Codesmith

My experience at Codesmith was a solid 3.5/5, but I would definitely round up to a 4. The community is probably one of the best parts. Everyone is super friendly and supportive. The staff are probably a bit overworked, but you can tell that they genuinely want the best for all of the students. I was a happy student and I ended up finding employment.

I will be separating my review into pros and cons, as follows:

Pros:

• Strong, supportive community. Readily available and friendly staff. I made some pretty good friends during my time here.
• The production project is a great opportunity to work on something that will, without a doubt, deepen your understanding of the technologies that you choose to work with.
• Very solid curriculum. The technologies that you learn are very relevant and high-demand. They also teach systems design and machine learning, although the latter is just a very short introductory unit.
• Remote stipend for office setup.
• There is a pretty solid network of alumni. 

Cons:

• Needs-blind admission. At the time of admission, I was a low income applicant and I received zero financial assistance. While there are scholarships, the vast majority of them are diversity scholarships and were not applicable to me.
• No job guarantee. This is something that other well-established (and even newly established) bootcamps offer.
• The instructors are mostly former Codesmith alum. While this is not exactly necessarily a bad thing, I noticed none of the instructors have a computer science degree or any real-world experience as a software engineer. Does that mean they're bad problem-solvers? No. It does, however, mean your instructor or fellow will most likely not utilize or understand best practices when writing code and designing lessons/codebases.
• Despite the great curriculum, the React unit is in sore need of a revamp. Codesmith does not teach Hooks, which is a must-have for any React developer.
• The job searching unit was pretty good overall, but I wish Codesmith was more specific about listing the production project as experience. A lot of job searchers are kind of left to figure things out on their own as far as that goes. I also think it would be nice if Codesmith made themselves available as an educational institute on LinkedIn. Being a bootcamp grad is not a shameful thing and giving alumni the option to list Codesmith on LinkedIn would be great.

Overall, the experience was great, but there is still much room for improvement. I look forward to seeing how Codesmith evolves in the years to come.

A quick overview of my experience: I attended Codesmith from Febuary-May 2020, worked as a fellow until August, and started my first engineering role at the end of August, after applying to jobs for 1-2 months.

(If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, scroll down to the Conclusion section at the very bottom)

I was drawn to Codesmith because I already had a little under a year of self-taught experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and I wanted to attend a bootcamp that had a higher level of entry for its students. After narrowing my choices down to Fullstack Academy and Codesmith, I ultimately chose Codesmith due to the appeal and quality of its in-person workshops. In particular, the Hard Parts series elevated my understanding of JavaScript to a new level — even after I thought I already had a decent understanding of the basics!

I had high expectations coming into Codesmith, and generally speaking those expectations were met. However, I should point out that our cohort switched from on-site to remote instruction halfway through the program due to the pandemic, which affected the cohort's experience for the second half of the program.

Codesmith's curriculum was divided into two halves when I attended (and I assume it's still fairly similar):

• Full-stack instruction: an intensive series of lectures, pair programming exercises, and projects teaching essential full-stack technologies like React, Redux, Node, and SQL/NoSQL databases.
• Production Project & Hiring: students build a developer tool over six weeks, and they also attend a series of lectures and workshops preparing them for the job search. They'll also put together a resume with the guidance of a fellow. Some supplemental lectures and exercises are also included here, touching on topics like AWS basics and CI/CD fundamentals.

In addition, we also had an assessment or algorithm exercise each morning.
Curriculum & Lectures
Overall, the first half of the program was by far the most engaging and fulfilling for me. I came into the program with some frontend experience, and after the first half I felt confident building basic applications with servers and databases. Our lead instructors knew what they were talking about and gave their lectures in an engaging manner.

At some points I did feel that the curriculum could be updated a bit (particularly in the second half - there was an AWS update that wasn't covered in the instructions, and we lost several hours as the instructors worked to find a solution), but I understand that the curriculum was updated during the latter half of 2020 and possibly later. It would also have been helpful to cover modern practices such as React hooks, linting, best practices for codebase architecture, etc. before going into the production project — these would make good quick additions to the curriculum if they aren't already included.

