u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Codesmith's problems are a leadership skill issue, not a student or alumni issue.
I criticized for years while simultaneously recommending specific people go there.
For a handful of people it's the right place. For statistically the vast majority of people reading this it is not.
But that was before the 20ish day outage and counting.
Leadership skill gap caught up with them and took down the company and there are zero people that should go there right now.
There are a few days of DS&A. I'm possibly one of the industry experts in DS&A and it's laughable to call that sufficient. It's the equivalent of a "sneak peak" without even really getting started.
The idea of hack hours is great, but they are a waste of time because it's you and recent alumni going over problems and no true expert guidance.
So you are wasting your time.
People who have a natural affinity for DS&A don't need this and would be much better off NOT paying $22,500 and learning on their own.
I really wish I could articulate this more - so many things at Codesmith are about putting on the appearance of something legit and I get where their DS&A motivations come from they have to acknowledge how much it sucks.
Instead they celebrate it as the reason people get great jobs.
I've spent SO MANY YEARS really studying all aspects of Codesmith - I know more about it than their c…
Codesmith's website is still down and recovery is not guaranteed. But the company claims to be operational and that they will be around forever.
It's been 9-10+ days now and the situation is unacceptable.
Since their reputation is built on engineering excellence and they teach people to be engineers, how can anyone trust anything they say if they can't take responsibility for what happened and be transparent. Like if the founder was like "I'm an idiot and I completely screwed this up. I let down the team, alumni, and everyone and I'm ashamed of myself. This doesn't reflect the contributions of hundreds of engineers and the great things we've done and we need to reflect on what went wrong, leave no stone unturned, and implement a comprehensive 3rd party audited set of changes to our infrastructure. We will let you know when those implementations are complete in two weeks."
So far their…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Oh so it's Meta then. Yeah Meta doesn't take bullshit, and maybe that's why I'm equally firm about calling out bullshit.
Meta is particularly sensitive about levelling and people who are mis levelled are generally laid off instead of adjusted or supported.
Also most of the people were contractors via 3rd party and those are throwaway at Meta and not a path to full time work.
I wrote a letter to Codesmith about this because one student lied (he apparently APPARENTLY STARTED WORKING AT CODESMITH BEFORE HE EVEN WENT TO CODESMITH on his LinkedIn) and I suspected this was to meet the YOE requirement at Meta.
Codesmith defended it and wrote a blog about him.
I have someone recently who told me that he submitted bogus dates to Codesmith on his OSP and Codesmith signed a letter the next day and handed it to him without checking anything. He believes they are committing fraud that just signs off on whatever people tell them.
Now, this person himself lied. But he didn't use the letter for anything and was testing the system instead so he wouldn't get in trouble telling his story.
I plan on pressing on this more in the future but don't have time now.
If you are a Codesmith grad and want to confidentially send me letters Codesmith signed for bogus OSP dates, my DMs are open and I will not share your name or identifiable info.
If there is systemic fraud and Codesmith didn't verify information intentionally to have an excuse to blame the students for lying to them, then they are in huge trouble.
I don't care about getting them in trouble but I…
Tell Codesmith leaders this. Every frickin day I see posts on my LinkedIn grasping at every possible straw, any possible value prop that will stick with people:
(Paraphrasing actual daily posts):
\- AI generated images for Rubber ducks/"array functions in javascript", etc...
\- Do this free course you might even get a job without paying anything!
\- People lie that you need a CS degree! Tech is for everyone!
\- We are a program for people with 10 years of experience! If you have a CS degree we're for you!
\- This is how you do a FOR...LOOP, if you want more come to Codesmith!
\- Do our free courses like "your first webpage!"
\- AI is scaring engineers, but if you are an experienced engineer who wants to learn AI with 10 years of experience, Codesmith is for you!
\- Here's an alumni video clip from 3 years ago saying something random!
