I think it comes down alignment.
Codesmith has like no staff left and none of them have extensive AI experience. They hired random people on Upwork to manage this thing, from marketing to program management to working on the contracts. I don't see students in 2026. I don't see placements in 2026. The "CIRR Audited Outcomes" haven't been updated this year, and CIRR has not responded to why. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy. A 2024-2025 lawsuit said that their financials required six months of forensic accounting to assemble and could not be provided on demand. Codesmith's AI curriculum is minimal and created by recent alumni. I'm not an expert but I would guess they would have trouble with the most basic government audit.
Additionally, the AI "Lead Engineer" on the IRS stuff is a full time engineer at a top tier bank. I also suspect that's problematic to have them on c…
I'll try to summarize then, I do agree that I haven't clearly articulated all of it publicly:
1. I interviewed Codesmith grads who were lying through their teeth and I got fascinated by it
2. When I started poking around people were cult-like devoted to Codesmith, which got me more interested
3. By asking questions a number of former staff and alumni reached out with telling me all kinds of crazy stuff going on there, which got me MORE interested
NOTE that through this time I was very supportive of them overall. The grads were solid, the outcomes were good. I recommended people go there. I recommended they ear the sausage. I was curious how the sausage was made.
NOTE also that people on the Codesmith side thought I was a competitor trying to steal business and I also spent some energy explaining the differences and clarifying.
4. I started piecing together how the sausage was made,…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
So you have zero affiliation with Codesmith, staff, former staff, alumni, etc... and you are just a person that happens to comment a huge percentage of comments on Codesmith related content.
I covered that case, and you could be normal Redditor who happened upon here, and then is being used for manipulation.
I recommended Codesmith to many people, who thanked me afterwards. I have had a pulse on this for 4 years, and I paused my recommendations in February 2024 (when they scaled back about 50%) and removed it in Fall 2024 (when they didn't fulfill the commitments they promised in Feb).
And I was perfectly timed with exactly the fall of Codesmith.
I was being a damn good industry analyst who called it perfectly.
Instead their leaders blamed me for the decline for simply calling out reality.
It's sad because the students and alumni who are (mostly) very ambitious and incredible people shouldn't feel attacked because Codesmith has had incompetent leadership.
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…
Pulse Check? I'm not seeing any signs of life from these bootcamps, and I wanted to do a check if anyone is a 2026 student/grad of these programs.
These are on Course Report's "top bootcamps of 2026" list that do not have a single review IN 2026 and I'm struggling to find people who actually went there in 2026.
Codesmith (excluding Future Code)
Fullstack
Coding Temple
Codeworks
Icon Hack
this link: [https://prachub.com/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_campaign=andy](https://prachub.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=andy)
note the utm\_source = reddit and the utm\_campaign = andy.
This was something that some account was doing with Codesmith, posting links all across Reddit pretending to be a "student" sharing a helpful link, and the link contained UTM params like this. I called them out and the person said they got the link from the Codesmith subreddit, so I searched the sub Reddit exhaustively and found no such link... confronted again... the person stopped posting and didn't reply.
I'm royally pissed off at Lars Lofgren for spreading such bullshit about my moderation because he has no fucking idea how to moderate Reddit - or he does and just wants good guys like me gone so he can get away with his sketchy stuff himself?
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…
We're on the same page that Will genuinely cares about improving education and genuinely cares about each Codesmith student and outcome.
The problem is he's not capable on the ground and his vision doesn't justify sharing thousands of students information in a call, losing the credentials for their AWS account, or his website leaking sensitive info like application gender and disability status. You shouldn't have to sacrifice anything to support that.
He allegedly sold 70% of his company in 2015/2016....
Court documents allege an agreement to make $500K a year and up to 50% of profits (not sure what that is for $23.5M of revenue)...
It's not an excuse for sharing "Landman Season 1 Web Rip" repeatedly alongside a "U.S Treasury" folder on this computer.
It's terribly sad because he hired a ton of people from Upwork to address his deficiencies and they arguably made it all worse. The s…
Codesmith launched their new website and it shifts focus to "enterprise" AI consulting, burying all their individual programs.
Codesmith updated their website in the past week and it appears to me in my personal opinion that their individual programs are being de-emphasized significantly.
