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Codesmith is a coding school redefining the way software engineering is taught. Codesmith offers full-time (13-week) and part-time (38-week) remote software engineering immersive programs as well as a full-time NYC Onsite program. Codesmith focuses on concepts and technologies such as full-stack JavaScript, computer science, machine learning, Dev Ops, React, and more. The immersives are advanced residencies designed to help individuals launch meaningful, high-level careers in software engineering.
The Codesmith admissions process involves a written application with optional coding questions, a nontechnical interview, and a technical interview. Codesmith offers a number of free resources for preparing for the admissions process including in-person and online coding workshops, a 2-week online prep course (CS Prep), and an online JavaScript learning platform (CSX).
Codesmith offers extensive career support that guides residents through resume development, interview strategies, salary negotiation, and more. Residents receive career support for life whether they are on their first job search, second job search, or beyond. Plus, the supportive Codesmith community encourages learners to tackle unique and unfamiliar problems, important when preparing for the ever-changing tech landscape. As shared in the most recent CIRR outcomes reports (Jan-June, 2022), more than 80% of Codesmith graduates were employed in the field within 6 months of graduating. Across all full-time immersive programs during this period the median salary for Codesmith graduates was $127,500. The median salary for part-time remote immersive graduates was $137,000.
When it comes to tuition, Codesmith payment options include upfront payments, monthly installments, and financing through Ascent Funding, Codesmith’s loan partner. In addition, eligible students can apply for several different scholarship options at Codesmith.
Codesmith also offers a two-day JavaScript for Beginners online course, as well as CS Prep, a 2-week program offered online and designed to prepare you for Codesmith’s Software Engineering Immersives. Further, you can join their free CSX learning platform and attend any of Codesmith’s free weekly workshops to learn more about its programs and build software engineering fundamentals.
I am posting this to let people know how I got tricked into thinking I can be job ready for the tech industry with only 3 months of classes, which is EXACTLY what Codesmith advertised...
Let me just start by saying that you will learn a good amount of knowledge from this program, I don't want to take away how rigorous this 12 week bootcamp actually is, and I actually learned a lot about programming and made a lot of friends at Codesmith.
That said, I am extremely disappoint...
I am posting this to let people know how I got tricked into thinking I can be job ready for the tech industry with only 3 months of classes, which is EXACTLY what Codesmith advertised...
Let me just start by saying that you will learn a good amount of knowledge from this program, I don't want to take away how rigorous this 12 week bootcamp actually is, and I actually learned a lot about programming and made a lot of friends at Codesmith.
That said, I am extremely disappointed in Codesmith, and felt like they scammed me out of 17k in tuition. I'll just go right ahead and say it:
Codesmith tells you to LIE when looking for jobs! They want you to put your so called "production project" in your resume as WORK EXPERIENCE!!!! They ask you to NOT put Codesmith in your resume, create a website and make it look really really nice so employers can be fooled that your project is a company, and reach out to random developers to "star" your repository to get a lot of stars in an attempt to pass as a legitamte professional project! They NEVER told us this in the beginning, and I felt duped and unsatisfied after close to a year of trying to follow their "Marketing" and "need-to-know-info" strategy to find jobs!
I knew it was too good to be true, when I first attended their Javascript Hard Parts meetup, the founder, Will, who by the way, was really really "Markety", claimed that Codesmith had the best hiriing rates than other bootcamps(by the way, they have NO outcomes reports whatsoever, to this day). Someone else that worked at Codesmith told us that, upon graduation, it takes less than a month to find a job...boy how I took the bait. I saw the culture there and lucrative promises that I eventually joined their July '17 cohort.
I graduated in October, and to this day, I am still struggling to even get phone interviews, I did have several interviews, but I had several recruiters and HR managers tell me that I'm trying to dupe them in my resume...I don't blame them, I mean, it LITERALLY is lying, we WERE trying to trick them into thinking we had PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE, what Codesmith told us to do, it is so shady and wrong!!! I didn't have the guts to come out and say it earlier, partly because I didn't want to believe that I paid 17k to get scammed, I wanted to believe that I chose the right program, so do some other students in my cohort as well as the cohort before us, but we're in so deep in commitment and money that we were in denial of the obvious.
