Know Your Why

I was talking to a colleague the other day who happens to be a serial entrepreneur. I shared with him that we are experiencing high demand for talent from our program and he made an interesting suggestion. He said:

"Why don't you build relationships with all the coding bootcamps nation wide and then have their grads feed into your program? It will cut down on the investment you make, and time to train folks, and help you get more folks into jobs quickly. It will help you meet the demand you currently have from employers to fill tech roles."

I grinned ear to ear and responded "because that is not my why."

Our apprenticeship program was something that we have iterated towards. I started in the coding bootcamp space, and we have since pivoted to a nonprofit that uses apprenticeship to solve the challenges I found in the private for-profit model of immersive coding bootcamps. I was seeing a lack of access and affordability, ultimately leading to the same disparity in opportunity for folks that are traditionally underrepresented and overlooked by the tech industry. To tackle that the biggest need for participants was financial in terms of tuition and how to afford to take a year of their lives to make a transition while in many cases still supporting themselves and their families. Thus the earn and learn became a critical component, but not the whole picture of our why.

Creating Coding Careers in theory could still be partnering with some programs in a meaningful way if they were also helping us with the root problem, helping those with significant barriers. Recently, CCC has made a shift in our demographic outreach and we will be focusing more on recruiting the same underrepresented populations we currently serve (Black, Latine, Women, LGBTQ+, Veterans, and neurodiverse individuals) and are also:

• Justice-Involved
• People experiencing homelessness
• Victims of Sexual trafficking or sex crimes
• Immigrant populations
• Out of School Youth
• Veterans
• And those that have low to moderate-income

I think everyone recognizes that these folks may have significant barriers to the upskilling process and lack a lot of the connections or resources needed to get on the radar of hiring managers at tech companies. But beyond their circumstances many of them have the grit and growth mindsets that are vital to be successful in a software environment. Plus, as companies help them overcome these types of barriers these folks are grateful for amazing opportunities and will be some of the best employees in organizations.

If we focus on folks that don't have many of these barriers and are already well-connected and fairly affluent it doesn't help address the root cause. I want to use my experience to help those that need it most. That is a big part of my why, and as a founder, my why is how we steer this ship.

When you are designing a program you MUST know your why, and you should never compromise on your North Star. Whether it means that some funding will be missed or you will have to tweak your model, you should not sacrifice the design and execution of your program if it negatively impacts or shifts your why.

We want our program to be a lighthouse, and we know we can remove many of the barriers that prevent these talented folks from breaking into tech. That is our why, what is yours? Please leave me a comment and share this with others, let's spread the word.