Note: there are numerous references to being the Forbes #1 bootcamps, which is false and they should remove that. Forbes updated their rankings April 1st (3 weeks ago) and while they used to be last year, that is not correct anymore and the link they provide themselves no longer has them as #1. Forbes now assigns "Best at X" awards in a number of categories and Codesmith has 'best outcomes'... but does not have best for experienced coders, not best career support, not best for portfolio, not student support, not professional development, so that seems like a slip up or mistake.
What are they pivoting…
Yeah nothing takes that away from him, it just seems he can't get his shit together as an operator based on my opinion of publicly available information.
Codesmith lost the AWS credentials and Codesmith's email and primary website were down for 3 weeks as they struggled to recover it.
He personally screen-shared evidence of pirated "web rip" copies Landman Season 1 and 2 numerous times in a public talk just a week or two ago about Open Claw.
He has intentionally screen shared his calendar numerous times in his presentations making it public info, student information numerous times.
Codesmith's website had numerous major security/PII issues that took several attempts to fix.
Codesmith student projects have leaked credentials, keys, etc... including a real charity's test Salesforce login information.
That's just a handful of explicitly public things off the top of my head that in my…
Well I can give my personal opinion on that and I have been researching for a while.
I think Will is a gifted explainer. He said he wrote the Hard Parts originally because he didn't really know how to code well. I think he said in an interview he didn't know what a JS "Map" was when he wrote them. He has additionally said that he does talks when he wants to learn something because it forces him to learn in order to then present it to people as an expert.
So given that it's absolutely fascinating how well he can explain things he literally just learned.
He has additionally said that he never wanted to teach, but both his parents are teachers and he said that as a kid he would force his sisters into doing classes on the weekends at home where he would lecture to them on things....
So it sounds like he's a gifted lecturer and it's just his superpower.
My opinion is the situation is qui…
Do you know how many people have signed up for cohorts since then? If any?
Like I've been researching Codesmith for 4 years and their student GitHub repos have very little signs of life relative to before. And they did a 3 month pause on new cohorts, breaking their years long tradition of overlapping cohorts and junior/senior model.
I know Launch School cut back from 3 cohorts for 2026 to 2 cohorts, which is their first reported decline, but they also aren't really a "bootcamp" and have never had a ton of students.
I'm not a lawyer. If things are laid out clearly in the fine print for a reasonable person to understand I do think the onus is on the reasonable consumer. But if the debate is over whether this is "reasonable" or not, I won't chime in on that.
My person opinion is that even the bigger bootcamps are small businesses in the grand scheme of things and have so few customers in the grand scheme of things that I think the market and actions of the bootcamp will ultimately be their demise if they are not communicating transparently and openly... like I said, bootcamps are shooting themselves in the foot if their numbers look unrealistically good in this environment and it's actually a negative signal in my opinion. Like what in my opinion happened to Codesmith... covering up a majority of ghosting alumni by counting 'LinkedIn verified placements' that boost numbers. Everyone can see with thei…
Two things to watch out for in that slide deck of outcomes
1. It's from 2024 and AI changes month to month. A number of industry engineers report not writing code anymore as of 3 months ago, so it's basically irrelevant what happened in 2024.
2. The 88% figure has some crazy fine print. If I'm reading it correctly, 88% of the people WHO GOT JOBS got them within six months and 12% took longer to get the job. But it's not the percentage of people that got a job.
TripleTen does a similar metric, but for TripleTen the weakness in the data is more that a huge number of people remain "active" by not graduating and not dropping out so they don't count in the stats and they are there too long to get job guarantee refunds.
I don't know if Hyperion is self paced with a similar gap but I would ask for clarity on the placement rates.
No program is perfect and any program that looks amazing in t…
Mid-level roles could be an option if you have a network that can push for referrals.
In the old bootcamp days, you would get referred by previous alumni, you get an interview, they don't really care about your experience at that point, and you get the job if you prepared well and got coached by the alumni who referred you.
Now a days there is a bigger emphasis on hiring manager calls that dig deeper. Not just for red flags but for green lights, and if you don't have big tech mid level experience it will be hard to get a mid level role in big tech.
Meta had this "rotational engineer" program exactly for this case to transition you but, they stopped it and shut it down last year.
So that's why right now I recommend the adjacent engineer path if you can align something with your background.