For those of you wanting to change career, stick to a 4 year college! For those that are considering bootcamps, stick to the well known, proven bootcamps, like App Academy, Hack Reactor, or Full Stack Acad, those that acutally publish job outcomes and will not asking you to sell your soul and trick your interviewers, even if you do consider ANY bootcamp, ask them outcomes questions, the job search process, ASK them for outcomes numbers, ASK them a lot of questions, if they're being standoffish, it's usually a big telltale sign. If it's too good to be true, it often is!
I will still try to find a software engineer job, but I am going back to the drawing board and learn more on my own, for free, there are many resources online for anyone to teach themselves how to code. the program did teach me a lot, but not enough to be job ready, I mean, its so laughable that Codesmith will tell you to market yourself as a react engineer witthout even teach you REDUX.
I felt scammed, I felt duped, and I felt that I HAD to say something so other people looking for bootcamps or potential attendees won't fall into the same predictament that I did.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Sep 10, 2018
When I was choosing which bootcamp to sign up for, the first thing I did was to come here and read people's reviews about Codesmith. Visiting this site again after having graduated, I feel like maybe I'd been seriously duped…
I just realized that most, if not all, of the reviews that are written by people from my cohort and the one before mine are posted by Fellows. For those of you who don't know, Fellows are paid student instructors who decided to stay and work for Codesmith...
When I was choosing which bootcamp to sign up for, the first thing I did was to come here and read people's reviews about Codesmith. Visiting this site again after having graduated, I feel like maybe I'd been seriously duped…
I just realized that most, if not all, of the reviews that are written by people from my cohort and the one before mine are posted by Fellows. For those of you who don't know, Fellows are paid student instructors who decided to stay and work for Codesmith after completing the program. Codesmith hires about 4~5 fellows from each cohort. It did with mine and the one prior. Considering that there are now over 20+ cohorts and if this pattern were practiced consistently, it means that there are at least 100 such reviews written by Fellows on behalf of their employer.
I am not suggesting that they couldn’t all have had positive experiences at Codesmith, but it’s one thing to do it voluntarily; it’s quite another when you’re asked by your employer during your employment to do so on their behalf, fully knowing that the business relies heavily on them and that any negative review might invite a rebuke. Just like how Codesmith would tell its students to star each other's senior project on gitHub to make them look more popular or legit, same thing is happening here. I won't name names but heck I am seeing A LOT of them here!
Codesmith is a program for experienced developers in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles. It is NOT for folks new to the software engineering space. If you have no background with programming, this school will NOT hold your hand and help you through the basics. On their website, they used to advertise that they were a school for 'experienced programmers' now they refrain from mentioning the type of student they accept instead focusing on what you'll get out of the program. This is left ambiguous fo...
Codesmith is a program for experienced developers in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles. It is NOT for folks new to the software engineering space. If you have no background with programming, this school will NOT hold your hand and help you through the basics. On their website, they used to advertise that they were a school for 'experienced programmers' now they refrain from mentioning the type of student they accept instead focusing on what you'll get out of the program. This is left ambiguous for a reason. While there are plenty of programmers out there wanting more experience in web techologies like javascript, there are many more folks who are trying to make a career change and become software engineers. They are trying to appeal to both at the risk of the latter group of which I was a part when joining.
I first discovered Codesmith attending their JavaScript the Hard Parts events on Thursday nights. These are free, insightful meetups where you dive deeper into the basics of JavaScript and start getting a sense of how things you'll use everyday function 'under the hood'. These are very good sessions and I recommend folks attend especially since they are free.
I had no intention of joining but I was on the market for a code school and once I mentioned that, I was targeted via email by the CEO of the program who also teaches the Thursday night courses. I was convinced that even though it was billed for experienced engineers, I would do well in the program as I learned quickly and was a great culture fit.
I joined and am very unhappy with the results. Here's why.
1) Teaching Style - The program claims to abide by the "Oxford University" style of teaching. This seems to be code for 'very little teaching with problem sets for you to figure concepts out on your own.' You work through problem sets and follow the instructions which include reading documentation for a product you've never heard of and figure out it's purpose and how to use it. To an experienced programmer, this is somehwat normal. You are introduced to new technologies all the time, and therefore, for experienced programmers, this style of teaching makes sense. But for people brand new to the space, this is not only frustrating but time consuming - a luxury which one simply does not have in this 3 month intense environment.
Every 2 days you focus on a new aspect of programming with javascript and it leaves you very little time to fully grasp what you're learning.
