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May 6th, 2020 × #bootcamp#curriculum#incomeshare

Bootcamps, Getting a Job, and Income Share Agreements with Heather Payne

Heather Payne, founder of Juno coding bootcamp, discusses details of the program, student outcomes, the job search process, and innovations like income share agreements.

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Topic 0 00:00

Transcript

Announcer

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Here is Scott Tolinski

Wes Bos

and Wes Bos. Welcome to Syntax. This is a podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Today, we've got a real good one for you. We've got Heather Payne, who I'll talk about in just a second, but runs a very popular boot camp. And here, talk about boot camps as well as getting a job, especially in the current climate that we're in. Today, we are sponsored by 2 awesome companies, Sanity, which is a structured content CMS, and Sentry, which is error and exception tracking.

Guest 2

So welcome, Heather Payne. Thanks so much for coming on. Cool. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you both.

Wes Bos

Also, Scott Silompey, as always, is one of those guys. Yes. Hey. That's me.

Wes Bos

I'm here as well. How are you doing today, Scott? Doing good. Doing real good. Just hanging out. Yeah. Good. Yeah. So I I guess I'll start it off here with, I'm I'm just gonna introduce Heather as to to how I know her, and then I'll let her have a second to explain kinda what she does. So I've known Heather for, I don't know, maybe probably 8 or 9 years Node, and then we go way back to like, I I owe Heather a lot for how getting into teaching and stuff like that because she was initially behind ladies learning code, which I did some weekend stuff with, and then, she brought me on when she started HackerU, both for boot camp as well as part time classes, which is really cool. And, it just got me into into teaching and then doing everything that I'm I'm doing right now, which is pretty cool. So Heather is running a boot camp, which is now called Juno. If you hear me talk about HackerU on the podcast, that boot camp is now called Juno. They have a bunch of other stuff as well past the boot camp, so, I'll just give you a second to sort of introduce yourself and anything else you wanna say.

Guest 2

Sure. Thanks.

Guest 2

It's funny because, like, you say that, Wes, but I actually owe you a ton as well because I would not have Juno today if it wasn't for, like, our early partnership working together on that. So, like, thank you as well.

Wes Bos

Awesome.

Guest 2

Yeah. So my name JS Heather Payne, and I'm the founder and CEO of Node College of Technology, which JS Westside used to be called HackerU.

Guest 2

Wes were founded in 2011 sorry. We were founded in 2012.

Guest 2

So it's coming up on 8 years, which is pretty wild to think about.

Guest 2

And we are essentially programming boot camp. So we help people go from being relative beginners to coding to job ready over a 9 week period.

Topic 1 02:29

Heather founded coding bootcamp Juno in 2012

Guest 2

And we have a bunch of continuing education courses as well, other things that we do.

Guest 2

I have a team of about 30:30 to 35 full time, folks who work at Juno full time. Man. Yeah. So we've grown a Scott.

Topic 2 02:43

Juno has grown to 30-35 employees and a large campus in Toronto

Guest 2

And, you know, we've done some really cool stuff. We have a 12,000 square foot campus in downtown Toronto, which we've we're just putting the finishing touches on a a half $1,000,000 renovation there, which we're super excited about.

Guest 2

And, last summer, I was part of Y Combinator.

Topic 3 03:05

Heather participated in Y Combinator last summer

Guest 2

So I I flew down to California and participated in Y Combinator for the company, and that was a really interesting experience too. So over my, you know, 8 years, I've gone from, you know, complete Scott up. We started up with no outside capital at all and then built it up to 33 employees. And now I've also had the experience of of, you know, going to Silicon Valley and talking to investors and that kind of thing. So it's been really interesting, and and there's been a lot of really cool experiences. And, of course, the latest the latest crisis with COVID is just another, you know, really interesting experience to have to figure out how it all works.

Guest 2

And I'm excited to chat about that today because, you know, what is the role of a boot camp in the COVID nineteen crisis and and during a recession? I think that's a really interesting topic that's on a lot of people's minds. Yeah. Absolutely.

Wes Bos

Let's actually just, like, get into that initially. Just like I'm curious, it seems like you pivoted into online learning really quickly and maybe easily from the outside. It means like you're doing a smooth job at it. So, like like, what did you do when you realized, oh, shoot. We need to shut this thing down, at least in Vercel?

Guest 2

Mhmm. Yeah. So luckily, there was someone on my team who, in early February, was like, we gotta watch out for this. This is coming for us, and it's gonna be very serious. So we had started making sort of contingency plans in early February. And it was always our plan to follow the local school board. So we decided in our plan that, like, when the school board decides that they're closing their doors, we too will close our doors. And it gave us a really, like, clear yes or no to follow, which Wes helpful because in times like this, it's, like, hard to know what the right thing to do is.

Guest 2

But that rule sort of helped us to see, like, okay. It's time to make a decision because this factor has happened. And so we had a few weeks to prepare for moving everything to online. Prior to this, we were hardcore in person boot camp. And you know us because you came there with us, always in person too. It was always about the in person experience.

Guest 2

If you ask people on my team, you know, would we ever move our programs ESLint? The resounding answer would have been Node, even though, you know, we saw coding boot camps like Lambda School popping up over the last couple of years and doing things exclusively ESLint, we've really believed in the in person experience. And so it really challenged our identity, I think, to have to move things online. But in a in a sense, like, we didn't even have a chance to think about it, and reflect on that too much because it was sort of like, okay, we have, you know, a short period of time to make this happen. The bulk of the work really did happen in about a week.

Guest 2

And so we, you know, decided what stack we're gonna use to teach our courses remotely, figured out scheduling and all that stuff. Wow. And, yeah. The we got the news that the school board was closing on a Thursday.

Guest 2

Friday was our last day in the office. Bos started remote on Saturday. So the whole thing kinda transformed in just a matter of a couple days. But I've been super, super happy. Like, we will always do live online classes now. This is for sure part of, our future.

Guest 2

And I could say that for sure. It's just the opportunity to help people who live outside of just the downtown Toronto area where we're located is so massive.

Guest 2

And, we really think that we're, you know, the best boot camp in existence. And so to make that available to more people than just people who can afford to live or to choose to live in downtown Toronto, been doing them for years years years. And so for us, it was about replicating that in person experience online as much as we can.

Guest 2

And, I think that's one thing that made it so great. We know what it needs to be like to be great, and we were able to use that as our kind of metric.

Guest 2

And then my team has just been so amazing. The involvement that I've had in moving the boot camp online has actually been extremely minimal, which, you know, is is very exciting for me as as a CEO. There's a lot of things to figure out in a in a time of crisis like this. And the fact that, like, my programs team and my curriculum team are just they just totally handled it and and moved everything online. It's been super inspiring to see how my team has has reacted to all of this.

Wes Bos

That's really interesting. I always tell people that part of the reason why I think people like the way that I teach is because I did it in person for so long, and I'm able to take that stuff that I've learned in person and and move that online.

