Codesmith

I graduated from Codesmith's January cohort and I have to say that they really proved me wrong and I couldn't be happier. After doing research for months and talking to many software engineers, the concept of learning Javascript in 12 weeks and getting a six figure salary shortly thereafter was looking pretty unrealistic.

I decided to set my expectations accordingly and wasn't really expecting much more than an internship or Jr. position out of the program. Ecstatic to report however that I am making exactly what Codesmith promised at a cutting-edge startup in Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, the hiring process is rough, really rough. Not even the Codesmith staff telling you it’s rough will prepare you for how rough it is, however they do a stellar job setting you in the right frame of mind to survive. My advice is to treat every single interview like a practice run, because it's the only way you can handle that level of confrontation and rejection. It took me 8 weeks of aggressive job search and 6 final round rejections before I got my dream offer. 

Why Codesmith is the best in LA

I have to say that the community at Codesmith is unlike anything I've ever experienced. The staff is amazing, but your cohort mates are really what bring the program all together. Being surrounded by a community of people eager to learn and teach as much as they can is contagious and an incredibly effective way of taking a crash course in something. Its also nice that Codesmith is fairly small, because  you get direct access to job support, the CEO, technical leads, and technical mentors 24/7. All you have to do is approach them. This is immensely important and unique to Codesmith. 

Last thing I want to say is that this review is coming from someone who was on the lower half of our cohort's technical aptitude. There were some really smart people in my cohort. Throughout your experience, you will hear success stories of former graduates. I remember thinking that I would never be one of those stories, because I wasn't as quick as everyone else, It took me 3 interviews to even be accepted into the program. Very happy with my experience at Codesmith and consider it to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made :) 

Full Disclosure: I have a (rather old) Electrical Engineering Degree from USC, and have been dabbling in coding for a long time.  Prior to enrolling in Codesmith, I had been teaching myself with free? on-line courses for about a year and a half, with the goal of becoming a software engineer. I used codeacademy, cousera, nodeschool, and freecodecamp, and would highly recommend completing at least the freecodecamp front-end developer certification before applying to Codesmith.

Outcome: I got competing job offers about 6-weeks after graduation and ended up with a position that exceeded my expectations.

Environment

  The energy and environs do a great job of getting one in the mindset of constant collaboration and explosive growth - it's about 75% start-up, with a small side of dorm life, and just a touch of actual boot-camp via the 70+ hour weeks (if you are the type to leave early, that is).  That said, the core team does a pretty consistently amazing job of doing their best to make everyone as comfortable as possible in what is necessarily a sometimes stressful and monotonous (those hours again) environment.

Be prepared to learn as much from your cohort-mates (and learn by teaching them) as you do from the instruction - not because the instruction is lacking in material, but because there is so much to be absorbed that you will find yourself creating your own mental models and comparing them to your peers on subjects that were covered in lecture, but you couldn't grok at the time.  This accelerated lecture-and-self-study format is very well-managed, which brings us to…

Pedagogy

  The cirriculum is thoughtfully-designed, very well-executed, and constantly being iterated upon - and while the latter may lead to some speed-bumps in implementation (which a decent dev should be able to handle without missing a beat, anyway), the trade-off is familiarity with the absolute latest and greatest - or at least most-hyped and in-demand for hiring - javascript libraries, frameworks, and buildtools to make yourself useful in just about any modern stack.

  As the main instructor, Dan is an amazing fusion of industry vet and natural-born teacher, easily on par with any CS professor I had at USC.  Even if you are already a Javascript developer, Dan will end up teaching you some new concepts, and he'll do a darn good job of making sure you get them.

  In addition to the actual technical curriculum, the entire experience is impeccably crafted to provide the right nudges at the proper moments to catapult a particular kind of individual to heights they never thought possible.  The admissions process also seem to do an impressive job of screening for the 'right' kind of person that will benefit from the program in their admissions process, which is important, because your success will depend on the success of your cohort-mates.

Community

  This is hands-down Codesmith's greatest asset.  Many of the alumni still come to visit and participate, and they are all now capable, empathetic engineers who provide a great example and relate-able stories to new devs.  The culture fostered by them, the fellows and LTMs, and the core team is one of unquestioned mutual support and desire to succeed - I honestly felt that everyone there believed in me and wanted to see me achieve my goals.

