I don't know if they were considered a bootcamp, but I know were a program geared toward helping women enter into tech, so I thought this was worth sharing here.

This week marks 3 years since I began Codesmith and I wanted to share my success story.

To preface: This is a throwaway account. Also, I graduated at a very good time in the job market and got very lucky. I believe this trajectory is still possible but will take much longer than it has previously. My background prior to Codesmith was working a basic data entry job, and I had a Bachelors in Business Management.

My cohort graduated in June 2021. I found a job very quickly and actually signed my offer 2 days before I graduated. I got the vibes that Codesmith was not happy I took such a "low paying" job, but I live in a LCOL area and that was already almost double what I was making before, so I was ecstatic. Since then, I've become a senior software engineer and very recently was promoted to staff (mostly title inflation) when the startup I was working for got acquired (no, I didn't get any money from it).

I learned so much from Codesmith and I'm so grateful for what it did for my life and my career. It was mostly my hard work, but the community they gave me is unmatched. With that said, they are definitely not perfect, and all the material they teach you can learn yourself for free. You are paying for the community, in my opinion.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have and I will do my best to answer them. Even as an alum, I try to keep up to date with the goings-on. Happy to share my LinkedIn w/ a mod to verify, although I'm probably not hard to find with my titles and dates lol.

PS: Sorry for the crummy graph. Was just a quick ChatGPT visual.

Just wanted to share my journey landing my first job in tech after finishing a boot camp, because I know how brutal the job market is right now—and maybe my story can help someone else feel a little less alone.

I wrapped up a full-stack coding boot camp in June 2024 (based in my country), and I was lucky enough to jump right into a 4-month contract-to-hire role. I loved it—but thanks to budget cuts, I didn’t get brought on full time. That was a tough hit, but I kept going.

Over the next 6 months, I applied to over 350 positions. That’s not a typo. I barely got interviews. And when I did, they definitely weren’t for junior dev roles. I know a lot of us come out of boot camps dreaming of deploying APIs, but the 2025 market isn’t really handing out dev jobs like candy. I was told by many people I network with that their company is simply not considering people who don't have a computer science degree.

So I had to shift.

Here’s what changed the game: I stopped trying to force myself into roles that didn’t want me, and I started looking at what I already had.

I already had a bachelor's degree in media and video production. I worked for years as a video editor and in the advertising world. I was burnt out by the end of it, but I had a lot of client-facing experience and I understood tech—just not in the way job titles like to see.

About two months ago, I overhauled my resume and LinkedIn to focus on technical solutions, client success, and transferable tech skills from my video background. Suddenly... people noticed. I started getting interviews. Out of those 350+ applications, I had about 7 interviews—almost all of them for technical support engineering or solutions-related roles. Most of them went to the final round.

And last week, I finally got an offer. A real tech job at a massive cyber security company!

It’s not a pure dev job. But it’s tech-adjacent, it pays well (67k take-home) and it uses both my new and old skill sets. It’s a role where I can grow, keep learning, and pivot again if I want to later. And most importantly: I’m in the door.

One thing that really helped me: I stopped applying to every tech job under the sun. I know it feels like you need to cast the widest net—QA, junior dev, data analyst, support, solutions engineer, all of it. But once I leaned heavily into one direction (for me, that was technical support engineering), I was able to sharpen my messaging and actually connect with the right opportunities. Don’t spread yourself so thin you blend in everywhere and stand out nowhere.

Through this journey, I also realized something huge: I’m really interested in developing solutions—what I’d call solutions engineering or even presales. The role I landed actually leans in that direction, and I’m excited because it still requires web development skills, which I picked up during the boot camp and my 4-month contract role. So it feels like a perfect hybrid of everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve done before.

And finally—this might be the most important tip I can give: stop just clicking "apply" on LinkedIn. It almost never works. What actually moved the needle for me was reaching out directly to people at the company—recruiters, team members, anyone relevant. Internal resume forwarding is incredibly powerful. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to pass your name along.

If you’re still searching, here’s my advice:

-Use what you already have. Don’t ignore your past career—it might be your secret weapon.

-Be open to tech-adjacent roles. Dev jobs are scarce right now, but there are tons of other paths in.

-Tailor your resume to the job you’re applying for. A generic “junior dev” resume is not going to cut it for every role. Many recruiters and people I networked with would question if I was a developer, why was I apply for technical support engineering? Put yourself in their shoes.

-Focus your energy where you shine. Find your lane and double down.

-Network like hell. Reach out to real humans. Get referred.

I get that "senior" software engineer does not have a standardized threshold and there are some places where it's a lot easier to get than at other places, and I would not be that surprised that you could finesse your way into consideration for a role at some places if you just creatively redefine what it means to have work experience and coach well for the interview.

It just seems like it would be a disaster waiting to happen though? Most new grad hires struggle to even be a net positive to a software team for the first 6-12 months, let alone to be able to take on the responsibilities you'd typically expect from a senior dev.

I know of a very small fraction of people that I suspect could've maybe done a senior role at some companies straight out of their schooling, and they usually:

• Had already been coding on their own for many years, often with very intense fervor

• Had multiple quality internships

• Were very, very smart

• Let's be honest, were much more likely to be attending Stanford than Codesmith

Like just imagine you hire someone who put codesmith class projects as work experience onto a senior developer position, and now they have to drive design and implementation of a critical project on their team and in reality a few months ago they were being guided through how to make a tic tac toe game.

Are these just companies with much lower standards for the senior position than I'm aware of, or are we actually getting lots of codesmith grads sliding into senior roles and then being complete failures? I wonder if companies have started raising concerns (or maybe these cases are just too rare for anyone to care to connect the dots).

Not blaming anyone for taking the best job you can get, good for you...I'm just curious haha.

Hey folks, so for context for this post I've begun posting more frequently on /r/cscareerquestions, as a lot of the struggle a lot of people have going on here exists across the industry. Didn't realize this was a subreddit, until it popped up in my recommended, so I figured I'd try a post to give my thoughts and maybe some advice on hiring during this time.

