Maybe we should start teaching coding differently
A story about a failure that gave birth to a new concept, making coding more accessible to working women
As a software engineer who’s been working remotely since 2010 I wanted to teach women to code so they can have a better life too.
So they can stay at home with their babies when they become mums, so they can leave their jobs if they’re not happy, knowing that with their skills they will be able to find a better fit in a blink of an eye. So they can go and travel the world, if that’s what they feel like… So they’re not financially dependent on anyone… So they can be free!
I had been ignoring that drive for a long time, but one day, when all the factors got perfectly aligned it got too strong for me too bare.
I called a few amazing people, we brainstormed, we researched and finally we rolled up our sleeves: we were going to create a programming bootcamp.
It was going to be a 3 month-long, full-time program in Portugal and we were going to teach them all the tech skills, but also the so much needed, and consistently underestimated soft skills. We were tired of seeing overworked engineers, we were firm opponents of the concept that you need to work yourself to death if you want to be successful, so we were going to take a slightly holistic approach to teaching programming, with surf breaks, meditation, positive communication, 360 reviews and all the “next-stage-organisations” tools and techniques.
A few months and many sleepless nights later, just 9 weeks before the start of the bootcamp we had only 2 confirmed signups and 2 “almost” confirmed ones, needing one final push. Financially it would have been viable to go for it. We could have invested more in marketing and gotten a few more students before the start, but…
We were offering women a better life in 12 weeks, with the lowest price on the market and only 4 signups?
We didn’t feel right about this! Something was off. We were offering women a great curriculum, better life in 12 weeks, with the lowest price on the market and only 4 signups?
We went back to the drawing board and looked at the data we had collected in all the interviews: almost all women we reached out to said they would love to learn to code, but they simply can’t afford to leave their jobs, their families and move to Portugal to study programming.
And it was completely contradictory to what we initially imagined: we wanted mums to learn to code so they can work from home and stay with their babies, but what about mums of older kids who couldn’t simply leave the country for a few months cause the kids need to go to school?
A few other big blockers were: “What if i go for it, but I’m not good at it?”, “I only want to learn front-end, I don’t need a full stack bootcamp”, “I am doing some online courses, but I lack motivation and when I get stuck on some task I have no one to help me with my questions”.
“What if I dive head first, but I’m terrible at it?”
So having all that in mind we decided: if we want to teach more women to code, we will do it on their terms.
We’re creating a new concept!
Through pure serendipity I ran into Lisbon Data Science Academy, a non-profit organisation who had developed a very good system to teach data science and they needed someone to help them put everything in motion for the second batch of their Starters Academy. A few video calls later we started working together.
In those few months I learned heaps about teaching methodologies and running an educational institution. It made me put myself in the students’ shoes and see things form their perspective.
And with the new learnings — the new UmaHub was born!
An online programming school, where students go through the video lessons in their own time and then worked closely with their mentor on the daily homeworks. A school where they’re able to mix and match smaller modules, lasting usually a few weeks, learning more about the subject without spending a fortune on it.
We gathered industry experts, created a pilot version of our first course, built a student portal from scratch and in June we launched the pilot of “Web Development for beginners”.
It filled up right away, with almost no marketing and surprise, surprise, 50% of the students were girls!!! 👩🏻💻
The feedback from everyone was amazing and very helpful, and judging by the websites they created — we know we did a good job indeed! I’m so proud of them all!
Currently we’re developing more new courses with industry experts and amazing teachers, always following the same principles:
Mentor-led. Online. Part-time.
Full circle support for our students and a community of life-long learning.
