Hi everyone, my name is Patrick Akeon.
If you're interested in software education, this episode is for
you. We look into Hack Your Future, a
not-for-profit organization which teaches refugees skills
and knowledge they need to become software engineers.
Joining me today are STUS and OOTKU.
And Stus is actually the education director, which is
really cool and worked at big companies like Uber and OOTKU is
a senior software engineer as well as a mentor in that
program. So enjoy, for today's topic, I
wanted to mainly discuss about software education as well as
the future and looking forward to it.
And thus I was looking into your background and I saw you had
many years actually before you joined Hack Your Future at Uber,
which I thought was very interesting.
How was that switch and when did you decide to make that switch?
Yeah, it was pretty dramatic switch for me, that's for sure.
Yeah, it is. So the switch is huge because
Uber is big corporate company. You get this luxurious office
and all the benefits that you can only ask.
And also the work, the work is quite demanding.
It's probably not the company. It has a really difficult, like
very complicated business to maintain.
And it's really, you really feel it as an engineer as well,
right? There's always something that
you need to take any like law in a country that you need to like
engineer something just special for this country and the change.
How did I get it? Basically, Hakifuture has only
four people who are on the payroll.
It's a really small organization.
And the education director, the previous one, Rob, decided to
leave. And that happens only once every
few years. Oh wow.
And I myself, I was volunteering in Hakifuture for really long
time, for four years. And they just thought that I can
be a great fit. And they tried to offer me to
apply. I first I was really thinking
it's because definitely the Uber has its, its benefits and the
comfort. And yeah, I decided just to go
for it. This is how I got to this this
position. And it was also pretty smooth,
like on boarding for me because I was already volunteering.
So I know the community, I know the people, I know how things
work. Yeah, from the outside.
And then it really helped me out.
Yeah, that's nice. Utko, how did you get involved?
Because I know you're more from the volunteer side.
Yeah, actually when I first started as an intern in KLM, I
had an another intern, fellow intern that he was already
volunteering in Hiccup future. And then I got the idea maybe I
can do it as well. And yeah.
And then I think not immediately, but after after two
years, then I started also mentoring in high care future
and part of the community. That's nice.
How many volunteers or how many mentors are like in the space?
Maybe this question should go to.
You want to take that? How many volunteers?
Yeah, it's we have a couple of dozens.
It's hard to really measure because some of them are more
active than the others. We have a few dozen volunteers
who are in the community. We can say that that are
sometimes. We don't expect obviously, from
the volunteers to be super active.
They have their own day jobs and their lives, so sometimes they
cannot. They're busy with something like
family until they do a break, but they're still in the
community. Nice.
And in a nutshell, what does Hack Your Future do and what is
it in the first place? Yeah, so Hack Your Future is
it's a boot camp. It's called in boot camp for
people from a refugee background in the Netherlands.
We offer a seven months intense program teaching web
development, full stack development for their trainees
and it's completely free for the for the trainees.
We try to do the best to make it as accessible as possible to the
to the people from the refugee background.
And the goal of this program is eventually to help them to find
their first job in the IT market and place them into the Dutch
labor market. And how many or how big are the
classes or like year to year people usually?
Yeah, We have about 5 classes. We call them cohorts, OK.
And it's about 5:00 every year. And for every cohort, we have
between 10 to 15 people. So it's about like we try to
graduate 5050 trainees per year. Gotcha.
Yeah. And as I mean, I, I like looking
at the market and right now the market is not what it was kind
of a couple years ago. Have you also seen the impact of
that? Because if the aim is to get
them their first job, I know especially for people that are
early in career, it's it's a bit more rough currently.
Yeah, definitely. It's something that's really, we
really feel that it was very easy a couple of years ago.
A couple of years ago people were we were able to find an
internships before they finish the program.
Yeah, that's nice, that's good. But now it's slowed down.
So we do feel that it's slowed down.
It's a little bit harder to find especially junior and intern
positions. However, on the good side, the
we still have the same number of percentage of people trainees
who find a job. It's just the only difference.