Daily Schedule:
- Come in and code for an hour (practice algorithm problems that are common for job interviews)
- After that, you either go to a 30-45 min lecture OR you jump into the work for the day for about 2 hours
- If you started with lecture, you work on the work for the day. If you started with work on a new subject, you go to a 30-45 min lecture. You spend the first 10 minutes talking about how difficult it was and the rest of the time rushing through what the heck you just did and a high level overview of how it works.
- back to work until lunch
- lunch break
- another 30-45 min lecture OR you continue working on what you did that morning
- Stay until at least 11pm, but usually closer to 1am trying to figure things out on your own or with some friends in your cohort
2) Trust the Process Mentality - When things weren't going well, I made it a point to request feedback on my work and find out where I stood because there was no formal feedback along the way. When I expressed my doubts about my fit for the program, I was brought into a room to speak with the COO and a teacher. They gave me two options, defer to a later cohort or stick it out because I was "doing just fine" I just needed to 'trust the process'. The idea of letting me leave beacuse this was not the place for me was something I had to bring up and the conversation was diverted away from that. I have training in sales and this is a classic sales mentality which, looking back, is really sad. I genuinely believed my best interest was in mind at the time, but I am very skeptical now. In terms of my learning, I was not doing well at all - they just had no accurate way of scoring or measuring my progress.
I went through this side discusison, 'trust the process' loop 3 times throughout my time there (the latter 2 meetings included the CEO) and I never felt good about the outcome. I should have left early on but there really is a serious level of coersion, intimidation and manipulation that goes on in these meetings.
3) Senior Project - During the latter 6 weeks of the course you work on an open source developer tool. You're assigned to a group of your peers (usually 3-4 people), you all ideate on something that will be impactful and relevant for developers to use, you pitch your ideas to the CEO. If you're interested in VR, your project likely will not be accepted - they don't like VR projects. Very few have gotten through but they believe the technology isn't impressive enough right now. It's all about how your project will look to potential employers -- and potential partners of Codesmith. This process is about you but it's also very much about the school.
My group of 3 had a slew of issues but the biggest was that we were of vastly differing skill levels and some other members did not feel it was their job to teach me things - which I can agree with. They paid just as much as I did and did not deserve to have to spend hours every day teaching me things I should've learned in the weeks prior. The staff was not very helpful, in fact, my partners were more knowledgeable than most of them. This made asking for help seem futile and no project group really worked very closely with their assigned staff mentors.
4) What I have to offer now - I left Codesmith feeling really bad about the investment but willing to work on my own to get my skills to a point where I could get hired. Unfortunately, I've found that not only am I extremely stressed but I also just don't have much to show for the massive amount of time and money I spent on this.
I'm considering legal action due to the misrepresentation of the product and the manipulation involved during my time there.
TL;DR:
Pros:
- The culture is fun, they like to party and play ping pong
- The staff are generally very nice people
- They tend to find really nice, smart and driven students. If I left with anything, it's a solid group of friends. I only saw one person asked to leave and it was definitely warranted. Strange situation.
- Solid program for current engineers looking to add something interesting to their portfolio and take a deeper dive into Javascript and a few other web technologies
Cons:
- Teaching style is poor. It's barely teaching.
Ex. The machine learning/python section basically did not happen. The teacher literally rambled and sped through slideshows of both basic and complex machine learning concepts, asking every 3rd slide "got it?" to which we all just remained silent because we were so lost, we couldn't formulate relevant questions other than "no. don't got it. what are you talking about?".
- Misleading/Manipulating - The CEO is a great guy but comes off as super salesy. You can't help but feel like you're being conned, and, like any good con artist, you also feel bad about questioning the transaction. This is standard manipulation and it's being practiced at a large scale here. Be careful.
There are quite a few students who had a negative experience and the common denominator among them is that they had 0 or very little programming experience prior to joining.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Sep 10, 2018
Before learning about Codesmith I was actively researching web development programs in NYC to see which seemed like the perfect fit for me. I applied and was admitted into some of the more familiar ones, but something about each didn’t quite fit what I was looking for.
While doing some research, I came across a comment on Quora that mentioned Codesmith. I wasn’t familiar so I did a quick Google search and read over their site. After going through the curriculum description, I was p...
Before learning about Codesmith I was actively researching web development programs in NYC to see which seemed like the perfect fit for me. I applied and was admitted into some of the more familiar ones, but something about each didn’t quite fit what I was looking for.
