Codesmith

I would like to start by saying as recent graduate who received a very decent job I am extremely grateful for what I gained at Codesmith.  Is the program flawless? Not really, but I’m sure it would be hard to find one that is.

In my experience good reviews give background and tend to layout the pros and cons, so I will do so accordingly here.

My background: I consider myself a career changer who came from a liberal arts background but have always been interested in tech and the idea of creating my own apps. Prior to entering Codesmith I did go back to school for an undergrad CS Degree. I felt like there were certain gaps in my knowledge I wanted to fill and so I decided to go through the program.  Despite all that I will say that almost everything I learned at Codesmith was new and I didn’t feel like I had any particular advantage over the cohort mates who did not have a CS background.  The more you can think like an engineer and problem solve, the more successful you will be.

Now that we got that out of the way let me lay down the pros and cons for you.

PROS:

Codesmith helps you get a good job.  I know there are some mixed opinions on the data offered up but from what I’ve seen almost everyone gets a good job within 4 months.  While I was skeptical at first, the salary numbers offered up by Codesmith are not a lie. Frankly speaking if I got nothing else from Codesmith, I learned what I was worth and what I could achieve. Could I have done this without Codesmith? Maybe, but it would have been extremely hard without the guidance and advice offered.

Codesmith teaches you the essentials of the latest ”hot” technologies.  I can’t tell you how many doors were open because I focused on studying the technologies in Codesmith’s curriculum. Even with the CS degree, without having gone through Codesmith, I don’t believe I would have been able to get the job I have now, nor most of my interviews where knowledge of the latest frameworks and tech is key.

The struggle at Codesmith really does prepare you for the job and the job search.  Point is, in this field you need to be able to learn on your own and solve problems without being hand held.  Codesmith helped prepare me for this.

You make lifelong friends. I know I know..  this may not be limited to Codesmith only, but I had to list it anyway as it’s true. You will make good friends as long as you are willing to.

CONS:

Not the best curriculum. Many lessons do leave you wanting more or still confused. Codesmith claims this is because they want to give you the bare minimum (skeleton ) so you can put the rest together on your own.  While this may have it’s advantages, I do honestly believe there is room for improvement.  The topics are right, but the content and instruction is lacking.  Don’t expect a step by step how to anywhere here, but as I said before this prepares you for the real world.

Not for everyone.   I think Codesmith does a pretty good job of accepting people who have the potential to succeed, but don’t expect Codesmith to make you a software engineer. You have to struggle to do that on your own and it could take longer for some than others.

IN ESSENCE:    I am grateful for what I gained from Codesmith and do not regret attending.  Its not the flawless program many people may sell it to be, but I still believe it offers something unique and continue to recommend it to those I think can succeed there.  Take advantage of the guidance offered by the program but don’t ever think that the struggle ends when you graduate.  Getting that job is hard and will require continued work and study after.

The instruction was very good and I became close with some of my cohort-mates. Ryan is a supremely knowledgeable teacher and an incredibly nice guy. The course helped me to fill gaps in my knowledge as well as build up more confidence before doing a technical interview for Codesmith.   

Since the lectures move quickly and the concepts require time to digest, I would HIGHLY suggest becoming familiar with ALL of CSX--the online pre-course material--before attending. If not, you may feel behind in the pair programming sessions and not get the most benefit from the course.  

Codesmith is an amazing opportunity to strengthen your skills if you have a background in programming or learn the right way of doing things if you have no experience.The curricullum is challenging and compact and every topic we touched is at the cutting edge of technology as we know it, but it is design this way so you can challenge yourself. 

Codesmith is not meant to spoon feed you the what,how,when and where of programming, Codesmith teaches you how to learn things on your own so that even if you are no longer at codesmith, you have the confidence that you can tackle any bug any block and any new technology.

These three months at codesmith really grows you as a person. The staff are the hardest working people I have ever met and they set a great example of not only what it takes to be a great developer, but also what it means to take control of your own destiny and make something out of yourself. It has been an absolute honor learning and having the opportunity to grow by pushing myself everyday and having people around me that  are also doing the same. 

Codesmith is no joke. It was such a challenging exprience for me. You will spend every single day, night and day for the next 12 weeks learning new material, doing challenges and debugging, all the while drinking endless cups of coffee. You probably spend 10-12 hours in Codesmith make sure you are ready for this hard work before you enroll. About the curriculum you will learn Full-Stack (Data Structure and Algorithm,React,Redux,Express,Node,SQL,NoSQL) in your first 4 weeks then rest is all about the project No more lectures, You work on your full stack project all day, helping each other out. Everone in codesmith is so smart and I'm thankful they are all trying and willing to help each others. If you do not have technical background make sure you study before you get into. Because curriculum so fast you wont have enought time to learn all in that short period of time.

I am a self-taught web developer who recently graduated with a BS in Computer Science. I didn't do any internships during my time at university and had trouble passing interviews for junior developer jobs. I needed something to fill in the gap between being a fresh graduate and having some industry experience and Codesmith was it.

