Bootcamp Alumni: we are doing the first ever free 🎉 Formation Day open house on October 1st and I wanted to invite you all to join!
Hi everyone, I've gotten to know some awesome people on here over the past six months and it's cool to see them already finishing up bootcamps I recommended to them way back when!
I wanted to invite bootcamp alumni to join Formation Day on Saturday, October 1st at 9am PST! It's a **FREE** jam-packed day of FAANG-level interview prep. Our team is putting a lot of work into creating a really useful day for people and we hope you can attend and get a lot of value out of it!
This event is generally targeted at people who are working already and exploring changing jobs, or are bootcamp or computer science graduates who have been interviewing actively. It is unfortunately not meant for people looking to get into bootcamps, but as always, I'm happy to give my 2…
So one of the downsides to Codesmith is that most of the day to day teachers are senior students, Fellows, alumni hired as full time instructions, and none of them have worked in industry yet. What Codesmith does well though is they propogate their "way of doing things" through the staff very well and consistently. So it's a little like "just trust the Codesmith way and do it our way" vibe.... and it works pretty well, but there ARE other ways of doing things haha and if their way doesn't work for you then go to a different program that does and don't feel bad about ruining your application streak :D
They are softening the language around mid level and senior roles. They used to say 70% of alumni receive mid level roles and 25% receive senior roles, but recently removed it from their LinkedIn because it’s subjective to say the least. I worked at Facebook for 8 years and have an extensive network at top tier companies and people found that claim somewhat infuriating as people with no related experience cannot get mid level FAANG roles (rare exceptions and edge cases but not 95% of Codesmith alumni) and the roles they are calling mid level and a senior are somewhat made up. People with prior work experience can get mid level roles and people can get job titles with inflated language (some contractors call everyone a “senior engineer”) but at the truly top tier bar, no.
So I would encourage you to look at Codesmith if you have no experience and you’ll be just fine if you have the raw…
Hi! u/lemonpotatoes thanks for spending the time to write up a great response! So one thing I haven't sorted out yet with Codesmith is that Will Sentance is EXTREMELY FOCUSED on teaching. Like he is a brilliant person and cares a lot about teaching quality.
However, most Codesmith people I talk to:
1. Find the material like a firehose and feel always behind. They are told that the point is to learn how to learn and most people absorb 20% of the materials.
2. All of their teachers, TAs, and leads were all Codesmith alumni themselves and haven't worked in the industry.
Do you have your own thoughts on this? It seems like a big disconnect from Will's intentions to build the best approach to teaching.
Hey, fewer than Codesmith, can't generalize any patterns other than they have all been similarly hard working, professional, collaborative people and their outcomes at Formation were no different (not statistically significant, but qualitatively).
I actually spend like 5 to 10 mins a day connecting with \~20 bootcamp grads on LinkedIn from all different programs, as my network is super Facebook-heavy and I want to connect more with junior devs and see what they talk/care about (also why I'm here haha). Despite Codesmith's reputation, HackReactor has quite a plethora of alumni who down the road end up a top tier companies. Granted they are larger than others, but many more than Codesmith. I have a strong stance that if you have the life circumstances to do so, you want the RIGHT job out of a bootcamp to kickstart your career in the right direction, not the HIGHEST PAYING job, so you shou…
Absolutely possible! Codesmith is an interesting one because they are very proud of results and their bar to entry, but it's not as high as it sounds (don't get me wrong, it's high!) but if you start from 0, study really hard and have a little bit of natural inclination towards the concepts, you can get in and do well.
I would try to reach out to some of the Codesmith alumni on LinkedIn too that maybe have similar background to yourself. Reddit is a bit of a crazy place and real people via LinkedIn are fairly approachable!
So I think education-wise Hackbright's teaching and curriculum as it stands today in 2022, isn't that great, it's fine, but not one of the best of the best. However, the tech industry remains fairly man-dominated (75% - 25%) and some people who have done Hackbright have found it easier to learn in a more gender-supportive environment. The industry is changing and I absolutely don't want to stereotype, but from my experienced I can totally understand this perspective for many people as a big reason to join a program despite the quality of education.
