Yeah everything in this thread is truth, not sure why I got downvoted. Whoever is downvoting that comment... show me the numbers and prove otherwise... nothing wrong with a 40% placement rate within 6 months, just be transparent and explain what you do and don't do.
A Codesmith alumni came to Formation and got a true senior job at C1 - due to their own hustle and drive - but it's correct they are not hiring people with no experience at entry level roles right now.
Is it possible that you are awesome and demonstrated both natural talent and a strong connection to the company?
I obviously can't speak to this experience, but I've worked with top bootcamp grads and top CS grads from MIT and Stanford and that statement doesn't apply at all when comparing the two.
A Stanford CS grad has about 300 hours across 6 core CS courses and then another 1000 hours in a dozen or two CS electives, then then have 3 FAANG internships on their resumes and leave with 5+ offers at FAANG companies.
This obviously isn't the typical CS degree and many of them are not like this. But saying the best bootcamp produces grads that are more experienced than a mediocre CS degree is more accurate. I would give Codesmith less of a hard time in this regard if they didn't market themselves as equivalent to an elite grad school and instead marketed themselves as the outcomes of a…
I've worked with a number of Codesmith alumni and everyone is an adult capable of deciding what approach they are most comfortable with, and we can make that work, but my general advice is:
1. Leverage what's unique about your pre-SWE experience. If you were an accountant, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or something else that you put a lot of time into preparing to be, then you should present openly and try to pull out relevant things from it, rather than hiding it. For example, a doctor who did research in protein folding and was fascinated by the large scale computer systems used for simulations and some day wants to work on such systems to help save lives.
2. Target entry level roles and apprenticeships at top companies. I time box the time I spend writing replies on Reddit and this one needs it's own essay.
1. A summary for entry level: starting off with right support and expectation…
I think the bigger point here is the auditing doesn't matter. I don't know where "audited" became synonymous with integrity. The CIRR process auditors just make sure humans input data correctly, and they don't do much investigating to dig into if that data is correct. For example, if a human put Susan's salary as $50,000. They will ask Susan, "was your salary $50,000?" and if she says yes, they are done. The CIRR spec doesn't say much about what auditing means, which is one of the flaws... they just throw the label on their to make it sound more legit... and it doesn't hurt, but it's a flaw. They don't even say clearly how salaries are verified! All they say is that start dates need to be pulled from an offer letter, but they say nothing about salary, so it can be entirely reported by a student incorrectly.
All of this to me is much more important that slapping "audited" on there and ca…
I don't think I questioned the integrity of the results in my post. When you have been calling CIRR the "gold standard" if you meant the specification itself or the auditing process was industry leading you are extremely mistaken and every bootcamp leader I've talked to agrees. And I take all of their words over a Codesmith alumni who has no context there.
I have read the CIRR standards doc (which I can't link anymore because the site is still down) many times and there are many problems due to lack of attention to detail. And they have similar problems attention to detail in managing their domain name.
The reason I mentioned Codesmith, is that if you are telling your students "studies show that Codesmith is better than Harvard and MIT" (this is a quote a few people shared with me), and in your own description calling yourself competitive to "elite grad schools", then the bar is high a…
I have not. I grew up middle class in Canada and my summer internships paid for my public education. I consider not having student debt a great priveledge for sure.
I work with many people who are severely not privileged, support them, cry with them, and celebrate with them, and it is absolutely brutal sometimes which is why I try to portray both sides of this.
Being middle of the road doesn't mean being neutral. There are two loud camps on both sides and after working at Facebook especially I saw how silencing people who disagree with you only makes things worse.
I do what I do to change lives and to change the world by enabling people from non traditional backgrounds to change the world. Period. And will always fight for people who are fighting for themselves.
Hack Reactor is a relatively good program that has scaled pretty well post-acquisition where a lot of other programs that scale have lost some of their steam. I think their size and parent company growth pressures have resulted in them have a lower entry bar than Codesmith in order to take on more people, but they keep a reasonably high bar and the result of a lower graduation percentage (\~75%) and they have kept the outcomes for graduates strong.
