Supporting Adult Career Switchers: The Unbootcamp Method

Speaker 1: Great. Thank you everyone for coming to my talk today. I really appreciate it. So my name is Michaelin Jones, and today we're going to be talking about supporting adult career switchers. So in this kind of method I've been using to experiment with different styles of curricula to see what is the most helpful to people transitioning into a career that includes programming. So who am I and what do I do? My background is in physics. I live in France, where I completed my master's in particle astrophysics. I'm a data scientist. And I do a lot of Irish language research actually, so I have my first peer-reviewed journal article coming out next week, very excited. I'm also a committee member of Python Ireland, so please join us November 15th and 16th this year if you'll be around. We'd love to have you. I write curricula.

Speaker 1: I started off by teaching children and realized there was a need to create some materials for them specifically for the Python language. And uh from there I went on to start teaching uh adults and also, you know, providing corporate training group classes. I also review curricula, so if you feel like you can have more impactful materials, feel free to contact me. I'm super um active on LinkedIn, so if you send me a message, then I'll usually respond within 24 hours and I'd love to connect. All right, so let's get into it. How do we support adults learning to code? That is the main question for today. And I think the first thing that we need to address is you want to get students with realistic expectations. Set them up for success. From the start. And this is actually a huge issue because I get students who

Speaker 1: think they should learn to program. They've been told it's going to be helpful in their career, but they don't exactly know why So what does society think we do? Over here to the left you can see what my mother wishes I would do. No success so far. What my mom 's and friends my mom and friends think I really do, and they're not even wrong. uh though that cookie monster hat has since disappeared. Uh and what we actually do, we all know it's problem solving. Constant problem solving, hitting your head against the wall, asking all sorts of questions. Sometimes your code works and you go, I don't know why my code works. Most of the time it's why isn't my code working? And nowadays, apart from these other resources we have, there's also large language model, help me, you're my only hope. So we've been here before. I gave a keynote talk at Python Island about a year and a half ago called Child Prodigies and Six Figure Salaries, discussing realistic methods and goals in Python education.

Speaker 1: That talk contained an embarrassing amount of pie charts. Friends don't let friends make pie charts, but I was feeling lazy, which I think we can all respect. Those pie charts have not fully been removed today, but we'll just get past that Uh so basic summary of what my conclusions were from that talk is we need to rethink about how we're advertising to newcomers Um to the field, uh it's a lot harder than they think it's gonna be. There are certain obstacles they are gonna face, but we won don't wanna be too discouraging, right? And we need to set a community standard for programming education. What do we think is good, robust material to help people along this way? And how can we produce the best developers possible? So some questions that we always need to be asking and that we need to help newcomers with when they first start is

Speaker 1: how long is it really gonna take realistically? Because they tend to have very unrealistic expectations. An eight-week boot camp is not going to make you a developer where you can get a six-figure salary. I just don't believe it will. It's gonna take a lot of work afterwards. And I'm not here to say that I dislike boot camps. I think they have their place, just to be clear What materials should they be using? Not all materials are created equal. And I think that this is something really important to guide them towards And then also what should they be putting their efforts into? Something I'm going to mention today is that a lot of materials and a lot of boot camps neglect to go over what students are going to need for the technical interview Uh so the premise of this talk is teaching programming feels pedagogically bizarre. And I could have actually framed this entire talk from the perspective of

Speaker 1: I do teach other topics. I teach languages. I teach graduate record examinations. I've gotten students into Harvard Business School. And I often feel like I'm more successful with that Even though I feel more competent teaching programming, why is that? And it all comes down to a few different things. One is financial. Most of those students tend to have parents who can support them One is the time frame it takes if you're learning to take a test and you have a maybe six-month timeframe and you have a test, a very standard curriculum to follow to meet your goal. It's also cultural and social. And I think that one of the things when I think about language learning, I go to my language classes every single week, one because I just enjoy it socially. So getting students involved in the community is so essential and I don't think that we emphasize that enough.

