u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Well the team isn't any more qualified than anyone else to do AI consulting so we'll see if they are successful at it. Will Sentance has never worked full time at a real company.
The IRS contract means nothing as there are 6 companies and counting in that contract and they have to compete on actual work and haven't seen any receipts yet for that.
It's possible they didn't want to shut down the Codesmith brand so this is just like a holding company, shell/home for the briend.
Will Sentance seems like he's completely moved on to physical AI, manufacturing plants in the mid-west, robot hackatons, Oxford Fellow, Stanford Fellow.
Amazing how quickly he moved on from Codesmith and abandoned everything after personally making millions of dollars (based on court filling estimations) off of Codesmith.
The sad problem is that out of the $50M Codesmith approximately/estimate made in pure stude…
Well the team isn't anymore qualified than anyone to do AI consulting so we'll see if they are successful at it.
The IRS contract means nothing as there are 6 companies and counting in that contract and they have to compete on actual work and haven't seen any receipts yet for that.
It's possible they didn't want to shut down the Codesmith brand so this is just like a holding company, shell/home for the briend.
Will Sentance seems like he's completely moved on to physical AI, manufacturing plants in the mid-west, robot hackatons, Oxford Fellow, Stanford Fellow.
Amazing how quickly he moved on from Codesmith and abandoned everything after personally making millions of dollars (based on court filling estimations) off of Codesmith.
The sad problem is that out of the $50M Codesmith approximately/estimate made in pure student tuition, millions of that went into Will Sentance's pockets and…
This isn't a loan at all no.
The way it works is the IRS has earmarked $118M of budget towards a huge bucket of AI initiatives.
As they carve out specific projects with specific dollar amounts, the partners will be able to pitch themselves and one or more will take the project.
It's possible the $118M won't be used up. In fact, historically, most BPAs do not use up anywhere near the allocated amount. It's there so that it's preserved on paper. But if priorities change or government shuts down or shrinks the IRS, etc... then its possible they pay out $0.
So in reality individual companies might get $0.
Codesmith said they had a huge vetting process and being selected was a sign of how good Codesmith is, but looking at the growing list of companies... it seems like everyone with their paperwork in order will get a chance and that the real competition is for delivering future results,…
I can clarify that, sorry I have a felling this will be long but it's important details IMO to make sure my opinions are clear.
So "fuzzing the numbers" doesn't mean intentional deception, but it means representing the numbers in a better light than they are. So by that definition - yes, CIRR was created through a marketing lens to promote bootcamps and it was designed to be rigorous enough to build trust, but also marketing-tilted enough to present numbers in a good light.
For example, there is a number that's like 'median salary'. But the only absolute number of people is the number of graduates and you have to chip away at that to get to the actual number of people in the people. E.g illustrative numbers: 100 people considered in the report, 90% graduated, 10% self employed, 5% not looking for jobs. 60% of what's left actually report income. So right off the bat the salaries only in…
Here is a list of the problems to show that i'm not being sarcastic. You could feed this into AI and fix all of these in an hour.
This doesn't include CSX.
1. Footers inconsistent across site, one says 2025, one says 2026
2. Alignment in 2026 footer is not centered properly
3. Header, hover on the final item in each list has no radius and bleeds onto the page
4. Home -> Join Us -> Train Your Team -> Enterprise -> Enquire -> hello@codesmith email. Felt like I was going in circles.
5. Programs say "more dates available" but the other dates are the exact same ones in the header I clicked from
6. The dates make no sense and Jun 1 should be July 1
7. Median Salary & Employment Rate overflows in one box, inconsistent
8. It looks like their loan providers is gone but now the payment options have a gap missing a block that looks weird
9. The Terms and Privacy policy are dated…
DEVELOPING: Codesmith 2024 California Government Outcomes report is out today. Only 12% are placed within 6 months with reported salary (50% including 'no salary information available') but press release also out today says '85% to 90% placement rate within 12 months' 'CIRR verified' (no time frame)
SOURCE: [https://bppe.ca.gov/webapplications/annualReports/2024/document/98d87f0e-23c1-4af7-aabf-7c91d4ea7312](https://bppe.ca.gov/webapplications/annualReports/2024/document/98d87f0e-23c1-4af7-aabf-7c91d4ea7312)
I can't legally comment much on this so instead I ran it through a neutral AI with the following prompt:
"Summarize this document and compare it to information about Codesmith you can research and flag any good things and flag any concerning things. Summarize in 5 bullet points."
