Our News Alerts were non-stop this month (and not just because Karlie Kloss is a new judge on Project Runway). Fullstack Academy was acquired in a deal worth potentially ~$50M, 3 pieces of legislation made their way through Congress, and 9 new bootcamps launched (don’t worry, we added them to Course Report).
Bootcamp Alumni in the News
- Built in Chicago highlights 4 women who have achieved success in the tech industry in Chicago after graduating from bootcamps.
- The NY Post profiles more “mature” bootcampers who have switched careers – great advice from Meredith Hamilton and Kevin Regan (both went to General Assembly UX Design), and Marie Sono who learned to code at Flatiron School.
- In a blog post on The Outline.com, a Flatiron School grad, Sophie Helf, writes about finishing Flatiron School after suffering a harrowing accident in New York.
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KUTV profiles a graduate of Utah bootcamp Bottega, CDA Press and the Concord Monitor profile a graduate of Georgia Tech Bootcamp, and TechCrunch reports that twin brothers (Timur went to App Academy; Artur when to Hack Reactor) were accepted to Y Combinator.
Is the Job Market Saturated?
- Lifehacker Australia says yes but has no evidence to support the claim and still recommends you go to a bootcamp.
- Tech Republic writes about a Glassdoor report showing that the average salary for data scientists has seen a 1.4% decline, attributed to the newly high supply of data science job seekers.
- Yahoo Finance looks at stats from a Hired.com survey which reports that 57% of employers would consider hiring a bootcamp graduate for an open role, while just 7% said of employers said they would not.
- Delaware Business Times reports that M&T Bank in Wilmington, Delaware plans to hire hundreds of technologists over the next few years, and will partner with organizations like Zip Code Wilmington to recruit software developers.
- The Community Impact Newspaper highlights how big tech companies in Austin like Dell, IBM, and Apple are hiring, and that many of these tech jobs don’t require a bachelor’s degree – mentions Austin Coding Academy as an option for people looking to level up and move into higher earning positions.
Updates on Income Share Agreements
- The co-founder of Leif (a company that services ISAs), Francis Larson, has launched his own coding bootcamp called Modern Labor in San Francisco. In addition to offering Income Sharing Agreements, Modern Labor also pays students a stipend of $2000 per month for the 5 months of the course.
- According to Technically DC, Flatiron School’s ISA is now available in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and Washington DC.
- The California Aggie looked at the loan debt crisis in the US through the lens of Lambda School’s ISA, and the St. Petersburg Catalyst offered another potential use case for ISAs – a Startup in Tampa called Defynance which wants to pay off people’s student loans for them, and then share their income for a set period of time.
Legislation around Coding Bootcamps
- Updates on 3 pieces of Legislation:
- A California bill from Republican Assemblyman Randy Voepel failed to pass in the California State Senate last month, but has now been approved, providing funds to enable students and their universities to enter income-share agreements.
- A second ISA bill was introduced by Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) in response to the reports of bribery in the university systems. We’ll update you on that next month if there’s any movement.
- Not about ISAs, but a San Francisco Assemblyman introduced Assembly Bill 1340 to help regulate the for-profit education industry. This would test the value of for-profit programs by comparing the ratio of student debt to the salaries of graduates, and would shut down imbalanced programs that leave students with overwhelming payments.
- The Brookings Institute offers advice for governors to help residents of their states keep their skills fresh during economic changes like automation and AI.
Diversity in Tech
- Barrons.com looks at the revival of Detroit’s economy, mentioning coding bootcamp Grand Circus, which is part of Dan Gilbert’s portfolio of companies
- The Forbes Technology Council shared a number of ways to make a more diverse workplace, including things like removing gender, race, and ethnicity from resumes, hiring people with a range of backgrounds, and being open to hiring from coding bootcamps.
- According to the Boston Globe, Hack Diversity, an initiative in Boston to provide provides internships and mentoring programs for talented students at community colleges, public universities, and coding bootcamps, has received a $75,000 grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
- Microsoft is partnering with local education companies to run free data science bootcamps in the UK with the goal of making tech jobs more accessible to women.
- The University of Denver’s Center for Professional Development (a Trilogy bootcamp) will run a 24-week Women’s Coding bootcamp.
- Flatiron School talks in UK Tech News about the importance of diversity in Tech and Technically DC reports that Flatiron School is partnering with SeatGeek to offer $200,000 in scholarships for women pursuing tech education.
