I have some insight on this as an outsider that has worked with a few dozen Codesmith alumni later on in their careers or immediately after Codesmith.
This is going to be a polarizing comment thread for sure.
PROS:
- many alumni that get jobs credit Codesmith's job hunt support for helping them. they typically site: mock interviews, weekly office hours, their cohort mates emotional support making it feel less lonely, and Eric Kirsten's negotiation help giving them confidence to ask for $150K offers when they otherwise wouldn't
- compared to many other bootcamps - which hardly do anything post graduation, I think Codesmith does a lot more than most
- they give you "lifetime support", which means you can always go back and ask questions in the future, get resume reviews or even do peer mock interviews anytime in the future and some people have found that useful
- one of the most powerfu…
In no particular order these are generally good, but each is different and depends on you: Codesmith, Rithm School, Launch School Capstone, Hack Reactor, App Academy.
I wouldn't judge too hard from CIRR reports - they are useful to identify if a school is legit or not - in order to investigate further, but CIRR is a business league established by bootcamps and it's not a super well written specification - with little details that steer in favor of bootcamps.
Talking to recent alumni and figuring out which program day-to-day is a good fit for you is most important, and using data to identify which programs to investigate is step 1.
Yeah the whole industry has this problem, and it's not Codesmith causing the entire thing. A very common pattern is people who have "3 years of self employed contracting" when they were just on Upwork and never even had a single contract. Or they did volunteer work that they call "contracting work".
I've seen everything under the sun and talk to my friends a lot about it.
The way most Codesmith alumni portray their experience though is by the one that triggers most people and makes then have a negative view of Codesmith. "scam", "liars", "no integrity" are words used.
The weakness in the approach is that all the code is public and anyone can read it - very few do - and those that do see how embarrassing it can be to portray those projects as months/1+ years of "experience".
You're right that it is what it is is, and the industry and the market will adjust.
It's why DS&A is preva…
This is a great example of how Codesmith's 4 week long OSP turns into what looks like a large project/company, fit with the website, logo, and it's posted all over the place.
I looked at the code and this is about 1 day of focused work for a really good senior engineer (the core project, not the marketing and write ups) and it is not mid-level or senior engineering work from 4 people for 4 weeks. Obviously the ideation, planning, and marketing take a lot longer when you don't have experience yet, as expected, so this is not a criticism of the people working on it, but a criticism that the project is at the equivalent of months of work at the mid to senior level, as their chief academic officer has stated (presented to me as notes from lecture from a student that though this was concerning)
This is one of the key ways that Codesmith grads, who choose to do so - not all, present themselv…
Hi, so I can speak to changes we've made at Formation, which is not a bootcamp and was engineered to be dynamic and flexible, these are the things I remember in the past 6 months off the top of my head in the 3 mins I timeboxed to writing this:
1. Redid job hunt reference materials twice
2. Redid async resume review process so people can get reviews faster in general
3. Created 5 new group and mentor led session types around job hunting, networking, job hunt office hours, storytelling, and specially check-ins
4. Created dedicate peer referrals channel, which isn't working too well because of the market
5. Added dozens of industry recruiters for mock interviews and responses in chat
6. Created a book a recruiter call on demand flow self service on our platform for people in interviews
7. Added on platform referral request flows for people who are a good match for companies to request re…
Sorry I don't :(. I work/have worked with hundreds of bootcamp grads later on in their careers and most come from Codesmith, Hack Reactor, Rithm, Fullstack Academy, General Assembly, Hackbright, and some other ones that are escaping my memory, but not Coding Temple. There are a surprisingly large number of Codesmith STAFF, students and alumni on here who have over time contacted me as a well which gives me a lot of insight into their program more than any other.
UPDATE: 2023 Predictions check-in and updates!