Another option to consider if I was considering Hackbright, would be Ada Academy, which has been building more momentum lately. They have a guaranteed internship at the end which can help you get a job more effectively. Hackbright alumni have done well as they've progressed in their careers and the network is also strong and supportive, but A…
I have the same questions and the distributions based on experience, but I can give objective answers to some of those other questions.
1. 120K is the median, not the average, so it doesn't mean you are likely to get this salary. It means of all the people who join there is a 50/50 shot making over 120K and a 50/50 shot making under 120K. But it's more important to narrow it down by people of a certain background. Like I know at Formation, the average first year TC for people with 0 experience is $134K and for 1 - 2 years is $181K, so I have to hypothesize that people with less experience are on the lower end, but need data to test that.
2. The Codesmith numbers in CIRR do not include any kind of options, bonuses, etc... they are just base salary. This is a criticism of CIRR, but it's also very hard to compute TC fairly. At Formation, we EXCLUDE all TC that is not objectively measurabl…
Hi, disclosure, I’m the co-founder of Formation.dev, which isn’t a bootcamp but a career accelerator focused on practice and feedback and not on lecturing/teaching.
I believe data structures and algos are extremely important but not just to practice them because they are interview questions. A lot of Codesmith alumni I work with are able to solve problems but lacking a bit in the underlying fundamental concepts.
If you believe DSA are important to you for interviews, learning CS fundamentals for months (not a week) and applying them to DSA is the way to go, rather than whack a mole trying to just solve problems for the sake of solving interview problems.
I saw you added the median thing or maybe I missed but this is my views on that. If I’m Codesmith I would very justifiably be marketing like you are saying, but to have students personally insult me about trying to steal Codesmith students
and tell me the “average” Codesmith student makes 120K and it is the best with nothing close is not looking at the data critically. Averages, medians are different things. Data excludes stock and bonuses, etc… It is not a factual statement to say that. Dancing, you are super reasonable on here so this message is meant for the others haha.
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/x44mov/how_legit_are_codesmiths_stat/imtfku9
cc u/InTheDarkDancing, I commented on this today elsewhere and adding here for consistency.
I also appreciate the blog post explaining how Codesmith supports CIRR. I don't have a problem with Codesmith's position on CIRR, but what I have a problem with is people blindly supporting Codesmith as the "best bootcamp" because of their CIRR outcomes and regurgitating their marketing as unwavering fact. These are smart people, who want six figures jobs levering their problem solving and critical thinking abilities and regurgitating marketing without thinking critically about it is not demonstrating that ability.
Codesmith directly comments about how important equity and bonuses are in compensation. Yet they continue to market their CIRR results (which explicitly only include base salary and exclude stock and bonuses) solely as a marketing strategy to make a claim they are better than other b…
Stats are real but there's more to the stats. For example, CIRR doesn't include equity and bonuses which means the numbers are actually only equal to or HIGHER than in the reports.
The key thing here is "median", i.e. the 50th percentile.
20% of people make under $110K and 20% of people make over $140K.
An “average" is most useful when you have a normal distribution and this data certainly is not. A “median”, which is used often for data sets to remove the influence of outliers, is, but it loses a lot of information in the calculating. Let’s say one bootcamp has 3 alumni with salaries 0, 100, 200, and the other 100, 100, 100. Same median, same average, completely different stories.
Which is why you have have to look at the outcomes for people who are starting with a background like yourself.
It's very likely that people with zero experience and a few months of CSX before joining a…
I can add some info about Formation.dev (disclosure co-founder, not bootcamp, not an option for people with no experience). Each Fellow has a continuous conversation in their private job hunting channel containing 5+ team members. Each Fellow has a dedicated human (their Fellow Manager) to talk to and who checks in with you constantly. You have career team members who are constantly trying to find you opportunities for referrals at good companies. You also have ongoing continuous scheduled training and practice that never ends to you keep getting stronger and stronger as you job hunt.
