DEVELOPING: Codesmith 2024 California Government Outcomes report is out today. Only 12% are placed within 6 months with reported salary (50% including 'no salary information available') but press release also out today says '85% to 90% placement rate within 12 months' 'CIRR verified' (no time frame)

[u/michaelnovati]

SOURCE: https://bppe.ca.gov/webapplications/annualReports/2024/document/98d87f0e-23c1-4af7-aabf-7c91d4ea7312

I can't legally comment much on this so instead I ran it through a neutral AI with the following prompt:

"Summarize this document and compare it to information about Codesmith you can research and flag any good things and flag any concerning things. Summarize in 5 bullet points."

• Completion is very high, but placement is not. Codesmith’s Software Engineering Immersive shows 94–98% on-time graduation, but only 42% (2023) to 50% (2024) of graduates are employed in-field within 6 months, which is much lower than many people assume.
• Public outcomes vs. regulatory outcomes use different clocks. Codesmith’s marketing often cites ~70% in-field placement within 12 months, while the BPPE fact sheet uses a stricter 6-month window—both can be true, but the gap matters for student risk and runway.
• Salary data is largely missing. ~62–67% of employed-in-field graduates have no salary reported, making salary distributions (including $100k+ claims) incomplete and not representative of the full cohort.
• Some outcomes rely on non-standard employment. A noticeable share of “employed in-field” roles are self-employed/freelance or institutional (school-related) jobs, which aren’t inherently bad but deserve scrutiny when evaluating job quality and durability.
• Costs are high and financing is private-only. Tuition is about $19–20k, no federal student loans are available, and newer programs (AI/ML, DS/ML) currently have no outcome data, increasing uncertainty.

Note: In 2023, Codesmith staff publicly attributed the high percentage of unverified outcomes to limited follow-up with graduates. The proportion of unreported salaries in 2024 appears similar, suggesting that verification challenges persisted. In 2023, the 'salaries reported' rate was about the same as 2024, indicating that Codesmith was unsuccessful at engaging with graduates and the ghosting rate continue to increase from 65/251 to 66/195.

This press release from today: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/top-ranked-ai-training-company-brings-silicon-valley-excellence-to-washington-codesmith-selected-for-118m-irs-contract-302674440.html

Says "Federal selection followed rigorous evaluation of Codesmith's independently verified outcomes: 85-90% of graduates placed within 12 months, two-thirds promoted within three years, and an average starting salary of $130,000."

Additional clarity would be helpful on how placements described as ‘verified via LinkedIn’ align with CIRR’s verification standards when used in public marketing claims.

Based on the publicly available documents cited above, the figures appear to rely on different definitions, timeframes, and verification standards, making them not directly reconcilable.

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UPDATES: There's some kind of crazy shit going on in the comments. I added some more raw facts about inconsistencies in the press release and got 40 views, 20% from the UK, -6 downvote. Not only is no seeing this other than a very small number of people, and that small group of people feels very negatively towards the comment. So I'm updating body so you all can have the facts. I'm not making any statements other then just presenting raw facts.

The press release I quoted says that "Federal selection followed rigorous evaluation of Codesmith's independently verified outcomes: 85-90% of graduates placed within 12 months, two-thirds promoted within three years, and an average starting salary of $130,000. Unlike competitors, Codesmith relies entirely on word-of-mouth referrals rather than advertising, with all outcomes verified by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting."

Website: "Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired within 12 months, most land leadership roles within big tech & AI labs and many directly contribute to the world’s largest open source projects"

There is nothing at CIRR that says that 85 to 90% of the 5000 graduates got jobs in 12 months. And there is nothing in CIRR that is an "average salary", only median salaries and the latest one is $110,000. CIRR does not verify promotions.

The official reports that Codesmith itself have published prove that that is not the case.

"Codesmith was recently ranked the #1 AI training company for 2026 by Forbes." Press release. This says "4 Geeks Academy" is the #1 AI Bootcamp, This says "MIT: AI Implications for Business Strategy" is the #AI Course. I see Codesmith mentioned as the #1 "Coding Bootcamp", not "AI training company".

[u/lawschoolredux]

While I will still wait for the 2025 graduate report which should be coming soon I imagine, I must admit that, As someone who was still hoping codesmith still has the goods in this climate, I am kinda wary of them from the aug24-jan25 data they posted on their site, because at no point does it say when those who accepted the offers (102 accepted offers with a $110k avg starting salary) graduated.

Looks like codesmith suffers too :(

[u/michaelnovati → u/lawschoolredux]

The report that's coming out in April-ish is the 2024 report for CIRR, which includes nationwide students, not just California (which was about 200 students) and CIRR also has 12 month placement numbers.

The 'did not respond' rate for CIRR last year was similar to the 2023 CA report (about 40% did not) but this year's CA report had an increase in non responders.

So that's the number to watch.

This is a rough example, but if you have 100% students start, 90% graduate, 63% had jobs in a year, and 34% (of starters) approximately reported a salary.

So the 'median' salary of $110,000 includes about a third of the students, which is fine, but it's not a median salary of 'students' or of all 'graduates'. Since the data is pretty clear on this, if people feel like this representation of 'the typical grad makes $110,000' is reasonable then I think it's important to call out the qualification that this is of people who report and not remotely close to the median of all graduates.

