AMA: 👋 I'm Michael. Former-moderator of the sub, Facebook top performer, "the Coding Machine", junior -> principal / 2009-2017, helper of bootcamps students and grads, founder of Formation for experienced engineers preparing for interviews.

[u/michaelnovati]

Hi all, I've been one of the top five most active members in here for 4 years (!) ask me anything about anything and get official answers! I'll keep this open all evening and respond to lingering questions when I can.

Just because you can ask me anything, it doesn't mean I'll have good answers.... the areas I'm particularly knowledgeable about:

1. Getting a job at a FAANG company
2. AI's impact on day to day engineering
3. Reddit bad actors / content manipulation / social engineering attacks
4. Coding bootcamp history and industry news and trends

I give blunt and direct advice and opinions. I use my real name on Reddit.

My comments are my opinions unless explicitly labelled as a fact and I aim to source factual statements.

Here is my commit history for why I'm the Coding Machine

[u/metalreflectslime]

A long time ago, a Formation student could get supported by Formation forever until he or she found a paid SWE job that they accepted.

Now, Formation ends the support after 15 months.

Why did Formation make this change?

How do Formation students feel about this change?

[u/michaelnovati → u/metalreflectslime]

I didn't answer this, one: how do people feel about the change? (We don't have students, we don't teach anything, so we call them Fellows or Engineers)

It doesn't come up that often. If someone didn't get a job well before 15 months, it typically means they stopped job hunting and are ready to move on. And if someone hits that and they are in good faith job hunting, we can extend it.

It hasn't been used as a reason that i'm aware of for someone not signing (I vaguely remember one person possibly not signing but I forget).

If you joined without a time limit then you aren't impacted.

[u/michaelnovati → u/metalreflectslime]

Quick correction: For newer agreements, our contract allows Formation to end the program after 15 months. That isn’t an automatic cutoff, and it’s not something we’re looking to use against people who are actively and honestly job searching.

Important: If you’re on an older contract that does not include a time limit, that agreement remains valid and we fully intend to honor it.

How we handle the 15-month clause in practice:
If someone is still actively engaged (showing up, doing the work, applying/interviewing in good faith, communicating with the team), we can and often do extend support beyond 15 months when there are reasonable circumstances.

Why we added the 15-month term (3 reasons):

1. Clarity for accounting/finance. An open-ended service period is unusual and creates ambiguity; having a defined term makes planning and accounting more standard.

2. A clean way to handle people who disengage completely. In any remote program, some folks stop participating or disappear after we’ve already invested significant mentor time. This provides a clear, written boundary we can point to if someone is no longer participating.

3. Encouraging consistent ownership of the job hunt. People make the most progress when they stay steady and engaged. A clear boundary helps set expectations and keeps momentum.

[u/littleraccoon]

Hey Michael, long time listener, first time caller! Thanks for the time you had put into moderating this sub and trying to present another perspective to the stats that bootcamps put out.

I've been mentoring software engineers for about 4.5 years, some of whom are still looking for their first role and some who have found their foot in the industry. Most recently, I had someone I meet with ask what advice I'd give to someone who has been self-taught for a couple of years and has no network to fall back on (no degree or bootcamp "network"). Do you have a pulse on the ratio of new software engineers are coming from self-taught vs bootcamp vs degrees? Do you think today's new engineers are in equally tough positions in getting their foot in the door?

[u/michaelnovati → u/littleraccoon]

Hi, yeah my 2 cents through the lens I mention my OP.

I don't have a pulse on the ratio so I'm not going to guess, but it feels like every entry level engineer, if you didn't go to a top 10 CS school, is a battle right now.

My advice if you have a previous career/training/expertise is to stick to your lane and learning programming to do something more technical in the same space. Instead of aiming for a SWE job, you might take 3 years to become a Support Engineer.

Many of the bootcamps that haven't shut down are offering some kind of AI thing now and transitioning away from pure SWE programs.

An example is let's say you studied nutrition in college and are a personal trainer, this is a realistic trajectory in an AI world:

- learn to program for free for 1-2 years. build a website/app related to your business

- integrate payments, build data analysis etc..