Speaker 1: How many people here are learners? How many are not professionals? I see t one, two, yeah, very few of you. So hopefully we can get even more. Um but yeah, exactly So what was the unboot camp method? What was I trying to do? I had a lot of students who didn't seem to retain info from boot camps, and I wanted to help them review in an effective way that would actually get them towards their goal of getting a job in the industry I wanted to target how to best support them, and I knew that it was going to be really experimental as I worked with them over 10 weeks in order to gauge what kind of topics they were missing out on. So I wanted to follow this three-pronged approach. Solidify the fundamentals. What were they really going to need to be fluent in to work comfortably?

Speaker 1: in a job, I wanted to provide guidance for portfolio projects that were unique to them and said something about who they were and what they were interested in. I wanted to emphasize prep for the technical interview as well. And along this path, I also gave them an incentive to sign up for one-on-one mentoring with me to actually make sure that they were working incrementally and regularly to reach their goals. So we're going to talk about the successes and definitely failures of this unboot camp that I tried out and what I would do in the future. So this first point here, I'm actually writing a talk on. It's going to be at EuroPython this year. I'm really excited. But I think one of the things I do want to point out is a lot of materials is not inclusive So if I go online and I see a learning path and there's no option to say, hey, I have ADHD, I have dyslexia, I need extended time testing in order to get the certificate you're telling me I can get, and there's no option for that, that is a serious issue and it's a serious gap

Speaker 1: in our materials that we have. Don't let my accent fool you. I think DEI is really important. The other thing is we don't necessarily connect with the fact that a lot of these people are switching into this career for monetary reasons. They might not actually be able to afford a really good computer. And if you have an extra computer laying around, which sounds crazy, right? But I think a lot of you probably do, maybe you can help somebody who you know is trying to switch into this career. I 'm going to instead focus on the following points. So aptitude and fit. I talk about setting realistic expectations. I think that we can do a lot to help students before they spend a lot of time and a lot of money making this career search to make sure it's really something they're very passionate about and they will stick with and they will succeed in.

Speaker 1: So we have to ask first why are people switching into tech I sent out a 40 question survey and got 32 responses. And in general, the main focus was I want to make more money Uh I don't necessarily think this is a bad motivation, of course, but I don't think it's enough to help people stick with it and actually reach their goals Personal and uh challenge and growth seems to be an excellent motivator and I I notice that really, really helps. Uh work-life balance, I don't know where they got this, I work all the time, I'm exhausted. It was actually a lifelong dream. We love to see that. And then refugee status. I'm very excited to say that the person who responded to this has a job now and they are thriving. So that's wonderful. So how do you know if it's for you?

Speaker 1: I think just try it, get your hands dirty. You do not have to go through the entire boot camp or some program that somebody's telling you in order to sit down and say, I want to solve a problem and see how I can do that. That's one of the best ways to learn is just playing with code, taking somebody else's code and changing it to fit your needs, right? Try to solve some tricky things and see, do you enjoy the process of being really frustrated and annoyed? Try to apply it to something that's relevant to you already. The most successful career switches I see are actually people who start off thinking, what could I do in my current job with programming that's actually going to help me out? And that is the best way to get started and not quit your job and still have some money flowing in while you're trying to acquire this new skill

Speaker 1: Um consider aptitude and personality. I think that I see a lot of advertisements saying learn to code in six months and then you can make a six figure salary. And I see this all the time on Facebook because I review a lot of materials and so Facebook thinks I'm trying to learn programming. I'm like, I'm trying to teach it. But please stop saying that because it gives really unrealistic expectations. Cheap test to figure out is this something that you would really enjoy? Because I think the people who are the most successful in this field eat, live, and breathe programming. We love it, right? Um so you want to make sure that it is really for you. And then doing the same D check on expectations. I know a lot of people come in, you know, they're game developers and that's fantastic, but it's one of the few areas where you can get a degree in computer science and come out making minimum wage, let's be honest. So I do get a lot of

Speaker 1: you know, guys in their thirties coming to me and they are like, I want to switch to being a game developer and make a bunch of money. I'm like Don't we all? So I think providing pre-tests to students, um, just asking them even simple questions like Do you like reading and staying up to date on the newest information? Do you like math? If you want to be a data scientist, you probably need to know what a p-value is. And then also the one that I see really hinder people is just complete lack of computer skills, typing, anything like that. If you come to me you say you want to be a programmer, but you hate computers, we have a problem. So the real question I always ask people, what problem do you want to solve? Why do you want to learn programming? How is it going to help you? And this is something that I think we need to focus from day one.

