Episode 23: January 2018 Bootcamp News

Welcome to the first News Roundup of 2018! We’re already having a busy 2018 – we published our latest outcomes and demographics report, and we’re seeing a promising focus on diversity in tech! In January we saw a significant fundraising announcement from an online bootcamp, we saw journalists exploring why employers should hire bootcamp and apprenticeship graduates, we read about community colleges versus bootcamps and how bootcamps are helping to grow tech ecosystems. Plus, we’ll talk about the newest campuses and schools on the scene, and our favorite blog posts. Read below or listen to the podcast!
 

News From Over the Holidays

• A Vice Motherboard article looked at coding bootcamps vs community colleges, considering factors like cost, diversity, and job pipelines.
• TechCrunch looked at the successes and failures of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) when it comes to finding a job, compared with coding bootcamps.
• The Chicago Tribune reports that Apple is Partnering with the City of Chicago to get its Swift app coding program into Public schools and city colleges.
• Rep Lloyd Smucker wrote in Lancaster online about his proposed PROSPER Act which would provide federal aid for students in short-term programs like coding bootcamps.
• The Atlantic wrote about how employers are looking for job candidates in the wrong places – there’s a lot of bipartisan support for non-traditional education like apprenticeships, coding bootcamps, and non-four-year-degrees, but many employers still require college degrees.
• Fox News interviewed Adam Enbar the co-founder of Flatiron School about how coding will become the new ‘manufacturing’ of the next generation.
   

Top News

• Thinkful, an online coding school, has raised $9.6 million in a funding round from Owl Ventures and Tribeca Venture Partners. The school aims to use the funds for expanding in-person offerings. Thinkful co-founder Darrell Silver told EdSurge that “Bootcamps as an entity aren’t working,” and asserts to Technically Brooklyn that “The bootcamp model didn’t work out.”
• According to the U.S. News and World Report annual survey, the best job in the USA in 2018 is the software developer! The top jobs are: #1 software developer, #2 Dentist, #3 Physician Assistant, #4 Healthcare jobs, #5 orthodontist.
• ELearningInside looks at a LinkedIn study which found that 75% of 25 to 33-year-olds experience a quarter-life crisis, and often pivot or switch careers. The article looks at how this could be spurring people to enroll in intensive retraining such as coding bootcamps.
   

Hiring Coding Bootcamp Grads

• Revature CMO Joe Vacca wrote a guest post for IDG Connect about why companies need to hire bootcamp grads, mentioning practical skills and diversity.
• An article in The Hill looked at the rising costs of hiring programming talent, and how companies are turning to outsourcing their development tasks, or to coding bootcamps to hire developers.
• Alison DeNisco Rayome of TechRepublic looked at how coding bootcamps are beginning to catch up with 4-year Computer Science programs in terms of number of graduates and average starting salaries.
• Utah Business looks at the types of jobs you can get without a bachelor’s degree, and how skills-based training, like bootcamps, is becoming more desirable for employers in Utah.
• The Globe and Mail interviewed an instructor from HackerYou coding bootcamp about what UX Designers earn, what they do, and how you can learn UX Design.
• Yiren Lu of NYmag profiles two Dev Bootcamp grads from Chicago, Grant Hummer and James Fickel, who started a crypto-currency-focused investment fund.
• Jeff Winkler from Origin Code Academy wrote a handy list of tips for junior developers who are job seeking for The Times of San Diego.
   

What to Learn at Bootcamp

• Coding Dojo’s latest employer survey report found Java to be the most in-demand language for 2018, followed by Python and JavaScript. A HackerRank report found that JavaScript, Java, Python, C++, and C remain the top languages that employers want candidates to have. We also looked at programming languages in our latest outcomes and demographics report and found graduates with the highest salary had learned Ruby on Rails at bootcamp, followed by JavaScript and C#.
• Jeffrey R. Young of EdSurge produced a video webinar looking at micro credentialing in education, mentioning coding bootcamps, and how employers are starting to take note.
• An EdSurge piece looked at the two year CS Masters program at Mills College for women and how it compares to coding bootcamps.
   

Increasing Diversity in Tech

• Liliana Monge, the founder of Sabio, said she wasn’t attending CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in 2018 because it kicked off with zero women speakers.
• Sharon Florentine of CIO looked at how coding bootcamps are producing graduates who are more diverse than Computer Science degree graduates based on the unique nature of the learning model.
• ELearningInside considered whether online learning can Close the Gender Gap, and mentions Bloc’s announcement of their Close the Gap scholarship, 50% of enrollments have been women.
• A Fast Company article profiled Hackbright grad Lindsay Grizzard about being the only woman in her company at her first software engineering job.
• Outsmart magazine profiled Veronica Diaz, a UT Austin Coding Boot Camp graduate who won an Edie Windsor LGBTQ Coding Scholarship to attend bootcamp.
• Pop Sugar profiled Clinay Cameron, a woman of color who took classes at Hack the Hood in the Bay Area, who now works at Yelp and helps mentor other women of color.
• A technical lead engineer, Cai Gao, wrote an opinion piece in Wired called “How to Buck the Brogrammer Culture and get Women into Stem,” mentioning coding bootcamps, local organizations, and what companies and engineering managers can do to increase diversity.