While doing some research, I came across a comment on Quora that mentioned Codesmith. I wasn’t familiar so I did a quick Google search and read over their site. After going through the curriculum description, I was pulled in - it had everything the other programs seemed to be lacking. More so, the projects students were producing were tools made to solve real problems egineers face. Projects I could never fathom students producing in a 12-week bootcamp. I was hooked and decided to apply.
After going through two rounds of technical interviews, I was admitted to Codesmith’s April ’18 residency. It was challenging, but it was the best experience I could’ve asked for. I left with skills I never imagined myself having, and close friends I can’t imagine myself without. The curriculum is set up in a way to give you the training needed to hit the ground running day one on the job as a software engineer, and the community is built in a way so that you constantly feel surrounded by a group of peers who support you and, believe me when I say it, after a week together you'll consider some of your closest friends.
If you’re looking to accelerate your career from being a junior to mid/senior level engineer, or are coming from a different background entirely (like me), Codesmith is the place for you. In just 12 weeks you’ll leave with the experience qualifications of a seasoned engineer.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding the program, its curriculum or my personal experience at Codesmith.
Phillip Troutman of Codesmith
Senior Software Engineer and Lead Instructor
Sep 12, 2018
I made a huge gamble to choose Codesmith over other coding programs in the Bay Area. Roughly 9 months later after "graduating", I'm in massive and crippling debt with very little to show for it. My portfolio can't even make it past any recruiter. I'm no longer even looking for a developer job and I'm working minimum wage to make ends meet.
The curriculum may have changed since I finished but at the time Redux was not taught; you absolutely c...
I made a huge gamble to choose Codesmith over other coding programs in the Bay Area. Roughly 9 months later after "graduating", I'm in massive and crippling debt with very little to show for it. My portfolio can't even make it past any recruiter. I'm no longer even looking for a developer job and I'm working minimum wage to make ends meet.
The curriculum may have changed since I finished but at the time Redux was not taught; you absolutely can not call yourself a React developer unless you know either Redux or Flux architecture.
The little interview practice we had was not helpful because we gave it to eachother. How are we supposed to know what to ask for and what to avoid if we've never interviewed and hired actual candidates?
I'm in the Bay Area; companies, start-ups don't care about Codesmith and there is a non-existant network here. Will told me that 25% of hiring partners were from the Bay Area but they all seemed to have failed to show up for my hiring day. That career network and React was why I decided to study at Codesmith.
However, it took nagging and months until I was finally connected to 3 companies; 1 of which never called despite organizing a meeting and the other required that I have experience in RoR while keeping me on a thread for nearly 2 months.
I don't even qualify for Internships or jr. positions apparently and most of the advice I was given did not help me; in fact, it seemed to have done more harm than good because nearly all recruiters found my resume misleading and so I never made it past that round. Again, we were providing resume feedback to eachother and received little professional resume tailoring.
I think I actually only had 4 technical phone screens and 1 on-site in my entire search.
Take it with a grain of salt when you hear success stories of people who graduated from here. It's a good program only if you're looking to relocate to LA where the bar is significantly lower.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Jan 31, 2017
I was a student from cohort 1 for the 3-week Deep Learning course. I dropped out after two days because it wasn't worth the time investment. I had already spent my money by that point (no refund). Since leaving around a month ago, no one from the program has reached out to me for why I left. I was hoping the stellar reviews here would carry over for the new Deep Learning program, but that was not the case. My main concerns are in the structure of the curriculum (as of July 2018).<...
I was a student from cohort 1 for the 3-week Deep Learning course. I dropped out after two days because it wasn't worth the time investment. I had already spent my money by that point (no refund). Since leaving around a month ago, no one from the program has reached out to me for why I left. I was hoping the stellar reviews here would carry over for the new Deep Learning program, but that was not the case. My main concerns are in the structure of the curriculum (as of July 2018).
It’s a 3-week course, but taught at the pace of a 12 week course. Tensorflow is not covered in the first week, let alone the first day. We spent the first two days on a very basic NN with no backpropagation. No backpropagation means weights were decided manually as an exercise. That’s like becoming an animator by adjusting individual pixels. Like learning astronomy by counting the stars. Attacking someone by hurling a gun at them. Rubbing two matchsticks together to create a fire.