Alternatively a mid level role at a smaller company that is hyper aligned with your pre-bootcam…
I haven't experience ageism myself so I can't speak for others, but I can give my 2 cents having worked with people of a large range of experience levels, regardless of age.
I have two points.
1. Dunning Kruger. when you have decades of experience you are on the real expert side of the curve. But you have do deal with the bootcamp grad a couple years out who calls themselves an 'industry leader' at peak Dunning Kruger. Those people are hyping AI right now and the more experienced I get the more I roll my eyes at the peak BUT you have to also take AI seriously. So my advice is to look at AI through your experience and 1+1 = 3.
[2.Be](http://2.Be) open minded. Kent Beck is one of my mentors over the years and he's an example of someone who inventing testing frameworks, signed the Agile Manifesto, and still voluntarily went to Facebook - which had basically zero tests when he joined, and…
The NPR podcast references sources from a stanford study showing that SWE jobs are likely to be replaced sooner than later, and federal government stats on unemployment rates of CS grads. They state that they are 2X the unemployment rate of history majors, but I didn't read the source.
They also discuss anecdotally with examples from 'talking to people for research' how top tier CS grads always had it easy and now they are just barely getting jobs, whereas 3rd tier CS grads always had it hard and now find it impossible.
Like Codesmith has 6 month California data for 2024 students and the number of people placed who reported a salary and weren't self-employed or employed by schools can be estimated at 12%. Which is a massive cliff from 2023 which was a massive cliff from 2022.
It's an example that demonstrates a complete and utter collapse of the bootcamp grad market, going from like…
Facts and accountability are foundational. You can troll all you want, but facts are the facts and your assumptions about my intentions are not facts.
The press release I quoted says that "Federal selection followed rigorous evaluation of Codesmith's independently verified outcomes: 85-90% of graduates placed within 12 months, two-thirds promoted within three years, and an average starting salary of $130,000. Unlike competitors, Codesmith relies entirely on word-of-mouth referrals rather than advertising, with all outcomes verified by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting."
Website: "Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired within 12 months, most land leadership roles within big tech & AI labs and many directly contribute to the world’s largest open source projects"
**There is nothing at CIRR that says that 85 to 90% of the 5000 gradu…
The report that's coming out in April-ish is the 2024 report for CIRR, which includes nationwide students, not just California (which was about 200 students) and CIRR also has 12 month placement numbers.
The 'did not respond' rate for CIRR last year was similar to the 2023 CA report (about 40% did not) but this year's CA report had an increase in non responders.
So that's the number to watch.
This is a rough example, but if you have 100% students start, 90% graduate, 63% had jobs in a year, and 34% (of starters) approximately reported a salary.
So the 'median' salary of $110,000 includes about a third of the students, which is fine, but it's not a median salary of 'students' or of all 'graduates'. Since the data is pretty clear on this, if people feel like this representation of 'the typical grad makes $110,000' is reasonable then I think it's important to call out the qualification…
I'm proactively commenting this because a number of Codesmith-adjacent accounts (staff, alumni, etc...) have been going after me this past week with no substance and referring to this article about me: [https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/](https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/)
I vehemently disagree with the conclusions the blog post comes up with and the examples used not being representative of the real discussion happening, or of both sides.
I think that any discussion that's not about the facts is a distraction from critical conversaion.
Now more than ever we need to be able to argue, debate and discuss facts without insulting me, name calling, threatening, harassing with nick names, and assuming my intentions.
**Discuss the facts, not the speculation about my intentions and motivations.**
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…
That blog post presents a one-sided framing and selectively quotes material to support a conclusion I do not agree with.
Claims such as: “Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5,000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired within 12 months, most land leadership roles within big tech & AI labs, and many directly contribute to the world’s largest open source projects” are extraordinary marketing statements. Evaluating them using publicly available sources like LinkedIn and GitHub is both lawful and commonplace when assessing public claims about outcomes.
Reviewing publicly available professional profiles and repositories is not stalking or harassment. It is standard practice in hiring, investing, journalism, and market analysis, and it is often the only way to contextualize broad promotional claims.
I also reviewed summaries of my own comment history using automated tools and reached co…
If an organization chooses to market itself publicly, highlighting metrics like GitHub stars or describing student projects as 'contributions to the largest open-source projects in the world', that choice necessarily invites public evaluation of those claims.
