Rodrigo Mufalani, Infrastructure Specialist for hybrid cloud projects at IBM discusses how becoming an Oracle Certified Master boosted his DBA career.
Born in Brazil, Rodrigo Mufalani is an expert Oracle DBA working at IBM as an Infrastructure Specialist for hybrid cloud projects. He recently sat down with us to discuss how he got started in his DBA career and how becoming an Oracle Certified Master and Oracle ACE catapulted his career and allowed him and his family to start a new life in Luxembourg.
My journey in the database world started a long time ago, back in 2004, and it happened by chance.
I was at college at that time and applied to a developer position at a company, but my programming logic was not as good as that expected from a developer at the company. But the HR department saw that I did pretty well on the SQL part of the test and invited me to apply to an internship position as a DBA.
Why did you decide to pursue that opportunity and go down the Oracle DBA career path?
When they offered me the position of DBA, I started looking on the Internet for what exactly a DBA was. I had no idea at that time.
I had started my career doing first line IT support, helping out with Windows installations and network stuff. But I was searching for something closer to the development side of things, as thatâs what I was studying in college. So, that offer was perfect.
And thatâs how I became an Oracle DBA. I think it was destiny.
And now you are an Oracle Certified Master (OCM) and Oracle ACE. How has that helped you in your DBA career?
It has helped a lot in my career. Itâs why I am speaking to you from Luxembourg. Until 2018, I used to live in Brazil with my family (my wife and kid). Because after the certification, I got an invitation from a company based here in Europe to move here and help them with their customers.
How is the exam to become an OCM?
I cannot talk a lot about it because I have an NDA, but I can tell you itâs pretty hard.
You have to prove you have hands-on expertise in a list of skill sets in different areas, some of which you rarely use on a daily basis. And it’s pretty hard because you have time, your mind and the exam itself against you. Itâs a two-day exam at Oracleâs headquarters, and I took my exam in the UK.
At the moment, and due to Covid-19, the exam is suspended, so there have not been new Oracle OCMs since 2020. But the future OCM exam, if there is one, will probably be related to the cloud and offered online.
What about the Oracle ACE award? When did you receive that one? How has it helped you in your DBA career?
I canât believe it happened more than ten years ago, in 2009. Especially because itâs not an easy distinction to maintain over the years. If you receive the award but you donât keep participating in the community, sharing your knowledge with the community, you lose the award.
Itâs funny because I remember I was reading the email in which they notified me that I had been awarded the distinction when my boss at that time called me into his office to go over some stuff. And I told him I just got awarded the Oracle ACE award, and he goes âOh, congratulations! But what exactly is that?â He just had no idea. It was so long ago. I was the third person in all of Brazil to be given the award.
The program has grown a lot since then, and itâs a pleasure to continue being part of it. I like talking to a lot with people and love to do presentations and talks at conferences. I founded the Luxembourg Oracle User Group with some colleagues, and Iâve had the opportunity to speak at several conferences. Also, I even had the opportunity to go to Azerbaijan before the Covid pandemic, and it was amazing. I have met so many great people through these conferences.
I must really thank the Oracle ACE program for giving me the opportunity to meet all these amazing people.
What is your main role at IBM?
Right now, I am helping with a large migration project for a big customer. I am doing some automation and am involved in all the migration activities as part of the cloud migration team. So, ensuring performance, that all is done according to the plan and on time, etc.
For the moment, I am mainly helping with Oracle-related subjects. My role is a little bit wider, spanning to all things database-related, but for the moment I am mainly playing with Oracle.
As a DBA, what are the most challenging aspects of working in a hybrid cloud environment?
Nothing in particular. The same challenges that we have all the time. So, tight deadlines for delivering projects, ensuring as little downtime as possible, etc. The customer always wants to have the, and we try to deliver the best to them.
What advice would you give to those starting in IT?
My advice for the starters in the field of technology would be to read and research as much as possible. Try to pay attention to the senior people around you and don’t be embarrassed to ask questions. But ask questions after you try. Of course, in a safe environment, not in the production environment.
I prefer that someone asked me after trying these or that step and failing to find a solution. Sometimes, people get so accustomed to getting every answer at once that they don’t even try.
Congrats on first software developer job? What projects have you been working on so far?
I’m actually not working on any client-facing projects right now because I’m still in the learning phase. Novatec has a Talent Hub, and every new employee in the software engineering department starts there. We spend a lot of time learning, as the project we will be involved in later require a lot of additional skills and knowledge of languages and frameworks. So, they want to be sure that we know all these things in advance.
Whatâs the talent hub like?
There are a lot of new developers in the
hub: juniors, trainees, students… And we work together on pretty much the
same program. We learn back-end, Java, Kotlin and some frameworks, but we also learn
front-end tools and frameworks. Then, in the end, we are given a project to do
by ourselves, and we present it and show everything that we have learned so
far.
Some need two months to complete the
program, others need more time. It really depends on the person, but it usually
takes no more than six months. We need to deeply understand the concepts and
processes, so we can use as much time as we need to learn. They don’t rush us. I
really love Novatecâs idea of the talent hub.
Pretty cool, isnât it? Sounds like a great way to get started.
Yes. I was so happy when they took me in. This was something I was looking for because I don’t have that much experience and they give us the possibility to learn and cooperate with other developers and see what the process of development is really like.
We participate in all the company meetings, as well as in sprints and refinements. So, from the first day, we can see what the other developers are doing and how they manage the development process. We are not taking part in it yet, but we are already aware of what the project looks like from the inside and how people are working on it, and this is a very valuable experience.
What are you finding to be the most challenging part of this learning process?
The most challenging for me probably has been
working on a project inside a team. Before this, I was doing everything by
myself. So, if I had a project to get done, it was just me doing all the
thinking, projecting via framing and coding. Now it’s just a bit different
situation.
You have other developers in your team, and the planning of the project takes more time than the coding part itself. Thatâs because it needs to be divided into small parts, and everyone in your team needs to understand what their task is and what they’re going to do.
And I bet you learned many things as a result.
Yes. I learned how to develop the user story, how to create a ticket, how to cooperate with other developers using GitLab and all these things which I would have never learned by, for example, being a freelancer.
You mentioned you’re learning back-end, and your previous training was in front-end tech. How is going full-stack like?
I was lucky because was able to handle the back-end pretty well because I had some experience with C#. So, Java was not that difficult for me, but still, it took me probably a month to dive deeper into it, to go beyond the basics and learn new stuff. Then it became easier when I started with Kotlin and the various back-end frameworks. The most challenging part was Java itself.
How was the experience of going through the onboarding process? Was there something in particular that positively surprised you?
I was really surprised with it all, as that the onboarding process was really well organised. Everything was on time and there were so many people presented their teams and projects. They were telling us with enthusiasm and happiness, explaining how they were handling things and that they were happy to see us at the company. That was very inspiring and surprising in a positive way.
What advice would you give to others just starting with their web developer career?
