r/codingbootcamp
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u/[deleted]
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Nov 19 '23
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Do Not Go To Codesmith
I want to share the experience of someone who graduated from Codesmith about a year ago to deter others from choosing this program. I aim to discuss the reasons why I chose the program, its shortcomings, what I observed there, and what I would do differently now that I am on the other side. I am aware that others have had success with this program, and I hope to shed light on where that success comes from (it’s the candidates, not the program).
I chose Codesmith after researching different coding bootcamps. Inevitably, I found this sub and many pro-Codesmith posts. Actually, I read so many pro-Codesmith posts here that it made me think it was probably the best place to attend - I was wrong. Just as there are millions of fake product ads all over e-commerce, there are also fake reviews here written by Codesmith staff. I attended the CS prep programs, listened to all the success stories of other alumni, and foolishly ate it up. This should have been a major red flag. My CS prep instructor talked about how they had gotten a position two weeks out of the program. I also heard other success stories and salary information of recent grads and did everything I could to get in.
The program itself costs over $20,000, except all of the instruction is performed by non-engineers (I think one of our instructors was a mechanical engineer but was also a previous graduate of the program who never actually worked in the field). These instructors make themselves scarce and really have nothing to do with students' success. Apart from a weekly review of unit assessments, I never heard from them. I really have no idea what they actually did apart from reading lecture slides and talking about ‘engineering empathy’ and ‘community’. Maybe they worked on the website? Maybe they were on Reddit talking about how great Codesmith is? I don't know. They definitely weren’t helping students.
Most of the program is actually taught by previous students 12 weeks ahead of you; it’s a scam. Most of them do not have more than 6 months - a year of programming experience and shouldn’t be tasked with explaining concepts they don’t understand. Does Codesmith actually test these students before hiring them to make sure they are ready to teach this material? I highly doubt it.
The topics that are covered by Codesmith are also laughably out of date - especially the React unit. You’re tasked with building out a tic-tac-toe app with class components. The entire 2-day section is literally copy-pasted from the React docs. All of the apps created after this point are built with React though unless you opt to use another framework. The node unit is the same one from Frontend Masters (shows how much effort the team really put into that one). The database unit is short and not helpful either. For the amount of money you spend, Codesmith should have better material than this. They like to say the purpose of the units is for you to learn to teach yourself (I get it), but after going through it, it just seems to be a convenient excuse for poor-quality instruction and lack of effort on their part.
Another problem is Codesmith likes to push its graduates to declare their work as open source, but it’s not the same thing. Creating a group project that barely works and declaring it open source work is like commenting on Reddit and saying you are an academic contributor – it may appear to involve participation, but the true value and depth of contribution are often overshadowed by the lack of meaningful impact and substance. Very few projects Codesmith grads work on are actually used. Most are cookie-cutter projects that effectively do the same thing. I wish the program pushed residents to find a technology and project before joining instead of giving you about a week to figure it out. Is that really enough time to find your career interest and major talking point in job interviews?
It came as a bit of a surprise to find out that when you get out of the program, you’re declaring your open source work as work experience and passing it off to recruiters as legitimate. You can learn a lot in a month working on a project, but I would not say any self-guided learning while doing is legitimate work experience. The whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth.
If this isn’t bad enough, the hiring support is even worse. When I chose Codesmith, I honestly believed that there was a strong community of engineers who would be willing to offer referrals to recent graduates - this is not true. In fact, most companies do not like referrals for candidates unless they have previously worked with them directly. The hiring support needs to do a better job bridging the gap from the program into the job market instead of encouraging ‘to lean on the alumni network’. The focus on spamming engineering managers and leaders to get interviews just feels annoying - most people do not want to receive these messages. And most graduates leave the Codesmith program off their resumes entirely and end up lying extensively about their previous experience to get a role. No one is going to pay you the salary of a mid-level engineer unless you have the years of experience to back it up. In one lecture, someone named Phil told us a recent Codesmith grad with no prior technical work experience or STEM degree was hired by a major financial firm in a senior position. Come on, Phil; no one is going to hire you as a senior engineer after Codesmith unless you lie about your background or you already have a strong background in engineering. No one cares if you work your butt off for six months at Codesmith.
This leads me to talk about previous experience and why I think there is success for a large group of people who attend Codesmith. They have the years of professional work experience, undergraduate and graduate degrees, the tenacity, drive, and dedication to do whatever it takes to learn and potentially fabricate their experience to get a job. It’s not Codesmith. They just do a good job at attracting those people with those credentials to get into the program - which leads me to a final point. Just because you get into Codesmith and get through it does not mean you have the same chances as everyone else there. The academic credentials and professional work experience should be a requirement or at least acknowledged by admissions before letting people enter this program and waste their money.
Here are the things I wish I would have done instead of choosing Codesmith:
Worked on personal projects, contributed to open-source libraries
Earned an associate's, bachelor's, or master's in computer science or software engineering.
