D R A F T
Europe is currently facing the largest migration since World War II, with Germany being one of the destination countries. Each week more refugees arrive in the city of Berln than prevoiusly in an entire year. While this is causing a humanitarian crisis that needs to be solved most urgently, people also need a long-term perspective.
One of Europe's most attractive locations for high-tech companies is Berlin. Some believe the capital city of Germany might even become Europe’s leading start-up hub within the next ten years.
According to a recent study carried out for the European Commission, the demand for software developers in the EU will grow from 1 million in 2013 to 2.8 million in 2018. The world wide shortage of software developers hurts global economy even today and it will become worse in the future. Given these facts, it is safe to say that there will be plenty of vacant programming jobs in the years to come, that these jobs will be payed well and that programmers will be offered all kinds of incentives and benefits.
In a typical software company in the US or Europe today, you find almost no female developers. What you find however, is a certain percentage of old-school programmers with poor communication skills. Modern software development is about communication, collaboration and community. Developers work together across national and cultural borders and they collaborate not only within their companies, but industry-wide on open source software, a phenomenon called "social coding". Startups and other modern high-tech companies have a high demand for qualified developers with above-average communication skills. All things equal, they will prefer to hire female developers to achieve a healthier work environment and to better represent the female part of their user-base.
According to a recent IEA study on 60,000 eight grade students, girls are more computer savvy than boys in 12 out of 14 countries. It seems strange that the number of female software developers is so small then. If you look at the number of female Computer Science students, you'll notice a dramatic breakdown in the 1980s. Researchers make a connection between the marketing campaigns during the introduction of the home computer and girls and women losing interest in computing. While computers were connected with science and equally attractive to men and women before, in the 80s TV and magazine ads told them that it was a men's thing, a fun toy to be shared by fathers and sons. Outside Europe and the US there are less stereotypes about female programmers.
The goal of this campaign is to fund the qaulification of four refugee women in Berlin and teach them everything they need to know to become a junior software developer. At the same time, these four women will receive material they can use to teach men and women of their chosing. As soon as they are legally allowed to work, we will work on finding jobs in companies that offer a welcoming work environment.
There will be two four-hour sessions a week in groups of two. The students will learn to solve problems as a pair (pair programming) and therefore not only acquire technical skills but also the communications skills required for modern software development. Additionally, all four women are highly encouraged to meet for one or two more weekly sessions among themselves to work on small assignments either as a group or as a pair. This three sessions/week format will continue for one year.
In the most recent installment of "Last week tonight", John Oliver points out that Germany would be Europe's only country providing a warm welcome for refugees. Help us to make a tiny contribution to integration and to live up to John's kind words!
##I did this before I have been a professional software developer for more than twenty years. (see my profile on Linkedin). During my entire career, I worked with no more than three female developers. I always was slightly annoyed by the testosterone-driven culture at many companies. I recently helped a Berlin-based software company with their recruitment efforts by writing welcoming and inclusive job ads for them.
Together with Olena Levitsky I founded she.codes -- the social coding school for women. Besides building an open source web platform and writing learning materials (CC licensed) for self-teaching coding skills, I am currently personally teaching eight women in the same format as described above (four groups of two each). The women's backgrounds range from artist, project manager, social worker to scientist. They come from Italy, Germany, Azerbaijan and Portugal. Even though we only meet once a week (in my kitchen), two of the women already found a job as junior developers in two Berlin-based startups. I try to do as much teaching and writing as possible and I think my time is much better spent this way than with doing contract work as a software developer. Since my teaching is for free (those students who can afford it are encouraged to donate), I was living off my savings as long as possible, with short bursts of contract work in-between. However, I really want to focus on this, and therefore I need your support.
Read more about she.codes here.
- the history of communications (from Morse to the World Wide Web)
- the history of computing (with a highlight on women in computing and a focus on UNIX)
- logic, basic digital circuits, how a CPU works
- the history of Free Software and Open Source
- difference betwwen machine code, compiled languages (C) and interpreted languages (JavaScript)
- the unix command line interface
- modern HTML and CSS
- modular software design with JavaScript and npm
- clean code, best practices, design patterns
- JavaScript in the browser, on the server (NodeJS), on mobile devices and on the desktop (electron)
- version control (git), Github and social coding
- pair programming
- test-driven development, continuous integration
- iterative, agile software development (Scrum)
If you know a candiate. let us know!
The prerequisites are:
- fluent in English
- must be able to come to Berlin-Kreuzberg (Schlesisches Tor) on a bi-weekly basis
- no prior computer knowledge required.
- 4x 400 EUR Laptop
- 12x 3000 EUR teacher salary
- total: 37.200 EUR
- Nov 2015 Finding sponsors and media partners
- Dec 2015 Crowdfunding campaign
- Jan 2016 Finding students, match-making, planning
- Feb 2016 - Jun 2016 Phase I: kitchen session with four students
- Jun 2016 - Feb 2017 Phase II: Continue kitchen-sessions, additional session in refugee homes (students become teachers)
- Jan 2017 Find jobs for first wave of students