Say Hello to Fall 2022 with Codebase!
Welcome to Fall everyone — let’s do a Codebase deep-dive and take a look at what’s exciting about this upcoming semester for us!
By Isabel Li, Fall 2022 President
Hey there — welcome to Fall 2022, and to everyone returning, welcome back! It’s always so exciting when the sunset of summer makes everything new again, and we get to come back to campus to meet fresh faces, classes, and communities.
For those who aren’t familiar, Cal has an amazing array of clubs and communities on offer for students like us to find friends, seek growth, and broaden your horizons; you’ll see communities for dance and dragon-boat, magazine publications and machine learning, statistics and software…(like us!) I’ll be expanding a little more on Codebase in this piece, but don’t forget to check out all the other awesome orgs (tech-oriented or not!) open to you — we genuinely hope you’re able to meet your people here during your college years.
So… what’s Codebase?
Codebase is a UC Berkeley student community which aims to make industry experience more accessible to students, and empowers students to break into software through semesterly projects with high-growth tech companies and non-profits. We’re a tight-knit community of developers, friends, and mentors who support and uplift each other throughout the college experience.
Every semester, our members work closely with clients to flesh out end-to-end software development projects. Developers work in small groups with their project managers for 13 weeks, growing their technical skills and gaining industry exposure.
Our past non-profit clients include the Berkeley Food Pantry, CoFED (a QTBIPOC-led organization that partners with young folks of color to build food and land co-ops!), and campus orgs such as The Green Initiative Fund, and The Berkeley Project. Past industry clients include Postman, Atlassian, Ginger, Relativity Space, and a range of other small to mid-size companies which can give us a tailored and fulfilling experience.
What’s at the heart of our club? Glad you asked! We value growth, mutual learning, and uplifting each other in our passion for tech. Our culture can be drawn from our Base Behaviours:
- Put People First — Care for people within our club! This means placing mental health and well-being over getting work done, helping each other out with classes or other stressors, and just extending kindness to each other!
- Actively Take Ownership—Show initiative and pride in your work, whether it’s stepping up on your project team or creating a CodeHost (see below!) or taking up a leadership role.
- Seek Continuous Growth — Be ambitious, always willing to learn, and proactive when it comes to seeking feedback. Be inspired by the people around you!
- Communicate Candidly — Don’t be afraid to speak your thoughts; create a culture of honesty, and prepare to listen and receive others kindly.
- Genuinely Give Back — We strongly value gratitude, appreciation, and paying forward all the best experiences and opportunities afforded to you.
Beyond this, it’s interesting to see how our culture shifts semester-by-semester as new members comprise and drive the overall community consciousness — my personal observation is that we’re increasingly a club which deeply cares about education, caring for community, and self-awareness of our social impact within the tech space.
Let’s take a closer look at our projects!
The largest component of being a Codebase member is working on our projects. Every semester, Codebase works with four high-growth tech companies and one non-profit organization and builds a technical product for them. Each project team, consisting of two project managers (PMs) and six developers, collaborates closely with their client company’s software engineers through 13 weeks of agile development, complete with sprints, standups, and code reviews. Throughout this process, our members are able to build their foundations in software engineering, learn the best industry practices, and work on a product with immediate feedback and users.
Because our developers are still full-time students, we always work remotely from our client, delivering two in-person presentations throughout the semester to present our progress.
We have two different types of projects:
- A Mentored Project — for those new to software engineering where we teach you full-stack fundamentals as you build a web project for a non-profit.
- A Client Project — for those with more experience through classes, side projects, self-learning, or an internship. These projects partner with industry clients and can be frontend, backend, databases, distributed systems, crypto, virtual reality… Don’t worry though, you don’t need to know the stack already — we’ll teach it to you along the way.
You can learn a little more about the requirements for which track you fall into on our website. In some cases, you might not have enough experience for Mentored or fall between the two, in which case we encourage you to apply anyway, and if your experiences aren’t a good fit we encourage you to apply again! Many of our members joined after applying a second time, when they were at a stage to have a better experience on our projects.
We’ll be announcing our client projects very soon so keep an eye out for updates on the specific companies and projects we’ll be working on this semester! https://codebase.berkeley.edu/projects
Beyond projects, what makes us not only a community of developers, but also friends?
