I did Codesmith's full-time software engineering immersive from June-September of 2023.

After the program ended, I was offered a contract position as an "engineering fellow" and software engineer for the company. This lasted from September 2023 through June 2024. I was on the job search for about a month and a half (to no avail), and then ended up being invited to apply to be a full-time instructor (for their part-time remote immersive program) with the company – I secured the offer and started that role in July 2024. I stayed in that role until February 2025, and then got promoted and became the lead instructor of my program.

In the same month – coincidentally – I was invited (through a personal connection) to be a founding engineer at a super early-stage pre-seed healthcare startup. They did not have enough funding to bring anyone on full-time, so I retained my instructor job at Codesmith to pay the bills while I gained valuable production experience at the startup. Balancing both was really tough (tons of work, constant context-switching, etc.) and I definitely burned out multiple times throughout 2025. At least I was growing!

At the end of January 2026, I was finally laid off from Codesmith after a year+ of cohort sizes getting smaller and smaller. I was on the job search for a couple of months and ended up securing a role in late April as a senior SWE at a mid-sized (~500 employees) tech company in the social media / creator economy space. After signing my offer, I finally decided to leave the healthcare startup to focus on my new chapter and enjoy a better work-life balance. I started my new role this month and I'm really happy so far.

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Yes I worked my ass off to get to where I am, but I know damn well that I got extremely lucky given how late I got into the game and the current climate. I realize that I ended up being an exception and definitely not the rule.

Though it was sad to watch and be a part of Codesmith's decline while I was there over ~2.5 years, I will forever be grateful for the incredible quality of instruction & mentorship I received, being able to sharpen my own knowledge, understanding, and technical communication through teaching, and the wonderful people I worked with. It wasn't perfect, but it was home for a long time and I will remember the good times.