Speaker 1: So the next challenge is selecting the materials to get started. So like I said, not all materials are made the same. And also not all materials are going to fit the student best. Some students are very self-motivated and they can go on you know self-guided learning paths. But I think a lot of students really benefit from a strong community helping pull them through the entire process. And actually I think everybody should find people in the industry that can mentor them and help them. So why start with Python? You come to me and say, I don't really know. I think I just want to learn programming. I think Python's a great place to start. We have a really friendly and helpful community. We have a lot of free resources. It's free and open source. It's close to natural language as well, which is why I use it to teach children. And it helps us as developers, of course.

Speaker 1: But It's the many, many uses. If you want to see how programming can be helpful to you in your life and why it's a good idea to learn programming, there are so many things that you can do with Python to solve that problem that you're interested in. So an example is somebody who works a lot in Excel might be really interested in Pandas or XL wings, right? Selecting quality materials, this is where it gets a little dicey. So, for instance, a lot of learners make things and put them up online and share that, and I think that's fantastic. My only problem with it is that you should say that you are a learner because other people are going to emulate you. So you see this like classic example of trying to use a for loop to fill a new column in a pandas data frame Please vectorize your code. Um but one of the things I also notice is so many people

Speaker 1: not uh who are learning Python who have never heard of our style guide. Pep 8 um or even the Zen of Python or anything like that. So look for materials that are you know emphasizing idiomatic Python code. writing good, clean, readable code, um, and then also emphasizing building a portfolio. And this isn't just projects that you're gonna see everybody doing because they all follow the same online path pick a problem that is really interesting for you, right? Guided practice that breaks down topics over time. This is the other issue I have with these kind of really rushed programs is they will throw all of Python at you in two days or most of Python at you in two days. Your students are not going to go back and say, Oh, but I should break down this one tiny topic and focus on that for several weeks to really understand what's going

Speaker 1: on. So if you're going to do that, pointing them towards materials that they can go and use over an extended period of time to get more confident with it and providing quality notes as well to help follow up. This is where mentorship is really essential. So having somebody who can help guide you through the entire process and review your code and tell you where you can improve. The other thing when you're selecting materials is is this a structure you can stick to? I'm going to talk about motivation and stick to it as at the end of this talk. I think it's one of the biggest challenges to overcome. When I talk to other people in the industry, the figure that tends to get sped out is like 98% will start and then not continue. And so I think within that 98%, we're still missing out on students who are highly motivated.

Speaker 1: They just can't seem to continue with it. So a few notes on my teaching philosophy. What did I use to build this program? Um, so I think that some things are really left out by a lot of people and these are some of my opinions. So I think a lot of adult materials are far too much up front. They're far too frustrating, far too complex. I realized this when I was working with students who came from boot camp said I didn't get anything out of that and I spent several thousand dollars. Please help. And I give them my curricula for children and they go, oh This makes sense. So I think toning it down a little bit and remembering we have to empathize with people who from a lot a lot of times are not coming from a STEM background. Just sending links doesn't work And you have to remember that these are human beings and if you just send them a bunch of links, you might be sending them the best materials in the world, but you have to break it down, you know, slowly.

