Formation Monthly Deploy: July 2025

Welcome to the Formation Monthly Deploy, our monthly blog highlighting achievements, insights, and innovations from across the Formation ecosystem. Whether you're a current Fellow navigating challenges, an Alumni building your career, or a Mentor guiding others, this space is designed to keep you connected to your community.

🌎 Market insights from Sophie

📊 Layoffs have stabilized after a seasonal spike.

Layoffs surged earlier this quarter, partly in response to shifting global economic policies, but have since normalized. Year-over-year layoff volume is roughly flat, and significantly lower than two years ago, suggesting stabilization in tech workforce planning.

💼 Software engineering roles are plentiful but evolving.

Product engineering still makes up the largest share of open roles, skewing toward full-stack and backend. However, companies are prioritizing generalist traits like adaptability and self-direction over deep specialization, with the exception of AI, where deep expertise is increasingly lucrative.

🤖 AI remains the fastest-growing opportunity in tech.

Demand and compensation for AI and ML roles continue to surge. Literacy in AI (both technical and product-focused) is becoming more important for engineers, with job postings related to generative AI up almost 4x in the last year.

🚀 The funding engine is revving up again.

IPO activity is picking up, unlocking liquidity and driving a wave of reinvestment, especially into AI. These dollars aren’t just hype: many AI startups are showing rapid revenue growth and global traction, marking a rare moment of both innovation and business viability.

🌊 Last month’s Rising Tide winners

Each month, we recognize Fellows who go above and beyond to lift others up. These standout Fellows showed up with support, positivity, and generosity, making Formation better for everyone around them:

Ruby Oliveira was celebrated for her encouragement and steady support in pair programming sessions. Her nominator shared: “She provided a lot of support during our pair coding and made me feel confident in tackling the challenging problem.”

Amesha Banjara earned recognition for her clarity and collaborative spirit. Her nominator shared: “Amesha has a very positive attitude. While we were working as a group, she really had a talent for explaining her code that made it easy to follow and understand.”

Carlo Bruno stood out for his warmth and presence in the community. His nominator shared: “Carlo was very welcoming and we had a great chat about Formation and life beyond. It was motivating to talk to someone so grounded and kind.”

🌟 Last month's Lighthouse winners

The Lighthouse Award recognizes mentors who go above and beyond to guide, support, and light the way forward. Last month’s winners exemplified what it means to meet Fellows where they are and leave them better than they found them.

Jordan Helsloot was recognized for his thoughtful coaching and structured advice. His nominator shared: “Jordan was the perfect mentor to help me navigate the sticky challenge of explaining my employment gap. His background in communication really stood out—he offered thoughtful advice on how to handle recruiters’ tough questions and helped me understand what they’re actually looking for and why. That perspective demystified a lot for me. He also gave me a straightforward framework to tackle these conversations and offered encouragement throughout. On top of that, he kindly offered to review my STARR stories async.”

Bryce Oldham stood out for his clear direction and communication style. His nominator shared: “Great communication and direction, and very clear reasoning behind decision-making. Would love to work with Bryce again!”

Maaz Azam earned praise for his detailed resume feedback and supportive mock sessions. His nominators shared: “Maaz gave really good suggestions and approaches on how to solve these types of problems. I really enjoyed this session. I would definitely like to work with him again.”

Andrew Miner was recognized for his leadership in both peer support and structured sessions. His nominators shared: “Andrew created a supportive environment in the Mental Health FRG meeting, where everyone felt comfortable sharing their struggles and offering peer advice. I never quite know what to expect from these meetings, but I always leave with meaningful and actionable takeaways.”

🏆 Job placement celebrations

We’re celebrating Fellows who turned persistence into progress and landed new roles this month.

Sreesh Manickababu → Amazon“The biggest shift for me was learning to separate rejection from my identity. I took each failed interview as a data point, not a verdict. And I leaned hard on mentors and mocks to improve fast.”

Ethan Franks → Udacity“Your network is everything. I have applied for hundreds of jobs over the last year and a half with very few hits. The job I ended up landing came through a friend locally who works at the company. Of course, all of the preparation through Formation helped me make the most of the opportunity and land the job, but landing the interview happened through my network.”

James Ng → Opendoor“Don’t just prep for the questions — prep to communicate. Understand the problem deeply, test manually, and walk your interviewer through your thinking. That’s what sets you apart.”

🚀 Recent launches at Formation

We're always building ways to make Fellows’ learning journey clearer, more personal, and easier to navigate. 

Here’s a look at what’s new:

Feed → Roadmap: A clearer way to progress through the Fellowship

We’ve combined Fellows’ Feed and Timeline into one redesigned surface — Roadmap. Now it’s easier for them to see where they’ve been, what’s next, and how each challenge fits into the bigger picture.

With Roadmap, Fellows can:

• View work chronologically. Simply scroll up to review past work, or down to see what’s ahead.
• Jump between challenges instantly.
• Zoom out for a full roadmap view with one click.
• Quickly and clearly know exactly what to do next. 

Activity Log: Fellows can see everything they’ve accomplished

We also added a new Activity Log to your left-hand nav. It’s a searchable, filterable table of every session, module, and challenge Fellows have completed, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Fellows’ work matters. Now it’s easier to find, review, and reflect on.

New course: Ship with AI

We’re opening up a new four-week course for software engineers who want to get smarter about how they build with AI. You’ll learn how to write better prompts, work across large codebases, design for AI collaboration, and use AI to accelerate your career growth.

The first cohort starts on July 28. If you want to build real skills, enroll here.

See you next month!

We’re always proud of how this community shows up — with generosity, determination, and drive. Keep asking questions, lifting each other up, and pushing the limits of what you thought you could do.

Until next month,

The Formation Team

This blog is adapted from our monthly newsletter, The Monthly Deploy. If you're not yet part of the Formation community but would also like these updates directly in your inbox, subscribe to our blog.