The people I've worked with from Hack Reactor and Codesmith are all fairly ambitious, hard working, driven people where ultimately any of the top programs might have good enough for them.
If you look 3 to 5+ years down the road, there are many many Hack Reactor alumni at top tier and FAANG companies in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th jobs. I think this is a result of them being San Francisco focused pre-COVID where once you get your first job in person…
I'm not a recent grad so won't answer the question, but zooming out, why to do you get more confused the more research you do?
If you feel like you can see yourself as a good fit in either, then either route will probably be great. One is not objectively better than the other.
A lot of high level outcomes and marketing is great for narrowing down your choices, but at this stage in the decision I would go with the only you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like is the right call... i.e. your gut.
Some warnings I've seen others do:
1. Don't compare exact outcome salaries or placements rates obsessively.... too much wiggle room here, just use them to narrow down in the first place.
2. Curriculum on paper. Don't obsess over every line of the curriculum and compare program to program and/or think that a curriculum with more things is better
3. Don't worry about the stack or lang…
I edited to clarify that, I meant both employed SWEs and not yet employed SWEs, I know more than a handful of mock interviewers and coaches with no experienced at all except at Codesmith itself as a paid employee.
I also consider graduates who are employed as "peer support" imo. At Formation we have senior engineers at FAANG companies as normal Fellows looking to change jobs believe it or not who will be peer with each other, but also peers to bootcamp grad Fellows with no job yet. Those are just standard peer sessions and interactions. The actual mentors/mentorship is from very senior engineers (or from 5 to 10+ year FAANG recruiters) who are experts at 1-1 and small group mentoring and they are paid very well at their day jobs and we pay them well as well.
Again sorry for the tangent, I just talk about this a lot to people 1-1 and this is meant more for others who might read this.
This still feels like you graduate and go in "support mode" where some other students/graduates (edit: graduates can be employed SWEs or not yet employed) hired as coaches (i.e. peers) check up on you. It's a wonderful and amazing community but it's still peer based. At Formation.dev we have a bunch of people who are/have been Codesmith coaches or mock interviewers and they are just graduates themselves without jobs or with minimal work experience. So the support is more like "enhanced peer support" and not the full weight of Codemsith behind you. Maybe over time it will be stronger as graduates many years into their jobs give back.
Codesmith experimented with a DSA course for alumni and they charged them for it at a heavily discounted rate so I would expect them to charge for any true future support.
At Formation we give people lifetime access to our version of slack and to some commu…
You don't need a degree or even a bootcamp certificate to get a good job. Having relevant experience of any kind does help, but even something like accounting can be a good bridge.
The thing with Codesmith CIRR results are they have an interesting distribution curve with bunch of people on the low side, and a bunch of people on the high side. Their low side is still good, but there are many people who do Codesmith and make under $100K as well. That could still be a solid first job even if it's not the flashy too-good-to-be-true numbers people share.
The other problem with CIRR is it excludes stock and bonuses. A lot of those higher paid engineers are even HIGHER than they appear on CIRR because of that. On the other hand, Codesmith has a lot of alumni placed at Capital One and Amazon over the past year, which are very heavy on base salary and the bulk DOES show up in CIRR.
Anyways if…
Hi, this sub is extremely Codesmith heavy, and there are several Codesmith students, alumni, and employees, who are extremely active on here, so it comes up a lot.
That said, I know many bootcamp founders, talk to some regularly, and I've worked/work with hundreds of bootcamp alumni, mostly from top bootcamps, so I have a unique view of many programs.
I have extensive knowledge of BloomTech/Lambda School as well and have a similar depth of understanding of their program but it's rarely talked about! I'm like the only person who read their trademark lawsuit legal documents in real time and discovered that they acquired a company in Florida to use that's company's trademark to bolster their claims - no journalist even reported on this.
I aim to be middle of the road on everything, which doesn't mean neutral, but it means talking about the pros and cons.
