May 2022 Newsletter
Hey folks!
Happy spring! We hope you’re all doing well, we’re so stoked to share what’s been happening with us since cohort 3 kicked off!
Cohort 3
Our students have been diving into the curriculum with our Lead Instructor and Dean of Students, Max Matthews along with our amazing teaching assistants. We’d like to take this opportunity to explore what students have been learning!
If you’re interested in exploring any of these subject areas further, we’ve created a Youtube playlist with all the class recordings that you can find here. We upload these videos daily!
Curriculum
We’d love to give you a snapshot of what it is students tackle during the first few weeks of the program!
In week 1, students cover some of the basic thematic materials surrounding computer software and software engineering.
Moving into week 2, students began to dive into the basics of HTML & CSS, spending Wednesday and Thursday working on a weather app, as well as discussing the nature of projects throughout the program
By week 3, students were getting more involved with HTML & CSS diving into setting up a News site and experimenting with the mobile function of the site.
In week 4, instructors covered Responsive HTML & development tools. By the end of the week, students were building their own portfolio sites.
Students continued developing their portfolio sites into Tuesday of week 5 before switching gears and talking about the capstone project as well as spending time working on a class project.
Students have been putting an immense amount of work into the program so far and are seeing results already!
Kickoff Ceremony
Cohort 3 of Careers in Code kicked off in person on March 24, 2022 and we’d like to share some details about the ceremony! You can check out our recorded livestream of the event here!
We are so very excited that all 15 of our students were able to attend the ceremony in person. Each student gave a brief introduction sharing a little about their story up until Careers in Code as well as what they hoped they could do upon completion of the program.
We were fortunate enough to be joined by a few local employers, some of whom were graduates of previous cohorts! These folks talked about the kinds of skills they would get out of the Careers in Code program as well as how these skills would be fielded in the professional world upon graduation. These employers also talked about their organizations and potential internship and entry-level positions that are available at their companies for students upon graduation. We’d like to give a huge thank you to the employers who spoke during the kickoff:
- Sidearm Sports (Dana McMullen)
- TCGplayer (John McDonald)
- Density (Ryan Gaus)
A HUGE thank you to Syracuse Surge, CenterState CEO and Le Moyne College & Erie 21 Initiative for all of their tremendous support to make the third cohort of Careers in Code possible.
Guest Speakers
We’re excited to announce that we’ve been continuing with our guest speaker program from our second cohort, and we’ve had four amazing speakers already:
- Brandon Lanthrip, a Senior Development Engineer at Target, was our first guest speaker of this cohort. He came to speak with our students about his experiences with extreme poverty, homelessness, and using coding and software development to find success and to break through the concrete ceiling. Check out his talk here!
- Jason Scharf, a Data Program Manager for the City of Syracuse, as well as our Student Success Representative at Careers in Code was our second guest speaker! Jason spoke to our students about accessing Syracuse’s open data! Check it out here!
- Ann Willcott, a Product Owner at Upstate Interactive, joined us on 5/9 to give a talk on Web3. Ann left a well-paying executive-level job in order to pursue a full-time career in Web3 and shared her experience with our students. Check out her talk here!
- Amanda Darcangelo, a full stack data consultant at Corporate Technologies, came and spoke to our students on May 16 about entering the data industry. Check out her talk here!
We’re so grateful for all the guest speakers we’ve had so far and all to come!
If you’re interested in learning more about guest speakers and how you can get involved, check out the guest speakers page on our website!
What We’ve Written
Meet Cohort 3 of Careers in Code — May 19, 2022
We’re so excited to introduce and welcome the students of cohort 3 to our community. Here are the amazing stories of our motivated, passionate students!
11 min read
Meet Max Matthews our New Dean of Students and Lead instructor — March 1, 2022
We’re excited to introduce Max Matthews (he/him) as our new Dean of Students and Lead Instructor at Careers in Code! Many of you may know Max already as one of our instructors for Careers in Code from our first and second cohorts. To learn more about Max and his new position, check out our Medium blog!
5 min read
Catching up with Jason Scharf — March 3, 2022
Many of you know Jason Scharf as our student success representative at Careers in Code. In his role, he helps our students navigate and eliminate potential barriers, challenges, hurdles, or problems they might have throughout our program. In addition to his role at Careers in Code, we’d like to congratulate him on his new position at the City of Syracuse as a Data Program Manager! Learn more about Jason by checking out our blog!
4 min read
How to Find a Great Mentor in the Technology Industry — April 28, 2022
Written by Laura Thorne, our Career Coach here at Careers in Code, this article explores how Being a mentee can provide professional opportunities and be a personally rewarding experience. Having the support of a mentor to give you insider industry advice will put you miles ahead of others during your job search or as you acclimate to a new company. Read more here!
5 min read
Job Openings
- Lock 4 Workforce Development Specialist — Non-traditional student advising, administrative duties, career and workforce development.
- Surge Coding Apprenticeship — Apprenticeship geared towards women and people of color with some technical skills. 12-month, full-time employment opportunity combined with on the job training and instruction.
- Vidaloop — Senior Software Engineer, Quality Assurance Engineer (Apply Here)
- Sidearm Sports — Full-stack developer, Mobile app developer, Senior front end developerTrainor — Full-stack web developer
- Amazon — Front end developer
- Accenture — Release Engineer, Entry-level apprenticeships, Software developer
- Fotokite — Software engineer, Spontaneous application (Apply Here)
- Geopipe — Senior deep learning engineer, Deep learning engineer, C++ engineer, Product engineer, Product engineer (DevOps), Product Manager
- DIEMlife — Back-end software engineer, Digital designer
- Airtonomy — Software engineer (cloud), Front end developer, Autonomous flight engineer (C/C++), Site reliability engineer (DevOps)
Upcoming Events
With all local meetups hosted virtually, you can join them even if you are no longer based in Syracuse. Come out and support the Central New York tech community!
- OpenHack — Tuesday, June 14, 2022
OpenHack is a casual social coding meetup with a simple purpose: Code together, on anything. Here’s how OpenHack works: You can hack on anything! Any language, framework, public/open-source, personal projects, client work… anything! You don’t have to have an idea to hack on, you can come join someone else.
- Women in Coding Class — Saturday June 11, 2022
Women In Coding hosts a monthly meetup on the second Saturday of the month. Each month we’ll be teaching and group programming in a different language/topic. Usually no previous coding experience is necessary, although some familiarity with basic HTML and CSS can be helpful.
Please check out the Syracuse Software Development Meetup for the latest events.