* **Completion is very high, but placement is not.** Codesmith’s Software Engineering Immersive show…
This has been up for a while but I feel like Outco is dead anyways. Like I think the founders moved on to something else. A number of people have been sued by them (and threatened to be sued) for not paying them after they thought they were eligible for the job guarantee refund and the collectors they talked to didn't seem that organized.
Pathrise also shut down.
I have a business principle that you ruthlessly have to focus on delivering value to people for what they are paying you or you shouldn't exist.
More bootcamps, interview prep programs, immersive, mentorship communities should follow this advice because far too many offer like a $50 Udemy course, add on recent alumni as mentors/teachers, add on intangible benefits like 'community' and charge $20,000.
You might get by if people get really good jobs and credit the intangibles.
But if you aren't trying to deliver value and are…
Launch School is doing ok because its model protects against the market to some degree and the market impact is less severe.
1. You do Core for months so then only people who are perfect fits for Capstone get in
2. The founder is hands on doing most of the work, so there aren't many people to pay. He could personally take lower income for some time to survive. Codesmiths founder uses your tuition money to go to conferences and write books and make lectures for Frontend Masters and students complain they never see him. Fine but you have to pay more people to run the program and when most of those people leave and you are still MIA - math doesn't work out.
3. Launch School's very small, like 20 capstone at a time, 60 a year. Codesmith had like 1000 people in 2023. The founder knows everyone by name and helps them try to get jobs individually.
So yeah Launch School ends up with like a 70…
No not at all, even non profits in this space have tuition, but you want to make sure it's transaprent. Like nothing in life is free so if something offers a money back guarantee for example - that sounds too good for you. Do 5 months of free classes! Like someone has to pay the bills and if that's the case, the success cases have to pay enough to cover all of the failure ones and are overpaying.
There are also "VC funded programs" where the program raised outside funding from venture capitalists and loses a ton of money per student in an attempt to grow larger and eventually make a profit.
These ones might be the best deal because you are actually getting a deal and the program is losing money.
The flip side is that the programs have pressure to grow so they might cut corners too soon as well.
Everything has pros and cons and transparency is key so you know what those are.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate you being realistic about the market.
RE: 3RD PARTY PLATFORM
Personally, I'm not a fan of bootcamps marketing features that they outsource to 3rd party services anyone can use. You are indirectly paying for that choice.
Second, in this market you need people looking for different angles that other people don't have and using 3rd party solutions is using something a bunch of people have access to - like you said - jobs getting 100 applications in 20 mins.
RE: MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
If something is too good to be true it probably is. The motivations of the guarantee make sense, but it doesn't work if they refund most people and paid all this money on Prentus and staff members in the mean time, company goes bankrupt.
We're seeing that happen a lot of places!
But the ideal in this market is meeting in the middle - you have some lower…
BREAKING NEWS: Codesmith 2023 official outcomes published: CANNOT BE WORSE - placement rate crashed from 70% to 29%. Enrollment also tanked over 50%. The software engineering bootcamp era is over.
I'm going to keep this brief because the data tells the story pretty well.
Codesmith was once arguably the top bootcamp, and generally regarded as a top 5 bootcamp, and their outcomes have been completely decimated. They touted in their marketing in 2023 of past years' median placement salaries of up to $130K, 90% placement rates, and people didn't care how it happened just that it happened.
**Well the job market has humbled even the best and Codesmith's self-reported 2023 student placement rate is beyond terrible, it's evidence that SWE bootcamps are no longer a viable pathway into the industry no matter what the program says or does.**
[Link to Official Report](https://www.bppe.ca.gov/web…
If you have a degree, internships is #1. If you didn't do any internships a bootcamp might be able to help, but you would be better off just making a group of 5 people and making a startup on your own and taking it as far as you can. Codesmith is a bootcamp that has like 7 weeks of lectures and the rest is projects with others, and you are paying $22K to go there... you could just find the equally talented people in the Slack who are admitted to Codesmith, and leave and do a startup with them for 4 months, put it in your resume, etc... and put the $100K total combined tuition cost towards founding the startup, ads, cloud infra etc...
If you give me a group of 20 people who are paying $22K, I'll take their $500K and run a company for them that they own 1/20th of and they will be much better off.
My personally opinion, I currently actively recommend avoiding Codesmith no matter what your background for two reasons. First, because of their morals and ethics and this view has changed in the recent weeks. Second, because a few more long time staff left recently and the haven't delivered on most of their promises in February last time there were layoffs. So I don't take their word to mean anything both morally on a personal level and practically on a deliverables level.