This isn't the right forum as we compete with Interview Kickstart, Pathrise, and Outco, so apples to oranges. I'm commenting this because just because the bar for bootcamps is so low that even if the above commenter's story sounds like strong support, there is a bar 100X beyond that that exists if you look…
It depends on which school you went to and what experience you had (i.e. internships) and what your goals are. If you have very strong fundamentals and are having a hard time getting interviews because of a lack of interviews and you want to work at a non-tech centered company (e.g. an agency or maybe a bank), Codesmith could be useful but purely as a job hunting strategy because you'll add this OSP project to your resume that's branded as professional experience in order to help you get past resume screens (this is fairly controversial with people on both sides of the ethics of it, but it works). If you did a CS degree, the project is the size and scope of a semester long 4 person group project, however many alumni market it like they worked at a company for a year, and that helps you get initial interviews and sometimes even mid-level roles at 3rd tier companies.
The alumni connection…
It depends on the experience and people have different points of view here even WITHIN FORMATION haha, it's very personal and depends on how your job hunt is going.
Like bootcamps have a fixed curriculum and templates for each step so they steer you towards one resume, one way of doing things. I would start with this approach/way of doing things as the first attempt.
Then if you aren't getting traction you can can start being more creative. For example, my brother got a job at Riot Games 10 years working on LoL - he was playing so much day in and day out and this was his dream job, so he wrote a cover letter describing him as a new "Champion" in the game with a cute character image and stuff and he got the job! A new grad engineer from Canada with with an analyst role at a Game thousands of miles away.
So if you have a passion and unique take on things, even if you are delivering Doo…
Yeah alumni do spend a lot of time cranking Leetcode, and giving back to Codesmith, by teaching and doing random things to boost experience, and if it takes 3 MORE months to get a job I think that time can be spent more efficiently. Which I need to disclose my extreme bias here, because Formation (disclosure, co-founder) works with numerous Codesmith alumni to more efficiently and effectively prepare for top tier interviews after Codesmith and then refer them and help them find pathways to solid matching companies. It's really a win-win-win IMO (despite two leaders at Codesmith badmouthing me, and being accused of stealing students). Also note, we are backlogged right now for people with zero work experience so if you are reading this, you likely have to wait a bit to start.
I can give some thoughts on this, TLDR: CIRR results are real and Codesmith has very high outcomes on paper, but there are two sides to everything yes, nothing is perfect. I talk often to Don (disclosure, Formation.dev, company I co-founded, has sponsored one of this videos - as he doesn't accept bootcamp sponsorships, this is one of the only non-bootcamp sponsorships he's ever done but it could be a bias)
So first of all, I believe it was hard for him to find Codesmith alumni for a few reasons:
1. People don't list it on their LinkedIn's often because Codesmith suggests people exclude it from their history so their skills can shine, rather than any credentials.
2. To remain unbiased he won't include people who reach out to HIM first wanting to be on his podcast.
3. There are a lot of vocal Codesmith supporters that have worked either part time or full time at Codesmith in some capacit…
Your account is 8 days old and some of the things you reference reminds me of several accounts from alleged Codesmith students/alumni that have attacked me in the past and then been eventually deleted from Reddit. So I will be choosing to not engage. Sorry if I'm completely off the mark here I just don't have time to for this to keep going on if that is the case.
Anyone reading this, please read my comment history, it's public, and decide for yourself what you think of my advice and my disclosures.
I accept the feedback that I need to be very careful about disclosures and it will continue to be top of mind in my comments in this subreddit and across similar subreddits.
EDIT: and I'm blocked... the classic "last word" long text + block strategy I was alluding to in the patterns above happening yet again. I use my real name here to be transparent. If I wanted to have a secret campaig…
I've worked with a lot of (10+) Codesmith alumni who come to Formation and can comment on some trends where I think the DS&A bar is at.
Most have a good starting DS&A, not quite at the top tier bar. Most get through the basics relatively quickly compared to other bootcamp grads but most people need some reinforcement/relearning in one or more areas. They then spend a similar amount of time as everyone else on the intermediate (and advanced) concepts that are needed to consistently be at the FAANG bar.
In general, bootcamps are not the best environment for teaching DS&A because of the fixed timeframe and fixed curriculum structure. These aren't just problems to pass an interview, but it SHOULD be about learning abstract concepts and patterns that be applied to solve complex real world problems. People learn these at different paces and have different degrees of and areas of interest. S…
Thanks for the offer, I have worked with many (10+) Codesmith alumni, instructors, interviewed some myself, reviewed many resumes, etc... and thank you for being diplomatic in your post!