Public scrutiny of public representations is not harassment, stalking, or doxxing when it relies on publicly available information and is conducted lawfully.
Claims either withstand scrutiny or they don’t. If they do, the evidence speaks for itself. If they don’t, criticism is a foreseeable and legitimate response.
Likewise, when security or operational issues become publicly observable or are responsibly disclosed, accountability and remediation, not reframing criticism as misconduct, are the appropriate response.
In the United States, open and lawful critique of public information is a core safeguard for consumers and markets,…
1. The piece being cited is not an article or investigative report. It is explicitly labeled as a blog post authored by a marketer. A third-party blog post is not primary evidence. I am not aware of any direct evidence in that post showing that I doxxed anyone. If such evidence exists, it should be identified specifically and evaluated on its merits rather than asserted by reference.
2. To my knowledge, my commentary consisted of clearly labeled estimates and opinions regarding Codesmith’s unit economics, expressed in the same analytical manner I have applied to multiple programs across the industry.
3. With respect to allegations of harassment or improper conduct, I again ask for evidence. My understanding is that I was removed from Codesmith sessions and Slack after stating, under my real name during a Zoom call, that a student described as “placed” was no longer employed at the comp…
Do they have open source projects? I know for places like Codesmith and Launch School you can just go through the open source projects that every student does and figure out placement rates. Anyone can do this and see raw information - with the caveat that LinkedIns could be out of date. However CIRR and Codesmith's auditor considers LinkedIn "LinkedIn is almost as gospel as anything else" (quote) so if you go off of LinkedIn you can figure out the placement rates.
I can't comment on that right now but encourage people to spend like an hour digging into it themselves and correlating it with public messaging if they are curious about this, and if they don't care then don't! haha.
DEVELOPING: FedStack and Lantec won up to $118M government contract for non-IT training for the Federal Government/IRS - Codesmith will be involved (conflicting reports)
Source: https://app.g2xchange.com/FedCiv/posts/smoothstack-obtains-118m-treasury-ocio-non-it-technical-workforce-development-and-training-bp
FedStack is large government contractor.
Lantec is a training company with three locations in Louisiana.
This is a blanket maximum contract and it's unclear what specific services are provided or expected, and what "non-IT training" means.
Codesmith claims here that they won the contract https://www.codesmith.io/federal and made the following statement
"Codesmith now extends its mission to driving tangible impact across the US economy, with the potential to return billions of tax dollars.
Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired with…
I support reasonable and respectful, fact-based discussion about if I should be a mod or not so that the discussion is transparent. My opinion is that anonymous mods with power are more dangerous than transparent ones because we all have biases.
I have email chains explaining the following to Codesmith leadership from Spring 2024 explaining all of this as well. Codesmith has yet to explain directly why they disagree with this framing, but continue to call my company a competitor.
This is my stance on my biases:
1. For the record. Formation is not a coding bootcamp and it doesn't compete for coding bootcamp students. We work with experienced engineers later on in their careers, about 1/3 of which were bootcamp grads in the past. The average work experience now is about 4-5 years of SWE work experience.
With regards to Codesmith, I'm aware of 3 people who were deciding between Codesm…
PART 8
1. Why did you compare Codesmith to the NXIVM sex cult, and do you consider that comparison proportionate or responsible?
I didn't compare Codesmith to a sex-cult. I commented that someone's reason for going there 'it changed my life and the lives of many others' is something that I hear in cult documentaries on HBO, which I stand by as my opinion.
Codesmith is not a sex-cult.
1. Do you accept that implying cult-like behaviour without evidence may constitute reputational harm?
If you state as a fact or with fraudulent/nefarious intention then that would be wrong to me regardless of harm. I have full right to share my personal opinions on Reddit that are solely my personal opinions through my lens and people can agree or disagree with those opinions.
1. Did you personally research and contact a Codesmith employee’s son on LinkedIn before emailing the company about him, and if…
PART 6
* Independent data from the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) verifies Codesmith’s student outcomes, showing around seventy percent of graduates securing relevant employment within one year and median salaries of approximately $110,000.
CIRR is not independent. It's a 501 6c business group/like a lobbying agency. It's charter is to represent bootcamps.
* Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct prohibits moderators from using their position for financial or competitive advantage.
I don't believe I am competing with Codesmith and my commentary hasn't changed from before and after being mod.
