I think their director is a reasonable person trying to make CIRR better, but there are hardly any schools left and Codesmith is the elephant in the room.
I mean I expect they will have to show 3 month, 6 month AND 1 year placement rates, and hopefully it will be clear people are taking a lot longer to find jobs.
I'm not anti CIRR or anti bootcmap, I'm just a perosn who believes in the win-win-win - student wins by being in the right place, bootcamp wins by making money, company wins by hiring the right person for the right job.
The solution is really hard because They have been advertising for 7 years that they create mid-level and senior engineers but they are like a grad school boot camp.
It's extremely hard in this market to actually place people with no or little experience in mid-level and senior roles, enough people did during the boom times that it carried the reputation of the program.
The ideal strategy right now is to place people in internships and apprenticeships and other entry level roles that are designed for people with no experience and will very quickly ramp them up into mid-level and Senior engineers. but if Codemsith doesn't drop that stance then there's not much they can do except what they've been doing.
Yeah my feeling was they were just going off reported offers, which could be from anyone at any time via a Google Form. And past alumni sometimes go back for negotiation help.
Seems disingenuous for them to say that though if they know placement rates are lower and have shared all this other data and numbers except for those.
They have an internal 2023 report that the CEO leaked in one of his talks so I know THEY know the data internally at least haha.
Yeah that's not a bad idea if you can wrap up all up before YC. There's no way in heck you could do anyting, including sleeping, after starting YC.
But you might also find some cofounders or contract employees through Codesmith alumni and they are making a bigger push for this kind of thing.
Working at startups for free/part time/contractor is a great way for bootcamp grads to get experience.
From my experience it's a terrible way to build a company because of the lack of experience of those people. But if you are a startup and have no funding and no experienced friends to help, I know a number of fresh Codesmith grads who don't have jobs, can't get interviews and this kind of thing would be potentially a win win.
There are some grads and alumni who are actually starting to do this! I've heard of two cases myself.
Side note from longstanding discussion about Fanzter :P, u/Swami218…
Yeah I agree with a lot of that and why for a number of people 1-1 I recommend Codemsith for their situation. There's a lot of good things for the right people with the right expectations.
I don't think they are being open and transparent with candidates though. Having seen a number of info sessions and/or people who go and message me quotes or questions.
And I see people in the audience get hyped up by statements that are borderline.
Like imagine an alumni said straight up, I have no experience and I got a 120K job, you can do it by following the Codesmith way.
Then you look up the LinkedIn and see 19 years of web developer experience listed.
Then you look up the LinkedIn of the person who asked the question. Some have gold backgrounds for Codemsith, but some do not, yet they still things along the lines that he speaker and say how their reply gives them hope and they feel so much…
# UPDATE JAN 9, 2024
This is a recent follow up with non-anonymous grads that further perpetuates the observations in the original post.
Codesmith recently posted this video of recent alumni who got jobs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaeK77HL2Kw)
All 3 were asked if their past experience helped them get a job. Without doxing anyone (you can watch the video), these were the response versus LinkedIn
**ENGINEER 1: Senior Software Engineer**
Response: "the company that I'm currently working for there's a lot of overlap in what my previous company was doing", "I understood their business a little bit better um so that aspect really helped me", "but yeah for from a technical standpoint I'd say Codemmith will will get your back"
**LinkedIn: 10 years+ at robotics company, 7+ years as "director of implementation" using the skills: " Py…
The changing narrative around becoming an engineer in 2024, an argument for taking a longer and slower journey to becoming a SWE instead of a 12-16 week bootcamp.
Before beginning I want to disclose that these are my personal opinions (I know I post here like all the time and you probably know this, but I have to disclose!) but that I'm the co-founder of mentorship platform that while isn't a bootcamp, does work with a lot of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job transitions. In some ways that might bias me want more people to go to bootcamps and this post talks about taking your time instead, but this post is my personal views on the topic.
This is a mini essay I threw together to outline some new thoughts I had. Curious to hear your thoughts. I'm not going anywhere and this is not an anti-bootcamp post. I might post something else making the case for traditional bootcamps too. Th…
I have a general engineering degree and was mostly self taught in terms of web development. I did do dozens of computer science fundamental "academic" courses though, and I did internships in schools.