Hi all, it's halfway through 2023 and I wanted to quickly revisit my predictions from this post to give some updates based on how the industry is doing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp\_predictions\_for\_the\_rest\_of\_2023/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/1226i27/bootcamp_predictions_for_the_rest_of_2023/)
# New: What's left for 2023?
The main thing I want to add is that outcomes for H2 2022 are going to go off a cliff. At first when we saw H1 2022 CIRR results come out they were better than expected, however Codesmith restated their numbers after audit and they were notably lower than originally posted for placement rates and high end salaries ([https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/14341x7/codesmiths\_newly\_posted\_audited\_version\_of\_their/](https://www.reddit.com/r/co…
From my experience, people are very happy and proud to drop their names in the spreadsheet and cheer on their peers outcomes... and a lot more reluctant to talk about how hard it is on the job and the failures that come with it.
I think this is the reason you see so many Hackbright and Hack Reactor and App Academy alumni at FAANG companies 5 years down the road, and while you see a good number of Codesmith alumni at FAANG too there is a greater number 3 jobs in as "senior engineers" at unknown non-tech companies pushing $200K. A mid-level Google offer though is $300K and I reiterate that an appropriate first job -> FAANG mid-level is a much better outcome down the road than what most Codesmith students do.
Codesmith's newly posted AUDITED version of their CIRR H1 2022 show discrepancies from their initial report published a month or two ago (... and a reminder about blindly trusting CIRR)
UPDATE (June 25th 2023): The Auditors re-released a correction and they republished the original report as the final audited report. This is all very confusing how such mistakes and errors could pass audit to begin with, but I believe the "original report" is the final numbers and the "audited reports" contained errors that were originally signed off on.
One of the misconceptions about CIRR is that results are audited before being posted. This is not correct and rather they are audited once a year and then updated after the fact.
Codesmith recently added their **audited** report to CIRR and it has worse outcomes:
[Link to original report](https://static.spacecrafted.com/b13328575ece40d8853472b9e0cf204…
Choosing a program based on outcomes is extremely dangerous. Outcomes should be used as a way to identify a small number of "legit" programs, but it's **extremely important** to look at outcomes of people with a background similar to yourself.
I chat with so many people that want to go to Codesmith or X because they like all the conversations with alumni from X but that Codesmith has the "best outcomes". For people who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, PMs, mechanical engineers, CS grads, I say sure because those outcomes are representative of people with your background. For people who have no "office work experience" you are better off finding a lower paying job that's a really good fit and Codesmith's methods are harmful to your development for most people - pushing someone whose never sat at desk before to get a mid level job and reject an entry level offer is not the right approac…
I wouldn't recommend a bootcamp right now. Codesmith is a program that markets to CS grads and people with more experience and even their placements rates as reported from recent alumni have dropped drastically since last reported.
I have a few recommendations to look at... what works for you is ultimately a personal choice, but just things to consider:
1. Consider career accelerators: Formation.dev (disclosure: co-founder), Interview Kickstart, Outco, Pathrise, Coachable.dev, Scaler, are main ones to look at. These are all very different programs but they focus on fine tuning and enhancing existing skills and focus entirely on the job hunt. They pick up where bootcamps end basically.
2. Consider doing volunteer work at places like Hack4LA, or other Code For America branches. This is a way to get more realistic "volunteer work experience" that is a notch above a group project that you…
I see both sides of this working with alumni who are also conflicted. I agree with OP that it's not something trained as the key to success officially, it's more something people do because they see alumni do it and succeed, or they get stuck on the job hunt for months and day by day massage the resume a little more.
Some people do intentionally pride themselves in bs'ing their OSP under pressure and passing interviews, but not many.
I think the reason it's important to talk about is that it's a tool in a toolbelt. And when we talk about people tend to go to extremes defending or attacking this strategy. There are consequences to a lot of things in this world and there are consequences to this strategy. I think it's important people understand their tools and use them effectively instead of being sold on a magical hammer that can fix everything with no effort.
I commented this above but copy pasting because it's important, I agree with the qualitative arguments, just an important note for the CIRR data:
Standard disclaimer: several people are mentioning average salaries, it's super important with CIRR data to recognize that the numbers at NOT averages, they are medians, and they are NOT the "average Codesmith grad" it is the median salary of PLACED CODESMITH GRADS, not ALL CODESMITH GRADS.
So it's the 50th percentile base salary of the 80% of people placed of the 95% of people that graduated. If you put $0 for the other 20% that didn't get jobs, the "average Codesmith grad" is making FAR less than this and the median would be shifted down to about 100 to 110K based on the CIRR distribution.
