#VetsWhoCode : Who, Why and How to Help (Updated for 2018 )
When I started this journey four years ago, I just wanted to create an actual solution for helping veteran employment. I didn’t want my fellow troops in transition to fall through the cracks, like I did.
That’s why I went into the nonprofit sector in the first place. I wanted to help my brothers and sisters. What I found was a system designed, not to help them, but, to get as much money out of donors, sponsors and government agencies as possible by telling the story of how the nation fails our servicemen and women; all the while creating extremely high requirements, yet, having extremely low benchmarks for success. Did you know that unless you are actually sleeping on the streets of some states you aren’t considered homeless? Meaning, if you are living out of your car, living out of a hotel room, or couch surfing at your buddy’s, you don’t qualify for certain support services.
I should know — I’ve had the great displeasure of doing all three. Despite the adversity, perseverance enabled me to climb out of the darkness, with a deep desire to keep other veterans from falling into the abyss. Thinking back, that was the hardest six months of my life! It was development and design that helped me get through those tough times, not the current nonprofit sector filled with relics that have cozy relationships.
I spent every waking moment learning skills that other people were either too stubborn or just too fearful to learn, and it added value to me — value the civilian sector could understand. Then, when a fallen soldier’s family needed help, my newly minted value empowered me to answer the call to bury a brother. Afterwards, I was like “what do I do next?” — leading to the stupid idea of turning something old (a freaking castle!) into something new, repurposing it to retrain veterans in real and digital skillsets. Unfortunately that didn’t work. But, out of it came true inspiration, something revamped, brilliant, and functional — something I hope would even make David Heinemeier Hansson (my hero) proud.
Who is Vets Who Code?
Vets Who Code is a veteran operated 501c3 charitable non-profit, dedicated to filling the wide chasm between technical expertise needed and available with early stage transitioning veterans and active duty military spouses through software development training and education. We are utilizing our online setup to train veterans anywhere, but we are so much more. We are a team of people with hybrid tech skills and a lean mentality, focused on helping veterans not only learn how to program, but get jobs in the field and to do it without the unnecessary bloat that other nonprofits take on. From a Brand Strategist who has worked with Fortune 500 Companies, to a Head of Operations that understands how to grow and build companies, to little old me, who got thrown into this because I simply wanted to help my fellow veterans, which is the most important part of this nonprofit. 75% of the team is veterans, and we provide what you need to surpass our successes and learn from our failures. ’Cause if we are to celebrate this thing called life, we need to be there together.
Why Code?
Great question. Right now our country has a problem: we have programming jobs, but not enough programmers. Not only that, we don’t have enough GOOD programmers. On top of that, while it’s definitely better, veterans are still the highest unemployed demographic in America. So we had this crazy idea. What if we raised the money to pay an instructor to teach veterans how to code? Not just any veterans, those who this skill could really impact. Not only that, let’s work tirelessly to mentor them in professional standards of code, business, and design. Can you imagine how much better you get at design thinking when the guy speaking has been thinking about it every day for the last 15 years? We then thought, what if we added tools to continue learning after you’ve dealt with us for 14 weeks? Our partners PluralSight and Interview Cake give us amazing tools to gift the veterans so that they can learn and prep for up to a year. Not only that — we make introductions, and train them in the interview process to help them get jobs in the industry. You know what? It works. Our troops have been getting highly paid positions, and we couldn’t be happier. Here we empower amazing people to have the lifestyle they have earned, and we do it all online; a feat that wasn’t even possible 10 years ago.
How Can We Help?
That’s actually a question we get quite often. Our veterans spend 14 weeks with our team focusing on the language JavaScript and and all it encompasses, and understanding software architecture and computer science fundamentals. We focus on having workflows, interview questions, and computer science theory | UX research.
For us the most important question is how can you help. If you’re a software engineer with at least two years experience working with ES6 and Javascript, sign up as a mentor. If you are a designer who can code, we are always looking for someone to help us with our user experience. If you are in HR, drop us an email, so that we can get our troops into your pipeline. If you’re none of the above, consider donating. As a 501(c)(3) we are tax-deductible, and as a team that has cool jobs already, all the proceeds go to resources and tools to help the veterans and our build processes. Our total operating cost is about $5000, and thats all we hope to raise a year.
