Technology bootcamps have become a popular and efficient way to provide people with job-ready tech skills quickly and effectively. We're excited to have Josh Lucas, Co-Founder of Academy Pittsburgh, and Justin Driscoll, Campus Director at Tech Elevator, to overview how their respective organizations are helping people get skills and connecting them to employment opportunities in as little as three months.
Transcription:
Good afternoon. Welcome to business as usual, Today is July 20 2020. And like seven months into the year, which is 2020. Hard to believe. But I'm Audrey, I run the Pittsburgh Technology Council. I'm joined here today by Jonathan Kersting. And he's vice president of all things media at the tech council as well as he does a host of other things in terms of podcasts and exposing companies to the world. So a few things, just some housekeeping to get out of the way and to extend appreciation for our sponsors. Thank you so much, two sheets. Everyone should know what sheets is if you live in southwestern Pennsylvania, but you might you might not notice they actually have an innovation center right here in Pittsburgh. And they're focusing as they always do, on a myriad of ways to create more innovation in terms of the businesses that they own. Deloitte Deloitte has been a longtime partner in the tech Council. They've been around for a long time as well. But their presence is what you might not know is that 85% of the Fortune 500 companies actually used white so they're very well wired. They're amazing citizens to us in this region, and we appreciate their work with us. And then Huntington bank has been with us right from the beginning. So if it weren't for Huntington bank, a lot of the small business loans through the cares Act would not have been processed. So thank you and use our sponsors as well. So we have a great lineup this week as well, Tuesday tomorrow we have UPMC's physician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and very interested in doing research in COVID. And the effect on on black community and people of color. And we have Valerie Cofield, she's Eastern minority supplier at the Development Center. She runs that we have her on Wednesday, which is the 22nd Thursday we have Dennis Dermis. He is a senior vice president at Bayer. And he's head of region, America. So that's what we have in store for you right now. And we're always adding new guests. So thank you so much. So your microphones are muted. And that's because we don't want to hear what's in your background, and we want to be considerate of our guests. And there was a chat, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to ask our guests some questions. So I'm excited to host these guys. They have been good friends with the tech Council, one worked at the tech Council. For almost a dozen years, Josh Lucas has been a great partner and been able to build something from really nothing. He's an entrepreneur in his own right, and doing things in a neighborhood that really matters and many of us aren't really familiar with it, but we should be and we will be. And Justin has really taken this idea in terms of of tech elevator to a new level and he really provides a lot of support and talent for people in many of our multiple National and Pittsburgh based companies they both do. And so what you're gonna hear are two people who were leading some really important work. They've been leading this work long before COVID. And they are going to be continuing to lead this work long after COVID I'm sure. So, last, I just want to say a couple of things. Last week, we convened over 400 of our members to the region's technology community, as part of a major event we do every year, we do a huge event that's in person, sometimes seven to 800 people in person. So we tried to figure out how are we going to do it, and we created a virtual event and honoring CIOs, Chief Information Officers and chief security officers from 13 counties around Southwestern Pennsylvania. So to a person if you asked any of those leaders what the top issues are that keep them up them up at night on any given day, and it's around talent, talent is that and so a few years ago, I think it started to sink in here in Pittsburgh, and cost the globe that we needed to end this war, or this urine or, you know, this develop pipeline were removed just moved employees from one end of the county to another from one company to the next, which has happened in Silicon Valley and other places as well. But we, we needed to be a little bit more aggressive about that we continue to so it was about building the pipeline. So by opening up our doors to skilled talent, and by working to upskill, our existing workforce, that's why you see us working so hard on the issues around immigration, but it also on STEM on programming for K through 12, and then telling our region's story to the world. And we try our best to tell our story with these two gentlemen and the companies that they've each built and expanded. So in the middle of this, we have, you know, a new national trend, the creation of short term, highly intense boot camps, focused on taking high potential people and helping them develop critical technical skills. So that's about all I'm going to talk because I want everyone to listen to The the guys that are here, I'm going to start with Josh Lucas and he you know, tell us about the spread you know that across the country and share really the origin of of what you're doing at Academy Pittsburgh because it's it's a story that everyone needs to know about and hopefully everyone can help contribute to. So I'm gonna pass the baton to Josh and then we're going to bring Justin on.