Just important to note, because I'm constantly on top of people who misrepresent CIRR outcomes.
CIRR outcomes don't include stock and bonuses so the…
Standard disclaimer: several people are mentioning average salaries, it's super important with CIRR data to recognize that the numbers at NOT averages, they are medians, and they are NOT the "average Codesmith grad" it is the median salary of PLACED CODESMITH GRADS, not ALL CODESMITH GRADS.
So it's the 50th percentile base salary of the 80% of people placed of the 95% of people that graduated. If you put $0 for the other 20% that didn't get jobs, the "average Codesmith grad" is making FAR less than this and the median would be shifted down to about 100 to 110K based on the CIRR distribution.
Just important to note, because I'm constantly on top of people who misrepresent CIRR outcomes.
CIRR outcomes don't include stock and bonuses so the actual median and average compensation is probably a lot HIGHER than what CIRR says, so I'm not saying this to bash Codesmith, I'm saying it to pro…
Open Source Project. 4 weeks at Codesmith are spent coming up with a group project, building the project, releasing it as a new open source project OR releasing a new version of an existing project, marketing the project, and then updating your resume to reflect the project.
The controversy around them is
1. Most people list the project as a company and as a Software Engineer (with very fine print "Project supported by a accelerator OSLabs")
2. Most people list the time spent on it as 3 to 18 months (the average being about 6)
3. The average person only committed 2 to 3 commits on the projects over 2 to 3 weeks in a sample of 200 GitHub profiles analyzed a year ago
4. The projects are supervised by a former student as a mentor who typically don't have any or much industry experience, but the projects claim they are "mid to senior level work equivalent"
Don't get me wrong, the project…
I've worked with (bias disclosure, co-founder of a coaching program for experienced engineers) a wide range of alumni from right after Codesmith, during Codesmith, down the road, people who work at Codesmith, and everyone is super professional, polite, hard working, and driven.
I've been the target of several attacks (where people have told me that posts were shared in both official internal slacks and unofficial discords) where alumni, staff, etc... have said some pretty mean things personal things about me but I think it's a very small number of peopel. Codesmith has been extremely defensive to things that I've called out. I criticized their "sponsored talks" for a lack of proper referencing of content and they staunchly defended that telling the entire student base that I'm wrong and incorrectly quoted laws that don't apply. All of that because a student blatantly copied the code sa…
Yeah the OSP posts that get tons of engagement have also been controversial. On the one hand, an incredibly supportive and engaged community. On the other hand, Codemsith steers that raw awesomeness and it comes across people spending almost more time promoting their OSP with posts, websites etc.. than they actually spend on the OSP itself and then get celebrated for it.
I also think some of that fear above is misplaced. Like it's very very very rare someone disappears out of the community (from what I've heard) but people seem to really really want to do what Codemsith tells them to do because the community is so close and the remote possibility of losing touch is so scary that people are super cautious.
I mean why the community is abnormally strong is for you to decide. Some say it's a family who have "family dinners" every week and some say it's unintentionally cult like.
I watche…
This is true for the most part. They are working on updating their materials by having alumni in the industry give official feedback. The ethos of education is "hard learning" and they want you to learn how to learn when overwhelmed, so I don't think they care that much about the curriculum. But enough people have complained I think they are looking into it.
I kept a close on on the staff backgrounds since I was shocked to see the vast majority of alumni exaggerating their OSP experience in number 4.a. I investigated after numerous staff members where I work didn't realize Codesmith alumni had no experience based on their resumes and the people were not super clear in their interviews either :(.
There are about 80ish +/- a lot out of 130ish employees on their website that are alumni of Codesmith itself (it fluctuates a lot, check for yourself!)
50ish are TAs/Fellows, 15ish are career…
In general, the bar is set so you kind of have to figure it out on your own. Whether that means leveraging the community, self studying, googling, hours of trial and error, finding pair programming buddies, etc... Codesmith selects for people that can figure it out on their own and it's a trait that will help you succeed as an engineer.