  The real heroes at Codesmith are the core operations team for their ownership of the program and complete dedication to each and every member of every cohort.  If just about anything is wrong, Victoria can and will make it right.

  The star of the show, finally, is Will, who performs countless acts of voodoo to make the whole thing happen.  These include a genuine, contagious belief in the mission which gives him the power to inspire almost on cue, a demonstrably super-human name recall ability, and a charmingly British fondness for giving memorable toasts when they are needed.  If he is offering you kool-aid, drink it. Every time.

Codesmith is a great place to advance your coding skills to the level of a mid/senior level developer. The staff does an excellent job of pushing students' problem solving skills while making sure you are kept abreast to the latest web technologies. The community built around the institution is really fantastic. There is no shortage of former students/mentors that you can go to with real world questions and insight into life as a coder; and it seems like the CEO still knows every student's name thats ever attended the program. I think one of Codesmith's major differentiators is the quality of their hiring program. They will not stop working with you until you are hired, it doesn't matter how many days/weeks/months ago your class ended. When you get accepted into Codesmith it's not just for 3 months, it's for a lifetime. The network of excellent, smart, driven people that you become a part of will no doubt be vital to you for years to come. As an alumni, you can always go to Codesmith to work on a project, get so advice from one of the staff, or just talk with other devs. 

If you are serious about advancing your programming skills to a professional level, I definitely recommend taking a look at Codesmith.

Summary

• Moved from NY to LA to attend Codesmith
• Worked 5 years prior at home automation tech company as a software engineer
• Graduated as part of May '16 Cohort 7 class
• Accepted six figure salary job offer as frontend developer within 2 weeks of graduating Codesmith

Excellent Community & Culture

I think the two things that made my experience so great with Codesmith was the community and culture thriving there.  From the very beginning, we were taught that our experience for the next 3 months wasn't going to be dictated simply by what we each of us could individually accomplish and learn.  No, our experience was going to be heavily inspired by what we could accomplish and build together as a cohort.  Codesmith did an outstanding job making sure that we were always thinking about how to "level up" each other via many different approaches such as pair programming to work on solving problems with a partner or simply creating a space where people could freely exchange ideas and dialogue with one another without fear of judgement.

Great Learning Environment

The academic knowledge that Codesmith teaches to get you up to speed with current technologies and more importantly their emphasis on honing your ability to think like an engineer, I think, are also what makes Codesmith a great program to quickly develop yourself into a great software engineer.  The pace of learning is fast, but they also ensure that you succeed in the program.  You'll become familiarized and well-equipped with the technologies and skills necessary to succeed as a developer today.

Exceptional Job Search & Hiring Support

Hiring Day was an exciting experience and a great way to conclude the program.  There were many top tech companies present there including the company which I eventually joined.  Codesmith was extremely supportive in this process by helping us prepare well in advance.  And to top that off, Codesmith also provided post graduation support, doing regular weekly checkups of how we are doing in our job search process and providing helpful advice to guide us towards the job we're looking for.

Codesmith certainly exceeded my expectations of how much I could get out of such a short condensed program.  I'm really happy to have been a part of it and to have had the fortune of meeting some really bright, like-minded, compassionate people, both the staff and cohortmates alike.  If I had to do it all over again, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.  

I have loved my experience as a Codesmith student because I feel it is a truly self-aware program that really delivers on its pledges. If you read the description above, it says "We prepare our graduates for roles at the leading tech companies in the country. Codesmith's program goes above and beyond a regular coding bootcamp."  This is exactly how Codesmith functions. The program does so much more than provide a great curriculum exposing you to the entire JavaScript ecosystem and its most popular frameworks. It:
1.  pushes you to expect more out of yourself and your classmates than you probably thought previously possible or were used to in previous walks of life (students regularly work until midnight)
2. thoroughly exposes you to the mindset of a true problem-solving software engineer
3. puts you through an exhaustive hiring program full of whiteboarding sessions, mock interviews, multiple resume iterations, and Github and social media profile preparation (THEY WANT TO GET YOU HIRED), all throughout the second half of the program so that you have all the tools you need the minute you graduate. All of that is in addition to dedicated post-graduation hiring support featuring regular check-ins, follow-up lectures and on-site discussions. Though Codesmith boasts great hiring numbers, a student does occasionally struggle to get a job. I can say with certainty that this is not for lack of trying by the CS staff. In the rare case that a graduate hasn’t found employment, they are still strategizing with that person to get him/her hired months out of the program.
To be clear, this is not a program that places you into a job. They do open their expansive network to students, which includes a hiring day event at the end of the program that regularly leads to a handful of phone screens and on-sites, but the rest is up to you. They give you all the tools to succeed, and then some. You have to have the confidence, the drive and the ability to translate everything you learn over those 3 months into the career you want.