Wes Bos

That's cool to hear you kind of say the same thing. It's like you've obviously had, like, 8 years of sitting beside somebody with their laptop trying to figure a bug out, and you you Scott the instructors learn what to to say online as well, I guess.

Guest 2

Totally. That's exactly it.

Wes Bos

Let's talk about boot camp. I want to know what you're teaching right now because, like, when I was when we started it up, we did, WordPress, Wes, jQuery and, yeah, just JavaScript.

Wes Bos

And I think that has changed quite a bit since then. Like, what is the the current boot camp? What do you learn in and and how long is it? Is is it still 9 weeks? Yeah. So we've stuck with 9 weeks.

Topic 4 08:20

Juno bootcamp is 9 weeks covering JavaScript, React and APIs

Guest 2

We are finding that it is taking a bit longer to get through lessons now that they're online versus when they were in person. So haven't made any official decisions about that yet, but it's something that I've just heard a little bit about, and we're monitoring that closely.

Guest 2

But, yeah. So still a 9 week program. We have shortened the HTML CSS portion of it. So it used to be 3 weeks when we were first working together Wes, and now it's like a week and a half, 2 weeks. Yeah. I would say. And then we're largely a JavaScript program, so we cover JavaScript and jQuery. And then we also get into React at the end. And they still work with APIs, and we still do some tooling stuff. So it's evolved quite a bit. I think we've been doing React now for about I think it's 2 years that we've been doing React. So that's been part of the stack for a while. Super interesting. That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm really interested in in how you validate the the, like, the topics.

Scott Tolinski

So, obviously, a lot of this stuff like React and the tooling, there there are things that are very, I don't know, prominent in our industry right now. But what's the process of taking a technology and knowing that it's, like, appropriate to be teaching now in this boot camp as, like a a core concept.

Topic 5 09:15

Juno evaluates and iterates on curriculum based on hiring rates and employer feedback

Scott Tolinski

How do you how do you decide that, like, okay. Now is the time to add React? Yeah. Is that, like, based on, like, hiring after the fact? Or

Guest 2

Yeah. So first of all, when Wes and I were first making the boot camp, we just guessed, and there was a lot of room for that, you know, back in 2014 because boot camps were very new. And so there was a lot of room just to put it out there and and see what works.

Guest 2

And then, you know, the cool thing I think one of the coolest things about running a boot camp is the chance that you get to do so much iteration.

Guest 2

You know, the program is only 9 weeks long. And so every time we run a boot camp, we're always changing something. Not too much because you don't wanna, like, you know, ruin the whole thing or whatever. But you can definitely do a couple experiments every single time, and then you see what works and what doesn't work, and then you keep building on top of those experiments. So we have a real, like, iteration vibe, a real experimentation vibe in the company.

Guest 2

And I would say people largely are, like, down to try something new, and then we just compare that to how things went in the past and see how it's how it works. So, like, the biggest change happened a few years ago when we switched from WordPress to React. And this was partially because our grads you know, when we started the boot camp, we didn't know that people would actually be able to get jobs out of the boot camp. That Wes, like, that sounded really cool, but it was 2014 and boot camps were new, and we just didn't know that that would be possible.

Guest 2

And so we were preparing people for freelance jobs.

Guest 2

We really pitched it as, like, get a job as a freelancer, come learn from Wes. And people came for that for for a long time. But then we started noticing that people were getting jobs. And by, like, cohort 2 or 3 or 4, it was, like, pretty reliable that you could get a job out of the program. And so, you know, we stuck with WordPress for a bit. But then once we made the call that we actually did not want people to become freelancers, we decided at some point a couple Yarn ago that this is a job transformation program. And so if your goal isn't to get a job as a developer, we don't think that this is the right program for you. We liked it because it just makes us more accountable. Like, if someone becomes a freelancer, is that success? You know, as a freelancer, you can struggle along making $20 a year Or you can, you know, obviously do way, way better than that. But it felt a little bit like gray zone for us for us to know if we did our job or Scott. Yeah. Versus if someone gets a full time job as a developer, you're like, okay, we did our job. So the the switch to React kind of went along with that because WordPress is not the right thing to learn if you're looking to get a job as developer in a company in most cases.

Guest 2

And then now in terms of how we make those decisions, I mean, we track our placement rates obsessively.

Guest 2

We have an outcomes team, which I actually run-in the company, and we have a really talented career services manager and, career support specialist on that team. And, like, every sing like, we're in touch with every single student every single week. We're doing 1 on ones. We're doing mock interviews. We're doing resume reviews. And so we know if a cohort is getting jobs slower than a recent cohort or getting them faster than a recent cohort. And we can use that data to make decisions around JS a change needed.

Guest 2

We'll also talk to people who interview our grads and find out why did you not hire them. And if it's a technical reason, like, we wanna know that, and we pass that over to the curriculum team. Yeah. And then ultimately, it's the curriculum team's job to make sure that they're speaking with employers and taking that information from the outcomes team and making decisions

Scott Tolinski

from there on, like, what to add, what to remove. But it's a really iterative process. Every single cohort, there's something that's been changed. So you're never gonna have the exact same experience as a student who came before you. Cool. Yeah. I think that's important, especially I mean, we all know that everything changes so frequently that being able to be so agile not to use the word agile in the the way that, you know, it is used in this industry, but to be so able

Guest 2

to quickly change, like, how how things are working, I think that's such a huge strength to be able to do that within a boot camp. Totally. And and such a difference between us and the college system, right, or the university system because in a university system, your program is 4 years long. If you make a change in year 1, you don't find out until 4 years later when those students graduate if you actually changed their outcomes or Scott. Versus for us, we can find all of that out within a period of 4 4 months, you know, or less. So it's it's pretty cool to be able to move that fast.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. No no kidding. Yeah. It's funny. I'm a, I'm a board member of the, like, the technical advisory board for the University of Florida's program. And when they were, like, talking about their web development program, I just was thinking, well, it's amazing that they're getting people to talk about these things to change them. Because when I was in school at the University of Michigan, the Wes dev program was just basically the most archaic, awful thing in the entire Sanity. And I, you know, I took so many classes. I just felt like I had learned more in my high school computer web development program than I did within this college program. So,

Wes Bos

it's just a such a huge strength to be able to to ebb and flow with the the industry as it is. I'm curious about, like, like, what makes a good boot camp student because I know you don't just let anybody into into the program. You you screen them, you meet with them, have a coffee.

Wes Bos

And you've seen, well, probably, like, 5, 600 students go through this and and try to get jobs after it. So you know probably a lot about personality and skills and just the person in general. So, like like, what do you see as someone who's a good fit for a boot camp and someone who will likely get a job when they come out of this thing? Mhmm. Yeah. So I think we have, like, approximately a 1000 boot camp alumni now.

Guest 2

So quite a bit a big number. And, many of those have you know, were handpicked for the program by me.

Topic 6 15:07

Juno bootcamp acceptance rate is around 20%

Guest 2

Last year, our acceptance rate was, 20%.