It takes longer now. So we still keep our goals and
just they have to wait a little bit longer.
How long is it then, what they have to wait now?
Well, now it's on average is between 3:00 to six months.
Yeah, it sometimes can be faster, sometimes can take a
little bit longer. It really depends on many
factors, especially the main factor is the location where
they live. Yeah, because many of our
trainees, they don't sometimes they don't choose to which city
they get to live. So we have, we have trainees
from really far away. If you have someone who's in the
age of the Netherlands next to the German border, it's going to
be a little bit harder to find a company over there.
Yeah. And we of course don't want them
to travel 2 hours a day to Amsterdam.
So it can't take a little bit more time.
Yeah, that's interesting. OK.
From your side, what what how are you involved in kind of the
education system? You mentioned volunteer and then
growing into a mentor role. Yeah.
So basically in high care future we have several modules in the
curriculum. So each module is a basically
different topic related to programming like HTML, CSS and
CLI, git and JavaScript, node dot JS.
So I'm a front end engineer but I thought OK maybe I can develop
myself in back end as well and I also enjoy it.
So I thought OK let's try mentoring not JS.
And I requested it and it got accepted immediately.
Then I started preparing for that and curriculum is already
open source and it also benefits me not only students.
I went through the curriculum and then prepared for the
module. And I think it was two years ago
that I that I mentored Node JS module and it went well.
Actually I asked feedback from students.
Yeah. Then I thought, OK, I can
continue with it. And I think since then I've
been, I've been teaching Node JS like probably eight to 10
cohorts. So classes we called it cohorts,
yeah. And other than that, I also
taught CLI git. So basically what I feel myself
comfortable with and what I what I feel like, OK, which module I
can be the most helpful helpful for them.
But were you comfortable in the node JS module then?
Because you said like this is more of a also learning for you
then. I think yeah, definitely in the
beginning it was, but I think, yeah, nowadays I'm I'm way more
comfortable. So it also benefited me
actually, not only the students, it's win, win.
Actually. You volunteer for them, you
share your experience. And I would like to mention it's
not only the technical knowledge you also share, share your
experience, basically what kind of struggles they can have when
they started. Like, because they, they
frequently come up with questions like this, like when
you finish the technical side of the session in the end, they
always try to ask, OK, how it will be working in a team, how
it will be what, what kind of struggles we can potentially
have. So also you have a chance to to
reflect on those. And also, you know, we have this
popular imposter syndrome for new basically beginners in IT
and it's so easy to crack sometimes.
And I feel like they really need some opinions and insights on
that. So basically you are trying to
give confidence to them as well. Like you will start and maybe in
the beginning you you might be a little bit vulnerable and you
might need some support system around you, but it will get
better, It will get always better by the time.
So those kind of insights, I think it also really helps them.
And it's not only the technical knowledge transfer basically,
yeah, it's just one part of it. And yeah, I really enjoy it in
general. And I'm looking forward to
teaching other modules as well. Community, community and, and
the, and the management is always open for that.
Yeah. And also we are trying to get
feedback in how it feels like for them.
So it's not like, OK, I will teach this and I'm able to do
it, no. But what what students say, say
about that. So that's really important.
Yeah, I can imagine. And for me, if I think about
what makes a good professional, it has a few aspects, right.
And it starts with knowledge and knowledge you usually gain
through traditional education systems skills there as well,
but more so when you actually start with hands on experience
at a job and then you have more. So I mean, I would say advanced
topics, which is like resources. So how, how many resources do
you have available to get stuff done basically within a team or
within an organization? What is your reputation?
And then what is your network, right?
Because if you have a network and you need something which is
outside of your area of expertise, then you can still
find it. But how do these categories kind
of fit into the education system that you've developed?
Yeah, it's, it's a great question.
I think you, we really think a psyche features more than a
community other than a boot camp.
We have, we have the volunteers that are senior developers in
really good companies, anything from Big Base or booking and
IGN, really nice companies and they actually have the the
expertise. Yeah.