Nothing in life is guaranteed.

Codesmith is no different and they can't guarantee you a job, but they give you the best opportunity in trying to get one. They can only show you the door and show you opportunites, but it is up to you to take those opportunites, if you don't, then you miss your chance. If you think Codesmith is a program that will hold your hand the whole way, then stop now and dont apply to Codesmith. This program is only for the ones who really want to be great software engineers and make a difference in the community and to push themselves and others to be the best they can be. I will not sugar coat it, this program is tough and very intense, but what you get out of it are skills and techniques that are priceless. Having the ability to code, gives you the freedom to now take ideas and bring them to life with just your mind and a laptop (not many other skills you learn today can have that sort of benefit).

Codesmith isnt just teaching their students how to code for three months and get a job. They are trying to teach you a lifestyle of how to learn and keep learning. Since languages will always be changing and new technology will be discovered, software engineers have to learn to adapt and Codesmith helps you do just that. If you are applying to Codesmith here are some expectations that you need to keep in mind.

 The Codesmith program is 3 months and budget in another 1- 3 months for looking for a job. Just because you finish the program DOES NOT mean you are finished. You have really only just begun! The job search starts once the program is done and it ends up being even more time intensive than the course because of all the jobs that Codesmith encourages you to apply to weekly. This work is all for your benefit though because the main reason most people will be doing the program is to get a software engineering job at the end. So, DO NOT take a vacation after the program, wait until you have SIGNED your offer! Like I said earlier, Codesmith can't guarantee you a job, you have to put in the work like everyone else to get a job. However, you havea benefit over the competition who didn't do Codesmith, the training and coaching for coding interviews and whiteboarding that Codsemith offers on top of many other things you will have learned once you have finished the program! I felt so prepared and confident going into interviews even though I had never had a software engineering job or even job experience in software until I started the program. On top of all the hours of practice interviews and whiteboarding sessions, Codesmith also has a Hiring Day event where 20-30 companies come and watch you showcase your final projects and go through lightning interviews with you. Some students even get onsite interviews from many of these companies! Just because you do get this event DOES NOT mean you stop applying for jobs outside of the hiring partners that come to the event. This is where many people might feel discouraged if they don't get an interview with one of the hiring partners but you CAN NOT give up! You have to keep pushing through and all of your classmates are supporting you and using their networks to help everyone get jobs. Everyone in my cohort was supportive and reached out to anyone they knew who were hiring software engineers. Codesmith creates THIS community and thats what sets it apart from many of the other bootcamps. 

Codesmith is a program like nothing else I have ever experienced. Being surrounded by other students who wanted to learn how to code just as badly as I did, really pushed all of us to strive for success. Codesmith gives you the best learning environment and their curriculum is only getting better due to their iterative process from cohort to cohort. If you are willing to put everything you have into this program, then Codesmith is the right place for you and your life will forever be changed. 

I wanted to add more detail to my initial review.

My time as a student was stressful, but rewarding. I was constantly trying to cram info into my brain at a rapid pace, and sometimes it was overwhelming, but I had some really solid people around me to help me through it. They would constantly take me on food dates, which really helped to relieve the pressure.

Circles were also helpful. Circles are where you talk about how you're feeling with other students and a member of staff, and they help you get through whatever troubles you're having. I wish they had it more as a student, because it was always nice to vent, but I still appreciate having it at all.