Well, thanks for having us today, Audrey. It's good to see everybody. Academy, Pittsburgh started in 2016. The idea was that we need to be able to provide condensed technical education to people in the region. And we need to do that with an eye on equity to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to participate in this tech in tech and Jason economy. So we run a 12 week web developer boot camp two or three times a year, about 65% of the people that participate in that boot camp come from some underrepresented group in tech. And then here in the region, we placed by 85% of them into jobs that have been average starting salaries around $55,000 a year. That trend continues nationally, obviously bootcamps have been proven over the last decade to be very good and taking someone that's an adult and transitioning them into a new profession that has more upward mobility.
So but you've done you've been a community builder. So just give a little bit of a background because I think people it's also important for people to know about the person and the leader.
Yeah, I mean, so Academy Pittsburgh, has a sister organization that we call work. Our Pittsburgh is a cooperatively organized business incubator. And so Academy is a product of that Co Op, we provide systems processes, and a place for people to come together that are entrepreneurs, or freelancers and work out their ideas and take those ideas to start and scale. And we do that all at a neighborhood level and work really hard to be inclusive of the people that are in those neighborhoods so that we're not displacing gentrifiers, but rather Creating access points where people can loop in find advantage, find resources and find talent capacity.
Would you think I overstated if I said that you were really an anchor, community leader in the Allentown area?
Well, I mean, if you like pasta, you'd probably point to Ala Familia. But we're probably second right. So now familia has been there for for 15 years. And we were there. We've been there since about 2012. So we've been there a while and we are in the process of acquiring some more real estate. And we want to make sure that that that those commercial buildings and that real estate is all something that that the community can access and feel like it's theirs. It's not ours,
and your community work one last thing on your community work with the sister organization, your community work cuts across every type of entrepreneur. It's not just the area that the tech council focuses on, and tech and tech.
Yeah, for sure. We do everything for build complicated, you know, web apps, all the way down to come So cleaning companies in an African American owned construction companies.
Thank you. Thank you for your leadership there. And if anyone gets a chance to post COVID at some point, it's really important to go up there and visit and see what's transformed. So I want to switch real quickly to Justin Driscoll, Justin we've known used to be at the tech Council, running all things related to talent. And, you know, we're thrilled that he's moved on into expanding the presence of tech elevator. So welcome, Justin, thanks for being here. And sort of tell us about tech elevator? Sure.
Hi, Andre. Thanks for Thanks for having me. Here today. Yeah, I I had a great time working at the tech Council. I still love the tech Council and it gave me an opportunity to help companies for the collectively 15 years almost that I was at the organization and it allowed me to meet a lot of tech companies and hear their challenges around hiring for Long time and we did some good work over the years while I was at the tech Council, and helping, you know, companies tangibly find talent. And so my when I transitioned to tech elevator back in 2018 is going so fast. I'm trying to at 2018 Yeah. So when I transitioned back in 2018, it was really just an extension and an expansion of the work that I had been doing, in my opinion, the tech Council for all those years. And so tech elevator is a bootcamp program. Just like Academy Pittsburgh in the sense of we are a short term education environment to give people skills that are highly in demand through a full stack, either Java or dotnet, focus software developer bootcamp program, and so it's 14 weeks it's very focused on taking adults average age is about 30 years old and putting them through a full time program. Coming through our program with the whole intention of landing a job shortly after graduation. And so tech elevator, really it was founded in 2015, actually in Cleveland, and has expanded one campus every year since 2015. So, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh was the fourth campus in 2018. And then Detroit, Philadelphia, and now because of COVID, our live remote program. And so we have eight different campuses now that we're focused on in helping adults learn software development skills in a short period of time to help them land a job after the program. And so we're very not we're focused kind of in two tracks all at the same time. We're very much focused on the academic side of it. So our instructors have an average tenure as a software developer software developer themselves for about 20 years before they come to tech elevator. And so they're learning practitioners these students are every day and then people like myself and others within tech elevator are building relationships with companies across the Pittsburgh region and all of our markets to help our students kind of open that door for them before they leave tech elevator and so that they have more of a soft landing at companies that might not be used to these non traditional students. And so then we're helping them find jobs. In fact, this cohort that we're in right now, as we speak is starting today to start the process here in Pittsburgh to look for that their first job right out of tech elevator. So it's a great program. It's I love it because it allows us to do really good things and help people change their lives. And so it That sounds it's not an intention to be overdramatic, or anything it truly is taking individuals who are down on their luck sometimes are underemployed or undervalued or stuck in a career and they want to get out of it and they come to technology. And they leave on the other end, no longer a landscaper or, or, you know, a role that they weren't happy with or they're, you know, an automated test engineer. They're a software developer. One. They're a junior software developer. And so it's really exciting work. And we, we get really energized by that.