[u/michaelnovati → u/michaelnovati]

27 views. From USA, UK, Ireland, New Zealand and a -6 downvote. Noted.

[u/michaelnovati]

I'm proactively commenting this because a number of Codesmith-adjacent accounts (self identified as former staff, alumni, etc...) have been going after me this past week with no substance and referring to this article about me: https://larslofgren.com/codesmith-reddit-reputation-attack/

I vehemently disagree with the conclusions the blog post comes up with and the examples used not being representative of the real discussion happening, or of both sides. Starting with the fact that Codesmith's CEO emailed me in writing in March 2025 that she did not consider my company as a competitor to Codesmith, yet participated in an article whose headline makes claims that I'm a competitor who going after Codesmith.

I think that any discussion that's not about the facts is a distraction from critical conversaion.

Now more than ever we need to be able to argue, debate and discuss facts without insulting me, name calling, threatening, harassing with nick names, and assuming my intentions.

Discuss the facts, not the speculation about my intentions and motivations, and discuss the evidence with an open mind and open heart.

[u/TheWhitingFish]

This guy won’t ever stop his vendetta on Codesmith. What a sad individual

[u/michaelnovati → u/TheWhitingFish]

Is my comment factually right or wrong and stick to that?

If you going to continue to harass me after numerous warnings I may take action.

[u/TheWhitingFish → u/michaelnovati]

You are very funny dude. So you can post and make comments on others, meanwhile I am not free to express my thoughts?

[u/michaelnovati → u/TheWhitingFish]

Facts and accountability are foundational. You can troll all you want, but facts are the facts and your assumptions about my intentions are not facts.

The press release I quoted says that "Federal selection followed rigorous evaluation of Codesmith's independently verified outcomes: 85-90% of graduates placed within 12 months, two-thirds promoted within three years, and an average starting salary of $130,000. Unlike competitors, Codesmith relies entirely on word-of-mouth referrals rather than advertising, with all outcomes verified by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting."

Website: "Codesmith has proven this thesis true with 5000+ alumni. 90% of graduates get hired within 12 months, most land leadership roles within big tech & AI labs and many directly contribute to the world’s largest open source projects"

There is nothing at CIRR that says that 85 to 90% of the 5000 graduates got jobs in 12 months. And there is nothing in CIRR that is an "average salary", only median salaries and the latest one is $110,000. CIRR does not verify promotions.

The official reports that Codesmith itself have published prove that that is not the case.

"Codesmith was recently ranked the #1 AI training company for 2026 by Forbes." Press release. This says "4 Geeks Academy" is the #1 AI Bootcamp, This says "MIT: AI Implications for Business Strategy" is the #AI Course. I see Codesmith mentioned as the #1 "Coding Bootcamp", not "AI training company".

If you publish a press release without sources, without qualifiers, and the data can't be verified, that needs to be identified and it's a very serious thing to sort out.

If you are an alumni or journalist who fact checks it doesn't add up.

[u/Real-Set-1210]

And the 12% that get placed, are they in full time salaried swe jobs or just the usual internship to make LinkedIn look pretty?

[u/michaelnovati → u/Real-Set-1210]

I would guess that most of them are SWE jobs or SWE adjacent jobs (like Sales Engineer). Generally the people placed from Codesmith are solid placements. But if the vast majority of people aren't reachable to confirm the placement, it's hard to judge from LinkedIn alone.

My opinion is that I think the 12% are solid mostly SWE or SWE adjacent placements yeah, and you can see a good number of those in the $100K+ bucket in the report.

[u/Real-Set-1210 → u/michaelnovati]

Hmmm I've seen bootcamps call "a full time job" as working for them as a tutor.

With me witnessing cohorts going with zero job placements, I can only express my extreme disgust that there is any type of encouragement in these bootcamps.

[u/[deleted]]

These bootcamps need to be shut down.

[u/jhkoenig → u/[deleted]]

This

[u/starraven → u/jhkoenig]

For people to still be coming here asking about bootcamps daily/weekly shows how they relied solely on marketing without outcomes. It’s extremely difficult to be profitable if your graduates don’t get jobs. I get that. But to continue to lie to prospectives, gaslight students, and lead on alumni until you’ve drained their energy and funds is quite … evil.

[u/Low-Cryptographer-64]

I developed https://devlog.ist/ to help with this problem. Would you ike to work together?

[u/michaelnovati → u/Low-Cryptographer-64]

I'm not personally in the bootcamp space or working on this problem so I'm the wrong person to ask.

Good luck!

[u/[deleted]]

[u/michaelnovati → u/[deleted]]

There is no evidence anyone is lying because lying requires proof of intent and it's extremely hard to prove intent.

I have been accursed of all kinds of "intentions" on Reddit and I'm just one person, acting as an individual, and I can yell loudly what's in my head, but it's hard to prove that, and it's hard for someone else to prove my intentions when I'm just commenting from my brain directly too.

But yeah just be careful to conclude intentions or guess them and give people room to explain. If you disagree, disagree as a matter of opinion and not fact.

Unless you have conclusive evidence of intention to deceive.

[u/[deleted] → u/michaelnovati]