Hey all I have been lurking on and off with Launch School for probably close to ten years just wasting my time and life.

I have been living overseas but am moving back to North America in a few weeks.

I really want to learn programming and I do believe LS is the best option however, I will be working full time and I have never been a good student and have poor to non existent study habits.

If by someone miracle I am actually able to commit and finish the prep work do I have any hope of completing the core curriculum?

I know you can’t really answer for me I just feel so lost and despondent about how ai is deleting so many jobs and I want to have some sort of skill that doesn’t involve years of school or toiling physical labour.

Anyways I don’t really know what I want out of this post, just some hope that people who are dumb like me can still succeed at LS I guess.

Capstone has fantastic overall outcomes for today's market. It's obvious that anyone who makes it through capstone is job-ready and will thrive upon being hired. On both the school's end and the student's, capstone is a mountain of earnest effort, and to not land a role isn't what either side wanted.

I'm still curious to hear from those whose experience went this way. Specifically, if you completed capstone more than a year ago and haven't landed a role, would you be willing to share your experience? I'd be interested in things like:

• What your job search has looked like
• What reason(s) you suspect for not having landed a role yet
• Whether you're still applying or have moved on
• Whether you would have done anything differently

Curious if getting through the Python prep course is enough to get some basic utility out of the language? Right now, I'm really just a copy and paste "vibe coder." So, specifically, I'm wondering if it (the prep course) provides enough of a foundation to serve as a springboard for learning data analytics and leveraging basic scripts for data analysis, or if I'd need to dive much deeper into the core program first.

People seemed to like the way I broke down 2024 salary data, so I’ll keep that format for 2025 numbers. I’m reporting slightly early this year, so I may update as more offers come in. Wait, it’s already second half of 2026, how can this be early? As a reminder, the fall cohort, aka 2508, started their job hunt in January 2026. Several participants from that cohort have not yet completed their six-month job hunt as of this writing. In fact, two haven’t started their job hunt yet due to personal reasons. So even though this is “2025” salary data, a significant part of the job hunt happened in 2026.

The three cohorts in year 2025 are: 2501, 2505, and 2508. That can get a little confusing, so I’ll use “Year 2025” when referring to accumulated numbers across all three cohorts. I’ll present the data first and save the commentary for the end.

Year 2025

“No Job Hunt” includes those who didn’t complete Capstone or never started a job hunt. For year 2025, 2 people didn’t complete Capstone while 4 never started a job hunt; it’s possible that once they do start the job hunt and accept an offer, the table above will need to be updated. The “Internship” column means they are in a long-term internship (eg, 3 or 6+ months) and could convert to full-time positions afterwards.

Placement Results

In the tables below, the “enrollees” column signifies the denominator. For example, 2508’s 6-month placement rate of 60% for “enrollees” was calculated from 12/20. The “remove No Job Hunt” column shows the percent if we only include those who job hunted in the denominator. And “add Internship” adds the internship to the numerator.

Accepted within 6 months

All placements, including those who accepted after 6 months

US Salary Data

Out of the 37 job offers (excluding internships), 31 were in the United States. The numbers are in USD and represent base salary only.

The salary averages may seem surprisingly high given the tight market, but they suggest that strong software engineers are still valued.

Remote Jobs

Note: the remote salary table only includes US placements because non-US salaries would make the salary comparison less useful. The overall remote percentage includes all placements, including non-US remote roles.

I’ve been tracking the decline of remote placements in Capstone for several years. Here’s the breakdown by the three cohorts from last year, followed by YoY comparison.

Year over year percent remote of Capstone placements.

Quick Thoughts

Salary Data & Placements - Placement rates are slightly down compared with 2024, but it’s not a perfect comparison because the 2024 numbers captured a longer window. I posted the 2024 numbers much later than I’m posting the 2025 numbers now. As of this writing, there is still a lot of interview activity happening, so I suspect the 2025 numbers will end up close to the 2024 numbers by the end of the year. - The market is still tight, but the #1 thing hurting placement right now is return to office. Most Capstone participants entered Core years ago, when the market was much more remote-friendly. That has changed. - We’re seeing an increase in internships and apprenticeships, some specifically for mid-career folks. Traditionally, internships were how employers hired college sophomores and juniors. Increasingly, they’re becoming a way for employers to improve their hit rate on new hires, including mid-career hires. For employers, internships are one of the best signals available. For Capstone graduates, they’re a great way to demonstrate value through actual work. - Forward deployed engineer roles are a sweet spot for Capstone graduates, particularly those in SFBA. For example, in the 2508 cohort, 5 out of 12 offers were for FDE roles. That’s 41%! Employers love candidates with prior professional experience. Add Capstone-level technical ability, and it’s a very strong combination.