And so your pick, what is the average salary about the same that Josh talked about?
Yeah, it's it's, uh, it's about 6059 59,000, I think is more specific. But yeah, it's it. We're finding that depending on the role, depending on their background, our average salary as an organization is just under 60. k, Pittsburgh's a little bit higher. But it's right around 60 K.
Okay, that's great. So I'm going to bounce back to Josh. Josh, you have a unique financing method for your program. There are no upfront fees for students. Can you talk about that and how they work?
Absolutely we work on an income share agreement model. So when someone participates in our program, they don't pay any upfront tuition. They only pay us if they get a full time job making more than $45,000 a year. And at that point, they owe us 10% of their gross income for 24 consecutive months. So what this allows us to do is to again, look and think about how to deliver these this programming equitably. It relieves some of the upfront burden, economic burden associated with taking 12 weeks off of your job to come through this kind of education. Our bootcamp is a 40 hour week boot camp roughly. So it's it's intensive and hard for people to participate in.
And, and typically, the skills that they're learning as a full stack isn't the same kind of skills. Yeah, we do. We do Ruby, C sharp and JavaScript. There's usually a little bit of reacting there as well. Okay, at the end. At the end, our participants do real world projects. So we find a nonprofit partner Or a small business that needs some sort of web app. And and our our project based learning really kicks in in the last two weeks, where the students get together and build something for someone.
So I'm just going to give a plug in then Jonathan, there might be some questions. So the plug is, is that when I mentioned about our Chief Information Officer and security officer event, we like to do a fundraiser. And the fundraiser this year is really focused on three programs, these two programs here, and our edge program for women. And we're going to put up the link because no amount is too small. We want to make sure that everyone has equal access to the learning that everyone needs. And both of these programs are great examples, in addition to the edge program for women, in tech, for people to continuously learn, and training just matters trainings got to be continuous, and it's for all of us. So Jonathan can Gotta go to the chat.
Absolutely. Got some great questions coming in here, guys. So from Ryan Haggerty wants to know, what kind of conversations do you have with employers around requirements for the job listings in terms of accepting Bootcamp, grads, bachelor's degree minimum requirements, things like that.
Yeah, so I will say from Tech elevators perspective, building relationships with companies really allows us to kind of break down that barrier a little bit. For companies, we've actually had companies who have initially hired a student. So a lot of companies have these rules, you know, around degree requirements, number of years, you know, specific kind of, I call it red tape kind of areas that they have to get over sometimes if it's the first time they've ever hired a bootcamp grad. So typically, we'll have a student that kind of fits the requirements that they hire, and then they go, Oh, well, maybe those rules and regulations aren't as relevant as they used to be in this day and age and so they we've had a number of companies He's actually roll back some of those more antiquated rules and regulations and requirements. Because they were so impressed with the graduate, they did hire, and then they open up the door for people without degrees or associate degrees, and, and so on and so forth. But the key for us is meeting with companies building that relationship, getting a student in there, showing them our curriculum, and really having them come well when COVID before COVID, having them come to campus and meet the students. And it's really more of a relationship building process, which then takes down those walls for a lot of our students.
