrong reasons.
If you are super ambitious - as many Codesmith students are there might be a number of pathways that could work better than Codesmith and judging the $$$ alone isn't ideal and in their outcomes advisor throws around big offer numbers like candy - "I was talking on the phone to someone this morning and she had a 150 and we got a 10 signing bonus" - not the lack of use of the "K" or "thousands"
So if the startup doesn't have scale and doesn't have process, a person can get by easier through sheer will compared to a FAANG. At FAANG, performance is calibrated and our performers are aggressively PIPed and fired. At a startup, lots of hustle might carry you, even if you are clearly operating at a lower level but adding value.
I actually hired a Codesmith grad as an entry level engineer (I think Codesmith called it mid-level in their stats, which was very clearly entry level but compensated against top tier benchmark) and this is the level all the Codesmith grads I work with are at immediately after Codesmith... should be going for entry level top tier jobs.
Many people tell me about how their outcomes advisor pushed people away from that roles and says they are grunteork roles that set your career back... but that's extremely inconsistent with what I've seen.... people who take m…
Yeah a bootcamp could be appropriate. Look into the top ones and see how they work and which approach is right for you.
I see a "Codesmith." comment and it's a top one or consider but look into how it works. Most people said things like "it changed my life" but don't explain how it works... it only works for certain people that will stretch the truth in their resumes (even most people here who say they went there and didn't do this often "stretched the truth")
If time is not an issue I would also look at Launch School. similarly it's a solid program but look into hired it works and see if that's good for you.
Also look at "career accelerators": Formation, Pathrise, Interview Kickstart. these are typically for people with SWE experience already so I probably would not recommend at all in this market, but you should look at them to compare "how it works" to how bootcamps work.
What role was this? Was it SDE I, SDE II, SDE III, or was it a tangential role? a contractor role, a frontend role, a solutions role?
Amazon's promotion cycle doesn't allow stuff like that so this would have to be some kind of special case signed off by a director or VP to correct for a hiring error.
The number of times I've seen this EVER for super legit reasons, I can count on one hand, and those people quickly became industry renowned engineers.
So even if this happened where someone went from SDE II to SDE III in 3 months it would be absurdly rare and not representative of any program.
I asked a couple of Senior Managers at Amazon and no one thinks this is possible on their teams, so it's definitely a very weird case.
Every statement like this that I've looked into has been some kind of caveat or weird case that was not as people believed it to be.
For example, the $400K Netf…
1. They do fire them, I do think most survive but I know peopoe fired too
2..There is a range here. Capital One hired like 50 Codesmith grads in the boom. Senior Associate is like below FAANG entry level and Senior Engineer is like FAANG entry level. They comp all cash so that Senior Associate pays like 140K ish total and that Senior Engineer 160K ish.
In some ways so many people going to Capital One messed up the stats because of the title inflation and all cash compensation. And the interview process that asks the same 4 questions for one of the interviews that all the Codemsith people shared and practiced with each other.
I'm very familiar with this topic and have seen the full spectrum as well as seen most of the data round this. I time box my answers and might edit this later with more details:
1. Short answer yes some people do,
2. Codesmith judges level based on both titles and salaries when they say "senior" so it's not a canonical "top tier level" senior bar. By Codesmith's bar it's about 15%
3. The people who get these jobs fall into three buckets
1. Non-SWE roles, but adjacent, e.g. "senior solutions engineer"
2. People who have experience already as SWE's or adjacent roles
3. People who fake it and lie about their experience to squeeze through at smaller companies, startups, and non-tech companies
4. The average ENTRY LEVEL FAANG engineer has a $150K base salary, so even though the outcomes are high at a median of $127K, these are clearly not top tier senior roles. Codesmith grads that…
\- Instructors (all but one) are former students -> Fellows -> hired as "Mentors" -> hired as "Instructor" -> hired as "Lead Instructor", and almost none have SWE industry experience
\- The instructors I know are overworked and told to let people do "hard learning" instead of helping them too much - but they love to help when they can and are allowed. Several people have independently told me this.
\- Did you put your OSP as 3-4+ months of work while double counting all your Codesmith projects as well? Did you put in the Project or Open Source section or did you put it under experience? Did OSLabs have to do a reference call to confirm your time there?
\- I know people hired as seniors who are paranoid they'll get fired when they realize more junior people are outperforming them. I advise a number of these people because they can't talk to anyone about it without getting found out and…
Me, I'm a non-anonymous member who has been here for 2 years and comment a lot.
