RGSoC in a Coaching Company - Part 1
Every year, our students work from the most varied places: university campuses, coworking spaces or coaching companies… Even though you can work on RGSoC from anywhere, coaching companies not only provide the space for our students to work, but also coaching support. We could be here talking about all the benefits from being a coaching company or a student at a company, but we thought it would be best for you learn from the students’ and the coaching companies’ own words. And to make things more interesting, there are pictures of the workspaces too! :)
Before we jump into that, we just wanted to announce our new Coaching Companies page on our website. This is the least we can do to show them how much we appreciate their support. Thank you!
And now, time for the sneak peek! :)
RubyCats and CodeQuest
(Warsaw, Poland)
Iza and Kinga at Code Quest! (Image: Iza and Kinga)
Iza and Kinga
“There are some nice work spaces in Warsaw, for example Google Campus, which we truly admire, but none of them could compare to the coaching company. And we are honored to have an amazing one - Code Quest! It’s not only about having a desk to sit at and coaches nearby. It’s a boost of energy in the morning, when you meet all of the amazing people, that are a part of Code Quest. It’s a chance to see, how a software house works. It’s an amazing opportunity see everything from the inside, not just look in from the outside. Thank you, Code Quest!”
Magda from CodeQuest
“We love Rails community and we’re proud to be a part of it. That’s why at codequest we support events like Rails Girls workshops and Rails Girls Summer of Code. Next to open source collaboration, such events are our small brick to build awesome environment we are working in. And it’s a pleasure to work with such people as RubyCats Iza and Kinga!”
LoadToCode and SoundCloud
(Berlin, Germany)
Thea and Marie at SoundCloud! (Image: Thea and Marie)
Thea & Marie
“Being part of a Coaching Company means:
- Having real-life support
- Seeing and being surrounded by rolemodels (on the way to being a programmer, being surrounded by programmers). Also, you are surrounded by so many experts and you can find them all over the work place! :)
- Having structure and a well separated work/learning and living-place for more effective learning. This makes a big difference concerning motivation and for a better work life balance.
- Contacts (having small or longer talks in the cafeteria with people from Soundcloud is not only inspiring but also a way to get to know more people working in the field).
- Best possibility to check whether you really want to spent your days like this, even though 3 months is a little short, it is good enough to find out if you like what you are doing.
- What could only be better? having a RGSoC-3-month-Hackathon instead of a coaching company ;)”
Duana from SoundCloud
“RGSoC is a way for us to address diversity issues in our industry, contribute to open source and sharpen our mentoring skills-but the biggest reward is seeing how people from such different backgrounds can thrive in code and help us forge a more inclusive and diverse tech culture.”
Echo and The Innovation Village
(Kampala, Uganda)
Naggita and Joannah at The Innovation Village! (Image: Naggita and Joannah)
Naggita and Joannah
“Coaching companies undoubtedly play a big role for the teams doing RGSOC. They give teams the right visibility, mentorship to jump start their career , guidance on the projects they are working on and help them to easily reach the technology community because they already have avenues to great tech meetups , gatherings and communities. The innovation village Kampala has given us incredible visibility in Kampala and without doubt Africa as a whole, we have appeared on one of their TV stations, ( IdeaT V), talking about our involvement in RGSoC and community outreach . We also have access to a tech community that inspires us to jump start our development. We have been introduced to a very significant network of very inspiring people. These people have given us ideas, encouraged us and mentored us. Some have inspired us to chase our dreams and become better engineers. It has helped us in becoming better speakers by giving us a platform to speak at an event. They have given us for all events we want to do as a team. It has really bent its programs to accommodate our suggestions on possible tech gatherings and involvements so that we can fully achieve one of our goals for RGSOC, community involvement.”
Japheth from Innovation Village
“Supporting the RGSoC defines why we set up The Innovation Village as a destination of ideas. Supporting RGSoC becomes a perfect opportunity for us to collaborate globally with partners who have significant experience that we can customize locally as we give an opportunity to brilliant girls to bless the world with their ingenuity.
All beginnings have the potential of immense possibilities. As we interact with the RGSoC, it might appear as if they are benefiting from us and yet we are benefiting more from them by giving them an environment they can bring ideas to life. Out of a simple conversations with the the ladies I could see possibilities of a series of projects they could bring to life with the proper mentorship.
The best thing about being part of RGSoC is being in the presence of possibilities. My experience so far is this is about raising to challenges through viable solutions driven by tech. Being part of RGSoC brings the best opportunity for this given it allows the global perspective to local talent who can be inspired to become local change-makers to everyday issues.”
KaUlah and Rebased
(Warsaw, Poland)
Ula and Katarzyna at Rebased! (Image: Ula and Katarzyna)
Katarzyna and Ula
“We meet our coaches every day, not only when we need some advice, but also just to say hi. Thanks to that we can learn not only from our experience but also by watching real developers at work. We have our own working space, with our desks, whiteboard and some fun stuff. We can see how IT company works from inside, how everyday job looks like. Moreover, we can take part in companies internal trainings which is very insightful.”
Piotr from Rebased
“Rebased is super happy to be an RGSoC coaching company for the third year running; we strongly believe in helping underrepresented people find their way in tech and fostering diversity in open source. Being able to help a team discover the joys of programming in a welcoming, non-stressful atmosphere on a worthwhile project (and shipping the code to production!) is always a great experience.”
Vegemite and Culture Amp
(Melbourne, Australia)
Ramya and Kylie at Culture Amp! (Image: Ramya and Kylie)
Ramya and Kylie
“The best part of having a coaching company is that we get to experience working in a professional environment. We’ve had the opportunity to pair program with coaches, which helps with understanding the requirements of what we’re working on, and how to make code more efficient. Our coaches have such amazing brains, we’re wondering when do we start thinking like that?
How Rails Girls Summer Of Code helps us to learn to code is that it is not just about learning code, it’s about having best practices such as daily standups, test driven development, well maintained code, and elegant solutions. One of the things that we love about Culture Amp is that they’re big on fostering community - the people who work here organise, take part in and speak at events. Culture Amp have been very welcoming, and we’ve taken part in their Conference Culture X Design, which was the first conference Ramya has ever been to.
Culture Amp have helped us jumpstart our career in software development by challenging us to ask the right questions in order to get the answers we need, and to learn how to find essential information. Their lunchtime Brown Bag sessions on tech topics such as Github and Docker have given us real world education in issues that affect them. We’ve also noticed that our open source contribution graphs on Github are so much greener! It’s been a great opportunity for networking and meeting people within the company, and finding out about the culture of a company that cares greatly about what culture is.”
Jo Cranford, coach from Culture Amp
“Diversity is a huge issue in technical teams - women are generally underrepresented, particularly in engineering roles. Our research shows that more diverse teams not only perform better, but are more inclusive and generally nicer places to work. In our own teams, we are very conscious of what we can do to create an inclusive work environment for everybody, and we also carry out research into diversity and inclusion across other companies. It’s a really important issue for us, and one that we actively work on!
As an organisation, Rails Girls is making a real difference - one of our engineers got her start in Ruby at a past Rails Girls event. We have sponsored Rails Girls events in Australia over the last eighteen months, and our engineers are encouraged to join both the local events and summer of code as coaches, and supported in doing so. We have also supported other local events including SheHacks. As a company we are continuing to look for opportunities to support and help encourage diversity within the community.”