For the junior developers who are just starting their web developer career, I think the most valuable advice I could give is: don’t be afraid to ask questions. Everything you want to know, everything you are not sure about, just ask. There are a lot of people who will help you, who will guide you and mentor you.
In a good software engineering team, they all want you to succeed. Thatâs the beauty of cooperation. Everyone helps each other out when they are working on a joint project.
What about work-life balance? Starting a new job can be stressful. How are you doing with it all? Are you working from home, or at the office?
Work-life balance is pretty much on schedule and going well. We’re still working from home remotely, but we can go into the office if we feel like we want to socialize with other colleagues. So, from time to time, we meet at the office. I do like work from home, as that way I don’t have to spend that much time in traffic to go to the office and back.
You were blogging quite a lot before starting your first job as a software developer. How is blogging given how busy you must be? Are your new experiences prompting you to write about new topics?
Yes, it’s difficult now with the content. I know there are a lot of people on Twitter who juggle their work with content creating, family and everything, but it was difficult for me these first two months. It being a new job, and my first software developer job, I wanted to get to know everything, to learn as much as possible. And that didnât leave too much time for content creation.
So, my blog is still where it was before, but still coming up with ideas. At Novatec we also have the possibility to write blogs, so I will probably think about that as well. I would like to pick up blogging again soon and write about all the new back-end tech I am learning to use, about Java and Kotlin â there are so many topics waiting to be written about.
For more guidance in your web developer career, make sure to follow Olena on Twitter and LinkedIn and don’t forget to check out her blog and Hashnode activity.
This IT job hunting guide will provide you with a review of everything you will need to consider in your journey towards your next professional milestone.
These are prime days for IT job hunting. As industries like commercial aviation are going through the darkest days of their history, tech-related businesses are thriving. From entertainment platforms and social networks to online retail and videoconferencing services. Some companies are simply very well-positioned to take advantage of our societyâs sudden change of habits.
Enterprise cloud companies have stepped up recruiting to meet the increased global demand for cloud services. Meantime retailers are hiring in mass to meet the demand for online shopping and home deliveries. It is a golden age for technology professionals, and you should take all the advantage you can of it.
This IT job hunting guide will provide you with a review of everything you will need to consider in your journey towards your next professional milestone.
IT job hunting in today’s jobs market
The IT skills gap is rapidly widening as new technologies emerge at an increasing rate and change the way firms operate. For this reason, most recruiters, predictably, name a skills shortage as their top challenge. The scarcity of skilled individuals raises salaries and empowers those with the most in-demand abilities. And so, new skill niches are continuously emerging. Consequently, IT professionals need to stay up to date with new developments if they want to remain relevant.
Certainly, outlining the greatest professional route for you based on your requirements and objectives is an art, and like any other kind of art, you must first learn the fundamentals.
Firstly, you’ll have to decide what kind of assignments you wish to do and pick the right firm and industry. Then you should describe your skillset and position yourself in relation to the tasks you wish to pursue. Finally, you will need to present a clean and consistent image.
As an IT professional, you must always lookout for new top IT skills to stay current and grow your career. However, with the ongoing growth of IT tools and the changing business climate brought on by the pandemic, deciding where to spend your upskilling efforts might be tough.
Technical knowledge must be updated on a regular basis to keep with current business trends, while softer skills like communication and time management are lifetime assets. The development of data science, the introduction of artificial intelligence, and the strong momentum of cloud computing are all having an impact on the most in-demand IT professionals.
The solution? To familiarise yourself with today’s top IT skills.
The art of CV writing
Once your professional profile and skills are all set up and running, it’s time to make them all come together in a well-rounded CV.
The CV is an essential component of every job seeker’s arsenal, particularly in today’s ultra-competitive IT employment market. These IT professional CV writing ideas can help you stand out from the crowd and land interviews with the finest organizations and positions in the field.
An excellent resume is a succinct and clear summary of your work history, personality, and goals. Because this is the recruiter’s or employer’s first impression of you, you should make it count
First impressions are essential in the online job-hunting environment, just as they are in face-to-face conversations.
After a company or recruiter first identifies a candidate who might be a good fit for the position; they will conduct a thorough review of their digital footprint. Any inconsistencies and red flags found will be taken into account before moving onto the next stage of the process. On the other hand, an insufficient online presence might prevent a candidate from being found in the first place.
Skills, check, CV, check. Now it’s time to go out and hunt for a job.
There is no single way of looking for a job. No single platform you should prioritise or sole strategy you should follow. It all depends on your profile, the kind of job you are targeting, and your personal style. Only one thing is true across the board: you have to be smart about it.
You will need to do some research; figure out where your desired employers get their talent from; approach the right people within the industry or organisation and use the right language.
Any job hunting guide that wants to stay relevant in a post-world should cover remote hiring and working.
Remote work is becoming increasingly common amongst IT pros. The way in which tech experts look for jobs and carry out missions was already changing before Covid-19 hit. IT freelancing was on the rise; With higher levels of remote work; slowly becoming an industry standard and the figure of the digital nomad gaining acceptance.
Remote employment across nations and time zones has become the norm now that digital transformation initiatives have advanced and organizations have been forced to adapt their hiring tactics to a world in lockdown. Remote employment is here to stay, regardless of country reopenings and a delayed return to the workplace.
But remote working and remote job hunting require a slightly different set of skills of involve different priorities and best practices.
Interviews are the final show of the job hunting world. And often the part of the process that most anxiety and self-doubt generates. The rise of remote hiring and the subsequent normalisation of online interviews makes this step particularly challenging; as traditional recommendations regarding non-verbal communication no longer apply to the likes of Zoom.
Selection procedures may be intimidating, especially when it comes to first interviews. Even if you’re a seasoned pro who believes you’ve got interviewing all under contol; it never hurts to take a second look at how you handle these pivotal moments and see where you can improve. Common sense, like in the case of so many other things in life, can be quite beneficial.
Congrats! You have gotten the job. The company or client that hired you is clearly excited about what you have to bring to the team. But do not let yourself think that the journey is over yet.
Onboarding is a crucial step in securing your job position and can well determine the impact and effectiveness of your work within this new environment. From properly getting to know your colleagues and your team’s structure to identifying internal workflows and collaboration tools. Therefore, what you learn in those first two weeks is key to ensuring you can give the best you have to offer and remain aligned with business objectives.
This often requires proactiveness on your part. Sometimes, your new employer will not have the time or resources to properly provide you with a welcome package right away. In these cases, you should take the lead and ask for everything you need in order to do a good job. Don’t be shy. Your employer or client will thank you, and it will show initiative, professionalism and commitment.
Working with a recruitment partner like Mindquest can be of great advantage in difficult onboarding situations. As expert recruiters tend to have good knowledge of the project you have been hiring for and know the company well. They will then be able to orient you through the process with minimum effort on your part.
Interested in hearing about onboarding tips from an IT professional who just recently started a new job? Then, check out our interview with Olena Drugalya to discuss her experiences at her first developer job.
Life-long learning
This is something you should do even if you are not looking for a job at the moment. Since technology is continuously evolving, your success as an IT pro depends in great part on your ability to keep up with the most in-demand skills â both technical and other, softer skills.