\- Here's an alumni making $150K from IT sup…
2/2 Fullstack - they have traded hands from Zovio to SimpliLearn so it's really a front on top of SimpliLearns business. I don't know enough about it but I suspect similar to Hack Reactor it's kind of like floating around with most of the below-surface running generically within SimpliLearn.
Flatiron - they spun back off WeWork and I haven't heard anything either.
General Assembly - they actually are still chugging along and they are focusing more on B2B upskilling than. You can read more about their parent [https://www.adeccogroup.com/investors/annual-report](https://www.adeccogroup.com/investors/annual-report) and they actually ARE mentioned often as a potential business boom. But not as a bootcamp, as a B2B upskilling platform.
Launch School - yeah the only actually honest bootcamp left that discloses 6 months after a cohort graduates how each student is doing and has still done t…
Alright these are my well informed PERSONAL OPINIONS UNLESS FACTUAL DATA IS EXPLICITLY MENTIONED BELOW:
Codesmith is the worst of the worst and their "transparent" data is smoke and mirrors and everyone needs to be cautioned about it. I'm taking a hit to my reputation calling them out so aggressively but I'm so morally against what they are doing I can't stand silent. Share with your friends and carefully review my arguments your self - don't listen to them without doing so.
Hack Reactor - they have been fully rolled into Galvanize with Tech Elevator, which was fully rolled into Stride Learning. My understanding from people there is that Stride Learning isn't putting that unit high on the priority list and it's kind of a drag on the company. You can read the investor updates here and see what you think: [https://investors.stridelearning.com/events-and-presentations/default.aspx](https…
Yeah nothing negative invalidates individual experience - good and bad.
But far too many people are looking for confirmation bias and latch onto an individual success story as justification to do a bootcamp they want to go to.
Bootcamps prey on this, because as you said, you referred someone because it worked for you, and this is a strong strategy. It's why every bootcamp asks for referrals for friends.
But you have to zoom out and look at the market right now:
1. Market disappeared for bootcamp grads
2. Failing bootcamps are cutting back and providing worse services (be in Springboard or even a top three like Codesmith and Rithm (shut down).
3. Almost everything about the programs are equal or worse ( when the students need BETTER support.
4. They don't have the cash to invest in making things better so anything marketed to you as a major change is smoke and mirrors - the "change" wa…
NuCamp has never been known for being the best quality, it's affordable and their pitch is like do the same materials that you do for $20K for 1/10th the cost.
But because of the relatively lower price point, their community isn't as strong and committed.
I talked to a Codesmith grad this week that theorized that because it costs so much, people want to stick it through and lie on their resumes to get something out of it instead of complaining about it and admitting they wasted $22,500.
Whereas as $2000, NuCamp has way more people testing the waters.
Anyways, the premise of these Vibe Coding course is ridiculous.
Like if you are curious about vibe coding and don't expect anything out of it... nothing wrong with it.
But bootcamps need to stop making people feel like they will be successful over night.
Running a tech company is brutal and only naive and crazy people should do it. T…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
# ⚠️ SCAMMER ALERT
This thread is full of Codesmith planted questions that are not disclosed.
**Your LinkedIn is full of lies - you apparently already have 3 years of "software engineering experience".** So you are lying there or you are lying here.
Sounds like you are just like the majority of Codesmith grads who lie cheat and steal your way to a SWE job.
Check out all the recent alumni who get jobs, open each of their LinkedIns and see how many months or years of experience are listed for their 3-4 week long project.
This has been up for a while but I feel like Outco is dead anyways. Like I think the founders moved on to something else. A number of people have been sued by them (and threatened to be sued) for not paying them after they thought they were eligible for the job guarantee refund and the collectors they talked to didn't seem that organized.
Pathrise also shut down.
I have a business principle that you ruthlessly have to focus on delivering value to people for what they are paying you or you shouldn't exist.
More bootcamps, interview prep programs, immersive, mentorship communities should follow this advice because far too many offer like a $50 Udemy course, add on recent alumni as mentors/teachers, add on intangible benefits like 'community' and charge $20,000.
You might get by if people get really good jobs and credit the intangibles.
