Codesmith

I have a unique situation. When I applied to Codesmith, I had taken some online courses and applied to jobs, but wasn't getting results.

The first few weeks of Codesmith, we reviewed a lot of JavaScript fundamentals. During that time, 2 companies reached out to interview me. During my lunch, I went to the interviews.

I did so well that many of the interviewers said they've interviewed developers with 5 or 6 years of experience, but never seen them get so many of the questions right.

A lot of that was due to Codesmith's great way of teaching Comp Sci fundamentals that many bootcamps don't teach.

A lot of my success in these interviews is due to Codesmith. Thanks!

At times, you'll feel like you want to give up. You think you're not good enough. Codesmith is not those "feels good" bootcamps that's all over the place. The first part of the program teaches the fundamentals of JavaScript. Coming from a PHP background, little did I know that JavaScript has such differences! It's a language with so many twists, and Codesmith explained it thoroughly and clearly.

The most intense part about the program, IMO, is the brainstorming week to come up with ideas for our senior project. This segment exposes us to vast amount of web technologies and trends. This gave us perspective on how big the web dev ecosystem is and what's possible.

Overall, I like the method and approach Codesmith is using, it trains people to be autonomous problem solving engineers, a skill employers value greatly.

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. 

Codesmith has a relatively wide range of individuals coming through the program. They range in age everywhere from twentysomethings to fifty or older, it's a really diverse program. I came when I was 18, straight out of high school, in lieu of going to college. When I was first considering going to Codesmith, I never thought I would leave with such a strong emotional connection to the people I met there, and such a feeling of community and connection that Codesmith has given me. Codesmith also has a universal reputation for producing really high quality, professional engineers- not just bootcamp grads- and I can honestly attest to the fact that I've grown more and learned more in the last three months than I ever did in any whole year of traditional schooling. Now I'm confident in calling myself an authority on frontend javascript development and state management, and that's something that people I know who went to other bootcamps like GE and Hack Reactor just can't say.

I attended Codesmith at the end of 2017, and it's been the biggest game changer in my quest to switch careers. Codesmith offers a valuable, hands-on learning environment that focuses on teaching students how to become better pair-programmers, communicators and self learners -- something that's almost impossible to find if you're trying to learn software engineering on your own. But be forewarned that the program is difficult and will stretch your limits; there's minimal hand holding, and imposter syndrome can be a very real thing. With that said, if you attend with these expectations, you'll be able to graduate as a stronger researcher and problem solver. And while I needed more time to brush up on some core concepts after I had graduated, I found that I was better equipped to learn more efficiently because of Codesmith. Ultimately, I was able to land a software engineering job within three months of graduating -- so the entire experience was absolutely worth it. If you're looking for a software engineering residency that offers great culture and the opportunity to develop cutting-edge projects that you're passionate about, Codesmith is it.