Code Platoon, a Chicago nonprofit that puts military veterans through an immersive coding boot camp, graduated its first class this year with high hopes of addressing both tech talent gaps and challenges to veteran employment.
The class of nine, most of whom went on to do internships, represents the start of what Rodrigo Levy, founder and executive director, hopes becomes a broader push to put veterans on paths to lucrative, high-demand software development jobs.
“I’d like veterans to recognize that this is not closed to them, even if they don’t have a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) background, even if they don’t have a college degree,” Levy said.
And even if they don’t have a lot of money to spend on one of the many good but expensive coding boot camps that have sprouted in recent years to give career changers an entree into tech. One of the pioneers, DevBootcamp, charges $12,700 for a 19-week session, though it does offer a $500 scholarship for veterans and other underrepresented groups.
At Code Platoon, students get a $10,500 scholarship, funded mostly by sponsor companies as well as some private fundraising and foundation money, so they end up paying just $2,500 of the $13,000 price tag for the 14-week course, Levy said.
The affordability was a selling point for James Wilton, one of the recent Code Platoon graduates, but not the biggest one. He was drawn by the promise of mentors, including a military veteran working in the tech industry, who helped him translate his National Guard experience to the civilian working world.
“That was extremely helpful,” said Wilton, 31, who is in the midst of a six-month apprenticeship at Chicago-based online lender Enova, one of the seven corporate Code Platoon sponsors involved in the pilot program.
Though the unemployment rate of post-9/11 veterans has improved markedly since the economic downturn, a recent study found Chicago-area vets are often unprepared for the transition.
Nearly 7 in 10 post-9/11 veterans said they needed time to figure out what they would do after the military, and more than two-thirds said civilians don’t understand their problems, according to a survey of 1,300 Chicago-area veterans released by Loyola University Chicago and the University of Southern California. Sixty-five percent leave the service without a job.
The jobs they do get may not be well-paid, with 83 percent of post-9/11 vets earning below the city’s median income level, the study found.
While there are many veteran service organizations, Wilton said there are so many that it can be hard to tell the good from the bad. And after the structure of the military, it can be difficult to know which of the many possible routes to take next, he said.
Wilton, who joined the California National Guard in 2008 to help pay for college, said he spent a year and a half in Afghanistan, where he worked as a photojournalist chronicling reconstruction efforts.
When he returned to California to finish out his eight-year contract with the Guard, he switched his major at community college from psychology to computer science, but he found the courses overly theoretical.
Drawn by the fast-paced environment of coding boot camps, Wilton searched online for a good one. Facebook pushed him an ad for Code Platoon.
Levy, who worked as a trader for much of his career, had recently completed a coding boot camp in hopes of becoming a tech entrepreneur when he got the idea for the program.
His son had asked him for the latest “Call of Duty,” and when Levy cautioned the 12-year-old that the boy was too young for the combat video game, his son sent him online to learn about how game developer Activision Blizzard supports veteran-related causes. Levy read about the challenges vets face navigating the landscape of civilian employment.
Meantime, the growing tech community was in a constant search for developers, and Levy had noticed that nearly everyone from his boot camp landed jobs. The U.S. is expected to add more than 186,000 software developer jobs from 2014 to 2024, a 17 percent growth rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Median salary is $100,690, though junior developers in Chicago start at about $65,000.
John Higginson, Enova’s chief technology officer, said the initiative fits with the company’s goals to increase and diversify Chicago’s tech talent pool.
The company two years ago launched an apprenticeship program that helps candidates without traditional computer science backgrounds get trained while they work.
Veterans are particularly appealing candidates, Higginson said, because they know how to collaborate and get things done.
“Nothing happens in any software engineering organization that’s an individual effort,” Higginson said. “It’s all teamwork, it’s all working with other people to build the software, test it, talk to customers to understand the requirements and make it something real.”
aelejalderuiz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @alexiaer