I don't doubt Codesmith's numbers at all. I also think Will Sentance is a fantastic teacher and is a brilliant person.
I have two completely valid criticisms of Codesmith that are not meant to mean the whole program is a giant scam and evil, they are very valid criticisms:
1. I strongly disagree with their definition of mid-level and senior jobs. I have brought this up to many people with 5+ years of industry experience and people have had much harsher things to say that I do about this.
2. I don't like how people, like yourself on your LinkedIn, list the OSP work as software engineering work at a company. Yours listed 4 months of experience but you had 14 commits over 21 days. I spent 2 mins looking…
Hi, I have some comments that I'll kind of put in bullet form to be a bit more succinct
* A lot of people move from accounting and music into tech, some of the abstraction in doing books comes in handy!
* If you are still working full time as an accountant and are not in a rush, a part time masters at top 10 CS school could be good and open up "new grad" opportunities via the school. If you really have like 1-3 years, and get get into a truly top tier masters program, this might be a good option.
* There are no bootcamps that have a high success at placing a MANGA. There are people here and there, but they are a fairly small percentage right out of bootcamps. People do tend to make it to FAANG in a couple years+ and that's a more realistic goal. Mid-tier and lower-tier companies are the most common outcomes. At Formation (disclosure: co-founder, not a bootcamp, NOT recommending for you,…
I mean I spent two hours a few months ago making a spreadsheet of 200 alumni after a bunch of people applied to Formation with the same resumes and the fake work experience. I didn't realize it wasnt work experience until talking to people and asking questions with weird answers, e.g. what were your goals, how were your hired, what non engineers did you work with, who set the team direction, how do you make money, etc... Then I learned about OSLabs, discovered it wasn't even a real organization, and did the deep dive above. I captured the work experience from LinkedIn profiles and the GitHub commit history of the people and discovered the average person claimed 12 months of work experience and had 3 weeks of commits on the corresponding proejct.
Since then have been keeping my ears open, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and tech talks for now, want to know this all works but try to re…
So I think this is a bit unfair and please don't post everything about individual people. Sure LinkedIn is public, but the students themselves are following guidance and shouldn't be called out in my opinion and nothing good will come of that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm particularly upset that a leader told Codesmith alumni that Formation is a scam 1-1 and that people claiming an affiliation with Codesmith have personally insulted me and Formation on Reddit repeatedly claiming that I'm conspiring to steal Codesmith students. I hope these people aren't actually affiliated with Codesmith and are just trolls (you never know on Reddit) because that kind of behavior isn't the amazing community Codesmith, and all of the hard working students and employees, stand for from what I've seen.
Why I think you are being unfair:
1. All of the alumni I have worked with are very hard working, pleasant, p…
Yeah tell me about it. At Formation we were trying to do this and decided to excluded private stock and options that had no primary or secondary market value in our numbers - which obviously lowers them, but in Codesmith's "Where are they now" report (which is not CIRR based) says they include all that in their numbers ("signing/annual bonus, stock options, equity, and relocation expenses") so presumably they have a way.
But I totally agree it's impossible for early stage private equity and options. The outcome is a range of probabilities and maybe they have some consistent way of calculating a mean.
Disclaimer, the following might appear critical of Codesmith, but I want to focus on the HOW IT HAPPENS instead of the WHAT HAPPENS. I also need to reiterate that it's a great program with great outcomes and a heck of a lot of fantastic alumni who are are hard working, professional and gr…
Hi, yeah to be very clear, I'm not doubting the CIRR results or the integrity of the CIRR process, nor am I criticizing Codesmith, I'm just think it's something notable to be aware of: that CIRR has pros and cons like anything else.
CIRR is strictly based on base salary only and Codesmith alumni with good jobs have stock and bonuses that are completely excluded so their real numbers are better than CIRR reports.
If I was Codesmith, I would try to get a more wholistic view of TC into CIRR. Which yes might benefit them, but also might make CIRR more accurate. Lots of ways of looking at things!