My background is I worked at Meta from 2009 to 2017, grew from new grad to E7 principal engineer, did 400+ interviews of all shapes and sizes, participated in calibrations and interview offer panels, and was the number one code committer at the company when I left.
After I took a break, I joined my partners company which helps engineers with experience level up their careers. We work with a lot of bootcamp grads later on in their careers so I know about and hear about just about everything with bootcamps.
Codesmith caught my interest about 2 years ago when I was interviewing people to join Formation for leveling up and they had these really weird jobs at "OSLabs" that made no sense, and were being nervously vague about them in the interviews. I then went down the rabbit hole and found out that OSLabs was (…
Since I've been mentioning this publicly they have stated in info sessions that they are proud that all their instructors are alumni who stay to teach.
I just watched this documentary called "Escaping Twin Flames" on Netflix and they had similar vibes... two people started it and then hired some of their first students, who then hired more students, and then became leaders in a hierarchy of members. Paying customers -> teachers and coaches. And similarly that program has extremely polarizing views about it.
At Formation (we aren't a bootcamp or school and CIRR doesn't work for us) but we have a 95%ish completion on our rigid success form because we work with people intensely until they get a job.
The fact that it's so hard to gather outcomes from people is a sign that the longer and longer time goes by post-bootcamp, the less and less the bootcamp has anything to do with the outcome. And the fact that the more time goes by the harder and harder that gets, is also notable for this.
My 2 cents against using the 12 month window for placements, but that's a whole other discussion haha.
That sounds like you had a solid interview experience where they took the time to get to know you and your code, and that's not what people typically do. Phil at Codesmith repeatedly tells residents that "no one looks at your code" in a way to justify the exaggerations.
But I'm specifically talking about SWE work experience and canonical top tier tech roles. There could be tech jobs where you leverage former backgrounds to get a better offer or better fit, **if you have zero SWE experience you are a junior engineer no matter what your title is and recognizing that is important for your career growth and trajectory.**
More importantly, I'm speaking about trends at the level of dozens/hundreds/low thousands of people AND over one's entire career, and not individuals at a point in time. There are always exceptions and one offs and everyone's journey is unique.
We don't have that many Canadians but they are definitely all over the place and typically lower than in the US.
Some points:
1. The market in Canada is MUCH LOWER COMPENSATION than in the USA, the salaries are maybe 30 ro 40% lower and don't increase as rapidly as you get promoted.
2. We're see a combination of people getting FAANG-level jobs in Canada, working for startups in Canada, and doing remote jobs in the USA, but I don't see any clear patterns or trends (too few people overall), and I don't think anyone can come in expecting any specific outcome.
3. My typical stance is that you should come to Formation and pay to be able to **confidently** walk into a Google interview and feel good about your performance (in DS&A, System Design, Behaviorals) and I feel comfortable saying that in ANY MARKET we as-close-to-guarantee-that-as-legally-possible that if you meet our entry bar, we c…
Finishing in April means your CIRR 6 month mark was October, so that's about a 40% placement rate. I tend to round up because people that you dont' know ghost, and if their LinkedIn says they have a job, they count as a placement anyways. So let's say 50%, which is consistent with Triathletes' comment. This is also consistent with the data I have as well.
I still think they should be more transparent about this since since they are so all in on CIRR and transparency in results.
For anyone reading this who is skeptical because of the somewhat sketchier pro Codesmith posts recently, this person is a very long time reliable commenter who has been here for a long time.
So about 70% placement in A YEAR is quite low compared to the past CIRR results almost concerninly low because they are advertising an 80% placement rate in 6 months post graduation and telling people that in info sessions. Just because CIRR hasn't published an H2 2022 report, they have a report prepared already and know the numbers and that's deceptive in my personal opinion to life in customers knowing the latest placements rates are.mjch lower. The CIRR executive director already said that Codesmith is free to self publish those if they want to.
Everyone reading this - CIRR is expected to change the 6 month window to 12 months and I expect Codesmith to start quoting 12 months placement rates of…
Zooming out, masters degrees are super complicated.
You know how 2U/Edx/Trilogy has partnerships with most of the top schools to run bootcamps under their names.
Masters degrees fall into a similar world of for profit, where a lot of top schools that have expensive, short degrees that they offer online or in remote cities for a very high fee.
