Coding schools and bootcamps were flourishing a few years ago. But many of them have only offered an entry level education, and many of them are now closing. From the beginning, Holberton has always aimed to stay on top of this fray by getting himself less marked as a bootcamp and more like an alternative to a two-year college degree. Holberton already enjoyed the support of a number of industry heavyweights, but he added to his board of directors the founder and chief technical officer of Docker, Solomon Hykes, the chairman and CEO of Docker. Upwork, Stéphane Kasriel and CloudNOW CEO, Jocelyn DeGance Graham. In addition, LinkedIn's CEO Jeff Weiner is now an advisor and investor in the project, which has raised $ 4.3 million so far.
Founded by former LinkedIn engineer Sylvain Kalache and former Docker growth and community director, Julien Barbier, the San Francisco-based in-person program puts the spotlight on Fundamental and now delivers its first five batches of students. Kalache told me that Holberton was able to place 90 percent of the students in these first lots in jobs, freelance positions or internships. Indeed, he pointed out that Holberton's students have got jobs like Google, Apple, Tesla, Nvidia and Docker. "Our students are competing with Ivy League candidates," he said, and noted that many students are actually recruited before they even complete the program.
Kalache attributes this to the emphasis of the program on fundamentals. Indeed, the first thing students learn when they start the project-oriented curriculum at Holberton is C. Once you've learned a low-level language like C, higher-level languages will immediately be easier for the students. it also makes these students interesting for these companies. "We now have validation of the technology industry," Kalache told me. "The caliber of the talents we train – they want more and those who want a high-level education now come to us."
It should be noted that Holberton's business plan relies on the placement of his students, so it's in his best interest to prepare his students for jobs such as Google and Apple. The company takes a 17 percent reduction in the salary of its graduates for the first three years of their new job.
"Talent is everywhere, but with our education system stuck in a training format many centuries old, many do not even have the chance to try," he said. Weiner said in a canned statement. "And many graduates are struggling to keep up with the pace of change once they have become professionals. Holberton's model of education attracts students from all walks of life and gives them the skills they need to get a job after graduation and, more importantly, to allow them to continually retrain for new opportunities. "
Holberton's mission is quite simple: Kalache and Barbier want to pass the program of the hundred or so students they're training to 1000. It's more than graduates that even the largest computer programs in the United States are coming out in a year, so the team is definitely challenged, all the more so as she tries to keep his group of graduates as diverse as his first batch.