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Aaron is a software developer who has recently discovered his natural teaching ability by becoming an instructor at Sabio, a full-stack software development bootcamp based in Los Angeles. And he’s loving every minute of it.

Aaron worked with Gregorio, one of the Sabio co-founders, while working atCode Particle. They had been working closely together for about two years when Gregorio left the company to follow another passion and start Sabio. While Aaron continued to work at Code Particle he had a curiosity about the bootcamp model, so reached out to Gregorio. He has now been teaching at the school full-time since February. The main reason he has been enjoying the career shift is that he can use his skills in newfound ways in order to better the lives of others.

“It’s pretty great. I love the fact that I get to help people. That’s the number one thing because I’ve been programming for years and years but I never really felt like I was doing anything that affects anyone except my clients. I thought ‘here are people that are looking for a better job and a better life, and hopefully I can help them improve upon their position.’ It’s about the people, and that’s the best aspect of it.”

Aaron studied programming as an undergraduate, and has been a professional developer since he graduated in 2005. He says, “I guess you could say I got a little burned out. It’s a tough job to do.” He worked at Code Particle for 5 1/2 years, learned a lot at that company. He also spent time working for various startups during his career, and loves the solutions-based aspects of computer programming.

“For me it’s the problem-solving aspect of it, that’s the best. I like the fact that with computers it’s a program that needs to be solved, and you can solve it with your mind. There’s  a certain rush that you get when you have a short amount of time to come up with the solution. That’s one thing that I do miss about programming professionally; it feels good when people are using your code and you’re successful in building things for them. There’s definitely a satisfaction to that.”

Aaron’s transition into teaching began in January when he picked up the weekend class at Sabio. This is also when Aaron and his wife had their first child, so things got pretty hectic for his new family at the beginning of the year. The weekend class went so well that Gregorio asked Aaron to come back and teach the next cohort full time. Now, Aaron teaches two cohorts and Gregorio teaches one, so you can imagine things get pretty intense around there. Aaron’s cohort ends in May, and then he will be working five days a week, cutting back on the current seven.

The students Aaron teaches are “from all over the place” in more ways than one. His cohort is comprised of “one guy that used to be a professional welder, some college or hospital administrators, some that are entrepreneurs that launch their startup, one guy who was going to get a Masters degree in computer science but came to Sabio for a more cost- and time-effective option.” Aaron says the overall theme is people that just want to get to the next level, and have the work ethic and desire to create something better for themselves.

Sabio teaches jQuery and Angular, two popular Javascript libraries, as well as C# and Microsoft SQL for the database. They also teach best practices in the industry for project management. Basically everything Aaron used for his old job. But to Aaron, the best part about Sabio is that you can land a software development job like his by going through a more vocational program rather than obtaining a computer science degree.

Prior to becoming an instructor at Sabio, Aaron got a little teaching practice in as an on-the-job mentor. Code Particle was into bringing in younger, inexperienced junior programmers, so Aaron had the opportunity to train two or three people over the course of five years. He learned some important lessons about how to be a good teacher during that process. “The main thing is you have to be patient with them. It was good exposure but it was nothing compared to what I’m doing [at Sabio]. Luckily my students tell me I’m a natural (those are their words!) and they seem to be learning quickly.” Aaron says that his newborn daughter has simultaneously been teaching him the patience required to be an instructor. He admits that the patience required to be a teacher and a father can be testing at times, but he loves it.

In addition to the intensity of instructing at that level, Aaron says another positive difference that teaching has brought to his life is the feeling he gets at the end of the day. “As far as my own personal peace of mind, I feel good when I leave at night. I don’t feel stressed out.”

That feeling of peace comes in part from working for a school as dedicated as Sabio. They work hard to empower their students and ensure that they are getting a quality education and placement into fantastic jobs. Part of that commitment manifests itself in the small class sizes that have composed Sabio’s cohorts thus far. They usually take on about six to eight students so each gets more one on one time. This is important because Sabio teaches programming languages that are fairly difficult to learn, but powerful once you get into the rigors of the real world and are on the job hunt. “We tailor our classes very closely to what the market wants. It’s a circular subject, so we’re making sure to stay on top of it.”

Another focus of Sabio is bringing underrepresented populations into the industry. Women make up about 20% of the software development industry, but Aaron points out that the Latin American population is much lower, making up only about 4-5% of the industry. Sabio is working to increase their representation in the industry, which is a factor that sets them apart. The founders of Sabio are really serious about that, and the classroom maintains a respectful environment for everyone. For Aaron, it’s something he really loves about Sabio and takes very seriously.

It should come as no surprise that Aaron sees himself teaching at Sabio for a long time. The school is on a roll; they have a waiting list and recently presented at South by Southwest, and Aaron exemplifies this passion and drive in his own work for the school. “I haven’t been excited to go to work for many years but that’s something that motivates me for sure. Making a difference is just something I wasn’t getting in my old job. From where I’m standing I’m excited to be doing this for a long time.”

For those wishing to pursue learning code, Aaron’s biggest piece of advice is to stay calm. Coding can be a big endeavor; it’s very difficult and stressful and it can become overwhelming. This is the same advice that Aaron gives his students: “You have to relax, you have to breathe. You can’t let it become you. In the end it’s just a job. You have to maintain a balance between your life and your programming. If you throw yourself at it 100% that’s respectable, but you’re going to burn yourself out. Programming is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. You have to manage your emotions, show respect to the people around you even when you’re frustrated. And you have to learn to live the life.”

quickfact //

What do you like to do in your free time?

Richard loved being a student at Coding Dojo so much that he eventually became their CEO. Initially, Richard was working at Boeing on the business side and realized he wanted to take a more active role in solving more technical product challenges. In order to make sense of it all, he enrolled in a coding bootcamp called Coding Dojo – and never looked back.

Richard attended Coding Dojo’s 12-week program at the beginning of 2014, and launched his first product – a SaaS platform called Mentor 2.0 – shortly thereafter. While creating his platform, which sought to connect professionals with mentors in their field who could help guide them to the next level, Richard had the opportunity to meet with professionals at enterprises like Costco to pitch them on his idea. However, he chose to put Mentor 2.0 on hold to return to his previous employer, Boeing, as a Product Manager.

“I loved my new job [as a software PM] because it was fast and got you talking to multiple groups, evaluating the product,” Richard said, “I really had a great time.”

After spending a few months back at Boeing, Richard applied for an incubator program created by Coding Dojo Founder Michael Choi, and became increasingly interested in the business workings of the company. Eventually, Michael asked Richard if he would be interested in running the show, and the rest, as they say, is history. Richard became CEO of Coding Dojo in June of 2014, six months after first enrolling as a student.

When asked why Richard chose to attend Coding Dojo in the first place, he cited the rigor of that particular bootcamp. “I found [out that] Coding Dojo teaches three full stacks, and no one else was able to do that,” he said. “During my interviews to be accepted into the program, I learned that this bootcamp was started as an internal program for engineers and was later ramped up after Michael discovered it was a successful learning model,” he said.

Because of its origins in trying to help a company’s internal engineers get better, Richard said the focus of Coding Dojo is different than a lot of the other programming bootcamps out there. “They were never in it for the money from the beginning,” he said, “because they were just trying to solve a hard problem with a lot of rigor — that’s one thing that really differentiates us.”

In describing Coding Dojo, Richard called it rigorous, immersive and intense. While Richard recognizes that this level of intensity can be a lot for some to handle, he said the right students come out learning a lot and being fantastic, well-rounded coders.