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Forbes reports that Lambda School will partner with Unusual Ventures to provide 6-week online coding courses to computer science students from historically black colleges and universities, including Howard University, Hampton University, and Alabama A&M University. They will participate in 10- to 12-week internships at tech companies like Zola, DataStax, zScaler, and Harness. And eLEarninginside profiles Lambda School’s Summer Hackers Scholarship for women.
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Yes Magazine profiles ReDI School, a coding program for refugees in Germany, with a focus on women and diversity.
- Galvanize is launching a new scholarship for veterans called the Samsung Veterans Fund, which has $300,000 available in awards for Veterans.
- Tech Cabal looks at the history of women in tech in Africa, with a specific focus on Andela and the GirlLEAD project.
Free Bootcamps in the News
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NewForce is a 6-week free software coding bootcamp in West Virginia (via Herald Dispatch).
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Fortune published a new profile of 42 code school, a free coding bootcamp with campuses in Paris and San Francisco. Founder Xavier Niel mentions that 42 in California has struggled to fill capacity because “When you are tuition-free, people think it is a fraud.”
- KCUR profiles LaunchCode, which was started by a co-founder of Square and has campuses in St Louis and Kansas City, and offers free evening coding classes (listen to the full story here).
- Hallmark University is launching a free cybersecurity bootcamp in Austin, called the East Side Cyber Force Prime program.
Advice: Choosing & Succeeding at Bootcamp
Bootcamp vs College: The Debate Continues...
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BC Business profiles the multiple different ways that people can get a technology education including universities, technical colleges, and coding bootcamps.
- IDG Connect offers advice from an employer (the Chief Product Officer at Sailpoint). He says, “You don't need a deep technical background to be successful in IT, so a bootcamp is probably enough for most IT roles. If you're interested in doing advanced programming or taking on a senior architect role, a computer science degree might be helpful. It depends on what you're trying to do with your career. IT is a broad field, and there's room for both types of backgrounds to succeed.”
- Nate Swanner from Dice reports that at the most recent American Workforce Policy Advisory Board Meeting, Tim Cook of Apple says “about half of our U.S. employees last year were people that did not have a four-year degree.”
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Analytics India Magazine looks at whether Data Science bootcamps are a good way to break into a data science career. Their final piece of advice is: “Don’t completely rely on a bootcamp, get the required degrees and build a resume with a significant number of projects and experiences.”
- Rosalie Chan from Business Insider took a look at how much people can make in different software engineering jobs after a coding bootcamp or CS degree. Hired conducted a survey of 700 developers across the country and put together this list, from Front End Engineers making $140,000 in SF to Blockchain Engineers making $155,000. The Register UK also wrote about this Hired survey, focusing on the demand for blockchain engineers.
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Tech Republic looks at how to recruit a college grad, looking at what skills companies should focus on when hiring people for technical roles – but suggests employers look at tech bootcamps...
Bootcamp Updates
New coding bootcamps
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Sputnik, a UX design and software dev bootcamp in London, UK
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Rambutan Code Academy, a full stack web development bootcamp in Sabah, Malaysia
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Buildschool is a free, 16-week, full-time iOS Development bootcamp in San Francisco
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Codenotch hosts 12-week full-time, and 6-month part-time web and mobile Development bootcamps in Madrid, Spain
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Xperian School is a 12-week UX design bootcamp that combines on and offline learning at their Hyderabad, India
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Pluralsight, an online learning platform
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Skills Abroad, a front end development bootcamp where students learn to code while traveling to and spending time in four different cities around the world
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Austin Sales Academy is a 3 to 6-week online sales training bootcamp based in Austin, Texas
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She Codes Plus is a 6-week, 36-hour full stack web development bootcamp for women in Lisbon, Portugal
Our Favorites from the Course Report Blog:
Liz put together a comparison of the costs of online coding bootcamps in March. The landscape of online coding bootcamps is vast – ranging from $30/month subscriptions to full-time bootcamps that cost $20,000. It’s complicated to understand how much you should be paying for an online bootcamp and this roundup should help!
Imogen enjoyed interviewing a woman who learned to code part time at Hackbright Academy, while balancing a full-time job. Takia shared what it was like learning in an all-women’s coding bootcamp, how her boss let her be flexible with her days off so she had time to study, and how she landed an awesome apprenticeship at Twilio, a cloud communications platform!
FURTHER LISTENING
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