But if you aren't trying to deliver value and are…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Hopeless but not impossible yeah.
So look at Codesmith's stats since we're talking about them and they release numbers.
2021 grads: about 90% of grads placed within 6 months
2022 grads: about 80% of grads placed within 6 months
2023 grads: about 40% of grads placed within 6 months (and very notable that there was a huge double digit percentage increase in people who ghosted Codesmith and got counted as a placement because of LinkedIn
2024 grads: no data yet, but based on Codesmith's little bits of data there have been about 250 offers in h2 2024 -> h1 2025, which covers some 2022 grads, 2023 grads, 2024 grads, and then 2024 grads.
Now enrollment has declined because they cutback from 4+1 to 1+1 cohorts in Feb 2024 so it's hard to tell what the placement rates are but they definitely aren't good.
Codesmith also should have plenty of information about 2024 grads now that i's 6 mon…
1. Agree the core team/admin team and the instructor team is hardworking, no question there. But Codesmith's codebase is apparently a giant mess that looks like the largest OSP project - which isn't surprising because the people that work on it just graduated Codesmith. I would say the team has tremendous POTENTIAL but the technical people lack the experience to be called talented. Based on some alumni talk that someone told me about where Will tried to explain the Codesmith architecture (in an attempt to learn it himself) and it literally sounded like the worst code I've ever heard of for a 10 year old company that calls itself a tech company, something like deploying the entire codebase to 32 microservices that each ran one of them???
I know this sounds mean but it's just being real. Like every instructor I know that sees Codesmith defend the quality of the code or the legitimacy of…
It's the exception, not because it doesn't have troubles from the market too but because they are marketing themselves as the "slow path" to becoming a Software Engineer.
More people will try and few will succeed but they won't be mislead or burned with it.
Now because of this philosophy it hyper optimizes for people making it through Capstone that are actually good fits and they actually get jobs, but it's relatively small compared to typical bootcamps.
But the fact that they have a 70% six month placement rate (accounting for every student, down from 100%) that is quite high when somewhere like Codesmith has a 40% six month placement rate (when including ghosters based on LinkedIn) shows why this slow and stead approach works.
Financially though it works because Launch School is small and founder run. Their founder teaches and helps people.
Codesmith has a bunch of directors and m…
That's why integrity is so important.
I have an email chain with Codesmith leaders about literally the math having problems on their California reports on their website and they never responded or acknowledged those concerns and answered other things.
Like if you publish things that were made up for marketing purposes, rushed in a panic because you realized how terrible the numbers were and did a massive LinkedIn profile sprint not so diligently that's fine but don't tell the public that.
If you keep telling everyone your data is audited but you and CIRR don't answer me about where the audited version is (historically CIRR publishes the audit paperwork after they are audited) it's sloppiness.
People make mistakes here and there but almost everything here is a mistake and when I talk to former employees that proactively tell me how clowntown everything is run there... everyone "in ove…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I haven't made a penny of salary for the past 8 years and i'm not selling anything. I'm pointing out how poorly positioned Codesmith's AI program is and how they need to seriously watch out for growing it through milking alumni - who are paying for something that they were promised for free for life.
I've spoken to a number of companies on the B2B side floated different ideas around. The answer - we want our fleet of 100 ML engineers to teach this internally.
Codesmith's AI program is maintained and lead by someone with I think about 2-3 years of industry experience, ZERO prior to Codesmith, has not done AI professionally.
AND IS DOING IT PART TIME WHILE HE WORKS AT MICROSOFT.
There's no way in heck this program can be good. No way.
I'm telling you I will work 16 hours a day to build a much better AI program applying my experience as the number one code committer at Meta and showing…
I had the same reaction to Chief AI Officer and called it out. They are pushing this narrative of the "modern engineer" - someone who brings their past experience to SWE and AI and is a unique perspective that makes the industry better.
I agree with the idea but the blocker is that this applies to people with EXTENSIVE SWE WORK EXPERIENCE and not to bootcamp grads with no experience.