I don't represent all CS grads, nor do I represent bootcamp grads, but just by 2 cents opinion...
When you spend 4 years doing a few dozens computer science courses, internships, compete tooth and nail for top tier tech jobs out of college, etc... it feels unbelievable that someone with no programming experience can get the same job, or as Codesmith claims "mid level and senior" jobs, after 12 to 16 weeks of bootcamp.
And it's not unfounded. It's just impossible to cover the same breadth a top tier CS degree does and if you have some internships under your belt that's even more of a gap. My peers find it super offensive a bootcamp grad with zero experience wants them to refer them as a "…
I wrote about this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis\_of\_52\_most\_recent\_codesmith\_offers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/)
I got a lot of attacks after posting that so I want to triple emphasize this is not trying to send a message to go or not go to Codesmith, it's simply pointing out a pattern to help people get a sense of how alumni are getting placed right now.
(I realize this comment might attract all kinds of haters from all sides but please understand that I'm trying to give this person good advice for them and it's in my opinion a neutral comment, with no ulterior motives. I've been getting harassed with downvote campaigns and trolls for the past two weeks after posting about Codesmith's recent placements, so please read the content and evaluate it fairly before downvoting this or making a snarky comment)
Codesmith indeed is a lot of work to get into but if you are already working in a stable job, then putting in that work will definitely be worth it if Codesmith is the right program for you. It will be a waste of time if it's not. So the question I think you should answer first is is Codesmith the right program for you, and if it is, put in the work, and if it isn't, I would encourage choosing another program.
Some context that it sounds…
2024 Bootcamp Predictions Mega Post. Revisiting my 2023 prediction post and exploring what I see ahead for 2024. 2023 was a rough year for bootcamps and the future doesn't look great for traditional programs - 2024 will be a year of caution, but I'm optimistically excited to see what happens!
Hi all 👋 for those that don't know me, I'm Michael, daily commenter here for about two years. Congratulations to the sub on hitting 40K members today! It was around 10K when I first joined!
**Background**
I'm the co-founder of a mentorship platform and work with a large number of bootcamp grads later on in their careers in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, job transitions. Before this I worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2017 as it grew from 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers and leveled up from an intern to an E7 principal engineer in about 5-6 years. I did over 450 interviews of everything from interns to dire…
I'm sorry you feel that way but respect your opinion.
I've been here day in day out, giving people advice on all kinds of things and I'm sorry if you feel my tone has changed, but when I was first around - I had some way more intense conversations with some Codesmith alumni who claimed I was "stealing here with the secret motivation of stealing studetns to Formation".
I am here to provide a unique lens of industry perspective + bootcamp perspective (having worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads from many programs but also interviewed 450 people at Facebook, built interview programs, observer of hiring committees, work on peformance review tooling,, etc...)
Quick story. There was a period of time when I had a goal of connecting with 10 grads a day from 20 different bootcamps on LinkedIn and I was accused of "Tracking down Codesmith students and trying to steal them to go to Formation…
I've so far appreciated your tone and would like to continue a normal discussion.
\- I have active conversations with dozens of prospective, current, former residents, staff, and former staff, it's not 3. I take the feedback to maybe back off a bit, things have definitely snowballed behind the scenes because they allegedly had layoffs of 18% of the staff and a lot of people were thrown off recently by the leadership response and feeling like every week something new is happening, lack of claritiy, and a lack of stability. I had a number of intense conversations that have continued and I think I that might be rubbing off on my tone as I keep everything there strictly confidential. I apologize and that's not how I intend to come across and hear that feedback.
\- If it means anything I circulated drafts with a number of people, some didn't respond, some demanded I post, some gave feedback…
Thanks for sharing.
I agree to some extent that showing what others in the industry do would be useful to know in general but I also think the analysis is very clear on how it should be used, and lack of this doesn't cancel out the value.
There are two reasons I focused on Codesmith:
1. Codesmith very publicly considers itself in a league of it's own. They claim to be the only non-traditional program to take people from zero to mid-level/senior and compare themselves to "elite grad schools". I therefore hold them to the bar they are presenting for themselves and don't think they should be compared to others.