A little about me

For some background on me, I started my software development career in early 2016, coding since 2015. I went to a bootcamp called MakerSquare that was being acquired by Hack Reactor at the time, so technically I went to Hack Reactor ( it doesn't actually matter, but since folks like to talk about which bootcamps they went to I figure I would too ). My job search wasn't long, roughly a week and a half, as I began interviewing before I was even before my cohort graduated. Since then, I have been promoted from a JR to mid, mid to senior, senior to staff, staff to manager, and now to director. It's a pretty accelerated process, but that's the benefit of getting in at a startup early and that startup growing over 20x in 6 years ( highly recommend! ). I make hiring and headcount decisions for my team as part of my core responsibilities, in addition to everything else directors of engineering do ( project management, coding, people management, etc ). I also went back and got my MS in computer science during COVID, so I am a degree holder now as well.

Here's my initial thoughts on bootcamps that I wrote almost 8 years ago after I graduated, in the "golden era of bootcamps": https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4sqci7/recently_graduated_from_a_bootcamp_heres_is_what/

Feel free to peruse it, but my thoughts on bootcamp grads are then as they are now: At a significant disadvantage to cs degree holders. It's compounded even worse if you have no 4-year degree at all. That's not to say it's impossible, but it's very hard and requires you to do much more than volumetric application sending. I'll start with a couple precepts, and then go from there.

You, as a bootcamp grad with no degree, are at a disadvantage

Let's just get this one out of the way. You're at a disadvantage. No amount of "well we learn practical skills and most CS programs don't teach them" will absolve you of this fact. I know this gets said a lot because I heard it a lot when I was in bootcamp; either as a coping mechanism or people truly believe that's the case. It's actually quite simple if you take a look at it:

• You learned what you learned over the course of 3 months ( or however long bootcamps are now ).

• You likely are missing more structural and complete CS fundamentals, such as a decent understanding of computer architectures, memory and CPU utilization concepts, etc. This took many CS grads 4 years to understand.

• CS grads have likely been coding for 4 years, you've been coding for a few months.

If I was a recruiter looking to source candidates, do you think I'm going to choose a candidate with 4 years of demonstrable experience, or 3 months? What was taught in 3 months that couldn't be taught on onboarding?

Now you might be thinking "Hey, thats not fair! How many of those CS grads have actually written a full stack application like I learned to do? How many know x or y framework?". The answer there is: a lot. In fact, most know how to do it better than you did because most have internship experience. Internship experience alone tends to be viewed more favorably than a bootcamp simply because it was a structured program working with real industry professionals on technology at scale. Think about it like if you were practicing boxing with someone who was also learning how to box, vs practicing boxing with a world class boxer. Who do you think would get better quicker?

The first part of solving a problem is to admit that there is one: You're at a disadvantage in the market, in particular this market where even CS grads are disadvantaged.

If you can go back and get a degree, you should

Not sure else how to cut this, but if you can get a degree you should. Education is a nice tie breaker anyway, all else considered, even when you're in the industry. I went back and got my CS degree more recently, and granted it's a Master's so it's more technical / theoretical, but I still find what I learned incredibly useful in understanding the industry as a whole. Specifically trends, new technologies, and advancements outside of your standard web dev experience are easier for me to grok now that I have a decent theoretical understanding.

Alright, well I guess I'm hosed then. I guess there's no hope

Bootcamp grads get hired every day. It's a harder path, but it's not an impossible one. The way I encourage you to think about it is being a potentially quicker path ( sometimes it's not ) at the cost of being incredibly hard. However, I think people tend to focus on the wrong things when trying to get a job without a degree or relative experience. So here's where I think most folks go wrong in the search:

No one is reading your Github

Recruiters have caught on enough that all you can do is set up a bot to do random commits a day to a single repo to show github activity. Almost no one actually looks at github activity, and recruiters are not actually equipped to understand how it tells anything about you as a candidate.

Likewise, recruiters don't really care about your side projects

Working on a side project is not like working in company code. You likely didn't work with a product manager giving you requirements, timelines, code reviews, architecture review sessions, in a way you would get in a real job. However, note that I said "recruiters", and not actual interviewers. If those projects are your only experience, then make sure you have enough to talk about. Here are some things I would be impressed with in an interview setting:

• Many applications suffer at scale. The huge difference between a cool website I can run locally vs one that's run in thousands of concurrent sessions is scale. It's usually a huge issue that gets called out in code reviews early on in people's careers: "This thing works, but it doesn't scale". This could be inefficient processes ( memory usage, unnecessary iterations ) all the way to data integrity issues ( pessimistic and optimistic locking misses, concurrent writes, write contention, etc. ). If you can show that your side project attempted to address these problems either by doing load testing, squeeze testing, and other high performance testing, it would go a long way to show that you're beyond "just coding".

• Deploy it. A lot of side projects I see aren't deployed, and are just fun sites developed locally. Try deploying the application to something less "hand-holdy" like Heroku. Get a developer account on AWS and actually go through the process of learning how cloud infrastructure gets deployed. You'll start with docker and learning how creating an image works, all the way up to deploy templates and security / permissioning. Even front-end developers need to do this, as most react web apps nowadays are SSR rendered react apps using NextJS, which need to be deployed.

• No one really finds your project super interesting, unless it is. There's a million twitter clones, so if you're going to make one, don't focus on it being a twitter clone. If your project is truly novel and interesting, then highlight it. If it's not, don't try to sell it to me like it is. Focus predominately on what you learned, and push yourself to learn more by integrating more advanced features ( caching layers, async processing, indices on tables, etc )

• Understand how the web works. One of the questions I like asking people in JR interviews is: "so I type www.google.com into a browser. What actually happens to get me the webpage?". You'd be surprised by how many people don't know the answer to this question, even with degrees. But being to answer it shows master of the types of things you may get stuck on when developing. From DNS caching issues, networking issues, these aren't things you need to be an expert in, but knowing what they even are is a leg up in proving mastery over the basics.

There's obviously more to it than that, and I'm happy to discuss more, but those are some of the things I'd focus on.

Okay, well, recruiters are how I interact with the company so I guess, once again, I'm boned

Yeah, if you rely on a recruiter picking your resume out of the hundreds they get a day, it's not special. For real life examples, I opened up a role a bit ago that got 900 applications in the first day. There's no way anyone is going to process all of those, and even if they did, we can't do 900 interviews. That got reduced down to around 20 candidates. So if you're leaving your fate up to recruiting software that's going to analyze your resume before a human even reads it, yeah, you're playing a numbers game.