Speaker 1: Um and also I think the the t that tends what tends to be the follow-up to this is well why don't you just blank eliminate that from your vocabulary? Why don't you just blank has never worked in my experience? Sit down with them Make a plan, help them out, come up with actionable items that they can do to feel like they are incrementally reaching their goal They need to see how each step aligns with the end goal. So this is where from day one, what is that problem you want to solve? What skills do you want to acquire and why And then as a teacher, every time you see something, you can go, oh, hey Sally, you know that thing you said day one? This is really helpful to you. And they're gonna remember in their brain and come back to it. I'm really big fan of something called the spiral method. So this is the idea of starting with

Speaker 1: something very simple demos, asking what-if questions, and then revising over time and building on that. And that's one of the reasons why it's really hard to do the things the way I like to do them in a standard boot camp style. So I would be making a big mistake, I think, if I didn't mention Gin AI, because this question always comes up I do like to point out sort of my philosophy on this. I know that we don't have a standardized philosophy on this across the industry, but my personal take is that students do need to get the basics down and develop problem-solving skills. So you do have to be very careful with your prompting. I see a lot of students go through my worksheets and they obviously just got ChatGPT to generate all of the solutions. Um, and they, if I ask

Speaker 1: them questions , They have no idea what happened, how it works, they can't break their code down. So when it comes to prompting, making sure that you're actually talking to ChatGPT like it's a tutor and it's leading you to the results. Some other uses I really like. Um for instance I'll have Copilot go through and say, can you just put a comment in each line of this code explaining step by step how it works? That's one of my favorite exercises of give is giving students really high quality written code and asking them to break it down for me. But when they get stuck, uh that's definitely a use uh that of AI. I think that can be great. Um but I think it's just really a good idea on the other hand um to get comfortable with your tools available. So I'm not gonna say, oh, I'll never use it, but at the end of the day, I don't think that it has replaced uh humans who can

Speaker 1: you know, guide and encourage and also advise on best practices. And I do believe that these opinions are supported by the literature, though of course I asked ChatGBT. what it thought. So, um did my own boot camp structure work? Was I successful? Attendance was difficult as always. It just always is. Uh we have adults who have children, they have another job. uh you know they're stressed out maybe they have six parent sick parents so for um accommodation purposes I decided I would record absolutely everything. What I realized is then they weren't watching all the recordings That's not very helpful. So what helped with compliance was even shorter recordings, breaking down essential information in 15-minute segments or less.

Speaker 1: So that's the structure I think I'm going with from now on. Um they needed way more help on basics than planned. So they had all done, you know, these frankly really expensive boot camps and they had just forgotten absolutely everything. I was a bit disappointed because we barely got to the really interesting things, so I'm going to have to follow up with them later on that. But I think it is really important to uh take note of that and think about what can we do in order to help people sort of stay on top of things and keep working on them afterwards. There is generally low effort on personal projects. That is something else I noticed people have severe anxiety about sitting down and actually working on a project by themselves. So finding ways to support them and making sure that they actually take the time to just give it a go. Do the thing badly.

Speaker 1: And then you can fix it later. So the key takeaway is flexibility is great, and I believe that working flexibility into this program was very helpful, but you do have to balance it with accountability. So moving forward, um I'm actually working on a lot of stuff. If you think this is helpful for anyone, I'm gonna have a lot of free workshops and things coming up, like I said. um you know contact me. So I'm gonna be doing a lot of short form videos on topics um and on study techniques as well that I think are really important. So I'm gonna have what I've been doing actually is Sending out my recordings and instead saying, here's when I'm available this week, these are my suggested office hours, pop in when you're free, and that's been a lot better. Another thing I'm experimenting with is flipping the classroom. Here's some materials, go and learn. I want you to come back and tell me what you did and explain it to me and then I can help guide you a bit better there.

Speaker 1: And then you've got more peer-to-peer learning, which I think is excellent. Body doubling is something that comes from the ADHD community. It's basically this idea of I just if I just have somebody in the room with me and I say what I'm doing and they see what they're doing, we're gonna sit there and just co-work together even silently So a bunch of my students, I've just been saying, you know what, you didn't finish the curricula yet, so how about we just body double on Thursday for two hours? And that's been really great. They've gotten a lot of work done that way. I'll be providing more guided projects with notes with ideas for how they can extend it as far as their personal goals. So getting them started with that project to support them in that aim as opposed to just saying generally what I hope they're going to go and work on. And then intensive Q<unk>A style webinars based on best practices and important points.