Codesmith alumni in particular a…
From what I've observed it's the following reasons, some good, some bad, and not in any order:
- Recent grads just went through the curriculum and might relate more to the struggles you went through. It's additionally good practice for those grads to reinforce their learnings.
- Some programs count people who are hired by the program as "placed" to boost their placements stats. Codesmith is bootcamp that hires back a lot of grads, currently about 50 to 60 of the 150 or so staff are former grads but they explicitly do not count these people as placed. They do however not consider them graduated either so they don't count at all on the CIRR stats until their 3 months contract is done. Most other bootcamps hire people back indefinitely while they are job hunting, which might result in them leaving suddenly and is a bad experience.
- If there are too many former students teaching, you do…
I believe they include that same information in their enrollment agreement as well and a few people have pointed that out to me, that it seems much worse than CIRR and that the it forces them to show salary buckets under $100K and that they go pretty low below $100K whereas in CIRR "under $100K" comes across as a higher amount.
So my understanding is that this is a result of different standards. I constantly say this and constantly get attacked by throwaway accounts, but CIRR HAS FLAWS. It's setup by bootcamp insiders to have a common and clear standard, but it's also setup with little small nuances to make the top level reported numbers look the best possible and in the best light.
The regulatory information probably has stricter guidelines because people can be heavily fined for not complying, but it might not tell the full story behind the numbers either. For example, they regulato…
Good question and the short answer is that it depends on the company and the person. I have worked with a number of recent bootcamp grads for example and might suggest THREE different resumes to someone.
If applying to a new grad job that accepts non-traditional programs, then I suggest putting the bootcamp loud and clear as Education, and listed course work and any grades in there. And then putting your projects and projects, or Open Source Contributions section for larger OSPs.
If you are applying to a job requiring genuinely 2+ years work experience that does not appear to be a new grad job and could potentially be intended for an experienced engineer then I would try to highlight more work experience. For example, if your past career involved technical stuff in some way, working on highlighting that. If you have no relevant experience at all then you might not be qualified for the…
It's interesting how that's a similar ratio to Codesmith but there are so many Codesmith students and alumni on here that talk like Codesmith is in a league of it's own.
Consider your options everyone and figure out which programs are the right ones for you because finding the right program will yield the best personal result, rather than choosing the program that you think is objectively the best.
I understand this is why we have CIRR and audited results and what not. Hack Reactor is larger and let's in people at a lower bar, who have lower outcomes, but for the right people it works really well too. And unfortunately non of the outcomes reporting schemes take into account background before starting.
1. People practice how to talk about OSP in depth without lying and without identifying it as a it is. This public video describes what I've heard from alumni and staff members, and what I've seen in alumni that I've interviewed myself, and specifically who talk to Erik Kirsten (a senior board advisor) as well: **"there's this one guy in particular his name is eric kirsten uh and this guy has a silver tongue and he will teach you how to say anything like you know you tell him hey um this is my background how do i present it to an employer to where it doesn't look like i just decided to switch careers because you want to avoid that stigma and he will give you a great way to say it you know"** 33:03 from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWYanfkfCY&t=1983s)
2. I totally agree there should be additional checks and bounds to catch people m…
I agree that some things are a result of limitations of LinkedIn. This is not one of them. People might not be doing this with bad intentions, but someone, somewhere, is aware of this as a strategy to stand out from other bootcamp grads.
I agree that how people portray their personal profiles is up to them But I pulled over 200 Codesmith alumni profiles and over 2/3rds of them have almost the exact same descriptions and representation of that experience as ambiguous work experience.
I really need to emphasize that I'm not saying anything personal about people that do this. Again, I support people doing this case by case, but the fact that the vast majority of students do it is a fact to note as no other bootcamp has this characteristic.
Sorry if it comes across that way, I work with Codesmith alumni daily to sort this out and they will attest how complex and case by case this is, and how middle road I am... I work with people to help them get the best outcome and sometimes they use their Formation resume and sometimes I advise them to use their Codesmith resume for a role.