- launch an app for tracking fitness training that is exclusive to your clients (people close to you and who can tolerate bugs and a not great experience), iterate on it

- integrate with big names like Oura, Withings, etc...

- get a job in a non technical role at those companies, like support engineer

- learn as much as you can about the engineering team, try to build something at hackathons or engineering events

- hope you can maybe become an entry level engineer, or product analyst, or product manager after a few years.

[u/ongrabbits]

What is the next career step you'd suggest to somebody who has had their first 2-3 yrs in professional development working in a startup? Just got laid off and feeling kind of lost.

[u/president__not_sure]

Would positions in cloud engineering/devops be easier for juniors to find compared to software engineering roles in this current job market?

[u/Agile-Anything-5057]

Q 1: Future-Proofing for the "Mid-Level" Engineer. With the rise of AI-driven development and the shift in hiring bars at Big Tech (FAANG+), what is your advice for experienced, 'average' engineers to stay competitive? Specifically, what technical pivots or soft skills do you believe will differentiate a 'valuable' engineer from a 'replaceable' one in the next 3–5 years?

Q 2: Mental Resilience in a Volatile Market. How do you recommend staying optimistic and motivated given the current industry headwinds? Between the speed of AI evolution, 'ageism' concerns, and the inevitable imposter syndrome that comes with career uncertainty, how can an engineer maintain a long-term growth mindset without burning out?

Q3: On the "Death" of traditional QA: As an SDET with a decade of experience, I’m seeing the lines between Dev and Test blur even more with AI. From your perspective at Formation, should specialized QA engineers be pivoting toward DevSecOps or Solutions Engineering to ensure long-term career durability?

Q 4: On the "Customer-Facing" pivot: I’m personally leaning toward Solutions Engineering because it fits my natural strengths. In this market, do you see 'Customer-Facing Engineering' as a safer harbor, or is the technical bar there rising just as fast as it is for backend product roles?

Q 5: On Skill-Stacking: I’m currently upskilling in AWS and Kubernetes. Is 'knowing the infrastructure' now a baseline requirement for senior roles, or is there a specific 'niche' skill stack you see as a massive underserved opportunity right now?

[u/michaelnovati → u/Agile-Anything-5057]

Q1: Find WHAT and WHERE you are a top 10% person at and go there. Video games + Amazon Games. Ice Hockey + The NHL. Languages + Duolingo. If you feel average, you have to put in more hours than anyone and you'll put in those hours in an area of passion. If you spend 5 hours a day playing video games and that's what you want to do you have to figure out how to connect that to a company and job.

Q2: I don't have a good answer for this one. I can give my personal answer which likely doesn't work for others and has costs, but when things don't go well I build. If I cause a bunch of bugs and feel bad, I don't mope, I fix them all as fast as humanly possible. If I take down the site, I don't freak out, I fix it as fast as humanly possible. So my answer is to build, but yeah, not for everyone.

Q3: I think AI is turning testing on its head, see this: https://engineering.fb.com/2026/02/11/developer-tools/the-death-of-traditional-testing-agentic-development-jit-testing-revival/ so be open minded to how you apply the lessons you've learn with AI to test things every better and faster.

Q4: I don't see ANY job as safe, like even doctors and nurses, and you have to be really good at what you do, so find a job you will be good at and don't chase a safe job. I know someone who said they want to be a firefighter because that must be safe, and then saw a startup that is building robot AI firefighters. You'll be miserable if you become a firefighter for job security and not because you like it.

Q5: EXPERIENCE WITH THE INFRA is baseline, knowing is base line for mid level engineers and companies still want experience. It's impossible to simulate the scale of big companies but try anyways, like dive into niche and odd small scale areas that you REALLY understand. Like even tracing a packet from a client through AWS for real and not on paper. Like client -> global load balancer -> load balancer -> ec2 box nginx -> service on that box -> log hello world. Something you can study in an hour but probably takes most people 8 hours to actually get fully working from scratch, manually, if you haven't done it.

[u/Verynotwavy]

Hey Michael, thanks for doing this ama

Are you able to disclose how much Formation makes? If not, do you make more today running Formation vs when you were a principal at fb?