So tell me a little bit more about teaching soft skills, we understand that the hard skills are necessary, but there's the whole soft skill side of things to make sure that kids that students can plug into when I say kids, I mean everybody of all ages, not just kids taking these classes, obviously.
Yeah, that's why it's important to do this as project based learning. So to be successful web developer, so much of that is learning the toolkit and being able to work in a team environment under so Sort of agile methodology. So you know, those soft skills we hear over and over again from employers are key. And one advantage of of hiring a bootcamp grad is that you're getting an adult who's probably transitioning out of another career, oftentimes a career that's adjacent to the technical work that you want them to do. So there really is an opportunity to take someone who's coming as a fully mature, robust individual, and just teach them a technical skill while they have all these sort of complimentary skills already in their pocket.
Yeah, if I could, if I could maybe just add add to that, you know, tech elevator takes a similar approach we actually have in every in every campus, at least one Pittsburgh because of the, because of our campuses, we actually have two, we call them pathway directors. And so most of our students who come to us haven't done a job interview in a very long time we do student interviews before we accept the student into the program and many of them have haven't done any type of interview. Before they come and the student interview they do with this is the first interview of any type that they have done in a very long time. And so we put them through a pretty rigorous program called the pathway program. And so we do multiple rounds of behavioral mock interviews, and technical mock interviews. And we bring usually around 10 different companies to the campus or to zoom, you know, right now anyways, and have them talk to our having talked to our students, we do panel discussions with software developers, because for our students, it's really this, it's this, whoever they used to be, it takes a while for that to die, and then to transition their brain to become a software developer. So over those 14 weeks, we need to expose them to software developers need to like so transitioning.
It's a little bit of a process, okay, I used to be XYZ. I'm not anymore. I'm not a programmer, for weeks, at least for them to go. Okay. Now I'm really a software developer, a junior software developer and associate software developer. And so the pathway program helps them make that transition.
Can you guys both speak to the diversity within your cohorts?
Yeah, typically, our cohort has about 65% underrepresented. A large portion of those are women. So we usually usually about 60% of the class is women, African American, usually about 20% per session. And then Latino and Latin x, you know, we've had a sort of up and down trajectory here in market where we've had one class that was overwhelmingly the you know, and then there'll be spells where we don't need to see as much participation.
So it's different for every campus, but I will talk to the Pittsburgh campus, we're usually around 20 to 30% underrepresented race and under underrepresented gender. And so in response to that, or it was really something we've been wanting to increase, we launched our represent tech scholarship. In earlier this week or last week, rather, to try to encourage more diversity in our cohorts. And so, tech elevators committed a million dollars over the next three years to fund one student per campus per cohort. So in Pittsburgh, our first student will be will be in the fall. And it's an 85% scholarship to come to tech elevator, since we're a tuition based program, and it's not an income share agreement program. And so it's something we've been wanting to, to do for a while we've been looking for the right, right opportunity and the right, the right approach to making a meaningful impact. And we feel like this represent tech scholarship is really our first step in, in in doing this type of work. And so Joshua has been doing a great job. We're envious of what Josh and his team have been doing up there. So they've been doing good and we're looking to, we're looking to follow suit with that as well.
Very cool. So how much is Take elevator to go through for a for a class.
Tech elevator is $15,500.
Okay. Okay, and what about what about it, Josh?
So where is a model? So it's based on your gross salary. So most of our participants paid about 55 K, they end up paying back about 10 grand.
Okay. All right, good. So what what do you both do to keep your cohorts connected? Are there things that you do for that you can talk about Josh?