While in Codesmith you have access to more people for support, but oftentimes it's peers and recent alumni who are TAs and many describe it as a firehose of constantly feeling behind (which is what staff say is expected and normal). So if navigating a state of constant confusion isn't for you then it might not be the best program for you... not saying it isn't, just suggesting to consider if it's the right program for you vs wanting to get in because you think it's the best program.
Some possible things to consider for help:
1. Ask in Slack - don't just…
Codesmith is a top bootcamp yeah and produces arguably the best results of any bootcamp.
But it really matters most if it's best for YOU and how it happens is more important than the raw results.
It's more like they only let in people who are more likely to succeed and hence more people succeed than other program.... rather than anyone who gets in has a golden ticket to success.
Reason why they are really good:
1. Very high entrance bar and only let people who meet the bar
2. Excellent alumni network who stay close to Codesmith
3. The founder cares a ton about teaching... I bet he would love to just teach all day and not deal with the business side haha.
4. They are extremely good at helping people leverage their ambitiousness to present themselves most strongly for jobs
1. This is often controversial because some people feel they support you in lying on your resumes to get past…
I think their representation on CIRR doesn't jeopardize the reliability of their data, but rather it's a conflict of interest because the specification itself is written by the people who have a vested interest in their data looking the best possible. And the issues with CIRR lie in the lack of clarity in the spec and reporting requirements that mask things (i.e. reporting percentages vs absolute numbers, lack of clarity on gathering salary data).
I think the bigger conflict of interest is with OSLabs - which is a legit-donation-accepting charity that offers letters of reference for students that make it look like they were involved with a separate entity without disclosing that the student was PAYING to do said work for CODESMITH's immersive program.
Hello friend, you asked for tough questions, so I'll throw out some of the tough ones since you are an employee, I expect you might not be able to answer them but you've repeatedly asked for tough questions so I'll try!
EDIT: just want to make sure that I disclose that I'm the co-founder of mentorship and training program (that is not a bootcamp or direct competitor to Codesmith, but we tend to work with a number of people who graduated from borocamps at some point in the past) to be transparent about biases.
Hard Questions:
1. How does Codesmith staff handle when a resident gets called out for OSPs not being real work, e.g. in the offer process or during interviews? Or phrased differently, is there a stance internally on how to handle students that have issues with their OSPs during interviews?
2. How do background checks work for OSP projects and how does Philip Troutman get away…
I don't know Coding Temple but I would make your own decision of if Codesmith is right for you and not over index on one negative post.
Codesmith leadership hates me and thinks I'm trying to take them down for some reason, but I'm a very middle of the road person and I see a lot of people over indexing on one or two anecdotes on Reddit so I want to caution people against doing that.
The post highlights numerous weaknesses of Codesmith - it's not perfect, it has many caveats and nuances. But for the right people it's the best program out there and if you've done your homework, talked to alumni, understand the day to day of how it works and what you do, then I would choose it!
This summary is fairly consistent with what I hear from most people as well, that overall Codesmith is a great program, very consistent, and the community is fantastic.
The big change is the job market since 2020 is the job market.
In the time period of 2021 and into 2022, people were getting like 150K jobs (which you can see in CIRR) at Amazon and Capital One by using exaggerated resumes (or have recruiters proactively reach out on LinkedIn without even expanding to see "Developed under OS Labs") to pass recruiter screens + practicing Leetcode on their own and with each other.
These people then were all over this subreddit in mid to late 2022 created an impression that Codesmith was a magical place with a magical formula and getting in will be the ticket to a $150K job. No one was explaining HOW it happened, just "Codesmith is the best", "Codesmith changes your life", and a bunch of…
Hi 👋!
What feels like years ago but was about a year ago I spent two hours on a Sunday cmd+clicking and collecting info on the LinkedIn vs GitHub OSP representation that really peaked my interest in Codesmith outcomes. I did similar math to you and was also confused in who was included in the "graduates included" number, versus the percentages underneath. More recently I looked at the formulas in the CIRR worksheets (because they weren't spelled out in the spec like they should be) and it added some clarity but I still have questions about how they extend how fellows are included (they admit to not following CIRR and delaying those people's clocks by the length of their contract) but I don't know if that impacts "number of graduates" or graduation rates, or what not. And would love the absolute numbers. But I was a kid who memorized cereal box nutritional labels and the exact details…
Relatively speaking yeah :( lol. I have a traditional engineering background and there were good classes and bad classes in college. There were good TAs and bad TAs. Overall though I would say my college program was really good. But that doesn't mean it was flawless.