The real benefit I'm talking about above for CS degrees is if you are able to engage directly with recruiters who are dedicated to hiring from your school and get priority interviews and "the red carpet treatment" (recruiters taking you out for dinner, fancy events, boxes of coconut water mailed to you).
It's not going there just grants you these benefits, they happen because the students end up being superstars at the companies and the recruiters go back for the next year's graduates.
The fundamental problem with bootcamps is that there isn't…
It reads more like 1-2 years of experience, and most companies that hire Codesmith grads are smaller non-tech companies OR contract roles that don't really know or check.
But correct, I have a number of industry friends who have gotten upset at recruiters for wasting their time in the next rounds, and experienced engineers can tell in seconds/minutes of a behavioral interview.
Yeah that's a good point it would be extremely hard to just apply online and get interviewed as a L5.
If the person gets promoted to staff though at this company, they will have a narrative for a high L4 offer and possibly L5 - would need to deep dive into what the person did.
I went from new grad to E5 at Facebook in roughly 2 years, so it's definitely possible, but it's not the norm.
Not to toot my own horn here, but that's why things like Formation exist, because everyone has a unique story that needs to be untangled. We can only do so much, but there are exception cases when this kind of thing can happen.
\+1 this, Codesmiths placement rate isn't great right now. They published some SALARY numbers for 2023 on their blog but conveniently left out placement rates. Fortunately I know a bunch of people who work and worked there and they share these things internally - the numbers are down, they know it, they aren't telling anyone and people have a right to not be happy about that and to demand numbers. If Codesmith info sessions and their website tout an 80% placement rate when their internal presentations show a lower number - that's not cool.
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
\+1 this, I don't agree with the decision to withhold 2023 results until 2024 so that 12 month placement rates can be reported.
From my conversations with people, numerous +1s to publish the H2 2022 data as is, and then republish 2022 data with 12 month placement rates.
Even people who graduated in H1 2023's data isn't relevant right now as the market changes week to week, and H2 2022 is even irrelevant at this point.
At the end of the day, it's no secret bootcamps are cutting back: Hack Reactor just chopped of the part time program, Codesmith laid off almost 20% of staff and a few people have left since then from what I've seen - and remaining staff are feeling pressure to pick up the slack (on the admissions, instruction, and placements side of things).
So trying to massage the data to present a better picture will never connect with an educated audience that knows the market is b…
Does that mean that the expectation is that if someone wasn't following CIRR standards, they will have to pass a consistent audit in order to be posted?
FOR REFERENCE OF WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT:
I mean they published [this](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/codesmiths-commitment-to-cirr-transparent-reporting-frequently-asked-questions) and stated:
>Who is included in the “hired by school” statistic?
Codesmith deeply values team members who grow their careers from the ground up and have a first-hand understanding of the mission behind the work that we do. For this reason, we appreciate instructors who have completed the immersive program themselves and understand the student experience. When you see the percentage hired by school on a Codesmith CIRR report, these are a very small handful of graduates that have moved on to work full time as instructors or Software Engineers for the compan…
Hi Rachel, I have a bunch of questions! I very openly have numerous criticisms of the CIRR standards but I also appreciate the vision of having standardized outcomes. My goal is to ask fair questions with no shades of opinions and hope to have constructive discourse.
1. Why are the results delayed for Q2 2022 compared to the Q2 2021 timeframe for release?
2. Why did the domain name expire earlier this year and no one renewed it for about 10 days afterwards during the domain recovery period?
3. What are the annual fees for being a "member school"?
4. Why is CIRR a 501c6 business league instead of a 501c3 non-profit?
5. What's the process for making changes to the standards and how to members contribute to that? (this might be a very long answer but just a high level overview)
6. What is the role of a board member of CIRR and what does the board do?
7. Why are outcomes reported as percent…
/u/InTheDarkDancing you are a by the books and audit-appreciating person who disagrees a ton with me about most things, so what are your thoughts on this?
Am I wrong in asking this "violation" (i.e. inconsistency with CIRR standards) be disclosed by the auditors in the report because it's not for Codesmith to decide what rules they choose to follow and not disclose in the official paperwork, or do you think this rule breaking is so obviously okay that we shouldn't question it?
I'm fine either way as long as it's consistent. Like we all follow the rules and disclose meticulously when we don't and feel justified, or we get aways with fudging the rules when we feel like it and hope that everyone agrees but it should discredit the trustworthiness (just a little bit.... not entirely obviously) of the outcomes.