Guest 2

So it is, like, quite selective in order to get in. And and not every boot camp, you know, maybe JS lucky enough to run things this way. But the way that we've always seen things is, you know, we wanna make decisions on admissions that's going to make sure that we're still around in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years down the road. And it's easy for us to make those decisions because we don't have a VC backing us or anything like that. I mean, I did go to Y Combinator and I I did raise a bit of money from friends and family afterwards. But for the most part, this is my business that I'm the only director, I'm the only shareholder, so I'm making decisions that are going to make sure that this business is around for the long term. And it's meant that we can decide to grow as fast as we think we should grow. And in some years, like, it's not a lot. And in some years, it's a lot. So it all it kinda depends on our our capability.

Guest 2

But what it it meant is that, you know, for the past 6 years, essentially, we would run 4 cohorts a year. And when we first started, they were 25 students each. And we've grown that number over the years to cohorts of 40.

Guest 2

But we've been pretty consistent with the size because we wanted to have the highest quality students joining us. And so that's sort of where that admission percentage comes from. But in terms of, like, what we've seen so, I mean, one thing that's really cool about Deno is that our student body is about 50% female identifying and 50% male identifying.

Guest 2

And actually we have a lot of non binary students as well, so I shouldn't even say that those exact numbers. It's a really cool and diverse student body, which I love. And we bring people from all walks of life, which is really cool.

Guest 2

The industries that people tend to come to us the most from, I would say retail, restaurant.

Guest 2

We have a lot of musicians Mhmm. A lot of artists.

Guest 2

We've had quite a few flight attendants. There was a time when we had a ton of journalists, which is cool because those journalists are now actually working in the in media companies, but in the developer Node of things across Canada, which is is really, really awesome. Yeah.

Guest 2

Love seeing that. Yeah. It's super cool. So those are some of the really popular ones. And what's really interesting about those industries that I just shared is that those are some of the industries being hardest hit by the COVID nineteen crisis.

Guest 2

You know, restaurant and retail are being obliterated right now.

Guest 2

Musicians are having a really hard time. Flight attendants, hospitality workers are all being hitched.

Guest 2

So We've always served people coming from those industries, which is why, I feel that our role in the COVID nineteen pandemic is to continue to serve those those people from those industries.

Guest 2

They are gonna need to switch into new jobs soon, and probably they want to because they they wanna move on to something new. And so we'll still be here for those folks. But what we see I mean, typical age range tends to be, you know, 25 to 40, I would say.

Guest 2

Typically, people would be making and there's, of course, exceptions to everything that I'm about to say, but this is just some some generalizations.

Topic 7 18:03

Typical Juno student age range is 25-40 making under $50k

Guest 2

People typically would be making less than 50 k in their job prior to coming to Juno.

Guest 2

And our average salary starting out after Juno JS is around 56,000 on average or so. So, you know, you're probably coming to Juno if you're making less than that right now. That's when it kinda makes sense for you. And then we just find, like, people who come to Node common thread is that they just don't wanna settle for whatever job they were in before.

Guest 2

So, you know, people who worked in restaurant industry or retail industry, they, oftentimes, almost everyone it comes to Deno did do some post secondary education, whether they, went to college or university, whether they finished it or not. They they usually did some. And then they just didn't it didn't get them the job that they wanted. They didn't get to where they needed to be. And instead of settling and just accepting that, they decided to, you know, apply to Juneau and come and go through this really tough 9 week experience and go through a tough job hunt and come out the other end as a developer. So there's a real thread there of people, like, not being willing to settle. And I think that's what makes our alumni community so cool and magical is that they all have this, like, thirst for more, like, deep within them.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. So that's super cool. And it turns out if boot camp developers are needing some place to host their data, which we all need some place to host our data. Yeah. Sure. You'll probably wanna check out one of our sponsors, and that is Sanity at Sanity. Io, which is the, structured content CMS for your

Wes Bos

new headless front end. So do you want to talk a little bit about Sanity Wes? Yeah. If you are building an app or a website or anything that needs data and you need a real time back end with either a GraphQL API or they have this really cool syntax language called Grok.

Wes Bos

Grok. And you need to pull in data into your into whatever app you're working on. Check out Sanity. It's it's pretty cool the way that it works is because it's not just, like, log in and use their interface.

Wes Bos

Use this thing called Sanity Studio that you can host yourself, which means that you've, like it comes with, like, a back end, but you can push it a little bit further and and code it yourself because it's it's your code that's that's running. So they give you this really Node, and it's kinda like WordPress Wes that in that regard in that, like, it's a prebuilt admin tool, but you can drop in your own React components, do your own validation, things like that. It's pretty nifty.

Wes Bos

Check it out at Sanity/ syntax. That's gonna get you double the free usage tier.

Wes Bos

Thanks so much to Sanity for sponsoring.

Scott Tolinski

Cool. So let's talk about, like, the post grad experience. Right? Is that that where you wanted to go next, Wes? Yeah. The post grad is is all about finding that job, and I know there's a lot of, I don't know, with small small colleges, private colleges, all sorts of things with trying to find job rates. Like, we get, you know, 90% of our our boot camp users finding jobs, and and oftentimes, I personally find those to be a little disingenuous. But do you have any sort of metrics or tracking, or or is there any sort of, process that you go through with Juno to really help increase those numbers of people to have success in post boot camp life?

Guest 2

Mhmm. Yeah. So, yeah, there is a big problem in the industry in terms of being able to compare apples to apples.

Guest 2

Because what if our definition at Juno of what employed means is slightly different than a different boot camp's definition of it? Some boot camps would count a part time job coding as an outcome and some wouldn't.

Guest 2

And so, first of all, for a long time, we didn't even keep stats. We just focused on and this was my job actually up until March of last year. It was my job to make sure that everybody who graduated from Juno's boot camp got a job as a developer.

Guest 2

And we actually didn't even keep stats. It was just about, like, working 1 on 1 with those students and making sure that they were really happy.

Guest 2

And that's how Deno grew, Wes just people spreading the word about us through word-of-mouth.

Guest 2

Then, like, a couple Yarn ago, it started becoming more important that we, like, had outcomes reports that we could use to show what our our data is. And so we we did started creating them. But then I think last year or the year before, this organization emerged out of the US called CIRR.org.

Guest 2

And it is, the Vercel For Integrity in Results Reporting.

Guest 2

Essentially, it's like a nonprofit body that creates a framework for boot camps to use to report on their results so that you can actually compare apples to apples when you are deciding which boot camp you'd like to go to. Yeah. It's really cool. And and it really provided the framework that we needed to help us also kinda solidify what we count as, you know, success or what we count as an outcome. So we joined, I think, you know, a year and a half or 2 years ago. And we've submitted 2 reports, so far and and we'll continue to, keep submitting the reports whenever they're due.

Topic 8 23:01

Juno reports outcomes transparently through CIRR.org to verify data

Guest 2

And it's just really cool. It's really cool to have a way of saying, like, you know, we're doing the right thing. We're being really transparent.

Guest 2

Not every single report is up until the right necessarily.