It's a controversial point but they do officially suggest to exclude it. The reasons they tell you are that: 'you did Codesmith and it's an elite school so you don't want to disadvantage yourself by coming across like a bootcamp grad. you have done projects that are at a mid or senior level and you want to be recognized for your accomplishments so you should emphasize those'
I don't agree with this reasoning but that's what they tell people.
EDIT: Want to clarify a few things because saying "officially" might be misleading
1. The official documentation doesn't tell you to exclude it but tells you to include it as experience and doesn't tell you to include the word Codesmith in describing that.
2. People are told the above not in writing but have reported being told it verbally during a standard resume lecture
Capital One's "Senior Associate SWE" is equivalent to the Google entry level L3 and Facebook entry level E3.
"Principal Associate" is more like Google mid level L4 and Facebook mid level E4.
The bar is higher but Capital One doesn't evaluate people like top tier companies do, they are a little more recall and study based.
Capital One right now has a super broken process that Codesmith alumni are exploiting so try running with it while you can! We've had Codesmith grads be honest about their experience and not pass the recruiter screen for ANY role there, and others who do what Codesmith told them to say who get these interviews... but each person does their own thing.
I would just be careful about over-leveling if you have no experience and are interviewed for this role. In the current economy low performers at higher levels who are overpaid go first in layoffs.
I've worked with several 42 alumni, and their former operations manager worked at Formation after leaving 42.
The long story short is having a free school with free housing doesn't really work here and people take advantage of it for all kinds of reasons, from homeless people, to non-work authorized people, etc... At the same time, they were extremely low-staffed in person, as their platform was all online, even though the physical campus and dorms were in-person. So people would show up and sit at the computer doing online work all day, where they didn't really need to be there.
So you have these really hard operation challenges of running an in person school with in person dorms, with extremely low staff, and add the fact that it's free and people from all over are trying to exploit that.... makes it really hard to maintain.
It think all the people I worked with at Formation (and pr…
There are a group of people saying that recursion and OOP are.now always tested to get in. We work with Codesmith alumni who still need recursion practice after graduating so that seems like a high bar to me.
If anyone has info on the consistency of the bar, please comment. Does everyone get the same questions/topics?
I agree that I should be more precise and appreciate the pushback and I did a deeper dive. A larger problem is most big tech do not allow you to have another W2 job in the tech field because their contracts cover all your IP created in the tech space and the OTHER W2 job usually has a similar contract and hence the conflict.
Agree on 52 Fellows, 3 months W-2 @ $1K per week.
17 prep instructors who have full time jobs elsewhere (I don't know the compensation, it's not gift cards but I don't what it is and I would somewhat expect it to be something hourly yeah, I shouldn't bucket them into the 50K a year - I just don't know but I didn't think it was equivalent to the full time instructors and have ZERO basis to believe it's lower, just guess)
15 engineering mentors who have full time jobs elsewhere (these are the people who I thought were not paid W-2 but paid with gift cards - or equiv…
I'm including alumni who do part time instruction in there too, and alumni who do mock interviews for free or gift cards (that number might be much higher actually)
Going off the about page. But there are also several people on LinkedIn who claim to work at Codesmith not on the about page so no idea how large this number is.
Will Sentence, the founder, is more opinionated about pedagogy I believe (never talked to him directly) and is a really smart person who puts a lot of effort into teaching effectively.
But I agree that CSX is pretty weak. It's intended as a "top of funnel" to Codesmith and many bootcamps follow this approach. They want you to join CSX and work with some peers on Slack. Then like it enough to sign up for a few hundred dollar prep course, taught by alumni. Then like that enough to join the immersive.
Most bootcamps have a similar approach to this. CSX isn't really intended to teach people anything as a standalone tool. Most of the people I know who got into Codesmith used many tools including Leetcode "easy problems" to get in. They want you to attend free seminars and pair programming sessions where they can build a relationship and help the right people make their way to immersive and…
Codesmith is somewhat split on outcomes. There's one contingent of engineers who have experience, don't really need the curriculum and benefit from mentoring others, the accountability, and the network. This group is aiming for top tier jobs. I believe this represents about the under 40% of people who make salaries over $130K.