Learning For the Future

• An American Genius article uses Revature as an example of a modern apprenticeship, and how apprenticeships are “the perfect platform to witness potential candidates in an actual workplace rather than looking at degrees and GPAs.”
• Tech Launch coding bootcamp at the Florida Vocational Institute held a free coding class for visually impaired students on January 27th, as part of its mission to encourage access to coding bootcamps for everyone.
• Southern California U of Health Sciences is partnering with Coder Camps to offer a 24-week programming bootcamp focused on solving real-world healthcare needs.
   

Bootcamp Scholarships

• Uber is partnering with Ironhack coding bootcamp to award $200,000 in coding scholarships to Florida Uber drivers and riders. NBC Miami talks to a student who won one of these scholarships to go to Ironhack and now works as a developer at Jetsmarter.
• JRS Coding School, a full-time, 12-week Javascript bootcamp in Charleston, SC, announced they are offering a new veterans scholarship starting in January.
• WeWork is teaming up with Patriot Bootcamp on a Veterans in Residence program in Austin. 10 veterans will get 6 months of sponsored workspace at WeWork.
• General Assembly is recruiting bootcamp graduates or experienced developers for a 5-week, fully paid Software Engineering Career Accelerator. Successful students will get an interview for a role with Cognizant, a Fortune 250 professional services company.
   

Bootcamps Around the World

• Rana Freifer of Wamda profiles various efforts to teach refugees to code in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, and how organizations like ReBootKamp and Re:Coded aim to help young refugees and their tech education.
• One of Dev Bootcamp’s co-founders, Dave Hoover, who now leads a software team at Raise, hired two Andela fellows, and recently visited Andela in Lagos where he met all the fellows, and explored the city.
• Elise Jone, a Trinidad transplant from Atlanta, GA, announced her plans to start a bootcamp in Trinidad and Tobago. She says computer skills are “one way that people from socially or economically disadvantaged backgrounds can improve their lives.”
   

Bootcamp Updates

• Flatiron School has announced their new Washington DC location will be at WeWork White House, with classes beginning in March. WeWork recently acquired Flatiron School, and the school plans to expand to more WeWork locations in the future.
• WeWork announced a partnership with 2U, which will license Flatiron School's Learn.co online learning platform, and pay $13 million to lease it. This was widely covered by publications including Inside Higher Ed, Bloomberg, EdSurge and Fast Company.
• DC Inno looked at Launch Academy’s failed attempt to launch Prism Shift, an all women’s coding bootcamp in DC. Staff reported that there wasn't enough interest in the program for it to launch due to a turbulent year in D.C.’s coding academy and education programming landscape.
• According to the Triad Business Journal, Coder Foundry filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December and has now closed. It’s a school for computer programming based in Kernersville, North Carolina, with campuses in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York City.
• Galvanize has a new CEO – Al Rosabal. He was most recently with National CineMedia, serving as the city’s Chief Technology Officer for the last decade, and replaces Jim Deters, who stepped down last year.
• Business Insider announced that RED Academy has launched a work-study program for international students to provide more diverse talent to Canada’s tech sector.
• HR Dive profiled Rowdy Orbit Impact, a coding bootcamp which trains African American and Latinx ex-prisoners for programming and tech jobs. The article also mentioned that websites like Glassdoor are banning job posts which discriminate against applicants with criminal records.
   

New Bootcamps in January 2018

• Elewa Education, Brussels, Belgium
• MUKTEK Academy, Mexico City, Mexico
• EDIT, Porto and Lisbon, Portugal and Madrid, Spain
   

Favorite Pieces on the Blog

Lauren Stewart

• Lauren enjoyed researching a piece called “Changing the Face of the Tech Industry.” It digs into the current landscape of the diversity in the tech industry and looks at how coding bootcamps are poised to help change the face of tech in 2018.

Liz Eggleston

• Liz was excited to publish the latest Course Report Outcomes and Demographics report, which provides readers with real data from graduates of bootcamps. We surveyed 1450 bootcamp grads, asked about who they are and what sort of success they’ve seen after they graduated. Read about average salaries, salary increases, student backgrounds, and how long it takes to find a job.

Imogen Crispe

• Imogen enjoyed reading a piece Liz did with a LinkedIn Engineer, Neha Jain, who mentors Holberton students! She had some great things to say about Holberton students, explained why she wants to give back to the community, and gave some tips for new developers. Neha also talks about the community for mothers in tech, PiMothers!
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FURTHER READING/LISTENING

• 2017 End of Year News Roundup + Podcast
• November 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• October 2017 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

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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.