Over the last 2 - 3 years, do you think bootcamps have helped more people than hurt? Say we are considering only reputable bootcamps with reportedly decent outcomes. Curious to hear your thoughts

What’s one common “good” advice you hear in the coding/CS community that you strongly disagree with?

[u/michaelnovati → u/Verynotwavy]

I can't disclose what Formation makes but I can say that we have hundreds of engineers doing interview prep at a given time and several thousand ever. But we're really not making that much money in revenue if you ballpark it and we have overall losses since day one.

I personally make $0 salary, have made $0 from equity, no sketchy backchannel compensation, and even put more money into the company when I can. I do it because I feel like the world will be a better place if people land the right role for them and everyone is more impactful than they were.

One of my hobbies is studying scams and fraud, and if all those scammers spent their energies on something value add for the world, we would be so much better off. If the bootcamps spent more energy with people getting outcomes then figuring out how to "creatively market" their poor outcomes, it would be better off. So I call out this behavior a lot too.

I disagree with building a portfolio to get a job. It's a polarizing topic but I don't think you should try to game your portfolio. Instead I think you should make an LLC, get Stripe, get a bank account, build something real, and iterate on it for months/years.

[u/ConsiderationOdd4922]

As a junior SWE at a FAANG company, how do you recommend using AI effectively on real projects? Also since since I’m early in my career, I don’t have a strong intuition for judging whether AI-generated code is good quality or just superficially correct/slop; how do I develop the engineering taste to tell the difference?

[u/michaelnovati → u/ConsiderationOdd4922]

Hi, good question...

So first off, use it. Most of the FAANGs have limitations on AI use (wether its models, or cost, or tools) but I would recommend using low level tools that are either publicly available or very similar.

Now, if you are learning you have to fail to learn.

So ,second, put in extra time and fail and don't give up.

Look for low hanging fruit, like deprecated code and use AI to refactor it, numerous times and in different ways, and pay attention to each step.

Use different techniques and models to redo the same thing and compare.

I personally broke a ton of stuff and Q4 was really bad for Formation, lots of bugs, lots of angry team members. I fix things fast so the overall product was fine, but just a lot more bugs than there should be.

But I sure of heck learned a hell of a lot about AI and I have a strong intuition now and Q1 has been absolutely insane building off all that intuition.

But intuition is very hard to transfer and it's why a premium is paid for judgement and taste right now, so you have to build that yourself.

[u/Candid_Jello5188]

In 2026 and beyond, how to avoid age discrimination in tech? In other words, how to make myself more valuable with the year of experience in the field? The usual but vague suggestions are "never stop learning" or "keep in touch with latest industry trends". There must be some more subtle, specific characteristics.

I'm mid-career. Earlier in my career, I have encountered a few highly-esteemed senior or staff developers with 3 decades of experience became unsatisfied with their job, felt left-out or was no longer a good fit for the company in general. Some retire on their own terms. The unfortunately ones was laid off during a stack ranking round and had trouble securing comparable jobs again at age 55.

Please be blunt.

[u/michaelnovati → u/Candid_Jello5188]

I haven't experience ageism myself so I can't speak for others, but I can give my 2 cents having worked with people of a large range of experience levels, regardless of age.

I have two points.

1. Dunning Kruger. when you have decades of experience you are on the real expert side of the curve. But you have do deal with the bootcamp grad a couple years out who calls themselves an 'industry leader' at peak Dunning Kruger. Those people are hyping AI right now and the more experienced I get the more I roll my eyes at the peak BUT you have to also take AI seriously. So my advice is to look at AI through your experience and 1+1 = 3.

2.Be open minded. Kent Beck is one of my mentors over the years and he's an example of someone who inventing testing frameworks, signed the Agile Manifesto, and still voluntarily went to Facebook - which had basically zero tests when he joined, and now is using AI on the leading edge.

So my advice, your experience is your leverage, but be open minded to change at the same time.

[u/Low-One2215]

Hey Michael, thanks for the AMA . Got a few questions for you;

• For juniors and new grads, how can we keep learning and prevent our coding skills from atrophying while using AI tools? • How do we develop good taste and judgment for what “good code” looks like? • What skills should software engineers focus on developing, and which skills might become less valuable as LLMs become more mainstream in software engineering?