And in fact, they are the also the Alfred volunteers who are,
they are actually helping to contribute to the curriculum as
well. Because I'm only one education
director, I cannot do everything myself.
I wish I had time to do it, but I really get the expertise of
those developers. And that reflects not only the
in the curriculum, but also in the day-to-day training and the
classes. They, our trainees can always
ask the mentors some questions, even after graduation.
So they still, while they're looking for the job, they're
still in the community. Maybe they're working on a side
project. They need some help so they can
reach out to me or some mentor or there's Slack that we are in
and they can just ask anyone and usually people answer quite
fast. And so we have this kind of
community of, of experts. We have not only tech experts,
we also have people who are volunteering as HR to help with
some interview training and also recruiters, product managers,
project leads. So we have a little bit of
everything and English teacher teachers as well, because
English is one very important aspect of finding an IT job,
especially in the Netherlands. And especially we kind of try to
find an English speaking environment.
That's the best shot for us. So we have this kind of nice
pool of experts that we can always consult.
How much do you balance then the, let's say the soft skill
side and more so the people side versus the actual hard skills,
more technical aspects in the education?
I think it's 5050. I would say yes.
We do have a program which is seven months and very technical,
very intense with all the technologies.
But we also along the program, we also teach them a lot of soft
skills. For example, how do you write a
resume? How do you present yourself like
verbally in an interview? How do you write a good cover
letter? We teach this.
We do some workshops for CV making.
So they make their own CVS, They get feedback from us.
And then, yeah. And also on the program, we also
encourage them to communicate with us.
A lot of things that sounds maybe trivial for you, for
people who already worked many years in it, but things that if
you're late for a meeting, so you should maybe say that I'm
sorry, I'm 5 minutes late, not arrived.
And they really try to get them familiar with this kind of a
culture. Yeah, of a working culture.
Yeah, the work ethics actually, yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of professionals in general can
still learn from a lot of work ethics.
I'll just, I'll just keep it to that.
Specifically, what I usually say on this podcast is I can imagine
a lot of things happening to people, but when it comes to
specifically refugees, I have no idea what they've gone through.
So this project or this organization and the fact that
you're involved in that for me is very admirable.
But how does it differ, for example, from a traditional boot
camp or traditional educational system?
Because, for example, I also had people from Kodaman and they
very much look towards education in the space in a similar way.
But you have a very distinct group of people that you work
with which are refugees. How do you think it's different
or what are some of the challenges that you've seen in
educating refugees? Yeah, actually these people
might have really interesting things happened in in their
history. So it's, it's really hard to
empathise about that. And that really reflects
differently on each of them. Yeah.
And yeah, most of them living in refugee camps, they might have
their first house, house from the government, maybe they are
just living there a couple of months and they are trying to
find a job because then the then the municipalities may be
putting some pressure on that to find a job in an earliest
possible time. So they are going through a lot
of psychological pressure actually.
And this community is, I think the first thing is giving some
relaxation to them because everybody kind of in the same
situation, they have their peers in the same situation.
And the aim is kind of the same. Just getting, getting, getting
the knowledge required and going through the curriculum and going
through the, the, the period for graduation and then trying to
find a job. And the community is there to
support them. And the community already has
the experience last, I don't know about at least 4-5 years
doing the same thing. And, and, and there, there,
there are a lot of success stories already refugees that
are that they are now senior engineers.
They are now principal engineers in really nice companies.
So this gives a lot of confidence both to the community
and, and the current students. And also, yeah, when they
started, started their internship or junior position,
the support is not, is not basically gone.
It's always there and they still keep communicating because it's
just another start, you know, stepping into a, a new career.
For most of them it's a new career.
Some of them already had a degree in computer science,
maybe all related related programs, but some of them don't
have any, any technical background.
So they still need support. So they basically we are trying,
trying to give, give them support after their their first
internship or junior position. And eventually we are also
having some of them really trying to give back to the
community and asking, requesting can I mentor now?
So can I do the same thing? Because that really creates a
really nice cycle. And also students also find that
kind of mentorship really interesting that there is
someone just went through the same struggles and ended up in a
really nice position and trying to help them.