They keep trying to push this narrative and come up with random alumni examples and twist them to fit the mould.
Codesmith: you can't force product market fit by just telling stories about how your product meets the market. It might make you feel good because the stories are great, but If it's not there it's not there and you guys are done - hang up the towel and if you want to keep doing this, start over from scratch.
Alina is more capable of running the company for sure but it's too little too late honestly.
She needs a capable team around her and almost everyone has left.
The whole industry is changing and the teaching style and pedagogy at Codesmith is dying out and you don't have a team left to invest in building out.AI ways to learn. You have to flip your company on its head. But you don't have the money and you don't have the talent to build that.
Even if Alina has a vision, the team is delivering garbage code (as her and I both know the quality of) and people there isn't even realize it. They celebrate the heroes of the past - who themselves really didn't know what they were doing either.
Will needs to leave the company entirely, which it sounds like might be over time and he floats to academia - where maybe he should be - because he just doesn't have the experience to forge software engine…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I didn't say anything about you. I was responding to that person about the typical grad behavior for why many Codesmith grads defend this behavior.
I had a rant that I deleted because it was not coherent. But time will tell and the truth is catching up with them.
Most people have already figured it out and apparently many remaining staff are one foot out the door.
Maybe the CEO steps down and Alina takes over and maybe brings in some funding to buy out the company for cheap and they try to build something new and sell it off for a profit later on in a consolidation of remaining bootcamp brands?
Kind of like what happened at App Academy. The founder finally left, the new CEO replaced everything with he own AI platform. They stopped doing SWE and kind of floating around as a completely different version of the program before.
Codesmith will probably follow that path and they really sh…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A good question is to ask why I'm like this.
Seek first to understand, then be understood is what Codesmith told their staff, and they should action it.
I offered to help Codesmith and some ideas to work with them. Their leaders didn't want to.
Alina confirmed to me that Codesmith paid some guy to post on Reddit and I gave her evidence that the same guy lied and tried to get me banned and that the mysterious missing founder of the Codesmith subreddit was involved with this scheme.
I offered to apologize publicly for any individual person who felt attacked by my commentary if they publicly apologizing for making shit up about me and sending it out to their community.
They declined to apologize.
Then I open up LinkedIn and see all kinds of fake made up stories that seem to rewrite history and promote Codesmith.
I hear about more and more layoffs even as of a month ago.
I hear about…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
A number of alumni are brainwashed and don't even realize they are lying. And then they get upset or defensive when you call them out because Codesmith "changed their life".
A number of these people come around eventually and it's one of the reasons there is zero Codesmith activity anymore on here.
After people get out of the bubble they see the truth and they don't go back and Codesmith alumni network is also dying.
Yes good point. I'm enraged right now and very upset at them.
They just posted on LinkedIn about how a grad went to Codesmith and got a $150K job at Twilio right away.... the grad went to Codesmith in 2018, got a job at Virgin and then Twilio in 2021....
They have a Dog Bot responding to me on Reddit now that is an incompentant use of AI or an idiot pretending to be AI.
But I'm losing it and sorry if I'm unprofessional about it now. I am a transparent and authentic person.
I believe I agreed with that in my post.
My the 'things' people told me about involve Codesmith cooperating in some fashion and they are clearly aware of it.
I totally get that if a student is like "help, I put OSP as work experience and they want to verify the background check, what do I do!?!?!" that if Codesmith staff tell the person "too bad, you're toast!" that would be bad. But from my understanding, this has happened enough times that Codesmith is aware of it.
I surfaced this to a leader in a 1-1 call and the leader said they would look into it because this person was shocked and puzzled that it was happening.
Well it's still happening!
Codesmith Grads - Stop lying on your background checks. Your OSP is not 'employment history'. I've received a number of couple of people having trouble with background checks because they put their project as 'work experience'. STOP.