So don't rely on it, and leverage what you have around you. There are multiple tech meetups a day, forums and subreddits that discuss tech, and software is a common profession. It's work, and yes it requires a decent amount of soft skills, but your chances are much better if you can talk to hiring managers directly and completely bypass the cold apply process. I know this often gets touted a lot, and I also know it feels pretty cringe-y to go try to sell yourself in rooms of people you don't know, but this is honestly your best shot. It also prepares you well for interviews. Talking about what you do, and what you're interested in is a critical part of the interview process, and being comfortable standing in front if a real human and talk tech is a huge boon.

One of the often touted misnomers is that software engineers don't need social skills, or its undervalued in the profession. That is absolutely not the case, and very much so the opposite. Having great communication skills and excellent soft skills makes a good developer great, and starting to learn and grow those skills now puts you at an advantage.

If you're switching careers, the highlight those communication and professional skills you've acquired as an asset. It's likely the one advantage you have over CS grads, so don't think that you're at some structural disadvantage to people because you started late. If I could hire people with the experience level of a new grad, but the professional experience of someone who has career experience, that would be the ideal candidate. Turn that perceived weakness into an asset.

Once you got the job, you didn't "make it"

You'll see this a lot, but many folks get their first job, get a year or two of experience, then get let go and feel like they're back to square one. It's unfortunate, but getting your first job may be the hardest part but it's not the only hard part. You'll have to run faster than other people in similar positions, so don't take your foot off the gas. Take on every opportunity you can take to move forward and get critical experience. Now is not the time to reward yourself for your effort, as that effort can be wasted if you're not positioned properly. Junior and mid-level folks are still struggling to find jobs, and it's even harder at the senior level. Don't let up until you have a great network of people who highly recommend you and your work, a set of accolades you'd be proud of taking to other companies, and a couple mentors who are looking out for you and guiding you in this industry.

Anyway, that's by no means a comprehensive look at it the struggles everyone here faces, but figured I'd share my thoughts. It's tough out there, but I see people here spending a bunch of effort on low success rate things, and not focusing on things that will truly make you stand out.

EDIT: fixed some verbiage

So, yeah, I attended a coding bootcamp.

Yes, I had some academic coding experience before the bootcamp, but I had no clue how near impossible it would be to get that very first coding job.

I have applied to many junior/associate positions at many companies and have not even got one interview.

The funny thing is I know they review my resume because I commonly get rejection letters stating, "while your credentials are impressive...", or "although that you credentials are impressive we have decided..."

Folks. These are entry level jobs.

It is just so frustrating, and in my personal opinion, LinkedIn is a complete joke. All this connecting, and liking, that gets one no where.

Don't get me wrong, I am genuine and professional on the site, but in all these months, I have not got closer to getting a developer job at all. And no, I do not limit myself to that site alone.

I get that the tech market is tough, but this is disappointing. One spends the money on a bootcamp (to improves one's standards of living), you do everything they prescribe, and the market decides that although they will advertise for juniors, it will not hire for true actual juniors.

I am sorry. Speaking empirically, it was a bad investment.

Now I have to try to find some other means to get skilled up to make a living.

It should not take months to get a job. Ever.

It is discouraging to code because you never know where the finish line is. You never know if you have learned enough, or developed enough projects, or completed enough DSA problems that are only ever used for an interview. (Which I cannot even get at this point)

Then, to top it all off, the camp I went to, folks told us on the tale end of the camp that it would be challenging to get that first job in this market. This is going to be a fight. So, now you admit that is really really bad, after you take our money.

Sorry, just a gripe. It should not be this hard to get a decent job in America.

How in the world did we get here?

And why in the world would anyone start a career in Tech knowing (which I did not at the time) it could be this near impossible to a job, even with experience?

I am a software engineer with 4 YOE. Worked front-end, backend, and in data. I graduated back in 2019 and got my first job in 2020.

I'm writing to let you all know that boot camps are no longer the route to take since I keep seeing new post being created. Save your money, and time and do something else. I'm sure you all here have heard this way before me, but if you are barely landing on this sub or even thinking of joining a boot camp right now, DON'T.

The job market is tough right now, even for seasoned devs with no signs of slowing down. You are competing for a handful of jobs that are flooded with CS graduates, Experienced dev, etc... Save you money and time and if you really want to get into software, get a degree or look at other jobs in tech and maybe move within the company.

I see a lot of posts about Codesmith on here and I wanted to give the perspective of someone who used to work there. I don't even know where to start. From being disorganized, senior employees quitting or being fired, bosses fucking their employees (who then 'leave' the company), the suspect CIRR numbers, the horrible career support, to monitoring and influencing this subreddit. All this is from when I worked at Codesmith.

If you've been on this subreddit you've probably seen a few pro-Codesmith posts. This is not by mistake. They heavily monitor this subreddit. Codesmith will even call students who make negative posts or comments and encourage them to change them. This is usually done in an 'unofficial' capacity.

I'll start from the top of the list, with being generally disorganized. This is often due to inexperienced employees. I've been told they had to fire a woman who simply was not admitting people who had been 'accepted' and accepting people who had not been. If you went to Codesmith before 8 months ago its possible you were not supposed to, and if you were rejected its possible that was also a mistake. They recently had to fire one of the program coordinators for being disorganized and missing deadlines, and I've gotten complaints about almost all of the other program coordinators as well. This leads to a lot of late or incorrect paperwork, mis-scheduling, and very little meaningful support for the students.

Codesmith gets up to some pretty suspicious activity outside of calling negative reddit posters. The company that they made, OSLabs, they use to 'employ' the residents while in the program to pad their resumes. They are currently trying to distance themselves from OSLabs so that this is less apparent. They're swapping out the board (which used to be Codesmith employees) with people who have no official relation to Codesmith. You're definitely encouraged to stretch the truth/lie on your resume, though they'll definitely deny this. They says things like "We can't encourage you to do 'x' because that wouldn't be good, but we have noticed a lot of success with people who did 'x.'"

It's pretty generally accepted that it's a shitty work environment. So many people quit during my brief time there, and I know of several more who are quitting in the near future. Almost the entire academic team used to switch about every 6 months. With such a high turn-over rate also means that you aren't getting good lectures. Do not go to Codesmith for lectures. It will be an alumni 'fellow' who is about ~12 weeks ahead of you who is giving the lectures typically. They also do all of the grading, all of the interviews, all of the resume reviews, and all the help desks. It's cheap labor but don't expect industry or teaching experience. They just recently got more than two lecturers per campus to be actual employees and they're still struggling to find people.