Then there is another contingent who end up making under $110K which is about 20% plus I would include the people who don't get jobs in 6 months (another 10%) and then the people who don't graduate (5%) (all this based on 2021 CIRR reports). I'm making a BIG ASSUMPTION that the people who don't graduate and don't get jobs are on the less experienced side but I'm sure there are people for whom this isn't the case.
Anyways, that means APPROXIMATELY BASED ON CIRR 35% of people who are weaker or have no experience get jobs under $110K or no jobs within 6 months of g…
I tried to give some reasons above but I don't even like what we have now on the site, because the outcomes vary so so so much by goal and we have to very carefully decide which numbers best represent what we do - which we haven't done yet - so we encourage people to talk to whatever random Formation person they can find with similar backgrounds and chat with them. Like we literally have had 10+ offers over $300K TC in October for whom that is the market rate and we help the people choose between offers. The uniqueness of those situations for those people are not captured in an average salary metric because and we want people to know they are getting a bespoke experience aimed at helping the accomplish their goals.
I've said this before but some of Codesmith's alumni get stock and bonuses as well, excluded from CIRR, and CIRR does not paint an accurate picture of their outcomes as well.…
Yeah actually I do. The world is very large. These companies are very large. People see hundred and hundreds of resumes.
1. Several times a week people on my team mislabel Codesmith alumni as industry experienced based on their LinkedIns. Recruiters spend seconds looking at your resume and they don't read bullet point 15 that says "product incubated under oslabs" and when they do, they aren't pondering what that is and if it's open source
2. I asked some people the other day about this with some examples, industry experienced people and two said expletive laced sentences about this practice.
You can blame it on the recruiters or the companies but things are the way they are because the vast majority of people have integrity in their resumes and don't do this and companies don't build teams of recruiters who are trained and focused only on this tiny edge case.
The problem here is tha…
So there is such a size-able Codesmith contingent at Capital One, they have their own Slack channel and they can refer people to a variety of teams.
Capital One has a variety of positions, but the one most people are getting is "Software Eng - Senior Associate" which pays around $150K a year base salary and total comp. A FAANG entry level is about $200K+ total comp based on performance for comparison.
Reasons how this works.
1. They only have one level lower than this that is very entry level "Associate Software Eng" and it's meant for new grads and kind of like a mini internship. So anyone with any experience would be considered for "senior associate"+.
2. Some of these people at Codesmith have experience already and don't do anything special to be considered.
3. Some of these people at Codesmith list their group projects as "work experience" and mislead the company into thinking t…
From my knowledge working with a wide variety of Codesmith alumni I disagree that "they don't teach anything". I see two buckets of people: first are the 2/3 of people with zero experience who self taught enough to get in, and they learn a tremendous amount of practical skills; second are the 1/3 of people with experience who do say things along those lines, and it's likely true because Codesmith's is a bootcamp aimed at helping people with no to little experience. The 1/3 of experienced people probably shouldn't go to Codesmith to learn skills but the 2/3 of not experienced people do find it incredibly valuable.
At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, work with experienced engineers) we have seen a slightly increased demand from bootcamp grads who can't find jobs, and our outcomes remain very strong, but we are targeting top tier companies and it's not for everyone. There…
I think they are generally similar yeah in that the materials are similar and they move at similar paces, and you should look at the day to day. Codesmith has a very tight community of awesome people as it's a bit smaller than HR. HR has a fantastic alumni network as well and it's much larger than Codesmith's but I feel like Codesmith alumni really "stay in the family".... just look at how many alumni come back in some capacity to teach or help out... almost every instructor at Codesmith WENT to Codesmith. People aside, Codesmith has really figured out the resume/job hunt process that works and has scaled to like 150-200 simultaneous students or so. Launch School's Capstone is in my opinion stronger but they take like 30 people at a time.
