People keep on talking about us - check out July's roundup below!
Coding Bootcamp Scholarships for Women
Our very own Tatiana has been working tirelessly to get the word out about her list of coding bootcamp scholarships specifically geared towards women. At Thinkful, we're all about encouraging more women to get into coding, and we're not alone.
Hadiza Mohammad from Women Rock Science wrote
Coding bootcamps are eager to have women apply so that more women can get into the tech field.
More information on bootcamps in the US and worldwide check out Thinkful’s bootcamp finder.
Kira Newman at Tech Cocktail took an interest as well and said
Tatiana Tylosky recently compiled a list of 16 coding bootcamp scholarships for women on the blog at Thinkful, an online technology education site.
Women in tech, or the lack thereof, is a familiar conversation these days - particularly in the startup world. We're working hard to change that.
Quirky Approaches to the Job Search
We've seen and heard and witnessed all kinds of out-of-the-box approaches to the job search. But no one impressed us more than Mark, our curriculum developer, who created a custom webpage to go hand-in-hand with his formal application to Thinkful.
Steph Walden at Mashable agreed and included Mark in a story she did about this very topic. Steph writes
For candidates seeking a job in programming or design, one above-and-beyond tactic is to create an eye-catching landing page, website or infographic that specifically showcases your skills. Mark McDonald, curriculum developer at Thinkful, landed his job using such an approach: He wanted to work at a technology company that aligned with his interests and values, so after narrowing down his list to a select few organizations, he built a webpage for each, and formally applied. The strategy got him call backs to every single company he applied to, including Google, Khan Academy, Clever and Thinkful.
Check out the webpage Mark built for us here!
Getting More Veterans into Tech
Along with helping to bring more women into tech, Tatiana has also been focusing on getting more Army veterans involved. She's been talking to a few Vets about their experiences working in tech after the military and learning different processes to help the transition from the military into the tech startup world easier.
Olivia Amter at RideScout, an app created by Army veterans to help locate transportation options in various cities, ran a piece that Tatiana wrote about available coding programs for Vets. The article states
In the midst of one of the highest unemployment rates for military veterans some amazing organizations and people have found ways to make a difference by helping military veterans succeed in the tech startup world.
Vets if you're interested in picking up some new skills, let us know. We're here to help!
Speed Without Drag @ PyData Berlin
PyData is an annual event that brings together users and developers interested in learning and sharing tips for working in Python. Saul gave an awesome talk about the different available and future options Python developers have to speed their (numerical) code without having to write the code in other languages. It's all about seamless optimization.
The people, they're talking all about Thinkful! Check out June's roundup:
June 2
Stephanie Walden at Mashable on "Why Today's College Graduates Must Be Self-Sufficient"
Stephanie writes
For recent college graduates, the transition to the working world after years of academia can be a shock to the system — and today's employers expect junior hires to hit the ground running.
Our CEO, Darrell, was interviewed and said that "it's a misperception that millennials are more demanding of their employers. What's actually going on is that today's workers expect to spend their entire lives connected to the job. As a result, they expect something in return."
June 4
Katelyn Bogucki at HuffPo Code announced our (and the world's) inaugural Swift course: "Did iOS Development Just Get A lot Simpler?"
In addition to the resources that Apple has provided, Thinkful, an on-line learning platform, launched a landing page for “The world’s first Swift course” on Monday night.
Like any tech company, our entire team tuned in to watch the live stream of Apple's WWDC conference in San Francisco. Unlike most tech companies, we launched a course in Swift, the new programming language that Apple announced at the conference, in just a few hours following the news. It was a huge day for us as we were the very first to announce classes in the new language!
June 4
Daniel Eran Dilger of Apple Insider: "Apple's Top Secret Swift Language Grew from Work to Sustain Objective C, Which It Now Aims to Replace"
Daniel discussed Thinkful's Swift course:
Thinkful, an education startup focused on mentor-led programming education, has already announced plans to offer a course on developing in Swift, in a program that begins July 16.
June 5
Fast Company's Ariel Schwartz on the next cohort of Thiel Fellows: "Meet the Next 20 Genius Kids Getting $100,000 From Peter Thiel to Ditch College"
Ariel introduced the next class of Thiel Fellows while also analyzing what past Fellows are doing. She mentioned our Co-Founder Dan and said
Among the most successful past fellows are Dan Friedman, the cofounder of a company called Thinkful that helps mid-career professionals who want to transition into more technical careers...
June 16
Kia Kokalitcheva of VentureBeat on: "Hack Reactor is Launching An Online Coding Bootcamp, But You Still Need to Quit Life to Do It"
Interestingly, Hack Reactor's program is designed to be as close to an in-person course as possible, which is similar to our model which relies heavily on our one-on-one mentorship for all students. We were mentioned in this article as an alternative online coding program:
While there are other online coding programs, such as Tealeaf Academy and Thinkful, this appears to be the first online version of an in-person program, at least among the San Francisco-based bootcamps.