Therefore, you need to take advantage of the many free online IT courses out there. Here are five courses to get you started that touch upon some of todayâs core AI skills. Develop new skills, challenge yourself. Include your new certifications in your CV and LinkedIn profiles. It will show employers youâre not just standing there, idle, that you are also ambitious and in constant motion.
While it is frequent for technology experts to be overwhelmed by generic offers from recruiters who do not understand their area of technological focus and personal idiosyncrasies. There are great recruiters out there.
To conclude, specialized IT recruiters can become a life-long career partner for technology professionals looking for a steady income of work and guidance to navigate an ever-changing and fast-evolving job market. Consider working with a partner like Mindquest to easily take your career to the next level, saving time and at no cost to you.
Find more about our recruitment and career services here.
A Career in Data Science: Unlocking The Power of Data with AI
We chat with Ton Badal, machine learning engineer at London-based DataOps start-up Synthesized; about pursuing a career in data science and the challenges of working with data.
How did you get started in tech, what made you go for data science career and machine learning in particular?
Since school, I have had an engineering mentality, I’ve always had this problem-solving way of thinking. I’ve always enjoyed math and solving problems. In university, I studied telecommunications engineering and specialised in audiovisual systems, so the processing of audio, images, video and other audiovisual systems from a technical perspective.
There I started doing research in machine learning, AI and data science. I started discovering this super interesting world. After that, I was sure that I wanted to do a data science career. So I went for a masterâs in AI. And that’s how I discovered this very, very interesting and challenging world.
What did you find to be the most challenging part of this process of learning data science as career and becoming a machine learning engineer?
When I started university, it was not a clear path yet. Eighteen or fifteen years ago, you couldn’t see the path of a data scientist from start to end. Data science sits between computer science and math. And, throughout my career, Iâve been closer to computer science than to math. But the challenge is that you have to know as much as possible from both worlds. But at the same time combine them as well as possible. So I think it’s been quite challenging to be able to unify both worlds.
Whatâs the best career advice you have ever been given?
This is not really a piece of advice that someone has given me, but rather something that I’ve seen people do. I’ve realised that, when I was starting to look for jobs and was looking for a career, I was kind of looking for anything. I felt like I was the only one selling myself. But at some point, you realise that it’s important that the company also sells itself to you. The company also has to be interested in the person who’s applying. It’s not just top-down, but also bottom-up. There has to be this mutual understanding. When I started looking for jobs, I didn’t care that much about that. But after a while, I realised that it’s really important to feel confident and be in a good environment. It’s crucial for your career development and for example a data science career.
So, I would recommend to everyone to not just get the first job and be very selective about what they want and what they seek to accomplish. Also, the people who interview you: you have to look at them and ask as many questions as you can about the company. Itâs not only about selling yourself, but also about understanding the company and making sure that the step you’re going to take is the best one for you because that’s going to influence the rest of your career.
Whatâs your advice for those who want to learn data science?
If you want to learn something, the best way to learn it is to get hands-on, to find a project that you’re interested in. There are a lot of open source projects that require some help. For example, at Synthesized, we’re now going to open source a fairness package. If you’re interested in this field, you can collaborate on many, many different projects. The best way to learn computer science and data science is to get a project, get a data set. Sign up for a Kaggle Competition, for example, and try to solve it and get as close as you can to the top of the ranking.
What are the biggest issues with working with data these days?
First of all, there is the problem of ending up with a poor signal-to-noise ratio. The amount of data that you can find nowadays is huge. But, many times, this data contains a lot of noise. And, if you are not careful, you are just going to end up with just a lot of noise that renders it useless.
The second big issue is compliance, so GDPR, HIPAA, etc. If you have data that is not privacy-compliant or that is discriminating against some groups, that’s going to be not only useless, but it’s also going to be illegal to use. So you need to work closely with compliance teams. You need to spend time with the legal team to make sure that you make proper use of your data.
Finally, thereâs the problem of data sets becoming data silos. More and more, to access data, you need a data engineer, a data scientist or a machine learning engineer — someone who can do the magic with the data. It’s getting more and more complex to access the data because doing so requires the knowledge of a data engineer or a test engineer.
How is Synthesized helping to solve these problems?
Synthesized has a core engine that is able to solve these problems by enabling users to easily access their data products in many different ways. So, for example, letâs take one of the problems that I was mentioning before: working with compliance and privacy. Our engine is able to generate data that is representative of the original data but is free from privacy issues and from even biases.
Another of the problems is related to infrastructure, to data silos. Current approaches are data warehouses and data lakes. There are some problems with these approaches, for example, the signal-to-noise ratio in the case of data lakes. There’s a lot of data in there, but it’s very difficult to use. But, the infrastructure problem is also there because the data is very centralised and you need a data engineering team to get to it. So what we’re working on is a new infrastructure called data mesh that aims to decentralise data access. It tries to decentralise all these data products so that each team can access the data independently. Both for internal and for external collaboration.
Can you tell us a bit more about your role at the company?
Iâm very lucky to have been a very early employee of the company. I joined at a very early stage, and this meant that, although my official title is machine learning engineer, I’ve been able to touch a bit of everything.
However, my main role as a machine learning engineer is making sure that the core technology is as good as possible. But that also involves a lot of what a pre-sales person would do. So, going to the clients, asking them for requirements, and making sure that the product works well for them and is as tailored as possible to their requirements. But about also improving the product.
And there is also some marketing work involved, like developer relationships. We need to push into that direction because we’re a small company with very new technology and we need to make sure that we sell bottom-up, not top-to-bottom. We approach customers as machine learning engineers, as the nerds who sell to other developers, not as the marketing guys who are trying to sell something to them. Otherwise,+j the message doesn’t get through that well.
What’s next for data? Where do you see data science in, letâs say, five years from now?
I think that, right now, we’re in a very crucial moment for data. We are having all these privacy issues, fairness problems, and the users are more and more aware of this. So, we have to make sure that we have the best practices in place, that we make the best that we can with our data but still respect users. It’s going to be a very challenging time.
At Synthesize, we mainly work with structured data, but I think it’s worth mentioning unstructured data. What’s happening with OpenAI, GPT-3 or other generative models — whatâs being done is amazing. It’s a very exciting time. I’m very, very excited to see what the next new thing is going to be.
Youâve been based in London for a while. What do you like the most about the London tech scene?
What I like the most about it is that there are a lot of people working on the same topic, and you can very easily meet people doing really interesting things. And that’s one of the most powerful things when you are doing research or trying to improve your product. Just talking to people, understanding their problems and just having a conversation about something that probably you don’t understand and you don’t even know about.
Discussing new tech trends with people at other companies, that can really help. You discover new things and go out of your usual boundaries. London is great for that because there are a lot of meetups. Well, there were before corona. But yeah, you can talk to and meet a lot of people. There’s this big ecosystem where a lot of things are happening and there’s so much to learn. I’m really happy to be living here.