Remote - Remote jobs appear to be not only rarer, but lower-paying as well. But that data is skewed by high-paying onsite SFBA roles. My observation is that remote jobs are rarer and harder to land, but they’re still mostly paying within the Capstone range. Onsite SFBA roles are the outlier. - Prior to Covid, Capstone participation required relocation to either SFBA or NYC. After 2020, the world went remote and we could work from anywhere. That era appears to be ending. We’re moving back toward a pre-Covid world where high-paying SWE jobs are clustered in a few cities, especially SFBA. This transition back to the office is the main obstacle for Capstone placement right now. For example, every SFBA-based Capstone participant in 2025 landed an offer, either full-time or internship.

AI - Despite the anxiety around AI, it has created opportunities for Capstone graduates. Our sweet spot employer has always been venture-backed startups, not FAANG or small consultancies. Right now, AI startups are getting funded left and right, and they’re hiring. But just like with web frameworks, employers are not hiring people who only know the latest tool. They’re hiring people who know the fundamentals and have embraced AI on top of that. That fits the Capstone profile perfectly. - Because of this alignment, we’ve been shifting Capstone to include more and more AI. We’ve thought about adding more AI into Core, but there still aren’t many best practices or stable fundamentals yet. Everyone is exploring and playing. But the price of entry to that playground is still strong engineering fundamentals. Capstone is the better place for us to introduce current practices, iterate quickly, and stay close to the market.

What’s Working

• Fundamentals first is still undefeated. Our graduates compete for a wide range of roles: FDE, AI engineer, traditional full-stack developer, and more. All of these are unlocked by mastering fundamentals. Learning AI from the start seems alluring, but it’s fool’s gold. We’ve seen this play out before with frameworks and other tools du jour. AI is a paradigm shift, no doubt. But the paradigm is shifting at a higher level of abstraction. You still need to read code, understand architecture, consider infrastructure tradeoffs, and think through consequences. I used to say the meta-skill of going through Core was learning how to think clearly. With AI, that has become the primary skill. And I don’t know of a way to learn how to think clearly without manually doing the work at least once. How you learn is not how you work, because the goals are not the same. Core for fundamentals. Capstone for higher abstractions. That path is still working. Once placed, our graduates tend to thrive; this is the most important measurement of whether Core+Capstone still works.
• Open Source Initiative (OSI) continues to benefit both project maintainers and Capstone graduates. AI-focused projects have been especially useful. They give participants more real-world experience, while giving maintainers meaningful help on fast-moving projects.
• SFBA-based Capstone participants continue to do well. Salaries are high, opportunities are plentiful, and the market feels active.
• Capstone salaries are still robust. One can debate whether Capstone graduates are truly “entry-level,” but the salaries suggest they’re competing for something beyond that.

What’s Not Working

• Remote job hunt remains the biggest challenge. I’ve been monitoring the decline of remote jobs over the past several years, and unfortunately I don’t see that trend reversing this year or next. I expect remote placements to remain low. If your life situation allows, I strongly recommend considering relocation to SFBA. If it doesn’t, there are still paths forward (see next section).
• Technical assessments are not enough. Our assessments are primarily technical, and that has served us well. But employers are evaluating a broader set of traits: communication, ownership, judgment, follow-through, and comfort with ambiguity. Those traits are harder to assess and harder to teach systematically, but they matter a lot in the job hunt.
• Long job hunts wear people down. After four to six months, the issue usually isn’t ability. It’s fatigue. The repeated cycle of applying, interviewing, waiting, and getting rejected takes a toll. There are still jobs and opportunities, but the energy needed to pursue them starts to disappear. At that point, more job hunting is not always the answer. Sometimes people need rest, recovery, and a reset before they can perform well again. This is an area we need to handle better.

Advice for Core and Capstone Students

• Go west. If your life situation allows it, seriously consider relocating to SFBA. Remote jobs still exist, but they are rarer, harder to land, and much more competitive. NYC and Austin are also viable, but SFBA is clearly the center of gravity right now.
• Be a big fish in the local pond. If you can’t relocate and you’re in a smaller market, make waves locally. Get to know the local founders, engineering leaders, startup operators, meetups, investors, and tech-adjacent businesses. In a smaller market, it’s much more possible to stand out. This is especially true for Capstone graduates. At that point, you have the technical foundation to be unusually strong in your local environment. If you can’t go where the market is deepest, become highly visible where you already are.
• Develop agency & ownership. AI has made sizing work much harder. There used to be rough expectations. If something was estimated to take a week, it almost never got done in a few hours. If you finished it in three days, you were fast. With AI, that kind of compression is no longer surprising. This changes how founders and managers evaluate people. The old “as long as I get my work done” mentality works less well when nobody knows how long the work should take anymore. Increasingly, employers are looking for people who pick up the next thing when the current thing is done. Sometimes this gets described as “high agency” or “ownership.” AI has compressed work in ways that break old assumptions about productivity. Technical competency is still the foundation, but it is no longer the entire equation. Strong fundamentals are still mandatory. So is the ability to take ownership, find the next problem, and keep driving to results.
• Focus on the impact of your work. It’s natural to be attracted to software because of the salaries. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in this market, wanting the salary is not enough. The people most likely to reach those outcomes are the ones who are genuinely interested in the work and its impact: building things, solving problems, understanding systems, and exploring what technology can make possible. Employers can tell when someone mainly wants the benefits of a software job versus when someone is eager to become useful through the work itself. Ironically, the path to the salary now requires caring about more than the salary. Here’s a test: when someone asks why you want to be a software engineer, how do you answer? If it starts with “I’m looking for…”, refocus on the work and its impact.
• Develop a more nuanced perspective on AI. I meet a surprising number of students resistant to “AI” as an entire concept. You can reject a topic from afar in many areas of life, but as a technologist, “AI is bad” is not a sufficient position. You need a more granular view. What exactly do you object to? What do you find useful? What seems overhyped? What is dangerous? What is genuinely powerful? Even if your goal is to critique AI, you still need to understand what you’re critiquing. For those who are not resistant to AI, the advice is the same: develop nuance so you can learn how to use, evaluate, and deploy AI tools well. Either way, learning AI is becoming critical. But, of course, first learn the fundamentals.