I'm currently only recommending Launch School (but under the caveat that it's not for everyone and has to be a good fit).
Note: I have no affiliations with any bootcamps.
Hiring is back to the way it was back in 2008. Experienced engineers have options in big tech. The only entry level pipelines that are reliable are the top-tier CS school new grad and intern pipelines.
174 isn't haven't a huge impact with big te…
COMMENTARY/UPDATE: Codesmith updated their accepted stats today, 168 offers accepted between March and August 2024 VS 53 in March and April alone. Average base salary in those ranges down to $117K from $119K.
Disclosure: I'm presenting my analysis as my personal opinions and commentary on the data provided. If anything commented is incorrect, I'm happy to make corrections and updates.
Codesmith updated their recent offer stats sometime today and I spent 15 mins throwing together my top of mind thoughts below.
Source: [Previous](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_CPn4TtghvS4UDvkZ9pD6G4JYItLODd3/view) and [New](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d7IGbYdtYPoI5Jbr4OxPwVgKyXhMTpI1/view?__hstc=109711322.0e322342ee14294aff502ad66630cdf2.1651003824655.1725406413979.1725413866740.756&__hssc=109711322.8.1725413866740&__hsfp=3801953514&hsCtaTracking=5fa5766f-6dea-46ee-b25d-ecf7276ecee9%7Ceed80937-e…
PART 2:
2. Yeah I comment on those. I'm aware of two Reddit posts. One is a person who left and ended up going out of SWE for their career and it was the right thing. The other person I don't know who they are but I do know someone who commented on that thread in support of the primary person recently tried to come back to Formation a second time, so maybe their opinion changed haha, but I want to go through the points.
**MOST IMPORTANTLY - we make hundreds of changes (literally) a week and Formation today is not Formation a few months ago, is not Formation a year ago.** I'm going to answer these as they would be TODAY, and I stand by my previous comments on those posts at the time they were posted.
-------------------------
1. "**Don't be blinded by their marketing**...". We absolutely have people that are still with us and very low morale. There are a number of people who joined us…
I think they have far too much price to drop tuition. I expect them to raise it again in January like they did this year despite tanking placements and outcomes.
If anything they will start to give out "scholarships" to effectively lower the cost but maintain a high sticker price.
Following the ivy League model. Stanford is $60K a year but most people (who don't come from rich families) pay much less or nothing.
So taking a step back....
Codesmith, like Launch School, is for a certain person. There aren't magically more of those people in the world who just aren't going because of the cost. If it's the right program, the cost is irrelevant because the long term impact will be so much more than anything.
So lowering the cost won't do anything at all.
If they relied on anyone with a pulse paying them whatever spare change they have, then lowering the price would result in more people…
One more question? How much interaction do you have with Codesmith staff.
I was running the unit economy of the program. If Codesmith has two dedicated instructors and one program coordinator for 6 months, that's about $200K. If they have a fraction of other people's time for outcomes, program coordination, grading etc... that's another 100K.
So if the program costs Codesmith $300K, I'm curious if this is a philanthropic program if the city of New York would pay $900K for everyone's tuition to enroll in Codesmith.
Seems kind of weird if Codesmith profits a huge amount from the program to subsidize its other programs.... like the City of New York shouldn't be keeping the lights on haha.
So just curious if you can list out the staff jobs (NOT PEOPLES NAMES) you work with in the program to do the math.
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…
You could leave (at the $500 a week refund policy rate).
You could target new companies and keep going.
So our process has two parts. First, you go through a number of challenges to practice and benchmark until your raw skills are at the top company bar. Second, as you get real interviews, we help you do mocks for the types you have and strategize for the process (e.g. push out interviews if you aren't ready).
The first part is like getting in shape at the gym. The second part is like practicing a race before the final race.
So if you change your targets it's really the second sort you have to keep doing and adjust and not the first.
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.
I heard that comment twice myself about his son.
I spend all my time with silicon valley people and he comes across like a lot of founders.
Everything is always going great, fake it til you make it.
Problem is this isn't a game of a photo app... we're talking about people's lives and we're talking $22K tuition and people need to have better.
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…
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.
>
With so much seniority in the job market, it's difficult even for the str…
In my opinion, people who leave prior to "finishing the program" are the largest problem with ISAs because that's when people get the most upset.... not only did they not get a job, but they didn't even finish everything!