2. As I said in the disclaimers, I have been following their placements passively for almost two years now and my friends and colleagues in industry (specifically engineers and recruiters) feel that Codesmith grads representation is anecdotally far more exaggerated than the rest.…
In all seriousness, the reason for Codesmith alumni's heavy, anonymous presence on Reddit is becasue people [exaggerate to get jobs](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/18cpq98/analysis_of_52_most_recent_codesmith_offers/) and if they out themselves on LinkedIn or somewhere else or give more details about who they are, they risk getting "found out" by colleagues and losing those jobs. I talk to my friend at a recent hiring and asked them if they knew a specific Codesmith grad the company just hired a few weeks ago had no experience (obviously friendly and off the books) and they said no idea from the resume or interview. So it's totally in people's interest to not share their success in any way that might reveal who they are, if it's based on stretching the truth.
At Formation, we had someone start at Meta this week and she happily participated in a blog post about her job…
This is one of the reasons why I so adamantly believe that people need to get appropriate first jobs out of a boot camp. what that means is different for each person but getting an entry level FAANG job that pays not as high as potentially some other jobs achieved through exaggerating resumes and pushing really hard, can be the path rapidly accelerating your career.
If Codesmith was really the ivy league like grad school for bootcamps they claim to be. they should be striving to place people in incredible entry-level rules that result in them making $600,000 in a few years and instead they are dismissive of those roles and pushing people to these exaggerated mid-level senior looking roles and pushing people to make the highest compensation they possibly can right out of the program.
I think they know that this is pretty much impossible because they can't reliably get people these jobs…
Sadly Codemsith has a "sister company" charity called OSLabs that signs letters of reference and does reference check calls.
I have evidence that they sign off on 4 months plus any additional time you claimed to have worked on the project (example letters of reference, and an employee confirming this publicly)
A grad claimed 10 months on LinkedIn and said it was because "people have the option of continuing to work on their projects" yet the project was untouched after the initial development window of about a month. I do not have evidence if Codesmith would sign off on 10 months of experience but this person seems to think they did 10 months and if they told Codesmith this, would they sign off on it?
By lying :(
The people I know from Codesmith basically had to have resumes that showed 4+ years of experience to qualify for "senior" at Capital One and they 'worked with Career Support Engineers' to help make that happen.
There's a tight crew at Capital One and they even help each other out, like one person did a wink wink 'hey how many years of experience do you have' - candidate said 2 - person said - make it 4 to qualify for this role. And somehow they got the job.
Maybe I'm being too negative, because it doesn't come out of thin air. People turn their past jobs into 'engineer-sounding' jobs. Illustrative examples like Auditor -> Technical Analyst. Teacher -> Technical Instructor. Customer Support -> Operations Engineer.
They have a outcomes advisor that one grad said has a "silver tongue" and can make anything sound good who can help with these kinds of things.
lol I'm glad I can have some amicable discourse in here.
Codesmith has a number of amazing placements out thousands of Alumni, there are a few dozen at Amazon, a dozen or two at Google, a smaller amount at Meta, a handful at Apple/Netflix.
100 (being very generous/rounding up) canonical FAANG placements out of THOUSANDS is an edge that people should not be using an as example nor should anyone be making decisions off of.
But that doesn't change the fact that a number of incredible people go to Codesmith and do incredibly well in their careers and I both encourage them to go there, support them while they are there, support them after they are there, and that's how it should be, I'm not hear to tear anyone down or bash on their achievements.
So Codesmith has like 50/60 or so Capital One placements ranging from Associate to Senior Associate to Senior SWE. Senior SWEs make about 160 to 170K base + a base performance bonus (say 8%) + signing bonus (say 30K) + maybe the perosn is including 6% 401K matching. It could get to 230K for first year TC on the high end yeah, but I could see it getting there.
Entry level FAANG is around 200K right now that I'm seeing and mid level is around 300K I'm seeing, so these "senior" alumni are kind of hitting "mid level"-equivalent Capital One roles.
Analysis of 52 most recent Codesmith offers LinkedIns and trends on who is getting a job right now and why. Summary: an average of 11.7 months of experience claimed for 3 week long projects (lacking evidence of additional time spent). Majority claimed to have prior SWE-adjacent experience.