Guest 2

You know, our our outcomes do go up and down, and we think that's an important component of being transparent with students JS to say, like, you know, this cohort was this and this one was a bit Wes, and here's why it was Wes, and here's what we fixed. And and, you know, here's what the future looks like so that you can trust us more. But, you know, internally, Wes, pre COVID, our target was, 70% employed by 3 months, which we have hid and hover around, typically, and then 90% employment by 6 months after graduation. And our most recent cohort that hit that 6 month mark before COVID hit I think they their 6 month mark was on March 25th.

Guest 2

We hit 89% 87 or 89% for that cohort. So those are, like, realistic numbers for a boot camp.

Guest 2

And we we hit those numbers. And, you know, we're not totally sure what the impact of COVID is going to be on our placement rates. They're obviously gonna go down. We're gonna try and make them go down as little as possible and make them go down less than every other boot camp in the industry just to kinda keep our place as, you know, market leading placement rate. But,

Scott Tolinski

then when we come out of the crisis, we'll get we'll get ourselves back up to that 70 90% placement rate. This is so cool. I think that goes a long way for trust within the company because it is it is there's so many of these boot camps that ESLint, and how do you know if you can them? And some of them definitely make inflated claims, so it's amazing to have some sort of external body or some sort of transparency policy in mind

Wes Bos

to really gain that trust. You're also showing salaries in here too, which JS, like, 79 people graduated, and, 1.6 percent is making over 90 k.

Wes Bos

52% is in between 50 60 k. Are these in Canadian, or are they adjusted? I think ours is in Canadian. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That's so cool that this is like a standard. Yeah. I had no idea. You can just look at the data and see, like, how many people actually get jobs. I I've always been telling people, like, talk to a couple people and and and read the reviews and stuff like that, but, like, this is just hard data Yeah. As to if you can get in, what do you expect for your odds of of getting a job. Yeah. Right.

Topic 9 24:50

Pre-COVID, Juno targeted 70% employment at 3 months and 90% at 6 months

Guest 2

Yeah. And I I like the the format as well because it shows what was the graduation rate. You know? So that way, if you're a student and you're thinking about where to go, it's like you can look at the report. You can see. Like, I think in our case, depending on what report you're looking at, it's like either a 100% graduation rate or, like, 98% graduation rate or whatever. So you can see, like, okay, there's a 98% that a chance that I'm gonna graduate, and then there's a x% chance that I'm gonna have a job within, you know, 3 months or 6 months or whatever it is. And you can just make a proper ROI decision based on that. Although I still think your point, Wes, is good, you know, when people are asking me for other ways that they should make a decision about which boot camp to join, I always say, like, go on LinkedIn. Mhmm. Look up the boot camp that you're interested in, and reach out to a few random alumni. You Node? Not the ones that the school gives you to talk to, but, like, look look up your own choices. That's what I said, like, a couple podcast ago. Yeah. Yeah. Look up your own so and then reach out to them. And and I've found in general that, like, boot camp grads are really happy to share their experience, whether they are happy to share it because it was awesome or whether they Yarn happy to share it because they have some strong criticisms of the program. I think people are really open about sharing that kind of stuff. So, you know, this is a big decision. It's a lot of money to go to a boot camp. Our program is $12,000 Canadian. And that's, I think, on the cheaper side in some cases when you look at boot camps, especially in the US. So it's a big financial decision, and it it makes sense that you would take some time to really investigate it properly.

Wes Bos

That's awesome. Let's talk about actually, like, interviewing, for a job. So you guys obviously do a lot on the the back end and make sure making sure people get their jobs. How do you prepare somebody for an interview? That's I get questions about this all the time. Like, do I need to whiteboard? And the reality is it's like I only ever had, like, 1 interview in my entire thing. And I think when I talked to you about doing HackerU, we just went out for beers. Like, that was, like, the Yes. That was the extent of it. Right? Like like, tell us. I have no clue. How do you how do you prepare for an interview as a web developer?

Guest 2

Yeah. Totally. So, you know, our our approach with the job searching piece of of the Boot Camp has always been kinda like teach people how to fish rather than, like, giving them the fish, you know, that whole thing. So we've always been about, like, supporting a a grad with their own job search rather than delivering them a job kind of on a silver platter. It's a lot more scalable and something that I've heard from our grads over the years is that the skills that they learned from us around how to find a job and how to organize their job search Yarn, like, lifelong skills that they will have forever. So I'll give you some, like, highlights of our sort of job search process that we that we follow and some of our, like, kind of tips that we have. So first of all, we need everyone to track their job search progress in a spreadsheet.

Guest 2

And we've actually recently started exploring, like, some software solutions for this instead. But, ultimately, what it comes down to is, like, job search is really frantic.

Guest 2

There's, like, new postings on all kinds of different places. And if you're just sending emails and not tracking where you're sending those emails, there's no way that you're gonna, like, be able to pursue each opportunity properly.

Guest 2

And so we create a spreadsheet and and our career services team shares access to it with them so we can actually see every single day what jobs the students, the grads are applying to.

Guest 2

But we've always given, like, activity targets to our grads. So it's like a certain number of jobs to apply to every single day.

Guest 2

And, you know, we find that our most successful grads are able to hit those activity targets. And, you know, in a pre COVID world, it wasn't a big number. It's like we're asking you to apply to, you know, between 2 4 job applications per day, and and then spend the rest of your time coding. Like, that's kind of our our recipe for job search success.

Guest 2

And those numbers are really important because if you're applying to, you know, 4 job applications a day, that's 20 per week.

Guest 2

And we find that, you know, a normal job search, you'll usually hear back from about 1 in every 10 companies that you apply to. You'll get, like, a positive response in a phone interview or something like that. And so if you're doing 20 applications a week, that means you're getting two phone interviews every single week. And then that actually is really important for, like, helping to keep the momentum going. So if every week you have 2 phone interviews, you're like, okay, you, like, bring a little bit of swagger into your, like, phone interview because you're like, I know I have another one tomorrow.

Guest 2

And it just kind of like it really becomes this, like, upward spiral of, like, confidence and success and, like, you know, never feeling like everything's on Node single opportunity.

Guest 2

What happens when people don't apply to enough jobs is, like, say you do 1 application a day, that's 5 per week. It's gonna take you 2 weeks to hear back one positive thing, because that's how long it takes you to do 10 applications. So it's gonna take you 2 weeks to hear back. And then you're like, oh my god. This is a really important interview because I only get pnpm every 2 weeks, And the pressure's on. And maybe you don't you're not yourself because of that. So we really find that, like, you know, more important than the interview itself, to me, is nailing the numbers game of applying to jobs. And then the value that you get from joining a boot camp, if their approach is the same as ours, is, like, you get someone who's keeping you accountable to that job search. You Node, every single week, we're checking in with you. You Node, okay. You only did 15 job applications this week. What was the reason? Is there something blocking you that we can help you with? Which actually just helps people achieve those numbers, which makes their job search more successful.