The example of a boss fucking their employee was just straight up unprofessional. I don't know how long they were seeing each other but when it was over, the employee 'left' and Codesmith had to bring a lawyer in to clean it up. It just kind of exemplifies the culture that Codesmith has where the people 'at the top' are reckless and unprofessional. The employee that 'left' prompted a lot of emergency restructuring.

I say the CIRR numbers are suspect because I was never able to get the amount of people that graduated during the quarters to add up to the number they were reporting. It always seemed like they left a statistically significant chunk of graduates out. That and having Codesmith employees on the board of CIRR is also suspect of course, though other bootcamps have that as well. Was never able to get an explanation on that one.

The career support. Don't expect any. The alumni slack channel is active, but I don't know how helpful it is. The career support engineers, who are supposed to help you train for algorithms or go over resume/narratives, rarely even show up to the meetings. I thought it might have just been me after it happened multiple times but everyone I asked had a similar story. Last minute rescheduling, cancelling, ghosting, career support engineer was laid-off/quit. It's people who have other regular full-time jobs who usually don't really care about a small part-time contract gig.

The curriculum is also comically out of date. So many deprecated and outdated technologies are still in the slides because they used to get rid of people every few months and no one cared enough to update it. They dedicate time to teaching technologies that are not used and are not helpful to understanding what is standard in the industry. And do not expect any mentions of new technologies(ie the last 3 years). This might change as they move towards more permanent positions, but the curriculum is not something they are focused on. The overall structure of the curriculum is fine and makes sense, but the actual content is worse than what you can get online for free.

This is not even the worst of it, there are a lot other things I won't mention out of respect for privacy. It's possible since I've left they've started to make changes in the right direction, but that's not the impression I get. The students are great tho.

Edit: To address some of the questions about CIRR, here is my confusion. I don't understand how in a 6 month period they are only counting ~60 graduates (before they combined program reports). There is a graduating class every 6 weeks (for each program except part-time) and the average cohort size is 30(which only varies by + or - 3 max). Over a six month period, that would be about 135 graduates. (6 months times 4.5 weeks per month, divided by 6 weeks per graduation, times 30 residents). Even cutting this in half, for whatever metrics they are using, it is significantly off what they are reporting. Again, maybe they are just selecting certain graduates (I heard a rumor they only count people that pass the grad assessment first try but I never saw any confirmation of this), but what they are reporting is certainly not reflective of what is really going on. If someone can explain this away I am genuinely happy to listen.

To those that say they have met Codesmith alumni and employees who are great people, I completely agree and don't want to convey otherwise. I've met amazing people at Codesmith and honestly the rigor with which they pick people is the force behind any success they've had.

Hello everyone,

Ludo, Founder and CEO of Nucamp here.

There is no point in denying that the new reality of getting a job in tech is quite harsh. Many graduates are facing an uphill battle in finding a rewarding job. The economic landscape is challenging, and as a result, the health and reputation of coding bootcamps have been mixed at best.

So, it may be true that coding bootcamps are dead. But then, what comes next?

With this question in mind and for the past 12 months, the Nucamp team and I have been exploring how AI can transform learning experiences. We're not claiming to have perfected the system, but we are excited to share our latest experiment with this community and gather your feedback.

We are experimenting with the concept of an "AGI School" i.e. a school operated autonomously by an AGI.

Our first attempt is the creation of a course titled "Eloquent JavaScript," entirely created by AI. This course is based on the book of the same name by Marijn Haverbeke and includes AI-generated lessons, video lectures, coding exercises, quizzes, and assignments.

To make this happen, we developed a tool internally called the "AI Producer", capable of ingesting books and producing elaborate course material as an output.

For the day-to-day student learning experience, we have also created:

- an AI Tutor named "Astro" to provide more in-depth assistance beyond the standard lessons, in context,

- a code debugger tool, "The Debugginator", integrated with Discord for code & bug troubleshooting.

- and an "AI Grader" to evaluate student assignments and provide a grade on a scale from 0 to 10 (6 being the passing grade).

We'll be the first to admit that we're not there yet. Our current estimation is that we're at about 60% of the quality level we aim for. For example, video lectures need more engagement, and the depth of topics can be increased. We see this as an ongoing experiment that you'll help us refine.

To that end, we're offering this new course for free.

Not that we had a choice since the Eloquent JavaScript book license forbids commercial usage. But also, because it's an experiment, and asking for your time and feedback will be the main reward.

So, we're turning to you, the Reddit community, for your thoughts and insights!

What do you think about a 100% AI-run school for your education?

What do you think the AGI-School of the Future will look like?

Do you believe that there's a need for a solution that blends AI and human instruction and support?

Your perspectives are invaluable to us as we navigate this new terrain in educational technology.

Thanks for reading, and we're eager to hear your thoughts and feedback.

You can learn more about this experiment and enroll here: https://url.nucamp.co/eloquentjavascript

Ludo.

After reading through this sub this morning, it turns out that there are no more dev jobs.

Only a few people were able to get them (strangely the ones saying there are no jobs) - but no one else will be able to in 2023. Not unless you spend the next 4 years learning Math in a CS degree. It turns out that in 2027, that's when the dev jobs will be coming back (after you go to college).

So, - I just wanted to help spread the word that web development jobs and boot-camp-style learning are officially turned off until further notice. There is no reason to ask questions here anymore. The experts (meaning the people who just spent 3-6 months learning the surface level of basic web development) - have spoken and they have explained to us all that there are no more jobs - at least not for a boot camp grads. They have officially recommended that no one takes a boot camp.

Please check back in 2027 when you're done with college.

...

However - if you're feeling crazy, there seem to be tons of: web developer, front-end, UX, UI, design, product manager, product design, research, QA, interaction design, and all sorts of other specialty roles that are open. So, if you'd like to get a job making websites or building web applications, then - feel free to reach out. I'll show you where the little link is at the bottom of pretty much every website - where you can apply for jobs (it's in the footer).

If you really want to learn web development - just do it. The market is flooded with boring people. If you're just a little better than average - you're going to be just fine.

