Codesmith

I'm a pandemic career-changer in my early 40s and I left a good, stable job to pursue software engineering. This may have been the most significant decision and the most challenging project of my life. Before I was fully committed to this monumental life... Read More change I launched a deep research project to determine which boot camp was going to set me up for the greatest success. My research led me to Codesmith. Every reputable coding boot camp offers some kind of free live workshops and online resources to get you started, get you involved in the community, and help measure and improve your skills. Most offer some kind of "boot camp prep" course. Tuition tends to be pretty similar across the board. So how can you really know which one is "best" or which one is right for you? My approach was to try them all. In addition to reading reviews and articles and checking out their YouTube channels, I used the free online resources from ten different schools, and I attended the prep courses for three different schools. I figured this would give me the greatest insight into how each school operates and whether I should trust the outcomes I saw published on their own websites as well as in the reports from the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR). My experiences led me to Codesmith. Codesmith's free workshops curriculum is incredibly robust. It includes sessions targeting everyone from Day 1 beginners to employed engineers seeking a deeper understanding of advanced concepts, and many sessions occur more than once per week. When I attended my first "JavaScript: The Hard Parts" session I immediately felt like I was witnessing something of real value. The instructor was a total pro. The approach and the method were thoughtfully constructed. The attendees were engaged and participating. The quality of this experience was in stark contrast to what I had seen from all of the other schools. I was mostly sold on Codesmith. The thing that sealed the deal for me was the challenge of getting admitted to Codesmith. At one point I had failed two attempts at the Codesmith technical admissions interview, and I had already been accepted to two other top coding boot camps. It would have been easy to throw in the towel and get started with one of the alternatives but my thinking was if I'm going to quit my job and take out a big loan at the same time, run through my meager savings, and risk everything for a chance at a great new career then I want to make sure it's the greatest new career possible. I couldn't be satisfied with a junior-level position that paid about the same as I was making before; I wanted to go into job interviews with the confidence derived from knowing that I had been through, by far, the most challenging software engineering boot camp available. Codesmith sets the highest barrier to entry and teaches the most advanced curriculum. They're able to do that because they have the best approach and retain the best staff. The formula is working. In a few days, I'll be starting my first job as a software engineer. I'm going to work at a large financial institution in a mid-level position with a team working on an exciting product. I've acquired all the skills I need to succeed in this industry, I've made a bunch of new friends-for-life, and I've built up a formidable professional network. I would recommend Codesmith to friends and family (and I do, frequently) and to anyone who is serious about getting started in the software industry.

Codesmith was an overall fantastic experience, and it would absolutely be my number 1 recommendation to anyone looking to attend an immersive. Pros -The community is wonderful, literally everyone I met was kind, helpful and committed to learning. -They... Read More challenge you CONSTANTLY. It feels rough when you’re going through it, but at some point you realize that’s the only way to get someone job ready in such a short amount of time. They’re called bootcamps for a reason. -Their system works. It takes a bit of trust and definitely some perseverance, but push through and if you follow what they teach you, you will get a job. And don’t be afraid to speak up to an instructor/fellow about how you’re feeling. In my experience I always felt so much better after talking to someone on staff if I was feeling frustrated or low in general. Cons -It’s VERY challenging, and not for the faint of heart. Expect to feel overwhelmed basically the entire time (but just remember, it’s all part of the system, and the system works). -It’s quite expensive -PTRI hours are rough if you’re on EST

Codesmith was an excellent experience and for me it was definitely worth it. I attended the full time immersive and it was a lot of long hours and tough work, but ultimately absolutely worth it and truly rewarding. I had already done some self studying... Read More when I enrolled and it really took my engineering skills to the next level. The most valuable parts of the program for me were the community and network you find, the project focus, and the hiring portion. I chose Codesmith because of the CIRR outcomes and the sense of community. I highly recommend checking out one of their free workshops if you want to get a sense of the teaching style. I got a job fairly quickly and have been extremely happy with my choice to make a career change. I'm able to do more satisfying work for more pay, and Codesmith really helped me get there.

I considered many other bootcamps like fullstack academy, general assembly, etc. but then codesmith hiring outcome came to my attention as codesmith's hiring outcome was the best among bootcamps out there. After going through 12-weeks of program and now... Read More getting a job, I can see why codesmith has the best hiring outcome and I am really glad that I decided to go with codesmith. It provides the best curriculum for people who want to be engineers and how to think and code like mid to senior-level software engineers. I got a job offer that is well above the median of codesmith graduate outcomes, so I can say that it actually works! pros: The curriculum, open-source product, and hiring support post-codesmith cons: Instructors' teaching quality (especially fellows) can be better, I would say

The course is well-structured and provides ample opportunity to clarify challenging aspects through meaningful repetition. The instructors are knowledgeable, personable and passionate. Along with a great community of students, Codesmith offers a learning... Read More environment that is effective and encouraging - you won't feel intimidated when you have questions or when you are struggling with the material.

Overall, I felt that the CS Prep remote experience was exceptional for people who are trying to get into the immersive bootcamp. My instructor, Matt Peters was very knowledgeable, helpful and made sure that anyone who had questions were able to get answers... Read More both during class hours and outside of class hours. I came out of the class with more knowledge, resources, AND peers than I had going in.

I attended CS Prep to help level up ahead of my technical interview for the Full-time immersive course at Codesmith. Honestly, I was quite blown away by how much I managed to learn in those two weeks. Self-teaching JavaScript is a slow process but with... Read More the help of Matt and Greg ( the course leaders), I was able to get my head around some concepts that I was having a hard time committing to permanent memory like Closure and Recursion. For the money, I think it's good value and is really helpful if you were to apply to any boot camp afterwards, not just Codesmith. The only con I can think of is that the hours were quite long but that's primarily because I'm based in the UK and so I had to shift my body clock to attend the course that takes place after work PST and late evening EST.

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... Read More 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.

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.... Read More 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.

Codesmith is the best bootcamp for 1 major reason and then a bunch of others - the biggst thing is the focus on building engineers > technicians. You are actively encouraged NOT to look up code blocks on stack overflow but instead use documentation, pair... Read More programming, and the extensive support network to get the hard learning needed. 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!