I've received a couple of reports over the past few months of Codesmith grads having trouble with background checks, failing background checks / having flags raised, etc... because their "Open Source Project" is listed as months to years of "employment history" and they need Codesmith to sign off on it, and it's too late after you started the background check. These reports were shared with me indirectly from concerned students/alumni.
A Codesmith leader told me point blank to my face that Codesmith does not sign off on background checks for OSPs as paid employment, and if you list it as volunteer work, they will verify the 3 week project for the timeframe…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I don't care either way, but if a program is publishing how amazing their outcomes are when they are good and goes RADIO SILENT when they are bad it pisses me off.
Codesmith's CIRR results tanked so they started publishing random time windows of absolute number of placements and then then even stopped doing that because in the past six months it's like fifty or something and a number of them have been looking for over a year.
I criticize them LEGITIMATELY and they come back with garbage data.
I bet their response to this is 'Michael is an asshole our placements are amazing, we had an average increase in salary over previous work of $70K so far this year! who cares if there aren't as many placements it's take people longer that's fine, it's all about average increase.'
My point is that changing the goal posts and each time telling everyone how "transparent" you are is garbage behavio…
Short answer yes. But long answer - Launch School still publishes detailed reports exactly 6 months after the cohort finishes and Codesmith published garbage reports to cover up their collapsing results.
I would put Codesmith worse than the ones that don't publish reports because it's been misleading the public in my opinion and that is worse than if they didn't say anything at all. They keep saying how "transparent" they are and it's a giant performance and bull shit from people with no integrity.
I spoke directly to one of their leaders on a phone call and I really just don't think they understand how messed up their own data is, or they won't admit it publicly because their company is collapsing and this is the nail in the coffin for them.
More details on what that why I feel this way.... I'm a very centrist person and I have been centrist with Codesmith for 3 years. I used to reco…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Here's some feedback for Codesmith you can relay. BE HONEST AND STOP LYING TO THE PUBLIC. Will: you very well know about continuing layoffs that keep happening over and over and over and you straight up lied above that there haven't been any 'restructurings'.
I'm absolutely not backing down and going to keep applying pressure until you are honest and tell the truth and stop manipulating the public.
Students deserve better. Your alumni deserve better. The former staff members who are treated like garbage deserve better. It's so sad that such dedicated team members who are laid off suddenly are so insignificant to you that you don't even acknowledge any 'restructuring' happening.
Absolutely garbage behavior and I'm enraged.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
I really hope Will isn't actually the lead instructor for this program for long because this is one of the worst uses of AI I've seen and thank you for proving my point that he is not qualified to be leading with curriculum development and teaching of this course. I don't want to discourage people from learning AI and I wouldn't be remotely hard on Will if this was a student learning AI, not someone branded as an industry leader in AI leading teaching a $4600 for 4 week course.
This is a completely defensive comment about one of five points and it doesn't even address the point whatsoever... it defends the legitimacy of the music band - which I never disputed - and instead I was attacking Will for posting like a dozen promotional comments for the band that didn't disclose he actually was in the band at the time. Your comment is defending that behavior - defending manipulating Reddit wit…
Based on their website as of 6/7/2025
Admin Team (8 people): no one on that list has a technical/engineering background.
Instruction & Engineers (15 people): more complex breakdown -
Lead Instructor (2 people): full time staff, both of whom graduate Codesmith roughly a year ago and have no real industry experience. One of them "works" for a Codesmith alumni's shell company/startup that Codesmith people use to beef up their resumes.
Engineering Mentor (2 people): full time staff, a stepping stone to the Instructor title. These are Fellows who stay on full time - kind of like Full Time Fellows.
Faculty Lecturer (1 person): James Laff was the head of curriculum and seems to have left, and this role is kind of like the more junior stepping stone to that role. This person graduate Codesmith end of 2024 and has never worked in industry.
Engineering Fellow (5 people): these are hourly TAs…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Other instructors feel exploited. So In your case - you do this program for 1 month and say have 30 people = $130,000 of revenue for Codesmith. What are they paying you? $100 an hour? And you are doing like 10-20 hours a week?