“I have a very different background compared to other people, which helped,” Richard said. “For me [the intensity] was ok because I had a military background. I love the immersive, focused environment.”

And Richard truly believes in the effectiveness of the immersive-learning model. However, he makes an important note that it’s not just about being immersive, but also about being experimental:

“I think that’s the key distinction … because you can be immersive, but not experimental. You can’t just be told what to do, you have to be able to build things and test them out. You make mistakes and you correct them until you get it right. When immersive, experimental, and informational come together — that’s when you get the best learning environment.”

The way Richard talks about education is the way some people talk about their morning coffee, or the FIFA World Cup. He truly loves the process of discovering the most creative and effective teaching solutions. Education is a vital part of his life. This is due, in part, to his background of being raised in China, where education is a fundamental part of moving up the economic ladder. To Richard, that’s what makes him much more appreciative of his important role in the educational market. “We work hard to offer our students great programs that can change their lives,” he said.

For Richard, the process of changing lives is something that fulfills childhood dream. “When I was younger, I wanted to do something extraordinary, but I didn’t know what it was yet,” he said. “My father was an entrepreneur and he always pushed me to go all out. He told me to never under-estimate the human potential, [and] I really hope that the writing on my tombstone it says all used up — that’s what I care about, being all used up and giving [life] everything I got.”

This passion for innovative education and going “all out” means Richard remains focused on providing great outcomes for Coding Dojo students, who come from various backgrounds. While some students have 15-20 years of software development experience, others come from completely different careers. However, rather than citing this diversity as a weakness, Richard sees it as key to the success of each class. “When you have students of different backgrounds, people get to see how others solve problems differently and they get to learn from each other, which is truly valuable,” he said.

If Richard could do anything differently about his own education, he said that he would have taken a class at Coding Dojo much earlier, rather than waiting until he was 28. “You’re never too old or too young to experience the language of the 21st century” he said.

A vital piece of advice Richard offers to anyone looking to test out their coding muscles: be patient. “Everybody’s different and anybody can code, but it’s like learning a foreign language, so some people are going to have an easier time with it than others.”

In addition to patience and persistence, Richard notes the importance of knowing where to find the right information in a world overwhelmingly full of it. Richard said that is one more value that Coding Dojo offers its students: the ability to make mistakes, quickly realize it and then correct them.

Because of his bilingual and multi-cultural background, coming to the U.S. from China, Richard is keenly aware of the global big picture and sees how the world is shifting toward technology. Richard compares the need to learn coding skills in the 21st century to the need for a young Chinese boy in the 20th century to learn English if he wanted to succeed in the world of international commerce – different skills for different times. Richard notes that in today’s world the language of possibility is now coding. “Everybody should be involved or have some sort of concept of coding,” Richard says, and for him, Coding Dojo just happened to be his favorite way of achieving that knowledge.

Quick Facts //

What is your favorite book?

My favorite book is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The author is really tough about freedom, which is the fundamental premise of the book. He says that the only freedom we have in this world is the attitude we have after something happens to us. I like to ground myself from a spiritual perspective, so I don’t get lost in the bigger picture of why we’re out here.

What’s one thing you’re excited about right now?

We are all very excited at Coding Dojo about expanding to a new campus in Burbank, near Los Angeles. In addition, we have a fantastic online platform that we’ve been developing since 2011. We have spent thousands of hours creating the platform and its content, so we’re going to have a re-launch of our online bootcamp. By the end of this year we will also be offering more coding languages comprehensively. I think I’m most excited for the re-launch of our online platform though — it will definitely be a game-changer.

Note: This article originally appeared on LendAcademy on March 13, 2015.

The initial promise of P2P lending when Prosper launched back in 2006 was that it would be a more social way to lend money. We would borrow money from a group of people we are connected with and pay back this loan more diligently because of that connection. Unfortunately, the reality was different than the promise. The financial crisis hit and the connections proved more tenuous than expected.

Today, a new kind of lending platform is bringing this social promise back. But it is applying more rigor to the way social signals are used in underwriting and pricing. IntroducingVouch, a new lending startup founded by former PayPal and Prosper executives that bills itself as the social network for credit. It has raised a $3 million initial funding round and started making loans in November last year. Recently I chatted with CEO and Co-founder Yee Lee to discuss how Vouch works and why he thinks it will be successful.

How the Vouch System Works

Borrowers apply for a loan either on Vouch’s site or through their mobile app. Then the borrower can invite friends and family to “vouch” for them. These people are then invited by Vouch to fill out a short survey and asked if they would be willing to contribute if the borrower becomes unable to make the payments on their loan.

Vouch looks at a number of factors to determine what interest rate it offers a borrower. It looks at standard financial data as well as the data they obtain from the social network. This includes how “vouchers” answered survey questions, how quickly they responded to a request to vouch for a friend, response rates for vouch requests, the overall size of someone’s network, how many vouchers took the extra step to also sponsor a loan, and much more.

Currently, Vouch is still in its beta phase but it has already made hundreds of loans using this system. The range of loan sizes is $1,000 to $15,000 but the average falls at the lower end of that spectrum at around $1,500. Loan terms are for 1, 2 or 3 years with the average coming in at 18 months. Interest rates range from 5% to 30% annually.

Vouch makes money in a similar way to Lending Club and Prosper, although we should point out that Vouch is a balance sheet lender not a marketplace. They collect interest and fees from origination of loans. Origination fees are only 2% today, but could range between 1% and 5% of each loan.

Targeting a Wider Range of Borrowers

Vouch has found several different demographics attracted to its service. Younger borrowers who have difficulty obtaining a loan from other sources; immigrants, who are new to credit in the United States; and debt consolidators, who are generally refinancing high-rate credit card debt. Vouch is able to lend money to borrowers down to a 600 FICO score and their intention is to eventually take that cutoff down below 600. Borrowers with FICO scores in the high 700’s have also been able to obtain better terms through Vouch. They are partnering with Cross River Bank to issue the loans.

You may dismiss this idea as doomed to failure given the experience of Prosper 1.0. But the team at Vouch, particularly given some of these people are former Prosper employees, are acutely aware of Prosper’s failed experiment from its early days.

There are some key differences. Vouch is pricing each loan and not relying on the “wisdom” of the crowd to set interest rates. Their Chief Risk Officer is an executive with decades of experience doing traditional consumer underwriting, so they know what they are getting into when targeting a subprime borrower.

Yee believes that Vouch can underwrite this population successfully because it is not just looking at the financial data of the individual. It is all about the personal network of each borrower. People are able to get better rates on loans and lower monthly payments by having their personal network vouch for them. Vouch has applied for a patent on this new underwriting system and Yee is convinced this is a better way to underwrite the subprime market.

What About Investors?

Right now Vouch is loaning money off their own balance sheet and they have no plans to open a marketplace any time soon. So, investors are out of luck at least for now. While Yee wouldn’t rule out opening a marketplace for investors some time in the future he said it is not on their road map today.

We know that researching a school is about more than scrolling through a database. That’s why Course Report features reviews, application tips, and interviews with founders, students, and instructors to equip you with all the details you need to choose the coding boot camp that’s right for you.