I will say there is nothing fundamentally wrong, it was just executed poorly. The idea of an online Deep Learning course is a great one and I hope Codesmith does not give up on this. Here are my suggestions.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Sep 10, 2018
We were there 11hours a day and then once every two weeks they had "optional" hackathons after. I never stayed because I was tired and at the end they didn't let me graduate because as they told me I wasn't passionate enough. It was more like "we did a poor job teaching you by leaning on the Socratic method as an excuse to force you to figure out 95% yourself, and we aren't prepared to share the responsibility of failing you so well just blame you for not staying at our hackathons". They k...
We were there 11hours a day and then once every two weeks they had "optional" hackathons after. I never stayed because I was tired and at the end they didn't let me graduate because as they told me I wasn't passionate enough. It was more like "we did a poor job teaching you by leaning on the Socratic method as an excuse to force you to figure out 95% yourself, and we aren't prepared to share the responsibility of failing you so well just blame you for not staying at our hackathons". They kicked out half of the cohort to boost their job placement numbers, yea maybe I wasn't ready to be a dev just yet, but you weren't ready to start a bootcamp.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Apr 10, 2018
As a graduate of Codesmith, I can tell you with 100% confidence that if I were to do it all over again, I would not pick Codesmith. I think Codesmith makes money way too easily from the students for the level and quality of services that they provide (or rather, don’t). Codesmith and its CEO would love to tell you that their instructions are purposefully bad because they’re meant to be cursory in order to promote “autonomous learning” and “independence”. To me that just sounds like a poor ...
As a graduate of Codesmith, I can tell you with 100% confidence that if I were to do it all over again, I would not pick Codesmith. I think Codesmith makes money way too easily from the students for the level and quality of services that they provide (or rather, don’t). Codesmith and its CEO would love to tell you that their instructions are purposefully bad because they’re meant to be cursory in order to promote “autonomous learning” and “independence”. To me that just sounds like a poor excuse for not having quality lesson plans and not employing high-quality, well-compensated, non-student instructors like some competing bootcamps do.
I take bigger issue with how Codesmith promotes and markets itself. Codesmith wants you to think that it’s for their short 4 weeks of superficial instructions and 8 weeks of scattered group projects that the graduates are getting the jobs that they claim. Did you know that you can’t even tell your interviewers that you graduated from Codesmith because of the negative stereotypes associated with it? Codesmith and its CEO swear that their program works because of their often anecdotal and unsubstantiated claims about student outcomes that are sourced from some “internally gathered data”. The thing is they even take credit for students’ job placements that happen well after their graduation when, more so, it was actually the students’ own hard work, struggle, and months and sometimes years of self-studying that got them the jobs in the end. I ultimately landed a job that I’m fairy happy with for now, but I spent considerably more time outside of Codesmith before and after, studying and preparing myself in order to successfully transition into the industry. I find it less than genuine that Codesmith would unabashedly try to take all the credit for student outcomes and make it sound like their 3-month program is all that’s needed to achieve a successful outcome just so it can continue to promote itself and make more money from unsuspecting and often, desperate students.
$17K for 3 months.
I know some prospective students justify paying or taking out a loan for the high tuition by telling themselves that if the program can help you get the kind of jobs that Codesmith is claiming, then it’s worth it. I did too. But that’s assuming that it does and there’s no better use of your hard-earned money. What if it doesn’t? What if it’s not?
-A.H.
Will Sentance of Codesmith
CEO
Sep 12, 2018
TL; DR;
Codesmith will be tough to get in to and tough to complete! You will be a mid-to-senior level software engineer by the time you graduate with a production-level project on your resume. The Codesmith team will go above and beyond to provide the highest quality education and help you find an amazing job with an amazing salary. The hours will be long, but the people you will spend your days with are amazing, both personally and professionally.
TL; DR;
Codesmith will be tough to get in to and tough to complete! You will be a mid-to-senior level software engineer by the time you graduate with a production-level project on your resume. The Codesmith team will go above and beyond to provide the highest quality education and help you find an amazing job with an amazing salary. The hours will be long, but the people you will spend your days with are amazing, both personally and professionally.
Acceptance
Acceptance to Codesmith is an educational journey in itself. You must already have some solid foundational programming knowledge just to make it through the interview process. The acceptance rate is lower than that of most Ivy Leagues (~4%). I attended a bootcamp long before I found Codesmith, which puts me in the rare position to be able to draw from actual experience in order to compare Codesmith to other programs. Looking back, I realize that all the knowledge I gained from that bootcamp really only prepared me to be eligible to interview with Codesmith. In addition to the substantive Codesmith interview, there is also a cultural interview. This ensures that the people you spend the next 3.5 months with are people that will facilitate your success as much as the staff and curriculum will.