Projects
Possibly the biggest part of Codesmith's appeal is the "production project" - a development tool that a group of residents work on (4 or 5, for my cohort) over a span of 6 weeks. Before tackling the production project, we also completed a handful of other projects, ranging from a Chrome extension to several fullstack apps, which did a lot to prepare us for this project.

While the production project our group built from scratch wasn't exactly what we'd call "production-ready," we did have the opportunity to iterate on several past projects and refine the codebase while adding extra features, which in retrospect might have been the better option, since it's closer to what most engineers do at their jobs!

One aspect of the production project that was a little less than ideal was the group dynamics. In my group as well as others, there were conflicts where some members "led" the project and created a less equal learning environment for others, or in other instances some members were unwilling to make meaningful contributions and instead preferred to chat. I expect that this is always a risk when forming groups (not to mention in the actual workplace), but this did detract at times from the experience. To future students, I highly recommend getting in touch with your group's assigned fellow if any conflicts or issues occur - I don't believe it's worthwhile trying to solve them on your own when the experience is something you're paying a significant amount of money for.

Hiring Portion
Without a doubt, the best part of the hiring portion for me was the resume. I came out of the program with a dense, polished resume that I didn't feel embarrassed sending to employers - in contrast, the resume I wrote before CS might as well have been written by a child.

I had high expectations for the hiring program because I had heard past grads praise it, with some even say that it was worth the cost of tuition on its own. I was 30 when I attended the program and had worked a number of non-technical jobs previously, and I didn't feel that the instruction regarding the job application or interview process broke any new ground for me. I've spoken to some other grads who are around my age and felt the same — I suspect that the people who get the most out of the hiring program are in their late teens to mid-20s.

For me, one thing I would have changed about the hiring program would have been to include some engineers in the workshops and lectures who had experience interviewing and working outside of Codesmith. While our instructors did make a solid effort to cover the standard materials for these lectures, sections like the system design portion would have been more engaging if they were led by an experienced engineer who had gone through or given SD interviews, rather than a fellow who had only completed this same unit weeks earlier. Likewise, I would have gone into the interview process a bit better prepared if I had been given more concrete details about the typical interview process, common exercises, etc. This is something that I had to do on my own time, through speaking to other grads and going through interviews.

Disclaimer: since we had just switched to a remote format at that point, there were issues with timing that caused several hiring lectures to be rescheduled, and unfortunately Will wasn't available to give his usual lectures. I'm assuming this isn't the current experience.

While it's true that you only get better at interviewing by interviewing, some more concrete guidance would have helped immensely, as some lectures felt a little vague. When I attended the program, we were able to interact with full-time engineers at three different points: during an alum Q&A session, during an hour-long mock interview with an alum, and during a 15-minute (I believe) phone call where we went over our narrative with an alum. When I began applying to jobs, I was uncomfortable about reaching out to the hiring support fellow for advice — while they were doing their job to the best of their ability, I felt more comfortable reaching out to someone who had gone through the hiring process themselves. I'm aware that Codesmith now gives graduates the opportunity to book time to speak to past graduates who are now employed as engineers, which is great. I think bringing engineers with this type of lived experience into the hiring program would also be a huge win for everyone involved in it.

Conclusion
Based on my experience, I'd definitely recommend Codesmith to anyone who has decided that a bootcamp is the right choice for them. Codesmith helped fill in the gaps in my engineering knowledge, and it also gave me the chance to work on an in-depth project with a group of other developers. My production project was likely a big reason why I was considered for the first role that I got hired for — I built a GraphQL tool, and GraphQL was a big feature of the stack I ended up working on.

Overall, I'd say the hiring portion was the only part of the program that didn't meet the expectations I had coming in, for the reasons I mentioned above.