Course Report was founded in 2013 by LivingSocial alumni Adam Lovallo & Liz Eggleston. While at LivingSocial, they saw Hungry Academy come to fruition and were inspired by the program’s success in transforming bright employees into entry-level developers in just about six months. As the bootcamp model continued to gain steam, so too did the need for a third-party resource for their students. With a little seed money and a lot of love, Course Report launched in December. Course Report is fortunate to be advised by Jay Weintraub, Aaron Batalion, and Tim O’Shaughnessy

Liz handled internal communications for LivingSocial’s Ops teams, where she worked with Adam in 2012 (although they’ve been buds for longer). In her spare time, Liz sells breakfast tacos to unsuspecting Northerners and blogs about it.

Liz and some of the Course Report team with a picture of Co-Founder Adam’s cats, the Course Report mascots.

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How did you get started with Course Report? What led you here?

I worked with my co-founder (and dear friend) Adam Lovallo at LivingSocial for a few years. We both saw the Hungry Academy produce pretty stellar junior developers for LivingSocial, so that was our first exposure to “bootcamps.” As the space continued to grow and evolve, Adam came to me with the idea for Course Report- I thought it was an interesting space, I was psyched to be able to interview people and write for a living, and I knew I could learn a lot about content marketing in the process.

What is your favorite thing about the work that you’re doing?

Working on very specific project is a nice change in pace- we’re able to set clear goals and take some risks to reach those goals. There aren’t many people who think about the coding bootcamp industry 24/7, so we’ve become experts to some extent on the subject, and I love obsessing about this space! Also, it is a blast to work on a project that is doing a direct service to people and exists at an important time in education. Working in this space also gives me footing to work on other issues that I’m passionate about, like getting more women into STEM. That’s a lot of favorite things.

What is your educational background?

I graduated from Indiana University with a BA in English.

If you could do anything differently about your education, would you?

Honestly, I know a lot of people say they would take programming classes earlier, but I would have focused entirely on humanities. I graduated pre-med even though halfway through college I realized I wasn’t passionate about it.

What is the importance of learning code in today’s workforce?

Well, these bootcamps have proven that learning to code can lead to a really great career. But even non-technical people can benefit from coding. From a journalist who can manipulate data to communicate more effectively to a product manager who can better manage a team of developers, learning what’s going on under the hood is quickly becoming important, even a requirement, in the modern workforce.

What kind of content do you feature?

Course Report features a few different types of content. First and foremost, we’re a resource for potential bootcampers, so we feature a lot of Q&As with students, alumni, bootcamp founders, and instructors. Anyone who is associated with a bootcamp and can provide some perspective for a future student, we want to feature! We’ll occasionally have guest posts from folks in the community who write about anything from Choosing your First Programming Language to Smaller Bootcamp Markets etc. Lastly, we periodically publish research reports about the bootcamp industry in general.

What are some of the goals of Course Report?

What is the main purpose and why is it important? Finding a bootcamp is a huge decision and it’s a different process for everyone- location may be crucial to one person and price may be the deciding factor for another. There are currently 145 bootcamps in our directory- the average person may know about 10 of those. We want to make that search easier!

Do you have some favorite interviews or content you’ve featured in the past?

Definitely- it’s always great to interview someone and keep up with their success afterwards. I love talking to strong, entrepreneurial women who use their bootcamp education to make a difference. I had the pleasure of talking to Rachel Warbelow a few months ago- she was a teacher who founded a college prep middle school in Las Vegas, then went to Dev Bootcamp over her summer break to learn to code and automate the processes for that school. Now she’s working as an instructor and Pedagogy Lead at Turing School with Jeff Casimir. It’s so neat to see teachers learning to code and improving systems within education. Another was Alyssa Ravasio, who went to Dev Bootcamp and founded HipCamp, a campsite booking site. They just raised 2MM!

Having the opportunity to talk with leaders in this industry is always a thrill; chatting with Jeff Casimir or Dave Hoover are automatic high points of my week.

What is your favorite thing to do in New York in your free time?

I moved to New York about a year ago, and love exploring and finding ways to make this huge city feel like my own. I bake on the weekends at Milk Bar, tutor with 826NYC, and am currently addicted to ClassPass, so if you can’t find me, I’m probably at Pilates.

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I was a debate nerd in high school, so I definitely saw myself as a lawyer.

What is your favorite book, and when was the last time you actually picked up a hard copy of a book?

There’s an amazing bookstore in my neighborhood that is filled floor-to-ceiling with real books- no prices, you just haggle with the owner. I think he keeps the store open until he’s ready for bed, so I pick up books there late at night- I just started a collection of short stories called Museum of the Weird, but my favorite book is A History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

You get to have afternoon tea with whoever you want! Who is it?

Ooh that’s a good one. Robert Krulwich is definitely towards the top of my list. I love Radiolab. Since this is a fantasy, though, I choose Tina Belcher from Bob’s Burgers.

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

Breakfast Tacos from Chacho’s in Houston, Texas. If you’re not a Texan, you probably have a gross misunderstanding of what breakfast tacos are. They’re magical.

What is something you’re really excited about right now?

Sabio is no ordinary place. It’s a place that recognizes a few really important things and is doing a little something to change the world. They know that there are more tech jobs in this country than we are able to fill, and are seizing that as an opportunity to create a stronger and more diverse workforce.

They use technology training as an artful tool to uplift communities that suffer from high unemployment rates and a lack of educational resources. They are here to give women and minorities the resources and opportunities to break into tech and create a vibrant and innovative workforce. Sabio is a developer training program “born out of necessity, desire and hope.”

Meet the woman behind the mission: Liliana Monge.

How did you get started with Sabio?

Sabio was started by Gregorio Rojas and Liliana Aide Monge, a Latino husband and wife team, that wanted to increase the number of women, and people of color that were part of the tech workforce.

What led you here?

Gregorio Rojas has 14 years in the tech workforce, and he grew tired of being the only Latino in his tech team, and he decided to do something to actively increase diversity in tech.

What is your favorite thing about your school?

I love that Sabio is all about empowering folks that want to transform their lives via technology.

What makes them different?

Our school is unquie because we specifically call out that women, and people of color should be coding. We make an active and intentional effort to make sure that more women are coding.

What is your educational background?

Gregorio and I both have BAs from East Schools. Neither of us have CS degrees.

What is the importance of learning code in today’s work force?

As a recent New Yorker Article mentioned, the world is currently being rebuilt via code, and it is such an exciting time to be part of this “tech revolution”.

Why do you teach the specific coding languages that you teach?

We teach the stack we know well, .Net – HTML5/ CSS3, .Net/ASP, SQL

What are the advantages of that coding language?

.Net is used by tons of great enterprise companies, so when our folks graduate they can secure jobs with great national companies that will offer them an opportunity to learn a ton and be part of a great established organization.

What kinds of backgrounds do your students come from?

Very varied. We have folks that recently graduated from high school, and some folks that are looking to come out of retirement. We welcome anyone that is willing to work hard, and that wants to learn to code.

What are some things that students who graduate from your school do afterwards?

They will find jobs as full-stack web developers throughout Southern CA.

What is your favorite thing to do in LA in your free time?

Our favorite thing is the beach

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Love love to ride my bike!

What is your favorite book, and when was the last time you actually picked up a hard copy of a book?

Favorite book is Born to Run – great story about the power of the human spirit and our natural ability to run our asses off! Picked up a hard cover book last night, I love to read real books.

You get to have afternoon tea with whoever you want! Who is it?

Bill Clinton, I hear he is really really great in-person, knows a little about everything!

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

Chocolate Cake

Who would play you in a movie about your life?