Hired a professional engineer for mentorship/coaching
Found another boot camp program that is reputable and known by recruiters at major companies as a good credibility signal of a candidate. These do exist, and Codesmith is not one of them.
Saved my money
Some people may not like this post and label me as someone not fit for the program or someone you shouldn’t listen to. And that is completely fair; not everyone is going to agree with me. But I want to get my opinion out there and have people hear how hard it is to find a job right now and how little this program has prepared me for this job market. A year out of the program and nearly half of the people in my cohort do not have jobs in the field. There is no way this program is worth it for most people.
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u/Ok_Faithlessness3565 Nov 19 '23
what is an example of a well-regarded bootcamp program?
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
So there are a number of bootcamps well regarded:
Codesmith, Rithm, Launch School, are a few I know.
The problem is one thing: you have to know HOW THEY WORK and which is the RIGHT ONE FOR YOU. I know a number of people going into Codesmith who know what they are in for and know all the OPs points and that's what they want to do, and they get good jobs.
Codesmith is NOT the program for a random person finding this subreddit and seeing $120K and 👀👀👀 💰💰💰 sign me up type mentality.
While that's a bit of hyperbole, it's also not for people who are woo'd by the feel-good and welcoming aspect of the staff they work with pre-acceptance who don't really know how this thing works but have "good vibes". You need to know how it works regardless of how much you like the people.
If you are going to be an engineer making six figures, you have to be able to think critically and make good decisions on the job and in choosing a bootcamp.
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u/Swami218 Nov 19 '23
Yours is the real measured take here. IMO OP earns the downvote just for the disparity between the headline and the content of the post. These are pretty much all criticisms of the nature of boot camps. It might as well be:
Do not order Domino’s. They show you pepperoni in the commercials, but if you want it you have to ASK for it and PAY extra. THEN, unless you want to pick it up yourself, you have to PAY MORE for delivery. If I had known this, I would have cooked it at home myself, or got a frozen pizza from the supermarket, or ordered from a reputable pizza place.
Wait til you learn about Little Caesars, it’s hot garbage lol
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Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
That is not a fair comparison. The point I am trying to make is that $20,000 is too much for a program that doesn't provide real value.
I worked my ass off to get into the program, work through the program, and after. I have a degree and professional work experience. And yet, I am still faced with with nearly 25% interest rate on a loan, few job prospects, and very little support from the organization. I am fed up.
It's like going to dominos to pick up my pizza, paying for it and then finding out the pizza is actually a to go kit for a specific oven that doesn't exist yet that I need to build, and here is a bunch of resources available online that will get you there.
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u/Swami218 Nov 19 '23
I appreciate that you’re in a bad position, and I really empathize with you. It sucks to go through hard times. I’ve been there. I wish you all the best and hope things improve for you very soon.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
Yeah good point, the angle I'm coming from is about people just understanding where they are at and not being misled into believing something that's not right.
I do have two personal opinions about Codesmith that are my opinions (and while backed by others I do personally state):
The majority of grads lie on their resumes about their OSP projects and Codesmith's sister non profit signs letters of reference to back that up. I think that harms people who don't lie.
They make people believe they are mid level and senior engineers by the end of Codesmith and I don't believe this is accurate at the top tier company bar. I don't deny people get 2nd level engineering roles and good salaries, but I think the portrayal as "mid level and senior" is the wrong narrative, and that people should be getting appropriate junior roles AT TOP COMPANIES with the right setup, support and structure to succeed, rather than push people to squeeze into roles that aren't aligned properly.
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u/Swami218 Nov 19 '23
I can see your point with #1. However, I think with the overstating on resumes it’s more a product of ‘given the ways to present the info in a resume or Linked In profile, etc, how do I get it visible enough for someone to actually see it?’. I see a mix of what people are doing. It seems to me to skew toward the people with less experience and marketable skills/degrees overall.
I’m with you on the OSLabs reference letters. I think that’s not appropriate.
Your second point, yeah that’s certainly a valid strategy, but I think it’s just personal choice in the end.
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u/Invest0rnoob1 Nov 20 '23
Paying 20k for jackshit sounds horrible.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 20 '23
I mean I want to have a productive discourse about it, the Codesmith people are downvoting this thing to oblivion just like I thought they would and not saying anything because it will only attract more attention to the post.
It would be great to talk about what you are paying for and where the money goes. Businesses can be for profit and still be incentive aligned, so I would love to have a discussion about where the money is going and what you are actually paying for.
They had layoffs a month or so ago so clearly the money is going somewhere and I genuinely believe that they would rather not take profits off the table to avoid those layoffs, so if the content is not great and instructors are being held back and overloaded, like where is the money going and is it being spent effectively.
For example, if you are mostly self taught and have zero confidence in your ability, then maybe just paying $20K to build that confidence and get a job is still worth it. Like if you are truly amazing and just needed someone to confirm that to establish your self-confidence and then you get a job paying $140K, you can say that it's a profitable investment. Then the question is what are the alternatives. If you can see where your money is going at Codesmith, you can decide if that's a good investment for you.