While you absolutely don’t need to join a club to get a job in software and develop your experiences, the major reason a lot of students join clubs is to find friendships and a college community. We have a bunch of fun and enriching internal initiatives which comprise our Codebase experience beyond coding together:
- CodeHosts — members hosting an event to introduce their interest/hobby to the club! In the past we’ve had board game nights, bouquet-making, a charcuterie board picnic…
- CodeBits/Bigs — being paired with a member of the club who can guide you through Codebase (and honestly just be your friend.)
- A semesterly day trip — these past two semesters, we’ve gone to Six Flags and the Santa Cruz boardwalk together!
- CodesGiving — in Fall semesters, we have a huge potluck where each team cooks a dish and we come together to celebrate CodesGiving.
- Professional development mentorship — all new members get paired with a member or alum who might be more experienced with job/internship recruitment in various fields, grad school, teaching, research, etc. and receive weekly guidance.
- CodeTalks — lightning talks on fun things just to know other club members better and learn more about each others’ passions!
- CodeGals — an affinity group for women in Codebase to bond over shared experiences and hang out every semester.
- CodePals — slowly getting to know everyone in the club by being paired with a random person to hang out with every week!
- Projects, again — while projects do involve work, a lot of your time with your project team is actually hanging out and doing fun activities (axe-throwing, hiking, baking) together!
…and more! As someone who started off in Codebase as part of a Mentored team, I’d go as far to say that I learnt all my software engineering fundamentals from my previous PMs, but it’s really the fun we have together which creates our core experience.
How are we involved with the wider Berkeley community?
As a club, we try to be cognisant of our impact on the wider campus and Berkeley community, and how we can extend our resources to others. Here are just a few of our external initiatives planned for this semester:
- Co-hosting Cub Fair, a student-led career fair on Sept 13th
- Professional development/recruitment workshops, open to all
- Tech talks/panels with industry speakers
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Tech roundtable
- Volunteering with the local community (we usually participate in The Berkeley Project together as a club!)
- While we don’t have the capacity and resources to offer a Mentored team experience to everyone, we have always published our mentored project curriculum for full-stack web development on our website for those looking to self-learn!
Join our team!
For our Mentored Track, we’re looking for students with little coding experience who want to learn and grow with us by developing a full-stack project to service a local non-profit. Our non-profit partner this Fall is the San Francisco Conservatory of Music!
For our Client Track, we’re looking for students who may have CS class/side project/internship experience but want to find a fun, driven community while working on an industry project together.
- Sign up here to receive updates about our info sessions, events and application deadlines: https://airtable.com/shriRw0n38U8tGbD8
- Have questions? Ask us any time on our Discord ‘table’ or come find us tabling on Sproul or the Glade!
- Submit applications on our website at: https://codebase.berkeley.edu/apply
- Deadline: August 31st, midnight! (or September 1st, 3am for buffer time)
Recruitment Timeline
Tabling
August 24th to 30th • In person on Sproul or the Glade!Joint Gender Minorities in Tech Clubs Panel
August 26th 6:30–8 PM • In person (Location TBD)Codebase Infosession 1 — come meet us, hear about our projects, and learn about our community!
August 26th 8–10 PM • Dwinelle 145 (and hopefully a hybrid option, link TBD!)Gender Minorities in Codebase Fireside Chat — hear from some gender minorities in CB and their perspectives on navigating tech, Cal, and more!
August 29th 7–8 PM • In person (Location TBD)Joint Tech Clubs Panel
August 29th 8–10 PM • In person (Location TBD)URM in Codebase Fireside Chat — meet some CB members from various under-represented backgrounds in tech and hear about their experiences!
August 30th 7–8 PM • In person (Location TBD)Codebase Infosession 2 — exact same content as Infosession 1, for people who couldn’t make it!
August 30th 8–10 PM • Dwinelle 145 (and hopefully a hybrid option, link TBD!)Application Due
September 1st 3AM
Hopefully this has been an informative deep dive into what Codebase is, and whether it might be a community you’d like to be a part of. Regardless of whether or not we’re the club for you,
I’m so, so excited for y’all to find a campus community you love and really encourage you to explore everything that college can offer you.
Of course, reach out to us if you want to learn more and chat, but until then, have a really lovely, wonderful Fall.
— smiles, Isabel.