Selena Gomez

What is something you’re really excited about right now?

This week’s top headline: Lending Club’s IPO. We can all stop holding our collective breath now!

There is a rapidly-growing category of companies looking to pair investors with loan seekers with the added perk of below-average interest rates (sweet deal, IKR?), and the fairest of them all as of this morning is Lending Club.

We’re shaking up the banking industry y’all.

Lending Club proved they are not only here to stay but here to conquer by arranging more than $6 billion in loans since 2007. This SF-based company just got it’s own little holiday present. Lending Club raised $865.5 million with their IPO today, and priced 57.7 million shares at 15, above the high end of its upwardly revised expected range of 12-14.

Lending Club opened at 24.75 and was near 23 in midday trading on the stock market, up 53%. It was the second-biggest IPO of 2014. This success has sparked a lot of clearleaders for the company and the industry alike. “Give me a P2P!”

There are other players in this P2P game, including Prosper Marketplace, OnDeck, and Funding Circle, but Lending Club is the first IPO (initial public offering) in this category.

LendLayer’s Chief People Officer, Jin, was lucky enough to be at the event at the New York Stock Exchange today. In the flesh.

Why is this a BFD?

“When it comes to applying for a loan, we have been pretty much stuck in the 20th century,” said Peter Renton, a blogger and founder of the website Lend Academy, which focuses on P2P lending. “What Lending Club and others in this space are doing is transforming an industry with a more efficient process.”

After the financial crisis of 2007-08, banks basically stopped giving out small loans to consumers and small businesses, so someone needed to come in and save the day in order to fill that gap. Clearly it’s working out for the companies who took that leap.

Check out those snazzy Lending Club jackets.

But wait, what second beacon of light is looming in the not-too-distant future?

OnDeck last week announced plans to raise $170 million by offering 10 million shares at a price range of 16 to 18. That’s two big players in the P2P lending game making waves, so there should be a lot to stay tuned for!

Will all of this finally make finance startups cool? I mean, we already knew we were cool, but now everyone else will know it. This news will help financial starups disrupt the crusty old banking industry. We’re building a little faith that entreprenuers can take on big, boring, technical, regulated financial institutions and have an impact. The little guy in the industry is growing up so fast * tear *.

It’s really hard to compete with big banking institutions with large-scale consumer-lending, but this is the first sign that it can be done. It’s also important to consider that larger-scale finance insterests are actually some of Lending Club’s investors, so sometimes these things work hand-in-hand rather than butting heads.

Mark Zuckerberg. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Most of the big names in technology are dudes. That’s just who has come to pop into our minds when we consider who is capable of the magic that is engineering and software development. And the stats don’t argue with this.

But a lot of computing pioneers, the ones who programmed the first digital computers, were women. And for decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. Bet you didn’t see that coming did you?

Elsie Shutt // Image via NPR

One prime example: a woman named Elsie Shutt founded one of the first software businesses in the US, CompInc., in 1958. And the programmers were all women. She was a big deal. She landed her first contract to work on the operating system for Honeywell’s new mainframe, and enlisted all the women she worked with to tackle the job together. CompInc. did really well, landing contracts with the US government, the Army Corp Engineers, and the US Space Program. Women were the center of the computing world.

But in 1984, something changed. The number of women in computer science flattened, and then plunged, even while the women studying other technical fields kept growing. And that’s where we are today. Welcome to 2014 folks.

What was going on in 1984 that made so many women give up on computer science? These shifts don’t come out of nowhere, there has to be some kind of action to push the reaction.

So here’s what was happening: 1984 was the year that a divide became clear between the coding haves and the have-nots. People who started coding earlier in life and messing around with computers went into university computer science classes with full force and confidence, and those that didn’t get the early exposure struggled not necessarily with knowledge and understanding but with a strong starting point. These people got left behind.

Owning a home computer became a kind of secret pre-requisite, a launching pad for success.

How does this fit into the gender divide? Home computers were advertized and available almost exclusively in a world of boys. Radio Shack sold them, and Star Trek made games for them. Ads selling computers almost exclusively showed boys. They were marketed as toys you could play games on, and entered the home the same way that Tonka trucks did. Computers became “for boys”.

This was the narrative. Boys in movies made things from computers. Journalists fell in love with geek boy culture. What does that mean for higher education? The computer science major became infused with the belief that men were just better at it. Women were slowly being pushed out of this world.

You can listen to NPR’s full podcast on how this narrative played out here, as part of their Planet Money series.

Flash forward to today.

According to TechRepublic women made up 26% of the computing workforce in 2013, and 3% of the computing workforce were black women, 5% were Asian women, and 2% were Hispanic women.

In the mid-1980s, 37% of computer science majors were women; in 2012, 18%. This was based on a study done by Google in June of this year.

Based on estimates from Q, an IT and Digital talent firm based in Los Angeles that specializes in tech talent in Southern California:

Out of every 100 software developers/engineers in Los Angeles, approximately 10-12 are female. In 2011, only 17% of job placements (all for positions in technology in L.A.) were women. Only 7% of developers hired through Q were women.

The world that is Silicon Valley today paints a very different picture than pre-1984. Both statistically, and narratively. And the two share cause-and-effect type links.

Women, being the minority in this case, are sometimes portrayed in the likes of Barbie- I Can Be A Computer Engineer, helpless damsels who break every piece of technology they touch. I mean, it’s cool and all that Barbie is going to be something other than an actress or Malibu dreamer in this case, but the good part of the book basically starts and ends at the front cover. After that, Barbie’s obviously more competent male friends take over and save her from the evil computer virus. Even (arguably) well-intentioned people sometimes make the situation worse rather than better. The narrative that began with nerdy male computer geeks in the 80s continues.

Barbie herself (aka Mattel toys) has since apologized for doing the opposite of inspiring and empowering young girls, and in a more boring world that would be that. But luckily we live in a world where we have since been blessed with the ability to edit Computer Engineer Barbie to make it better, which has lead to some fantastic #feministhackerbarbie memes. Changing the narrative has taken on a fantastically literal meaning.

Women breaking into the world of tech has become a gigantic project we need to fulfill in terms of numbers. In reality, it’s a cultural shift and an attitude adjustment that will make the most difference. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but for technology, in this case, (dare I say it?) we need to go back to the way things were pre-80s.

In order to change the way we think about women in tech, we need a shift in norms. So what are the norms we can shift? It’s the whole “You play well, for a girl” scenario. People need to stop being surprised when a women is a good software engineer, and that will eliminate some of the barriers for others to follow. Who or what will be the equality juggernaut that breaks through the maddening cultural barriers and level the playing field? ‘Cause girls can play ball, you just have to give them the same coaching as every other member of the team and a chance at bat.

So where do we start? One hypothesis is that university degrees in computer science and engineering receive far fewer female than male students, and this can account for the lack of females in the tech industry later on. The university theory attributes the drop off in female interest in technology to be later in life.

But is that really the point at which interest begins? It may be when it peaks, but we begin developing our ideas about who we want to be from very early stages of life. If you believe in kindergarden that all women are culturally destined to become this-that-or-the-other cog in the industrial machine that is the job force, you are less likely to break from that later on. We’re back to to the 1984 narrative-shift.

Our ideas certainly develop over time. I have come to squelch my childhood dreams of becoming a Riverdancer and a fire fighter simultaneously, smiply because I have become an “adult” (emphasis on the quotation marks) and now understand that that is not realistic. But if anyone ever told me I couldn’t be a computer programmer for reasons that are simply not true, I might have believed them at that early and vulnerable stage in my life.