For the ISAs we have, we don't have a "end of the program" and there is a clear refund policy if you leave early, but we try REALLY hard to proactively reduce costs to the value a person got if someone leaves early based on what they actually did and not just the calendar time in Formation the person is contractually required to pay. Like if Formation didn't work for you, but you had 25 mentorship sessions and did 100 hours of practice tests and tasks, and no issues reported in your weekly surveys and 1-1 checkins, then it's not fair to pay zero because you were on an ISA.
+1 to the industry needs to stop focusing on outcomes. I push the arguments for this a lot and often and get tremendous pushback from the Codesmith alumni and staff (including a leader that pushed back publicly).
Bootcamps shouldn't be 12 weeks and they shouldn't be about getting jobs only. Those types of bootcamps are done and over with.
They should be about the quality of the experience and education and about marketing to the right people that they think their program will work for.
It's why I push back on CIRR trying to force bootcamps into joining it by asking students to demand CIRR outcomes.
It's not 2021 and people focused on outcomes only are joining bootcamps for the wrong reasons - whether it ends up working or not.
In terms of ISAs though I just think you have to think of it as a loan nothing more. You have 3 options:
1. pay $X upfront
2. pay $Y a month for 4 years on…
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"**,…
Just to be clear, this post was a personal opinion and not one of Formation and not about Formation.
RE: Formation, I take that as feedback for sure, I don't think the 750K number is really effective too, but it's accurate and it's what our competitors do, so we took the easy there as we focused on other parts of our website.... Which I think is the fundamental reason we're on such different pages here, Formation isn't a bootcamp and CIRR-type data makes no sense. We've tried to cut numbers with artificial time windows for banks and loan providers and all those people love them and support us strongly, but we don't share them publicly because they used for math for finance people and don't help an individual understand their journey and likely would only mislead them because of the unique commitment and path that each person takes.... the timeframe is largely up to the person.
Not all…
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…
Hey, feel free to DM me if you want me to look into your specific case, it's hard to generalize what happened or if there was a miscommunication perhaps.
To give some more info:
- There is no fixed schedule or fixed materials. Every week you get a new schedule of small group sessions, practice and benchmarks to work on based on how you did the previous week, and eventually you'll get to real mock interviews to sign off that you are at the top tier performance bar. A small caveat is no two Fellows will have the same experience or materials and our job is to sign off that you are at the top tier interview performance bar as efficiently as we think we can get you there, rather than by exhaustively covering fixed materials. That's why the time it takes, the time per week, etc... are all very ambiguous and fuzzy because we don't want to mislead you into thinking there is anything fixed abo…
Yeah I'm familiar with the Codesmith style 4 step application, with the double down and follow up, etc.. on the receiving side too haha.
I meant that I'm curious what people say and if how they portray experience in that process.
But yeah if you are using your own trackers, like sheets and notion trackers that Codesmith has access to, but it's enforced or standardized then they have no idea how successful Codesmith-style applications are.
It's entirely possible that people just log those more often because they put a lot of effort in them and they need to stay organized throughout the process. Whereas with quick applies, it's so easy that people might not be as diligent with recording them.
I'm giving direct insight though - if people are not required, they won't record all their job applications. Some bootcamps have people required to send in proof of applications to maintained job…
I can answer this very transparently, apologies it might be long or over detailed, but trying to explain clearly and openly.
Originally we worked with Leif to administer "classic" ISAs, which is something like, don't pay anything until you get a new job, then pay X% a month for Y months, capped at Z dollars, e.g. 10% per month for 15 months, targeting 15% of one year's base salary. These also had caps so if you make over $165K base salary, you won't pay more than the cap. If you didn't make $65K or more then your payments are paused until you do, or until a year passes in which case the contract is cancelled.
There's a lot of good things about classic ISAs as they really help people pay who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, or be approved for an upfront cost or a loan.
The flip side is that, as I've said many times, the job market was particularly rough in 2023. Since we work with…
2024 Bootcamp Predictions Mega Post. Revisiting my 2023 prediction post and exploring what I see ahead for 2024. 2023 was a rough year for bootcamps and the future doesn't look great for traditional programs - 2024 will be a year of caution, but I'm optimistically excited to see what happens!
Hi all 👋 for those that don't know me, I'm Michael, daily commenter here for about two years. Congratulations to the sub on hitting 40K members today! It was around 10K when I first joined!