Still, a hiring program alone won't help you get a job. After the initial lectures, Codesmith provided me with an environment to push myself to improve, and a community of graduates that supported me as I moved on to the job search and beyond. Without Codesmith, I definitely wouldn't be at the engineering level I am today.

I want to start off my review with a quick preface. If you are looking for an easy way into the world of software or web development then this most likely won't be a good fit for you. It takes a tremendous amount of work throughout. Before the program, during the program, and after the program (where some would say that this is where the real work starts). Your mileage may vary depending on your initial experience and innate affinity for coding and problem solving, but there is simply no way to avoid the effort that is required for this transformative experience. 

I started off with absolutely zero prior experience in coding and began with first learning what a variable is and what we use them for. After a period of self-studying, I wanted to take my learning process to the next level and came across Codesmith by pure chance. What immediately stood out to me was the great sense of care that they had for their applicants and the Codesmith community. What really sealed the deal for me was going through all the free resources that Codesmith provides that I felt were a great benefit in helping to solidify my understanding of the basics. After watching some of the javascript hard parts videos led by CEO Will Sentance, previously obscure and confusing concepts started to click. I was hooked and knew that this was what I was searching for. 

From that point forward my learning process and exposure to coding took off. Everything was geared around getting through the technical interview, which for me was quite difficult. The technical interview IS difficult, but it's not without reason. If applicants aren't able to demonstrate the level needed to enter the immersive programs then it really isn't in anyone's benefit for that applicant to be accepted as once the immersive starts, the brakes are few and far between, and the level of difficulty increases exponentially. Believe me when I say that Codesmith is not trying to trick anyone during the technical interview nor does it require any esoteric knowledge. It's simply testing if the applicant has a good understanding (not mastery) of a lot of the fundamental concepts in javascript that serve as the building blocks for what is to come in the immersive. If you are struggling with the technical interview, reach out to people in the Codesmith community. They truly do care and want to see you succeed, but the effort and dedication from your end HAS to be apparent.

As challenging and exhausting as the full-time immersive was, it was an incredible experience that I wish I could do all over again. Never before have I been with a group of people so focused and passionately working towards a goal for such an extended period of time. The struggle and pain that we went through as we were hit with wave after wave of difficult concepts and frameworks/libraries really helped us to bond and form a close connection (they are still my friends to this day that I confide in). You really do start to get a sense of working as an engineer when going through different group projects, especially when you get to the production project phase and start mapping out your workflow with your team members. The sense of pride that you feel when you create something from scratch at the end was such a rewarding feeling as you work under a deadline with your team members. The anxiety that I felt when going through the program and not understanding everything was subsided by the constant support from the staff and fellows. 

When you wrap up the technical side of things, you start getting into the job hunt phase where you learn how to finally work towards leveraging the skills that you've acquired towards a full-time job as an engineer. Most people would say that this part is actually harder than the technical portion as the job search process is quite volatile. There will be a lengthy trial and error process and no matter what there IS a level of luck involved as well. But those that prepare WILL be able to capitalize on the opportunity when they eventually come across it. You will be able to go through the entire application process at Codesmith, from developing your profile and resume, to how to optimize your LinkedIn profile,  to how to write cover letters and sell yourself as a credible engineer. Codesmith also has advisors like Eric K, who have been in the industry and are a tremendous benefit to helping you navigate scenarios that you will encounter like negotiating your salary and benefits, discussing your narrative and background, and how to portray yourself as a competent engineer so that when you do come across these situations you are able to recall to the experience provided to you!

To wrap up....
I have been on both sides at Codesmith.  As someone that went through the full-time program, and as someone that works for Codesmith. I can truly say that there is no subterfuge, Codesmith genuinely cares about this process and helping people to achieve their goals and to fulfill their motivations for going through this rigorous program, whatever they may be. The effort required is tremendous but all in all, I can say without hesitation that it's worth it. The community that Codesmith has developed here is second to none, and it's why I wanted to work for Codesmith. I wanted to be able to give back to other applicants going through this process just like how when I was applying to Codesmith there were so many people that reached out and helped me to get through everything. Life as an engineer/developer is one of continuous learning and improvement, and if that's what you're looking for I truly believe that Codesmith is a great way to get started. The outcomes and salaries may seem very enticing, and rightly so. But more than that, it's this valuable skill that you are acquiring that will be in demand and dominate our society for years and years to come. 