What you’re seeing, experiencing, and absorbing when you are three-years-old matters. Toy companies are starting to get that more and more, and taking advantage of the fact that parents will do anything if they think it will make their child a genius. Because Mozart makes babies smarter. This is the kind of thinking Computer Engineer Barbie tried and failed to utilize.

Image via Rotten Tomatoes

This is something a lot of people can get on board with, and has lead to an increase in the neutralization of toys. In the past, the boys section of Toys R Us looked like a fun and diverse collumn of knoweldge and entertainment, and the girl’s section looked like the inside of a unicorn. More and more, toys are entering the game and leveling the playing field, toys that allow girls to create and solve things, the same way that toys in the boy’s aisle have been engineered to do for a long time. Basically, Lincoln Logs are for everyone now.

Before you get too excited, there are two sides to this debate, and we still have a ways to go. Just when you thought you had all the answers to the educational gender-gap.

Side one: we should take tech and engineering toys that were made for boys, dress them up, and turn them into toys that are appealing to girls. Goldie Blox is an impressive series of books and construction toys designed specifically for girls. They’re webiste boldly states “building toys aren’t just for boys”. And they’re right. But leave it to the internet to take something seemingly great and uncomplicated and make you think about it too much.

Side two: we should make these toys gender equal rather than draping things in pink and sparkles to make girls take interest. Consider this side the war on pink. And the pink aisle has gotten a lot pinker over the years. Why are we distinguishing between genders? Why do girls have to be coddled and catered to? They don’t need extra stuff to be interested in something. Toys that try to catch girls’ eyes with color and pop are simplifying things too much and perpetuating stereotypes rahter than neutralizing them. It’s sexist.

Sides aside, most experts agree that the pink aisle does have a negative impact on girls’ interest in the STEM subjects. “Wanting to be a doctor or architect or cook, that really begins when you’re young and walking around with a stethoscope or playing with an Easy Bake oven,” says Richard Gottlieb, CEO of toy industry consulting firm Global Toy Experts.

By the time kids reach third grade, there’s a significant divide between boys and girls when it comes to STEM-related ambitions. A 2009 poll by the American Society for Quality of children 8 to 17, 24 percent of boys said they were interested in a career engineering, but only five percent of girls said the same. The gender difference in math and science is a bi-product of culture, not biology.

But we also know that all of the cute baby-dolls and fake vacuum cleanders aren’t discouraging women from going to college or making mean progress in the workplace later in life. Women now make up the majority of students entering undergraduate education in America, and are attending law school in equal numbers as their male counterparts.

I guess the moral of the story is that we’re doing alright, but it wouldn’t hurt to make the toy aisles a little more diverse, and, hey pop culture, maybe highlight some more female role models in STEM fields while you’re at it. Jimmy Neutron is cool and all, but maybe the next Bill Nye the Science Guy should be a girl.

Ultimately, there is no reason for anyone to feel like they can’t do anything. Anyone should be able to get a manicure and then use those manicured hands to create amazing and complex code. Anyone should be able to play with Transformers and then go into a career in fashion design. You don’t have to be a brunett with glasses to be smart (what’s up Velma from Scooby Doo and Gretchen from Recess) but you totally can be. If Computer Engineer Barbie had been written and characterized properly, it could have been a huge success for young girls everywhere who want to wear pink, dye their hair blonde, play with princess dolls, and become coders. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. But a lot of players are entering the arena and things are heating up. Change is in the air. It’s about eliminating barriers and making all options available to everyone.

This little girl put it best: why should all the little girls have to buy princesses and boys have to buy superheroes when both girls and boys should be able to like superheroes and princesses? You go Riley. Smash all the toy aisles together!

Women who code is one topic among the dozens the grand debate of gender divisions, and this is a debate that may never be “over”.

When he came to understand that coding is intertwined in aspects of all business, Jared seized the opportunity to attend a tech bootcamp. His B.A. in Linguistics aided in his learning of new coding languages at Coder Camps. After camp, he quickly found a rewarding job that leaves him enough time to kayak down the Colorado River for fun. He shares his advice on getting an education in tech!

How did you get started with Coder Camps? What led you there?

I was working as a Desktop Support person for the Houston Astros and wanted a stronger career future. I had previously done light design programming so I was familiar with object oriented programming. I began looking at coding bootcamps and Coder Camps was located in Houston, was significantly cheaper than other camps, and taught .Net and Javascript which I was most familiar with due to my work at the Astros so I felt like that was the best opportunity for me.

What is your favorite thing about your school? What makes them different?

Coder Camps was great because it felt like the right amount of in-depth personal instruction and assistance blended with individual and group exercises to maximize my time at camp and maximize my learning from all sources. I feel like this approach helped target various types of learners and created a strong and enjoyable learning atmosphere.

What is your educational background?

I received a B.A. in Linguistics from Brigham Young University. My familiarity with learning spoken languages definitely contributed to my ability to be able to pick up new coding languages.

If you could do anything differently about your education, would you?

I would have done two things different if I could redo my coding experience. I would do three times the amount of prep work before arriving at camp, and I would have made better use of my time away from camp while enrolled. I didn’t put in as much effort as I should have even though I still learned a lot and got a great job coming out of camp.

What is the importance of learning code in today’s work force?

I believe that learning code is something all future students and employees will eventually learn. It has become so intertwined in every aspect of business that the majority of future employees should be able to at least comprehend basic code and that will make them more valuable as employees.

What specific coding languages did you learn? What are the advantages of that coding language?

I learned ASP.Net, C#, AngularJS, and Javascript during my time at camp. (Angular is a specific type of Javascript). The .Net stack is prevalent throughout the world for business operations and Javascript can interact with almost any language. These skills ensure I will always have a job because there will always be a demand for these languages and if I eventually specialize in one specific language, the earning potential skyrockets exponentially.

What have you been doing since you graduated?

Since I graduated, I went on a job hunting campaign and quickly found the job I currently hold. I moved to the Austin, TX which is where I wanted to live long term and was able to buy a house because I doubled my previous salary from when I was at the Astros.

What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?

I like to go explore the areas around Lake Travis and kayak down the Colorado River.

Where are you from? What is your favorite thing to do in that area/city?

I grew up in various parts of Texas but primarily down in Corpus Christi. My favorite things to do there included going to the beach, surfing, and fishing.

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I didn’t honestly know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I switched majors in college 4 times and it wasn’t until I left graduate school that I really got serious about picking a career. My time with the Astros gave me a great vision into the IT world as a career and then I needed to choose what to specialize in and I selected programming because of the stable job environment and the great lifetime earning potential.

What is your favorite book, and when was the last time you actually picked up a hard copy of a book?

My favorite book is Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy. I have a good sized collection of hard cover books at my house and I enjoy reading novels extensively. I recently purchased 3 new adventure novels to enjoy.

You get to have afternoon tea with whoever you want! Who is it?

If I could have tea this afternoon, I would want to share it with George W. Bush.

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

I would order Kimchi Fries from ChilantroBBQ right now and anytime because they are delicious!

Who would play you in a movie about your life?

Matthew Mcconaughey would represent me well because we have similar personalities and are both from Texas.

What is something you’re really excited about right now?

Coder Camps houses a lot of talented and interesting people, and Jacqueline exemplifies this tenfold.