Hi all, I was recently made aware of the 52 most recent reported Codesmith placements (not saying when this was provided to protect identities, but it's from a window within the past couple months) and did a summary of how those people present themselves on LinkedIn. Please note that this is an UNOFFICIAL ANALYSIS based on an ordered list of placements during a 2 month time window. I won't be DOXing anyone on the list, and because this is just my personal analysis and not an official study, you should use this information for illustrative purposes only. There are numerous ways you can try to reproduce…
Here's a great job post from Codesmith, they are looking for someone to manipulate social media on their behalf
-Foster positive relationships with Codesmith enthusiasts and leverage advocates to amplify the brand message.
-Proactively participate in discussions to influence the narrative around Codesmith.
Its also news to me that they have 5000 immersive alumni and hundreds of people in FAANG jobs.... I count a lot less.
https://codesmith.applytojob.com/apply/8cJdwgcb9g/Brand-Architect-And-Content-Lead
Don't DOX anyone, but can give general cases:
1. We haven't offered ISAs for like 7 months now so it's going to be a smaller and smaller number of people in that bucket. But someone on an ISA who lost their job, their ISA stop the second they lost their job. If they don't get a job within another 12 months then it's nullified, if they do, it continues where they left off when they were laid off.
2. If they were not on ISA, then they paid upfront. They could return to Formation, likely with a discount, case by case and depending on the circumstances. But many people would choose to leverage the alumni community the best they can and not pay to return because their skills are still fresh enough.
Layoffs are very personal and happen for all kinds of reasons and don't happen that often, so each one is case by case, but that's a generalization.
Yeah I agree Codesmith is still one of the best bootcamps, they just bill themselves as an elite grad school and are unabashedly talking about how good they are in all the talks I see and I see graduates carry forward that vibe... when on paper they are doing like a "good bootcamp" education and not anywhere close to something billing itself as an way better.
For gosh sakes, their contract is a Google Form equivalent that doesn't meet basic requirements of a contract, it's a one way form.
If you have paperwork showing what your IP relationship is with OS Labs then I would back off on that. I hadn't seen it in the contracts sent to me by people asking about things in them.
Thanks, I largely agree with your assessment too and it's why I try so hard to help the right people go there. People who go just because of the outcomes won't do well.without those other traits and attitude.
RE: OSP, it's a straight up lie that you worked for 3 months on the OSP and Phil saying that is actual fraud if he said that he does that. I understand that he thinks all of the time at Codesmith goes into that OSP but residents are also listing all of their other projects on their resume too, and their tech talks, and their "publications" (I e. medium post about the OSP) and that is all double or triple counted if you are getting 3 months credit for the OSP.
That said, they will also verify time spent after Codesmith. I found someone who removed a word from the README file 4 months later and they claimed 7 or 8 months in their LinkedIn.
I know several alumni who are floating 1 t…
This post is sadly something I hear often right now and is why I'm not happy about CIRR changing their metric from 6 months placements to 12 months placements.
So much happens in that year of job hunting that it's largely irrelevant what the bootcamp did. The bootcamp could do nothing and then you could spend NINE MONTHS studying DS&A and get a job and the bootcamp gets credit.
Anyways, sorry to hear about this.
I know it's doom and gloom but it's also true that the market is just overloaded for entry level and the only consistent path I'm seeing is if you are a new grad from a top school, all other placements are one off. Sorry and Codesmith grads that lie about their experience are also getting placed.
So if the startup doesn't have scale and doesn't have process, a person can get by easier through sheer will compared to a FAANG. At FAANG, performance is calibrated and our performers are aggressively PIPed and fired. At a startup, lots of hustle might carry you, even if you are clearly operating at a lower level but adding value.
I actually hired a Codesmith grad as an entry level engineer (I think Codesmith called it mid-level in their stats, which was very clearly entry level but compensated against top tier benchmark) and this is the level all the Codesmith grads I work with are at immediately after Codesmith... should be going for entry level top tier jobs.
Many people tell me about how their outcomes advisor pushed people away from that roles and says they are grunteork roles that set your career back... but that's extremely inconsistent with what I've seen.... people who take m…
I mean at the end of the day it's very irrelevant to most people and it's you can call yourself whatever you want. There's a Codesmith grad who is a "Vice President Software Engineer" at a bank!!!