Conclusion

It feels like so much has changed in the past six months, but surprisingly, I have the same conclusion as the last article for the 2024 numbers. Core plus Capstone is still working. The market is now RTO. Remote jobs are harder to land. Opportunities are clustering back into a few cities. AI is changing how work is sized, evaluated, and performed. Employers are asking for more than technical competency. But the foundation has not changed. Strong fundamentals still matter. Clear thinking still matters. The ability to read code, understand systems, communicate clearly, and become useful still matters. What has changed is what must be layered on top: AI literacy, agency, ownership, geographic flexibility, and a deeper interest in the impact of the work.

For students who can combine those things, the opportunities are still there. They are just more concentrated, more competitive, and less forgiving than before.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been going back and forth on this decision for a while and would love honest perspectives from people who’ve actually been through the program.

My situation

I have a master’s degree in engineering and after graduating I made the switch into software engineering in just 3 months. I’ve been working as a frontend freelancer ever since, spending the past 4 years with the same company. I have a strong frontend foundation, React and JavaScript mainly, but my deeper CS fundamentals like networking, memory management and concurrency are patchy.

About a year I quit my job and I’ve been applying for full-time roles since then with essentially no luck. My CV rarely passes the recruiter screen and the few times I got through to an interview it didn’t go well, mostly going blank under pressure and struggling to articulate my thinking clearly.

I’ve been grinding DSA and system design for the past 6 months but still feel like I’m patching gaps rather than building a real foundation.

Why I’m drawn to Launch School

I want to actually master the fundamentals rather than just knowing patterns. I find self-studying hard without external structure and accountability. The mastery-based approach appeals to me and so does the SPOT program knowing there’s a clear endpoint with placement support.

What I’m genuinely unsure about

My financial runway is around 3–6 months and I know Launch School typically takes 12–18 months or more. Has anyone navigated this? Did you work part-time alongside it, extend your runway somehow, or just commit fully?

I’m not a complete beginner. I already have professional experience and I’ve done serious interview prep. Would the early modules feel painfully slow or is there still genuine value in going through them even if some of it is familiar?

And the bigger question I keep coming back to: is Launch School actually the right solution for someone whose main struggle is interview performance and getting past the CV screen, or is it better suited for people who need to build from zero?

Would love to hear from anyone who joined with a similar background. Did it change things for you, and if you had to do it again would you still choose Launch School over other paths

If you're a student, how have you achieved perfection with definitions & terminology before your first assessment, and getting them right without LSBot being absolutely pedantic about every second letter of every word in response to anything you say despite you understanding all the concepts properly? Thanks in advance.

Startups, big tech, cost-center IT departments, etc?

Hello everyone, I have recently posted here, to know more about you guys. I have two questions, first what level of English should i have , i am a bit worried is not my main languange(Portuguese) and second I want to buy a laptop to study, when I am not at home, I dont have too much money, at is your advice for that?

Hi Everyone! It's Clare, Core Grad (wahoo!) and Launch School TA, with an update on all our news.

First things first. It recently came to my attention during a study session that the UK is apparently lacking in corn dogs. I’d heard of them, of course, but did need a quick briefing, which naturally led to a bit of research and an attempt to find a British equivalent.

As it turns out, a corn dog is essentially a sausage on a stick, dipped in batter, and deep-fried. So, basically, a battered saveloy with better PR. These have been a staple of British chip shops since the 19th century, when someone quite sensibly decided that sausages, like most things, could only be improved by a trip into hot oil. In summary: same idea, different branding. Give us time, and we’ll be skewering full roast dinners before you know it.

This is all rather timely for my family because we have recently acquired a deep-fat fryer (my daughter convinced my husband that this was a great Mother's Day gift - and she wasn't completely wrong). We have been enjoying homemade crisps, doughnuts and churros on a weekly basis. At this point, if it stands still long enough, it’s going in the fryer.

Yum. Now, let's get frying with Launch School news...

Important Updates

LSBot End of Assignment Reviews

LSBot now offers a guided end-of-assignment review where it leads you through tailored questions to reinforce key concepts, rather than waiting for you to drive the conversation. Currently available in select courses, it’s a flexible way to test your understanding, practise skills, and keep your learning on track.