Jaqueline Sloves is the Program Director for Coder Camps in the San Francisco Bay Area, but she was originally a student in their Houston location. Classes in the Bay Area begin January 20th, and the program is ready to hit the ground running thanks to the hard work and dedication provided by Jacqueline. She has said the process of expanding Coder Camps to different cities across the country has been a fun, dynamic work experience.

You can become a student at Coder Camps by filling out an application here, followed by a 30 minute interview.

As far as her personal experience, Jacqueline sees Coder Camps as the best possible first step towards a career she wants to explore. No matter what she wants to stay in the technology field because it’s so innovative and booming in the Bay Area.

Her path to computer programming was “all over the board”. Jacqueline attended UC Berkeley and received Bachelors degrees in Environmental Economics and Philosophy, as well as a minor in Forestry. Her interests are diverse, but she is interested in the weaving narratives between different disciplines. She sees technology as as intertwined part of society and the environment; the fields are not mutually exclusive.

She does, however, wish that she had taken more time in college to learn some more technical skills. She advises students to get in touch with the more technical and mathematical side of their brains, and not get discouraged by interactions with teachers, or difficulty learning the material.

True to her environmental background, Jacqueline loves the Bay Area outdoor scene. She recently moved to the Bay Area, and loves running, hiking, and biking the regional parks. But these are balanced with a fantastic and diverse food scene and local events, which also make the Bay Area a fantastic place to learn.

Jacqueline’s journey from Coder Camps in Houston to Coder Camps in the Bay Area was preempted by other adventures that taught her a lot. She was in the Peace Corp in Ukraine, where she lived in a little village with limited virtual contact and technology. For her, the contrast between her experiences facilitating after-school programs to young students in technological isolation, and her experiences learning coding in some of the most vibrant cities in the US was eye-opening.

“I went from feeling very isolated in Ukraine because I didn’t even have internet in my vilage. There were three computers in our library and one of them was broken most of the time, so coming back into America where everyone has internet and there are resources everywhere was a big shift. But I definitely have a big appreciation for connecting with people and how technology makes that possible.”

Now, Jacqueline has a full understanding and appreciation for being able to take an idea and put it on the internet.

Once you’ve learned a coding language well enough, learning the others is more like learning a different dialect of a spoken language rather than learning Chinese if you’ve never learned a language other than English before, à la Mark Zukergerg.

However, tech bootcamps are accelerated, and are therefore most likely going to teach you one language very well very quickly, rather than going through the whole history of coding. Based on a study by Course Report, we have created a visual of the top coding languages taught by tech bootcamps across the country. Feel free to share it with your friends, we like sharing.

So who is right? Which coding language is best?

It doesn’t take a data scientist to see that Ruby is by far the most-taught programming language, taking the cake by being taught in 57% of courses.

But just because Ruby dominates doesn’t mean it goes undisputed.

One of the bootcamps that taught Ruby on Rails semi-religiously to aspiring full-stack developers is MakerSquare, which is an immersion school located in San Francisco and Austin. But since they began in 2013, they have introduced more and more JavaScript into their curriculum, leading up to a recent announcement that their next cohort beginning February 24th will teach entirely JavaScript. Harsh Patel of MakerSquare discussed the shift with Course Report this week, stating that it “doesn’t feel like a crazy or gigantic change”.

The frameworks they will be working with are Angular, React, and Node, but Patel wants students to get a strong fundamental understanding of Javascript in order to be able to work with any framework they stumble upon in the future.

When asked about how the decision to switch to teaching JavaScript came about, Patel said, “Instructors and founders all started seeing that Node was being used more and more by larger enterprise companies and that’s usually when you know that a language/framework is here to stay.”

The whole point of tech bootcamps is to be helpful catalysts to getting a job in web development, so these accelerated learning programs want to make sure they’re staying on top of languages that are the most relevant to companies.

Another reason MakerSquare is making the switch is becuase they wanted to eliminate constant “context switching,” or going back and forth between different states of mind. Thus far, they have been teching Ruby and JavaScript, which can make it more difficult to focus on one language or task.

Let’s throw another language into the mix.

Coder Camps wrote an article explaining why you should choose to study with them and learn .NET rather than attend another tech bootcamp and learn, well, anything else. The article explains that Coder Camps is the only .NET bootcamp in the SF Bay Area and claims that the demand for .NET programmers is staggering – while there is an overflow of entry-level programmers in other languages due to the oversaturation of programming bootcamps in the Bay Area, there remains a scarcity of entry-level programmers who know .NET.

This chart taken from the Coder Camps blog argues the importance of learning .NET, which was developed my Microsoft and runs primarily on Microsoft Windows, which dominates the operating system market share on a global scale.

Coder Camps Founder David Graham responded to this question on Quora: Is there a coding bootcamp bubble? Part of his answer included an explaination that positions for developers weren’t going to dry up anytime soon, and bootcamps just want to prepare as many people as possible in the most effective way possible. Part of this includes teaching programming languages that are the most useful.

“The .NET world of employment is global, while most jobs for Ruby (currently) are localized to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.”

This visual generated by Indeed and found on the Coder Camps blog shows the progression of jobs in various programming languages over time.

According to Liliana Monge, co-founder of Sabio, a software development bootcamp based in LA that focuses on getting more women and minorities in tech, “.Net is used by tons of great enterprise companies, so when our folks graduate they can secure jobs with great national companies that will offer them an opportunity to learn a ton and be part of a great established organization.”

However, Hack Reactor, affectionately known as the “Harvard of tech bootcamps”, distinguishes and prides itself by teaching Javascript. However, this may not be a distinguishing factor for long as more bootcamps begin to teach Jacascript.

The debate about why Hack Reactor chooses to focus their curriculum on Javascript is in full throttle on Quora. Quora is a great place where you can get dangerously lost in questions, answers, and different opinions on various topics within the realm of tech bootcamps.

In a Quora question seeking out more options for full-stack Javascript development bootcamps, Adam Lovallo, co-founder of Course Report said, “There is definitely a lot of interest in the success of these full stack JS programs and I suspect more bootcamps will begin offering JS centric courses in addition to rails. ”

This prediction might prove to be true over time as more tech bootcamps emerge or change to focus on teaching Javascript.

//

Why is this important? If you were an employer, wouldn’t you want to hire a programmer who already knew the programming language you needed? Part of chosing the school that is right for you might be picking the one that offers classes in your desired langauge, based on where you would like to work in the future.

Tech bootcamps graduated 6,000 people in 2014. That’s 3X as many as the year before. Basically you better get on this train now, cause it’s not slowing down, and it would be helpful if you got on the right car now, so you end up at the right point on the software development station.

Ok, train analogy over.

But in all honesty, have any of you attended a tech bootcamp, or thought of attending one, and considered programming langauges taught to be a top priority? If you’re a school out there, why do you chose to teach the langauge that you do? Please comment or send over your thoughts ([email protected]).

Coder Foundry is a tech bootcamp with a lot of talent and a lot of heart. According to co-founder Lawrence Reaves, “There is a corridor of technology stretching from DC to Atlanta on the east coast where there’s a lot of demand for .NET technology, and we’re in the middle of it.”

Lawrence himself comes from a strong tech background with over 15 years of experience in the business.

Advanced Fraud Solutions is a software company he started seven years ago along with Coder Foundry co-founder Bobby Davis. It’s a model that takes an innovative, proactive approach to identifying fraud and risk for the financial institution, and is all built in .NET technology. One major thing that Lawrence came across while growing his company? A need for developers and a lack of supply.