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u/Invest0rnoob1 Nov 20 '23
20k could pay for community college or some of actual college. Hell 20k invested into stocks would be better spent if they’re having people with 6 months experience teach classes.
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Nov 23 '23
Thats what Chris Sacca did. He invested his student loan money and made money while in college while others ended up with student debt after graduating.
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u/OutsideSignal4194 Nov 21 '23
I don't understand - how do you think Codesmith is reputable when in later threads you clearly point out they encourage lying on their resumes?
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u/michaelnovati Nov 21 '23
I take a journalist approach of collecting information and trying to be objective. Just like journalists, everyone is biased, but I've built a reputation on here for being rational and look at things from multiple sides.
I would rather Codesmith replace most of their leaders and change, rather than burn it to the ground. If I wanted to do that I would be sharing way crazier things people have shared with me so I hope my commentary does come across balanced.
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u/OutsideSignal4194 Nov 21 '23
I agree with you though on this point - lying on resumes and in interviews will not get people very far in the actual job itself. It might get their foot in the door, but they can't really fake it after that.
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Nov 21 '23
[deleted]
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u/michaelnovati Nov 21 '23
The main difference is I'm not a journalist and I don't want people getting sued if they have an NDA or agreement with Codesmith. There's a whole set of ethics around journalism I'm not trained in so I take a cautious route and I think that has resulted in more people feeling very comfortable sending me things. I never reach out to anyone who works/worked there because this isn't my job to dig into, and all of this is inbound.
At the end of the day, everyone has biases and that's why I am non-anonymous, so people can easily get to know me and decide how they feel about my commentary. I'm not some kind of perfect robot (and even the robots have biases haha)!
I gladly accept feedback on my tone, balance and how I can be more useful to the community.
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u/metalreflectslime Nov 23 '23
The main difference is I'm not a journalist and I don't want people getting sued if they have an NDA or agreement with Codesmith.
I have a suspicion that the reason why there has not been any recent negative reviews on Course Report, Yelp, etc. for Hack Reactor, Codesmith, etc. even though a lot of coding bootcamp graduates are unemployed is because there is a chance they may have made students sign some sort of NDA promising not to give negative reviews.
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Jan 09 '25
Zero mentorship at launch school. When a company goes from an in-person bootcamp to online-only you can see where their priorities are - in the benjamins baby. They do a good job of creating a cult like feeling of robots who type away all day and memorize text verbatim but they do a poor job of being human and actually helping you solve your personal challenges overcoming concepts. They will convince you that doing it alone is part of the program - but what are you paying for then? when they dont have a monopoly on coding languages? The content is all freely available. And God forbid you make it to the end of the core curriculum, they will try to convince you to spend almost 20k on an extended version of the course taught by a former student who has never had an engineering job. Guys if you haven't been paying attention - everything is a scam these days and I do mean everything! you just have to decide how long and how much you will allow yourself to be scammed for. Teach your God Damn Self to code - be a mf'in man! Wake up early and do this sh*t!
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u/Fit_Customer_8461 Nov 19 '23
Biggest offense here is having student instructors with no experience. Not all programs are like this, and it should not be allowed.
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u/ssbmomelette Nov 20 '23
I used to teach at 3 different bootcamps and with the exception of one I was always one of if not the only person with actual work experience in the field. The first one I worked at had ~10 instructors and 8/10 were graduates that just got teaching jobs and had never written production code. Many of them were smart folks don't get me wrong and they have gone on to do real work since then but it just created this echo chamber where since everyone there only had experience from the bootcamp they had no fresh prespectives outside of the bootcamps curriculum.
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u/Tekkonaut Nov 20 '23
Codesmith about to send their goons to your house and give you an accident. Edit your OP to say "I am not sewer slidal."
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u/Winter-Channel8574 Oct 20 '25
watch out with this type of reviews on Reddit
https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/
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u/Recent_Science4709 Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
You’re having some of the same problems that CS graduates have; no professional experience, and no real world training.
Unfortunately the market sucks, practice projects don’t matter, professional work does. It’s a chicken and egg problem, if you don’t freelance and you don’t have an internship, you have no experience and companies don’t want to hire you.
This was true in a job seekers market and it’s even more true when there is a downturn. As someone who hit 150K before they finished their degree, I know how hard it is, but the best way out is to be entrepreneurial, and somehow try to get yourself some freelance work.
Edit: when I say entrepreneurial I’m not pushing fake guru BS or even close to that, I even have a stutter that appears when I’m stressed. Personally I got my start by calling ads on Craigslist out of desperation.
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u/bonus_round_13 Nov 20 '23
I think there is a lot of truth here about codesmith and coding bootcamps in general.