The voting on these comments suggests people are in a different camp: 'Whatever…
Hiring is picking up for mid level engineers. Disclosure: I'm co-founder of a mentorship platform for SWEs with 1+ YOE under their belt. We have seen 4 or so Meta offers in the past few weeks and many more interviewing. It's definitely not easy but if you have a legit 2+ YOE (like full time SWE job, not projects, not open source, etc...) then you should be getting interviews in a reasonable timeframe in this market. There are many more challenges in passing the interviews and with headcount, but the gears are turning.
That's not at all the case for new comp sci grads and new bootcamp grads (including Codesmith and Launch School and other programs that have these kind of "open source work experience" projects) and the market remains incredibly hard just to get interviews without lying about that experience. The exception being CS grads from top tier CS school - they have a lot of choice…
I'm someone who posts a lot of criticism of CIRR, the most out of anyone, do you think my comments are misinformation or are you talking about other comments. My comments are critical but sourced directly from the CIRR standards, worksheets, the website, and talking to one of the founders of CIRR, and not made up.
Most Codesmith students I talk to get their information about CIRR from Codesmith posts.
Some people do state misinformation about it on here but that doesn't mean that all criticism is misinformation either.
For starters, Codesmith openly doesn't follow CIRR's standard for graduation date as it considers PAID FELLOWS to not have graduated until the fellowship contract is complete and does not count them as placements, even though the CIRR rules are clear than any job after someone meets the consistently applied graduation requirements is a placement and graduation dates ar…
I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too.
Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue.
They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good.
These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up.
1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including Lin…
Fair point on people's goals and that was lost in this thread for sure. A lot of people don't aspire to "FAANG" and I help a lot of people go to NOT-FAANG explicitly.
I also appreciate the callout on "worse" and it's not at all pedantic. That should have been qualified since it meant "worse in most respects to top tier tech companies, such as compensation, empowerment of engineers, scale, challenges of work, career growth" but even then "worse" is still a judgy word and a mistake to use it.
I use a definition of top tier as follows (which I mean by "FAANG") and I'll be clearer from now on:
1. Tech focused company - the primary business value is the technology or a product relying on the company's core technology.
2. "High compensation" - which varies particularly by region, but generally offers include some kind of equity or ownership participation (or equivalent), extremely strong be…
It's a good question and there isn't one answer. I've even heard Codesmith's CEO changing his tone a bit here, he said recently 'by mid level and senior we mean real Software Engineer jobs'.
Which is a fair point. ENTRY LEVEL FAANG jobs pay about $200K with $150K base right now, so even measuring by cash, Codesmith's "$127K median outcome" would not be below even entry level of the highest paying roles so I don't think they are trying to say their grads are "canonical FAANG mid level and senior" but rather that they are "legit" engineers. Many bootcamp grads get much lower paying, engineering jobs, and Codesmith's point is that the grads get full blown SWE jobs.
My problem isn't so much debate over the choice of language, but that they claim the OSP PROJECTS ARE A KEY TO PRODUCING MID LEVEL AND SENIOR ENGINEERS and that is where I draw the line in my personal opinion. Any kind of non-e…
I actually find Codesmith grads have great hustle and produce a lot of code too. Look I hired a Codesmith grad and know dozens, I worked with dozens of new grads directly in my career.
Most of them have more hustle than new grads I've worked with but most also have way more skill gaps. Very much ready to have a shot at succeeding in entry level roles and that's commendable for a 12 week program.
I agree that there aren't enough Codesmith grads to make a dent in the system. It's why every time I talk to people about this they are super offended and some say they would never hire anyone who went to Codesmith, but no one does anything about it, because it's just not a significant number of people OR the complexity of training the ATS to block OS Labs is not worth it.
But the motivations are wrong and so think you know that. I had an AMA last week live that you could have come to and Neetcode, Blind75 and Sophie are doing a panel next week if you want to see our story and motivations and what we do and what we believe in, you can do so live and hear it from own mouths instead of inferring from comments I'm making in a minute or two typing like crazy on Reddit.
Anyways, this behavior will catch up to them. NY onsite paused indefinitely now, down to 2 cohorts a month instead of 4, c…
I don't have any universal data so I should make it clear that Codesmith claims 100% of alumni get promoted within 5 years (it's based on 120 grads who decided to reply to the survey and from a long time ago, vs the 3000 grads they claim they have, so I don't entirely believe this - and know counter examples that were probably not in the 120 people, but that's the most zoomed out data we have).
