The need for programmers is becoming more and more prevalent in our world today; intensive coding schools, or "bootcamps," have been coming to answer that call. These schools are national, international and are making a difference in not only the tech communities that surround them, but the lives of the people who join them. IronHack is among the ranks of those schools based internationally and we had the chance to speak to one of their recent graduates, Christina Douzmanian.
IronHack is an eight-week coding program that started in Madrid, Spain. Colleagues and founders Ariel Quinones and Gonzalo Manrique founded IronHack thanks to a project the two were working on. They saw the need for programmers growing, particularly in startups. So in 2013, the pair worked together once more, in the midst of an economic crisis, and created one of Europe's most reknowned coding schools.
The two have now extended their reach to both Barcelona, Spain, and just this past January, Miami, Florida. All courses outside of Madrid are taught in English by programmers from companies like Yahoo, Spotify, eBay and more. They teach the most common coding languages for web development, in addition to offering another course in iOS coding. The Miami location is currently only teaching the web development course, but will implement the iOS course in June of 2016.
Douzmanian, however, didn't always dream of being a programmer. In fact, she spent most of her life in the food service industry, working in the local hotels and restaurants of Miami. She's dubbed herself an "avid internet user," discovering her passion for coding via Reddit. The post announced that Harvard was releasing their most popular course to the public online for free, Intro to Computer Science via edX.
She decided to check out the course for herself, eventually discovering coding schools. "I heard about IronHack because they were coming to Miami...I heard about it through a friend and she told me that they offer scholarships for women." Douzmanian explained, "I applied to a few coding schools, got into a few; they're all really expensive, and all required me to go to New York or San Francisco and essentially make no money for three months. I couldn't figure out a way that I'd be able to afford it. And then I heard about IronHack..."
At this point in time, IronHack was still only in Madrid and Barcelona and eventually coming to Miami. Once she realized that there was a location in Barcelona, the instantly contacted her family who lives overseas only a few hours away from the location. "I figured I could take a chance on it, my parents were delighted to have me close by, so I applied for IronHack and I got in; low and behold, three weeks later, I was to flying to Barcelona to go to coding school." She said.
"The best part of the program is the people that you meet who are doing this really hard, intensive program with you." Of her cohort, Douzmanian recalls that she and only three of them were from Spain, two were from the US, and others were from Russia, Poland and Germany. The Barcelona location is possibly the most international location as in the past they've also had students from China, Thailand, England and Canada.
She also recounts some of her struggles during the program, such as not having people she knew and having very little coding experience compared to her peers. But it didn't take her long to feel like she belonged. Douzmanian was part of the full-time program, working five days a week from 9 am to 9 pm. Most of her peers were programmers and engineers with connections to the tech industry, she had neither of these things. "I had been working in the food service industry for 10 years. For me, it felt like it was an accident, like I shouldn't have been let in. But it never felt like I was behind, it never felt like they paid less attention to me because I didn't have coding experience. I was supported, by my colleagues and by the teachers and by the staff."
Emotional support isn't the only thing that IronHack offers. Career support is a huge part of what makes the students of these programs successful. "They made a huge effort to connect us to the local tech community of Barcelona. They took us to MeetUps and events, we toured different tech companies..." Douzmanian said. In addition to encouraging contacts, IronHack's last week of the program is dubbed Career Week, teaching students how to search for jobs by giving them a strategy, mock interviews, and coding tests.
What the students truly work for is their own projects. IronHack's mantra is "learn by doing," which is exactly what their students do. Each student picks something they would like to do and develop on the web. Some of the practice they have entails group work, other exercises require working alone. It's all about creating programmers who are well rounded and prepared to move as quickly as their industry does.
Douzmanian's project was actually inspired by "Made in New York." One of her colleagues showed her this as she had plans to move to New York after IronHack and the website was a good way to help her find a job. The website is now partnered with New York City and is a digital map pinpointing different startups, investors and co-working spaces. It provided information about the company and hiring opportunities at the click of a button; Douzmanian wanted to put her own spin on this.
"I realized with Miami's booming startup scene, we had nothing like that," she explained, "I heard a lot about there being a lot of outsourcing for Miami tech companies, them hiring people from Austin...looking in San Francisco. And I thought, why not make it so that it's the jobs and the companies and the tech scene are more visible and accessible to the community? So I made a digital map of Miami that would essentially show all the companies and co-working spaces, places that were hiring and also allowed users to create profiles for not only themselves, but their companies if they were hiring."
She called her project "Mapped in Miami" and was selected in the top five of her cohort. "One of the judges told me he had actually been part of a panel in Tel Aviv that had judged a project similar to that one where it was a digital map of Tel Aviv. He said 'Yeah, the guy who created the map of Tel Aviv got 12 million euros [or something like that], to boost the tech scene in Tel Aviv.'" She mentioned that in the beginning, she wanted to do a group project related to food, but shortly realized after, "It's cooler and it's more exciting to do something that you're really passionate about...I care that Miami, all of the young people I know, They would rather work as a bartender because the money is better than working in an entry-level job in an office. I care that we're not, there' nothing keeping young people here. It's a serious loss to have all the talented young people move to LA or New York or San Francisco. We should be keeping them here because if not, the city is never going to progress...We have a lot of incredibly intelligent people, people who speak two or three languages, why wouldn't they learn to code? So I didn't understand why the tech scene wasn't benefiting the people of Miami. I wanted to do something that would help people and that would also showcase my new skills."
Douzmanian's website is currently down to the public, but she hasn't stopped her work since her graduation. Shortly after leaving the program, she decided to work for IronHack's Miami location, and has recently been hired by a company in Utah through IronHack's partner Learn to Code. Not only is she going to be able to support herself even more with her new job, but she'll also be able to accomplish her dream of being able to work from home and traveling the world.
"Knowing how to make a very simple page isn't going to get you a job. IronHack not only helped me in terms of basic skills that are needed for any development job, but also, they put me in the community." Douzmanian said, "I would have never had access to the tech community if it hadn't been for IronHack...Now I not only have access to job opportunities, but I'm also friends and intertwined with a lot of people who are active in the tech community now...A year ago, I didn’t know anyone in the tech community, now I know hundreds of people; that's something I wouldn't have achieved without IronHack."
For those wanting to enter the field, the best place to start, according to Douzmanian, is to look up free online tutorials. Harvard's course via edX or CodeCademy are both reputable places to begin learning. She also notes that it's incredibly difficult to learn code entirely independently unless support and connections are already made.
Coding schools like IronHack offer a plethora of different options for students who decide to join them. In a very short amount of time, students are provided with the most current scripting languages, connections to their local tech communities and the support that come along with fining and securing a job. But these coding schools require sacrifice. They are expensive and they are full time. Scholarships are available, but it requires the student to give up their day job in order to focus entirely on the program. These kinds of schools are meant for people who truly want to be programmers and who are willing to dedicate the rest of their lives to the art.
IronHack is an application process, but even those with little coding experience like Douzmanian can and are accepted. Wanting to taste their process? IronHack is offering two free workshops in the near future in both Miami and Fort Lauderdale. The two workshops will both be an intro to Ruby on Rails. For more information on IronHack and the courses they offer, check out their official website.
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