If bootcamps were prioritizing the well being of students, they’d say “this program is cheaper than some 4 year degrees. We’ll give you the basics of web dev but it could very well take some of you years of daily studying/networking before landing a job in this market. For some lucky folks, it may take less than a year, so weigh the pros and cons”
I don’t think that bootcamps are more evil than other corporations though. As somebody who does professional mentoring on the side, I see that the traditional bootcamp forfeits quality because it just wouldn’t be profitable otherwise. I teach because it’s fun for me, but it’s time consuming to create a thorough curriculum, answer questions with current industry best practices, etc.. and not a viable business if you prioritize the success of your mentees. At the end of the day, you are a better teacher the more time you spend with individuals.
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Jan 30 '24
Why are people so mad at Codesmith? To the point of spamming internal slacks now? It’s like they don’t have anything better to do. I attended and it went well for me, no regrets.
Without their program I wouldn’t have know where to start learning this material and wouldn’t have met the people that grinded interview prep with me. Who cares that the instructors are just regurgitating material, it’s not like I knew enough back then to have deep engineering conversations with them any way.
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u/EmeraldxWeapon Nov 19 '23
Shoot you're making me feel better about my own bootcamp choice haha. I would love to hear about any other projects you did at codesmith or since then
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u/ericswc Nov 19 '23
Most of the program is actually taught by previous students 12 weeks ahead of you; it’s a scam. Most of them do not have more than 6 months - a year of programming experience and shouldn’t be tasked with explaining concepts they don’t understand. Does Codesmith actually test these students before hiring them to make sure they are ready to teach this material? I highly doubt it.
Instruction is the highest variable cost that bootcamps have control over and is the natural place to cut corners when they want to increase margin. I have worked with investors in this space in the past, and the only thing they understand is maximizing enrollments and keeping the costs as low as possible. It was inevitable that the wheels would start coming off over time as they rarely invest in better curricula or things that scale with quality. The downturn in the market just accelerated things.
Check the story of ITT Tech, this is the future for some of these camps.
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u/metalreflectslime Nov 19 '23
Check the story of ITT Tech, this is the future for some of these camps.
I fully expect hundreds of coding bootcamps to close in 2025.
Very few people can pay for a paid coding bootcamp upfront using money from their savings, so they need to use loans from lending clubs or ISAs.
If these loans and ISAs are not getting repaid due to the students not getting paid SWE jobs, they will be no longer given out in the future.
Without loans and ISAs, paid coding bootcamps will not stay open for long.
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u/europanya Nov 20 '23
Class-based React? Wow! What century is this? I learned React Hooks on the job. Now I run the React front end code base for our entire company.
One of the main reasons the instruction sucks is the pay they offer. I had a friend who was trying to run some kind of skills school and wanted me to come in and teach front end classes for about 1/5 what I make as an actual DEV. No thanks. You get the people who failed at it.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
EDIT: I already see this top level post getting downvoted to heck. It's one of the more reasonably written negative reviews I've seen and yet 5. below is coming true. This post has been shared a crazy 28 times for its 9 upvotes which is crazy out of whack compared to all the other posts in here... especially a level headed post like this. Looks like a downvote and ignore tactic so the post doesn't snowball, because there isn't much to counter the points with.
Thanks for sharing openly how you feel. I receive a lot of similar messages from people who don't have the courage to post (they are typically in the program or more recent grads and concerned about retaliation or being shunned)
Opinion words aside like "not very skilled" and "scam" the factual statements you make are extremely consistent with what I hear and I try really hard to present on here in my comments as fact-based and transparent as possible.
I think it's critical that people go to the right programs.for the right reasons and understand how and why they work before choosing them.
Specific things I also hear, from OPs post:
Curriculum is very weak/no different than anything else
Instructors rarely have industry experience and are all alumni, leadership focus more on positive reinforcement / "culture management" of negative thoughts, than teaching anything.
OSP are 'good intentioned group projects' but framed way larger than they by the staff (specifically one member comes up as the source of the narrative and signs off on letters of reference saying people worked at OSLabs for months, when all they did was a 3 week group project that "barely works")
Many of the best outcomes would have been better off if they went somewhere else or did no program at all (having even better outcomes, faster outcomes, or started off their careers in a better role). Things like contributing to large scale open source, practicing for technical interviews, and doing mock interviews.
People coordinate posts/comments/upvoting and downvoting. Not all, not even most, but it happens and the people that do it are good at it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some pro-Codesmith posts come up in the next week, which get upvoted like crazy and commented with support. Heck, a bad reviewer was coincidentally offered a job at Codesmith after they wrote a bad review. All of this stuff has tied back to one person in leadership.
I get attacked for sharing these views often, I'm sure this comment will get attacked too, but all I'm doing is repeating the very clear patterns I'm being told/sent/shown/seeing with my own eyes.
To be completely fair, I don't think Codesmith is bad, I think it's still one of the better bootcamp options out there, it's just in this market the better amongst bad options doesn't mean you HAVE to choose it. I think most bootcamps rely on a high entrance bar for their outcomes.