So you are responsible for making the curriculum, teaching it all, and you get paid like $10,000 a month and Codesmith made $130,000.
Even if they have a couple of other helpers (both technical and operations) and the total cost is $20,000. There are no other costs here, no career program, no alumni support, etc...
This means that Codesmith is exploiting your generosity to make $110,000 a month off of you, which is absurd.
Now imagine you ran a program entirely by yourself and started your own company, think of how much money you would make... you are effectively paying Codesmith $100,000 a month for the opportunity to 'pay them back for all they did for you'…
It's not about getting the role, it's about the next 5 years and what AI is going to do with that.
Codesmith's results were from people exaggerating resumes and Codesmith looked the other way.
AI will replace you if you were lying and getting by by sheer hustle. AI works 24/7. AI can parallelize 1000 tasks.
The only think AI can't beat yet is the taste that comes through SWE experience.
IMO, there is no alternative right now, just don't change careers and learn programming for free on the side slowly over a couple of years.
I'm very confident in the next 5 to 10 years
1. We'll know what all the new jobs AI created are
2. We'll be able to train people for those jobs quickly with bootcamps - but the demographics might look different than bootcamps today with smaller deltas each time around and people aren't becoming "programmers", they are Accountatns becoming like AI Accountants.…
Codesmith marketing campaign: "you’re not late to tech". Unfortunately you likely are, and this kind of thing is tone deaf and misleading. Instead of making changes in their program structure they are marketing a 10 year old program structure as if it still works and please don't fall for it.
Codesmith sent out a mass email campaign today that I found offensive.
>If you’ve been thinking, *“Is it still worth trying to break into tech right now?”,* you’re not alone… but we will let our latest data speak for itself.
Yes, let's the data speak for itself. For 2021 grads about 80% got jobs within 6 months of graduating, and for 2022 about 70% and for 2023 grads about 40%. We don't know what it is for 2024 grads but word on the street is it's about the same as 2023 grads or worse.
The trend is falling off a cliff so let's let the data speak for itself and run for the hills.
>Despite layof…
The $895 was meant for people that did the new SWE immersive because it's the same as the old + the 4/5 AI lectures now. So the $895 would be for the Saturday discussions I guess? I'm not super sure but I get the vibe they are trying to leave the door open for heavily discounted alumni rate because they originally said loud and clear that Codesmith will give you everything you need to be hired for LIFE and by backtracking on that to extract money from alumni, it's a bad look, so maybe if you watch the 5 free alumni lectures you can ask them to qualify for the $895.
I don't want rub salt in a wound, but an alumni could organize their own thing, like slap a calendar invite on your calendar to all watch a lecture recording every week and then discuss it with each other, and then do a project together.
You'll get 85% of the value for free.
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
Yeah it's absurd to me. They have a feature piece and video interview with a Codesmith student about their recent experience and then the video came out and I went to the person's LinkedIn and noted that the person was the Lead Instructor now for the course he just took.
Like they aren't doing journalism or vetting. They are making videos for whatever people pay them to do and then try to claim they aren't bias in choosing the awards.... well there are zero reviews for this new AI program so I don't understand how they could have any information to make this claim and their info is heavily based by what Codesmith paid them to say... and that's echoed back in these awards.
It's just a pile of garbage.
I don't say no one, but I do say that it's not systematic anymore - every placement feels like a one off case. Launch School Capstone is small enough that historically each person was a one off case and it never relied on patterns.
Larger programs had hiring partners and common places where alumni pass down back channel referrals and cover up the fact that all the people have zero experience and then help the people ramp up. For example Codesmith -> Capital One is this.... people scheming to lie on resumes and get through interviews and then help each other not get fired after starting.
Hi!
1. Internships are like 5X the next point so it really is the biggest tip. But other tips are: network with past alumni as they might be able to help refer you, pay attention to companies or recruiters that come on campus (IRL or digitally) to recruit, try to be willing to move anywhere and consider jobs absolutely everywhere.