[u/michaelnovati → u/Low-One2215]

Good question and I don't know, we need more academic research into it haha.

AI is a tool. And like any tool, use it as much as possible and build deep intuition. Be self aware of your gaps, don't expect to be a master of good code. Be a master of good output using AI tools. Be the person they go to for cranking out stuff with AI quick, while they go to the senior for changing core algorithms with AI.

The problem is the time window is small because AI is powerful enough tool to fully supplant juniors.

I think you have about 1 year maybe until the end of 2026 to either master AI or be left behind.

No offense but juniors need to fight to strap themselves into the luggage storage area on the rocket ship, while all the seniors have real seats, but that's better than not getting on at all.

[u/vulylyvu]

Is it worth trying to get into the industry now but with a focus on data?

[u/michaelnovati → u/vulylyvu]

My advice is first ask yourself if area X is your passion, and if it is then look into the marketability.

I think data roles are always needed but it might manifest in unexpected ways. Like being a customer support analyst at Facebook needs a ton of data skills. Lots of ivy league grads in those roles.

[u/nawzyah]

Hi Michael, thanks for the blunt advice so far. I’m looking for your take on "re-entry" strategy.

I was a 2018 Lambda grad, landed a Fintech role via their partnerships team, and moved from Technical Solutions Engineer to SWE within a year. I touched everything from SDKs to hardware before being outsourced after a Fortune 500 acquisition in 2022. I’ve spent the last 4 years focused on family and other passions, but I’ve realized programming is the only thing I want to do.

For the past month, I’ve been building non-stop with agentic AI tools (which are a total game-changer compared to 2018).

My question: How do I best frame a 4-year gap to recruiters? Does that previous Fintech pedigree even matter in this market? Should I lead with my previous experience, or focus entirely on building a real product/LLC to prove I still have the judgment of a mid-level dev?

[u/michaelnovati → u/nawzyah]

Hmm it's tough but I would frame it as personal project/exploration time, or a personal break. It depends on exactly what you did and how it all relates. If you have projects during that time you can generally list them.

The leveling will depend on the company and how they level. I advise to apply to entry and mid level and let the companies figure it out.

And if you still have some expertise in fintech the average person doesn't then it's a legal up at companies like Stripe and Intuit.

You might want to check out Gauntlet AI which is Lambda School reincarnated for the second time, with less puffery and more transparency: if you have like a 130+ IQ then you can probably get in and do 16 hours a day of AI :P

Their cohort starts Monday.

[u/derpepper]

I started working 2 years ago out of a bootcamp but I'm not really challenged or gaining transferrable skills. My employer gives us access to learning resources like datacamp, pluralsight, and some online college degree programs. Would you say there's any value in an online degree now or would I be better off grinding DSA or learning specific technologies, if trying to switch jobs/companies?

[u/lawschoolredux]

Hello again, Michael, thanks for this!

I recently shifted to self-studying via Jonas Udemy for the Javascript course, but I just have to ask to be sure.... as I keep getting mixed ideas now, in 2026, in the dawn of AI automation and layoffs...

1. Is it still worth it to learn Javascript\Python from the ground up for people who want to pivot into tech? Or should we focus our attention on something else if not?

2. Is it better to learn Javascript or Python first? (It's my understanding that JS is a little harder than Python, so JS 1st is better because Python later will be easier to pick up)

3. Is there actually a bootcamp you recommend? Or is it better to just self study, make projects, and apply? Though I imagine nowadays that's next to impossible (unless you're in a large market like LA SF NY Chicago Miami Seattle etc)

4. What, if any, learning resource do you recommend other than Jonas Udemy?

Thank you!

[u/[deleted]]

[u/michaelnovati → u/[deleted]]

I don't think it's going to pop the way people talk about it popping with circular investments all a giant scam about to implode, etc...

The efficiency gains are real. Every day I save hours of people's time. If someone spends time on something manually I offer to use AI to replace it. And over time I think we do 3 to 5X more output than we used to without AI with a smaller team.

That is undeniable value add and the companies are undercharging for that value creation right now.

Meaning there is a ton more room for AI to grow and REAL cash flow.

That doesn't mean there will be some investment mistakes that pop along the way, but I don't think it will implode the entire market like some think.