Peter Fisher, host of the popular How To Code Well podcast, discusses why he started teaching coding and some of the best career advice he has given.
Peter Fisher; freelance web developer and host of the popular “How To Code Well” podcast; discusses why he started teaching coding and some of the best career advice he has given.
I never actually wanted to be a programmer. I actually started off from an arts background. So I did a lot of graphics design and a lot of 3D animation. We did a lot of flash animation and action script coding, so the coding came alongside the multimedia stuff.
When I was at school, I was building small little websites for myself and friends just to post images on. And I found it interesting that one could build something with really small feedback loops. All you had to do was write some HTML code and refresh the page and you had something.
And then when I got my first job in a web development agency, I discovered very quickly that I wasn’t actually a graphics designer as more of a coder. So, I was able to transfer my passion for design to a passion for designing and architecture.
You are the host and teacher of How To Code Well. A podcast and learning hub around web development and pursuing a web developer career. How did this adventure start?
I never started How To Cope Well with the intention of building a business from it or being a creator. It was a purely accidental thing that I got into. I always started blogging when I started learning because that was my way of keeping note. But I was writing to myself rather than to others.
After I finished university, I was in this ocean of developers who’ve just come out of university, and they were all looking for the same jobs. I was speaking to a lot of recruitment agents, and one of them, off the cuff, said âI wish there was a way I could show our clients how well you can code.â This was like 2006-2007, so YouTube was just coming out. And I thought: âYou know, that’s something people is starting to use more, so I will video myself doing some code.â It was a very selfish decision. It was never intended to teach anyone how to code, it was just to show how I coded, so I could have called it How Well I Code rather than How To Code Well.
But then you decided to focus on helping others. What changed?
At first, I did about four videos and posted the links up onto my CV, but I very much doubted that anybody would actually see those videos from a job perspective. So, I forgot about it for a few years and didn’t bother logging back into YouTube.
Then one of my family members wanted to post or share a video for other family members. And I just thought âOh yeah, I’ve got this YouTube account.â So, I logged in and, after several years of it being dormant, I noticed that there was a ton of comments and questions and feedback which were all very positive. I thought this was something I could run with, and it went from the very selfish decision of promoting myself to helping people out. People on YouTube were asking if I knew how to do other things, how to use other programming languages, where the next part of the course was. The funny thing is that I never thought it was a course when I did it. The driving force of How To Code Well is its community.
What was the most challenging part of starting to produce educational content on a regular basis?
I was a junior dev working a full-time job with freelance work on the side, and I was now teaching people to code, so time was and is a thing that is against me.
I’ve got a very strict rule of not doing it during working hours, so it’s evenings and weekends, and over several years I’ve managed to keep that going. But there’s a lot of sacrifices one has to make. For instance, if I live code on YouTube on Tuesdays after work, my working day is prolonged, and my downtime is shorter. If I live code on Twitch on Sundays, my Sunday afternoons are out of the water. And there’s a lot of preparation that you have to do before you do that. You need to think about what it is that you’re going to code and talk about.
What about impostor syndrome. Do you experience it yourself? How do you address it?
Impostor syndrome is something that is definitely real, and with the podcast that came through accident as well. I started doing long-form content where I was touching upon subjects that I didn’t know much about. It got to a point where I was getting to the limits of my knowledge, and I just decided to bring people on the show to learn from them. It’s always a learning journey, always knowing where my limitations are.
With every course I build, I think that I’ve done the wrong thing, if I’ve said the wrong technical thing. You know, if I’ve pronounced an acronym wrong. You’re constantly doubting yourself. It does get easier because you get used to that feeling and you can have a little word with yourself and say âIt’s fine. It’s okay, you can publish it.â
You’ll never truly know how the audience is going to react until you publish it. So, every doubt that you’ve got in your mind is just your doubts. It’s not the doubts of others. I think that’s how I get through it.
Speaking to people on the podcast who know about the subject matter, I do come away feeling like I know nothing. I know what they’ve said because I’ve understood what they said, but it just makes me aware of how little I know of web development, which is another reason why web development is so good, because there is so much to know and so much to learn, it’s endless. You’ll never learn everything.
In your experience, what makes a good web developer versus a great one?
From a technical standpoint, a good web developer knows the syntax and the processes. But a great developer understands the technical consequences of those processes and decisions, and they can lean upon past experiences.
Also, a great developer is highly professional. They know when to say no and they have justifications of why they’re going to say no. They have testing, they know how long things are going to take, they have some experience behind what they’re doing. They’ve seen it from inception to deployment, and they’ve gone through the whole bug fixing cycle. But really, I think what boils it down is experience. You can’t just learn to be a great developer, you must embrace it and experience it.
Based on what you have seen through your courses, what are most developers struggling with these days?
Not understanding core programming concepts is something that I see a lot, so knowing the framework but not understanding the core principles of the programming language behind that. Learning the concepts of programming is a transferable skill. I’m not just talking about learning JavaScript or learning PHP or Python. It’s learning the operators, the logical flows, learning what a function is versus what a class is. All of those things you can take with you to the next programming language.
What I see a lot is people diving into frameworks and then getting stuck when they move to another position or another job, or when that framework changes. They are comfortable in that world, but they’re not comfortable in the world outside of that framework.
Whatâs the best web developer career advice you have given?
First of all
Take breaks. Take more breaks than you think you need to. Your brain works offline, so even if you’re not physically at your machine, you’re thinking about the work. I think about the work when I wake up and when I go to bed. I never switch off in terms of thinking about the bugs that I need to fix or the logical flows, but because I’m not staring at a screen, I’m not getting stressed about it. I’m processing this information in my brain in the background. And, when you come back to the code, itâs easier to identify the issue that you are in.
The second one
The second one is to keep asking questions. Web development is super hard and it’s going to get harder. You think you know it now, but, in two years’ time, you’ll know two years’ worth of it, and then you’ll discover another two years that you don’t know. There’s more stuff in web development that I don’t know than there is that I do know, and Iâve been in it for a long, long time. Don’t beat yourself up and if you don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve, then ask someone. And, if you don’t understand what that person is saying, ask someone else, because perhaps that person hasn’t talked about the answer in a way that you can absorb. Maybe you are more of a visual learner. Maybe they can show you on a whiteboard or take you through the process. Throwing acronyms at someone isn’t a very useful thing, is it?
Lastly
Lastly, technology comes and goes. At university, I studied visual basic and action script. Well, action script is for Flash. Flash is never used. And visual basic, I just wouldn’t even know. I did well in that course, but I’ve never used it. What I’m trying to say is that technology comes and goes, and whatever you learn now probably won’t be the thing that you will be learning in 10 years’ time or doing in 10 years’ time. So, what you need to do is accept that and embrace change, but don’t embrace change every five minutes.
And the only thing would add is to just enjoy it. Don’t get too stressed with it all. It’s a very challenging thing, and I find that, the more I get stressed, the more I dislike it. So, once you find that you’re actually getting stressed and frustrated with something, take a breather, take a couple of hours. The code will still be there tomorrow, so take an evening off.