Aside from the emotional stress, I loved my time here. The bonfires, the relay races, the people... I miss it all. Codesmith has really outdone itself by consistently bringing in beautiful people who are not only smart, but empathetic. 

Life at Codesmith was tough, but because of that, I'll never forget it.

Wow. Just... wow. This program was something else. Before I came here I remember I was lacking confidence in my ability to bring something to life with code, as well as a sense of belonging. Now, flip both upside-down. I feel like I could code anything. I can design API's, websites, databases - everything. And if I can't right now, Codesmith trained me to figure it out. To put my head down and solve the problem. This skill is so difficult to teach, but Codesmith figured out how to do it. Don't forget about the sense of belonging, though. That piece is crucial, too.

The people I've met at Codesmith are all insanely brilliant. Not only that, but they're also extremely humble, and just good people. They'll stay up for hours with you late into the night to help you figure out that problem you just can't wrap your head around. They're family to me in all honesty.

Overall, Codesmith has given me a family I know I can always count on, and additionally, it made me hireable. That's exactly what they promise, and they kept it. 

I graduated September 20, 2016 and was hired exactly one month later, on October 19. I make almost twice now what I made managing accounts at a PR/advertising firm and am immensely satisfied with where my career is and with my decision to attend Codesmith. Without the program I would never have been able to make it to where I am, hence the five star review.

That said, there are a few things I wish I had known going in. These points are meant to be helpful to potential students and are a reflection of my own experience.

• Although the program lasts for three months, the time commitment that they tell you to prepare for is actually six months total -- three months of program plus three months post-graduation to find a job. So budget that in.

• Throughout the course, I never felt 100% prepared or felt like I was able to complete any of the coursework to a level that totally satisfied me. The pace was incredibly fast and there was never enough time to learn everything thoroughly or in-depth enough to make me feel relieved, like ‘oh I got this’. I think the program could be more effective if it was longer.

• When you come out, there is a huge gap in tech experience between the mid-level jobs you are going for and the years of experience you have. How to efficiently and effectively bridge this gap was never adequately answered, in my opinion, and depended a lot on the individual. In my case, I was able to get a mid-level salary due to the fact that the job I got specifically required agency experience, which I already had. That said, the Codesmith staff is super supportive and will be by your side through the entire process. Also, I know other graduates for whom this particular issue wasn’t a problem for them.

Those things aside, the program does work and I am immensely pleased to have gone through it. Like other reviews here, I’ll iterate that it’s not easy and that no one hands you a job once you graduate; the onus is really on the individual to maximize the tools they are given. But the staff is really supportive and they do a phenomenal job at proactively fostering and maintaining a positive and community-oriented learning environment. As one of three female students in a class of 17 I was a little apprehensive of a ‘bro-grammer’ culture but from day one Codesmith made it clear that there was a zero-tolerance policy for anything outside of a supportive and respectful atmosphere. I would absolutely recommend Codesmith, especially to other women. We need more females in tech!

I had always loved the problem solving and engineering creativity and freedom afforded by software, and it's hard to know what it truly takes to get it to the next, professional level. It is somewhat of a leap of faith to drop everything and go all in on learning a new skill. But if coding is something you truly enjoy, Codesmith provides an excellent environment for massively accelerating that process. That is for many reasons, and I believe the most important are the people involved there. The staff is truly dedicated to getting everyone to the next level, and just as importantly, you will learn and be pushed by the students you are learning with. This is hugely important, and I believe they do an excellent job of finding highly intelligent students who really want to learn.

With that being said, they cannot do everything for you. You must show up ready to go and ready to push yourself as hard as you ever have. Learning new skills takes time, dedication, and tons of practice along with the perserverance to keep pushing past inevitable hurdles and barriers. This will really never stop, and if you think it will, software might not be the right field for you. But if you bring that energy, you will be shocked at the things you can do. Codesmith provides an excellent engineering environment. If you love coding, building, learning, and people, I can't imagine a much better place for accelerating your personal devlelopment. I think the other reviews have accurately portrayed the day-to-day life there.

I graduated and am now working at a Bay Area company that I got into contact with through the Codesmith hiring partners. I love it there and am continuing to push myself very hard to grow as an engineer. I had multiple hiring offers in SoCal and NorCal within a few weeks of graduating and am excited about the talented, compassionate network of folks I've met in the program. 