When it comes to HR vs Codesmith I often ask people's timeframes and their goals because both are solid options. Codesmith is slightly better if you…
What are you using to judge that Codesmith is the clear #1? Have you looked into smaller programs like Rithm and Launch School Capstone. Rithm has very small class sizes directly taught by seasoned instructors. Launch School Captone projects are very similarly designed but blow Codesmith OSP out of the water in terms of time spent.
Depending on what you are looking for Codesmith is likely a contender for the top choice, but curious what "consensus" you are basing that statement off of. Reddit is full of anonymous people who come and go. Codesmith currently has 50+ previous students on staff as Fellows and many more as instructors, and how do you know a bunch of "alumni" on here aren't also on payroll and leave that out?
I don't know the scope of the project, but work on something you are already passionate about. Here are some past examples I've seen:
1. A former wine buyer for a restaurant built a cellar tracking app for restaurants
2. A former professional musician built a machine learning sheet music generator
3. A college student built an iOS game like guitar hero but novel in a few weeks having never know iOS before
Some of the projects I built when self-teaching web development:
1. An "auto-voter" website for a reality TV show competition
2. An itinerary generator for Walt Disney World that told you which rides to go to when based on your group, intensity, ride characteristics and wait times, etc...
3. An internship review website
4. An app for assisting you to draft a minor league hockey team (I'm from Canada, this was common lol)
I also think Codesmith and Launch Schools projects of making a…
Yeah for all those who criticize my comments about Codesmith, I'm honest to god just capturing this sentiment from many alumni who feel this way too but don't talk about it often because of the fear of being ostracized from the Codesmith network. And if you see how some people attack my (in my intention) neutral pros and cons comments about this, you can see why those people feel that way.
I agree with most of what you are saying about how your skill and impact drive your trajectory once you get a job (and also the strong Codesmith alumni network who stay involved) - and I also add that many people can accelerate their careers by seeking outside training to increase that skill.
One key thing I disagree on, which is that the blatant exaggeration harms those with similar experience who don't exaggerate. I gave the example before, but I did a four month long entire semester college thesis project that involved hours and hours of running around Toronto doing scientifically correct user research, building a prototype, repeating, launching a product, hundreds of pages of writing. If I don't create a facade to make this look like this was a company and work experience to boost my resume, I'm being harmed by those people that are doing that for less significant projects.
At the…
Good question, this is what I'm talking about discussing sources and quality of information in questioning conclusions so that the overall body of knowledge gets better and better.
I can't give more info about the sources without DOXing (which as someone pointed out, is against Reddit ToS and also against my personal ethics), which limits the credibility... like an article based on off-the-record sources only.
The information provided was that at some point in time Phil did/does reference calls for people and confirms the information you provide him when giving a heads up that you need a reference call (there is a process for requesting a reference call that I also don't want to go into in case it would DOX people involved). What I don't know is if anyone checks that self-provided information's accuracy or not.
I don't have any idea whatsoever what the people say on these calls, and I…
Hi! It depends a lot on your experience and two paths:
One option is the career accelerator bucket of programs. Like Formation, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation. At Formation, most people we work with have work experience but have some people with CS degrees (or are graduating soon) who are DS&A heavy and aiming for new grad FAANG roles, and I think it's a good fit for that. Although you should be starting to apply and interview very soon because it's the new grad hiring cycle right now! Formation doesn't have any veteran benefits so it might not be a good fit, but check out these programs.
If you don't have any internships and are not aiming for a FAANG/top-tier company that is CS-fundamentals heavy then I would recommend looking at a bootcamp. A lot of bootcamps start from scratch, so veteran benefits or not, I would consider a program…
Every Codesmith alumni I've worked with at Formation (15+) has been a really fantastic person. Hard working, professional, well rounded, collaborative.