One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that different coding languages are used for different types of enterprises. According to Lawrence, “On the west coast obviously there’s a lot more demand for Ruby and Python; it’s a broader spectrum. But kind of where we are it’s enterprise- and corporate-based. There aren’t as many startups, and these corporations have come to rely on .NET technologies.”

Long story short, .NET technologies are mature, developed, and scalable.

After difficulty finding developers that fit the bill, Lawrence and co-founder Bobby Davis decided they could develop a way to get the software engineers they needed themselves.

So they adapted the tech bootcamp model to something that was appropriate for what they were doing on the east coast. “We developed a 12-week course of full stack Microsoft. Our lead instructor and mentor, Andrew Jensen, has been teaching at the University of North Carolina for seven years.”

Lawrence with his family in Hawaii

The other part of the tech bootcamp equation is getting people jobs. That’s why Coder Foundry has a full time recruiter who works with students setting up and preparing for interviews. It’s probably part of the secret sauce that leads to Coder Foundry’s 95% placement rate.

While Lawrence has a strong background in technology, he admits to being “primarily a business guy.”  He took technology courses as a concentration for his MBA at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

However, Lawrence’s journey with technology began long before that. “I was coding some in high school, then I was coding again in VB in the early 2000s, so I’ve kind of dabbled in and out of it the whole time. I’ve kind of stayed on the business and sales side of all of it.  My first exposure was writing loops and BASIC, early generation programing, I’m only 45 but I sound ancient when I say that.”

Coder Foundry dives a little deeper than that in regards to what they teach, and has a very robust and applicable curriculum. “Our curriculum right now is about MVC (front end Microsoft bootstrap, Visual Studio, CSS, and HTML) and Angular JS. There are two schools of thought out here, everyone’s learning MVC but some people are switching to Angular so we’re trying to fully prepare our students for everything.”

Not only are these students prepared with a  strong knowledge base to buff up their resumes, but they also create create real-world projects to add to their portfolios. Coder Foundry students go into interviews knowing they can demonstrate everything they’re doing on their own.

The curriculum is well defined, and the projects are hashed out before anyone comes in for the first day of class. According to Lawrence, “We have a rigorous curriculum we keep the student on. It’s not a make-your-own-project. That way we can make sure they learn and accomplish what we want them too. They start out doing bug trackers because every company has the common need to have bugs reported, tracked, and resolved. Then students then build a financial portal which is much more complex.”

While the ideas that Lawrence and co-founder Bobby bring to the table represent each of their different backgrounds, they have a common goal. Lawrence comments that the ways in which people can choose to learn anything about technology presently are tenfold. “The options that people have now are so diverse. When I wanted to go into technology 15 years ago, there were two options: go to college or teach yourself.”

While a university education in computer science is no easy feat and certainly not a negative, there are a few issues Lawrence sees with the way tech education is run in this arena. It’s true that programs that are at the university level are accredited, but this can sometimes play against them because these accreditations are often five, six, or seven years behind what employers actually wants from their developers.

Lawrence has a good analogy for all of this. “You learn theoretical education in college. Tech bootcamps provide more of an apprenticeship where you can actually learn a skill and get placed in jobs three months later. It’s like blacksmiths back in the day. It’s about getting college graduates to learn to apply the skills they learned about. I think a lot of people come out of a degree program lacking some really hard skills. I wish I had the opportunity to attend a tech bootcamp myself back when I needed one.”

And nowadays, learning code isn’t something that is only for hardcore software engineers and developers.

“I think this is where our overall economy is heading. If you’re coming out with a background and an understanding of how code works, and you’re able to transfer that knowledge into other positions, that’s a great thing. So you may not want to be a coder but you can apply your coding knowledge to other positions to understand a particular business unit. When you understand coding you understand how these projects work and how to interact between technology and business units. It’s kind of amazing, if you look at the companies in the southeast, they’re all reliant on some sort of databased project, and most have a web-based need. It’s a common thread among every business to use the web.”

TL;DR // Quickfacts

What do you like to do in your free time?

I do a lot of fishing. I like freshwater fishing from North Carolina all the way to Florida. Most of the time it’s catch and release. I’m into respecting the fish and the environment.

Catch and release

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

It was always an entrepreneurial flare, I always wanted to be in business. In the mid-90s when tech started to come into it’s own, that was what really drove me to pursue it as a career. It was an exciting time and I decided to make that my career choice.

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

Fish tacos. When I’m in CA I eat them every day for lunch. Really anywhere in Southern California, they’re the best. Taco Surf in San Diego is awesome.

If a movie was made about your life who would play you?

The actor would have to be Harrison Ford so he could make me look as cool as Han Solo.

You get to have afternoon tea with whoever you want! Who is it?

One of the founding fathers. I’d like to talk to them about what some of their early intentions were and tell them where we are now, compare some notes.

What’s something you’re excited about right now?

One Partnership To Rule Them All //

One of the top IPOs of 2014 was Lending Club, a peer-to-peer lending service that is disrupting the business of commercial lending. With share prices up over 45 percent since its IPO launch, Lending Club connects individual investors with startup businesses looking to make a name for themselves.

The news for them got even bigger this week. Yesterday, Lending Club announced a deal with Google to establish a line of credit to over 10,000 of Google’s partnership businesses using Google’s own money and Lending Club’s loan service to help expand the reach of Google’s resale partners, and ultimately grow Google’s bottom line as well. It’s like a win-win-win.

Since Lending Club works by crowdsourcing investment funds, they have lending caps on their loans, which are $50,000 for businesses and $300,000 for small businesses. Here’s the thing about the Google deal though: their partners can access up to $600,000 in loans. That’s twice the lending cap in case Friday is getting to you or you skipped kindergarten math.

This is technically a pilot program for now, so definitely consider this a trial-run experiment. But a pretty cool one.

Google, as per usual, is sitting pretty. Lending out its own capital to partner firms allows those firms to keep selling Google’s business services as their footprint grows, meaning that Google will also be increasing its revenue. I know, it’s a big surprise.

This is a pretty big move from Google, as it already has direct investment arms (Google Ventures and Google Capital) that take equity from companies it likes and wants to nurture and grow. The Lending Club partnership program is different, though… it provides capital without equity, which can be used for business development and “other growth opportunities.” This may include hiring staff and other expansion initiatives.

TL;DR: Google can now invest greater sums in its partner network, while Lending Club gains more clients and increases its market advantages in P2P lending. Plus, partnering with a big player like Google increases trust in Lending Club, which puts them kind of on top of the world after their IPO late last year.

Spread the Wealth //

Turns out LendingClub (LC) and OnDeck’s (ONDK) stellar December IPOs are good for the rest of us littler P2P guys because they have been catching the interest of investors. This sets the stage for other consumer and small business lending platforms (like LendLayer!?) to go public this year or later on.

Student loan-focused peer-to-peer lender SoFi and OnDeck competitor CAN Capital are both weighing an IPO. Private investors have also poured capital into other fin-tech startups like mobile payment providers (like Square) and consumer finance websites (like Credit Karma).

Basically, get ready to see a P2P IPO takeover in the near future!

Partnership Number Two //

Funding Circle, a business oriented peer to peer lending platform, has signed onto a new partnership with Herefordshire Council, a local government in England, to launch a “pioneering” agreement.  The new partnership is designed to boost local economic growth and job creation via improved access to business finance.