My Codesmith story pretty different from most, but it has the same happy ending.

I come from a more technical background than a lot of people who come to Codesmith. I studied mathematics in college, taught math and science professionally, and was already comfortable with the basics of coding. To top it all off, I wasn't even very interested in web development, I wanted to work in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and was looking for a way to enter into that field.

Something about the culture, philosophy, and pedagogy of Codesmith drew me in, and I joined. It was an excellent decision.

During the program, I found ways to take what we were working on and make it interesting to me. I spent more time focusing on databases and algorithms, and focused my projects around things that related (however tangentially!) to Machine Learning.

Right after I graduated, the pandemic hit, and Codesmith hired me on to help deliver some of the lessons remotely and to help maintain their website. The managers at Codesmith knew my interests, and were kind enough to let me spend a significant amount of time developing their Machine Learning curriculum.

After I left at the end of 2020, I was able to build a web app that leveraged computer vision that I could show off to companies and demonstrate my interest in Machine Learning.

After a few months of job searching, I was able to find a perfect position for me – a software role developing tools for a machine learning team at a startup using computer vision to help diagnose cancerous biopsies.

To be clear, I'm not saying Codesmith will turn you into a Machine Learning engineer. What I got from Codesmith wasn't some specific set of skills or special knowledge. Instead, Codesmith provided me exactly what I was missing: the ability to spearhead a publishable project from ideation to deployment; experience working with a team of engineers on a project for extended periods of time; familiarity with the tools that professionals use; war-stories to tell of uncovering and overcoming daunting technical challenges. In short, Codesmith developed my engineering maturity.

If you too lack engineering maturity, and have the determination to work through the long hours and challenging curriculum, then I can't recommend Codesmith enough. I don't know what you are trying to achieve, but if you are creative and hard-working, you can leverage the catalyzing environment of Codesmith to make it happen.

What's brilliant about Codesmith is they don't just teach you languages and frameworks. About a third of the program is dedicated to actually building an open source developer tool that other engineers can actually use that will impress potential employers. This is a step beyond where most programs leave you and is critical to their graduates' success -- it gives you a huge leg up and something fascinating and deep to talk about in an interview.

I came in from a completely different background and only learned what JavaScript was half a year prior. I was no doubt intimidated by the rigorous curriculum, watching engineers only weeks ahead in the program write applications I never believed I could in that period of time. Soon enough, I was at the same level. 

I faced challenges when it came to applying for jobs. That part of the process can be rough and is a psychological battle as much as it is a test of strategy and skill. Codesmith walks you through in very practical terms how to apply, and their strategy is great. But ultimately, graduates will come up with their own strategies and use Codesmith's as a springboard. In the end, what got me through was that Codesmith instilled a belief in me that I could do it, and that conviction, while sometimes quite small, carried me through. I eventually received an offer to the same generous tune of their average graduate outcomes, which I did not believe could happen.

You absolutely have to put in the work; applying to jobs will come easier to some than others. Know that you're embarking on a challenge. But as far as there being a better program out there for launching you into a Software Engineering career, I'll believe it when I see it.

I participated in CSPrep, the two week part-time pre-bootcamp prep program, and am eagerly preparing for the bootcamp itself.  Codesmith is incredible for a few reasons.  First their approach which involves building a complete, rock-solid foundation including understanding what is going on under the hood with the javascript engine using diagramming of the callstack, thread of execution, execution context, and memory, and precise technical language is great.  Second, instruction is interactive and socratic and I can attest, as a current teacher, that the instructors know all of the good teacher moves.  Finally the culture of everyone struggling through hard learning and not looking up code, pair programming and answering each other's questions and being kind and generous and supportive made me feel at home and overcome imposter syndrome.  Codesmith is a community it is hard NOT to want to be a part of.  This is a mission driven organization that has genuine educational motives at the forefront.  I <3 Codesmith!

