If you want to survive in this dog-eat-dog world you’ve got to learn to code. How better to learn than with a bunch of cool nerds? Coders Lab offers six-week bootcamps filled to the brim with practical exercises. After completing such a course, students acquire programming knowledge sufficient to start working as junior front-end or back-end developers.
“Our teaching methods focus on 4 areas: practice, work with mentor, building student’s portfolio and career support,” says Somar Mahdi, Junior Marketing Specialist at Coders Lab. “This form of education can act as a vocational course or postgraduate studies.”
The company was founded by two brothers, Marcin and Jacek Tchórzewski. After graduating from the Warsaw School of Economics Marcin launched two start-ups – Coders Lab and a travel-support application Magello. Jacek is a Warsaw University of Technology alum and a back-end developer. He gained experience in companies such as Mobica and TomTom.
To enroll in the Coders Lab bootcamp course, you have to successfully complete the application process. It consists of an English language test and a logical thinking test, similar to the ones created by Mensa. Additionally, you have an opportunity to talk about your motivation during a phone interview. Upon acceptance to the program you receive a set of materials that will give you a basic understanding of programming before the proper course starts. Prework, according to the Coders Lab team, takes about 60 hours to finish. A lot? Maybe, but this course is not for the faint of heart. 240 hours of classes are split into 30 days, 8 hours a day. You can choose a full-time course (lasting six weeks) or a part-time one (15 weekends). It’s usually not enough to finish all tasks during the classes, so you should expect some late night studying as well. The whole six-week course costs 9800 zł (about € 2250).
For the front-end developer course, this intensive course encompasses HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and WordPress modules. The back-end bootcamp focuses on PHP, JS, jQuery, Symfony2 and MySQL. Additionally, since the first day, students use GitHub to create their personal programming portfolios. Curriculum is constantly updated to meet the requirements of the fast-evolving IT market.
Coders Lab offers an extensive support-career program. During and after the course they help the students find a job by organizing special workshops devoted to professional CV preparation, job interviews and the specifics of IT market. Students’ application documents and GitHub portfolios are sent to over 100 cooperating companies. Since the launch of the company in 2013, over 400 students graduated from Coders Lab, and 80% of them got employed in the IT sector after finishing the course.
It seems that a professional career in programming does not require full-time IT studies. All that it takes is strong motivation, a lot of enthusiasm, and professionals keen to share their knowledge.