**Background**
I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform and work with a large number of bootcamp grads later on in their careers in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, job transitions. Before this I worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2017 as it grew from 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and leveled up from an intern to an E7 principal engineer in about 5-6 years. I did over 450 interviews of everything from interns to dire…
Hi, I wrote a more through reply about Formation on the thread but didn't answer these questions yet, so I'll do my best here:
\- How many paying customers ever? I don't want to give the exact amount for competitive reasons, nor do I have it right now, but it's the high 3 figures / low end of 4 figures of people who have been accepted and joined
\- It takes people about 6 to 8 months (it's gotten longer in the weaker 2023 market) on average to find a job, but the range is very large because of these factors:
1. We work with people who usually have 1+ years of SWE work experience but it varies from 0 to 20+ and people with 0 come in with no interviews in sight and the people with 2+ or more come with with interviews lined up.
2. People do Formation part time on their own schedule and put in whatever time they can, so it takes people variable amounts of time to find a job based on thei…
This is a common problem with the Codesmith approach (not the majority, but it's a common thing to happen) and there's a number of people at career accelerators like Formation, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, etc... as a result.
The Codesmith approach can really throw off your mental model of the industry because you hustle into roles many people are not ready for or the right fit for, and have a hard time understanding what to do next. It works if you keep the hustle going until you land a solid legit tech job, but it doesn't handle the other cases so well.
This market is making Codesmith grads learn quickly that you are not a mid level or senior engineer at top tier companies. So you get stuck with not getting these interviews, not knowing why, and then failing the mid-level/senior top tier interviews you do get. (This is the pattern I've seen).
With the exaggerations seen in most r…
Don't DOX anyone, but can give general cases:
1. We haven't offered ISAs for like 7 months now so it's going to be a smaller and smaller number of people in that bucket. But someone on an ISA who lost their job, their ISA stop the second they lost their job. If they don't get a job within another 12 months then it's nullified, if they do, it continues where they left off when they were laid off.
2. If they were not on ISA, then they paid upfront. They could return to Formation, likely with a discount, case by case and depending on the circumstances. But many people would choose to leverage the alumni community the best they can and not pay to return because their skills are still fresh enough.
Layoffs are very personal and happen for all kinds of reasons and don't happen that often, so each one is case by case, but that's a generalization.
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…
I'm bias because I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform/career accelerator, but I would consider this type of option if you already have work experience - [Formation](https://Formation.dev).dev, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, Coachable (all of these have deferred payment options as well). These are all very different but they are all built to prepare you in different ways for the job hunt.
Since you already have legit work experience a bootcamp probably isn't what you want to do because the majority of people you work with be much further behind. **You will have way more exerience than most of the instructors who teach you.** And you don't actually learn much raw skills. If you do want to choose a bootcamp, Codesmith is probably the best option for you if you want to hustle your way into the next job and get all the support you need doing that, but I wouldn't go there to actually…
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) .…
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…
I'll confirm you're not me lol! But I looked up all the people in that screenshot and they all have fairly normal Codesmith-y LinkedIns with exaggerated OSP experience.
Some of those people have a lot of experience before too, that's not super common. I've seen info sessions before and Codesmith is pretty clear that people come from 'a range of backgrounds' and most people haven't worked as SWE's before.
Did they talk about that in the session? I'm sure they chose people that were all saying amazing things about Codesmith was and how they persisted with the Codesmith-way of doing things and it worked, without really saying what that means.
I'm sure Eric K was probably mentioned by everyone too as the reason why they got a crazy high offer. Several people have sent me Eric Ks advice (in various forms from audio/video) and it's very good, standard, bread-and-butter advice you would ge…
This has all the details: https://www.stridefunding.com/formation. You are better off reading the 4 ways the loan ends rather than me trying to summarize.
The new ISA is directly with Stride so we don't have any say or influence over your terms and you need to get the final answer from them directly.
There is some confusion, but a simple answer. We had an old ISA that we stopped offering a few months ago that was forgiven if you left the program without a job and don't have any job paying over 65K. We replaced that with 3 payment options and one of them is similar to an ISA but is not forgiven unless you leave early and make under 55K for several years.
So there are many people at Formation with the old ISA and the new ISA which understandably causes confusion. Many programs have gone through this transition over the past few months as well.
If you are ever confused, DM me or contact someone on the Formation team because it's really important for everyone's sake that you thoroughly understand the payment method you choose and we have 4 different ones right now!!!