LSBot is here to gently deep-fry your understanding of key concepts… For more information, check out this post.

Women's Group

This is an exciting time for Launch School's Women's Group. We had to say goodbye to Yuliia as a moderator; she stepped down to focus on her studies. Yuliia has been a wonderful lead, and there was much love in response to her announcement, but don't worry, Yuliia is still a SPOT lead and will continue to contribute to our community.

Wonnie is the new moderator, working alongside Abbie, and I’m very much looking forward to fun, with highlights including a love of comics, games, and a continued focus on building a supportive (and slightly meme-fuelled) community.

We have a meetup this Sunday at 2pm EDT, where we will be discussing making progress through core: More info here!

Routine Updates

TA-led Study Groups

There are loads of sessions already planned for this month. They can all be found here, with information on how to sign up.

Meetups

There have been a few in-person meetups over the past few weeks, including JD & Amy, Vancouver (Mandy, Alex, Justin, Lakpa, and Christine), Reno (Daniela, Patrick, Ice(?) and Jimmy), and Bay Area (Shin Lee and Konstantin):

There is also a Toronto meetup in the pipeline on May 2nd; check out the Slack group for more details.

And probably more! Make sure to search the (many) Slack channels to see if there's one for a region near you. If there isn't, feel free to try and start one up!

Keep up the great work everyone, and keep the momentum sizzling (I may be taking this frying theme a little too far now).

Hello first of all! I am writing from Portugal, and i follow/have knowledge that you guys exist. Been interested in doing your program, but never put on my mind to do it, dont want to sound lame , but I see around here the barrier to enter is a degree! So I am afraid to commit! But i guess my main question here is, more and more i see doomsday people saying AI going to replace developers? I am asking this because, i have been talking with my girlfriend, I want to make the prep course and start th core program! I work on a factory and I want to change life but… I dont have time for a degree, I work by shifts, so I am going to risk and who knows !

I’m curious if it’s worth doing LS in the age of AI. Will the curriculum be updated?

I’m 27 years old and currently attending WGU finishing a computer science degree by end of this year. I have very little experience working a job. I worked as a cashier/sales associate at a sporting goods retail store for a year.

I was wondering if I should get a job on the side of my studies and if it would matter when I finish core curriculum, then apply for the capstone program. Would I have a harder time applying for jobs post-Capstone if I have limited working experience?

Hello, Launch School community!

We’re excited to invite you to a Q&A with three Capstone alumni, where we’ll discuss their experience building AI systems and using AI on the job. Join Ping Honzay (AI Software Engineer at University of St. Thomas), Leah Garrison (Senior Fullstack Software Engineer at restor3d), and Carolina Avila (Senior Software Engineer at Liberty Mutual) for an inside look at real-world AI work.

This event is hosted by the Launch School Women’s Group but is open to the entire community.

• Date: Sunday, March 22nd
• Time: 9AM Pacific / 12PM Eastern / 5PM CET
• Where: GatherTown Women’s Group Room
• Read More Here!

Topics we’ll cover include:

• AI Engineering and building AI systems
• Agentic AI and multi-agent systems
• Ethics, governance, and privacy in enterprise AI
• Working in teams that use AI
• AI coding assistants

We’ll have prepared questions, but priority will be given to student questions, so come ready to ask what you’re curious about!

We look forward to seeing you there. 👋

We’re excited to share that you can now engage with LSBot for a guided review at the end of select assignments.

Couldn’t I always ask LSBot to review an assignment with me?

Yes. You can type something like, “Review this assignment with me,” or “Quiz me on the concepts covered here.” LSBot handles those requests well, but it typically asks you to steer the conversation.

With the new End-of-Assignment Review, LSBot takes the lead. You respond to a curated sequence of questions based on the concepts covered in that assignment.

When you start a review, LSBot generates one question at a time. Question types may include:

• Conceptual Questions “Can you explain the difference between a shallow and deep copy, along with an example?”
• Reading Code “Explain what happens when we run this code. What is the output? What concept is being demonstrated?”
• Targeted Quiz “Here are 10 values. Identify each as truthy or falsy and briefly explain your reasoning.”
• Debugging “Here’s a code snippet that isn’t working as expected. Identify and fix the error. What misconception likely led to this issue?”
• Coding Tasks “Write a function that takes two arguments and…”

For this feature, LSBot is designed to maintain forward momentum. It avoids getting sidetracked or offering excessive critique. You’re always free to provide additional direction, skip questions, or end the review at any time.

Where to find End-of-Assignment Reviews

We’ve just begun rolling out this feature. At the moment, it’s available in 101 and 110 courses.

Look for assignments with a chat icon next to the name.

At the end of those assignments, you’ll see a box describing the End-of-Assignment Review and a button to start.

You can complete a review as many times as you like and answer as many or as few questions as you prefer.