2. A MISTAKE was I was not remotely self aware of my communication in meetings and it was very bad, like absurdly bad. Like I was not good at energy and jumped too quickly to solutions without giving a chance for people to explore.
A MISCONCEPTION was that work would be really academically hard and raw intelligence was most important. Things weren't complicated but they were complex and success was about understanding and navigating the complexity. A corollary was that you I learned you could do just as well as the smartest people by our working them.
I wis…
No not at all, even non profits in this space have tuition, but you want to make sure it's transaprent. Like nothing in life is free so if something offers a money back guarantee for example - that sounds too good for you. Do 5 months of free classes! Like someone has to pay the bills and if that's the case, the success cases have to pay enough to cover all of the failure ones and are overpaying.
There are also "VC funded programs" where the program raised outside funding from venture capitalists and loses a ton of money per student in an attempt to grow larger and eventually make a profit.
These ones might be the best deal because you are actually getting a deal and the program is losing money.
The flip side is that the programs have pressure to grow so they might cut corners too soon as well.
Everything has pros and cons and transparency is key so you know what those are.
There have been placements, but they keep shedding staff so it could be another thing falling through the cracks.
There certainly aren't a lot of placements.
And a couple placements I've seen and really embellished and made up LinkedIns it's almost like an insult or a joke.
One started working at Codesmith as a TA prior to starting Codesmith as a resident.
One claimed their 3 weeks of commits on their OSP were 1 year 8 months of experience and got a job recently.
I flagged both of these cases to them.
Like I believe one person there is trying to fix things but it's just not really fixable.
Every day people hit me up with their personal experiences there and their engineering system seems like a giant scam now and I'm super annoyed.
Like TAs and instructors who migrated libraries from one React library to another in 20 places and then put down 1 year of SWE experience as a senior…
I was highly recommending Codesmith back in the day, and encourage a bunch of people to go there in 2021-2022. Sadly the market is falling apart and not a single person is still on their full time instruction team since then, literally about 20 instructors left and the longest serving one joined at the very end of 2022. And a number more joined since then and left. There are only 2 lead instructors AFAIK right now. Nevermind a number of directors (4 I count) who left and haven't been replaced.
Every day I get their LinkedIn posts touting 'you could be next', 'now's the time', and all these conferences their CEO is going off to and speaking at and it's really making me sad.
Then there are all these sketchy accounts on Reddit promoting them. Like I caught this account pretending to be a student who was sharing promotional links all over Reddit for CSX with UTM tracking params to trace th…
I don't think predatory, but on the "delusional" aspect, it's probably too mean of a word.
Like I think Turing had arguments for believing they could finish out 2025, and the changes in the economy made that not possible.
Should they have known that a President who has said the word "tariffs" over and over for about 40 years might introduce tariffs? Yes.
Do they have a crystal ball to tell the future? No.
My centrist stance on this is that bootcamps have to be absurdly transparent right now into what is going on.
I'm absurdly hard on Codesmith more than Turing because they live in an alternate reality on this stuff and don't acknowledge anything publicly. Like if all your instructors turned over except for 1 in less than a year, something is absolutely, fundamentally, stop the presses wrong and you need to pause immediately and just rebuild or reset and come back in the future. But…
All things equal I would look at the school and opportunities for industry internships that upper years have been getting that you might be able to get.
CS -> SWE/Design/PM
Math/Stats -> Data Analyst/Data Scientist
Both can -> Data Engineer.
I would probably take overlapping classes to keep your options the most open, but once you get that first internship, assuming you still like it, I would stay in that lane and keep trying to get better and better internships in the same field so you come out strongest as a new grad.
1. This person was the equivalent of a top tier low mid-level/high entry level and while he said he had zero experience in that blog post, his LinkedIn says he had a year of "freelancing" experience, so he likely lied about his YOE to get the mid-level job and then performed well to get the senior job.
2. Codesmith alumni (outside of Codesmith itself) cheat on Cap1 interviews by sharing all of the questions they ask and having currently employees feed answers to people for those questions.