I attended the JavaScript the Hard Parts meetup a number of times before considering the program. I was impressed with the level of depth of the content and noticed my own skills and technical vocabulary improving quickly after just a few meetups. I truly felt that this was a next level program and not just something to get you from zero to "Hello world!".

The program itself is very intensive and one of the hardest things I've ever done and I would do it all over again. My skills as an engineer and my technical communication improved by leaps and bounds over the course of the program and I now feel confident in tackling any complex or new engineering problem. It taught me how to teach myself, effectively communicate, and reason about difficult problems.

I never thought I'd be the type of person giving tech talks in front of large groups of people or being relaxed and confident when whiteboarding difficult algorithms on a whiteboard, but Codesmith gave me the tools, practice, and confidence to do so. 

One of the most valuable parts of the program is the hiring prep and support. I have since taken a job as a Senior Front-End Developer and couldn't have done it without Codesmith.
 

You can find any coding school or bootcamp that teaches JavaScript, React, or whatever trending technologies. However, it is really difficult to find a community where every student and team member is positive, energetic, and respecting one another.

Students at Codesmith spend over 12 hours a day; from 9am, most students stay until 10 or 11pm at night. Even though they are mentally exhausted and physically tired, students still help other students who are having difficult time understanding the technology they learned that day.

Some students decide to stay at Codesmith as "fellows" after graduating. Fellows stay untill late night to help junior students and support students to become successful software engineers.

Many alumni often come back to Codesmith. On Alumni Night, alumni give a talk about their current work and their story after Codesmith like how they struggled until getting a job. They also give mock interviews to senior students so that students can have more confidence when they face real interviews.

Engineers at Codesmith provide great lectures. They don't teach how to create React application from bottom to top, but rather they make students learn the hard way so that students can store the knowledge in long-term memory. Students will be exposed to new technologies and learn how to utilize them by finding answers by themselves or working with other students. By pair programming with other students, they not only learn how to work with other programmers, but also how to technically communicate.

What is great about Codesmith is students will learn how to become a better person as well. Students take a short survey prior to a lecture about implicit bias; they learn how not to discriminate other students or future coworkers by their race, national origin, gender, or age. Eric, who is an advisor for students, teaches interpersonal skills that are important for interviews. Last but not least, lectures from Will, CEO of Codesmith, are crucial and really helpful for those who do not know how to get a job in tech industry.

The amount of knowledge that I have gained through this experience is unreal.  I can confidently say no other place will push you the way Codesmith does.  They don't just teach you material, they introduce you to topics and guide you in a way that forces you to learn the right way.  The only piece more enjoyable than how much I have learned is the community of people that I have met - insanely kind, welcoming, hard-working and unique.  I never knew a place like this existed but I am beyond fortunate that does.

After Codesmith, I increased my starting salary by 25% and I landed my dream job; Here's how I did it.

First, I think Codesmith is a unique opportunity that, if you can get in, will give you the leverage and skills that you can use to dramatically increase your starting salary and land your dream job. With that being said, there is no hand holding, although you can ask engineering fellows to assist you if you hit a block. To get the most out of the experience, you have to put in the time to work on your coding skills and focus on translating their lessons into real-world, working web applications. It's a challenge but hey, if it was easy, then it probably wouldn't be worth your while.

Before Codesmith, I had a grasp of some web technologies but lacked the computer science backbone and interviewing skills necessary to land a mid to senior level role. Codesmith helped me round out my skills and taught me all of the major modern technologies that companies ask for on their job listings. I learned through building challenging yet interesting projects and technologies that employers would *actually* be impressed by. To do this, the Codesmith staff pushes you to do more than you thought was possible and by the end of the course, you are in awe of how much you accomplished.

As you approach graduation, you really start to experience the true value of the Codesmith program by seeing the culmination of everything you have learned combined with the invaluable knowledge that the Codesmith team provides you in preparation for your job search. Resume reviews and practice phone screens prepare you for the real world and by the time you receive your final offer, you will feel like a professional interviewer. At least that’s how I felt. I trusted their process and, a few months after graduating, I received an offer from my top choice company.  

I was extremely excited when I received my official offer because it was in my range around the average for mid level engineers in NYC (currently $117,195 on Glassdoor) and it was with a company that I felt was a fantastic fit for me.

I certainly wouldn't have been able to accomplish this without Codesmith. I highly recommend it if you are looking to level up as a software engineer and dominate the job search to find the perfect job for you.

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.

Everything you've probably read about Codesmith is true. Its a tough worthwhile grind where you'll be thinking about code every waking/sleeping moment, (albeit maybe not while you're playing ping pong)

This program is definitely not for the faint of heart, but those that are looking to be stretched in what they know technically and then more. It's very much get out what you put in. There will be lows, where you'll be challenged to problem solve and debug with your pair programming partner, exuberant highs where you'll feel the happiness that comes with understand a complicated topic, and everything in-between. Its in my firm belief that there is no other program that competes with Codesmith and I would make the same decision again in a heartbeat.