Guest 2

And then in terms of interviews, we've actually been, like, quite hands off typically. Back when I was doing like, supporting all the grads myself, I just said, you know, if you do 3 interviews and you don't get it, like, 3 interviews at 3 different companies and you don't get a job offer, come see me because we're gonna do some interview, like mock interview practice. And I didn't usually have to do much. So we usually found that, like, by the time someone does, like, 3 interviews, they're usually you know, a lot of the time, they they end up getting a job. Now we are doing a practice mock interview with, like, every single student just to make sure that, you know, in that 1st interview that they have, they do nail it. But my my tips for interviews are are largely bring a lot of energy, and I think this applies even more so now that lot of interviews are happening remotely.

Topic 10 31:22

Key interview tips - energy, questions list, follow up

Guest 2

You can both see, like, because you can see me and we're on video. You can see how much, like, animation I'm bringing to our conversation.

Guest 2

And it just makes it a more enjoyable experience for the other person. Wes of hands. So so that's really important. I'm enjoying it. Yeah. That's really important. A tip that I've always shared with our grads for their interviews is, bring, like, a printed out piece of paper with questions on it. You know that at the end of the interview, they're gonna say, so do you have any questions for us? And there's something that's so professional about, like, reaching into your Mhmm. You know, probably your backpack realistically and and pulling out this, like, piece of paper that Yeah. That you took the time at home to prepare and write and print. It just shows that you're the kind of person who is very thoughtful. So we have a lot of, like, tips like that that we share with our grads as they're going through the job search, just to give them, like, a little edge on the other people who might be searching for a job. That if you're not having someone kinda guide you through your job search process, you're gonna miss out on a lot of those kinda tips. So that's part of the value add that you get when you when you join a boot camp. Yeah. As someone who's been on both sides of the the table in the interview process, I can tell you those little things are are such a a big difference when somebody comes across your table, especially when you're interviewing, you know, 10, 20 people.

Scott Tolinski

The ones who stand out are the ones who do those little professional things. They write the cover letters. They show up, you know, 15 minutes or they do all of the the perfect things that you need them to do, and it really makes a big difference. It it stands out in a very positive way. So it's really exciting to hear that you guys are are emphasizing those kind of interview techniques in your program.

Guest 2

Yeah. And and here's the thing. Like, it's not really fair. You know? Like, it actually sucks that we have to encourage our grads to do this kind of stuff because if it Wes, like, just about skills, then they would get the job GitHub, you know, they get jobs that they're qualified for without having to do all this stuff. But unfortunately, like, that's not how it works. And you're right. Like, it does stand out to us, you know, to me too Wes I have an interview and someone does something that goes a little bit above and beyond. I'm like, wow. That you know, we use that as a signal that they're gonna go above and beyond as an employee as well, which is probably true. Like, it does probably make sense. But yeah. Another thing that we, encourage our grads to do, and this is like a slightly controversial one. I've also received quite a bit of feedback over the years of employers not liking this, but we really drill home that our and this is probably more true in a COVID nineteen era than ever before. We really drill drill home that our grads need to follow-up on their job applications.

Guest 2

So it is not enough. And and maybe this is obvious now, but, know, when we first started, this was not obvious at all. Like, it is not enough to just submit your application into Indeed or through LinkedIn or whatever and, like, hope that you're gonna get magically picked out of a pile, you're probably not gonna get magically picked out of a pile of applications. Like, it just isn't. And and I don't like to rely on luck in my life. You know? And I try and encourage our grads to not rely on luck either. Like, let's take control of our destinies, you know, in a sense. And so, you know, by doing a follow-up, you know, 3 days later, hey, just checking in to see if you, you know, received my application. I'm really excited about the role. You know, it's not a follow-up where you're like, hey. Did you check it yet? It's like a it's an opportunity for you to Yeah. Again Yeah. Sell yourself on why you're such a great fit for the role and why you'd be so awesome there. So we actually every week are checking in with our grads, you know, did you do your follow ups? The follow ups are key part of the job application process. And, again, I wish we didn't have to do it. I wish magically the right person for the job would just magically get picked out of the pile, but that's not realistic. It's not the world we live in. And in a COVID era, there's there's fewer people doing more work.

Guest 2

You know, some people, like HR has been an pnpm area that I've seen a lot of, layoffs in. And so there's gonna be less people looking through the same number of job applications, looking through more job applications. So this stuff just becomes even more important.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Anything you can do to make you stand out in those positive ways is a plus in my mind. Absolutely.

Wes Bos

So let's talk about COVID right now. So we're starting to see the effects of much of the economy being closed trickle through to web developer jobs. Like, Eventbrite just laid off couple 100 people because there's not events going on right now. Right? And and we're starting to it's easy to think, like, oh, we're web developers. We can work from Node. So our jobs are fine, but we're starting to see, like obviously, our job as web developers is to support the world coming online. And if if that part of the business is no longer there, then then our jobs start to to get in trouble, which JS sucks. So now that web developers are losing their job, there's less jobs out there, what do you say to someone who's coming out of a boot camp when there's this fresh crop of experienced devs Mhmm. Maybe fending for the the same job?

Guest 2

Mhmm. Totally. So, yeah, we have, like, a few things that we're keeping in mind for this. First of all, just today in Canada, they announced some support for students and graduates.

Guest 2

It's called the Canada emergency student subsidy, I think, or something like that. And it means that anyone who graduated school in Canada after December 2019 or anyone who's going to school in the fall can get 12.50 a month, from May through August. So, we expect that our grads will be eligible for this. And so and and, you know, all boot camp grads in Canada would be eligible for this. And so that's great just to, like, ease the pressure a little bit on needing a job right away.

Guest 2

It will take longer to find a job. So we are no longer in the, you know, 90% within 6 months world. We don't know how long it's gonna take to get a job. It's gonna take longer for sure, but this will help a little bit. So I'm I'm feeling really excited about that. The other thing that we're doing I mean, we're doing a few things.

Guest 2

1, just, like, more student support. They just need more from us, in terms of, like, even emotional support right now. And so we're, like, here for that, and we're ready to talk about that kind of stuff.

Guest 2

There's also a lot of wage subsidies that are available to employers. Some of them already existed before COVID and and some now are, being added because of the COVID nineteen crisis. And so I actually expect that there will be a lot of wage subsidies to help recent grads, you know, from colleges and universities, but also from boot camps, to land their 1st jobs in the coming months.