Speaker 1: So I'm hoping to have more pre-recorded materials And then my friend Alex Uber and I are going to experiment with having these hour and a half-long workshops where people come in and they can just ask professionals in the industry for extra help. Challenges again, so motivation and stigma the plan, this is that final point there I wanted to talk about. Um so It seems easy, right? Plan your work and work the plan. Have great study habits, do the work, get the job. Done. Um but the issue is one thing I do notice is that a lot of students will plan the work and then they just keep planning Oh, on Tuesday I'm going to do this. Then they don't. Well on Wednesday I'll do that and this. It doesn't work out. So you really want to help people actually just start to do the thing. Encouraging great study habits is going to prevent overwhelm.

Speaker 1: So I'd like to talk a bit about behavioral activation. This is a concept from cognitive behavioral therapy. Basically, the more you do a thing, especially if it's rewarding in some way, so it has high value to you or it's enjoyable, the more you're going to want to do the thing. So I try to help students, okay, this week we're going to just do this twice Next week I want you to aim to do it twice. The next week after that, three times. And that's something that you can help people spiral up as opposed to just saying, well, you need to study five days a week. That doesn't work quite as well Measuring their success in input versus output, this is going to be based off the individual. Do you want to talk about how many hours you put in, or do you want to talk about your goal, what you want to get out of it at the end of the day, and work towards that People are motivated by input or output usually, but it can vary depending on the project.

Speaker 1: Bullet journaling is something I'll be talking about in my discussion at EuroPython about ADHD because it is something from the neurodiverse community But I think that it can really genuinely help people who are coming back as an adult and they're a student again for maybe the first time in a while, though I like to think of myself as a lifelong student. Knowledge management systems, so we're getting all these links, that's great. Try something like I love obsidian, um, so something to manage all these links and have them somewhere so you're not overwhelmed by oh this person sent me this and this person sent me this, and I think that that can be really helpful. Social accountability is I think the most important thing. So like I said, body doubling is great. What I'm going to be integrating more is in-class competitions. So who can get the best model?

Speaker 1: And let's talk about why Um and then overall, so over a 10-week program I'd like to have some sort of leaderboard or checklist so the other students can see, well, how far along is that other person? Competition is a huge motivator actually. So breaking it down as far as data-driven improvements, I think that one thing that I would integrate into any curricula right from now on is a pretest Basically, to figure out if people have realistic expectations coming in and also read a realistic understanding of where they're at. Um and I think that this can be a serious motivator if they take that and they didn't do as well as they thought they were going to do, it can encourage them to put a little bit more effort up front. I want to create clear aims with each student at the start, so always discuss with them what's that project you have in mind,

Speaker 1: of course And then uh breaking down those aims into actionable goals. This is where don't just give them links, actually sit down, create a checklist that the entire cohort can see so everybody can see and motivate each other Um write down steps for their projects. So what's the basic, you know, how do we just hack this, right? And then how do we improve from there Schedule regular student presentations and require other check-ins so you can get a constant stream of whether or not your techniques are actually being helpful. And then have students review each other's code. That peer-to-peer peer-to-peer learning again, I think is something that's really important and we need to be engaging people. but also encouraging them to build this learning community amongst themselves. Get your study buddy.