Curriculum
The curriculum that I experienced in my previous bootcamp provided me with a great coding foundation that made me a great junior developer; however, the knowledge that I acquired there was not sufficient to elevate me to the skill level necessary to join the highly competitive work force as a mid-to-senior level software engineer.
Codesmith residents are held to an extraordinarily high standard of technical excellence and communication. The curriculum is extremely challenging and vigorous. We learned the essentials of computer science (algorithms, design patterns, big O notation), as well as the latest technologies such as React and Redux. As challenging as the coursework is, however, you are not on your own. The one-on-one support from the resident fellows is incredible (think TAs, but they care a lot more). Each person on the staff at Codesmith does everything within their power to ensure success during and after the program.
During the second half of the program, we build production-level projects in small teams. These projects are the best projects coming out of immersive programs in both caliber and quality. Production projects from Codesmith have been acknowledged by the inventor of Redux, Dan Abramov (React Monocle), featured at the Google I/O developer conference (web-dsp) and, on more than one occasion, drawn enormous interest from the React community. My own team's project, Reactide, was the #1 trending app on Github and gained over 5,000 Github stars in the first week of its release. None of these projects were promoted in any significant way; they have all stood on their own merit and ingenuity.
Day to day
An average day at Codesmith consisted of a daily coding challenge, multiple lectures, a lot of pairing, more lectures, and the occasional game of nerf war! What surprised me most about Codesmith was the time commitment required to complete the program. At a minimum, we were there for about 10-14 hours per day, 6 days per week, which is far greater than the time commitment required at a traditional bootcamp. The extra time adds up to at least 2-3 weeks more than you will get anywhere else. The days passed rather quickly, however, given the high expectations and quantity of work required of each of us each day. As I said before: this program isn't for those on the fence about their engineering career!
Classmates
My cohort was a really fun, hardworking, collaborative and supportive cast of characters. Completing a program consisting of over 1,000 hours together created a strong bond between us as a group. To this day, we continue to help and support one another by answering coding questions, giving one another job leads, or just solving interesting challenges together. We even go camping as a group, now and again.
Outcomes
Finding a job, no matter how substantively prepared you are, can be an arduous undertaking. During the last few weeks at Codesmith, there is a lot of focus on preparing for job interviews (including rigorous mock interviews and white-boarding), perfecting your resume, and developing job hunt strategies. This support does not stop when the program ends (as is the case with traditional bootcamps). After completing my previous bootcamp, I was grossly unprepared for the job hunt with absolutely no support from the staff after graduation. This is absolutely not the case at Codesmith. If anything, support in the job hunt increases post-graduation. Staff from Codesmith continued to help me research jobs, prepare for interviews, and keep my coding skills sharp long after graduation day. They even helped me negotiate my salary when I received my first offer. Codesmith students routinely receive offers right out of Codesmith that are $100,000 or more, which is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 times what you will receive as a junior developer coming out of other immersive programs. I can attest to both numbers from experience as my current salary is literally double the salary I was offered after my other bootcamp.
Conclusion
Not long after I graduated from Codesmith, I landed my dream job. I'm a software engineer (with a highly competitive salary) in New York City, building software to help cities and organizations provide coordinated public services for veterans, families, and low-income individuals.
If you are able to be accepted to Codesmith, go! Do not hesitate! It will be the best decision you can make for your career.
TLDR;
TLDR;
Compared to other programs
I was looking for the best program in terms of academic quality and hiring support. I open to move, but being a father, I also had a limited amount of time so a two-year masters program was not an option.
I narrowed down my search to App Academy, Hack Reactor, and Codesmith. Codesmith stood out for having the most modern stack of technologies covered, the enthusiasm their graduates had for the program, and the student production projects were far more advanced than any program including the universities including projects that have revieved media coverage and recognized by leaders in technology.
The application and interviewing process
The interview process is less about judging what you know and more about demonstrating your ability to communicate through tough challenges and your passion to push through. I was able to learn which areas I needed to work on in case I needed to try again. They always welcome retrying.
Work, life, culture
There were real sacrifices including a pause on work and social life and very limited time with my family. On the other hand, I could see no other way to have a career transformation than this. Also, it was all temporary and the internal support from Codesmith was always there for me.