June 19
Kathleen O'Brien wrote a piece for NationSwell: "Inside the $100,000 Deal to Skip College and Start A Company Instead"
Kathleen mentioned Co-Founder Dan writing
Undoubtedly, being a Thiel Fellow becomes more appealing when once you start looking at the success of former program participants. For instance, Dan Friedman is now the co-founder of a company called Thinkful which works with mid-career professionals who want to switch to technical careers.
June 23
Jennifer Berry contributed to Yahoo! Education: "Degrees That Might Be A Waste of Money"
Jennifer talks about how to make educational investments count and how to avoid wasting your money on dead-end degrees.
Our CEO, Darrell Silver, was interviewed and explained
What happens to a lot of [college students] is they choose a major based entirely on what they're interested in today, not giving any thought to how difficult it will be to get a job after college.
June 24
Daniel Earle of The Muse: "The Programming Language You Should Learn (Even If You're Not A Developer)"
Daniel explains why learning Swift makes job candidates more appealing to potential employers. He mentions Thinkful's course writing
Thinkful, an online school that teaches programming, recently polled its iOS teachers and students to figure out the right time for non-engineers to take the plunge and learn Swift, and they answered in union: That time is now.
He argued that Swift can give you an "edge" in any job search!
June 25
HuffPo Code's, Katelyn Bogucki, and her weekly Floating Points segment: "PODCAST: Is the Amazon Fire Phone A Flop?"
Katelyn writes
In Season One, we discussed Thinkful because it was the first online education company to announce a Swift language course. Evan Schneider, an engineer at Thinkful joins the Floating Points crew this week to discuss his role at the company and give us insight into their curriculum. Is Thinkful's online, self-paced program a better way to learn how to code than a bootcamp?
Evan, the first engineer at Thinkful, even revealed our most popular course!
June 25
TechCrunch's Sam O'Keefe and Jordan Crook co-authored: "One Month Raises $770k to Teach All Of The Coding"
Thinkful was mentioned as an alternative program to One Month, which is a program that promises to deliver a fully functional web application after just one month.
...One Month is certainly not alone. From Thinkful’s class and mentor model, to Udemy and Udacity’s fully digital courses, to gamified experiences like CodeAcademy or Treehouse, there are more than enough locations to learn coding online.
June 26
Robert McGuire of SkilledUp contributed to VentureBeat: "Hacking the Hacker School: How the Bootcamp is Being Taken to Scale Outside the Coding World"
Robert wrote an in-depth article about bootcamps and what they're bringing to the table. He interviewed our CEO, Darrell, who said:
Bootcamps are scalable as an industry. The sheer volume of bootcamps and the tuition that’s being generated speaks for itself. But, if I was investing in a bootcamp, I would wonder if there can be one winner or if it’s really a local business.
To help those interested in learning more about bootcamps, we created our very own 'Bootcamp Finder' - check it out!
These last few months have definitely been busy. Our team has grown considerably, we've mastered - and were the first - to develop an entire course in Apple's new programming language, Swift, we launched a weekly hang-out for the developer community and CEO Darrell spoke on an awesome education panel at Internet Week!
Additionally, a few of our friends wrote about us along the way and we wanted to share some of what they had to say:
May 14
John Egan at The Huffington Post for "4 Outside-the-Box Career Tips for College Grads" writes
Whether you look at this year's job market for college grads as great or gloomy, it's important to keep in mind that a diploma doesn't automatically translate into employment.
Our CEO, Darrell Silver, shared a few tips for college grads seeking jobs. One of them was to remain productive, especially if they're running into job-search roadblocks. This trick is eventually why Darrell hired Thomas, one of our engineers.
May 15
Matthew Flamm at Crain's NY Business: "Tech Students' New Code"
Matthew interviewed our Co-founder Dan about why more and more students are saying no to four year degrees of college. Dan was quoted saying
When I looked ahead at what I was going to accomplish in the next two years, it seemed very predictable. I was ready to take on bigger challenges that would have a great impact.
May 21
NYC.gov: "Mayor de Blasio Details Tech Investments in City Schools to Close Achievement Gap and Better Prepare all Students for the Workforce"
de Blasio on his investment to bring more technology into the classroom:
The technology in our classrooms has to keep pace with the real world. The ability of our kids to succeed and compete depends on it. That’s why our budget makes strategic investments to link our schools to the innovators that drive our tech ecosystem, creates career pipelines from our high schools to top-tier firms, and exposes kids to the latest technology from the time they start pre-K to the day they graduate college.
Our CEO, Darrell, was quoted in favor of de Blasio's plans saying that his "investment in technology will come back to us hundreds of times over in new jobs, new companies and new inventions we can't even imagine for years to come."
May 22
Anne Babe of Techonomy: "Mobile Panel Looks at How to Engage Students Through Their Devices"
Anne covered this year's M1 Summit in New York where Co-Founder Dan was speaking on a panel about how
Mobile can serve as a powerful tool for building community and engagement among online learners.
Co-founder Dan said, "when it comes to user engagement, the biggest competitor to any online education platform isn't a rival one."