Guest 2

Employers love to save money. And especially in in this world, you know, where revenues are being cut because there's not as much consumer demand, the opportunity to use Yeah. A wage subsidy to hire a recent grad and and end up only paying, you know, $10 an hour to that person instead of 20 or 30 or 40 or whatever, that will be really appealing to employers, because senior developers are still gonna cost a lot. So, you know, for those who are budget constrained, that will be really helpful to them. And then something else that we're looking at is how can we support our grads in, like, a more broad sense when it comes to employment? So, you know, in in the past, we've moved warp, like, we want you to get a full time job. We actually make our grads sign, like a document GitHub before they join ESLint us that they will put full time effort when they graduate into finding a full time job because it was that important to us that everyone kind of have that expectation in mind. But we're now exploring relaxing that a little bit. For the time being, it may make sense for our grads to take on a shorter contract that they might not normally be interested ESLint, but now that would be a good idea for them. Some of them may be interested in taking on freelance projects, and we think that could be a good idea for them in the short term until more full time, opportunities open up. So we're just being a little bit more kind of open minded about it. If you can get 2 20 hour a week jobs, that's, you know, the same thing as having a a full time job. And so can we pursue things like that? And so we're actually reaching out to employers and pitching them on on that kind of thing. And for companies who have decided to lay off, a developer, Node know, they're still going to have some dev work to do. And so Node we can be there to have them hire 1 of our grads and have them do it in 20 hours a week or something like that. And it's sort of a win win in that case. But I think ultimately, there's gonna be a little bit more it's gonna take longer to get into a job, and so we're focused on how can we make sure that our grads are getting experience of any kind as quickly as possible? And how can we make sure that they're still learning and still improving their skills? And I really see that once, you know, once the economy JS opened up again, no matter how long that takes, and I have no idea how long it's gonna be, but once that does start to happen Mhmm. There's gonna be a lot of demand for businesses to bring their businesses online more effectively because they're gonna wanna be more more resilient to this in the future. So anybody who, you know, doesn't currently have a Shopify store, they're scrambling to make one. They're doing it really fast and and quick. And at some point, they're gonna wanna invest in that and maybe doing it a little bit more properly or doing something a bit more custom.

Guest 2

And that's just, like, one example. So I I really think that in the coming years, there's gonna be a boom for developers, and it's just this short term period that's really painful. And so that's why I think it's still a great time to learn and a great time to go back to school. And and like I said, you know, those retail workers and restaurant workers, like, we want those people to come to us now. And and, yes, it'll still be you know, it'll take longer for you to get your job. But then once you're in and we see this all the time, like, once you graduate from Juno and you get your 1st developer job, like, you're pretty set. Like, it's pretty great. Mhmm. And, like, just to drive that point home, we we're keeping track of our grads who have been laid off because we want to provide support to them. And so we have a ESLint. And and, you know, it sucks to have people who have been laid off. We have 20 who we know of that have been laid off. But that's out of almost a 1000 people that are grads of our program. So, you know, we're helping those people. We're supporting them. 2 of them have already gotten jobs again, which is super exciting.

Guest 2

And, you know, the reality is, like, less than 2.5% of our grads have been laid off as far as we know. Once you're in, you're quite ESLint. And, you know, of course, there's some luck at play. But for the most part, we still think it's a really great idea to become a web developer.

Wes Bos

Yeah. I was just I was just saying that to somebody the other day, how every business needs to go online. Like, my dad builds websites, and he's friends with, like, a lot of Dutch people who run greenhouses.

Wes Bos

And every single one of them is scrambling to get some sort of online pickup inventory system going, and I'm just like, this is a term I hate, bricks and clicks, but the bricks and clicks play after this is gonna be huge for people who need to bring like, in the States, it's pretty good, but in Canada, the whole, like, order and, pick up in person,

Scott Tolinski

it's kinda there, but it's it's not nearly as good as as it is in the states. And I think that that's gonna get really good once once we get back to everything. Yeah. Yeah. And even here, I mean, it really kicked up a notch as everyone's probably seen. But, like, it's like, oh, you wanna order some alcohol? You just leave your ID in the window. They drop it on the front porch. It's it's like everything's, like, really, evolved in those directions really, really quickly. So, again, once everybody has a chance to breathe, it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be a rush to really solidify a lot of those systems.

Guest 2

Yeah. And there's also gonna be some major changes to human behavior after all of this. Like, you can't go through something like this and not have big changes happen. And when changes happen, new businesses get started.

Guest 2

And all of those businesses are gonna have an online component. Like, it's impossible to believe that they won't. And so I think there's gonna be this whole, like, set of new types of businesses that get founded that are all gonna need support as well. I forget what podcast I was listening to, but they made the point that, like, after World War one came the roaring twenties and after World War two came the fifties, which was also a really big boom time, in history. And so there's some thoughts that, like, that's what we're in for once this all gets resolved JS like a really big boom time. And, you know, that might not happen, and it's best to prepare for all scenarios. But, you know, I I think it's I think there's a pretty good chance that we're gonna be in for a really, like, really interesting decade to come once we get past this.

Wes Bos

No. I'm gonna name it the bricks and clicks boom. Bricks and clicks. It's gonna be in the $3. Here we go. Yeah.

Wes Bos

What else I wanted to talk about? Are you you still doing income share agreements? Right? You just launched that, like, 6 months ago? A year. We it's the 1 year anniversary last week. Wow. Yeah. So income share agreements are,

Guest 2

a payment method that started to gain some popularity in, like, 2018.

Guest 2

I first heard about them in in December of 2018.

Guest 2

Essentially, what it is is it allows you to not pay upfront for your education, and this could be at a college or university or a boot camp, or maybe something else. So you don't pay up front. But then once you graduate and you make a certain amount of money in a salary Node a certain amount of money, whatever, you pay back a percentage of your income for a certain number of months. So just to illustrate how ours work, our upfront tuition is $12,000, but you could take ESLint income share agreement, which means you just pay a dollar upfront. And we have to charge a dollar because need to, like, have a legally binding contract, and money has to change hands. It's like a government rule, because we are, like, regulated by the government. So you pay a dollar. And then once you graduate, you pay nothing until you're making 50 k a year or more in a job. And at that point, you pay us 17% of your gross monthly income. And there's a payment cap of 1.5 times our upfront tuition amount. So the most you'd ever pay is 18,000.

Guest 2

And the cool thing about this, especially in, like, COVID time, is that if your pay ever drops below 50,000, you stop paying for that period time until it goes back. So you did have a grad who took a pay cut at work and their pay dropped below 50,000 and they stopped their payments so they don't have to pay right now, which is really cool.

Guest 2

And also if you end up losing your job or you have to stay home to take care of loved we have sort of 5 years to collect these monthly payments. And after 5 years, no more payments are due. So it's not like debt where you're kinda stuck with it forever either. You know, 5 years is kind of the max that you'll be with something. And even if you haven't finished paying it off, you just don't pay anymore.

Guest 2

So it's it's been pretty popular. Cool. You know, when we launched them, we're the 1st school in Canada to launch income share agreements. I believe, to date, we're still the only one. It's been a year.

Guest 2

There's a few schools that have sort called them income share agreements, but they're really more like payment plans than than true income share agreements.

Guest 2

And so, you know, it was a bit of a slow start in our 1st cohort where they're available. We 5 students who took income share agreements, but the next cohort had 12. So that was really cool. And now we get, like, way, way more applications than we can afford to fund.

Guest 2

We fund them out of our own profits, and we also, in the past, have gotten a loan to be able to fund ISAs as well. So, you know, for us, there is, like, a maximum budget that we can put into this. But, essentially, we spend all of our profit. Oh, yeah. Because you have to pay your instructors Yeah.