To answer the question though, I'm interested in it because a lot of people rely on CIRR as the source of truth as there's nothing else to go off of, and I want to help people make the right choice for the right reasons and ultimately help people find their right starting point in their careers.…
CIRR board member shakeup, four people out, Codesmith in, anyone know anything?
Hi all, I keep tabs on CIRR as it's a very interesting organization trying to standardize bootcamp outcomes. It's a 501c6 business league that was founded by Ascent Funding (who provided student loans for bootcamps) and it is made up of bootcamp representatives who have been trying to standardize outcomes in the industry.
It has it's pros and cons, which I've talked about extensively and aren't part of this post, but someone pointed out to me that in the past month or so the following board members **left CIRR**:
* Erin Frazier, Senior Director of Operations & Marketing, The Software Guild
* Joseph Kozusko, Chief Growth Officer, Ascent Funding
* Lesia Harhaj, Director of Career Success, Fullstack Academy
* Sharon Wienbar, Independent Director, former coding bootcamp CEO
And the following board members **w…
>As the husband of a current CodeSmith student, and a lead engineer, I agree with this description of the program. The tactics can be very surface-level. A tech talk and an open source project (that is made to look like a company on LinkedIn) can make a candidate appear much more senior than they actually are, on the surface, and give someone with no production engineering experience the false impression that they have more experience than they really do. And that is the secret sauce of CodeSmith.
The problem is: Everything is taught so quickly that it's impossible for most students to absorb it, and there is very variable quality beneath the sauce. (For example, a whole semester worth of data structures in an undergraduate course is taught in 2 days during the first week of the program). There's no possible way to do that deeply and well. Furthermore, classes are taught on powerpoint…
Interesting, thanks! Yeah I do know one person who also felt Codesmith was too slow as well and joined Formation (disclosure for anyone that doesn't know, I'm a co-founder and want to be transparent) after meeting the bar and being a better fit. I suspect anyone with work experience already or who is at a "leetcode medium" level Formation is probably better depending on their goals. But I honestly thought this was a small number of people... if it's a larger number this is really useful and explain some of the negative personal comments Codesmith employees and alumni have made about me haha.
I'm glad to hear they are trying hard to support someone falling behind. Despite these personal attacks I wish we could work better together and I think they really do have good intentions and care about each student. We have some fantastic Codesmith alumni at Formation who are highly motivated and…
Hey, the job market is changing a bit right now yeah. For top tier big tech, Facebook is frozen but for the past few months Randstad recruiters on behalf of Google have been talking to thousands of bootcamp grads and they were really ramping up. Amazon was also very approachable for bootcamp grads and their compensation increased significantly since end of last year. Google has a temp hiring freeze to "readjust priorities" and Amazon is slowing down hiring on some teams, but still chugging along.
A degree won't matter that much if you can get your foot in the door for an interview.
A lot of Codesmith alumni get their first jobs at a smaller company, or agencies, or banks, a very wide range out of options. They have an engaged network of alumni to help refer you to different places. And even if the economy gets worse, they will be around to help until you get a job.
The only time a deg…
hey! so this gets way too complicated to comment on Reddit, you can pull things out of context but this is like the topic of a multi hour long seminary or something. Let me throw a couple of things in here:
1. Having a good fit in your job and being at a very strong company will have more impact on your career than getting paid more in your first job. If you are choosing between a 2nd tier and 3rd tier job and one pays more, that difference in company is less important than going to a top tier company.
2. So once people are in a job there's a lot more going on that can impact trajectory, more training, more programs, more friends, etc.... so you can get the data, but it doesn't mean much. I haven't seen career tracking data other than Codesmith published a report of "where are they now" that has salary data from like 60 or something people from 3 to 5 years ago. The methodology didn'…
There is no best or second best bootcamps objectively. You should talk to people at the bootcamps to figure out what is the best fit for you and how people of similar backgrounds do.
1. Codesmith. Great for ambitious people who work hard. People come in at a high bar. Alumni network is strong and supportive.
2. Rithm. Great intimate experience where the founders and leadership strongly believe in directly teaching students rather than scaling and growing.