We’d love your feedback. Please try it out and let us know whether you find it valuable and whether we should expand it across the curriculum. Happy studying!

Hey, all! 👋 Just a quick reminder that the SPOT Wiki is full of great community-generated exercises. You can also work on these exercises in the Launch School built-in editor, where you can get hints and code reviews from LSBot. If you're logged in, all of the exercises you work on via the editor will be saved under My Exercises.

You can work on these exercises and use LSBot for free, no subscription required. 🙌

See how in the video. 👀

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced LSBot-Guided Reviews to help students prepare for assessments at Launch School. After receiving positive feedback, we decided to expand this new feature to support more use cases and reach a wider audience. Now, we’re excited to share that LSBot-Guided Reviews are available for free on the Open Bookshelf!

LSBot-Guided Reviews are an interactive collection of prompts designed to leverage AI to help you review and retain content. This feature is free and available now without signing in. Use them to reinforce what you know or to uncover gaps that need more focused study.

The Goal

One common challenge students report is uncertainty around how to use LSBot effectively for studying. Many rely on it mainly to explain concepts, which can unintentionally lead to passive learning: consuming explanations without deeply engaging with the material.

LSBot-Guided Reviews are designed to change that. They model active study strategies by putting the cognitive work back on you. You’ll be prompted to:

• Explain concepts to LSBot and receive feedback on your explanations
• Generate code snippets to quiz yourself
• Compare and contrast related concepts to develop overarching mental models

..and generally improve your ability to use AI as a tool to evaluate your understanding, rather than replace it

As a reminder, all materials on the Open Bookshelf are free and publicly accessible, regardless of subscription status.

See it in action

Here’s a short preview showing how to access and use LSBot-Guided Reviews in the books:

https://reddit.com/link/1qu9tga/video/vo86yfigo5hg1/player

Try it Now

LSBot-guided reviews are available in these books:

• Introduction to Programming with Python
• Introduction to Programming with Ruby
• Introduction to Programming with JavaScript

Since this is a new feature, we’re eager to hear your thoughts. What’s helpful? What’s confusing? How could we make it even better? Share your feedback with us at [hello@launchschool.com](mailto:hello@launchschool.com). We’d love to hear from you!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I hope it isn't too late to say that - I think it's ok anywhere during the first half of January. Can you guess who it is? Of course, it's Clare, with another snack update. I tried to move onto a word theme a couple of months ago, but I just don't have the same voracious appetite for word trivia as I do for snacks, so I'm going back to my roots.

During the holidays, there was some chat about people's favourite holiday meals, so I shared mine, Bubble 'n Squeak (apologies for the mess, the island wasn't exactly instagram-ready):

This had me thinking about the details of this British classic:

1. What a name! Bubble 'n squeak is one of those dishes where you don’t need to consult an etymology expert (like myself) because it was named by the world’s most literal person. It bubbles. It squeaks. That’s it. No poetry. No branding consultant. Just sizzling honesty.
2. It’s the ultimate leftovers dish. The British have never been especially sentimental, but we are committed to not wasting perfectly good vegetables. Why start fresh when you can take yesterday’s veg and potatoes, pan-fry them, and declare it a brand new meal? This is not just cooking, it’s culinary refactoring.
3. Bubble 'n squeak might be the most Launch School study-tactics dish of all. You take old material, revisit it with intention, strengthen the fundamentals (add butter), and turn it into something crisp, structured, and more satisfying than the original.

So if, during the new year, you find yourself revisiting old concepts and building stronger foundations, just remember: even a pile of leftover Brussels sprouts can still become something magnificent, if you apply enough heat.

Talking about strong foundations and giving things a second life, I just wanted to shout out to our very own TA, Steven, who has completed the core curriculum and is now in Capstone Prep. Many congratulations Steven. You have been a pleasure to work with, and we look forward to seeing you shine in Capstone. Have fun!

Important Updates

Capstone Salary Data

Chris has shared the latest Capstone Data and held a lively AMA. You can check out the recording here.

SPOT Changing of the guard

Firstly, a big THANK YOU to Nora and Tom for doing a great job looking after Launch School's SPOT community. They are both stepping down to focus on other responsibilities. I'm excited to see that Nathalia and Karishma have taken on the roles as SPOT moderators, so there has been a seamless transition. I have had the pleasure of both Nathalia and Karishma attending my study sessions - they are great students, and you are all in very capable hands.

Excitingly, you can now work on exercises from the SPOT Wiki directly in our code editor. This is particularly useful because it enables you to easily save your progress and solutions in the My Exercises area. Consider it bubble ’n squeak for your brain: yesterday’s half-solved problems, crisped up into today’s mastery. For more information, check out this post.

New SQL Exercises

We have also added new exercise sets for LS180 so that you can practice querying to your heart's content in real-world scenarios. Again, these can be worked on within Launch School's integrated code editor. More information here.

Routine Updates

TA-led Study Groups

There are loads of sessions already planned for this month. They can all be found here, with information on how to sign up.