Speaker 1: That is going to be one of the most helpful things you can do. Basically, create social accountability and undeniable evidence of advancement from the start. It's especially great because then people can point to what they have done and say, hey, I had that success, and then they'll feel motivated to go and get that next success So essentially this all wraps up with community. It's indispensable, and I think that that's something that we should encourage people from day one. I do see a lot of online programs. They will have learning paths And they'll have even job boards, but they don't have anything announcing local meetups. They don't have anything announcing announcing, you know, the next PyCon that people might be interested in. Um they don't have anything where students can interact with each other. Some of them do, which is great, but I don't think they're very heavily used. And this is something I encourage students to absolutely use, and I encourage anyone creating curricula to absolutely consider

Speaker 1: The other thing is for students, I will tell them, hey, come and write a talk with me. Let's talk about you know one of your projects or let's work on a workshop together. And they're a little bit sheepish. If somebody says, hey, I want to mentor you, come on, let's do this Absolutely do the thing that is going to be super helpful to you. So I like to wrap up just on this. This is my Zen of Python education. It's a rough draft and it kind of summarizes my philosophy And I'm really curious to see what you guys agree with and disagree with. So I like to say PEP8 exists for a reason. Refer to the actual documentation. And not some random website. Simple explanations are better than complex, so you know keep it simplified. Complex is better than complicated You will have to repeat things. We can't all be Dutch, which is referenced to Guido.

Speaker 1: If you still don't get it, just give it a go, right? Uh short, frequent lessons or sessions where you're practicing is better than long and then dropping it for months on end. Long sprints do absolutely have their place though. Programming is not a spectator sport. Get your hands dirty. Error messages are our friends. Don't just you know send it off to ChatGPT, especially if you have a beginner. Really try to work through that and don't freak out if you see that red, right? Um and meetups are one honking great idea. Let's do one of those. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2: Enjoyed that and um I couldn't help noticing that three of the things that you suggested were really key. One was to challenge the students by asking them questions Hold them accountable and demand evidence, they all make both you and the student feel uncomfortable. And I often see people skipping that part Because it is uncomfortable for both parties. So how how do you deal with that? What do you do? Do you just push through it? Do you have a way off

Speaker 1: I think that Yeah, you know, and it's one of the reasons why starting off with children was really helpful to me. A lot of my students tell me, like, because I always start when I introduce myself and I say, by the way, there's no stupid questions You can ask me what two plus two is and it's fine. And I'm not gonna think you're dumb. And I think that um especially adults, they're used to being that person in the room who like they always know everything maybe. Um coming back to being a student that can be really difficult. But I think my philosophy in life is I'm okay with looking stupid because it means I'm learning Um and so I think that if you adopt that attitude, then it puts your students at ease or it puts your colleagues at ease and people feel more comfortable to come up to you, even if it's just They'll private message me as well, so we have different methods they can talk during class or they can send it privately if I'm using like cold cout

Speaker 1: for instance There's a chat there and they can just say, hey, I don't really get this. And then usually it's a really great question actually. So that's kind of how I tackle that is just really focused on putting them at ease Yeah, does that answer your question? Kinda. So

Speaker 2: the things that you I found really effective and that you mentioned are the ones that make people uncomfortable, including yourself.

Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah.

Speaker 2: And you know, holding people accountable or or asking them to explain something when and when you know that they don't get it.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And and that's a barrier for many teachers as well as learners to get through that discomfort because it's part of the learning process. So I want I'm interested to know how you deal with that.

Speaker 1: Grinning and bearing it. I just do this is it all comes down to do the hard thing because it's the only way to help people improve. And if you are really serious about Do I so I the thing is I will contract and I know that my score as a teacher is gonna you know impact whether or not I'm gonna get that job again, right? But at the end of the day, if I really just care about I really want to make sure that they got something out of this course, then uh, you know, instead of just making sure they all like me, uh Uh likeability is nice, but you know, impact is is much more important. Yeah. So you just gotta keep that goal in mind. Thank thank you. That's a great question.

Speaker 3: Just one uh question from the remote audience. Um while your talk focuses on the pedagogic pedagogical aspect I would say another skill that new programmers have to learn is developing a thick skin, being prepared to make lots of mistakes, feel humble, etc. Do you think do you find there is a high dropout rate when it comes to that?