3. Launch School. Self paced month to month and aiming to get into the Capstone path, which is more intense with strong outcomes.
4. Hack Reactor. Strong all around. Very strong alumni network of people a few years down the road.
5. Hackbright and Ada Academy: these focus on specific demographics. Tech is fairly male-dominated and some people might learn better in a more diverse environment.
Now separate topic, CIRR results because it…
Wait so they can choose to "not ask you to fill our their CIRR", as in they like "accidentally forget to email you" wink-wink?
I mean to be completely transparent, I've heard of some sketchy things that OTHER BOOTCAMPS do, but the threats, personal insults, and backchannel badmouthing I've gotten from Codesmith employees, alumni, and students when I even talking about the pros and cons of the CIRR results is pretty crazy if this is the case and it's systematic.
Are you sure this isn't a one-off or anecdotal? Or if you have any proof or evidence can you DM me? Or report it to CIRR possibly would be a better action.
u/michaelnovatireplied·★ FEATURED
Hi there, I'm the co-founder of Formation, and feel free to ping me with your name/email if you want some more advice on areas to work on. Our bar is high and our assessment process is hard and you shouldn't feel bad. I want to reiterate that most people we work with (70%+ as of our last count) have worked for at least a year in SWE jobs so it should be expected to be hard as a bootcamp grad.
Our assessment is not an objective test so much as it's meant to help us pattern match you against other people we've worked with. We want to get a baseline of where you are at, and based on a meeting about your goals, if we can get you to where you want to go. If you got a perfect score you might not even need our help!
Anyways feel free to reach out regardless with maybe your LinkedIn and a little more info and I can try to give you some more advice!
I'm curious to hear CS students and alumni stance on this from the inside.
I can speak to the broader market and economy. It's quite an interesting time. Salaries and hiring were hot for the past 3 months and things are definitely freezing up right now. Two months ago, Google outreached to bootcamp grads inviting them to interview, getting inundated with thousands of applicants, and now Google is freezing hiring and reshuffling priorities and some people think there will be fewer L3 slots - yet to be determined. The companies that are hiring are aware of the "FAANG-Freeze" and are not negotiating as much and they have more leverage. I'm also seeing some interviews get cancelled or offers being "delayed" out of hesitation, and this can be demoralizing if you are super close to a dream offer and it gets put on ice. So regardless of the result - be ready for a potentially rougher time.
Th…
Sorry kind of replying to the whole thread here.
This is a normal thing I've heard too. I know alumni who felt similarly even during OSP. If you are open about it you get a "trust the Codesmith way, it worked for alumni" response and that has motivated people to keep going as they see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Throughout your career you'll feel overwhelmed a lot. Admitting it means you are open minded to learning. When senior engineers feel this way they sometimes fall back to what they know, even if it's not the best solution for a new problem.
I'm biased (no bootcamp, eng degree, ex FB 8 years, run career accelerator program) but I strongly believe in learning the fundmamentals rather than any specific technologies, or memorizing DS&A.
You want to be like a handy person that can do a heck of lot with a couple of beat up old tools by being just knowing all the different wa…
I don't think Codesmith is a notch above the rest, but it's absolutely one of the top bootcamps to consider. I've posted before about the reasons for why they effective relative to other top bootcamps but to repeat:
1. Higher barrier of entry, similar to how ivy league schools have good outcomes, the entry bar matters. It's not the only reason obviously, and the teaching has to be great, but it's a factor.
2. Codesmith resumes are crafted to turn 12 weeks (full time) of curriculum into a resume that looks like someone with about 1 year of work experience, and omitting Codesmith from the resume, which helps get more interviews than other bootcamp grads as their resumes appear strong. This is a more controversial point. Some people see this as misleading, others see it as a means to an ends as long as you can do well on the job. You'll find extremely strong opinions on both sides on Reddi…
Hi, we work with a lot of bootcamp alumni (something like 40%, close to but less than half have been to bootcamps in the past) so I thought this might be applicable to alumni or soon to be alumni.
Our advertising is similar focused and not advertised towards people looking for bootcamps. If you visit our website you might also get ads as well. Or do you mean me talking about Formation at all. You can look at my entire comment history and Formation is mentioned a lot but most responses don't mention it at all.