How To Code Well is a video podcast which is live on YouTube every Thursday at 20:00 BST. The audio version is released every Friday and is a week behind the live show. You can find it on iTunes, Spotify and most other podcast platforms.
You can follow How To Code Well through its website, on YouTube (Live every Tuesday @ 17:30 BST and Thursday @ 20:00 BST for the podcast) and on Twitch (live every Sunday @ 14:30 BST).
How does one grow as a front-end developer? We chat with Vasilika Klimova, senior front-end developer at Avaloq and founder of the SkillUp School.
How does one grow as a front-end developer? We chat with Vasilika Klimova, senior front-end developer at Avaloq and founder of the SkillUp School in Luxembourg, about why soft skills and not over-engineering are key to advancing as a front-end devand in your web developer carer.
Why did you decide to go into web development? Whatâs your web developer career story?
Actually, web development wasnât my first choice at all. I have been playing video games since I was three years old, and, at first, my idea was to become a game developer. I studied C and C++ at university. You can get into this industry through OpenGL and all this stuff but, in Tver, my city of origin in Russia, we didn’t have any jobs for students in this area. So, I found some web development vacancies and decided to try it, and by the fourth year of university I got my first job as a web developer as a Webmaster. So, I started from scratch.
After working there for several years, I finished my university degree and moved Moscow. Then I had to decide if I wanted to go for back-end or front-end, as before I was full-stack. I was doing server code, business logic, all requests to the servers and database stuff, but also user interface. I did all of it. In Moscow there are bigger companies, and these usually have different web development teams, teams for front-end and teams for back-end. So, at this point I needed to decide: do I go as a back-end PHP developer, or as a JavaScript front-end developer? And I went for front-end because I’m a visual person. I need to see what I’m doing, and, when you work with a server, you usually look at the terminal and you see just code and not a lot of interfaces.
And what came next? You now live in Luxembourg. Why the change? What are you up to these days?
I’m actually in Luxembourg because of my previous job. I was a Front-End Team Lead at Artec 3D, a company that has offices in Moscow, Luxembourg, China and California, doing user interfaces and 3D-related tasks. After five years, I decided to switch and was approached by Avaloqâs HR department. They do banking software; itâs quite common to work in the banking industry in Luxembourg.
Avaloq is a much bigger company, and banking quite a regulated industry. Did you notice any differences as a front-end dev?
So, I went from a 200-people company to a 2,500 thousand one with 30 offices around the world. And some processes are not as fast.
Before, when I needed to ask someone within the company for something, I just went directly to them and asked them. But Avaloq has around 800 people at its main office in Switzerland. If you need some information, there are a lot of different teams, and you really need to investigate. For example, sometimes you are working on a project, and you need to find the people who wrote the code in the first place. And often, the only way to know who did this code is to look at who committed it. Coders and managers change, and the only way to find the author of the code is through the commit.
And besides your job, you also work on some web projects, do consulting and give private lessons for adults and children. You are also the founder of SkillUp School, a school that teaches technical skills and how to advance your front-end web developer career. Tell us a bit more.
Yes. I started being a teacher and mentor for front-end development in 2015. I taught at schools in Russia, both online and offline. And after I had settled in Luxembourg and finally had some time in my hands, I decided to create SkillUp School, as I hadnât seen that many schools like this in the country.
What we give to our students is this absolutely modern way of looking at front-end technologies, because as professional front-end developers, we are using them every day. We started in 2019. We donât have too many students, and our main idea is to be very flexible for our students. People who want to change their career usually already have a job and not that much time to invest in their development. We only have two or three teams per year, so not big groups, and we are very flexible. It helps us take an individual approach to each student, and I often become even friends with them. After the course, I keep helping them grow and with any questions they have.
In your experience, what makes a good vs. a great web developer?
I think I started to think more about this when I became a team leader. Good developers can think from a technical standpoint, but a great developer, in addition to the technical aspect, knows how to take more of a business perspective. The main idea behind our job is to deliver something that makes our clients happy. You need to think about the business requirements, why you have these requirements, if there may be a more efficient way to create a feature that meets them and not overengineer. You need to ask yourself âWhy?â several times.
I know some genius developers, but sometimes they end up over-engineering because they want to make something ideal, something perfect. But the business doesnât need that. You need something now, for this and for that purpose. And you always need to keep timing in mind. If development takes more time, then you can run into problems. Itâs more of the developerâs time, which results in more money. Donât over-engineer. Relax and just keep it simple.
As a senior developer, how can more junior specialists grow as front-end developers?
To work on their soft skills, on how to learn, how to behave, work in teams, etc. If one day youâd like to become a team leader, itâs important to work on your team skills, on how to negotiate with web designers. Often developers have issues with designers because we materialise their design and they are not happy with what we created. You really need to have a grasp of some psychology basics for this.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I like scuba diving. I already have more than 100 dives on my back and am a rescue diver, so I could rescue someone from the water, I hope. Itâs so calming and beautiful under the surface. But I don’t have enough money to do it too many times a year. Usually maximum twice per year, unfortunately. Covid-19 has made it particularly hard too.
I also like playing board games and having a nice time with friends. I still play computer and video games sometimes. Not to compete, but itâs just something that helps me relax. I am partial to games with and interesting and breath-taking plot.
What makes a successful web dev? We interview Berlin-based front-end expert Stefan Judis, who works for Contentful leading developer relations.
What’s the secret to creating content for web devs? We continue our chat with Stefan Judis, developer relations lead at Contentful, blogger and front-end expert. Here is why and how he shares what he knows and learns with the community.
After building a career as a front-end developer, you’re now leading developer relationsfor Contentful. What does exactly the job involve?
Developer relations is still a fairly new field. What we see over the last decade is that a lot of technology companies. And especially the developers using these technologies have a lot of decision power. We at Contentful are one of these software providers, a headless CMS (Content Management System) that you can put anywhere. And our developer relations team doesnât work directly on the product. We have completely separated engineering teams that are building the APIs and the product itself.
And the DevRel team is there to spread the word about Contentful but also going into the communities and helping developers with whatever they’re struggling with. And this can be Contentful related, but very often it’s also just web development related. So, what we’re doing is that we are blogging, we are building code examples, etc. And whenever we are talking to users or customers or friends; we are basically the bridge between the product and the developer communities out there.
When someone has a problem with something, our team are usually the first people that they go back to. And we’re then feeding all these things back into the process and building this trust within the developer community. So, yeah, we are blogging, speaking, writing, and hanging out on our community Slack. To connect with the people, have a little bit of fun and build cool stuff. That’s what I do for a living.
But you also enjoy creating content for web devs in your free time, right?
Yes. Since this year, so since 2021 and the pandemic and being stuck home, I’m writing a weekly newsletter. If people are interested in random web development stuff to read on a Monday morning over their coffee… It’s usually something around 10 resources, some GitHub repositories, some music, etc. And I’m writing that every Sunday. So if you’re up for some random good stuff I thought was good over the week, people can subscribe here.
So where do you draw the line between your personal blogging and the one you do as part of your developer relations job?