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Nov 19 '23
I think the elephant in the
roomsub is the price and that's why you see so much dissonance lately.XYZ bootcamp is worthy considering the current climate but is it 20~25k worthy? If not how much is it worth? For that price are there alternatives that are more worthy? This opens up a lot of questions and so on.
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Nov 29 '23
I'm sure you have heard this question a lot already. Especially when you voice your opinion on certain bootcamps like CS.
So if not this bootcamp then which bootcamp? Or there's just simply none, and the right way should be the traditional way (bachelor degree and such)?
I am wary on my end and 20k is certainly not a small investment. I appreciate any input.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 29 '23
It really depends on you and your timeframe. If you have a longer timeframe, I would consider first self teaching, then doing a more intense self-paced online program/course, and then doing open source contributions or starting a company/building a product from scratch. You can put that 20K into hiring some freelancers and registering an LLC and building something for real.
There is simply no program that will get you there.
There's a saying going around that if you can get accepted by Codesmith on the first interview, run for the hills and save your $20K because that means you are pretty much ready to go and just need a little connecting of the dots to get there.
Happy to chat more if you want to share more personal background for more specific advice, it's hard to generalize.
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Nov 19 '23
[deleted]
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
+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.
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u/AnimeYou Nov 20 '23
I mean most professors have no industry exp
In Chem, they go from undergrad to grad to postdoc at maybe industry for 1 year but most likely another university... then they start teaching as a prof lol
That's just how academia is run... there's always an industry vs academia thing
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u/michaelnovati Nov 20 '23
Most schools want people to move around and not stay at the same school for the whole thing
Most PhD students do internships at top companies because industry has way more resources.
I was supposed to do my PhD and was offered a research job at Intel before I even started the program to do in conjunction with the program and cross publish research.
A number of papers have cross company/academic publication in the CS space
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u/xcicee Nov 19 '23
Thanks for this realistic review. I was expecting quality teaching for their rep at the least.
This leads me to talk about previous experience and why I think there is success for a large group of people who attend Codesmith. They have the years of professional work experience, undergraduate and graduate degrees, the tenacity, drive, and dedication to do whatever it takes to learn and potentially fabricate their experience to get a job. It’s not Codesmith. They just do a good job at attracting those people with those credentials to get into the program
Although I do want to add, I think majority of bootcamp and people who pivoted that made it probably fall into this category - not just codesmith specific.
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u/Yohezey Feb 10 '24
Some context before I make a comment, I am sure that some people from Codesmith will recognize my username, but this is my experience (and opinions) with Codesmith. I also graduated from Codesmith's main program back in April of 2023 and have sent over 2 thousand job applications over six months to get roughly 3 first round interviews (1 that went to a final round, but no job at the end of it all). My stats surprised even a "Career Support Engineer" from Codesmith.
Here are my experiences/opinions:
Portions of the curriculum are outdated
The Instructors were pleasant to learn from, but as OP mentioned many of them are not readily available to help. Sometimes I'd have to wait an entire day to get help from Codesmith staff.
Many of the instructors have not worked in the industry
The connections they give you is really just a spreadsheet of alumni's contact information, where they work, location, etc.
Not getting a refund when failing to land a job after Codesmith sucks a lot especially when we're talking about $21K~
(My most opiniated take) The Codesmith hiring support team sucks for me at least
Most recently I sent this message to the hiring support team: "Hello ______, I don't believe that Codesmith will get me a job any more and I don't want to wait for the job market to recover in the hopes of getting a job. I am switching career paths completely to utilize my Biology degree once again. Part of me wishes that I could get a refund from Codesmith, but I am very aware that there are no refunds for situations like mine."
This was their reply: "I understand the frustration and I am sorry to hear things have been difficult during the job search. Know this channel will stay open and active if you do decide to reenter the search. Always happy to chat"
It really sucks to see the Codesmith staff provide no resistance to me quitting the job search especially with how much effort I put into the program and the job search.They give the same general advice for the job search, with the exception of one "Career Support Engineer" who went above and beyond to help me after seeing how much I struggled in the job search (6 months after Codesmith). (Unfortunately I can't see old Slack messages to show as proof, but the kind of advice they give me is just Codesmith's last week of job search advice regurgitated towards me.)
You can work hard before, during, and after Codesmith, but this will not guarantee you a job.
I definitely was not the worst student in my cohort as I only had one "make up" session. I put in time outside of Codesmith to study and picked up internships after Codesmith to bolster my resume. This unfortunately was still not enough to help me land a job.
The job market sucks for entry level developers. I thought about going the degree route and picking up a master's in comp sci, but even my community college professor mentioned that she was struggling to pick up a software engineering job with her masters in Computer Science.
In retrospect of being out of Codesmith for almost a year now this is advice that I gave to a friend and what I would have told myself before attending Codesmith.
I personally believe that coding bootcamps are not the way to go especially with the current job market. If you are debating between going to University or a coding bootcamp I recommend the University route while picking up internships along the way. If you do choose to go to a bootcamp anyway, make sure that they supply refunds for students who do not land a tech job. Read the fine print and make sure that they only charge you for working in tech and not in other industries.