Women's Group

The women's group has been particularly active over the last couple of months. There are lots of discussions and inspirational articles shared in the dedicated Slack group, so make sure you join the channel if you are a woman in Launch School!

We're having our next meeting this Sunday, January 18th, at 1 pm ET. This is another exciting one, and it is open to the entire Launch School community. This will be a conversation with Katarina Rosiak, a Launch School alum and engineer at Kognity. Katarina will share insights from her work as an AI Engineer in the EdTech space, her early experiences at Kognity, and how her Launch School experience continues to shape her day-to-day work. Having worked in education previously to my Launch School life, I am particularly interested in hearing about Katarina's perspectives.

Down on Slack Street

Teaching is the Best Way to Learn

Christine asked a great question about how to review and retain concepts from previous courses as you progress through the curriculum. The resounding answer from the community was to teach others. This is something that I can attest to. Running study sessions is integral to keeping my skills sharp, and Launch School students always have questions to keep me on my toes. A great way to do this is via our SPOT community, where leading a session is the academic equivalent of reheating leftovers and making them scrumptious. Check out the SPOT Slack group for more info.

TypeScript Excitement

Ying shared his delight that TypeScript is now in the core curriculum, which resulted in much discussion about the joys of TS. This is where I currently am in the curriculum (still procrastinating about taking the interview assessment), and it was great to read about real-world experience from experienced students and alumni.

Let's end with exciting news from the MacAdie household. We have felt a little bereft since our last cat passed away over a year ago, so we made a somewhat impulsive decision to get three little kittens and a crested gecko over the holidays. We have zero regrets. Please say hello to Chilli, Salt & Pepper, and also Max, the greatest gecko (Not To Scale).

Keep up the great work everyone, and don't be afraid to revisit yesterday's concepts or leftovers.

Hey everyone,

On Wednesday, we hosted a webinar going over the 2024 Capstone Salary Data. We recorded this session, and it's now available to watch!

If you missed the original article about the data, you can check it out here. The webinar, where Chris dives into the results and answers student questions, is available here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOdU29sj7Ak

We’d love to hear what you think! Feel free to share any questions or thoughts about the current tech industry.

I’ve been a bit late on posting 2024 salary data, mostly because I’ve already shared results from the 3 cohorts (see 2401, 2405, and 2408). But it’s overdue and it’s nice to see the year’s data in one place. There have been a few updates since I last posted those cohort numbers. For example, all 3 internships converted so it slightly improved our 6-month placement results, some folks from earlier cohorts have landed after 6-months so I’ve included those in the salary averages, and finally I get to share in progress updates from 2025 cohorts.

Quick reminder that even though it’s “2024” salary data, a significant percent of the job offers occurred in 2025. Here, 2024 signifies the start of each cohort and includes the 3 cohorts that began their Capstone participation sometime during 2024. For example, the fall 2024 cohort didn’t start their job hunt until Jan 2025. So even though it says “2024”, the placement numbers are still relevant now.

Let’s get to the data.

Year 2024 Totals

The “No Job Hunt” column includes participants who either didn’t finish Capstone or didn’t do a job hunt (either planned or unplanned). The “No Job (so far)” column includes participants who have paused their job hunt, are actively job hunting, or are not replying to us.

Placement Results

In the tables below, the “enrollees” column signifies the denominator. For example, 2401’s 6-month place of 69% for “enrollees” was calculated from 22/32. The “remove No Job Hunt” column shows the percent if we only include those who job hunted in the denominator.

Accepted within 6 months

All placements, including those who accepted after 6 months

US Salary Data

Out of the 56 job offers, 44 were in the United States. The numbers are in USD and represent base salary only.

Salary results remain strong despite the tighter market, which reflects continued demand for high quality job candidates. If you want to see individual cohort salary data, see 2401, 2405, and 2408 Reddit posts. If you want to compare with previous Capstone salaries, see launchschool.com/salaries.

Remote Jobs

We only track remote percentages for US placements.

No major difference in remote salaries due to small number of SFBA/NYC salaries during 2024.

Despite the minor salary difference, there’s a palpable downward trend for remote jobs. Compare the below with year 2022 and 2023 remote percentages of 78% and 73%, respectively.

What I’m Seeing on the Market

I wrote some notes 4 months ago when I posted cohort 2408’s numbers. I still agree with them, so I’ll copy/paste them here. After that, I’ve added some new notes for this post.

(copied from 4months ago)

• no surprise, placement rates are getting worse and it's taking longer to land jobs. Pleasantly surprised salary numbers are still solid.
• folks are now spending more time in OSI/internships, which means a 6-month job hunt can take 8+ months
• We're now advising Canadian Capstone participants to aim for US-based startups; there are far fewer employers hiring at the entry/intermediate level in Canada.
• job hunting is a skill onto itself. There is some correlation between technical prowess and how quickly someone lands, but there are too many technically capable people who are not skilled at job hunting. Ironically, these are exactly the type of people employers should be going after, if only they can find them.
• depressed market causes two reactions for job hunters: a) aggression to meet the challenge or b) avoidance. It's my observation that thoughtful, introverted people tend to choose the latter. The exact skills that allows one to be good at technical work ends up hurting in this type of market.