Anecdotally, four buckets:
1. People who get by but change companies within a year or around that time, or they get a contract job they don't do super well on and just don't get the contract extended and then switch to a similar or slightly better company after a year, and then do this a few times. And soon enough they have the 2-3+ YOE for real to make a bigger jump to a top tier company. Worked with a few of these people at Formation. So they kind of show up, give it a huge amount of hustle bu…
I might want to move this offline but can we connect on Codesmith's OSLabs. Feel free to DM me or LinkedIn Message me.
It's a 501.3c charity but:
1. President went to Codesmith a long time ago as a student
2. VP is a paid consultant for Codesmith who co-founded a subsidiary of Codesmith
3. Treasury is Director of Community for Codesmith
4. 3 Codesmith employees posted about how they are helping hire / involved in hiring the executive director position at OSLabs
5. The contact phone number is the same for OSLabs and a Codesmith for profit subsidiary.
6. Letters of Reference from OSLabs are signed by Codesmith's Chief Academic Officer but titled as a OSLabs Board Member who is not listed as such.
I'm curious because we've explored sponsoring non-profits in various ways and consulted expensive Silicon Valley lawyers and non of this would fly according to them.
CIRRs standard doesn't have clear processes for everything. For example there's no clear process for collecting salaries, while there is a clear process for collecting job start dates. The document itself isn't written by lawyers, like GRAD (Hack Reactor's version) is, which has clear language and a clear structure. In addition, the worksheets they provide have formulas in them and some are not explained in words in the docs. Like if I remember correctly, there are some about excluding students or deferring graduation dates where the sheets were.doi f something that wasn't explained in the spec.
Finally, Codesmith extends the graduation date for people that get hired back as fellows/TAs. While they don't count them as placements (which is good) they do extend their clocks for the life of the contract, which gives these people an extra 3 or more months to find jobs and be included in the…
Anyone know what's going on with CIRR? H2 2022 Results delayed, two more board members no longer working for their bootcamps - which leaves potentially just Codesmith and Launch Academy left managing CIRR
Hi all, sorry for posting so much recently, but I hope it's useful!
So we are all waiting for CIRR H2 2022 results to be posted. Last year the first wave came out mid September with Codesmith's results coming out at the very end of September, but now it's October already and I made some concerning observations.
I have made some observations below in trying to collect the facts.
I have been really on top of CIRR because the signs of this decline have been apparent for a while. It was setup as a business league from a bootcamp loan provider, and the standard was prepared by outcomes members for marketing purposes (according to one of the founding members of CIRR in a Reddit comment) .…
It's really hard to answer this question. It's just impossible to work on this scope of project in 3 weeks. I would say that having a smaller scope project would LIMIT the potential, and the potential is NOT limited by the scope of the OSP, it's limited by the time.
Even if people worked 24 hours a day for two months it wouldn't be enough.
[Ada](https://adadevelopersacademy.org/) is a 11 month bootcamp, where everyone spends 6 months learning and then 5 months at a top tier internship with a partner company. It's a non profit with very strong partners like Zillow, Redfin, etc... And IF these people convert full time at the end of a 5 month full time internship, they are hired as entry level engineers.
Ada has paused enrollment because of the market and they can't guarantee those internships.
What makes Codesmith's 3 week OSP a secret sauce that makes it's alumni not just equal to a f…
So practically speaking, their grads are pushed to judge level via salary, e.g. if you get a 65K offer, you'll get a call from Eric convincing you not to take it, regardless of the actual position and if it's good for you long term, just based on the salary.
The thing they do is repeatedly tell people they are mid level and senior engineers just by finishing Codesmith. This sounds like there must be more to it, but the materials I've seen literally just start convos with, "Alright so since you graduated and are a mid level engineer, we'll have to do A, B, C on your resume" or "The OSP is the secret sauce that makes you a mid level or senior engineer by the end of Codesmith", or "Mid level engineers solve problems on their own and that's what Codesmith prepares you to do"
Yeah entry level FAANG is in the $150Ks base salary and about $200K with stock and bonuses, not including strong ben…
It's very reasonable to question a new account posting about a $140K outcome and we can have a very REASONABLE conversation about it.