Codesmith is the real deal. It's very challenging and rigorous but you get out of it everything you put in, and more. My cohort had 13 graduates and we all were super motivated and dedicated to learning as much as we possibly could over the 3 months. Teamwork and personal drive are crucial to succeeding in this program. I not only made Codesmith my number one life priority, I made it my only priority and I now have an awesome job that I love. 

The most valuable skills you learn at Codesmith are how to attack problems and efficiently search for answers. They do an amazing job of prepping students for interviews so you feel ready and prepared to hit the ground running after graduation. Their hiring day is also unlike any other bootcamp’s. They introduce students to some of the top companies and startups in the area, and many of these intros quickly turn into on-sites. 

My only advice prior to attending Codesmith is to do your homework and make sure you’re truly passionate about coding because learning at such an accelerated pace is no easy feat. If you put in the work and are excited by the idea of learning with and from your peers, you will leave Codesmith with invaluable skills and the job of your dreams.  

A bit of background about me. I graduated from UCLA with an Applied Mathematics B.S degree in December 2015, had a total of 2 C++ classes and that was the extent of my software engineering experience . I found Codesmith through a friend and visited JS The Hard Parts on a few Thursdays. I immediately felt the energy that people there had, I am not sure if this is just the software engineering culture but Codesmith just had that vibe that everyone wanted to be there. I now have my first job out of college as a software engineer. I graduated from Codesmith (August 2016) and I got hired two weeks after hiring day by one of the hiring day partners. 

Before I go on about my experience at Codesmith I would like to add an exception. That is, this program is only for certain people and those people are the ones who are 110% dedicated to learning, growing, and giving it their all. This is not some ‘chill’ bootcamp where you can just hangout and mess around and then expect to get a job, if you put in the effort the results will come. Now saying that, I put my life on hold for 4 months (two weeks before and after the program) and dedicated more than 80 hours some weeks to my learning and my projects. You don’t need to do that but you do need to be motivated and completely bought in to what they are teaching you because if you don’t, you won’t get all that they have to offer.

Daily Life

Make sure to eat a decent breakfast before you get there because once you are there the hack hours starts after the 5 minute stand up at 9am. You don’t want to skip out on any of the hack hours. I was one of few that would bring their own lunch and dinner. I used my Sundays to get laundry done, make lunch and dinner for the week, and then relax a little bit. I would make sure to have some type of caffeine right before the lectures as most of the times your lectures could fall right after lunch, aka food coma. Besides that, I had a good flow and think everyone should be able to manage their time with only the one day off, like I said before you just have to be completely focused.

Academics

As a recent UCLA grad I learned from my math professors who were the genius people wanted for their research and were not the best teachers. This is not how codesmith is. The lead instructor was a very good teacher and he is also brilliant. Make sure to utilize him and any other people there, they literally are there for you so make sure to annoy them with as many questions as possible.

Competition

Also my experience from my math classes was that everything was based on a ranking and if you did better than your classmates you received a higher grade. The one thing that was so different and amazing was that there was still the competitive nature at codesmith, you always wanted to show the best projects or get as far as you could on all of the modules. But never was there a time where anyone wished a classmate wouldn’t do as well as them, but everyone was held accountable and we all pushed each other. This was by far one the the best aspects of Codesmith.

Community

If you don’t know already, Codesmith hosts JS The Hard Parts on Thursdays and they are also becoming one of the biggest meet ups in LA for React and Node. There is great opportunity to meet a whole slew of different people with different experiences and endless amounts of networking. Definitely take advantage of this but do not make this your priority while in the program because you should be focusing on learning and retaining everything. 

Job Prep

I can honestly say I would not have been able to get any decent job without Codesmith’s help with my job prep. The mock interviews and resume building were the best help I have ever received in terms of job prep. The job search process is just that, a process, and they did an incredible job prepping me for that process. As long as you’re a hard working, compassionate, empathic, and personable person, you won’t have a hard time getting a job even if your experience is low, i.e. I have never had a real job before, and now I am a software engineer making 6 figures. Incredible to be able to say that and I owe it all to Codesmith.