May 24
VentureBeat's Devindra Hardawar: "EdTech Experts and Startup Founders Discuss Tech's Profound Impact on Education"
Devindra moderated our panel at Internet Week NY and writes
The intersection between technology and education today will likely have a profound impact on our future.
CEO Darrell had this to say: "The biggest challenge that we see is how limited access to expertise really is in edtech."
Thinkful on Gigaom: Can "skills grouping" help adults learn better online?
What is "skills grouping" and how are we using it at Thinkful to increase student engagement by 40 percent? Thinkful founder Darrell Silver chatted with Gigaom about how we're searching for ways to make learning online the best experience possible:
If you sign up for a class on Coursera, complete lessons on Codecademy, or use another online learning platform, chances are, you’re mostly going it alone. Yes, students interact with each other on online forums, through peer grading and, occasionally, in offline meetups. But, for the most part, students travel at their own pace with minimal accountability to a group — and, in those models, many students ultimately drop out.
To help keep students engaged and able to progress at their own speed, startup Thinkful is bringing skills grouping or student tracking – an often-debated practice in K-12 education — to the adult world of online learning. Backed by Peter Thiel, the startup charges students $300 a month for a customized program that combines one-on-one tutoring with existing online learning resources from sites like Khan Academy, Treehouse and Codecademy. In an effort to boost completion rates and student motivation, the company will next week launch “Skills Groups” of 10 to 40 students who are organized according to different skill levels.
From PandoDaily: Our CEO on "The future of becoming a job-ready engineer"
Today, Thinkful's co-founder Darrell Silver published a guest-post on PandoDaily about the evolving engineering job market. Here's the full-text of the post:
For the first time, people learning to code can actually do it efficiently part-time. And I don’t mean high-school students with no social life and fewer responsibilities who teach themselves, though that does describe my teenage years. I mean adults with full-time jobs. I mean people whose schedules are full and who can’t afford to quit and pay college tuition at a traditional University.
While much of the marketing around much of the “learn to code” movement focuses on short-term goals, aspiring coders see themselves on a much longer path. To teach themselves, these early adopters are using different education programs at different stages of their development.
There’s a big divide between those who can code and those who cannot. This divide is similar to the difference a generation ago between those comfortable using a computer (typing, virtual files, etc) and everyone else. A burst of innovation in PCs back then means that today computer literacy is a prerequisite for every service-sector job. That kind of change required a lot of training.
As software continues to eat the world, the next wave of computer literacy training is growing right alongside it. Today’s spike in demand for engineers will be tomorrow’s expectation that employees can manage data too large for an Excel spreadsheet, and that everyone automates their own manual tasks. Behind the talk of the skills gap and the craze around sourcing top engineers is a stronger, more durable trend. In the future, the last line of everyone’s resume will include some variant of “python” and “JavaScript” where today it reads “Microsoft Office” and “Excel.”
The tools for all this learning are new, so their impact on education can be hard to see. After all, high-quality alternatives to two-year Masters programs won’t appear overnight. But if you think of lifelong education as an investment for the long-term, as successful adult learners do right now, the future of technology education becomes clear.
For absolute beginners, the most common starting point is Codecademy. Millions of people have jumped into their encouraging, inviting lessons. A personal trainer at our gym wants to barter for a spot in a Thinkful class. Not surprisingly, the trainer got his start on Codecademy. Similarly, fast-growing companies like CodeSchool and Lynda offer students the opportunity to learn during downtime, such as while commuting or over lunch.
But learning alone is slow, difficult, and doing so usually proves demotivating. The lack of personal attention is proving to be the achilles heel for MOOCs, where students who seek help describe the experience as “the blind leading the blind.” This is one of the primary reasons online courses commonly see completion rates of between 5-10 percent. As a result, it’s no surprise to see experimentation with mentorship models similar to those from Thinkful. After all, there’s a reason individuals have directly taught each other for thousands of years.
Most important for learners at this stage is not job-readiness, but rather that students learn how to answer their own questions. When I’m writing code, I have two windows open: my text editor of choice and a Web browser I use to find answers. Proficiency in coding is often as much about identifying gaps in your knowledge, and filling them quickly using Google, as anything else.
The last stage in this new education system is provided by schools like Flatiron School here in New York City and many others opening in cities across the US and abroad. These are mostly offline programs providing short, intense, and expensive crash courses in all things web development. They require you to quit your job and, often, pay over $10,000 in tuition. In addition to the high-quality, hands-on education that students receive, the secret sauce of these programs comes in their filtering of applicants to only those who are already almost job ready. The majority of these schools’ revenue comes through recruiting fees. This means that applicants are screened for job-readiness in high-paid engineering positions as much as anything else.
These new learning options aren’t going to replace the elite computer science programs at Columbia or Stanford anytime soon. But even if these schools were affordable the commitment they require isn’t reasonable for most adults. MOOCs are bringing credibility to online learning, but it’s this new set of programs that, when combined, are finally delivering on their central promise: Efficient, accessible and effective online education.