If people are that passionate for and against Codesmith and don't want to have REASONABLE discussions then moderation won't help... people have to self reflect a bit more and try to be more open minded.
I've had 20+ alumni, sutdents, staff, former staff and family of students tell me that Codesmith is extremely positive place with processes to "correct negativity" and that's part of the problem. The result is that people with feedback message me telling me they have no where to give feedback and they dump it on me instead. It's really hard to navigate!
There are no bootcamps that I know of based on my definitions.
If you want high compensation, Codesmith, Launch School have well into six figure median salaries for placed students, and Rithm and Hack Reactor are close as well.
But there is no program that creates mid level and senior engineers because you can't get there without industry experience, but **let me explain what this means.**
I was promoted at Facebook from entry level to mid level in 3 months from starting and then mid level to senior in \~1.5 more years. The senior to staff in \~2 years.
So when I started, what was I? You could say 'well I was a mid level engineer from the start and underleveled!'
But that's really not true. I was an entry level engineer and I was treated like one, and I crushed it.
If I was hired as a mid level engineer, I might have underperformed or not done as well and maybe taken a lot longer…
I've interviewed a number of Codesmith grads for Formation acceptance (which is not a job, so I have a more constructive/feedback hat on and more tolerance) and they practice all of these questions at Codesmith yeah.
But yeah I noticed within 5 minutes, and the misleading answers kept going or we would have awkward silence, but people would not say it was a job, but they say it's something else. I was "working with an company under OS Labs" for example.
There are a number of buckets here but generally, this is why all of these jobs are with small or less well known companies - who are not tech companies, and don't have solid vetting processes, and sometimes people make it through.
1. People who get entry level jobs at solid tech companies that they call "mid level and senior" but aren't. e.g. someone at Google got entry level L3 job and said it was "level 3 senior" but L3 at Google…
Neither are amazing right now and the market continues to evolve day by day so no one will be able to give you a definitive answer, but I can share some opinions.
1. Hiring is picking up for people with 2+ YOE SWE. This is genuine SWE work experience and not "programming experience" or "open source projects". Specifically 2+ years. I work with engineers in this bucket and a number were hired by Meta in the past few weeks or an doing onsites and it's definitely a change in pace!
2. Hiring is NOT picking up for bootcamp and new grads and it's getting more stressful and more intense. University recruiting teams were decimated in the layoffs and are using the resources they have for new grad hiring right now in the fall at the most reliable top tier schools, instead of broad entry level hiring that was happening in the past. This is making it much harder for bootcamp grads and grads of no…
I can give my pros and cons fact based answer. It's funny that when I do this for Codesmith people say I'm "trying to take down the great things they have done" and when I do it for BloomTech I'm accused of "supporting a scam" but 🤷♂️, I'm just trying to give balanced views.
1. Bloom Tech rebranded from Lambda School because of a trademark lawsuit with Lambda Labs. They spent over a million dollars (unverified) on legal fees to defend the lawsuit and even acquired a company in Florida called Red Lambda to try use that company's trademark defensively. But instead they settled and changed their name.
2. They have undergone massive changes in the past 2 years, not necessarily good ones, but they are trying to make a sustainable business that works. They let go of a large number of their staff and moved to a more self-service model based on their platform. the platform is some in house an…
We're waiting on CIRR results but Codesmith has provided some info in a report last week and in info sessions.
The placement rate was down from about 80% to "in the 60%s", and the salaries were down about 10% or so to the "$120Ks"
I've also heard anecdotally that they are trying harder to to track down alumni and get every last person into those CIRR reports.
But 60% ish still isn't that bad. It's significant if you are planning your life around a bootcamp right now - might not be the best idea to make any assumptions on outcomes - but it's not like it's ZERO placement either.
1. To sue someone you have to have damages in most states. First, someone would have to show that they joined Codesmith to become a mid level engineer and that they didn't AND that a reasonable person would have also believed they would become a mid level engineer seeing the same marketing. Second, they have to show that their outcome was worse and then somehow try to figure out how much they were overcharged given their outcome. If you raised your compensation by $25K, but didn't get a senior job, how "harmed" were you? It's really hard and not many people would want to deal with this kind of thing unless they felt really truly screwed over as a last resort.
2. There aren't any legal definitions of "mid level and senior engineer" and they could argue it's their opinion and that it's backed by the high salaries earned by graduates compared to competitors. Even if it's more of a gray are…