Going through this journey with a community of like-minded individuals was beyond fun. You get the opportunity to work with talented, driven people who are on your same path and equally dedicated to reaching success. Everyday was filled with team wins and high-fives that kept us pushing forward to bigger challenges.
The regular ping-pong breaks and walks to nearby restaurants and bars in the tech-savvy Playa Vista area was also pretty vital in keeping us sane, too.
Curriculum
Codesmith focuses on full stack development with technologies that are the most in demand today but also for the next few years. It focuses on JavaScript because of its ability be used in so many technical specialties, but also for it’s ability to help learn other software languages. It’s not uncommon for production projects to include C++, WebAssembly, Python, machine learning, etc. The curriculum focuses of advanced problem solving strategies that build students' abilities to learn in an accelerated manor throughout their careers in a constantly changing industry.
Hiring Support
In addition to a highly selective hiring day, Codesmith has an entire team of entrepreneurs and hiring support staff that are a phone call away that help alumni with networking, negotiations, and interviews. Alumni also have access to office space and interview prep after graduating.
Recent graduates are finding themselves in senior level engineering positions at Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, Nike, WalmartLabs, TBWA Chiat Day, NFL, etc. with salary offers well over six figures. When adjusting to costs-of-living, Codesmith’s recent grads boast the most successful salary offers in the nation.
Conclusion
This program is not for everyone. With a 3-4% acceptance rate, Codesmith diligently picks only the most passionate, driven, and valuable team-focused individuals who are willing to work towards aspirations beyond any other program. There was a lot of lost sleep, and even sometimes tears, but ultimately I feel truly honored to be a part of a industry leading community who I always plan on always contributing to. Though only two-years old, I’m looking forward to see them progress as they produce the future leaders of software engineering.
I graduated September 20, 2016 and was hired exactly one month later, on October 19. I make almost twice now what I made managing accounts at a PR/advertising firm and am immensely satisfied with where my career is and with my decision to attend Codesmith. Without the program I would never have been able to make it to where I am, hence the five star review.
That said, there are a few things I wish I had known going in. These poi...
I graduated September 20, 2016 and was hired exactly one month later, on October 19. I make almost twice now what I made managing accounts at a PR/advertising firm and am immensely satisfied with where my career is and with my decision to attend Codesmith. Without the program I would never have been able to make it to where I am, hence the five star review.
That said, there are a few things I wish I had known going in. These points are meant to be helpful to potential students and are a reflection of my own experience.
Although the program lasts for three months, the time commitment that they tell you to prepare for is actually six months total -- three months of program plus three months post-graduation to find a job. So budget that in.
Throughout the course, I never felt 100% prepared or felt like I was able to complete any of the coursework to a level that totally satisfied me. The pace was incredibly fast and there was never enough time to learn everything thoroughly or in-depth enough to make me feel relieved, like ‘oh I got this’. I think the program could be more effective if it was longer.
When you come out, there is a huge gap in tech experience between the mid-level jobs you are going for and the years of experience you have. How to efficiently and effectively bridge this gap was never adequately answered, in my opinion, and depended a lot on the individual. In my case, I was able to get a mid-level salary due to the fact that the job I got specifically required agency experience, which I already had. That said, the Codesmith staff is super supportive and will be by your side through the entire process. Also, I know other graduates for whom this particular issue wasn’t a problem for them.
Those things aside, the program does work and I am immensely pleased to have gone through it. Like other reviews here, I’ll iterate that it’s not easy and that no one hands you a job once you graduate; the onus is really on the individual to maximize the tools they are given. But the staff is really supportive and they do a phenomenal job at proactively fostering and maintaining a positive and community-oriented learning environment. As one of three female students in a class of 17 I was a little apprehensive of a ‘bro-grammer’ culture but from day one Codesmith made it clear that there was a zero-tolerance policy for anything outside of a supportive and respectful atmosphere. I would absolutely recommend Codesmith, especially to other women. We need more females in tech!
If you're considering a bootcamp, do yourself a favor and don't mistake Codesmith for one. For the money, good bootcamps take in new comers, hobbyists, and amateurs and do wonders in preparing them for entry level junior roles. By contrast, Codesmith does this for free. If you want a junior role, start coming to Codesmith where they've cultivated a community created by and for engineers. Regular discussions and workshops expounding on topics from fundamentals to advanced software engineeri...