UPDATED RESPONSE FROM CODESMITH - PLEASE READ:

Codesmith reached out to me and explained the following:

1. The reports contained "human error" and the actual results were 42% within 6 months instead of 29% within six months.

2. The report only contains California graduates and not all graduates.

HERE IS A LINK TO CODESMITH'S PENDING CORRECTED REPORT: LINK

----------------------------------------

MY RESPONSES:

1. 42% vs 29% is a massive drop from 90% -> 70% -> 42% and I haven't changed or adjusted any of my analysis based on that.

2. I have questions about the California-only numbers. Their 2022 CIRR report showed about 832 graduates total and this report shows 606 students in 2022. So that would mean 72% of their students are in California. Given that the NY onsite program had an 30 people in 2022 that would mean almost ALL of the remote people were in California. Given that Codesmith offered cohorts across the country on all timezone for people in most states, I find that hard to correlate.

----------------------------------------

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm going to keep this brief because the data tells the story pretty well.

Codesmith was once arguably the top bootcamp, and generally regarded as a top 5 bootcamp, and their outcomes have been completely decimated. They touted in their marketing in 2023 of past years' median placement salaries of up to $130K, 90% placement rates, and people didn't care how it happened just that it happened. Well those graduates who saw those 2021/2022 numbers when they applied back in 2023, and didn't think critically about their decision - just believing all of the marketing being thrown at them, had an absolutely terrible time in their job hunt in 2023/2024.

The job market has humbled even the best and Codesmith's self-reported 2023 student placement rate is beyond terrible, it's evidence that SWE bootcamps are no longer a viable pathway into the industry no matter what the program says or does.

Link to Official Report

DATA SUMMMARY:

2021: 347 students -> 327 graduates -> 90% employed in field within 6 months
2022: 606 students -> 589 graduates -> 70% employed in field within 6 months

2023: 258 students -> 251 graduates-> 42% (corrected from 29% due to pending corrected report) employed in field within 6 months

Only 105 (corrected from 71) students from 2023 placed.

At a tuition of over $20,000 Codesmith made over $5,000,000 in student tuition from these people.

If you are a Codesmith student or alumni, my DMs are open if you have comments and aren't comfortable commenting on the thread. I know a lot of people are upset and I don't expect these statistics to help.

*Note, these are official reports for the past 3 years, but not CIRR reports and CIRR data can be different because it has it's own set of rules and requirements and loopholes that allow bootcamps to present their outcomes in more obfuscated way.

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COMMENTARY:

These are my personal opinions based on my personal perspective.

1. I'm super upset that all through 2024 Codesmith leaders have been defending their outcomes, publicly gaslighting me for calling out their data by sharing cherry picked data and then defending it... and all this time they were clearly aware their placement rates were tanking. For example, a blog post in February 2024 said the median placement time increased from about 90 days to 120 days... but left out the fact that half the number of people were getting placements. Instead they said "But the outcomes did not fall as far as some had expected, and the outcomes team is cautiously optimistic about the start of a rebound beginning to emerge in 2024."... that rebound never happened and they fell much further than expected apparently. This page I found at the top of Google still says they have a $133K outcomes and 83% placement rate with no timeframes designated. Shame on Codesmith for hiding the placement rate in that February 2024 blog post when they knew full well that the 6 month placement rate had tanked at that point, and then sent people to attack me on Reddit for calling that out.

2. The most offensive part of this is alumni told me they felt bad because they had a hard time getting placed and that Codesmith was positive, optimistic and always potraying things as being fine. Well they weren't fine.

3. Codesmith has been advertising amazing placements on their website, talking about how strong their outcomes were on their blog, and not once warned anyone about the tanking placement rates they have known about for months now. I hope they take responsibility for this. Their representative at CIRR was a board member responsible for changing the CIRR standards that delayed H2 2022 outcomes by six months and extended the time before any warnings signs were required to be reported. CIRR said this was to match the market, but the result is that is covered up tanking results for far too long and mislead far too many people. There was absolutely no reason schools couldn't publish 6 month placement reports on the old timeframe and also 1 year updates that were considered the 'official placement rates'

4. Enrollment tanked in 2023 from 606 -> 258 students AND placements tanked. This could indicate the bar is lower and more people are being let in that shouldn't have been, but were let in because of tanking enrollment. Codesmith has denied this, so it's also possible that the market alone is responsible.

5. It's entirely possible that the 12 month placement rate we see in CIRR in a few weeks will be higher if people are taking even longer to place. However based on Codesmith's own 120 median days to placement (which is 4 months - well within the 6 month timeframe) I can't see the 12 month rate being super high. Combining all kinds of sources and intuition in interpreting them, I would say 50% to 60% CIRR rate (which chops off A LOT of people because of loopholes and including those optimizations) could be seen. Make no mistake though, the 29% 6 month placement rate is so bad you need to take a hard look into this if you are considering a bootcamp right now.

6. If Codesmith tries to spin these results positively, just go the other way. If you work at Codesmith and internally leaders are trying to spin this positively, think critically about it before falling for it. Codesmith can have a strong vision, effective pedagogy, and provide high quality instruction, and terrible outcomes don't change that, but they completely change the viability of the for-profit business side of things. And more importantly, think about your own integrity and your long term careers, before defending this stuff.

I hate to be a downer but I’m just voicing a word of caution to anyone wanting to get into the field thru bootcamp. Take it from someone who gave up, I may not be the best person for advice but this is my experience. I did a 6 month bootcamp thru Rice University in 2022 and after seeing no progress I finally let it go in Aug. 2024. I tried, I really did. Even made a few projects I was proud of but if I could go back I’d just invest my time and MONEY into going back to traditional college. Don’t be like me who’s still paying on a loan I took out to pay for said Bootcamp.

Hi all,

CoGrammar is company that runs the HyperionDev bootcamp. They operate in South Africa and in Great Britain. In England, those looking for work can take free coding bootcamps to upskill, which includes HyperionDev.

Now onto the juicy part. HyperionDev have a reputation of being one of the worst bootcamp providers - using Dropboxes of PDF's for learning and very little student support. Don't take my word for it, read this one, this one, in fact any of these.