So that's really, really feeds the soul of this of this
movement, let's say. Yeah, that's very powerful.
Yeah. I can imagine that someone that
has gone through that and then is educating gives a lot of
credibility, right? Yeah.
And then you can actually empathize on a different level
then, for example, I would, because I haven't gone through
what people go through there. Yeah, that's very interesting.
And the Heist, the founder of Hacky Future is always telling
us that the goal of Hacky Future, what the vision is that
it's for refugees, by refugees, then it's a big win if we have
more people from that background who actually contribute.
And this whole organization's really like in a nice supporting
cycle. Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
How does it differ from the boot camp that you're doing and let's
say the education system from more traditional education in
the university, for example? Because I've been in university,
but it was many months back. And I know with newer
technologies also, education is going to change, I feel like.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's very different from the traditional
education system. We try to focus.
Well, first of all, we, we always tell our trainees that
this is not a school. So, and we always tell them that
please, like look at Hacker Future as a full time job.
Yeah, we ask for them to commit for 40 hours a week just like a
job, because it's quite intense. Like it's seven months of a
program. It's really, really compact and
really dense. On site as well as in they have
to go to a class or. Yeah, it happens sometimes.
It's like it's hybrid now. Yeah, before, before COVID, it
was completely offline and now it's hybrid, but it also mostly
self study. Gotcha.
Yeah. And it's quite, it's quite
different from traditional even from from a traditional boot
camps, because first of all, the audience is quite different.
And it's a free program and our curriculum is open source.
That means that anyone who is interested can follow the
curriculum. The the people like Udka
mentioned, they're very diverse and very unique.
And usually in traditional education system, OK, you have
like, a bunch of people in their 20s with pretty much the same
background, and they all graduate and going to pretty
much the same path. Yeah.
And here you have people from all kinds of countries, all
kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of previous educations,
everything from not finishing high school up until like being
computer science or cybersecurity experts, we had
those kinds. And then every person is unique.
So when they graduate, it's really interesting to see the
direction they go to. And also for the education part,
we try to focus more, project less of homework and assignments
and tests. It's very, we try to make it as
interactive as possible and also with the goal of making the
graduates job ready on day one. And then everything we do,
everything we we, we planned during the program is towards
this goal. In the end of the program, there
is 6/5 to six weeks of a final project.
In this final project, they actually work as a small
development team. It's usually it's for people
with a product manager and a tech lead, and they work
together and the mentors treat them as a junior developers and
they designed something from scratch.
They build something in the in the scale of a webshop, right?
It's obviously something, it's different.
They have their own really creative ideas, but they build a
complete application which looks nice and works well.
And they get to work in a team with all the conflicts and all
the yeah, with all the issues that can come up.
And in the end, they always give me a really good feedback about
this part. Yeah, that's really nice.
Actually. You triggered me when when I so
I work at ING and there might be a new person joining our team.
And some of the feedback that that was mentioned there for
that person was there was a red flag because she said, OK, when
you disagree with someone in your team, what do you do?
And her answer was, well, just convince them to agree with me.
And I was like, damn, that's a statement.
Like it could be in a funny way. Maybe it's a funny way, but I it
was just written on paper, so I couldn't really read it.
And then also she mentioned, well, with with junior
developers, they're usually wrong because that's why they're
juniors. And I completely disagree with
that. For me, junior developers, they
give a fresh perspective in that way.
And especially when they have already have been in the team,
they know a little bit about conflict resolution, a little
bit about butting heads. Because at the end of the day,
decisions doesn't need to be made and it doesn't really
matter who's right or wrong. We need to make a decision and
then iterate and then see what's right or wrong.
But in that way they already get part of the education and part
of the way of working along the way, which is something I really
like. Absolutely.
I I completely agree with you, Patrick.
I saw it especially when I was working in KLM and it was my
first company in this IT industry.
It it was the Dutch culture was really has a has a strong effect
in that working environment. And what I see that every
opinion is valued, doesn't matter where it is coming from
doesn't matter your age, doesn't matter your experience.
