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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.
This review has been preempted as apparently Codesmith (Eric) called ME thinking that one of the unsatisfactory reviews were written as it "sounded like you" and reassuring me that their job statistic placements will be verified soon which left me in a HUGE confusion until I realized they still have not verified that since I inquired about it since October 2017. If it takes more than a year to verify statistics where your early LA cohorts have already been published before, it just means t...
This review has been preempted as apparently Codesmith (Eric) called ME thinking that one of the unsatisfactory reviews were written as it "sounded like you" and reassuring me that their job statistic placements will be verified soon which left me in a HUGE confusion until I realized they still have not verified that since I inquired about it since October 2017. If it takes more than a year to verify statistics where your early LA cohorts have already been published before, it just means that they areWAITING on people to get hired to boost their statistics up more. A third party verification is easy to do, you give them your data and it does not take that long as they do not have many students EMPLOYED. Apparently that is why some people cannot even leave honest feedback as Codesmith keeps calling them to change their minds.
Which leaves me to my next point that most of these 5 star reviews are done by Fellows who are "employed" by Codesmith as esentially teaching assistants, to help answer "help desk" requests when student submits a ticket. However, most of these tickets do get ignored as these TAs are not meant to help students but rebuild the website for Codesmith. All in all a huge marketing and low laboring scam setup here.
This is a going to be a LONG, well in depth REVIEW with some personal anecdotes and feedback I was given personally, and experienced through these 3 months at Codesmith. While I appreciate the staff for being nice, the overrall value into going Codesmith was absolutely wasted and there was not even WiFi working well during my April/May-July 2018 time and I have tracked it back to NY Cohort #2's time as well. There are a lot of excuses for things they need to address and NOTHING IS PERFECT, but they sure act as if they are and are not open to suggestions and shut down anyone who does not follow their "Codesmith ways" which just inherently means being a sheep in thoughts and actions.
Background
I am a NON-cs student who just started coding early of 2018 and was pushed too much to join Codesmith despite my lack of foundation of even Javascript. Which I was assured repeatedly they will help me in. I am also typing this as I am recovering from LASIK as I feel infuriated that they are hounding other people for their HONEST reviews and accusing people that are busy with their lives.
There were precoursework that were given and not really reviewed in depth. Pair programming was a huge pain in NYC's Cohort 4 as Codesmith has internal politics that HUGELY affects their students' even though that is what they should be focusing on and not other aspects to promote an invalid hostile environment. Their COO Victoria left which gave a huge amount of work to the staffs apparently, and no one boetherd to check up in our cohort if ANY of us were even pair programmed efficiently. My seniors did not face this problem as they had Victoria's presence and apparently she didn't "leave to attend Business School" as Will Sentenace's own explanation was for her departure, but she was FIRED for being young in a COO position for Codesmith due to "lack of experience" even though she did a lot of work behind the scenes apparently at Codesmith.(she was also the one passive aggresively ensuring everyone was coding well with one another). Her absence made the staff ignore a lot of risk factors in our cohort which made MOST OF US MISERABLE.I do not think any one of us actually enjoyed the time at Codesmith except knowing one another.
The funny part is for a bootcamp to advertise learning of "deep diving" by facing "engineering blocks" through "pair programming" of units, I TOLD them myself in a feedback at Week 2 that they conducted to their outreach coordinator Jenny, that pair programming is not being efficiently done. She told me herself, "Well! We cannot enforce pair programming." ??????? WHAT DID I HEAR. Yes, I relayed this to Will himself and his own magical PR words of his marketing schematic self was, "she is not a representative of Codesmith's staff so what she said did not represent Codesmith at all. We even had an extra 30 minute PP of effective pair programming for your cohort and I even pulled people aside personally to let them know about it."