Speaker 1: I think yes, and um it's also maybe an indication of how we treat each other when somebody doesn't know something. Um, I think that I have been in situations where I don't feel like I'm being encouraged as a learner, where I feel like I'm instead being put on the spot to know everything Um and we need to go back to having a curiosity mindset as well. But I will say, you know, if you're if you're the kind of person where you always want to be right and you can't handle being wrong ever uh the code's probably not gonna lie. Like if you don't have the right answer, then yeah, that can be a big struggle. So it goes back to is it a is it a great fit? I think that the dropout rate is partially There's more we can do and we should take responsibility for that. But also partially, you know, coding isn't for everyone and that's okay.

Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you're stupid. It doesn't mean you aren't, you know, capable. It just means maybe it's it's not the right industry. Yeah So it's a very complicated uh there's so many facets to to why the dropout rate is is what it is.

Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 4: Um I really enjoy teaching, but I struggle with the fact that um our topic is deep, like really deep you can explain always another level, one more topic, one more like nuance. Have you any ideas on how to like shorten this? How to manage just the right level of explanation that fits the person instead of saying, yeah, I could go on and on and on, but I have to get it short What's your opinion on opinion on this?

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I like um flipping the classroom firstly, because people will tell you to the level that they understand and then you can help them deepen that a bit over time. That's another reason why I really like the spiral method of Let's keep it simple and then let's loop back around to it. A lot of time in my teaching notes and my student notes as well, I'll say, by the way, you should go and look into this, or we are going to come back to this because this is a really important topic that we haven't quite gone into depth yet. but maybe it's not quite working towards the goal of that day in that specific class. So for me, I just like to make little notes for myself and for my students as far as we're going to come back to this and talk about it more Yeah. Pingin.

Speaker 5: Hi. As part of helping people getting into programming Last part is kind of helping them getting a job. Now with more and more AI tools, the number of jobs kind of disappeared. How can we help them? With the last part.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is one of those things um, you know, I think a lot of us are having an existential crisis and a lot of us have been in this industry for much longer than these people just starting off Um and this is why I do emphasize how uh can it help you right now in the job you're in. Um and that's probably the safest route and also if you're feeling safe and confident and comfortable then I think that it it promotes uh you know a learning mindset where you can actually focus as opposed to panicking about am I even going to get a job after this, right? Um but you know this is I I do get students coming in wanting to learn to code and really it turns out what they want to be is just more tech literate. Um the the programming landscape and the job landscape is changing rapidly I'm not going to stand up here and tell you I have all the answers.

Speaker 1: Nobody should. I don't know what it's going to look like in a year, in two years. But the best thing you can do is be a hard worker, be a curious person. And I think that, you know, if you're pleasant to work with, you're curious, and you're always trying to improve and you work on your problem solving skills and really having your fundamentals down um being honest about what you understood in that process, then I think that there's usually going to be a place for you. It just takes a bit of perseverance. Yeah. Oh you have a more open Hello Hello

Speaker 6: Thank you for a talk uh you you describe too many too many tasks which we can perform to help people to be better to find new job and it takes much more time. Uh and question, can you imagine some methods to min ninety to monetizy to monetize this artwork with people 's because if it's freelance or charity it takes too much time

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's kind of why I'm looking for another job if anyone has anything. Uh I mean this is what I do and I really enjoy it. It is a labor of love. Um but uh you know you can you can create materials. Um, you can offer corporate training. You can I do a lot of things to supplement what I try to do for free as well. Um, but you know, at the end of the day, there there are a lot of students who um, you know, they will pay for this kind of service Um but uh you know it's it's difficult to get new customers and everything like that. Um I mean I'm making it, I'm doing fine. So uh but Yeah, no, as far as monetizing it, I would say it's a labor of love. I'm not gonna stand up here and say, hey, for-profit education, especially for programming, is

Speaker 1: Absolutely thriving. There are absolutely examples where it's going great for people, but um, you know, uh just getting the word out there and um especially group classes and things like that where you can keep the cost down, especially for career switchers, but still, you know, have your life supplemented, I guess. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 3: Thank you for your questions, everyone Thank you, Miguel.