It's just the opinion that people look at and that's the
important thing. Actually, the title doesn't
really matter is the opinion what what is important.
And yeah, and that that requires a lot of maturity actually.
And if you are coming from different culture backgrounds,
that might be a little bit different for you.
It was different for me as well. I needed to learn it.
But eventually I see how much how much difference it makes.
Yeah, for me it's, it's strange because it's the culture I grew
up in. Like my parents are from Turkey
originally, but I was born and raised here.
So then I, I kind of see myself as Dutch.
Like I would ask my parents, what am I?
They were like, you're just, you're Dutch, right?
It's the simplest term. So that for me is normal.
And then when it's not normal for people, it kind of shocks me
that it would not be normal that an opinion is valued or that we
consider it and that we talk it out or that we have to kind of
find alignment. And it's not just my way or the
highway. So when someone says that, it
kind of irks me or triggers me and I'm like, oh, that's
interesting because it's different.
Yeah, from the education standpoint, I've been looking at
mainly Gen. AI tools.
I think a lot of people have. And for me, it's interesting if
you have this boot camp where people at the end of the road
need to find a job, right, That's the aim.
How do you then focus on what they to educate them when it
comes to technical skills? Because for example, when
something new would pop up, a new cloud technology, you can
focus on that, but it's not established yet, so that might
not be wise. How have you chosen like what
technologies to focus on when it comes to educating?
Yeah, this is exactly what one of the challenges in my in my
position is that I get to decide what direction we go.
And yeah, you're correct. Like every day there's something
new. Now there's AI thing and there's
millions of things that I want to include to the program.
But we, you know, we cannot make it a four year course.
We have to graduate and find a job.
Yes, the faster the better. What we do is we do some kind of
prioritization like we tried now with full state development
because yeah, this is like the highest chance and the most
demand, the most demanding roles in the IT industry.
Like a developer, if you know how to write a nice React
application, a little bit of back end, then there's a high
chance there are quite, quite a lot of positions open for you.
And regarding what exactly we teach, well, first, I get a lot
of advice from the community, from people who actually work in
the companies, right, who actually work with those
technologies and they can advise like, is it a good thing?
Is it, what direction is it going?
And we do using our mentors, we do keep the program alive.
It's open source, so anyone can contribute.
I do manage the whole process of it, but the most of the
contribution is coming from the mentors.
I think would go couple of weeks ago, we actually added the new
week to the node JS model. So we had some authentication
model and we build it together. We don't go and now it's it's
live and it's a lot of feedback that we also collect from
mentors curriculum. They give their advice and also
from graduates who actually I'm going to companies and they,
they, they told me that, oh, we use this, this technology.
I wish we would teach hacky future and hacky future this
technology as well. So it's hard, it's challenging
to make decisions. I need to basically collect all
the information, all the feedback, which can be really
like contrary between mentors and some mentor will like this
framework, some others will like this framework.
And then we need to see like, OK, So what will be the best
thing to put into the program to maximize the increase the
chances for them to find a job? Yeah, I'm happy to hear that
it's not just static, right, Because it it can very much be
static. But I'm happy because technology
is evolving, that the education also evolves with it.
That's just goes hand in hand. Yeah.
And what I would like to mention the, the curriculum being the
open source is something that sometimes students, trainees,
they are finding some issues with the documentation or maybe
an out of date technology feature.
And they are just coming to us. Hey, they this is this, this
link doesn't work anymore. So what I do, I just encourage
them to create their, their first PR basically, Yeah, first
PR to their own curriculum. So just before joining a
company, so you can just to make APR, it doesn't matter.
You are, you can be a trainee right now.
You don't have to be a mentor. Yeah.
Just create a PR, someone will review it, then the the
curriculum with that contribution basically.
And the curriculum is also really flexible.
As thus mentioned, Node JS used to be a two weeks module before,
but I realised that the API testing part is a little bit
complex for them and I need, I need to put some extra
description explanation for that.