Wes Bos

And pay for rent. You have to pay for I I didn't even think about that. Yeah. You have to, like, like, front end all of the stuff and then also hope that they get a job Yeah. After the fact. Right? Yeah. Totally. Kinda on you. So there's a vested interest there. Right? Yeah. It's very it's very fun and interesting,

Guest 2

thing to manage. But essentially, we just give out the number of ISAs that we can afford to. So, you know, for now, we have a capped at about 10 per cohort, and that allows us to still we have 40 students per cohort, so it allows us to still cover, like, all of our Scott. And then, you know, and then we we get the money later when they get a job. So, of course, there's a little bit of risk here because if people are taking longer to get a job, it's gonna take them longer to pay us back.

Guest 2

But, you know, because we, like, just fund this ourselves out of our own profits, it doesn't really matter if it takes longer. So that's kinda cool. And then so the innovation that I wanted to mention, is actually relating to income share agreements. So we're launching this on Oh, okay. April 28th. Be launched. So by the time everyone hears this, it'll be live already.

Guest 2

It's, the world's 1st, pay what you can income share agreement.

Guest 2

So the idea here is that, you know, previously, you either pay the full $12,000 up front with cash or you pay a dollar and take a $12,000 ISA.

Topic 11 47:20

Juno launched the world's first pay what you can income share agreement

Guest 2

But what we're launching now is the chance to choose. So if somebody wants to just pay $3,000 up front, they can. And it means that their payment cap that end up paying instead of being 18,000 would be end up being less than that. So it's like a really flexible way. And what it does for us too is extend our ISA budget. So, you know, you can imagine in the past, I had 10 ISA spots, $12,000 each. So I had a budget of $120,000 Wes ISAs.

Guest 2

That can go a lot farther if I'm giving out ISAs of $6,000.

Guest 2

I can help more students, you know, by giving them a bit of a lower ISA each. So we're pretty excited about it. We think it's really, like, innovative and cool and student friendly.

Guest 2

So it's launching on the 28th. And and, you know, if you're listening to this, it's already live. So, you know, if you wanna go check out Deno college.com, and then I'm sure on the Node page somewhere, you'll be able to see something about ISAs. Just click on that, and and there's a calculator and stuff that you can use to calculate your total investment.

Wes Bos

That's really cool. I when I first talked to you about the income share agreement, I'm like, man, that that makes a lot of sense, and it seems very fair. You talk to a lot of people who are sorta outside of it, and their initial reaction is like, you're gonna take part of my Sanity.

Wes Bos

And, like, I'm glad that you can, like, sort of but, like, I'm glad that you can sort of, like, explain it on the on the podcast as to, like, how it works because it is a little bit complicated, but I think it's such a cool especially now that, like, you can pay whatever you or whatever you're able to pay upfront.

Wes Bos

And then, like because because there's a lot of people who I think everybody who goes through the boot camp, they're like, life has changed. Right? Like, you change the trajectory of your life because you've totally moved into this. Like, right now, it's an excellent industry to be in. So it's cool that that is not now limited to just people who have the $12 upfront to to pay that.

Guest 2

Yeah. Like, $12 is a lot to, like, have in your bank account. And what if you're not lucky enough to be able to borrow it from, like, friends or family or something like that? Like, bringing bringing tech to more people and getting more people into tech JS, like, the whole theme of my life, like, the whole theme of my career.

Guest 2

You know, it's the reason that I started ladies learning code. It was to bring more women into technology and coding and give them, like, great early experiences so that they are not turned off from it and that they actually wanna pursue it. And, like, over the past 8 years at Juno, you know, the biggest, like, the biggest thing I think we hadn't been able to figure out is, like, how to make it so that we have more, like, socioeconomic diversity in our programs. And and we're not there yet. There's still, like, a long ways to go. And, you know, even the fact that we, you know, we require people to have their own laptop. It's like there's still things that that make it hard. I mean, you know, we we have a loaner program and, like, we, you know, we do everything that we can do as a as a private company, but there's always more. And so this is sort of our, like, latest innovation over the past year of just, like, bringing more people into this world that we think really deserve to be in this world and should benefit from being in this world.

Scott Tolinski

I think that's a great cap off.

Wes Bos

Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to say or plug or anything else you want to mention to the audience?

Guest 2

I guess, like, one thing that that I'd love to mention, you know, now that our program is live online, we're actually able to serve, like I said, a much broader audience. So if the idea of a coding boot camp has kind of been in your mind, but you haven't been sure, like, which one is right for you and and maybe the ones in your city are not you're Node so excited about them, you can now come to Juno, which is is pretty cool. So, if you wanna check it out and see what Node like, we offer tons of free, like, 3 hour kinda like web dev coding workshops. They're totally free. It gives you a chance to see what our our instructors are like and what the classroom format is like and what live online feels like. So if you go to the homepage, which is junocollege.com, just on the top right corner, you'll see a free online workshops button, and you can click on that and and sign up. And we'd love to have some more people from across the world. We've had people signing up from different countries already, and I'm just really excited to see what the next few months look like as we sort of have more people joining us from from anywhere.

Wes Bos

Awesome. Yeah. I get people all the time asking me, like, hey. I don't wanna just do your course. I need something more structured. I need something more involved. And, like, what should I take? And I'm like, I don't really know. Like, if you're in Toronto or you wanna come to Toronto, then go to Juno. But other than that, I I I don't totally know. It's awesome that I can point people to, because I think another big thing about boot camps that we didn't talk about is that, like, the how good it is is very much dependent on the curriculum and the people that are are teaching it to you. Those are probably the by far the 2 most important things. And I know that both of those things are are very good at, you know. Yeah. And I think, like, to that point, to me, it's like

Guest 2

so different when you go to a boot camp that's like owner operated.

Guest 2

You Node, like, I founded this company and I work in this business all day every single day. Like, this is my life's work.

Guest 2

And that's really different than when you join a boot camp that, you know, was backed by VCs and has already been sold and it's been bought by, like, a private equity company. Like, I don't know. I think it's important to look up, like, who is the owner and who's really behind the company that you're choosing to to buy from, and and who do you want to support? You know? And what alumni community do you want to be part of? I think that stuff really matters. And there's a lot of coding boot camps that are not owner operated anymore. And I just think being owner operated is the Bos, so I'd always look out for that. Absolutely. Yeah. You want there to be a vested interest. You want there to be, you know, something at stake Yeah. For you to succeed. Exactly. And this is totally unrelated, but this website is so slick. It's Gatsby. Right? Let me look at it. I don't think it is Gatsby anymore.

Wes Bos

Is it? It is. It is? Oh, great. Well, at least the Pejambon. Anyways, you wanna check out a fast, slick website with a nice design, check out junocollege.com.

Guest 2

It is it's really nice. I just outed myself. You guys obviously built this in house. Yeah. We did build it in house, but I just outed myself in terms of my knowledge of coding, which is extremely minimal.