But point taken for sure, and will add a +1 in the remove category haha
I know a lot of recent grads and grads a few years later and can list some observations.
1. This sub has a ton of people looking into Codesmith and currently in Codesmith. As it should because it's on of the top bootcamps. I have seen a few alumni pop in every now and again, typically when Codesmith is directly mentioned in the original post. I don't think alumni frequent this sub otherwise.
2. Codesmith has forked outcomes, meaning the people with experience who get 140K or more salaries highly likely are not in this sub because they are already somewhat connected to the industry. The 20% of people making under 110K who have much less experience probably are more likely to be here (or be here as alumni when they get jobs). And the job hunt is not easy for any bootcamp grad so I could see people hunkering down during the job hunt.... why spend time here. I'm sure some people will hap…
There just happens to be a lot of talk about Codesmith in this sub. There is almost zero talk about Hackbright, BloomTech/Lambda School (who I know several former execs and is one of the largest bootcamps in the world), Springboard, all of which I'm fairly familiar with as well. There's a little bit of talk about Rithm, with whom I'm talking to the founder next week to catch up, and I talk about on here very neutrally no different than anyone else. I know a decent amount about CIRR and the early bootcamp founders.
We're early stage, we're relatively new, as the Codesmith alumni chug along through and share their experiences I hope you can have an open mind to figuring out what we are, the painting is not done yet and I am a small part of Formation. We have a crazy awesome team of people working their hardest to help each Fellow achieve and exceed their goals.
Sophie (founder) used to r…
I heard that from one other person now but I thought it was a mistake, that seems low no? People have said it's a very intense full time job and only for the top students. But top alumni are making over $120K salaries, so saying: "you're one of the top students and should be making at least $120K but instead you should do this for $52K a year". I'm probably missing something or factually incorrect about something, so listening for some people that have done it to explain.
EDIT: One theory I had was that I could see it being a great thing to do while job hunting and better than doing nothing, but someone said that they are so busy they don't job hunt (could just be that person 🤷♂️), and it's clear they are expected to do a three month contract and not leave early (which I've heard a few times in various ways but that like any at will, W-2 employment, you can leave early, and fellows h…
With my FAANG-hat on, If you don't have any experience you should be aiming for entry level roles for truly top tier companies. The Facebook/Google/Dropbox/Apple/Netflix/Microsoft/etc.... bar has multiple levels of cross-company calibration going on to make sure your level is based on your work experience and scope of responsibility and not on your raw skill level. If you are very skilled you will get very good performance reviews and bonuses at your level and take on more responsibility quickly to get promoted faster. But levels at FAANG are based on scope of responsibility.
To answer the question, at Codesmith there are are combination of different things going in the "non-entry level" statement:
1. Somewhere between 10% and "a third" (different people have said different things) have some experience before Codesmith. Those people might be able to get "FAANG-level" mid-level roles de…
Hi! I'm combining my take on things into a top level comment. I started working at Facebook in 2009, right during the end of the great recession. I started interviewing and doing university recruiting in 2010, shortly after the great recession. I know some some people might have also lived through that time, but I can share my view working in tech during that time. I also have hundreds of colleagues and former colleagues who worked through both that recession and the dot-com crash of 2000. I also work with a lot of experienced engineers now, helping them get jobs at top tier companies and am very familiar with the market, and know people at almost all the top companies.
I know a lot of people have opinions in the other comments, I'm just presenting my perspective for a different point of view for anyone reading.
1. Tech is not going away. The efficiency improvements to all aspects of l…
Just to clarify for other people reading this. Codesmith vs Formation is not a choice for most people. The vast majority of people are Formation are working as engineers and doing it part time, or have worked for 1 - 3 years and taking a pause). We have one person I currently know of that felt Formation was a better fit than Codesmith, and 10+ Codesmith alumni at various points in their careers. Most of these alumni come in at a middle of the road junior DS&A skill bar, slightly above the minimum we are confident working with but still clearly in the middle junior bucket and that is our lowest experience bucket. So the vast majority of people before Codesmith aren't choosing between the two. I recommend Codesmith to a lot of people who have no experience a couple times a week in DMs.