If you're considering a bootcamp, do yourself a favor and don't mistake Codesmith for one. For the money, good bootcamps take in new comers, hobbyists, and amateurs and do wonders in preparing them for entry level junior roles. By contrast, Codesmith does this for free. If you want a junior role, start coming to Codesmith where they've cultivated a community created by and for engineers. Regular discussions and workshops expounding on topics from fundamentals to advanced software engineering topics are offered free of charge on a weekly basis. Free of charge. Several times a week. Every week. For free. Meet other like-minded people passionate about engineering. Learn from them and you can teach yourself how to code and probably get a job if you're keen.
If you want to take the next step in your career as a software engineer, as I did, prepare rigorously for the Codesmith admission process and submit an application. Prepare to fail the interview, study, and apply again. Even through failure, you've improved yourself ten-fold. But if you've truly dedicated yourself and committed to becoming the type of engineer who can solve any problem, you might get a chance of a life time.
The Codesmith approach borrows from a pedagogical model practiced by the world's best institutions, reconfiguring that model to meet modern educational needs. It takes a fraction of the time a traditional computer science program needs to prepare you. Although it's also not an equivalent, the approach awards you valuable, hands-on knowledge in place of theory. Part of the program is dedicated to bringing you up to speed with the most current technologies in the javascript ecosystem. We're talking MVC/MVVC, TDD, and RESTful architectures in addition to modern frontend frameworks like React (check out the website for more details) . Don't expect a lot of hand holding here. By design, you are meant to grow by hitting blocks in knowledge, which tests your ability to grow as an engineer. All the while, the instructors keep a close watch, taking care to intervene only when necessary.
The majority of the time at Codesmith is dedicated to building. Developer tools, client-facing applications, javascript libraries---take your pick. You take the knowledge you've gained up untill that point and create something for the community. The open-source projects built at Codesmith are regularly featured on hacker news and the like. In fact, a recent cohort's project was featured on the main stage at Google I/O (check out WebDSP). What 'bootcamp' can say that? The answer is none. Only a program like Codesmith can put out projects of this level of quality.
To offer my own experience, which is shared by many, I was a self-taught programmer with a non-technical background (accounting and non-profit administration). In terms of academic performance, I was about average, something I take pride in given the level of ability among my peers, which included experienced engineers, recent cs graduates, and some 'non-technical' folks like me. In terms of projects, my team developed an application commissioned by a real company for its userbase. Afterward, I was lucky enough to earn a fellowship, where I had the opportunity to contribute as an engineer and mentor others. When my fellowship ended, I prepared myself to begin a full-fledged job search which I thought would last up to an additional three months. But instead, I received my first offer from a Codesmith hiring partner exactly one day after and I'm now happily employed as a full stack engineer earning a competitive salary.
Simply put, the program works and I changed my life by deciding to come here. Just do yourself a favor and check it out for yourself. See you there.
Employed in-field | 80.1% |
Full-time employee | 77.4% |
Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | 0.7% |
Short-term contract, part-time, or freelance | 1.7% |
Started a new company or venture after graduation | 0.3% |
Not seeking in-field employment | 0.3% |
Employed out-of-field | 0.3% |
Continuing to higher education | 0.0% |
Not seeking a job for health, family, or personal reasons | 0.0% |
Still seeking job in-field | 19.6% |
Could not contact | 0.0% |
How much does Codesmith cost?
Codesmith costs around $20,925. On the lower end, some Codesmith courses like JavaScript for Beginners cost $350.
What courses does Codesmith teach?
Codesmith offers courses like CS Prep , Full-Time Remote Software Engineering Immersive, Global Part-Time Remote Software Engineering Immersive, JavaScript for Beginners and 1 more.
Where does Codesmith have campuses?
Codesmith has in-person campuses in New York City. Codesmith also has a remote classroom so students can learn online.
Is Codesmith worth it?
The data says yes! Codesmith reports a median salary of $133,281 and 82% of Codesmith alumni are employed. Codesmith hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 546 Codesmith alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Codesmith on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Codesmith legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 546 Codesmith alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Codesmith and rate their overall experience a 4.89 out of 5.
Does Codesmith offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like Codesmith offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.
Can I read Codesmith reviews?
You can read 546 reviews of Codesmith on Course Report! Codesmith alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Codesmith and rate their overall experience a 4.89 out of 5.
Is Codesmith accredited?
Codesmith is approved to operate by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education. For more information visit: https://codesmith.io/regulatory-information
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