April 2020 Coding Bootcamp News Roundup

Table of Contents

• Bootcamps Responding to Coronavirus
• The Future of Education and Work Post-COVID-19
• Acquisitions & Fundraises
• Now’s the Time to Upskill
• Learning to Code Online
• Regulatory News
• Bridging the Tech Gap
• Tech Jobs for Bootcamp Grads
• New Coding Bootcamps + Campuses + Courses
• Our Favorite April Pieces on the Course Report Blog

As much of the world sheltered in place this April, we’re sharing musings about the future of work and how alternative education like coding bootcamps can help with reskilling. And we’ve continued keeping tabs on how coding bootcamps are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, plus all the new hardship scholarships and initiatives now available. In addition to news about COVID-19, April still brought news of fundraises, new university coding bootcamps, and 4 new schools in the Course Report directory!

Curious about what happened in March? Check out last month’s episode with the biggest news from March 2020.

Bootcamps Responding to Coronavirus

• BetaKit reports that Lighthouse Labs in Canada had to let go of 14 employees, and that Vancouver-based Red Academy closed its doors entirely due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

• EdSurge reports that Lambda School cut staff, and that the Lambda School executive team will take a 15% pay cut including CEO and co-founder Austen Allred. 

• Geekwire reported this month that Coding Dojo in Bellevue, Washington has also trimmed back its staffing, letting go of 7 staff members and furloughing 14 others.

• Fast Company rounded up 4 volunteer projects that software engineers can help with now.

• The Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer announced that General Assembly will be providing training for workforce development.

• In an open letter, Lighthouse Labs and Juno College of Technology ask the Government of Canada to include Private Career Colleges in New COVID-19 Student Support Measures. 

The Future of Education and Work Post-COVID-19

• Reuters reports that a record 26.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment since mid-March. This number will have a profound impact on education and the future of work, as companies will quickly replace many human jobs with technology.

• EdSurge drives home that “upskilling workers to compete in a more technology-driven job market—and developing human skills to augment or work alongside smart machines—is now even more of an imperative.” With higher ed reeling from moving on-campus learning online and seeing a loss of internships and tuition assistance programs, people may be more inclined to invest their time and money into online training courses that blend learning with working.

• EdSurge reports that during this pandemic, more than 70 percent of online education companies like Khan Academy and Edmodo are offering free or discounted tools. The rise in traffic is posing a potential problem because servers costs rise as traffic does and so do third-party tool costs.

• IT-Online interviewed Riaz Moola, CEO and founder of HyperionDev on the tech skills people should learn now, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and honing digital collaboration skills for virtual workspaces. 

• Adam Enbar, CEO of Flatiron School, was included in a Fast Company article about all the things COVID-19 will change forever change, saying that “no ed-tech tool or platform can or should replicate the in-person classroom; tech’s role is to create new experiences altogether.”

• EdSurge published a piece about the difference between remote learning and online learning. 

Acquisitions & Fundraises

• Tech.EU reports that Irish edtech startup Code Institute raised €1.2 million to expand online coding courses. The round was led by Kernel Capital, through the Bank of Ireland Kernel Growth Funds, and Infinity Capital. 

• Naspers told Bloomberg in April that they are on the lookout for acquisitions in the online education space, even as the global economy seems to be slowing to a stop. Naspers owns Udemy and has invested in Codecademy in the U.S.

Now’s the Time to Upskill

• HR Dive did a thorough report about the coding bootcamps that have been offering corporate training over the years, and how companies are starting to reconsider bootcamps as reskilling and training talent is now a huge corporate priority. 

• EdSurge reported that new startup Learn In raised $3.5 million in order to help employers finance and allocate time for training their current employees. Learn In has been created by the co-founders of the corporate learning platform Degreed. 

• Code Nation is now offering their online classes as an opportunity for employers to upskill rather than furlough employees.

Learning to Code Online

• Business Insider’s 10 steps anyone can take to teach themselves to code at home with advice from the VP of Flatiron School and the CEO of Women Who Code. 

• Apartment Therapy included Coursera, edX, Khan Academy, and Codecademy in its recent roundup of free online courses.

• According to a Inquirer.Net, Coursera has made nearly 4,000 courses totally free to help unemployed workers during this time. 

• Coding Ninjas is offering a 21-day coding challenge with a 50% tuition refund for those who complete the challenge.

• Business Insider posted a list of the top 15 coding languages with the highest salaries. The programming language associated with the highest salaries is Perl, which has an average global salary of $84K. The second-highest programming language is Scala with an average salary of $77K, and the third-highest paying language is Go at an average global salary of $72K. 

• A Tech Republic article says that while JavaScript and Java are the most popular programming languages among organizations, they are actually two of the least favored languages, according to professional developers. Python was the clear crowd favorite amongst most of these developers. 

• Fast Company reports that the old computer programming language COBOL is still being used by state unemployment offices. Due to the dramatic rise in unemployment claims being filed right now due to the pandemic, the unemployment offices are desperately seeking engineers who know COBOL. Now might also be a great time to learn low level programming languages!

• If you’re looking for an online bootcamp right now to change your career, Liz Eggleston of Course Report talked to U.S. News and World Report about whether this is a good time to enroll at a coding bootcamp and how to navigate through all of your options and payment plans. 

Regulatory News

• Forbes reported that Lambda School released its student outcomes report this month.

Bridging the Tech Gap

• Noa Khamallah, co-founder of Charge, wrote in Forbes this month about why coding is the great social equalizer.

• For their Gender Equity in Tech series, Technical.ly interviewed Tonia Dudley, the senior advisor at the cyber security firm Cofense, for advice on how women can break into tech today.

Tech Jobs for Bootcamp Grads

• We just published a piece on the Course Report blog that takes you through the 4 steps to becoming a remote developer. 

• In Money, career coach & consultant Latesha Byrd has a few tips for those on the job hunt right now during the pandemic. 

• This month, we spoke with Thinkful’s Career Coach Brenda Bridges on why networking online is so crucial these days and the easiest ways to get started. 

• Networking is a great way to find mentors, and Analytics India Mag just published a piece about the importance of finding a data science mentor, especially if you’re new to the data science field. 

• If you’re overwhelmed by your job search, check out Flatiron School’s Career Prep course. This course is totally free and covers everything you need to know to land a new job in tech.

New Coding Bootcamps + Campuses + Courses

• In UK’s Leeds and Manchester area, Yorkshire Post reports that coding bootcamp Northcoders has launched a remote 8-week coding course to help those in need either upskill or career-change.

• Fullstack Academy has partnered with Louisiana State University and California Polytechnic State University to offer a live online cyber security coding bootcamps. 

• The New Indian Express reports that The Indian Institute of Technology Madras Digital Skills Academy has launched a new cyber security bootcamp called Certified Cyber Warriors. 

In April, we added these 4 new bootcamps to the Course Report directory:

• WP Code Camp

• Data Scientest

• Manzoor the Trainer (MTT)

• Coders in Hoods

Our Favorite April Pieces on the Course Report Blog

Liz’s favorite piece this month was her Q&A with Nicholas Roberts from ServiceNow. ServiceNow is a cloud-based digital workflow company and they have developed an internship program specifically for bootcamp grads who are military veterans! ServiceNow is still hiring during the COVID pandemic!

Jess’s favorite blog piece was with former teacher and General Assembly alumni Sarah who is now working remotely as a Junior IT Engineer for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Sarah has this advice for people who are unemployed and thinking of making a leap into tech: “This is a great time to take a negative situation and put a positive spin on it. Do something for yourself. Invest in yourself. You're never going to have more time than you have right now.”