I've spoken to a lot of people and only a handful of loud people on here believe the mid-level senior level thing. They all understand that there is a difference between like mid-level Google vs mid-level Capital One (I think a senior at Capital One is an entry level at Google, and a "Master Engineer" is senior at Google).
They are running through a playbook of "how you create an OSP project", which templates you use for Medium, website, slack posts... everyone knows the "Sponsored talks from Single Sprout" are kind of a joke, but they do what they are supposed to do because they see it work for previous alumni.
Some of the loud people on here are actually just trolls or employees, there are also a small number of people with multiple…
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith but I know a lot about them and have done a deep dive into 200 alumni profiles. I posted a similar comment in the coding bootcamp sub reddit recently and am reposting here.
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and started coaching and training (potential bias disclosure: this is paid training) to help people from non-traditional backgrounds... so I work with a lot of bootcamp grads and learned a lot about how the top bootcamps work.
**Codesmith:** I do know a little more than most programs.... fun sto…
Yeah CIRR does two things:
1. Sets a standard and set of rules and definitions everyone agrees to follow
2. Requires reports to get audited
CIRR is a business league, founded by SkillsFund (now Ascend) and supported by a Course Report.
The results themselves are meant to have high integrity and I trust the numbers. BUT it doesn't mean the whole process and the rules don't have biases in them.
CIRR represents the bootcamp industry, it's a business league with the charter of supporting the industry the members are in. So it's in CIRR's interest for bootcamps to succeed, it's in Ascend's interest for bootcamps to succeed and for students to get loans from them. It's in Course Reports interest for bootcamps to succeed and get page views on their review website and higher valued sponsorships, it's bootcamps interest because more enrollments = more business.
People reading my comments: C…
I have zero affiliation with Codesmith. This subreddit is really Codesmith heavy so the topic comes up on a daily basis disproportionately more than any program for it's size. As one of the top program, this makes sense I think. I'll explain the context for why I know so much about Codesmith in particular after given broader context for others reading... how I know so much about Codesmith is an interesting story though!
My story: I worked at Facebook in California from 2009 to 2017, straight out of school from Canada all the way to E7 principal engineer in 5 years. Company grew from about 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and I did a ton of interviews, helped grow people's careers and really saw pretty much people of every background imaginable at/interview at Facebook... so after leaving, took a break and then helped start Formation ([formation.dev](https://formation.dev)) to help peop…
Ping alumni and ask! You ideally want to learn about the experiences of people who had a similar background to you and how they felt about the program.
It's really hard to trust any kind of "ratings" overall.
Course Report is a supporting member of CIRR and accepts sponsorships from bootcamps.
SwitchUp has a disclosure that they get paid by bootcamps that they send people to.
Career Karma gets paid by bootcamps to send people there and has sponsorships.
CIRR itself is founded by a bootcamp loan company and supported by a bootcamp review company (Course Report).
Reddit is full of anecdotal experiences from anonymous people without much context.
And bootcamps do all kinds of tactics to encourage positive reviews and discourage negative ones. In fact all businesses do.... like I saw at a bank even: "If we weren't a 10, talk to a manager first to work out any issues you had with your…
RE: Outcomes. Combo of all three yeah and with a fourth important factor.
1. NY + SF matters, remote salaries have been good too but this still a factor
2. Roughly "a third" (Codesmith's words) of people have prior experience such as a CS degree or industry experience. Yes this matters a lot. Especially those with prior experience.
3. Alumni network isn't so much "better" but more committed. Hack Reactors is fantastic, Hackbright's is also fantastic, but their network is very engaged. 50+ of their current employees are people who just graduated Codesmith and they have a fervent following and support from alumni that is possibly unmatched. Very helpful and caring alumni!
4. The exaggerated work experience + "just ask for "$150K" negotiation strategy. This is very effective at helping people land higher salaries. Many companies recognize Codesmith projects on resumes and put them in the…
There are definitely way more jobs than developers. The economy is very volatile so there are hiring freezes at some companies, and layoffs at others, but overall there are a lot of jobs and more engineers needed than there are engineers.