Codesmith is a good bootcamp. They control their growth, they care about having good outcomes, they keep the bar high, I genuinely think Will and others love teaching.
I'm not here to judge if it's worth $20K, of if it's good for you, me, your friend, etc.... and I have been relentlessly attacked for critizing Codesmith on:
1. All in support of CIRR without trying to improve the standard and make it better
2. Over-representing OSPs and doing fake background checks/references for people
3. Not being inclusive because only very driven people with $21K, and 11 hours a day + 7 hours on Sunday can attend.
4. Making people thi…
Yeah I have many comments about the OSPs but that is exactly why they aren't anything close to mid-level and senior projects. If you work for 4 weeks with a senior eng who specializes in React, you would get a lot better fast... and this is why an entry level apprenticeship at AirBnb paying $100K is better long term than a Senior Capital One job as your first job out of CS, imo.... for the average grad. For some people it's not but pushing people to mid and senior roles is missing a fantastic opportunity for grads.
I think they are going to have trouble with OSLabs as a boost to get mod and senior roles. If it's wildly successful, students will get to learn from real senior engineers and be perfectly setup to get referred to entry levels roles from them, but not mid and senior. There isn't an industry engineer I've asked who approved of CS grads marketing themselves for top tier mid se…
From what I've heard it's solely DEFENSIVE not offensive. Which is why you see a ton of random people come out of the woodwork with almost no history on Codesmith-specific posts. I carefully check the comment history when I get attacked and numerous accounts only post and comment about Codesmith and then attack me about Formation. Kind of odd for an account with almost no history to know me so well to make detailed attacks and simultaneously only comment and post about Codesmith.
The other problem is so many people are hired back as fellows, career support, instructors, that a lot of people who talk about being an "alumni" don't disclose that they were/are also an EMPLOYEE! Codesmith has 80 to 100 (depending on when you count, changes frequently) former students currently on staff in some capacity on their Website.
Thanks for sharing a reasonable opinion about your personal experience without overly generalizing like so many do. Can you elaborate more on the career services and resume stuff (specifically with the treatment of OSPs on resumes)? That's an area I see a lot of "do this because it works" and I'm curious if you agree or if you have seen different.
I have worked with/work with/have talked to a bunch of Codesmith alum at all stages, from struggling to crushing it, and have seen what you said reflected in a number of people who are "crushing it" almost word for word. But for a lot of people in the program that learn really fast but aren't as on top of things as the top 10%, the curriculum and firehose-style pace is really effective.
\[EDIT: commenter explained the original comment was not about bootcamp grads but master's grads, and I re-worded/removed things that are also now out of context, and sorry for misunderstanding the context!\]
Most people from bootcamps aren't making $200K in their first year. I've seen a Harvard Math grad have a path like this for example, or a UT Austin Civil Eng grad, but these people have some kind of natural abilities and work ethic that made it happen.
A very small number of people will, and those people will probably be making $1M a year in 5 to 10 years, like maybe yourself /u/Evening_Message5556 (which I would say based on my interactions with you :) )
That said at Bloomberg and Amazon, you can make $200K TC (e.g. $160K base + $40K+ bonus) by crushing mostly DS&A interviews and passing behavioral interviews. One of the key pieces is the behavioral interview and you coming acr…
I think you are reading what you want to read from my more controversial comments. Your entire comment history on Reddit is about Codesmith on Codesmith posts.
I've been here for a year, giving daily helpful advice on all kinds of topics that aren't Codesmith. I've talked to dozens, possibly over 100 people, advising them to go to bootcamps (often Codesmith) based on their situation and goals. I've even advised people to go to competitors to Formation.
Instead, I get Codesmith leadership following my posts, circulating internally, anonymous accounts commenting on my posts, and complaining about me, when they should probably be paying me for helping a bunch of people choose Codesmith who weren't sure about PRIVATELY IN DMs.
