October 2018 Coding Bootcamp Podcast

Just as coding languages are always changing, things also change very quickly in the coding bootcamp industry! In October we read about two big acquisitions, some fundraises, and partnerships and rivalries between universities and bootcamps. We heard about the interesting backgrounds of some female bootcamp founders, and what demand there is for software developers in the tech industry! There were also articles about companies teaming up with bootcamps and two coding bootcamps going through hardships. Read the summary or listen to the podcast!

Congrats to:

• Lighthouse Labs on celebrating their 5th birthday in October 2018!
• Burlington Code Academy’s, 12-week bootcamp which won the Startup Award at the Vermont Tech Jam in October!
• The president of Suncoast Developers Guild, Toni Warren, who was named in Business Observer Florida’s 40 under 40 list!
• Our coworker James who just welcomed a new baby on October 30th!
   

Funding and Acquisitions

• Trilogy Education acquired online coding bootcamp Firehose Project, and JobTrack, a career services platform.
• The company which owns The Software Guild, LearningHouse was acquired by Wiley Publishing.
• WeWork did not acquire another coding bootcamp. But, Forbes did an overview of WeWork’s push into the education sector mentioning Flatiron School, Mission U, and 2U.
• EdSurge reported that Lambda School, the 30-week online software and coding school, has raised $14 million in a Series A round led by GV.
• The New York Times reports that actress Priyanka Chopra has invested in Holberton School, a 2-year coding school in San Francisco, as part of an $8.2 million round of funding that closed in April.
   

A Look Inside Coding Bootcamps

• Forbes profiled two female bootcamp founders – Corinne Vigreux started Codam College, a free coding school in Amsterdam, and also founded TomTom, the map and navigation platform; and Raffaela Rein who started online coding bootcamp CareerFoundry in Berlin.
• An American Inno reporter went to a Beginners Workshop at Flatiron School and wrote about her experience.
• The Bold Italic looks at how coding bootcamp initiatives like Techtonica and Hackbright Academy are specifically focusing on getting more women into tech.
• ElearningInside profiled Social Hackers Academy, an Athens, Greece-based coding bootcamp for migrants, asylum seekers, and out of work individuals to train for tech jobs.
   

Coding Bootcamps + Colleges

• Melissa Korn from the Wall Street Journal writes about this trend in higher education where colleges and bootcamps are teaming up to offer a more well-rounded education to students.
• Technically Philly recently profiled a couple of students from the LPS Bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania, a Trilogy bootcamp.
• New York City Economic Development Corporation is partnering with Fullstack Academy, a coding bootcamp, and Laguardia Community college to launch a Cyber Bootcamp to increase the number of cyber security professionals in NYC.
• Inside Higher Ed profiles Ryan Craig’s new book about alternatives to college, called A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College, which looks at the threat of disruption coming from coding bootcamps, apprenticeships and staffing firms.
• A post sponsored by PWC in the Guardian profiled a Le Wagon coding bootcamp graduate who started her own business, and compares her experience to CS degree graduates.
• An Inside Sources opinion piece looks at the role coding bootcamps are playing in filling demand for tech skills, and talks about how coding bootcamps, costing a fraction of a four-year college degree, serve as a pathway to success for many people.
   

Businesses Partnering with Bootcamps

• In its latest collaborations with coding bootcamps, Facebook is partnering with Hacktiv8 in Indonesia to offer 15 scholarships for students to take the 12-week immersive coding bootcamp.
• According to Bloomberg, American companies are starting to invest more in worker training amid a tight job market. The reporter talked to Jake Schwartz the CEO of General Assembly about why it’s important for companies to focus on employee upskilling.
• Enterprise Times reported that JP Morgan is now putting employees through code school to learn and become proficient in Python
   

The Job Market After Coding Bootcamp

• Dice looks at how employers are tweaking their requirements to attract more candidates, including accepting bootcamp grads, incentivizing prospective tech employees with wine and dining, paid interviews, accelerated decisions, relaxed interview environments, and upfront money.
• Momentum Learning, a coding school in Durham, North Carolina, wrote a guest post for WRAL TechWire about how students are finding their dream jobs after bootcamp.
• In the first episode of Hackbright Academy’s new podcast, they interview Kathlyn Hart, the founder of Be Brave, Get Paid, a step-by-step salary negotiation bootcamp for women.
   

Bootcamp Announcements

• Origin Code Academy, a 12-week bootcamp and one of San Diego, CA’s few coding schools will close its doors on November 16, 2018 after three years of operating.
• CBS News reports that WozU students are raising concerns about the quality of the curriculum and materials, and about the pressuring sales tactics.
• Elearninginside reports that coding bootcamp App Academy has launched a free online platform for learning to code.
• Express News reported that San Antonio-based Codeup is officially launching an 18-week data science class in February 2019 which will cover Python, statistics, machine learning, and SQL.
• A profile on South African coding bootcamp WeThinkCode_ in IOL Business Report mentioned their plans to expand across Africa with 3 new campuses by 2024.
• Tech Crunch reports on how Codecademy, an online coding learning platform now aims to compete with coding bootcamps with its new Codecademy Pro Intensive – an immersive 6 to 10-week online course with a structured, detailed syllabus, and unlimited access to a pool of mentors.
• NewForce, a 6-month tuition-free coding bootcamp in Cabell County, Huntington, West VA, is launching to train students on in-demand software development skills.
• Egypt Today reports on the launch of Codeaku, Egypt’s first Blockchain bootcamp, which just got accepted to Y Combinator’s Startup School.
   

New Schools

• B9lab, online
• Techtonic Academy, Boulder, Colorado
• Codecool, Budapest, Hungary and Warsaw, Poland
• The DEN, Silicon Valley
• Humind, Paris, France
• NewForce, Huntington, West Virginia
   

Favorite Articles on the Blog

Lauren Stewart

• I really enjoyed catching up with a group of bootcamp alumni three years after they graduated bootcamp. I spoke with graduates of Fullstack Academy, General Assembly, Hack Reactor, and Flatiron School to see how coding bootcamps helped them achieve their goals a few years down the line.

Liz Eggleston

• My favorite piece to work on was a video on demo day at Flatiron School’s Access Labs in Brooklyn! Imogen and I took our camera and talked to a couple of grads about their final projects. Eva and Saige demoed their awesome apps for us and told us all about their new software development jobs!

Imogen Crispe

• I enjoyed working on an interview with the Director of Software Engineering at Progressive Leasing, Kristie Azarela, who hired a graduate from Salt Lake City bootcamp DevMountain! She told us how the woman she hired had a varied background in graphic design and QA which has made her a great addition to the software engineering team, and she hopes to hire more bootcamp grads in the future! It was also great to talk to a woman director of software engineering, who hired a woman bootcamp grad!

 

FURTHER READING

• September 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• August 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast
• July 2018 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup + Podcast

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