Herefordshire Council has committed to lend £50,000 directly to businesses in the area.  The loan program will use the Funding Circle platform.  Funding Circle stated that if demand was high the amount loaned to businesses could be increased.

CodeCombat is a fun way to learn code by playing a game. Here is an interview with co-founder Nick.

How did you get started with CodeCombat? What led you here?

My cofounder, George, would always get frustrated during our previous venture because he’d have to wait for Scott and I (the programmers) to build new features instead of being able to jump in and help with the coding. So he tried every resource out there for learning to code, but he just found them unengaging. They were lessons, and there’s a reason we aren’t in school: lessons are boring.

So we thought about it, and we realized that especially with coding, it should be fun, because programming itself is really fun once you get past the frustrating parts at the beginning. We had some ideas for how to skip all the frustration and bring the magic to everyone, so we started hacking on CodeCombat to see whether we could make something amazing.

What is your favorite thing about the program? What makes it different?

If you take 100 people who are sort of interested in learning programming and have them try to do some coding tutorial, 99 of them are going to get quickly disengage and think, “I guess this just isn’t for me.” This is a tragedy, since they just haven’t gotten to the fun part yet! It’s been super rewarding for us watching many of the other 99 would-be programmers actually getting into it: slaying ogres, saving peasants, and clapping their hands in victory. Watching kids as young as seven get through variables and loops in under an hour, with real code? That’s the best thing.

What is your educational background?

George, Scott, and I went to Oberlin College for degrees in, among us, Computer Science, Mathematics, Economics, East Asian Studies, and Cinema Studies. When we graduated, we didn’t want to get normal jobs, so we just started doing startups.

An early morning shot of the CodeCombat office.

If you could do anything differently about your education, would you?

I would have blown off all my classes in college, minimized rather than maximized my GPA, and just worked on my own projects instead of looking for that traditional credential. I triple-majored, and yet my degree has never, ever mattered–the only thing that counts is my code.

What is the importance of learning code in today’s work force?

(omg it’s so important — skip)

Why do you teach the specific coding languages that you teach within the game? What are the advantages of that coding language?

CodeCombat is an HTML5-based browser game, so everything has to be JavaScript. But that didn’t stop us from writinga transpiler and adding support for Python, CoffeeScript, Lua, Clojure, and Io. Those languages were the ones that our open-source contributors wanted to add. Now the default is Python, because that’s a great language for beginners and experts alike.

What kinds of people and markets does CodeCombat attract and market to?

We are marketing towards 8-18-year-old kids, but we’re getting plenty of older players, too, and a few even younger. It’s a challenge getting the difficulty and pacing right for all these age groups, but programming is a surprisingly age-independent skill.

What is your favorite thing to do in San Francisco in your free time?

Longboard around the waterfront on my electric longboard.

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I had no idea; a poet? I didn’t start programming until college, at which point I kicked myself for wasting all this time and not starting sooner.

The CodeCombat office, featuring George designing some new screens.

What is your favorite book, and when was the last time you actually picked up a hard copy of a book?

Current favorite is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I have a Guinness Book of World Records sitting on a table behind me, which I have been flicking through lately to see what the strongest dog is and who shot an arrow the furthest using their feet. But all my real reading is done on Kindle now, on my iPad.

You get to have afternoon tea with whoever you want! Who is it?

Archimedes. We could take turns blowing each other’s minds with massive science shock.

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

I bet I could fit about a thousand pounds of tins of Almas Beluga caviar on my desk before it collapsed and crushed my legs, which I could then resell for somewhere between $10-30M depending on how much I depressed market prices with my chicanery.

Who would play you in a movie about your life?

Keanu Reeves, the greatest living actor of our time.

What is something you’re really excited about right now?

Gayle L. McDowell is the author of Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, and Cracking the Tech Career. Her career focus on hiring and tech interviews can be seen in herwebsite and blog,  her commitment to creating new and updated editions of her essential books, and her work as a consultant. We got a chance to chat with her and gain some insight on how to land a valuable career in tech. And her most important piece of advice for anyone wanting to learn to code.

How did you get started with writing? What led you to write Cracking the Coding Interview?

Interestingly, I never really saw myself as a “great writer” growing up. I could never write the flowery prose that some of the best writers I knew could. I was much more matter-of-fact and to the point. It turns out that this style lends itself well to a technical point.

I wrote Cracking the Coding Interview after running CareerCup.com for a while. People needed more help on interviews — more careful guidance — and a dump of interview questions wasn’t really doing it.

What is your favorite thing about your book? What makes it different?

The distinguishing factor is really the emphasis on problems that make you think. That’s really what these interviews are about: seeing how you think.

Some resources try to teach you lots of fancy algorithms. That’s great for certain things, but that’s not really what the interviews are about.

What is your educational background?

My background is in computer science. I have a Bachelors and master’s degree in Computer Science (along with a minor in math) from the University of Pennsylvania. I also have an MBA from Wharton (don’t judge!).

What is the importance of learning code in today’s work force?

Technology is the backbone of so many companies now, so coding is very helpful to understand how that works. If you choose to really make coding your career, there are so many opportunities.

What coding languages do you think are the most important to learn in today’s work force?

Languages like Python and Javascript are very popular and have lots of opportunities. Additionally, Swift/iOS is also a great language to learn if you want to pursue a new career angle. Because Swift is a brand new language, you won’t be competing with people with 5 years of experience.

What job experiences have you had, coding/tech related or otherwise?

My first “real” job was as a web designer just after graduating high school. That helped me land my first coding job as a software engineer intern at Microsoft, where I ended up doing three internships during college. I did one last software engineering internship at Apple, then worked for Google for three years (software engineer again). I worked briefly at a startup after Google and then began focused full-time on CareerCup.

What main or most important piece of advice would you give someone just starting to learn to code?

First, don’t worry if the pieces aren’t quite falling into place immediately. Coding is literally learning a brand new language. It’s a totally new thing, unlike anything else you’ve learned. It will be totally foreign to you. That’s okay. Push through.

Also, take the time to play a bit. It’s good to work off some tutorials, but don’t feel like you need to stick to those 100%. Once you’ve learned some basics, poke around and try to write something on your own. Deviate from the examples a little bit. It makes it a lot more fun and you will have a better understanding of what you’re learning.

What main or most important piece of advice would you give someone just starting to look for a job in tech?

Either look for a company that’s growing or one that’s got good name recognition. Both will open doors. The one with good name recognition will establish credibility. That credibility will help you land future jobs. A rapidly growing company, on the other hand, will have lots of opportunities internally.

What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?

I’ve got a 1.5 year old son and one year old puppy. My free time is mostly trying to keep them from chewing or climbing on each other.

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was very young, I wanted to be a vet. I figured that they got to play with dogs all day. Then a vet put my dog to sleep. I did not like vets anymore.

I started coding when I was 14 though and knew I wanted to be a programmer after that.

What is your favorite book, and when was the last time you actually picked up a hard copy of a book?

For fiction, I love the Time Traveler’s Wife.

For non-fiction, I found Stumbling on Happiness fascinating.

If you could order any food and have it in front of you right now what would it be?

Sushi. Always sushi.

Who would play you in a movie about your life?

I like Emma Watson a lot. I appreciate that she seems to have her life together, she’s smart and she’s not afraid to speak her mind.

Is there anything particularly exciting that you’re working on right now?