Yeah, we run so many sort of complementing programs. So we keep a riot channel going right, like an open source version of slack, where people bounce around and ask questions. We do active recruiting there. But probably most importantly, when folks graduate Academy Pittsburgh, they often transition into the other ecosystem and start picking up 1099 contract work. So it's not uncommon for our grads. To spend another quarter with work or Pittsburgh, actually doing web builds app builds under a completely different set of developers completely different set of senior talent to continue to mature their portfolio. And then as they interview and go through the job seeking process, they usually fade away as they pick up their full time gig. But that sense of community I think persists. I see a couple of chat hanging out. So you know, they're here and they know that it's important for their future career development, right to continue to pay it forward.
Justin, how do you keep your cohorts together?
Oh, yeah, we we've had similar we've had a really great experience with our alumni so tech innovator alumni, love to go when you know, we've had a number of experiences where they've gone and worked at the same companies like batches of them, whether it's FedEx or single source property solutions, or Hitachi or PNC, of course, be ny melon. and many others, but there are like little pockets of tech elevator alumni at these camp at these new these companies and so they lunch together, they work together. And we have multiple happy hour events throughout the year where our alumni come back together and meet with current students. So we keep them engaged to that. We also do what we call alumni, mentor nights. And so three times a year the alumni will come in to visit the well, when we're in person to campus to meet with current students, do behavioral mock interviews with them do technical mocks and interviews with them is just an additional, you know, way to get to know them. So our alumni in Pittsburgh are incredibly engaged. In fact, a group of them just got together and raised for the first scholarship. It'll be $1,000 alumni scholarship for diversity focused student to come and the alumni have done that themselves. They created a website. They are collecting their own money. And this fall. So in the fall, we'll have an additional scholarship opportunity for one of our fall students funded by our alumni. So they're, they're really, really engaged here in Pittsburgh. Okay, so
I just want to remind everyone, we're trying to do the same thing for both of these organizations. So Lexi has put the Donate page out there as well. This none of this money comes to us. It goes right. Right to them. So I see Ryan Haggerty has a question. Do you see that, Jonathan?
Let me see here. Is this one just come in have that the way it's Wait,
what kind of it's before that it says what kind of conversations you have with employers around the requirements section on job listings. In terms of accepting Bootcamp, grads is job ready. So for example, the whole notion of listing a bachelor's degree is a minimum requirement.
Either if you want to take a stab at that, Josh, we touched on it briefly, right.
We have the advantage of demand right like there's a lot of demand. For web developers, right? While some of the larger enterprise level companies have been slower to transition into seeing the value of somebody coming out of a bootcamp like like tech elevator or Academy, the reality is people have to start being more flexible, because there's so much need for quality web developers. So that four year degree while it is a sticking point, sometimes for some organization, every year, it gets less and less interesting.
Very cool. Neat. Is it a collaboration with Career Link or job training employment agencies as well?
Yeah, I think I think we both do tech elevator as an approved training provider through the careerlink. And depending on what county they're in some of the outlying counties can will fund a student almost entirely to come but most I think Allegheny County's around $5,000 for them to fund a student. So we are very much engaged with careerlink on that, on that standpoint,
yeah. kerlick money's 8500 I believe last year
Ah, okay. And so what about people who are actually working right now? Can there are there opportunities for some programs or some pieces and parts of this to be available, so that there's regular upskilling.
We've done next sessions in the past, it's a little tough for us. Those stretch out over nine months. And we, you know, folks get burnout coming three days a week, and too long really grinding on it. You know, we keep looking at doing another night session, because the demand is crazy. It's so many emails every month, because folks can't quit their regular job. There's an economic hardship there that doesn't get addressed. So we're always talking to funders about how to make that happen. Because we know that for example, a single mom is going to struggle to do our program, but might have a better chance of participating in my class, right?
Yeah, we face similar challenges with with not you know, with non traditional Ours programs, but we have had good opportunities and good good. You know, good good things happen with bigger companies who can take an employee and put them through tech elevator to rescale them. So there's a lot of companies around town that have individuals on their teams that the job has changed, but they're good people, and they want to keep them. And so rather than letting them go or laying them off, they'll send them to tech elevator upskill them for those 14 weeks and put them back into a software developer role or a testing role within the organization. So any large organization that is looking to rather than laying off, you know, it's sometimes cheaper to retrain those individuals and upskill them through a boot camp program, and then put them back into the workforce in different open wrecks.