The problem is that not all engineers are the same and needs are the same. Senior engineers can have 10X, 100X impact over junior ones, but cost maybe 2-3X a junior engineer, so the demand for them is even higher. Whereas there is kind of a log-jam of bootcamp grads with very little experience, ready to contribute 1X for a reasonable salary, all vying for the same junior spots, and on paper all look the same. So it's more like a traffic jam where things aren't moving just because of too much traffic!
My advice right now for bootcamp grad (I'm bias, Formation works with a lot of Bootcamp grads) is to keep working on fundamental skills so that you can b…
I wholeheartedly agree with you and spend my time every day helping people find the best companies for their personal goals and situations. This above is general advice for most people that I haven't met and I'm always happy to chat through options with people!
I'm happy to talk about Formation and briefly answer the questions, it's off topic.
You are new here (your account is 2.5 weeks old) so quick introduction, Hi 👋, I'm one of the more frequent contributors to this sub and try to give people the perspective of someone with 8 years at FB, E7 level principal engineer, done 450+ interviews at FB - from interns to directors, was the top contributor of all time when leaving and they created an senior engineer archetype for me, and now I help run a training platform aiming to help increase diversity in tech by leveling the field for people from non traditional backgrounds and have worke…
Salaries and compensation will vary wildly based on: location, experience, how people do the math for their offers (trust me... people use different math for stock, bonuses, and benefits and it can be all over the place), and of course: a splash of luck.
I've said this many times now but your salary out of a bootcamp means nothing about your career in tech. The canonical example I give is that a $100K Dropbox Ignite apprenticeship is much better than a mid level job at an agency or bank, and possibly even an entry level job at a top tier company (I would still take entry level FAANG for the highly motivated people).
Let's say you have no experience. An apprenticeship at Dropbox, or another FAANG, will teach you very strong fundamental skills for how to work day to day as an engineer. Then you can apply all your hustle to crushing it, converting full time and loving your job and feeling…
Can you define "strong presence at FAANG"? I look at HR alumni in LinkedIn and see pages and pages of FAANG employees a few years down the road. I've found maybe two dozen Codesmith alumni at full time FAANG SWE positions.
Regarding salaries, not making this point about Codesmith or HR, but advice generally for those listening. If you want to make more money, your first salary out of bootcamp is very irrelevant in terms of you career income in tech. 90K apprenticeships at FAANG are infinitely better than a 120K job at a 100 person atartup with a team of 10 engineers. You'll be making way more money in just a couple of years. So judging just based on that the immediate salary alone is missing the forest for the trees.
Engineers at Facebook are not ranked by salary, and compensation varies by performance. A new grad with a $130K base salary will make between $140K and $300K based on th…
Thanks for civilly discussing too, like very much appreciate talking about this from different angles!
Yeah my response above was the two things I didn't feel middle of the road on, but I very much appreciate the hustle mentality as well. I don't sit with the "CS degree snobs" that a degree is strictly better than anything.
I also strongly agree with the argument about performance but that Codesmith grads are performing well at what Stanford/Harvard grads would call 2nd or 3rd tier companies. If Codesmith advertised itself as "Get the outcomes of 2nd tier CS school, paying the price of a 3rd tier school and in only 12 weeks!" I think that would still be appealing to MANY people.
Instead Codesmith advertises "Codesmith is a team dedicated to democratizing higher education for a new era - with graduate outcomes of an elite grad school but online and for 1/10th of the cost" [Link](https:…
Codesmith students when launching their OSPs post everywhere and then "stars and clap" each other's projects. They have a script to instantly clap 50 times on Medium and they comment on each other's project posts comments like how awesome and useful the tool is etc... Then they talk in their marketing about how many GitHub stars the projects have as a sign that the projects are very important and impactful in the community.
They used to officially have a week where people spent all their time hyping each other's projects but it's been reported that they stopped this long ago so I don't think this is what you are referring to. It's also very student driven and more of a tradition to "celebrate" OSPs being done.