Here is Lie #1 I caught Will in. I spoke to EVERYONE in my cohort if they have EVER been approached by Will about this and they have said no. Only one person in my cohort said Ryan (who was the LTM - Lead Technical Meentor? - at that time) has approached him, but not Will himself. Will could not even be bothered to attend his own Javascript workshop on a Saturday morning that was attended by 100+? or more people since he was late by an hour to his OWN MEETUP. Plus if this was true this would have been fixed from Week 2 onwards but I can see people still not pairing well even on the last month for projects at Codesmith lol.
Another Fellow mentioned that she has tried to get the women's nnegotiation/ hiring workshop in before but Will has not even responded to her about it. I pushed for it to happen for my cohort and my juniors as there were a lot of people who needed to know. I slacked him a lot, did not see a date as it was nearing the end of my curriculum. I had to ask a FEMALE staff of Codesmith just so I can relay how infuriating and frustrating it is to try to get something done when they claim to be "FORWARD THINKING AND RESPECTIVE TO EVERYONE".
Half of my cohort has failed their weekly "checkings" which are assessments of that week's topics/units. The funny part is that the React portion in Codesmith is similar to React's OWN documentation tutorial so while I am not saying that Codesmith got lazy in TEACHING React but they just had a similar guide to React's own starting process tutorial guide ....
1:1 tutoring was not available in our cohort and instead we had a group review done as it was more "time efficient" but still "time wasted" as it was not individualized, and not personalized. They just reviewed code semantics without really explaining what was going on between components, which I learned well AFTER the program ended.
I am the bottom knowledge % wise in my cohort and I did not mind since I just started out and it was fine. But the lack of support of materials and just being thrown in haphazardly because this is "how engineers learn" as Will personally told me himself, just means I never got proper foundations to even make projects work. My whole cohort still did not even know how to use React well despite having ALL of our projects in React which is funny. Our resumes are well spoken and FAKE which makes it seem legit, which they're not.
I was also one of the people who got tutoting by Stephen and even some of the tutorings from him and Fellows have mentioned that Codesmith has taught their units in such an unnecesary way of learning that no one grasps it until wayyyyy later or until they learn it a more effiecient way to understand it. I was told I was also not a hard working because my brain quits after a while since you are there Monday-Fri from 9:-8pm and Sat 9am-4pm. It's not a matter of how long it takes to learn but how efficiently can you get it, that's how you can work smarter not harder. Which is the oppoiste of Codesmith's values apparently.There are multiple ways of learning (and teaching it as I was told) it but if its more complicated than it should be, that in itself is against programming itself.
Lie #2 - Will told me himself he was paying tutors out of pocket at $200/hr and as a FAVOR for me and others to get extra tutoring at 10 hours a week for 4 weeks. He personally told me himself, "Anonymous, even YOU cannot contest these rates I am paying here." I was offered a refund of around $4k or tutoring which at the end of the day I am more interelsted in LEARNING, which I had to fight for a lot. I can contest these rates because Will wasn't even paying that much to begin with, he even said "THESE TUTORS ARE TOP OF THE INDUSTRY SO THEY ARE WORTH $200/HR I AM PAYING OUT OF MY OWN." He didn't yell this, but was very affirmative hence the CAPS. Turns out the tutor was just one of my Seniors in the previous cohort so thanks! Thank you Will for such TOP OF THE INDUSTRY TUTORS@!@! I do appreiate Stephen's tutoring -- just being lied continously again face to face by Will Sentance, Codesmith's own CEO is infuriating and frustrating.
I have also failed my finals assessment and I was told I had to retake it. I asked why since I did the backend pretty well and I was told I can do it in any format I want but the test itself restricted you not to use React since it had a longer setup and their testing for the assessments were not setup for React but specific file locations and such. I was told I could have asked to restructure the file formats myself even though the test ittself said not to and I even asked a Fellow for help and they told me to stick with the testing environment. If I had the flexibility to do so but have no actual instructions and flexibility given initially, why tell me after? Absolutely ridiculus. I also asked them why do they need me to retake it and they said, "oh well its for us to know where you are and how to benchmark you to get the help you need." I mean I already know what I am struggling with which was basically almost everything so I did not have the optio2n to repeat the course just "extra help". Basically their motto is letting YOU know where YOU are behind, so YOU can learn yourself and catch up yourself. Absolutely no support as promised.