Guest 2

And people always find that really funny to to hear. And it's like one of the questions I get asked by students all the time. They're like, so, like, when did you learn to code? And, like, what was your most recent project you worked on? And, you know, I always share that, like, you know, I I was learning how to code. My my story is that I started learning how to code in, like, 2009, 2010.

Guest 2

But as soon as I started ladies learning code, there was so much interest in it that I just switched into the mode of helping other people learn to code and that's where I've been ever since. So, you know, I have some I have some knowledge. I can be dangerous or whatever, but but mostly, you're gonna wanna talk to our instructors if you wanna not talk about coding stuff.

Wes Bos

Yeah. I think the the very first HackerU website,

Guest 2

we had, like, some HTML fields or something like that. And remember, you could get in there and do it. No problem. Yeah. I I I I could I could do some stuff, but definitely not the best. That's funny. How to find a job, though? You know how to find a job? I know how to find a job. That's my special expertise.

Scott Tolinski

Now going through a boot camp is such a great way to make sure that your code gets better and better with professional training.

Scott Tolinski

Now another way that we can make sure our code gets better and better is by using a tool to track and log the errors and bugs that happen inevitably within our code. I mean, of course, I don't write code that has bugs, but everybody else does. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to head to century at century.i0.

Scott Tolinski

That's sentry.i0.

Scott Tolinski

Use the coupon code Sanity treat. You're gonna get 2 months for free, and you're gonna wanna see why this error and exception handling tool is just so fantastic.

Scott Tolinski

It really allows us to see everything that's going on in our application at a glance, fix it, make sure it's fixed, and attach it to releases.

Scott Tolinski

There's a ton of features for everybody. There's features for the whole team. It's almost like, hey. There's something for the whole family. There's features for the whole team. There's the marketer features. There's the, GitHub manager features, and there JS, all of the developer features. The, junior developers who's Scott go push some quick code fixes for the growth of the team.

Scott Tolinski

So check it out, century.i0.

Wes Bos

Alright. So we're gonna wrap up. The 2 things we do at the end is is, 1, we do this thing called sick picks where we pick literally anything. Could be, a mug. Could be anything in your life that you find helpful, whether it's software or a physical good. I should have told you about it earlier. You don't have to say anything if you can't think of anything.

Wes Bos

And then at the end, we do shameless plugs, which is just if you wanna plug anything, you can ESLint it off to that.

Wes Bos

Alright.

Wes Bos

Heather, do you have a sick pick for us today?

Guest 2

My sick pick is whereby.com, whereby.com.

Guest 2

It is the collaboration tool that our team has been using to work remotely together.

Guest 2

And it basically gives everyone their own virtual office that is just kinda, like, available all the time and makes it really easy to pop into other people's offices. And Wes you're in a meeting with somebody, you can collaborate in a Google Doc together, which is a really, really nice feature. You can see people's faces and you can collaborate at the same time. So, an alternative to Zoom, it's been really helpful. I don't think we would have been as successful with remote working without this tool.

Wes Bos

That's really cool. I like this a lot.

Wes Bos

I'm gonna have to to try this out. I never heard of it. So what are you using for the actual online classes? Are you still using Zoom for that? Yeah. Zoom is for the classes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And this is just for, like, working meetings, stand ups, things like that? Sweet.

Scott Tolinski

Cool.

Scott Tolinski

So my sick pick is related to a sick pick that I've done before, which was my, oh, the size of this Wes like, like a quart maybe of a cold brew maker. It was like a giant mason jar with a filter.

Scott Tolinski

Well, I have upgraded to which Courtney thinks this is ridiculous, but I've upgraded to a 1 gallon cold brew maker, and it has a tap.

Scott Tolinski

So it A tap. It has a tap. It's a giant 1 gallon glass mason jar with a tap and a filter. You grind up grind up your beans. You put your beans, the water, and then you Scott a tap. You got your c b, all d. And, this looks really cool. So this is my sick pick. I really like my cold brew coffee, apparently. So, check it out if that sounds like something you'd be interested. It's actually funny. When I, Courtney got the message that it was shipped before I told her that I had bought it, and she's like, you did not buy this 1 gallon Colburn maker. And I was like, oh, I did. It's on the way. She says, but the the ad says it's for parties. We're not hosting any parties. I'm like,

Wes Bos

this isn't for parties. This is for daily consumption. This is not gonna drink a gallon a day. But Oh, man. You need to post a photo on your Instagram. I need to see that. Okay. Will do. Oh, man. I'm gonna sick pick something that, Scott we were just talking about this earlier. It's ISTAT menu for, for the Mac, and it basically puts all the CPU I use it for CPU, GPU, and upload download, especially because I'm on such a strained, network connection here up at the cottage. I always need to see, like, what is using my bandwidth, and am I choking it out with whatever's going on right now? So I Scott menu. It does tons of stuff, but I use it for, seeing my upload download really quickly in my in my menu bar. And, Scott told me he's been using it for, like, what, like, 9 years, and I just got it a couple weeks ago. I've been using it since, like, 2012. Yeah. So, like, almost 10 years now. Yeah. It's crazy.

Wes Bos

That's great. Alright. Shameless plugs. I'm gonna shamelessly plug my new website, actually. It went live couple days ago, Bos. Scott. It's a Gatsby website as well. Really happy with with how it looks and how it came out.

Wes Bos

And, if you you can see a list of all the different courses that I have on on there as Wes, but take a look. And, it's all open source as Wes, so you can see it on GitHub.

Scott Tolinski

Cool. I'm going to shamelessly plug my latest course, which is on design systems in Figma, where we talk about all of the really interesting features that exist, many of which only exist in Figma, to create these elements that become reusable, expandable components, text sizes, whatever, to build a really robust design system. This course is specifically for anybody who might not feel like they have the skills to design something and maybe even developers who, if you get a system in place, then you know you can create something. So this is all about learning how to create those systems rather than like, oh, add this border radius here, add this here to make it look nice, giving you the tools to essentially make yourself a good designer. So head on over to level up tutorials.comforward/pro.

Scott Tolinski

Sign up for the year. Save 50% right now. Yeah.

Wes Bos

Awesome.

Wes Bos

Heather, do you have anything else to shamelessly plug?

Guest 2

Yeah. I'm gonna shamelessly plug, the fact that we're we're not just a boot camp. Juno has a whole bunch of continuing education courses, which are all now available live online as well. So you could take them from anywhere in the world, but we've got, you know, web development, JavaScript, full stack, UX, data science is one of our newest ones. So if you're interested in learning something kinda like twice a week in the evening or once a week on the weekend, check those out, because they're really cool. So juno college.com, and you'll see in there, like, a bunch of different courses you could take. Awesome.

Wes Bos

Sweet. Thank you so much for coming on. That was really fun. We get questions about boot camps and finding jobs all the time, and it's fun to have have you on and and to talk about it. So thank you so much. Well, thanks for having me. This was really fun. Great to see you after so long, Wes, and really nice to meet you too, Scott. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Likewise.

Wes Bos

Alright. Thanks, Heather. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye.

Scott Tolinski

Bye. Head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows, and don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop

Guest 2

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