I've said many times that we don't have that many direct-from-bootcamp alumni and we actively waitlist many or out right reject, this is not our target demographic…
I can add more to what "encouraged" means. They have lecture and references materials that do no encourage anything strongly as the "official" stance. Where these "encouragements" come out are:
1. Former students who are resume reviewers, TAs, etc... might give that advice 1-1 because of "other people who did it and succeeded"
2. In verbal Q&A's it might come up as an option to help you
3. You talk to alumni directly on Slack who get placed, ask them for their resume, see what they do, and copy them.
Here is my 2cents having worked with a number of Codesmith grads anywhere from during Codesmith, immediately after, or down the road, for a variety of goals, from just wanting to get a job, to wanting to get a top tier job.
Overall Codesmith is a great program, an incredible community of amazing people. Every one I've worked with is professional, hard working, and great.
It's great for people who are super ambitious and work hard but it's not magic. So I try to help people choose to go for the right reasons and look beyond the on paper results.
I have the same 3 issues you do and comment about them often.
I also have a different perspective with these issues because as an industry engineer who knows literally several thousand other FAANG/ex-FAANG engineers, the dozen or so peers I've asked have had reactions to Codesmith resumes ranges from "omg that's sketchy" to "this is blatant fr…
Here is my detailed analysis, neutral look at the data (some points might seem boring, but just writing it up thoroughly). I tried to put the more controversial points first as I doubt people will read all of this.
# SUMMARY: Not much change from H2 2021, slight downshift in salary buckets, but overall very similar numbers.
# 1. Median salaries continue to be super misleading because of multiple cutoff points (a CIRR issue I describe often is pronounced here)
So the part time program exemplifies these the best, explaining via example.
37 people included in report. 10% of people were excluded because they said they weren't job hunting when starting Codesmith.
Now 31 people were placed. 21 people salaries, and 3 people did not report salaries. So of the **\~40 people who started, 21 people reported salaries and the median of those was $137K**.
For the full time program, 301 people…
Yeah a couple people who went through their program and my partner at Formation spoke to their founder a few years ago.
You should absolutely not trust me though about anything! It might be a great fit for you. Just for any program or coaching you look into you want to know how it works and not just be convinced by the big numbers on a website, even for my own program.
Some things to ask:
1. Ask them to explain outcomes in more detail. Where were the last 10, 20, 30 placements? How do they calculate the numbers on the website? The numbers on their website are clearly inconsistent and you need a more practical picture of the outcomes.
2. What is a typical day or week look like?
3. What kinds of strategies help a Coachable student do better than a random new grad?
4. Ask to talk to alumni who have a similar background as yourself and ask them about their day to day and what is good and…
I definitely see all kinds of sketchy behavior on Reddit. I have several friends, and Formation alumni, who work at Reddit and hear about things. This subreddit has no minimum thresholds for posting so it's particularly susceptible to bad actors and a lot of the more controversial stuff you'll see is brand new accounts with almost no comment history at all making bold claims out of nowhere, making it impossible to validate. So I tend to read people's histories carefully when I encounter someone new making strong statements.
All of that said, I don't think it's astroturfing and I don't think Codesmith every tells anyone to post on Reddit at scale and most of the anecdotal stories on here are genuine, especially from well established accounts.
This subreddit is a small, nice corner of the world and part of the heavy Codesmith presence is a snowball effect. Lots of Codesmith alumni here,…
A lot of lists are paid for/sponsored posts. Codesmith is 100% one of the top bootcamps they just don't pay to show up in lists, which is a good thing, in my opinion! Codesmith doesn't do much marketing and focuses on getting you to show up to free sessions to get you into the funnel and to get you to keep coming back for more and more commitment, until you sign up for the immersive. They do sponsor Course Report and Switchup and you'll see them there in "featured lists".
Codesmith is also relatively smaller than the other programs and while it has investors, they are not owned by any large company and their founders don't come from a traditional "education" background.