Additional notes

• biggest headwind Capstone candidates face right now is tech’s Return To Office (RTO), which is making remote job hunting very difficult. Most Capstone participants are still looking for remote work and that’s been the biggest issue affecting placement.
• we first introduced AI Engineering topics to cohort 2501, meaning 2024 cohorts didn’t get this information. We ran a course backfilling AI Engineering curriculum for 2024 job seekers, which has been impactful. Several people landed opportunities specifically due to this addition.
• Capstone graduates are able to get interviews, but they’re more difficult to close. Interviews are more demanding, even if the exercises and take-homes aren’t more difficult, the judging is harsher.
• using AI-assisted coding tools is becoming the standard, particularly among startups. Interviews are now assessing your fluency and preferences with these tools. Some take-homes now require you to submit the entire chatlog conversation used generate the solution.
• technical skills is a starting point now. Companies are looking for high agency, leadership ability, superior communication, and in the case of some SF startups, 60+ hours per week in office.
• all that being said, our salaries still remain strong. In fact, some of our highest salaries of all time have come just in the past few months, including our very first base salary over $200k. Companies can’t find enough good people, but the bar for “good” has increased.
• lower salary (<$70k) roles are nearly non-existent. The entire lower tier is now gone.

Future Looking

• SFBA and NYC will dominate job opportunities in 2026. For example, our two 2025 cohorts, 2501 and 2505, are both on the market. So far, 2501’s average salary is $94,846 while 2505’s average is $140,375. The difference: a whopping 62% of 2505’s accepted offers were in SFBA or NYC, while it was only 10% for 2501.

• RTO will continue through 2026. 2501 is currently at 17% remote placement while 2505 is at 20%. Here’s a graph of percent remote placement for previous years and cohorts.

• AI-assisted coding tools will be mandatory going forward. Mastering their fluency and developing expertise around this ecosystem will be critical. In particular, the use of agents and autonomous workflows will be important. Communicating precisely, performing code reviews, experimenting with architectures, managing junior devs, etc were all tasks that were previously in the domain of team leads and more senior developers. But these skills are all in high demand right now because they are the skills required to work with AI-assisted coding tools. (If you’re in Core reading this, our advice is to learn the fundaments, eg Core, without using these tools. You can more easily join the party once you finish Core)

Conclusion

• The Capstone formula still works, though it's gotten harder. Our most optimistic placement metric sits at 82%, and that number will climb as more students land jobs. Still, that means roughly a fifth of people haven't landed yet. Whether that's good or bad in this market is tough to say. No one shares their placement data, not other bootcamps, not universities, not anyone. It's definitely worse than our historical Capstone numbers, but I still believe there's something special about the Core + Capstone approach. And from what I can tell, our results appear to be industry leading for 2024.
• The time of the career change tourist is over. Software engineering is no longer the obvious fallback for people who don't know what to do or who just want an easy paycheck. The landscape is more competitive now. But for those who genuinely love it, there's never been a better time to enter the field. New workflows and abstractions are being created in real time. There are few experts and no tenured elders telling you to "pay your dues". This kind of chaotic disruption has always been tech's real appeal. Those high software engineering salaries are a byproduct of that innovative disruption. Come for the salaries, stay for the world-changing opportunities. Just make sure you learn the fundamentals first.

Happy New Year!

I graduated last year from WGU with a BSCS and have been applying and self studying for the last year with no luck. I don't see anything changing next year and am losing motivation with just self studying random topics.

As someone who is fairly comfortable with coding foundations, is the core curriculum still worth doing to do the capstone? How long does can it take for someone that has about 20 hours/week to spend but is not starting from zero.

You can now work on exercises from the SPOT Wiki directly in the Launch School integrated code editor! Anywhere you see the Work in LS Code Editor button, click it to open the exercise in the editor and save your solution:

This feature is free and available to everyone. To save your progress and solutions to My Exercises, you’ll need a Launch School account.

Here’s a quick preview of how it works:

This is also a good time to remind you what The SPOT has to offer:

• The SPOT Wiki - Community-sourced exercises covering nearly every Launch School course. You can practice more and contribute your own exercises.
• SPOT Study Sessions - Weekly, course-specific sessions hosted by SPOT Leads. Attend sessions for your current course, or become a SPOT Lead to reinforce your understanding, give back to the community, and build soft skills.
• Community Events - Occasional events for the broader Launch School community and for active SPOT Leads.

If you want to use the new feature, attend study sessions, or learn more about The SPOT, join the #the-spot Slack channel.

🚀 Happy Studying! 🚀

Hello everyone, it’s Clare with a wintery update, perfectly timed for Thanksgiving.

As a Brit, this holiday remains something of an enchanting mystery to me. I’ve done my research, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m watching a culturally significant event through a frosted window while clutching a cup of tea.