* As a co-founder and equity holder of Formation, Novati stood to benefit financially from reputational harm caused to a rival institution. This represents a direct conflict of interest and a potential breach of the moderation code.
I don't agree with this at all. We work with boo…
PART 3
* He made repeated allegations of nepotism against a Codesmith employee after discovering that the employee’s wife had completed a one-time contract with the company and that their son later enrolled as a student.
I made that claim once or twice.
* Novati researched the son’s LinkedIn profile, referred to him publicly in Reddit threads, and contacted Codesmith executives directly by email to repeat his allegations.
This is not correct no. A GitHub project I saw just happened to have the person on it that I recognized the last name of and I looked at their LinkedIn. I then emailed executives about it because his dad is the lead career/negotiation advisor and I figured it he likely looked over his son's resume and LinkedIn that contained significant exaggerations.
* He subsequently advanced claims that Codesmith students were falsifying résumés through their participation in “o…
PART 2
* From that position, Novati began posting extensively about a direct competitor, Codesmith. Over a period of 487 days, he published 425 negative comments or posts referencing the company—an average of almost one per day.
Not true. I posted about Codesmith extensively prior to becoming a mod. I don't have a count, but a number of the comments are on spiraling threads with dozens of comments. I think the heat map of commenting on a given day is more telling.
* Approximately ninety percent of his statements concerning Codesmith were negative in sentiment.
I don't agree with that. I write multi paragraph comments with lots of sentiments in them. My overall tone has been increasingly negative since September 2024.
* Threads originating from r/codingbootcamp subsequently began ranking highly on Google searches for “Codesmith,” often displaying titles such as “Codesmith is an enorm…
I can't summarize here because it's long and I have like an 8 page press briefing doc lol but you're right that there is more to the story. Like how they hired a Reddit hitman and the guy got dozens of accounts suspended. All of their instructors are a pyramid of graduates from the school itself. They lost their AWS root phone number and their website and email were down for 3 weeks. And dozens of other relevant facts.
There are two sides to every story and both sides should be heard.
Bootcamps are failing. Codesmith did very well in the good times but their grads were systematically exaggerating their Codesmith projects into average of 11 months (my Nov 2023 analysis of 50 grads). I still recommended people go there during those times, but I was cautioning the 'right people' should go there who know how it works and what they are in for.
Unfortunately even in 2024-2025 those tactics…
I'm not backing down from anonymous accounts personally criticizing me using the same language and tone. That's for sure personal at least.
Codesmith doesn't have to shut down to make me happy. The other option is for Will and Eric to leave the company entirely and let Alina try to fix it without being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Will tries to approach things from first principles... the way he thinks it should be is the only way and is not distracted by or listening to others to change his mind.
The problem is that when called out for getting something wrong, he seems completely incapable of acknowledging it (at least in public) and instead either ignores it, or defends against it instead of addressing it.
Some of the best builders have this attitude but it only works when you are actually right at the right time.
Will has been wrong about too many things now and the com…
Hi, thanks for sharing a well thought out argument.
\- Lying on the resume is a tough topic and some blame goes with with the people hiring. The snowball of "6 YOE for entry level jobs" is kind of the result of both sides. Hire a bootcamp grad with no YOE for a job needing 0 to 2 YOE, get burned, list 2YOE+ next time, bootcamp grad lies more, increase again to 4YOE, etc...
They are getting burned because the hiring process inherently is flawed and requires some amount of honesty, but there cost of mis-hiring is you fire the person and move on and it's a rational market. If it was too costly to fire someone, they would spend more vetting the people.
So the way I see it - both sides are optimizing for their market conditions and Codesmith grads lying just enough to get through and doing just good enough on the jobs to not trigger the snowball is the market trying to balance everything o…
Codesmith asks people when they started job hunting and I wouldn't be surprised if they change thier metric to "12 months from starting your job hunt" instead of "12 months from graduating"
If your numbers suck change the goal posts!
Until it's such a joke your alumni turn on you.
Word of mouth is number 1 source of people and no one will recommend a program that changes goal posts to trick the public.
Yes look at my account history please. Are you delusional? I had three different independent AI engines analyze my entire account history for the substance I talk about and it's all aligned with my representation of myself.