Well, when you work in DevRel, the line is very, very blurry. Where does work start and where does it end? So I usually do a lot of things on the side. Right. So I do a lot of blogging on my own blog and occasionally I do something for the Contentful blog. Lately, I am leading the DevRel team, which means that I’m not hands-on with the content that much anymore. But I’m still around and the line is very, very blurry.
When you work in these semipublic roles, it’s usually like âOh yeah, Stefan is the Contentful guyâ. And when someone writes me DM on Twitter on a Saturday because they’re struggling with something, well, I’m the last person to say âYeah, no, it’s the weekend, not going to help you right now”. So it’s very hard to tell where it starts and ends. But I’m just really into web development and I like to share all the things that I learn and that are exciting. And that’s just what I do.
What advice do you have for other IT pros who want to create content and share tips to help out others? How did you start creating content for web devs?
It’s hard for me to give advice, but I can say what I do. I made it a habit of writing something down or creating a video or some sort of content around things that I discover. I’m also reading a lot. I’m subscribed to a gazillion newsletters. So when on a Sunday morning, I read something and have this thought âHuh, I didn’t know thatâ, I put it somewhere. It could be on my own website, or it could be on Twitter. But just making this habit of constantly documenting what you’re learning helps with this whole idea that you don’t know anything about web development, because this fear is just so big.
I have been doing this for three or four years. And what that comes down to is that I now have, I don’t know, 200, 300, 400 learnings on my own website. And these are primarily for me. So this is how it started. Because I wanted to come back a month later or six months later and look at it and say âMan. You got a lot smarter over the last six months”. But, after some time, more and more people discovered what I wrote. Because, if it’s useful for me, usually I’m not alone.
And thatâs one piece of advice that I would give to people that want to start creating content or blogging. If it’s useful for you, you are usually not alone. And there is nothing like âOh, beginner content is not usefulâ or âIt has to be this 2,000-word, in-depth article with a lot of scientific, engineering knowledgeâ. That’s absolutely not the case. We have so many people joining the industry. And whenever you learn something or when someone learns something, I think it’s a very good habit to just write it down.
And then you have the greatest feeling in the world. When some people write me an email or send me a tweet tell me âHey, Stefan, I just learned this thing. You learned that three months ago and now thereâs two of us.â And that’s just beautiful because you can kind of connect the two things, helping people but also documenting your journey.
And you have even built some tools to help you and others in the learning journey, Tiny Helpers and Random MDN. Can you tell us a bit about them?
Tiny Helpers is a very simple website that I created around Christmas one and a half years ago. There are so many self-built or quick build tools that you usually cannot Google. For example, there are a lot of people that build tools for accessibility or tools for defining font sizes, but when you Google them, you will never, ever find them because they are not SEO optimised. There are not a lot of words in them. If you find them and don’t bookmark them, you will always lose them. So, I just built this little resource collection that is Tiny Helpers, and I put it online because that’s what I do.
I thought, âWell, if itâs useful for you, then it’s probably useful for someone else.â And the whole thing is open for contributions. I think I have had over 100 contributions. And there are quite a few people that just come in and say âOh, that’s useful. I should add that to Tiny Helpers because thatâs where I go to find little online tools.â And, when I’m looking for a very specific tool that I’ve seen online, I’m going there as well and it’s the same thing. If it’s useful for me, it’s usually useful for someone else.
The other project that you mentioned, Random MDN is a quick and easy Twitter bot that I built to support my learning journey. So MDN is the developer resource for Mozilla, and it is huge. There is so much knowledge in there and I just had this random thought: âHey, it would be kind of cool if there was something that tweeted out random MDN pages. It tweets six times a day. It just grabs the sitemap from MDN, picks a random page and tweets it out. And I learn new things just because of it. Sometimes I see a tweet and I am like âHuh, I didn’t know that.â And very often this me to blogging about it, just because my own bot taught me something about web development.
Ethical hacking can be the solution to some of our most serious cybersecurity issues. We interview Rickey Gevers, cybersecurity expert and founder of Scattered Secrets, a password breach notification and prevention service that is helping businesses and individuals protect their online accounts.
Here is how this Dutch security pro got into hacking, was arrested by the authorities, and went on to show how that his talents could also be a force for good.
My dad was really the one who introduced me to tech. I’m not a typical technical person. I like to play outside and those kinds of things. So, not necessarily being behind a computer. But my dad bought a computer when I was young, so I started playing with it at a young age too. I liked the Internet a lot because you could search for anything you wanted. I am a very curious person, so I was looking things up all the time.
But an Internet connection was very expensive back then, and at one point my parents had to pay a lot of money because of me. So, they used a Windows password. But I managed to break into the Windows user account and started using the Internet again. They got mad again, and then my dad used a BIOS password, which was a proper measure to keep me out for a month or so.
Then I managed to take out the whole modem, put it in my own computer, install all of the drivers and use the phone connection from the moment they left the house. And I put my computer in such a position that if they came home, I could see them entering and remove the cable, remove the modem, and put them back in my dadâs computer just in time before they entered the house. Thatâs how I sort of started hacking, in a pretty natural way. I wasn’t really busy with hacking or anything. I just wanted to get the things done.
Then, at the age of 13, you created Waarneming.nl, a leading community-driven platform where users collect and share data for nature conservation, research or education. How did you go from there to the major leagues of hacking?
Usually, when I talk about the things that I have achieved, I see Waarneming.nl as the brightest thing that I’ve done. I didn’t make any money from it, but it contributes a lot to society. And at one point the website got hacked, which I will never forget. One guy just took it offline and put some defacement posters on it. I put the website back online but, after half an hour, the guy defaced the website again. It a lot of fun for him but, of course, it was not for me.
I decided I didnât want this to happen anymore in the future. And the only way to stop it was to understand how hackers work. So, I started to learn to hack and, pretty quickly, I hacked my first computer. I kept on challenging myself. Back in the day, nobody got arrested for it. I didn’t break any computers ; didn’t delete any files or whatever you can imagine ; I just hacked the computer and that’s all I did. So I started aiming for higher targets. I went from one computer to a computer network. I went to universities because they had fast Internet connections. And I moved up the ladder and eventually was able to basically hack any network, move laterally within the network and become the main admin. And that’s sort of where my story ended.
For some reason, the University of Michigan did a forensic investigation, found me and arrested me. As I said, this was back in the day, so not a lot of hackers got arrested. I had also hacked NASA, to just give you an example. And I remember one guy got arrested for hacking NASA, but at that time, it was very normal to hack computers at NASA.
What exactly happened with the whole University of Michigan incident?
Well, the University of Michigan was sort of my playground, because the Internet connection there was very slow. So, if I wanted to try some new tools that I had found, I usually tried to do it on a network there, which is probably one of the reasons they caught me. But they did a proper forensic investigation and they determined that I was in the network, that I had full control of the network, but that I didn’t do anything else. So that’s why the FBI basically did not chase me.