It comes into play on here, and I feel strongly about it, because you DO need to define your terms to compare apples to apples and apples to oranges.
Codesmith's overall point is that Codesmith thinks their grads are "better" (their outcomes advisor says "Codesmith is the best" a lot) than everyone else. There was a panel where the CEO sitting (in person) beside Hack Reactor and other CEOs and said straight up that Codesmith was better because it's grads get "mid level and senior roles". They want to emphasize that Codesmith is not a "bootcamp" per-se and if they used canonical terms, they might get compared to the other programs.
So I think that's reasonable in that comparison. But the down…
Fair point, I shouldn't say "all" there, it's more of a "most" or "almost all"
The people I work with/talk to made it seem like it was a unofficial pipeline of alumni referring grads and helping them prep for the interviews and I wanted that to come across clearly.
It's certainly not easy and the people who get these jobs are very strong and well rounded, and great overall.
Me, I'm a non-anonymous member who has been here for 2 years and comment a lot.
My background is I worked at Meta from 2009 to 2017, grew from new grad to E7 principal engineer, did 400+ interviews of all shapes and sizes, participated in calibrations and interview offer panels, and was the number one code committer at the company when I left.
After I took a break, I joined my partners company which helps engineers with experience level up their careers. We work with a lot of bootcamp grads later on in their careers so I know about and hear about just about everything with bootcamps.
Codesmith caught my interest about 2 years ago when I was interviewing people to join Formation for leveling up and they had these really weird jobs at "OSLabs" that made no sense, and were being nervously vague about them in the interviews. I then went down the rabbit hole and found out that OSLabs was (…
Since I've been mentioning this publicly they have stated in info sessions that they are proud that all their instructors are alumni who stay to teach.
I just watched this documentary called "Escaping Twin Flames" on Netflix and they had similar vibes... two people started it and then hired some of their first students, who then hired more students, and then became leaders in a hierarchy of members. Paying customers -> teachers and coaches. And similarly that program has extremely polarizing views about it.
I've heard far more complaints from staff members than students/alumni have complained. A lot of students/alumni have found him motivational because he's given them the confidence to lie on resume and feel entitled to do so and it all came from his lectures about OSLabs and imposter syndrome. Staff seeing those lectures feel very cringy now and it's one of the reasons there is so much churn in instruction yet no one feels capable of giving him that feedback.
+1. I know my main college classes were taught by legit professors but a lot of tutorials and stuff were TAs who were PhD students.
I think the difference is that at Codesmith even the lead instructors went to Codesmith and haven't been SWEs yet.
I mean alumni who are working in industry to the career support stuff. They just aren't super super senior engineers who have had strong trajectories and track records hiring and helping people grow, so their words are taken disproportionately.
Someone I know closely was told to "practice their buzzwords" by one of the mock interviewers.
The program is Codesmith. They have a high bar but most people have zero work experience and get mid level roles. The typical grad does so by lying about the length of their experience and the program itself has a non profit sister company sign off on letters of reference to confirm them.
I agree it's impossible and all of my coworkers agree, but was curious about your opinion too.
I argue this often but all the Stanford CS grads I know have 10 offers and red carpet treatment during the CURRENT new grad hiring season RIGHT NOW.
So if you are calling yourself the "best bootcamp", as numerous Codesmith leaders and staff unabashfully do - both internally and externally, then you have to compare yourself to the best.
If Stanford were to compare itself to all the for-profit online schools, it would be apples to oranges.
And comparing Codesmith to programs with no or lower entrance bars is also apples to oranges.
I also don't think you would fall into this bucket based on your post and your clear and transparency for 2+ years here.
I know a number of people that post on their own free will, a number of people who ask me to post things on their behalf, a number of people who just tell me about their multiple accounts and how they use them, it's a really wide spectrum.
Like I do have a trusted source who claims to have first hand evidence of an employee directly asking a group of trusted alumni to comment on specific posts and I want to figure out how THAT is happening and sprinkles down to others.