Lies #3 - was given Will's and Eric's own number for after graduation but it seems that Will is ghosting a lot of my messages plust other people in my cohort. Yet when I was interested in joining, I had a 4am e-mail and constant text messages and phone calls about joining. He said emails were best to reach him but I wasn't even given his email.
I did manage to get a senior software position but I completely ignored all of Codesmith's guidelines. I applied to over 200 job applications and only got 2 onsites out of those. Apparently I am supposed to get 1-2 onsite interviews out of every 20 applications but that is another lie. Most are outright rejections and I only got placed luckily through a very kind and pushy recruiter (which I am always kind to even recruiters even though Codesmith says not to pay them much value). If anyone is jobless still after 6 months and applied to every position, be warned that you may be blacklisted as recruiters tend to notice why you are till job searching after some time "your startup which is a project has disintegrated over a few months ago."
I completely started over after the program ended since it was disappointing, frustrating and tiresome to have to "fight" for a way that I can learn best since I could not even take a single project to break it down much simpler for me to understand and piece together. Instead you are jumbled up all through each different projects to use the frameworks and knowledge you have supposedly obtained which is 10% for a semblance of something that works.
The completely ridiculous thing at the end I was asked on how I can improve learning/teaching for their future cohorts at the END of my cohort despite my numerous complaints of the lack of Fellows helping and (1) hour PP slides that are not even great starting course materials to learn off. If I repeatedly have told them during learning that we are not learning the right way we won't ever "cement" our knowledge during projects as that is the known "Codesmith's way" which is all convoluted shenanigans. I paid to learn, not to be your consultant on fixing your problems even though Codesmith at this time had 20+ classes already and 3 for NYC. So again that means their curriculum still needs to be changed and improved as most of Codesmith's graduates STILL have to learn the curriculum after their time spent of 3 months.
This review may make me sound like a bitter person but no I was more determined to get a job on my own despite knowing nothing at the end of the bootcamp. I have spoken to several friends who have done Fullstack academy and App Academy and they have not had buyer's remorse as I have had. I recommend Fullstack Academy more as App Academy is more stressful than needed. If you have any questions you can reach out to me at teamgingko@gmail.com.I would love to leave a verified review but like many others, have to mask our actual profiles to not damage our own reputation and jobs / potential jobs. I recommend Udemy for courses as low as $10 to each a particular language/ framework.
It's really hard to work with anyone especially a CEO (Will Sentance) who lies to students' faces and has the guts to tell me I cannot contest his claims. I sure am and can, and will because most of them are FALSE. A lot of other reviews have also labeled him as "markety" Will, which is true. A business who keeps contesting every "negative" review left so often and does not even address the main focal points but skirts around points made to again self promote their "program" that "dives deep under the hood" while trying to foster a "community" but lies to their students is truly atrocious. I wouldn't mind if their program did not work out for me, but to be belittled every step of the way to ensure I had proper guidance is definitely something one should not experience.
I would rather take out all 4 of mmy wisdom teeth again on the same day, without any painkillers if I can go back in time to prevent myself from even entering this bootcamp. Oh and Codesmith does take credit for students' long work after they completed the program. Most of them didn't even understand the subjects taught and instead learned them well afterwards. Ask to speak to their graduates if possible, the ones with NO technical experience at all. If you do the math if there are about 10-15 people and LA had about 20 cohorts and each cohort had 2-3 fellows... which ammounts to about the same 5 star reviews left behind, which reviews are actually real? Again, please feel free to email me at teamgingko@gmail.com for any questions.
Codesmith of Codesmith
Codesmith
Oct 23, 2018
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. 553 Codesmith alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed Codesmith on Course Report - you should start there!
Is Codesmith legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 553 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 553 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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