I added these to my comment above that I think are super interesting from this data,
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>It's really interesting to see "past salaries", the number of people making six figures BEFORE CODESMITH is an anomaly for bootcamps, and one of the things that skews the numbers. 16, or 20% of the people made over 90K BEFORE with and I would say most people on here are hoping to make 90K AFTER. People really need to know this going in... that part of the success is that a number of people going in are already successful.
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>2. This gives more insight into the split distribution - lots of high salaries, lots of low salaries - which, like 2., is not the norm for bootcamps. You can see personas in the data. Some people with $140K+ salaries started with high salaries anyways. Some didn't, those people are the "all in Codesmith" people who defend it to the bitter death - but it's like 5 peopl…
Hi! Yeah send me a DM so I can explain a little more how the new ISLs work. They are very different from these old ones as the payment term is longer and the individual payments are typically smaller and what the typical person will pay back is expected to be closer to the cap.
You have to start making payments after a year, but only if you are making the minimum salary at the time, so if you are unemployed your payments won't start. This is less friendly than the old ISA but it helps solve the problem that numerous programs have discussed where anecdotally, people don't feel motivated to look for a job as aggressively as those who paid upfront.
I say this all the time but it's very important because of the down market that no program, including Formation, hands you a job and you are not paying for a job. You are paying so that you present your best self and become a better engineer an…
We don't have any ISAs that cost exactly $25,000 so I'm happy to explain your ISA better if you ping me internally! There is a cap to make sure your ISA has an upper bound that is meant to be a positive feature for you and that is not the amount you owe necessarily. The amount you pay back depends on your salary so for this specific "full option", $25K is the cost if you get a BASE SALARY of $167K or higher.
In the past few months we have clarified our payment options to help explain this so hopefully this will only be clearer in the future that the ISA option (which is just one of many) is an alternative to paying the upfront cost but with a higher cost for the luxury of deferring payment.
The price of Formation varies by experience and needs, as it is a mentorship platform as opposed to a form of education, so that was an example for making a simplified point, but for anyone reading…
I have some insight on this as an outsider that has worked with a few dozen Codesmith alumni later on in their careers or immediately after Codesmith.
This is going to be a polarizing comment thread for sure.
PROS:
- many alumni that get jobs credit Codesmith's job hunt support for helping them. they typically site: mock interviews, weekly office hours, their cohort mates emotional support making it feel less lonely, and Eric Kirsten's negotiation help giving them confidence to ask for $150K offers when they otherwise wouldn't
- compared to many other bootcamps - which hardly do anything post graduation, I think Codesmith does a lot more than most
- they give you "lifetime support", which means you can always go back and ask questions in the future, get resume reviews or even do peer mock interviews anytime in the future and some people have found that useful
- one of the most powerfu…
UPDATE: 2023 Predictions check-in and updates!
Hi all, it's halfway through 2023 and I wanted to quickly revisit my predictions from this post to give some updates based on how the industry is doing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp\_predictions\_for\_the\_rest\_of\_2023/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp_predictions_for_the_rest_of_2023/)
# New: What's left for 2023?
The main thing I want to add is that outcomes for H2 2022 are going to go off a cliff. At first when we saw H1 2022 CIRR results come out they were better than expected, however Codesmith restated their numbers after audit and they were notably lower than originally posted for placement rates and high end salaries ([https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/14341x7/codesmiths\_newly\_posted\_audited\_version\_of\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/co…
1. +1 the Lifetime career services at bootcamps aren't helpful because they are meant to help bootcamp grads get jobs. When you have a job and want to get a better job, they don't support you as much as you could. I've heard people say "\[my bootcamp's career services\] helped me negotiate my next offer and it's a gift that keeps on giving".... but what they don't realize is that if they sought help from others that specialize in experienced engineers (disclosure: co-founder of Formation which helps and hence I'm very biased) that you might have made wayyyyy more. The average person placed after Formation increased their first year TC by $96K (see website for how we calculate). So if you are super thankful for "free" help to you increase you compensation by $50K, you could have paid $10K to make almost $100K more... Anyways, this isn't an ad for Formation - Formation has lots of concerns…
We now have more upfront options including loan with partners, deferred loans (until you get a job, up to certain time limits), interest-free loans (if you qualify), and are working on more income-based deferred options.
Our mission is to help improve diversity in tech and we want to be accessible so we are doing the best we can to offer more pricing options so people can find one that works for them.