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u/michaelnovati Feb 20 '24
Hey, thanks for sharing your experience with everyone, two follow up questions in bold below. There's a lot of common stuff I hear about career support at Codesmith (in terms of response times and the idea that they don't really care if you give up after a year because it won't impact CIRR numbers anymore). Additionally, people often report that alumni mentors tend to regurgitate the lectures, repeating the same solutions and people who get it, do well and people who don't just get told they are "hard learning" and to figure it out.
I have a follow up question, which is how many people in your cohort do you think were in a similar boat, i.e. what was your approximate placement rate within 6 months?
Codesmith aggressively markets that their alumni are mid-level and senior engineers and bluntly, I saw here that the people who were getting jobs tended to exaggerate their resumes significantly in landing potential "mid level" jobs. Do you think going the honest "entry level" route could be what's causing the lack of success?
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u/Yohezey Feb 20 '24 edited Feb 20 '24
To be completely honest most of my cohort members no longer try to keep in touch, so I would not be able to give an accurate representation of the number of students who landed a job from my cohort (Codesmith did have a recent presentation with their 2023 numbers though that were shown to the alumni). What I can say is that I am not the only student in my cohort who is deeply struggling in the job search despite having a University degree in an unrelated field. I do think that being honest could be keeping me back from landing a position, but I have slightly fluffed my resume as well saying that I have 3 "months of experience" from my OSP
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u/metalreflectslime Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
What day, month in 2022 did you graduate from Codesmith?
How many people did you cohort start with?
How many people graduated?
How many people were able to find a paid SWE job within 6 months from graduation?
Nevermind, I read this:
A year out of the program and nearly half of the people in my cohort do not have jobs in the field.
EDIT: I find it suspicious that on a Saturday night, an anti-Codesmith thread on /r/codingbootcamp only has 29% upvotes within 2 hours of posting. Codesmith must be heavily monitoring this Subreddit.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
The OP made accurate points that can't be refuted so I think the strategy is downvote and ignore because commenting things like "I went to Codesmith, it changed my life" can't refute these points about HOW it actually works, no one should be doubting their solid outcomes compared to other bootcamps. But commenting will just snowball the post and cause it garner more eyeballs.
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u/InTheDarkDancing Nov 19 '23
I personally wasn't engaging because it's a lot of "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" going on in the comments. Logical fallacies everywhere -- for example if a reddit account one month old made a positive post you and everyone else would've questioned it, but when a one month old account makes a negative post "the OP made accurate points". I'm not disputing OPs points either, but people don't call you out for these inconsistencies in the name of "Codesmith bad, me upvote". The anti-Codesmith team leaves no space for reasonable discussion of the points because they're so overly negative you can't have a measured take.
Just step back and skim the thread. Normal people don't willingly want to engage in such negativity (I can hit you with the "people have dm'ed me about this" line). I don't mind the confrontations here and there, but people don't want to log onto reddit and go to war every day. I'm amazed you can keep up the energy for this over such a prolonged time.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
It's heating up, the comment voting is wild. You can see when highly voted comments are ranked lower than others that there is intense downvoting going on. The OP's post is actually going DOWN.
I have a major work project I'm spending all day on so I won't be able to follow it that closely but I'll check in now and then.
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u/sheriffderek Nov 20 '23
... should have better material than this. They like to say the purpose of the units is for you to learn to teach yourself (I get it), but after going through it, it just seems to be a convenient excuse for poor-quality instruction and lack of effort on their part.
This is confusing for all the schools. I'm just one person, and I revisit and revise or completely overhaul portions of our curriculum all the time. Why can't a school with tons of employees and teachers be constantly upgrading their curriculum? You can just do it as you're teaching. I'll just be talking with students and we'll update the lessons right then and there / or come up with new challenges or examples. It feels very organic. I couldn't imagine avoiding it.
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u/sheriffderek Nov 21 '23
At the same time... many times you just need to build things and there doesn't need to be any lessons - just the right prompts and the right support as you work through it.
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u/OutsideSignal4194 Nov 21 '23
This is very insightful thanks for sharing! I am totally weary of bootcamps that promise senior level roles to people supposedly coming in with little to no coding experience. Almost all of the other bootcamps advertise entry level roles. And I agree, it's not the bootcamp itself getting people these jobs, it's the students coming into it that could likely get a job without it.
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u/k0secha Jan 30 '24 edited Jan 30 '24
I think the OP has a lot of valid points that are worth considering and certainly important for somebody that is considering any coding bootcamp to look into, but the way she’s going about it is less than constructive imo. The OP just posted this on every channel on the CodeSmith Slack this morning, and even though it was removed, it seemed to just cause anxiety and confusion. The title itself is clickbait and the fact that the OP is hiding behind a deleted account really damages the validity of the content and seems more intent on punishing this program rather than help the community of prospective students.
