Ewa Magiera
Head of Communities at Code First: Girls
Members of Code First: Girls (CF:G) community prove that a tech job is within anyone’s reach, no matter whether they have studied history of art, biotechnology or economics.
Start with an introductory course and find what interests you
Many young women taking CF:G courses decide to apply because they’re interested in tech, but they can’t financially commit to a paid course without fully understanding what coding involves.
An Introduction to Web Development course with Code First: Girls and/or free tutorials such as Codeacademy are a good way to gain more confidence and decide whether it’s something worth pursuing.
While a few of our alumni decided to switch to a Computer Science degree at this point, a significant number decide to upskill by taking one of the popular available courses, either online or onsite. The most popular online resources are Codeacademy.com, Coursera.org or Udemy.com.
For those of our alumni who decided to learn onsite, 6-12 weeks long, full time bootcamp-style courses proved to be very popular. They include Makers Academy, Flatiron School, Founders and Coders bootcamps,, as well as CF:G’s own BT FurtHER Programme.
How to pick the best option for me?
While there are plenty of online (and free) resources, learning this way takes time, as usually there’s no time pressure to submit a course project or even complete one in the first place. Online courses also allow more flexibility in choosing the subjects, as learners can pick and choose various technologies and see which one they could pursue. However, once things get complicated, most online courses don’t offer support in terms of readily available instructors.
On the other hand, bootcamp-style, onsite courses are a considerable time (and sometimes financial) commitment, but they offer relatively quick results combined with a recognised certificate, and sometimes even a job guarantee (e.g. BT FurtHER or Makers Academy course).
This is not where the story ends: now’s the time to attend meet-ups and hackathons, job fairs and send CVs to actually land that developer job. It’s certainly possible without a tech degree but with a good deal of determination. Code First:Girls keep track of such success stories on their Wall of Fame.