Then the high-tech crime unit here in the Netherlands was established and they contacted the FBI and asked them if they had anything they could do for them. So that’s when the FBI said, well, we have a file here. We know its name, we know where he lives, so maybe you can pick up the case. And that’s basically what they did. I got arrested by the high-tech crime unit as one of the first hackers they arrested, I believe. They thought I was a really big hacker, which I wasn’t, of course. I did hack a lot of computers, but I never did anything with it. So, I was basically a huge disappointment.
Then, after some years under trial, and a suspended sentence, you went back to hacking, but with a different approach. You went on to create Scattered Secrets. What was your thinking?
At first, when I went on trial, I wondered âshould I continue this?â But after two years, I was like âwell, I’m only good at one thing, so let’s just fight back and show everybody that I’m on the good side and that I don’t have anything to do with criminals or whatever.â And I started hacking again.
I did a lot of penetration testing, and at one point I noticed that you can easily hack any company and you usually do it with the same trick. That’s when I started building Scattered Secrets, because I believe you can hack any company by simply looking at the passwords that have been leaked. So that’s what we’re trying to fight against right now. We’re basically doing the low hanging fruit for most hackers. It’s not that interesting. It’s not that advanced. But, in our opinion, it’s the most dangerous and easiest way to hack any company right now.
So, you basically monitor for passwords that have been hacked and leaked. Where do hackers get these passwords?
The funny thing is that most passwords are leaked through only a few databases. We have a few enormous leaks. One of them is MyHeritage. The other one is MySpace. And the third one is LinkedIn. That’s where most passwords come from. It’s often the small databases people are in, but once every two years, you have an enormous breach.
Given these ongoing data leaks and recent headline-grabbing global breaches, how do you think we are doing in terms of cybersecurity?
Often, if you talk to security experts, they say we’re not getting better. But in my opinion, there won’t be a single day without hacks. That’s simply because you have the human factor, and the human factor is always vulnerable. We can build secure systems, but there’s still a human using them, so it will always be vulnerable. So, we have to deal with the fact that there will always be hacks.
At the same time, when it comes to multinationals â back in the day, in 2014 or prior to that, we had these flat networks, and you could easily become the administrator. It was pretty easy to hack large companies. I think most multinationals now have a certain base level. And, sure, in the news we see the ones that don’t have that base level. But we’re getting more and more mature. I think that’s the most valuable lesson.
To you, whatâs the most challenging aspect of cybersecurity?
As a security researcher, I think the most challenging part is that you have to keep up with your knowledge, you have to continue learning and working. If you stop doing certain things, your knowledge starts to lag behind. It’s a constant battle to keep your knowledge at a certain level.
And what are your go-to cybersecurity education resources to stay at that level?
Without a doubt, the SANS Institute. In my opinion, they’re the only real experts. Itâs very expensive, between six and eight thousand euros, but it’s absolutely worth the money. I try to do a course every year, but itâs not always easy to find the time.
The CV is an indispensable part of any job hunterâs toolkit, especially in the ultra-competitive IT job market of today. These CV writing tips for IT professionals will help you make your profile stand out from the pile and open the doors to the best jobs and companies in the industry.
âA good resume is a clear and concise showcase of your experiences, personality and aspirations. Since it is the first impression that the recruiter or employer will have of you, you better make it count. Here is how to do it.
Need advice on how to start or develop your freelance consulting business in tech or IT? Need to start a new permanent or freelance assignment? Join Mindquest and get support from our team of experts.
CV writing tips: Choose a positioning strategy for your profile
Due to the constant evolution of work culture and business processes; more and more IT experts are more and more looking for a job that is part of a well-defined project. To do so, you need to be strategic. You can use the header or the first part of your CV to describe your professional profile and aspirations using the keywords that your target employer is more likely to be searching for.
This âseductionâ phase, if you will, requires a solid business and marketing strategy. Adapt your speech as much as possible by offering services that are in line with what expected of the position and industry. If you are a developer, look for a cv profile example for software engineers; the Internet is teeming with good ones. You can also ask a colleague or mentor for theirs.
Make your CV clear and enjoyable to read
Content over looks, but do not neglect the visual aspect. Without falling into an excess of originality, make sure that all the elements are easily readable and prioritize the information. Remember that your resume is like your advertising booklet. It should invite reading and also contain all the necessary information.
Describe in a few lines or preferably bullet points what your duties and accomplishments were during previous projects. Indicate the type of companies you have worked for and the specific sectors you are familiar with. You can also specify the technical context and team configuration for different positions. As this will help attract employers who are looking for a specific level of expertise or experience.
Highlight key information for maximum impact
Single-page resumes are for people at the start of their careers. Opt for a multi-page CV that highlights your past experiences in relation to the type of mission you are aiming for.
In order to make your CV more impactful and attract the attention of the recruiter, you should highlight certain elements of your CV based on your strengths and the target position. If you have already done several similar gigs in the past and have some big wins to display, put the emphasis there.
You should also bring up some of your soft skills and passions to help you stand out among other candidates. Perhaps you have a rock band on the side or are a great climber â figure out a way to squeeze that in there. It will make you more relatable and help recruiters remember you more easily when weighing on their various choices.
Complement your CV with a portfolio
Chances are you already have a great deal of experience under your wing. Youâve worked for interesting companies, played a key role in noteworthy projects, helped bring to light successful products.
Beyond including all that experience in your CV, putting together a short portfolio can help potential employers get a better picture of your skills and strengths. It doesnât need to be a portfolio as polished as, letâs say, that of a designer or a graphic artist â a simple explanation of every one of your best projects will suffice. If youâre after a programming job, put together some of your best code.
Make sure your CV is aligned with your online presence
Last but not least, keep in mind that one of the key CV writing tips for IT professionals does not have much to do with the CV itself, but rather with presenting a coherent online presence when compared to your CV.
After a company or recruiter first identifies a candidate who might be a good fit for the position, they will conduct a thorough review of their digital footprint. Any inconsistencies and red flags found will be taken into account before moving onto the next stage of the process. On the other hand, an insufficient online presence might prevent a candidate from being found in the first place.
Make sure that you are presenting a cohesive profile across all platforms and services. Is the image you are projecting in your CV consistent with your LinkedIn or Twitter profile? Are your past job titles the same on the different job boards you are present in? Do the start and end dates of previous projects match?
Tech education is a force for social transformation. We interview Karen Boers, co-founder & CEO of BeCode, a Belgian coding school bridging social divides.
Tech education is a force for social transformation. We interview Karen Boers, co-founder & CEO of BeCode, a Belgian coding school bridging social divides through tech education. A social entrepreneur at heart, Karen has kick-started various successful digital transformation projects over the years â including the European Startup Network, the EUâs first network of national startup associations.
How did your professional career begin? How did you enter the tech space?
Well, after some time in HR, I joined what at that point was a brand-new research institution focusing on software innovation. I joined as a management assistant, so absolutely nothing to do with the tech part of the company. But it was a burgeoning institution, and we grew quite rapidly. I evolved into marketing and communications and took on HR as well for a research staff of one thousand people across multiple universities in our country.