Finally, Codesmith has a "cult-like" (not my words) following that feels like a family. Almost all of the instructors, lead instructors, fellows, TAs, etc... went to Codesmith itself, and alumni are extremely protective…
u/TheeKingInTheNorth: I've seen all sides of this and it's not binary. People's views depend on two things: 1. where they are in the program/what point in time, 2. the person's background and their personal resume.
Number 4 below is most important (and the rest is for reference), because a lot of people don't know that step is happening. If you asked those people "how did Codesmith verify your OSP work or provide you with a reference?" I bet most of them will say, I don't know, they didn't need it. Some of them will say, oh I just filled out a Google form - don't really know. And then others will think the references are totally fine and not even mention that it's something controversial.
This is all either secondary (second hand from a primary source), or first hand sources shared with me.
1. They strongly and firmly tell people in lecture to not lie on their resumes.
2. They also s…
You should be super honest on the background check forms, even if they don't align with your resume and I've seen this a few times with Codesmith alumni. They have a semi-sketchy process for getting verified and they will verify your entire time in the program as experience on the OSP, even though it was 4 weeks and the evidence they give you in writing fooled several people I tested with who thought it was a verification letter for a SWE role.
Assuming the hiring company is using a large common company like HireRight or Checkr, they are checking for two things:
1. Do you have any red flags: e.g. a criminal record that might be relevant to the job?
2. Can they verify the information you put on the background check?
The report they send back isn't a pass/fail, but it's more like "able to verify"/"not able to verify". Sometimes a totally legit job can't be verified because the company r…
Thanks for sharing. I give a warning often that one person's trajectory shouldn't be generalized. I know several Codesmith alumni with similar trajectories and several without. I've also seen similar trajectories from many bootcamp grads in general.
Some things that would be good to share are how Codesmith helped you with those new jobs in terms of finding them, preparing for them, and negotiating.
It's a crazy tough job market right now and you can't invent jobs that don't exist.
Even with an optimized Codesmith resume, you are competing with multi-year ex-FAANG engineers and it's not enough anymore.
My team is working around the clock to figure out ways to get early career people opportunities and we've really had to be creative: house-built job hunting tool, sourcing jobs for people, having FAANG recruiters as mentors, direct referrals, resumes books, even a partnership with Netflix, and people are still getting frustrated with the job hunt and not getting many interviews. So I can only imagine what it's like being a bootcamp grad in this market where you are mostly job hunting on your own.
I'm fairly connected in the industry and 8 out of 36 in 4 months isn't bad, It will hopefully end up being 40% or so. We won't see the impact on CIRR until results come out in Sept 2023 t…
Hi, I wanted to comment directly since in reviewing the thread I realized your questions weren't answered.
1. I don't think OPs experience are growing pains, or at least not the way they were portrayed. Behind the scenes, our scheduling and matching algorithms actually get better and better the more people we have and create more opportunities for better session matches. We have chosen to grow much slower than we can, and investors want us to, to prioritize experience over growth and making sure everything is great in practice and not just in theory. I said this in another comment but it's not uncommon for 5 out of 6 people in a session to have great feedback and 1 to feel like it was a terrible session. We are fully aware that Fellows are paying a lot of money and expecting a lot, so one bad experience needs to be investigated and improved, but that one experience is also not represen…
100% agree that great engineers are not always great mentors, couldn't agree more! This is one of the reasons I personally don't do sessions, and focus on writing code, but that Daniel, Sophie, and others do sessions.
So most of our mentors are industry engineers who first go through light training (reading materials and videos) and then go through a shadowing and reverse shadowing process to be approved to run sessions.
For 1-1 mock interviews they are instructed to run them as industry mock interviews, and they complete a structured feedback form at the end with dozens of data points.
For group sessions, it's a little more complicated. We have a few dozen session types and people need to get shadowed and reverse shadowed for each type. Each session has very clear instructions on how to run that session - both technically and regarding the overall flow. Every single session technical…
Hi, we severely limit the number of people with zero experience (hence waitlists or rejections) and you can see in our recent placement data that about 1/3 of people had no full time experience and that was equally split amongst: bootcamp grads, CS grads, self taught/other degree: [https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/](https://formation.dev/blog/2022-formation-fellow-placements/)
I would argue that CS grads have fundamentals, some bootcamp grads do if they self studied post bootcamp, and self taught is the real wildcard where we would only admit people who meet the bar and just happened to do it themselves - typically over many years.