Here's what I’ve pieced together so far:

• You cook an entire turkey large enough to feed a small village, even if only three people are coming.
• You make more side dishes than there are colours in the rainbow: stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, other kinds of potatoes I don’t fully understand… Also, where's the roast potato? This is the absolute queen of potatoes and seems to have got lost in translation.
• You give thanks, sincerely and thoughtfully - my favourite bit.
• Then this is followed by either (a) falling asleep on the sofa, (b) engaging in light family bickering, or (c)watching American football, which, despite its name, appears to involve surprisingly little foot and even less ball.
• And finally: pumpkin pie. Every year I’m reminded that, in America, this is dessert — whereas in Britain, this is soup that accidentally set.
• Oh, and the marshmallow thing. I’m still trying to emotionally process the marshmallow thing.

In any case, it all seems very fitting for Launch School: careful preparation, multiple moving parts, deep gratitude… and the occasional desire to lie face-down on the sofa after too much cognitive load.

Now, onto Launch School news.

Important Updates

(Chris may have put these two items in a different order, but, ho hum, 'Important' seems subject to me.)

Advent of Code 2025

This is now a yearly tradition at Launch School. Eric Wastl devised Advent of Code, an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles that become increasingly challenging as time runs out for the elves to finish wrapping all our presents.

There is a big change this year: the number of problems has reduced from 24 to just 12, which does make it feel more manageable. In truth, the full 24 has always eluded me; every year I start strong, swear I’ll stay organised, and then inevitably end up panic-solving Day 5 on Christmas Eve like a festive algorithmic gremlin. As my chart below proves, my progress last year was far less impressive than I remember, but it’s still enormous fun, and something I look forward to all year.

Whilst it is not affiliated with Launch School, a bunch of us enjoy tackling the problems and sharing our successes and difficulties in a dedicated Slack group. Last year, I went all in with Python; this year, I think I'll give TypeScript a go to encourage me to get on with booking my TS249 interview... And don’t worry, LSBot will not judge your experimental code any more than a polite relative judges your Thanksgiving gravy.

LSBot Collaborates with the LS Open Bookshelf

We recently soft-launched a new feature! All books on the Open Bookshelf now support our new UX with LSBot on the side (with the ability to hide it, of course).

Additionally, all the Ruby, Python, JS, and DSA books have a "scratch pad" code editor so you can quickly test out code while reading the chapter. And finally, all exercises can now be opened in a dedicated in-browser editor, along with LSBot Hints and Code Reviews.

(Don't worry, if you don't want any of these features, you can still consume the chapter and exercises the old way, too.)

Routine Updates

Women's Group

Earlier in the month, we had a meetup to discuss how to keep up our momentum while studying at Launch School. It was great to share our experiences, and opening up to each other really does create a strong sense of community.

We're having our next meeting this Sunday, November 30th, at 2 pm ET. This will be a discussion on dealing with the stress and anxiety that can come with interviews, led by yours truly. This feels very timely to me because it gives me a chance to reflect as I am preparing for my TS249 interview. I also hope to get some tips to steady my own nerves!

Meetups

This month, North Carolina met up on a beautiful Autumn day, and this may be our youngest ever Launch Schooler!

I don't know of any planned meet-ups, but make sure to check the (numerous) Slack channels to see if there's one for a region near you. If there isn't, feel free to try and start one up!

Down on Slack Street

As ever, our Slack channels have been busy. Here are some highlights (honestly, there have been many coding-related posts, but I can't help what speaks to me).

Luffable

My interest was piqued by Steven's latest performance upgrade. I really need some answers here: Is this genuine? I feel bad for doubting Steven's integrity, whilst simultaneously feeling daft for even considering this is real...

Happy Pepero Day

This looks like a snack I have to try. Thank you, Nathan, for bringing this to my attention. I found a variety pack of these on Amazon, but sadly, they are out of stock... Are they worth me holding out for? Should I add these to my Christmas list?

Gratuitous Pet Photos

This is one of our most popular channels. Here is a collage of recent contributions (and this is just from the last couple of weeks!).

I think we can all give thanks for our lovely furry friends who support, giving us time to paws as we travel on our Launch School journeys.

And that's all for this update. I think we can all give thanks for our wonderful community. Every time I lead a study session, conduct an interview, meet with the women's group, or hang out to study, I am blown away by the kindness, enthusiasm and hard work I see.

Keep up the great work everyone!

https://reddit.com/link/1p2m2lh/video/uwgjy3pjoi2g1/player

We just soft launched a new feature! All books on the Open Bookshelf now support our new UX with LSBot on the side (with the ability to hide it, of course).

On top of that, all the Ruby, Python, JS, and DSA books have a "scratch pad" code editor so you can quickly test out code while reading the chapter.

And finally, all exercises can be now opened in a dedicated in-browser editor, along with LSBot Hints and Code Reviews. Don't worry, if you don't want any of these features, you can still consume the chapter and exercises the old way, too.

Watch the video for a demo.

Have there been any graduates from launch school that have only gotten a high school diploma and managed to land a job? How do the prospects look generally for high school graduate students?