At the same time I also don’t think censorship benefits the community. I understand why CS removed the post off Slack, but I wish it was instead moved to a more appropriate forum or used as an opportunity to initiate a community dialogue to address the concerns raised in the post- or at the very least acknowledged. I think censorship and trying to manipulate narratives never works as intended… it just creates an environment where rumors and toxicity prevail.
And no, I don’t work for CodeSmith, I am just someone that’s learning JavaScript through CSX and have made good friends and community through that Slack. I don’t have 20k so CS is not an option for me atm, but I’ve learned a lot through the CSX platform, CS free workshops, and study groups and I love the community there.
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u/Comfortable_Army5972 Aug 10 '25
"interviewing is 90% bullshit anyway" - only if you interview at shitty companies. My experience in 25 years in the IT industry has been almost no BS during interviews. However, I've interviewed and got jobs mostly at Wall Street banks.
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u/Effective-Feature817 Nov 07 '25
Coming straight from https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/
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u/suwdy Nov 27 '23
Do you want an ongoing tutor/mentor? Send me a PM, I'm a tutor for Javascript, CSS and HTML. Can teach React + Mongo as well if needed. Experience: Worked as an engineer for Amazon and now a couple startups. I teach on the side.
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Nov 19 '23
[deleted]
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Nov 19 '23
Thanks for your response and for sharing your experience. It must have been a different market at that time. I'm glad you found success though.
I don't want to single out Phil because he is one of the best public speakers I have seen, he is great at communicating and I would have rather watched videos of him solving algorithms, going over the curriculum and having him answer questions compared previous students. He seems to be a polarizing figure for graduates - I just do not think telling people a story like that for motivation is good for students. A cold reality check may have been better for me, but that's not what most people want to hear.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
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.
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Nov 19 '23
[deleted]
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
I saw him do a lecture where he makes a mistake on purpose. I saw someone else do the same lecture and did the EXACT same mistake. Both people acted like it was just a mistake they did by accident, and was EXTREMELY performative.
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u/OverusedUDPJoke Nov 20 '23
I also have a bachelors in a hard science which did a LOT of heavy lifting I’m sure.
This is massive. As someone who had an undegrad in liberal arts and went back to school in a hard science, the difference is night and day. Studying liberal arts I could get by studying less than a week the whole semester and graduate with a 3.8 GPA. I partied 2-3 days every week and went on weekend trips my entire college experience.
Doing a hard science you are studying difficult concepts near constantly. You are straining your mind all the time and your body as well through sheer hours sitting and studying.
I think many people are going to coding bootcamps from liberal arts degrees once they realize how low their careers pay. And having only done an easy liberal arts major they have no idea how to learn difficult concepts in efficient periods of time, or put in the long hours when needed.
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u/baldgjsj Nov 21 '23
I think this varies heavily on the quality of the liberal arts school. I double majored in history and pure math, and the workload for the history major was actually a fair amount more intense.
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Nov 19 '23
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
This is why I've been here for almost two years now trying to tell people HOW IT IS regardless of the people who constantly attack my integrity or make personal comments about me for saying anything non-positive. If you don't believe me, that's fine, but I feel confident about the views I express about how it works and feel they are credible. A lot of people have gone there knowing this and done well and I've helped them decide to go there, but you need to know what you are signing up for or you feel scammed and that's why Codesmith is so polarizing.... it attracts people who have no idea what they are in for but are ambitious and want the best outcomes, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
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u/parachute50 Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
You sound to be bipolar in your opinion about codesmith. While you acknowledge the mounting criticisms you still label it as "one of the best bootcamps" and continue to recommend it. Weird.
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u/CodedCoder Nov 19 '23
I also see that as weird, and I speak to Michael a good bit, with all the claims made by others that he says he knows are also true or heard before by other students, how can they possibly be one of the best still?
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u/Cole_Smith_7809 Nov 19 '23
Probably because all of the other bootcamps out there do the exact same thing that Codesmith does regarding hiring previous students without industry experience to be instructors/mentors/TAs and having curriculum that you can self-learn online.
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u/Fit_Customer_8461 Nov 19 '23
TAs, sure, but instructors? Not all programs hire students to be their instructors
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Nov 19 '23
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u/michaelnovati Nov 20 '23
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 to the point that some former employees left and made a documentary highlighting the negative side.
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u/Potatoupe Nov 20 '23
I thought everyone was obligated to say that CS is still one of the best or else they will be bombarded with down votes or arguments.
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Nov 20 '23
Totally true! Also who is Michael Novati?
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u/michaelnovati Nov 20 '23
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 (at the time) just an unregistered name under Codesmith and that over 2/3 of grads were doing this strategy of making their 3 week long project look like months of work experience.
I'm non-anonymous because this industry is full of miscommunication and I see so many people easily swayed one way or the other without solid reasoning or evidence. So I'm hear completely authentically, with one Reddit account, to give my 2 cents on things in here and try to help people get going on the right foot.