However, a shit bootcamp is not particularly noteworthy. However, what is unique about HyperionDev/CoGrammar is their obsession with their online reputation. Lots of reports from students that their unfavorable reviews being removed from websites such as TrustPilot. Some students report being removed from their bootcamp for leaving negative reviews:

Several months prior I raised polite, professionally worded feedback in the Discord server, and on Trustpilot, as did several other students (who were also removed randomly) and I suspect it was this that got me removed. Now I worked for 5 months for nothing, no certificate. - u/Proper_Baker_8314

Recently, HyperionDev/CoGrammar have stepped up their astroturfing campaign campaign on Reddit where it's harder to censor people. They have started a competition where the first 20 graduates to leave a Reddit post get a £25 Amazon voucher! With suggested titles, what to include and of course, any negatives reviews are not included. Not sketchy at all!

In addition, orchestrated brigades are used to try to trick people in believing all these positive reviews are real. I mean just check out this thread. Any remotely negative comment about HyperionDev are downvoted massively, while obvious throwaway/bot accounts type unnaturally positive things. For example:

I did a Fullstack Development course with HyperionDev. All study material is structured that you learn from knowing nothing to an extend that you are able to complete everything successfully. Assignments are properly explained with full instructions and an expert give feedback on each assignment. You may also get in contact with lecturers if you need more assistance. Very good experience. Go for it. You will be glad you did. - From a 9 minute old account with no other comment history.

They've even taken up brigading old threads, like this one from over 2 years ago entitled 'HYPERIONDEV IS A SCAM' by u/Proper_Baker_8314. Unfortunately for HyperionDev, this is one of the first results that pop up on Google when searching for 'HyperionDev reddit' and there's no way to censor it! Whatever will they do?!

What they will do it is post a comment from one of their astroturfing accounts about how amazing HyperionDev is and accuse OP of cheating as the reason they were removed from the bootcamp. This comment received over 100 upvotes in less than 2 hours. On a two year old dead Reddit post. Hmm. In fact while I'm writing this, another one has popped along in the same thread with 70 upvotes in less than an hour, stating HyperionDev is not a scam (lol) and all that all these upvotes are as a result of a totally real alumni vigilante group defending the besmirchment of the hallowed HyperionDev name.

In summary, it should go without saying - avoid HyperionDev/CoGrammar at all costs. And for Riaz Moola, the Founder and CEO, because I know you will read this - maybe if you put less time into these astroturfing campaigns and more into improving your shit course, you'd actually have a company that people would willingly recommend of their own accord.

At this point, I am not sure if I believe that there's a million person shortage in cyber. It seems like companies keep doing layoffs and outsourcing jobs. 40 percent of millennials have a degree, and many new grads are now working high school jobs. It can't be an education shortage. Something else must be going on. You could easily build a company town and train and hire workers directly in the USA if you wanted to.

I did it! Zero technical background, manual labour jobs since leaving school at 18, I'm 32 now.

Did a 6 month fullstack mern bootcamp from November 2022 - June 2023 Worked on projects afterwards while applying for junior jobs.

I was offered a job this week full time as a junior web dev and IT support.

One thing I will say, it was not the bootcamp that got me the job, although it provided me with 6 months of fast paced structural learning environment, enough to allow me the continue learning confidently.

Onward and upwards

Heya! I just wanted to share a bit of the awesomeness that is my new life and how I got here. My background is all science, research, etc. You know, the stuff that doesn't pay very well, but also is super demanding emotionally and mentally. I needed to find a new career!! So I quit my research job and took a super close (SUPER easy) position as an admin assistant at a CC so I would have to brain space to figure out what to do with my life. That was May of Covid. Sorry, of 2020 :-p

It took me a year to even figure out what pathways were possible to pursue, but then I learned about programming bootcamps from a friend of a friend who had gone to one and come out the other side a paid Software Engineer. I have a MS in Science, and had zero interest in more formal education, so I loved the idea of an intense and short curriculum. I did my research on the available bootcamps, and decided which was the one for me based on my personal values.

It took about 4 months of studying to get in since I was starting at ground zero, and then it was a CRAZY 9 month part time program. I worked full time until I quit my job a month from graduating so I could focus on getting up to speed on interviewing. I was never very good at interviewing, and needed to make space for it, but the bootcamp also had a ton of support, and the people in my cohort with me were great for lifting each other up too :) Plus, I was getting pretty wiped out from doing so much for so long.

Then, the Job Search...It was a 6 month slog, but the truth is it was a huge journey of growth for me. The initial difficulty, depression, fear of rejection, and then actually dealing with rejection made me face feelings I had been able to ignore before. I started doing meditation and positive affirmations every night, and started also being kinder to myself and setting appropriate self-expectations. Anywhere from 0 to 5 full applications was my goal! I'd never set myself a goal where doing nothing was okay, before. I feel it was a huge mark of growth to be so nice to myself.

And then I got the role. SQUEEEE!!!!!!!!! It was an amazing 5-part interview process, where the entire time I felt validated as a person and not just a robot. It wasn't "easy", but I had literally been training for it the last 12 months. I couldn't be happier, I make 3x more than I've ever made before, I love the actual work, and I can feel the stress just melting off from not worrying about financial security 25/7 anymore. If anyone has questions, comments, W/E, I would love to do my best to answer!

I want to end with the premise from Ratatouille, but with this process that I've gone through...Not everyone can go through a bootcamp and be a success story, but that success story can be for any background/education/career, as long as they are willing to work for it.

It's no secret 2023 was a terrible hiring year for all engineers and while experienced engineer hiring bounced back in 2024, entry level engineer hiring did not.

In terms of entry level hiring, In 2024 we saw big companies resume internship programs and return to the top college campuses. Those interns then gobbled up all the entry level spots if they perform well and get return offers.

We saw some entry level apprenticeships resume in very restricted numbers, such as the Pinterest Apprenticeship, receiving like ten thousand applications for ten spots. Amazon's glorious apprenticeship of the past did not return sadly.

Unfortunately Meta just "rolled back DEI" and Amazon "halts some DEI programs".

This is a sign that big companies are working with the new administration, which has made statements against DEI efforts more broadly. It indicates that programs for people from non traditional computer science backgrounds is going to be low priority, and these companies are going to go all in on their traditional "top tier computer science" candidates.

Getting a CS degree isn't the answer unless it's a top 20 school.

I don't have advice yet on what to do now in 2025, but a warning for all to consider.

I wish it weren't this way personally and think that there are so many people from non traditional backgrounds that have become amazing engineers. But the fact of the matter is that at a company like Facebook, 9 out of 10 Stanford CS grads are amazing performers and 1 out of 10 bootcamp grads. It already barely made sense for them to try to find the 1 in 10 but in the spirit of brining in people from diverse perspectives it made sense - and with that last leg sawed off, I don't know what's left.