Some Codesmith people are so brainwashed they only see Codesmith stuff and these 100 comment back and forth threads that I refuse to back down on, and completely miss the substance of what I talk about that actually gets VIEW COUNTS.
Codesmith people, go "under the hood" instead of being so superficial.
Like i said in the other comment, entrenching on the Codesmith side without talking to me just makes me shake my head. You'll see in the future when you wake up.
Many alumni have and it's one of the reasons their community has completely and utterly fallen apart. The only Codesmith people I hear from now are on payroll in some capacity. Your alumni are gone because…
I feel like I'm transparent about it, but I will summarize here my arguments that have been consistent for a period of time. I'm extremely transparent about these reasons, so either people think I'm lying or they think that there's some like secret motivation. I don't know.
Codesmith thinks I have all kinds of motivations that they are just incorrect about, and believing them is only harming them even more and making their situation worse. So I don't really know why they're doing that, but it might make them feel better than accepting the truth.
I have been consistently clear that Codesmith was one of the top bootcamps, that their number one strength was in helping ambitious and driven people build self-confidence in their programming abilities, and that they had three things that I didn't like.
1. They were consistently marketing placements as mid-level and Senior roles, and in my op…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I can't disclose exact things nor do I proactively reach out to people about it. From what people told me the numbers aren't good.
They removed all their highest paid employees and pay very low now. They fired the most expensive people and hired people in their place and paid them a lot less for the same job.
Codesmith is $22,500 so if you have 10 people every 8 weeks, thats $225,000 or about $100,000 a month.
Their staff right now:
1 instructor: $10,000 (they are paid a lot less now)
3 mentors/combined fellow: $30,000 (fellow is multiple people part time)
1 coordinator: $6,000
1 admissions: $6,000
1 outcomes: $6,000
Marketing/Career Support: $6,000
Overhead = 20% $13,000
Total: is like $80,000 or so?
I think this is why they are clinging to life, they convince loyal alumni to work for a fraction of what they should be paid... like those MLMs that run off of the labor…
Checking in on Codesmith a year later. After recommending Codesmith for 2 years I stopped recommending them a year ago because of massive staff loss, program cutbacks, and tanking outcomes. A year later, things are even worse 😭.
I'll try to summarize some history briefly and then get into the updates. I've been following Codesmith (and a handful of other programs) very closely for years now. I've spoken to dozens of students, staff, alumni, their CEO and have a very good idea what's going on. Codesmith doesn't like me. I've offered to help them, I've reviewed their students projects, I've pointed out security flaws, etc... but they see me as a "jealous competitor". I'm the founder of an interview-prep platform that has nothing to do with Codesmith and works with a bunch of Codesmith ALUMNI in the FUTURE job searches - all of whom thing we are very complementary. But nonetheless, I have…
Depends on how much experience. But Meta is strict on YOE requirements because of regulations and such (even though internally they don't care much about YOE). New grad jobs go to interns and aren't accessible anymore. Mid level jobs require 2+ years of YOE.
They use to have this rotational engineer program ("pathways") for mid level adjacent jobs for people with nontraditional experience that wasn't quite FAANG-level. It still required 2+ years of experience but it could be any kind of SWE experience.
I've seen some people from Codesmith straight lie about their experience to qualify for that program, someone saying he worked at Codesmith as a job, before he even started going to Codesmith as a student.
You can potentially get a contractor job there, but those never result in full time employment after and put a hole on your resume.
My advice (that I advise a number of people) get a…
Bootcamps aren't an alternative to college because most bootcamp grads have college degrees (just in different areas). Codesmith's data they shared in a public talk maybe 1.5 years ago or showed that the vast majority of people had college degrees and most went to pretty good colleges to, like the UC system in California, etc...
Second, when I go to Codesmith's homepage I see a giant $110,000 as the first thing I see and a a banner of where people got hired 6+ months ago.
When I go to Stanford's homepage I see a photo of Stanford, followed by it's mission and news.
Different goals and vibes.
One is luring you in with big numbers and then having terrible placement rates. The other is luring you in with brand and prestige and being a part of an elite community and delivering on that to every single student.
Launch School H2 2024 grad outcomes. Placement rate within 6 months is lower than 2023 grads (50% versus 75%). Note that the denominator is all people who start, so will do comparisons in the body.