We worked closely with industry partners to understand their needs and design software solutions for real-life problems. Not just economic problems, but also societal problems like children that have been ill for a long time and have been isolated from the learning environment. It was the pre-Internet era. So, we started working on solutions for children to have a virtual playground and play and chat with their friends. It was really cool. That’s what got me interested in technology. Not the technology itself, but how it can offer answers to societal problems and bring human-centred solutions into the world.
Then you went on to create several business and career development projects, as well as Europeâs first unified startup network. And at what point did you decide to dive into education and create BeCode?
I saw there was a huge war for talent raging all over the tech world. Not just for startups, but also in bigger companies. During one of our international missions to Kenya, we visited a coding school that was taking people off the streets, providing them housing, and giving them the training to become programmers. They would then introduce them to European startups looking for new talents, offering them as remote employees. And I thought âcool idea, but maybe there are similar solutions to be found closer to home.â
If we cannot find the right talents to join these companies, then we’re going to be in trouble. And not only from an economic point of view. We also have a huge societal problem with lots of people that are being isolated, cornered, and that face a lack of prospects. And, if we donât address that problem, then we have an even bigger issue coming up.
Being the mother and stepmother of five teenagers, that was kind of in my face. I thought âif I don’t help resolve these issues, my children are going to be in huge trouble five to 10 years from now.â So, for me, the sense of urgency was pretty high. Thatâs how BeCode emerged from my multiple professional experiences.
I had my love for education, my industry experience, my experience in marketing, and my first steps as an entrepreneur. It all came together into a bigger project where we basically go hunt for untapped talent. We go look for people who are low-educated, in long-term unemployment, of immigrant background, etc. People who, for whatever reason, are struggling in todayâs job market today, but definitely not for lack of talent or motivation.
How do you reach these at-risk people and help them realise and unleash the potential of a career in tech?
We go search for them. We try to inspire them into considering ICT as a career. Often, the problem is not that they’re not talented, but rather that they don’t know that they’re talented. They’re not aware of the potential they have. So, there’s a lot of awareness and evangelisation to be done with these audiences, to get them excited about tech and consider such a career choice.
Then we help them through really hands-on training programs. Not through too much theory, not through listening to the big expert who will tell you what to do, but basically through trial and error. We give you a small exercise, a project, then something more complex, etc. You have a small group of peers and lots of resources that you can draw on. Basically, nobody reads a manual before they start solving a puzzle either, right? They just pick up the pieces. They try bits and pieces. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, you search for another solution. That’s what they do.
What skills are you putting the focus on through your tech education programs?
The funny thing is that our tech education does not actually focus on the tech skills themselves. I mean, it’s a means, but not an end. What we focus on mostly is teaching them how to learn in a technical environment, because whatever competency or programming language teach them today, tomorrow the context and the technologies will have changed. So, they will have learned basically nothing, or at least not how to continue developing themselves as professionals.
Thatâs why we focus a lot on learning how to learn: understanding where the resources are; how you can apply them to a use case; what to do when you get stuck; how to build a network of peers where you can go and ask for advice; how you look at examples and copy-paste, but not exactly copy-paste, and debug, etc. So, it’s much more about the soft skills and the learning process around technology.
In the end, they come out with a basic set of technical skills, but mostly with the ability to continue learning once they leave this environment. Especially because in seven months you canât learn everything. So, whatever they come across, they will have to keep learning for probably the rest of their careers.
And that’s what we hear from the companies that hire our graduates. It’s a combination of, âOK. It’s nice to have people with a different perspective around the table, but it’s also nice to see that eagerness to learn and that ability to learn and be a problem solver rather than a bringer of problems.â Also, the ability to resolve problems as a team and work towards goals together.
Whatâs usually your main piece of advice for those starting out with their tech education?
Always dare to fail. If you don’t try, if you don’t experiment, you’re not going to learn. When you learn how to walk as a kid or even how to ride a bike, which is already a bit more complex, you don’t go sit down and read the manuals first. You fall flat on your face at least a couple of times. But you get back up on your feet. You look at your parents to ask âwhat exactly did I do wrong?â And maybe they give you a little nudge left or right, and you try again. You do better. And that’s how we learn.
It’s our natural way of learning. We have to accept that, if we want to learn as adults, we also have to fall flat on our face a few times and hurt ourselves a little bit. Weâll look at other people for small tips and pieces of advice, then take those and try again. And that’s OK. It’s not shameful to try something and not succeed at the beginning, or even not to succeed at all. But if we don’t dare to venture out there and try, then we will get nowhere.
What are some of the most incredible stories of personal transformation you have seen at BeCode over the years?
That’s a tough choice. We have seen over 1,500 stories pass in front of our eyes, and many of them are absolute tearjerkers. I think the one that touched me the most was that of a female refugee. She spent two years trying to come to Europe and had asked for asylum. It was a really rough journey where she saw a lot of hardship and people suffering around her. I don’t think she even dares to tell the people that she met here in Belgium.
She then spent another two years here going through the motions of becoming a refugee: doing the paperwork, learning the local language, etc. And then she came across BeCode. She was so eager to learn.
While she was with us, she was also trying to get her children, who she had had to leave behind, over to the country. And she succeeded not only in finishing the programming course and securing herself a job, but also in getting her children here. You could see it in her eyes that she was absolutely convinced that she was going to make this happen. No was not an option. And she persevered. She had a rough time during the training at certain points, but she always saw it through and found a way out, and she was always open to helping other people. When you see people like that graduate, secure a job, see them reunited with their children; those stories, they stick with you for life.
But I love helping the local people as well. It can be equally rewarding to see somebody who’s been a truck driver for twenty, twenty-five years and started struggling with their back and is not able to drive the truck anymore. That was basically their whole life. They spent their whole life in their truck and then, all of a sudden, they’re completely stuck. If you can somehow make them see that there might be an alternative career for them through tech education, an alternative future; that can be a life-changer.
What new tech education projects is the BeCode team working on these days?
We have seen that, for some, becoming a professional programmer is a good career choice. But for some, it’s a bridge too far, and that’s okay. Right now, we are developing a number of shorter training programs, so that they can just taste and try and then decide whether it’s something for them.
But we are also working on programs to teach people basic digital skills, how they can survive in a collaborative workspace so that we all had to become acquainted due to the global pandemic. Things like how to download your work schedule from the Internet as a factory worker, how to apply for your holidays through an app instead of by writing on paper.
If you look at recent studies, the digital divide is mostly on those digital skills. Yes, there’s clearly a shortage of programmers. But the biggest problem is on fairly basic digital skills that really hamper people from being proficient as professionals and in their personal lives. And that’s a disaster.
If you look just at Belgium â and we’re quite a developed country, aren’t we? â 40 per cent of all Belgians lack the digital skills to be proficient in what they do today. And, if you look at low-educated people or people in low-paid jobs, that number rises to seventy-five per cent. So there’s a lot of work still to be done and not just on the programming side. That’s our conclusion and our path forward, to include these people as well and not leave them side-lined.