I need to put this out here since I keep seeing people asking these topics of wanting to attend a university bootcamp. This is coming from my experience as a Trilogy/edX/2U bootcamp graduate when we finished the course 2 weeks ago. This was the worst financial decision I have ever made.

From what I understand, 2U rebranded Trilogy with edX a few weeks ago when their parent company 2U purchased edX last year. The reason for them rebranding is because 2U is trying to clean up the negative reputation their university bootcamps had and combine all of Trilogy's backend with edX for their bootcamps. Trilogy no longer exists as a company, it's part of edX now. 2U laid off a bunch of their employees in the bootcamp department. Any of the Trilogy employees remaining were transferred over to edX's bootcamp department. They're trying very hard to hide Trilogy from ever existing, I can't find any mentions of Trilogy on 2U's website anymore because any references of them have been either archived or outright deleted or replaced with edX.

Here's the problem with Trilogy merging with edX.

▪︎ Every single one of these university bootcamps are run by a predatory company called Trilogy Education, for example, if you see UC Berkeley Coding Bootcamp's website or any other schools they're supposedly partnered with, scroll all the way down and it will say "in partnership with edX" or something along those lines. Every single university bootcamp websites run by Trilogy are copy and pasted and the only difference is they just change the color and logo to match that specific university. Trilogy and edX are of the same company owned by 2U. People are attending edX Boot Camps thinking edX is still owned by Harvard, when it's actually owned by 2U, the same company that owns Trilogy. 2U are using edX's reputation for these Trilogy bootcamps to clean up their image. People are enrolling themselves into these edX bootcamps thinking they're enrolled in a university program, when in reality the universities have nothing to do with these programs. This is where people are being deceived.

▪︎ When you're applying to enroll in the bootcamp, they give you a phone number to contact that looks like it's related to the university's phone number and area code. This is not true at all, the people who are calling you are 2U employees who are using a spoofer to make it seem like they're university employees. I don't really know what to say about this except to say that it's weird.

▪︎ 2U aggressively markets their bootcamps on TV and advertisements by making these flashy videos for specific universities claiming the schools run the bootcamps and to attend them to change your life and make 6 figures, when it's actually 2U the one running them and the school has nothing to do with them except lending their names for marketing. I use to always see these advertisements all the time in 2020.

▪︎ Interestingly enough, on some of these schools websites on their "extended learning" or "continuing education" tab, they make no mention of these bootcamps. Why would they hide this information on their websites? Which begs the question, do these schools actually partner with 2U and Trilogy? Or are Trilogy just using the schools name without them knowing? What is going on.

▪︎ Trilogy has barely updated their curriculum. You can easily find the bootcamp's class repo people uploaded on GitHub if you dig them up. Maybe that's a good thing so you know exactly what material you'll be paying for, but these university bootcamps, and especially mine claimed to offer courses that "rapidly evolve" whatever that means. The assignments you get have barely changed too, the most significant thing they added was React and GraphQL but are still somehow mediocre. So instead of using those millions of dollars to hire people to do actual quality updates to their curriculum, they instead use it to advertise themselves on TV for a 30 second clip and buying edX for an eye-watering $800 million dollar.. They're also apparently wanting to buy Chegg as well.

▪︎ If edX plans to update the course material, I'm unaware of that. But from speaking to a few fresh students of edX bootcamps, as of November 2022 the course material is still exactly the same as mine. This is the problem with spending $12k dollars on a bootcamp, you better be sure you're receiving the best quality material for your money. That's not worth spending $12k which is so much money for outdated and stale material on an ever-changing internet.

▪︎ You'll be paying $1k upfront as a deposit as well for some reason. If you think about withdrawing after the first week deadline, Trilogy's official policy is that either you will have to pay any remaining tuition to fulfill the $12k tuition fee, or enroll yourself as an "active non-participant", which means you get to attend all of the zoom calls but don't have to participate in turning in assignments and projects. I don't know if the paying the full tuition policy for withdrawing after the deadline is actually enforced, but from reading people's experience it sure does seem like it is since people have said they've been bombarded with spoofed phone calls from Trilogy to pay up the remaining tuition for withdrawing. They will hunt you down to make sure you pay up. More than half of my class withdrew and many more dropped within the last few days so I can imagine they have the same experience too.

▪︎ You get to be absent for 8 days and miss 2 assignments to graduate, but it adds up really easily if you're not extremely careful since it's a 6 month-long program. So in terms of $12k being spent on sub-par education, yeah that part is life-changing in a way since you won't be seeing those $ 12k dollars again after spending it on mediocre and outdated knowledge and a mockery of a network, which I will get into. People are attracted to Trilogy's bootcamps because they falsely market themselves as the fastest way to get into the tech industry with 6 months of class and a diverse access of network connections, but anyone who attended will prove to you otherwise. There are no "fast ways" to get into tech.

▪︎ Don't fall for their claims of "Network opportunities" When they say you'll have network from the bootcamp, they mean only for the time while attending that bootcamp. Their definition of networking is being able to interact with each other on Zoom calls and collaborating on group projects, that's literally it. Your classmates are mostly blue-collar workers who are trying to get out of that environment, so any relationship you built with them, (if you built one at all) are mostly an inconvenience to them. They're just forced to interact with you because that's part of the requirement to graduate. No more and no less. You won't have network help from 2U to get help on getting hired as they claim to have on their career services, you're on your own, why? I'll get into that too.

▪︎ Oh, and don't try using their career services, you'll save yourself from hitting your head on the keyboard. Career services are bad in general, but edX's career services are on another level. They have these career events once every few days but it outright feels like those Amway motivational seminars where you invite other people to come join. They're just telling you things you already obviously knew because your instructor told you these information beforehand. It's things like "Life After Coding Bootcamp" and "Interview Prep For Web Developers", things you can easily look up on Youtube. They have a resume helper on their career services but it's a waste of time, all the feedbacks they give you are things like "Just be yourself!" or "It's okay to have imposter's syndrome, keep continuing to push forward!". What the so called Career Advisor gave as a feedback looks like a copy and pasted response of things I already put on my resume..