If he got promoted relatively quickly maybe he deserved the job! But to get the job it's more likely he "hustled" a lot to get it. Many people lie on resumes and cheat on interviews so this isn't a Codesmith thing, but since Codesmith denies any kind of supporting of cheating and lying, they can't get credit for helping with that piece, nor can they take credit for how smart this guy is inherently. S…
I couldn't disagree more and this comment demonstrates a lack of understanding of how top tech companies work. Maybe it's how other companies work though. Like I know Capital One, which isn't like a top tech company but is a good company, has a very gamble process. Codesmith has so many people there that feed each other questions to prepare and game the process, specifically the System Design round which is very fact based and a small number of questions there. Codsmith grads have a document that contains these questions and they practice them with previous grads who work there. They also have a channel at Capital One to support each other because most have to lie to get past the resume screen and work with more junior peers who outperform them at first, and they use this channel to support each other.
Anyways, the interview process isn't a game of leetcode and saying what you need to d…
"Senior Software Engineer" at Cap1 === "Principal Analyst", they are the same level, which is what he was promoted into.
You need to have 4 years of experience to be senior at Cap1, and I personally have seen the resume of a grad that a Codesmith career services engineer helped him fake to show 4 years and be qualified for that role as he was not going to be considered without a resume showing that.
Carlos received a Senior Analyst Role, which corresponds to high entry level/low mid level at top tier companies compensation and scope-wise. "Senior Software Engineer" at Capital One is a different level and corresponds to Prinicipal Associate that he was promoted to.
I know at least one Codesmith grad who got a Senior Software Engineer role but he lied on his resume to show 4 years of work experience to get the job.
Similarly Carlos in that blog says he had zero experience yet his LinkedIn showed a large amount of experience, I think as a freelancer or something last I checked.
The program is motivated by trying to support people from diverse backgrounds, which is why not only the score matter, but the soft-skills, motivation, and demonstrating Netflix values.
It's subjective and I totally understand as a student and not having worked at Netflix that it's hard to self-evaluating those aspects either, but those are equally important - we've been doing this program for a few years now and we want to make sure we select/recommend people who **we see signal** of a path to getting hired there
I edited to add Launch School. Believe it or not, I respect that Codesmith at least tries to publish consistent data on a consistent cadence and I didn't want to put it side by side with Launch School which makes Codesmith's placement rates look way worse.
The problem this is Launch School has every single graduate accounted for and a ghosting grad isn't included. Codesmith includes LinkedIn verified ghosters in their data.
What would you recommend I do, just only publish Launch School's in this case?
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy★ FEATURED
That sounds awesome. I've been consistently saying for years that bootcamps are sufficient alone but apprenticeships (or any kind of supported on ramp) is the absolutely ideal job for bootcamp grads.
It takes some investment but its a way to get some really good people without paying $500K for a Stanford grad.
The problem I'm seeing right now is there are fewer bootcamps left and places like Codesmith where grads lie about their experience to sneak into more experienced roles, covering up the fact they went to a bootcamp. It completely breaks the system.
Imagine you hire five boot campers and they go through your rotation program and you unintentionally/unknowingly hire a codesmith grad as a mid-level engineer who is equally experienced as the boot campers, but is now in this weird spot where they're faking it all the time that they have experience. really the ideal would be that they…
yeah, we've had conversations in the past about people going to boot camps to learn rather than to get a job. unfortunately with the market right now, the people who are going to boot camps are people who have done a lot of research and are going to get a job.
like the people who are complaining to me so much about Codesmith right now is a mix of that. their teachers are recent graduates that don't know as much as they do because they were like super prepared and went there just to get a job. and then people who got a job or didn't get a job but are complaining that of way more people than expected in their cohorts did not get jobs yet and that they're very upset with the support they're getting, like cutting off mock interviews this month for alumni according to one person, something they promised for life.
like I hear so much about just one program because it's spiraled over the yea…