I don't know if you agree or not, but each cohort is a little different. Part time is a lot more chill (and hence why their ghosting rate is much higher on CIRR), new york onsite is super intense, east coast I get the most concerns about toxic positivity, etc... I don't know all the of the instructors…
Like I said before, my commentary reflects what people tell me. With recent churn of staff and longer time staff who left a while ago reappearing there is more going on here.
Look at their Glassdoor reviews (I hadn't but a prospective student shared them and asked if I knew of they were real). Notice how all the 1 star ones have a shit-ton of upvotes and the great ones have none. And this is with Codesmith monitoring page and reporting reviews for fraud review.
Yeah that's a good point it would be extremely hard to just apply online and get interviewed as a L5.
If the person gets promoted to staff though at this company, they will have a narrative for a high L4 offer and possibly L5 - would need to deep dive into what the person did.
I went from new grad to E5 at Facebook in roughly 2 years, so it's definitely possible, but it's not the norm.
Not to toot my own horn here, but that's why things like Formation exist, because everyone has a unique story that needs to be untangled. We can only do so much, but there are exception cases when this kind of thing can happen.
I mean I talk to people that literally say "I will lie, chest and steal to get a job" and this post would be reassuring to them.
I also talk to people that think the Codesmith community is amazing but they never lie and they are hence conflicted. And some people go but are conscious of all of this and some people choose another program.
I mean their enrollment is struggling and they might be trying a new strategy because the puff pieces have not been working. so maybe they're trying to lock in the right people? I don't know. I still think that this is better than the previous stuff because even if it is planted, it aligns more with what I hear from lots of alumni who are successful too.
I 100000% agree and I'm speaking out about one program in particular, Codesmith, that I don't think is being transparent about the reality of the market and a number of staff/former staff/alumni have privately messaged me asking me too.
Is there a reason you don't want to say where you went though? Every bootcamp and program is different.
Does that mean that the expectation is that if someone wasn't following CIRR standards, they will have to pass a consistent audit in order to be posted?
FOR REFERENCE OF WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT:
I mean they published [this](https://www.codesmith.io/blog/codesmiths-commitment-to-cirr-transparent-reporting-frequently-asked-questions) and stated:
>Who is included in the “hired by school” statistic?
Codesmith deeply values team members who grow their careers from the ground up and have a first-hand understanding of the mission behind the work that we do. For this reason, we appreciate instructors who have completed the immersive program themselves and understand the student experience. When you see the percentage hired by school on a Codesmith CIRR report, these are a very small handful of graduates that have moved on to work full time as instructors or Software Engineers for the compan…
Good outcomes + marketing.
1. Codesmith has the highest outcomes on paper and about a quarter of people who go there found them on Reddit (internal second hand number)... so people find it on Reddit and then come back to where they found it to talk about it.
2. Rithm is a very tiny program, but is also good and word spreads. But give it's size and much smaller alumni size I don't expect as many students to hang around.
3. Launch School Unique mastery model and "slow approach" so it gets discussed a lot and the Capstone rivals Codesmith for outcomes.
4. Turing. The only accredited bootcamp that became a school, other than Make School that shut down.
5. Hack Reactor. One of the oldest programs, consistently with pretty good outcomes. Has a lot of alumni over the years hanging around.
Hiring is picking up for mid level engineers. Disclosure: I'm co-founder of a mentorship platform for SWEs with 1+ YOE under their belt. We have seen 4 or so Meta offers in the past few weeks and many more interviewing. It's definitely not easy but if you have a legit 2+ YOE (like full time SWE job, not projects, not open source, etc...) then you should be getting interviews in a reasonable timeframe in this market. There are many more challenges in passing the interviews and with headcount, but the gears are turning.
That's not at all the case for new comp sci grads and new bootcamp grads (including Codesmith and Launch School and other programs that have these kind of "open source work experience" projects) and the market remains incredibly hard just to get interviews without lying about that experience. The exception being CS grads from top tier CS school - they have a lot of choice…
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy· edited★ FEATURED
100% I literally recommended OP consider Codesmith and was discussing in private 30 mins ago.
The ignore strategy is because I mean this: I've talked to the founders of numerous other programs on here and have professional open conversations with them, and not a single leader at Codesmith has contacted me for 1.8 years now of me being the same old person on here every day.