Resharing the original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1n8s8mr/cohort\_2408\_salary\_outcomes\_6month/](https://www.reddit.com/r/launchschool/comments/1n8s8mr/cohort_2408_salary_outcomes_6month/)
**As usual Launch School is very clear and transparent about their analysis so I really don't have to read between the lines, you should read their original post.**
**INDUSTRY COMMENTARY:**
In the bootcamps world, Launch School and Codesmith are the two remaining bootcamps with consistent six figure outcomes over a decade, so it's really the main comparison.
Codesmith hasn't given any numbers for a while so we'll extrapolate there's based on the patterns.
**Also note that C…
I feel like a lot of bootcamps say that. ' Our program is 70 hours a week and it's so intense it's like a year of school'
Codesmith's former head of instruction would tell people in their career prep lecture that their "open source product" that they spend 3-4 weeks on was 'so intense' it was the equivalent of '4 months of mid level engineering work'. A student told me someone challenged him on this during the lecture and the instructor got so offended and upset he ranted for 10 minutes and then had to 'take a break' before resuming.
It's absolutely wild what these programs are telling people and it should be called out for discussion in the open so both sides can be heard, because I wouldn't assume the bootcamps are doing this to scam people, they might just be delusional and out of touch with reality... many bootcamp instructors haven't worked in industry and don't even know!
Here is an analysis of my commentary purely about Codemsith "sporadic but consistent"
"Here’s an unbiased summary of Michael Novati’s commentary on Codesmith over the past few years—covering the topics he addressed, frequency, tone, and the overall vibe:
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Topics & Themes
1. Curriculum Stagnation & Slow AI Integration
Michael pointed out that Codesmith’s curriculum has remained largely unchanged over the years. For example, in early 2024 he noted:
> "Codesmith's curriculum has been the same for YEARS but in Feb 2024 they added 5 lectures on AI… This is 'not changing'… 12–14 weeks of the same structure they did 5 years ago… I guess they think it's enough to raise prices to $22,500 this year."
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2. Deteriorating Placement Outcomes
He emphasized a steep decline in graduate outcomes. He shared CIRR-based figures showing that six-month placement dropped from ~90% in 2021 to…
My commentary on Codemsith is fair and research backed.
And yes, please look at my post and comment history!
Do you realize how much of that is these 50 comments back and forth threads with fake accounts that are now suspended or deleted from Reddit?
Their founder is encouraging people to attack me on this by selective pulling comments deep from threads where I was frustrated - which had dozens to hundreds of views and we're later edited or deleted - instead of focusing on the tens of thousands of views that point out fact based major flaws in Codesmith.
- twice publishing mistake reports to official bodies and issuing corrections after I called it out
- running a fake charity with no notable income with a fake leader who told me that Codesmith writes letters of reference on behalf of the charity and that she has been placed on leave for a year and isn't involved anymore.
- tanking o…
To me this is the difference:
Like people can 'owe so much to Harvard' and still see the pros and cons of going to Harvard - even if the pros outweigh the cons for you as an individual.
If you 'owe so much to Harvard' and then attack anyone criticizing Harvard for anything, then something is wrong.
When people are in the mindset of 'it changed my life', It comes down to leadership.
I talked to Codesmith's new CEO and said straight up about why I do what I do face to face, so when their founder goes around riling up the community as a 'competitor attacking the community' - that's a cult-like characteristic - turning reasonable and well-researched criticism (even if you find me annoying) into an "us vs them" ideological battle instead of a reasonable debate.
I'm aware of both groups at Codesmith. Many alumni that reach out to me or that I connect with, are very much in the 'I got a go…
The key thing here is "it"
YOU changed your life. YOU decided to sign up and put in the work to pass the entrance interviews. YOU showed up 13 hours a day. YOU hustled hard on your narratives to get past resume filtering. YOU passed interviews.
What did Codesmith do?
1. accountability
2. support
3. building self confidence
4. helping tell your narrative to get past screens
5. basic programming education
6. access to a network of alumni
I can see it getting blurry when instead of feeling like "Codesmith supported me in changing my life" the feeling tilts towards "Codesmith changed my life".
Cults (speaking generally from watching over 200 hours of cult documentaries) prey on people with low self confidence who will credit "it" with the positive impact the cult brings because that is easily turned into devotion and exploiting a need to "pay it back"). Things like free labor, donatio…