RE: Sessions. People get dynamically scheduled for sessions based on the skills and difficulties they are working on right now, so generally speaking, you should be in sessions with people around your level. We have a lot of improv…
PSA: Netflix Formation Program applications opened today! (2024 CS grads in the USA). Sadly, this is not open to bootcamp grads this time around, but any CS students who are considering a bootcamp before graduation might benefit from this program)
Hi friends, Netflix [announced](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heyjoshuag_formation-activity-7033558750359683072-hGi9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) the launch of the Netflix Formation Program, a **free program (paid for by Netflix)** for 2024 grads to get rigorous CS fundamentals training and potential interviews with Netflix for entry level SWE roles. This is intense program and is extremely competitive to get into, but if you qualify, check it out!
Now many of you know me well in this community and I champion helping bootcamp grads get great first, second, third jobs. This time around, unfortunately this program is only open…
PSA: Netflix Formation Program applications opened today! (2024 CS grads in the USA)
Hi all, Netflix [announced](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/heyjoshuag_formation-activity-7033558750359683072-hGi9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) the launch of the Netflix Formation Program and applications are open now through March 5th, 2023. This is a free program (paid for by Netflix) for 2024 grads to get rigorous CS fundamentals training and potential interviews with Netflix for entry level SWE roles. It's an intense program and is extremely competitive to get into, but I wanted to share it with the community so that people interested can check it out!
From the post:
>Netflix has teamed up with Formation to bring rising seniors personalized training and world-class mentorship from the best engineers in the tech industry. This is a **free** **program**, and participants who demonstra…
Yeah +1 to others, it's not super relevant that Will went there, and yes it's true: [source](https://www.coursereport.com/blog/founder-spotlight-will-sentance-of-code-smith)
Hack Reactor was acquired by Galvanize in 2018, and then K-12 acquired Galvanize in 2020. And then K-12 restructured as Stride Learning at then end of 2020.
So whatever experience he had back then it is certainly a little different from the experience now.
The only think that's relevant to some degree is that Codesmith's instruction staff all come from Codesmith alumni who become TA's, get hired full time, get promoted to leads, etc... and they are lacking like real industry experience in the ranks. Their main investor has many startups, is mostly known for film, but did an SAT prep company, and their head of outcomes did a startup as a product-person many years ago and then wrote movies as well. There on and off…
I disagree frequently that Codesmith's outcomes speak for themselves. They are unlike most programs in that there's a peek of people on the high end and a peek of people in the low end and they don't break out results by experience level. So people with more experience or a stronger background who end up making more money might not be realistic for someone who is maybe from a completely unrelated industry with no even vaguely related skills, like basic math, and I don't think that that's clear from the results.
In addition, I've worked with several Codesmith alumni who got fantastic jobs after the 6-month window but pretty close to it that they report on and those people don't even show up in their results. So there's a lot more going on than just what outcome say on paper. both good and bad.
Hi, thanks for sharing a great summary of your experiences and I really appreciate you sharing thoughts to help people figure out if what Formation currently offers is for them or not. Our team cares deeply about each and every engineer succeeding and works with people for as long as it takes to get a job, but we are your partner in the journey and being on the same page is critical.
I won't say much on this thread, other than a few points below, unless people address me directly, because I don't want to interfere with the discussion or step on your toes.
RE: Session consistency: For context, we create a new schedule for each Fellow, and mentor, every week - truly from scratch, and entirely different every single week.... hundreds (crossing thousands) of sessions scheduled every week dynamically from scratch. The real challenge with doing this, is that it's incredibly hard to handle at…
Their CEO posts about placements all the time on Twitter and how well people are doing. He claims 100% of job seeking people from their backend program got jobs and many before graduating.
Can you shed some light on those 3 to 4 job offers? I know they report graduates who get 2nd, 3rd, etc.. job offers down the road. I've worked with a few alumni from Bloomtech at Formation and Bloomtech has reported their placements in that channel even though they came to Formation afterwards and some even had work experience in between.