Codesmith is an environment where knowledge is built upon hard work, indeed, but most importantly, kindness. In all my time there I never received but words of encouragement, inspiration, and guidance. Every instructor and volunteer seem fully committed to you understanding  why  code works the way it does, not simply gimmicks or fancy tricks.
The curriculum is filtered  through best practices, truly modern approach, and updated technical background, so you hit the ground running on your way to land that first job. Most importantly,  you learn to incorporate new developments on JavaScript into your toolbox, to remain on the cutting edge of both the industry and the top echelon of professionals.
My appreciation of the profession and its growth greatly improved upward by the long hours invested in  the course, but the results speak for themselves, the accompaniment I've received inspires me to work harder everyday to accomplish my life goals and make my instructors proud.
Truly, I can not recommend every course offered by Codesmith enough, there is where your hard work produces generous fruit.

The best investment I ever made, the people in my cohort alone are worth the money spent. Now imagine that, coupled with the intense immersive curriculum and the power house instructors, AND the leader of CS - Will S is an actual human being that's so down to earth, real, extremely helpful, and actually cares. 

This is a no brainer, it's the real deal, I landed a role shortly after graduating and I got more than what I was asking for. When does that ever happen in life?! 

If you have the funds or can get the funds, stop thinking, CodeSmith is the answer. 

Pros:
- Great Curriculum: CS Prep teaches you the Hard Parts of Javascript and prepares you for the technical interview of the Codesmith Immersive. It provides a great starting point for students to understand the field of software engineering, as you pick up tidbits of wisdom while progressing through the course. Their supporting materials were also organized and helpful. 
- Community: My cohort had an amazing community. Many of the students would constantly talk and joke through the Slack channel and Zoom chat. There were minimal difficult personalities, and the vibes were generally good.
- Accessible Instructors:  All the staff at Codesmith are very responsive and supportive. I really appreciate how easy it is to communicate with the employees and find help on whatever problem you have.

Cons:
- Expensive: CS Prep lasts about two weeks, but there is only class four days a week (three hours on weekdays, six hours on Saturday). In my opinion, $875 is expensive for the amount of time spent learning, but the price does roll over if you get into the immersive. To me, CS Prep is not worth the money unless you are for sure planning on joining the Codesmith Immersive. 

I, like many others who attended Codesmith, was hooked the first time I attended JS: the hard parts. The approach to learning CS was the exact opposite of the dusty, archaic book-learning of computer concepts I experienced in college. It was not long before I signed up for the immersive program. I won't mince words: this program is spectacular. Attending the CS immersive was a highly formative process in which I learned how to learn. Codesmith is not a program where you can turn your brain off, hop on the conveyor belt, and expect an offer from IBM at the end of the process. It will challenge you. Your brain will contort in ways you hadn't thought possible. But in the end, if you've given it the diligence required, you'll come out with the mind of a highly capable software engineer.

Of course nothing can be perfect-- there are some issues that might be present in any (albeit quite successful) startup, and it must be said that this is likely not the best path for everyone. But I can say without a doubt this was the right choice for me, and I had no qualms in recommending the program to a friend who starts next month.

Codesmith's immersive program was an unforgettable experience.  Not being given the answers to everything is quite uncomfortable, and can be quite overwhelming at times, but couldn't think of a better group of people to go through it with.  The level of commitment and empathy shown by everyone from the instructors, to the residents, and hiring support made it all the more worthwhile.  
    
The CIRR data speaks for itself, it's just whether or not you choose to believe it.  I'll admit that I was pretty skeptical the first time I saw the reviews.  Having gone through it all and meeting these wonderful people, I'm proud to be one of the testimonies that feels lucky to be a part of it.