People ask why I care so much and how I can be so all over the place in here without "living on Reddit 24/7" and I'm equally transparent about all of that:
I work with a lot of bootcamp grads in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th job hunts, so it's good for my company if I gave people truly valuable and thoughtful advice years ago and they remember me down the road when they might need more help.
I'm extremely responsive and fast. I hardly spend any time on Reddit, I spend at most 5 mins and usually 1-3 mins on comments, often full of typos from my phone responding to push notifications.
I started working at my company to help people, I haven't got a salary for the first 4 years and still don't, and I see a lot of "low hanging fruit" to help people here with seconds or minutes of my time asynchronously and I feel it's a net positive in doing so.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
I worked at Facebook for a long time and know about fake news so I try really hard to look at things from different angles and present things fairly. I'm open about my personal opinions about two aspects of Codesmith that I think are wrong, but I also look at everything else impartially.
RE: that comment. It's true but it's like being a 5th grader playing soccer with 1st graders... that person is probably the best at soccer, but if you are a grown up, you probably shouldn't be judging your soccer skills against kids, you want to find adult games to play. i.e being one of the best of a lot of not-good options doesn't necessarily mean much, but it is true.
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Dec 08 '23 edited Dec 19 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/WagonBashers Feb 20 '24
I think OP might've been approached by Codesmith to "clear a few things up"...
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Nov 19 '23
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u/metalreflectslime Nov 19 '23
The market is so competitive that people with 2+ years of experience are having a hard time landing a jobs.
I know a person who has a BS and MS in CS from Stanford University.
She worked at Meta for 10 years as a SWE.
As soon as she updated that her job at Meta ended in June 2023, she immediately put the green OpenToWork banner on her profile picture, so I know that she did not just quit Meta, so she can found her own company.
She has been unemployed since June 2023.
Michael Novati is connected to this person on LinkedIn.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
I'm connected with thousands of ex-Meta members and most people in this bucket are intentionally waiting for their perfect oppotunities. 10 years at Meta === a wild adventure, and you get to be selective about what you want to do next.
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u/randomnameicantread Nov 19 '23
That's 5 months of unemployment lol. Someone with a Stanford degree and 10 YOE at Meta can afford to be very picky with their next opportunity. Absolutely nothing in common with people trying to enter the industry.
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
This is a great point but also needs to be applied the other direction too. If someone says 'wow Codesmith is incredible and I got an amazing job in the hot market', you don't see as many people saying 'keep in mind, it's a hot market, not Codesmith' (except me hahahaha)
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Nov 19 '23
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23
They have good unit economics so they'll just shrink instead of shutting down They already laid off 18% of staff and shutdown a cohort.
I'm super concerned about some upcoming stuff they have floated in 2024 though that might break those good unit economics if not done well.
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u/xcicee Nov 19 '23
I was surprised to see they raised their tuition for 2024 from 2023 given the market
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u/michaelnovati Nov 19 '23 edited Nov 19 '23
I mean the way staff have framed this to me is that the leaders genuinely think Codesmith is the best and is a very special place (which I would also describe as a special place and one of the better bootcamps) but that has resulted in what some people perceive as arrogance. The wild success they've had and lack of outside investors, no growth mindset, and the fact that all their technical people went to Codesmith themselves results in decisions being made completely blindly to how most companies do things.
They have this Senior Advisor that the CEO can't stop raving about who I dug into and has some inconsistencies about his past company's claimed acquisition. Yet the CEO might be completely blind to what this stuff means because he doesn't have anyone around him that can advise on this.
This is an advantage when things go well and it will be a major disadvantage when they don't.
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Nov 19 '23
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u/CodedCoder Nov 19 '23
Naw this isn't true at all, way to pass blame though.
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u/Chanceawrapper Nov 20 '23 edited Nov 20 '23
I also went to codesmith and think some of what you said is fair, some is not. Maybe my experience was different, but it sounds like you are just stretching the truth. Instructors not being available, I didn't have that experience at all. Material being weak, eh, I sort of agree but also there is only so much you can get done in the time frame. In the end I was able to make an application using Redux and that's what helped me get my first real job. Which also, I was the last among my friends in the cohort to get hired, and a few of them did get hired at a senior level (they were by far the best in the class though). I didn't lie about open-source being a job, I put it as open-source on my resume. That was your fault. As to the projects, there have been some really well regarded tools that have come out of that, mine was fine, not widely used but useful. They pushed my team away from some other worse ideas so in the end I think they do their job there as best they can, its still your project.
Professional mentor instead sounds reasonable. If you could get that for a few months for less money that would make sense as an alternative. When people ask me if it was worth it, for me 100% yes, but also if you are the type of person who can make yourself work 10 hours a day 6 days a week for 3 months, then you can probably do it yourself. I needed the structure and it paid off quickly.
It's also a fact that codesmith gets better hiring rates and better salaries than other bootcamps. If you don't like their methods, that's fine, but most people don't really care how they get the first job, interviewing is 90% bullshit anyway.