And we just extended it to to the three weeks.
We both included API testing and also the authentication part.
So that that's also really nice. They, they are getting some
experience with authentication, which is really crucial in real
world. So they already have some idea
and the idea about the implementation of it.
Yeah, whenever I meet people that do either mentorship or
something like you that you educate outside of your
day-to-day work, it really inspires me.
And I'm really curious, because you started this program, how
has it made you a better software engineer, or if any,
because I'm assuming it has. Absolutely.
I absolutely like I do it voluntarily, but it's just out
of my control, like contributing a lot to my to my own skills as
well. Like especially the mentorship
because yeah, helping out people that that also means the
transitioning into your, your skills that you are that you are
using in actual work environments.
So helping out other engineers basically.
Also emotionally empathy. I think you are developing a lot
on that. And yeah, I think there are a
lot of benefits, especially if you are doing it voluntarily.
There's, there's this extra soul in in the process, yeah.
Yeah. Do you see yourself moving to
more, let's say, less and less hands on and more people
aspects? Because you're still very much
hands on when it comes to the education part?
Yeah, I think a lot about this, actually.
My previous engineering manager encourages me a lot going into
the leadership direction. Yeah, but I think eventually I
just decided my hands are not shaking yet so I can still
program but just delayed it leadership position and.
One of the questions I get many times in Q&A episodes that I do
is people that really look towards the skills that people
need early in career. From your side, since you've
been involved from the education, we're on the hands on
side. What do you think makes a really
good software engineer, let's say early in career?
I think what I also suggest trainees is that they are asking
me like what what we should do in, in the, in the interviews,
especially after graduation. What I say them is that don't
put all your energy into technical skills because the
company companies will be aware already that you don't have past
experience much. So your technical skills would
be limited in any case. But the soft skills is something
that you could have already, you can already have basically.
So that doesn't matter if you have experience or not.
So if you can, if you can do empathy or if you can be patient
towards your colleague, those kind of things are already in
your character some kind of, but you can still develop them.
But just emphasize on those skills, especially in the
interviews and after the interview in your traineeship or
in your internship in your junior position, just emphasize
those soft skills, just focusing on them and shove them.
You are technically limited, but you are a brilliant person in in
the team as a team player. So I think that's a really good
strategy in my opinion. Because technical skills just
they, they just build up by time.
And at some point even there is this diminishing return.
And but soft skills are are not like that.
Like they are really nice engineers in the industry, like
they are helping out their colleagues, they are leading
them, they are teaching them. Those are really valuable
things. I think the technical part is is
just just staying, falling behind, let's say.
Yeah, absolutely. For me, it's very interesting
though because the technical aspects, that's usually what
gets really drilled down when you go through an interview
process, right, especially at bigger companies.
I mean, I've applied to Uber, I get a hacker rank kind of lead
code test that I have to do before I talk to people.
So especially in bigger organizations, it's there.
But then this focus on education, 5050 skills and
technology as well as then the soft skills, how do people then
still get over that initial hurdle when it comes to entering
a company? Because they really drill down
on the technical level, even for juniors sometimes.
Yeah, from what I hear, for some graduates it's easier than
others. That's obviously different
people. Yeah.
How did they do it? Some of them already got a good
mentorship from us, so it's already they know what to
expect. So that helps from time to time.
Forgot to mention, but also during the program they have a
technical interviews with me. So they build a project and I
just have a technical interview. I just ask them around and show
me what to do. And also in this technical
interview, also kind of check their presentation skills, their
explanation skills. Are they, what happens if they
don't know a question, an answer to a question?
And they sometimes they just make up something.
So I tell them don't do that, for example.
And for some Chinese, it's obvious, for some others it's
not obvious. And we try to make it aligned.
Yeah, I mean architecture has a pretty good reputation amongst
some companies that are graduates are high quality and
they're really motivated. I think if they're motivated to
learn and to change and to to get familiar with the new
environment, I think they can they can do everything they want
to and this company and they overcome the the challenges of
of those social skills, for example.