Yeah, I would, I would agree. I would think the time is now for that as well. What What about COVID has that affected either of you at all? Austin's laughing. Laughing just a little bit.
Yeah. So over, I guess it was middle of March. I mean, we basically transitioned our program in a weekend to online, we have historically been somewhat adverse to online learning from a, from a boot camp perspective. There's a lot of online boot camps out there. And many of them have done good work. But we have always been a little bit in person, proud, so to speak. I mean, we've always been very proud of the in person experience and wanted to keep that. But COVID shook everything in that world. And so we were forced to go, our spring of 2020 cohort was half in person, and then the second half had to be online. And so we teach three hours a day, just like we did in person via zoom, we can do whiteboarding, over zoom, we can share slides over zoom, and then in the afternoon, we have Our instructors are online all afternoon in zoom, Google Hangouts and, and some other tools to allow us to still, as best as possible replicate that in person experience. Because our thing is we wanted to maintain the quality of that personal connection between our instructors and our students and the other students because they really, they work a lot together as well. And so, at least through the end of the year, we will be in what we call live remote. And so we will be still conducting our sessions via live remote environment through the end of the year. Okay, and when does the next cohort start? And I'm going to ask Josh the same two questions. We start the middle September 14. So Josh COVID. And when does the next class starts classes September 21. Applications are open now. It'll be first come first serve. So we expect that class to be full here in the next six weeks or so. Cool, good stuff. Right, we intend right now for that September session to have a hybrid model, where it's in person socially distance, but have that online option available. Obviously, if the governor gives us different guidance, we're going to adhere to any sort of rules and regulations that come down. But we do intend to happen in person aspect to this.
Okay. And so here's as we're winding down, that Shane is asking what actual outreach goes out to communities of color? What are you doing to really push that out?
Yeah, I mean, as much as we can, right. So, you know, we we do sort of a best practice marketing campaign that is specifically designed to raise the bill's visibility. This kind of programming is an opportunity for folks that have traditionally been underserved. We have a slew of partners, everything from neighborhood allies and folks at all the different foundations that advocate in the background, and then we work closely with partners like do sunrising who create one? Yeah, whose mission It is to be that pathway into into the black community, for example. But you know, the reality is about 80% of all of our participants come from word of mouth. So from other graduates referrals. So that's why it's so important that we keep these diversity numbers high because that leads to greater diversity in the future sessions.
Great point. Great work. And I know you're doing a lot of work in Allentown and beyond. So I got that. Thank you, Justin. What about for you?
Yeah, our it's primarily a partnership model as well, word of mouth and partnerships and careerlink. And in this scholarship, the foundation community has been helpful with word of mouth, and really, really trying to be purposeful, to you know, to increase to increase that word of mouth has been our best friend in that in that world so far.
Well, part of it also is for us to help you as well and so anything that we can do To make sure that we're tooting your horns and and Brian Kennedy wrote something that I'll just repeat as we wrap up. These are two great human beings working on some of the toughest issues facing the tech sector. Thanks to both of you. And that's true, I would have to agree, because both of you could be doing other work. But instead, you're helping us try to turn our heads upside down, and think of ways to create the pathways for tomorrow. So I can't thank you both enough. I know we've put up we've asked that we are taking donations that go directly for scholarships for them, as well as our edge program. We've put that out there, stay connected to these organizations and the work that they do, because I bet you many of you could actually be helpful to them in many different ways. So I'd like to thank Josh Lucas, thank you for all the work that you're you've done and you continue to do and same thing for you, Justin, thank you for your work. Tech elevator really, really help. really hopeful and what you're doing is very helpful for a reason. So on that note, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today, join us tomorrow and providing relevant information to help drive the Pittsburgh economy and appreciate you tuning in. And joining me was Jonathan Kersting. And Brian Kennedy is behind the scenes working his magic. So thank you both for being here. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks.
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