RGSoC in a Coaching Company - Part 2
Now that you saw a bit where Echo, RubyCats, LoadToCode, Vegemite and KaUlah work (if you missed it, the blog post is here), it’s time to show you the rest of the coaching companies’ spaces!
Thank you so much for being part of the program! <3
Hackbrighters and GitHub
(San Francisco, USA)
Patricia and Melissa at GitHub! (Image: Patricia and Melissa)
Patricia and Melissa
“Our Coaching Company is Github, located in San Francisco’s South Beach neighborhood, close to San Francisco’s AT&T stadium. The best part about being hosted at a Coaching Company for RGSoC is to be surrounded by fellow software developers. Being immersed in an environment where we’re able to discuss and learn from other developers is priceless to our growth as software engineers. Githubbers have been so warm and welcoming! Githubbers are so willing to lend their expertise. To illustrate, our team gets impromptu seminars from Sam Lambert (https://twitter.com/isamlambert) about distributed systems. We’ve spoken to Ian Olsen about JavaScript and ES6, as well as Lizz Hale about Ruby on Rails. Both Michelle Tilley and Katrina Uychaco have assisted us with learning React. Overall, it’s been a wonderful experience to jumpstart our careers.
As coding apprentices, the technical help and support we’ve gotten has been incredible. The senior engineers also have been really open about how to navigate the culture of the tech industry. They all sympathize with how hard it is to break into industry without a CS background from a fancy school. But they’ve been really helpful with advice about how to meet and introduce yourself to people, as well as point us toward different meetup groups. This is information and insight that you can’t get online or in a classroom. Being explicitly welcomed by a coaching company goes a long way toward feeling welcomed by the industry.”
joda and ABSOLVENTA
(Berlin, Germany)
Dayana and Johanna at ABSOLVENTA! (Image: Dayana and Johanna)
Dayana and Johanna
“You don’t necessarily need a coaching company to learn how to code but if you have one, you get a lot of insights you wouldn’t otherwise: You can experience how those coding skills you learn are applied in every day work life. For us, it is very motivating to see that professional developers work in a similar way as we do (of course much faster ;)
We learn a lot of useful terminology, but most importantly how a day in a programmer’s professional life really looks like: In stand-up-meetings, you overhear and observe a lot which tools, frameworks and programming languages the professionals are using and thus get an idea of the manifold problem solutions there are.
Apart from having this great environment, we of course are very lucky to have such supportive coaches, which are ready to jump in when we are stuck or when we don’t know how to continue.”
Carsten from ABSOLVENTA
“The learning curve is steep at the beginning of the summer: There’s new lingo left and right, a project whose complexity might be intimidating, there’s lots of new people, and the team has to find their own workflow. But as the weeks pass, mysteries dissolve into knowledge and the once foreign codebase has not only lost its scariness, but feels a bit like home. Three months of working on Open Source builds a tremendous amount of developer self-confidence!”
kindr3d and Namics
(Frankfurt, Germany)
Elvina and Micaela at Namics! (Image: Elvina and Micaela)
Elvina and Micaela
“It wasn’t easy for us, team kindr3d, to find coaches in Frankfurt, but when we did we lucked out big time and scored an entire coaching company. They provide us with safe space and technical support, but also allow us to be close to our coaches, hence we resolve most of the issues directly on the ground, which allows us to be self-sufficient and low-maintenance within RGSoC. We find office environment rather motivating, since we have enough free space, quiet and meeting rooms where we can isolate ourselves and use white boards, projectors etc.
Namics has daily fruit delivery, unlimited coffee and drinks, so there is enough fuel to go through a hard day’s work. But there are also leisure areas, kicker table and sofa, where one can wind down and experience a home-like environment. We also had a chance to observe real-life team software development (agile style) in progress with its shortcoming and advantages. Seeing a team from the inside gives us confidence, that there is a place in a team for a junior, apprentice, and that fresh perspective and enthusiasm are assets worth rewarding in IT.”
Perifericas and Raul Hacker Club
(Salvador, Brasil)
Emma and Geisa at Raul Hacker Club! (Image: Geisa)
Emma and Geisa
“The best part of having a coaching company during RGSoC is to learn directly from professionals who are running projects all the time and share with us mistakes they made so we can learn from that too.
We choose the Raul Hackerspace as our host not only because we’re members, but also because RaulHC is a place that embraces diversity. Since the beginning we knew we wanted to work during RGSoC here. There’s a kitchen, so we can prepare our food and snacks, and the best part is the dazziling view.
*As seniors, coaches are helping us to thrive in this path. Rather than giving us the solutions right away, our coaches are giving us tips and advice, guiding us and enabling us to find the answers by ourselves.
Brena Monteiro is the co-founder of UpriseIT, a software company based in Gov. Valadares in Minas Gerais state. She has large experience in software projects and development with Ruby and Rails. Daniela Feitosa and Aurélio A. Heckert are from Colivre, a cooperative service company that supplies solutions for Internet, development and consultancy in free software. Victor Flores aka User_X, a senior development represents LampiãoSec, a security research group.* “*
MitPal and Elevator Factory
(Atlanta, USA)
Sherri and Anitha at Elevator Factory! (Image: Sherri and Anitha)
Sherri and Anitha
“The support that we have received in RGSoC and the Coaching Company is invaluable. We have an amazing team that has donated time and resources to help us be successful during RGSOC. Our co-working space was donated by the Elevator Factory, which has allowed us to come in and work together every day. Our coaches, Pamela Vickers and Pete Holiday, have given countless hours of their own time to help us work through any issues that we may be having. Without this support system in place, learning and accomplishing all that we have would be difficult at best. Our skill set along with our confidence continues to grow, and we know that our career goals are definitely within our reach.”