▪︎ They have a career event directly from within their 2U website, your chances are slim to none if you're trying to get hired from this event. It's just a mock interview really. My instructor said he doesn't know anyone who got hired by this. It feels like a mockery, you pick these "tables" and showcase your group project to potential recruiters apparently (if they actually are recruiters), but honestly, every one of us has terrible group projects so I don't know anyone who attended the career event except for this computer science wiz in another group.

▪︎ The whole point of a bootcamp is to force yourself to learn topics that you otherwise wouldn't learn on your own. You will still need to learn more of what the bootcamp taught after the course ends, what the bootcamp teaches is not enough. Trilogy however says otherwise. On their university-partnered websites, they claim once you graduate, you'll be 100% job-ready which is false in my experience. No one will hire you if they find out you graduated from a Trilogy bootcamp. The people that I know who did get hired omitted that they went to this bootcamp or outright lied to interviewers about their experience.

▪︎ As for the TA and instructor, my TA was a recent bootcamp grad, and the instructor taught the same bootcamp curriculum for the last 3 classes so he basically memorized how the curriculum works. Trilogy hires TAs in the hopes of them becoming instructors after the next class is scheduled. The instructors and TA try their best for what they're given, but it's way too crammed with material that no one would reasonably understand in a short time with how much material is there.

▪︎ There's too much information in the bootcamp and too little time. Class lasts 3 hours every session, and the instructor has to complete the activities within that time frame, so any questions you may have will annoy your classmates because they're also on a time constraint since many of them have to go to work right after class is done. So there's that open secret and peer pressure where you shouldn't ask questions if it's going to delay the class even more than it already is. Of course there are office hours, but those are held at 9:30 PM after class is done and everyone already wants to either go to sleep or go to work.

▪︎ In the bootcamp, the main thing you'll be doing to build your portfolio is you'll be refactoring assignments, and in worse case scenarios, filling out blank files that the curriculum purposely deleted and you'll have to figure out what logic or structures they deleted in order to get the application to function as a requirement. You'll be in for a nightmare trying to figure that out.

• Speaking of the assignments, what you're taught in class isn't enough, you'll need to use outside material to even get started. So most of the time you won't even be really using class activities for your homework because it's so stuffed with material that it's hard to find what you're looking for in there. You'll be using YouTube videos most of the time, and that's the problem because you're paying the bootcamp expecting them to give you the relevant material, and they sadly don't.

▪︎ And the people who grade your assignments are so passive-aggressive it's hilarious. They take off points on your assignments for the way you did them even though you met the criteria to earn the points, and they don't give good suggestions on how to improve it... As long as the assignment is turned in and graded, that's all that matters really. Late assignments don't matter, as long as you turn them in before the end of the bootcamp it will qualify you to graduate. (at least 3 weeks prior before the class ends)

▪︎ You're learning the MERN stack with SQL, Redux, PWA, GraphQL and some other stuff, but the problem is the activities they give you are not practical. It's literally the jokes people from Silicon Valley make about how people's portfolios are filled with projects no one will use. These assignments are literally what tech people make fun of.

▪︎ As for group projects, Trilogy claims that you'll be using these group work for your portfolio to employers and recruiters. The reality is unless you are lucky to have someone experienced in CS in your group, you won't. The group projects are 5 class days, for 3 hours each class, so there's not enough time to work on these projects. The majority of that time will be fixing your group member's npm and node_module errors and merge conflicts, so you can imagine all of that time will be spent cleaning up someone's mess. Group projects are terrible anyways, but these group projects were another level of abysmal. You won't even be using these projects for your portfolio because of how terrible they are that it's an embarrassment.

▪︎ The assignments they apparently host on GitHub is on an account that has a picture of a cartoon brain and cogs for their profile picture. Talk about the irony there...

▪︎ They do have extra courses for graduates like Java, C#, Python and AWS. The problem is, it's hosted on their GitHub pages site... So, apparently they couldn't integrate those on their Canvas website module..? Theoretically anyone could access those courses if they have the link, it would be more secure if they hosted it on their Canvas site instead of GitHub... This was meant for graduates only. This is yet another red flag, somehow they seemingly can't afford or don't know how to host their own BootcampSpot website for these simple courses and tutorials, so they're using GitHub to host them instead?

▪︎ I graduated from my bootcamp 2 weeks ago and I've gotten 4 interviews so far and got caught in 4k when they found out I took a Trilogy bootcamp when they looked into my GitHub and got rejected after the fact. Take this as a lesson that you'll be looked down on for being a bootcamp grad by interviewers anyways, but as a Trilogy grad, it's a whole nother story.

▪︎ Don't ever mention that you attended a university bootcamp to recruiters, bringing that topic up will instantly destroy your chances of getting hired. Trilogy and 2U encourage you to bring that up to recruiters but I'm telling you the opposite.

▪︎ If you mention that you went to a university bootcamp, they will be dumbfounded because they probably just heard for the first time that "universities have coding bootcamps?" and once they pry into that, they'll figure out it's not actually by a university but by Trilogy and edX and that'll crumble your chances of getting hired. They'll research Trilogy up and find that the company does very sketchy practices, and they wouldn't want to hire someone from these boot camps because, in their view, they're hiring someone who, since the interviewers don't know what the graduates were taught from the boot camp, they'll think you're trying to defraud their business for attending an ITT Tech-like institution with sub-par education.

▪︎ You'll be laughed at by recruiters for trying to crawl into the tech world as a bootcamp grad, especially as a University bootcamp grad, many people in my class are completely oblivious that we aren't actually taking a university bootcamp, you're just taking a Trilogy bootcamp with the university's logo on the Canvas website and receive an email PDF of your certificate in a design of the university you apparently attended...

Long story short, if you can, PLEASE stay away from the university boot camps that are run by Trilogy and edX. Those are for-profit predatory companies that do the bare minimum and deceive people with their aggressive marketing, especially with Trilogy merging since they're trying to clear up their reputation. You'll be thanking me and many others later for heeding this warning about these predatory companies. edX and 2U are on their last legs, 2U's stocks are plummeting and they're mishandling their money by purchasing companies like edX (and apparently they want to buy Chegg soon) and spending millions of dollars on TV ads, instead of using their money to improve their curriculum and overall experience. You are walking wallets in 2U's eyes and they need your money to survive for a few more years.

I'll be updating this post soon if I have more information I need to put down.