I do believe there are a very small number of people at Codesmith (I heard recently one or two in each c…
Always reach out to people who did the program and ask for specific details of day to day and specific anecdotal outcomes for people with a similar background to you.
Humans are humans and the adjectives we use to describe things are relative to our experiences. So rather than just "this was amazing" you want to know examples of why it's amazing.
Programing is not magic and an array is an array. So what makes one program better. Why are Codesmith's CIRR outcomes actually better? with examples. Not just "we teach people depth and how to think". Like what is it objectively that makes those outcomes happen. For example, this is more specific ''We test and oberseve what job hunt strategies work for alumni to get jobs and we double down on them and adapt, so we are always teaching people the job hunting strategies that are working and guide students on how to implement fhem'
Sorry for t…
From what people have told me there is a paid one (that is 75% off for alumni) and there is a like self service guide an alumni made (which I've read). There is A LOT of content, guides, opinions out there (some paid, some free) to get ready for DS&A interviews and these are honestly are fairly similar on par.
Obviously I'm bias, but we (Formation) have people who live and breathe 24/7 how to train people on DS&A, SD, etc..., thousands of tasks, hundreds of assessments, dozens of mock interviews with senior+ engineers people who have done hundreds of interviews, all the stuff is living and breathing and changing daily. So I have a high bar for DS&A courses because we are creating something magical here.... but we're very expensive and it takes everyone a different amount of time. Most of these courses above are a few weeks and static.
I left out the community support in my post below/above, I also hear that often about Codesmith. So most bootcamps have alumni slack/discord/etc... where people talk about jobs, referrals, etc... But Codesmith alumni are really bonded with the bootcamp and come back to do mock interviews and give advice. Like I heard about several attempts at creating advanced DS&A courses for alumni that were driven by alumni just wanting to help out and contribute.
I wish there was a simple answer to this because I get asked a lot.
It really depends on you. How do you learn (e.g. by reading, by doing, with people, alone)? What are your starting skills and how much programming have you done? What kind of job do you want? Where do you want to work?
For a high school student who has the opportunity to go to a top 10/20 CS/engineering schools, I would almost always recommend going the college route and doing top tier internships each summer. 1. you get to try working at different places and find the BEST job for you and not just A job. 2. you meet a lot of other people who will go one to other top companies and in other areas as well.
If you are going to go to a less well respected college just to get a degree on paper, I don't know if it's always worth it over other things, like bootcamps. This is where it becomes more personal. Codesmith is 9am to…
Yeah totally, when I bring this up people think I'm like calling them out and I'm really very much in the middle. Their work is a lot better than what a lot of bootcamps do. Their alumni are relatively successful. So I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making a judgment call for everyonI'm just trying to answer the question from my perspective as someone with a ton of industry experience who works with a lot of people who went to bootcamps in the past.
Codesmith is really focused on efficiently doing things to build up a resume that appears really good on the surface. They also do a good job teaching, but I just mean the priority is to make it all look good to help people get jobs, i.e. getting resumes past screens.
One thing is the open source projects that a lot of people ambiguously label as Software Engineer jobs at companies. The projects have websites and all the Codesmith people like and promote each other's projects to build momentum. Not bad stuff, just very focused on making it look good. The actual projects don't have outside people working on them and are like really really good college class group projects that got portrayed a little more like company like engineering work. And there is a playbook for every project that is the same flow. The Codesmith way.
Another thing is these tech talks that people do. They prepare…
I haven't done Codesmith but can answer the question from working with Codesmith alumni.
With Codesmith you get lifelong support in their community. After you officially graduate, you get continued check-ins, practice, access to the community for support and referrals, and ongoing lectures for interviewing and negotiation. While normal Codesmith is 9am to 8pm every day, this phase is way more hands off and on your own.
I cant answer when it ends. Around 90% of people get a job within 6 months of graduating. The 10% that don't, someone else can hopefully answer.
From what I've observed, most Codesmith people are ambitious and hard working and a lot of people find jobs. At Formation we've worked with a range of alumni from those who need extra help to find any job to those who are really solid but need extra support to achieve top tier jobs.
One downside of the job hunt support is…