Instead, the CEO has badmouthed me in internal all hands, the outcomes advisor has texted someone telling them Formation's a scam and he'll give them all he needs. An alumni made very inappropriate comments about me in an alumni Slack that were screenshotted to me. And all this kind of BS in private and the public response isn't "he is dark depraved person whose sole mission in life is to take down the great thing \[we\] have built" (this was quoted to me by a student but I don't know if they quoted it or paraphrased…
Can you elaborate more on why you found Eric K "awesome" and "inspiring"? There is some controversy around other team members but Eric K is by far the most controversial - people who work there love him or people hate him and no one is in between haha.
I do have two sources of confirmation that he has a group of alumni that he asks to comment and post on Reddit and that raised eyebrows for me. But again, I keep an open mind until I have clear patterns, and sources are super polarizing on him.
I did a deep dive into his resume (looked up press releases, articles, etc... and poked around) and found some questions about his background that appeared different or portrayed differently in his personal pitch, but I've never met him or talked to him personally to clarify those things.
I comment a lot about Codesmith and it's not "a shitshow" internally but it's also not run flawlessly. They don't have a typical company org chart and I've corroborated some of the anecdotes of HR/internal stuff, but every company has things they are doing well and not well and that's not a reason to flip a table because overall it's doing a lot of things right too.
Now in terms of outcomes. First off, CIRR hasn't been updated and is overdue.
They have released some numbers though of offers signed in 2023 and the Q1 median was $110K and Q2 median was $115K and Q3 median was $120K. Presumably H1 was when most of the H2 2022 grads were placed so I don't expect their next CIRR report to be nearly as good.
These are ways the numbers can be steered, but I severely doubt they would be intentionally fraudulently made up.
1.CIRR lets you confirm a placement by external sources including Lin…
Fair point on people's goals and that was lost in this thread for sure. A lot of people don't aspire to "FAANG" and I help a lot of people go to NOT-FAANG explicitly.
I also appreciate the callout on "worse" and it's not at all pedantic. That should have been qualified since it meant "worse in most respects to top tier tech companies, such as compensation, empowerment of engineers, scale, challenges of work, career growth" but even then "worse" is still a judgy word and a mistake to use it.
I use a definition of top tier as follows (which I mean by "FAANG") and I'll be clearer from now on:
1. Tech focused company - the primary business value is the technology or a product relying on the company's core technology.
2. "High compensation" - which varies particularly by region, but generally offers include some kind of equity or ownership participation (or equivalent), extremely strong be…
I actually find Codesmith grads have great hustle and produce a lot of code too. Look I hired a Codesmith grad and know dozens, I worked with dozens of new grads directly in my career.
Most of them have more hustle than new grads I've worked with but most also have way more skill gaps. Very much ready to have a shot at succeeding in entry level roles and that's commendable for a 12 week program.
I don't have any universal data so I should make it clear that Codesmith claims 100% of alumni get promoted within 5 years (it's based on 120 grads who decided to reply to the survey and from a long time ago, vs the 3000 grads they claim they have, so I don't entirely believe this - and know counter examples that were probably not in the 120 people, but that's the most zoomed out data we have).
Anecdotally, four buckets:
1. People who get by but change companies within a year or around that time, or they get a contract job they don't do super well on and just don't get the contract extended and then switch to a similar or slightly better company after a year, and then do this a few times. And soon enough they have the 2-3+ YOE for real to make a bigger jump to a top tier company. Worked with a few of these people at Formation. So they kind of show up, give it a huge amount of hustle bu…
The market is indeed tough. It's not quite "improving" in the sense of going back to the good times we had.... it's changing.
I won't give my full background but I'm expressing my observations having a pretty good pulse on hiring at the top tier companies specifically.
Hiring during the freezes was senior engineers only. Like canonical senior engineers with 5+ YOE at strong companies and who have worked on large scale products already.
The hiring now has opened up to canonical mid-level engineers. At Meta for example, this means a bare minimum of 2 YOE at solid companies working on large scale products.
So this is benefiting people who have solid experience already.
New grads are generally struggling. There is new grad headcount during the current fall hiring season, but it's going to top tier school grads, like Stanford, and other schools they have dedicated recruiters for.
So for…