December 2016 Bootcamp News Roundup

Welcome to our last monthly coding bootcamp news roundup of 2016! Each month, we look at all the happenings from the coding bootcamp world from new bootcamps to fundraising announcements, to interesting trends we’re talking about in the office. This December, we heard about a bootcamp scholarship from Uber, employers who are happily hiring bootcamp grads, investments from New York State and a Tokyo-based staffing firm, diversity in tech, and as usual, new coding schools, courses, and campuses!

General News

• Uber and Miami-based coding bootcamp Ironhack have partnered up to offer $100,000 worth of scholarships to Uber drivers and riders. There will be two full scholarships and 50 partial scholarships towards one of Ironhack’s programs.
• HackerYou is now the first coding bootcamp to become accredited as a private career college in Ontario, Canada.
• Bloomberg News reported on failed live-in coding bootcamp Coding House, and spoke to students who felt they were duped. As a result, Education Dive wonders if the coding bootcamp bubble is about to burst. (And a bootcamp grad responded with this.)
  Editor’s Note: While we wholly disagree with the opinions in the Bloomberg article, we’d rather let employers speak for themselves. See below for all of the forward-thinking companies like IBM and Forbes who love hiring coding bootcampers.
• The Texas Workforce Commission is continuing to crack down on local coding bootcamps, sending out more letters about lack of compliance. (via Dallas Business Journal)

Employers Hiring Bootcampers

• In a Quartz article, IBM says they do hire coding bootcamp graduates, and plenty of their employees do not have 4-year college degrees.
• A Front End Developer at Forbes gives a first-hand account of how he got to where he is today by going through a coding bootcamp (General Assembly).
• Gravity Payments CTO talks about the importance of investing in employees who show passion and aptitude, and gives an example of how she put a good employee through a three-month coding bootcamp (via Forbes).
• Recruitment company TripleByte explains how and why they’ve had equivalent success working with both coding bootcamp grads and recent computer science grads (via InfoWorld).

Related: 8 Companies Who Love Hiring Bootcampers
Related: Why Progressive Hires from Tech Elevator
Related: Why Mobify Hires from Lighthouse Labs
Related: Why Access Development Hires from DevPoint Labs
 

Investments and Fundraising

• New York State has granted $1.3 million in funding to Galvanize, a Denver-based coding bootcamp that plans to open a campus in NYC in 2017. (via Denver Business Journal)
• Tokyo-based company, Temp Holdings, has announced an undisclosed investment into San Francisco-based coding bootcamp Hack Reactor (via Staffing Industry Analysts).
• Fullstack Academy has invested $20,000 in a startup founded by one of its alumni as part of its Fullstack Fund initiative (via EdSurge).

Related: 10 Founders Who Started at a Coding Bootcamp
Related: Coding Bootcamp Acquisitions
 

Bootcamps Impacting Diversity

• ReadITQuik highlights charities that encourage inclusion in tech such as Black Girls Code, Women Who Code, and mentions Dev Bootcamp’s partnership with Lesbians Who Tech.
• UK coding bootcamp Founders and Coders is starting a bootcamp in Nazareth, Israel to teach Israeli Arabs how to code (via Jerusalem Post).
• 13 US veterans graduated from the first cohort of Rackspace Open Cloud Academy’s 12-week cybersecurity tech bootcamp in San Antonio, Texas (via ABC).
• The Firehose Project’s online bootcamp just announced their TechHire Partnership and how they’re tackling the diversity problems in tech.

Related: How Women Navigate the Job Search at Hackbright Academy
 

New Programs and Campuses

• NYC Data Science Academy is launching an online data science bootcamp, in addition to their existing in-person program.(via Data Center Journal)
• Origin Code Academy in San Diego is launching an 18-week part-time bootcamp, in addition to its 12-week full time program (via Philly Purge).
• Coding Dojo is opening new campuses in Berkeley and Orange County, California. The coding bootcamp already has campuses in Seattle, Dallas, San Jose, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Chicago. (via Geekwire)
• Revature has opened yet another coding bootcamp at a university, this time at the University of Florida. As with its other courses, they are free for university students and include an apprenticeship (via Education Dive).
• Eleven Fifty Academy is thinking about where to teach people to code next - they are looking for an area which is particularly in need of developers to hold classes (via Indianapolis Business Journal).
• Thinkful is opening an office in Washington DC so that they can hold meetups and information sessions in the city, as they do in New York where the HQ is located (via Technically DC).
• In 2017 The Software Guild will run online bootcamps for a number of universities, including Oregon State University, Wichita State University, Baker University and the University of Georgia (via Crain’s).
• Flatiron School launched their new Community-Powered Bootcamp where people can learn through collaboration (via Forbes Opinion).
   

New Schools

• Coding Academy by Epitech, Paris, France
• KeepCoding, Madrid, Spain
• ASI Data Science, London, UK
• LabsIOT, online
• The Coding Bootcamp at UCI Continuing Education, Irvine, CA
• Upscale Academy, Los Angeles, CA and online
• CodingNomads, Bali, Mexico City, and Thailand
   

FURTHER READING:

• November 2016 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• October 2016 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• September 2016 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

About The Author

Imogen is a writer and content producer who loves writing about technology and education. Her background is in journalism, writing for newspapers and news websites. She grew up in England, Dubai and New Zealand, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.