Yeah, we're doing. During the internship we also
have some evaluation. So we talked to the companies
that hire there and hired them as interns.
So we get the feedback as well from the companies.
And if the companies choose, for example, not to hire them as a
full time, which not happens too often, then we always ask for
feedback, how can the training can improve.
So we continue working with them and collecting this feedback.
Also with job interviews that did not result and the success,
we also get the feedback from them.
OK, you did that. You did that.
Maybe focus on this technically or maybe you're good
technically, but for the course on this skill.
So yeah, it's dynamic, yeah. And it's a whole lot I feel like
that you can focus on or that you need to land your first job
in the 1st place. And then from software
engineering, you can grow to various technical sides.
Like you can focus more on cloud technologies or indeed more
DevOps related things and go into the OPS side and the
technologies and observability, for example, is a big topic.
Or you can go more towards the people side, indeed more product
related or more team related, working on more productivity and
efficiency within a team. And then starting out, you need
to have this kind of solid fundamentals to start off from
because then it's easier to grow into the other topics.
And I'm wondering how much is going to change because a lot
of, let's say, easier tasks from what I've seen online and with
ChatGPT as well as other Gen. AI tools, get more easily
generated nowadays. So then I feel like the role of
a junior software engineer will also change, but I'm not sure
what that will look like later on with the tools and even with
the automation that you've used. What do you think junior
developers will do more so towards the future?
Well, that's an interesting question actually.
I think a lot of people already thinking about it in the
industry. But in my opinion, we shouldn't
limit this to the junior engineers.
It will change. If it will change something, I
think it will change it for everybody.
I agree on the junior engineers. Yeah, So what I think
personally, maybe the the writing code, this action even
may disappear, but still this written auto generated code
should be reviewed by someone at least for now.
It's should definitely be reviewed.
Sometimes I just give Copilot, GitHub Copilot or GPT to write
some function. It is being so complex actually
can be separated into several functions, let's say.
Yeah, it will improve. It's just matter of time and
it's not matter of 1-2 years, probably 1-2 months.
It's going so fast, but we need someone, we need people to
review this code, auto generated code.
And also I think we should focus on the main responsibility of
the engineers being the problem solving.
Actually, it's not writing code. It's not maybe it's not even
programming is they are just aspects of it.
But the actual thing is problem solving.
And if someone is a problem solver, if someone is a good
problem solver at the moment, I think they will still stay in
the stay as a as a good problem solver.
They will still be needed by companies.
So, but the actions can change. Definitely, yeah.
I mean, I complete devil's advocate because first of all I
agreed that we are problem solvers, but we're also
maintainers and there is a knowledge gap that when the role
changes into reviewing generated code, then how do you get the
knowledge to be able to review the generated code?
Because you need to look at it solves the problem, but then is
it maintainable or is it scalable?
Those become the new bottlenecks I feel like, and I haven't seen
a solution for that yet when it comes to people that enter this
tech field then. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Maybe I would like to ask this
question. What is your takes those?
Well, first I would just want to say that I really agree with
what Utko said about that. Well, I see those Gen.
AI tools as just another tool to solve problems, right?
30 years ago, the developers 30 years ago wasn't there as a
developer, they used books, right?
You didn't have the Google to or Stack Overflow to ask the
questions. So they used books.
And I guess I assume that the Internet changed the software
industry also as well, right? Yeah, especially for the entry
barrier, right. And I think this is happening
the same with with AI. I think it's just another tool
in the pocket of the software engineer.
It's a very powerful tool which we obviously need to use
responsibly. And yeah, like for, for
reviewing code and you, yeah, it's kind of this cache mean
tool, right, That you need to, to review code, you need to be
really good in software engineering.
But if you use AI as your junior position, then you don't you're
not good in an engineer. Then I guess you're still like
when you use AI, you're not really let him do the work for
you. I think it's just like kind of a
helper tool. This is how I look at it now.
Of course it can change. It's very flexible.
Then it's just another then I think the junior engineers that
they will still have to review senior score.
They'll still need to give like opinions about about like
solutions. I think this is part of the job.
It's not just writing code, right.
So junior, junior developers are also taken to a product meetings
and to solve solutions will give at least some sort of opinion
about like higher level solutions.
So I think, I don't think it's just going to go away and
they'll be like really far away from the code.
I think they're still going to be there.
But that's of course my opinion, yeah.
I gotcha, I still think I agree with that.
Sorry, what did you want to say? Yeah, sorry.
Actually there is this kind of transition in an IT engineer's
life. I think when you first start
programming, you visit a lot Stack Overflow, but then you
kind of transition from that phase to OK starting reading
documentation. Maybe it's a little bit more
complex compared to Stack Overflow.
We don't have direct examples etcetera.
But it's the facts basically truth in that the in the
technology what you are searching for.
So maybe there, there there will be a need for that kind of a
transition for generative AI as well.
So maybe you first you will start by just creating the check
GPT, but then you will understand, OK, I need to
transition into still checking the documentation or maybe
creating the check GPT not give you the direct solution, but
give you the references or the the facts from the
documentation. I think that's a good use.
So it's also. It also depends how you use
check GPT. Yeah, I agree.
So you can use it to solve problems, but also to educate
yourself. Yeah, exactly.
I, I mean, for me, it's a lot of fun, right?
Because I can use my experience and then use it more
effectively. And it's very hard for me to put
myself in the shoes of someone that doesn't have that because
then it's like, OK, what do I choose basically?
Or which one is the right way? But then if you shift that and
you allow it to educate yourself in a new way, I think that can
be the most powerful then. Exactly.
And I think it's really good, especially in explaining already
written code. For example, I think it's it's a
really good tool for that. There might be a code piece that
you don't really understand or missing some pieces.
You can just select it and ask copilot, Hey, could you explain
me what's going on here line by line?
Yeah. And I think it's doing it great.
Yeah, I agree. Have you used any Gen.
AI or are you planning to use Gen.
AI in the education space? Because at some point you'll
probably want to if it really becomes more and more
established. Yeah, it's a big topic.
Well, first, my current position about it.
I will not forbid using JGPT for almost any part of the program.
Like if they want to build a project, they can use whatever
they want. They can use all the generators.
But there's a interview, technical interview, and I'll
ask questions about your project.
If you don't know how to answer how things are working, then
that's really bad. So I expect no problem, you can
use Google, you can use all the tools you want, but it's your
code. You copy something from Che GPT,
it's your code, you own it. So this is my perspective for
it, whether to include or not include.
I just offer actually trainees in the in the for the boot camp.
They get access to a free copilot.
I encourage them to try it out. And also, I encourage them, we,
the mentors, encourage them to use it in a way to explain the
code more than write the code. Like good convention.
So you have something complicated.
You see something that you never seen before in an assignment,
then you can ask GDPT, like, can you what's going on here?
Or just ask general questions. What's the difference between
technology A and technology B, for example?
It's a great tool for this. Yeah.
For writing code, I think it's more like it doesn't.
It can solve some problems, but I think they're really narrow
solutions, so they cannot write a complete architecture at the
moment. And whether to include it into a
program. I don't see that we need to
teach anything about the Gen. AI.
I don't consider AI at the moment as a module because in my
opinion it's a little bit too advanced.
I will see in the future what's what will happen, but it also
depends on the on the job market.
Yeah, we have some consideration of opening maybe a model or a
track for data engineering. Yeah, we're still considering a
few options to go and that involves a little bit of AI here
and there. But we're still like thinking
about, yeah, what we're going to do with the with this
technology. Yeah, that was one of my
thoughts actually, because I think the more and more data has
already kind of found its footing and becoming very
important in organizational decision making.
If your decision isn't based on data in any shape or form, then
what is your decision based on? It's just an opinion and you
might be wrong and then you pay the price basically.
So then the data side as well as the data engineering side, I
feel like is already very important and might become even
more important in the future. But then my thought was also
software engineering is just one of the the branches of
technology, right? And it evolved into, OK,
starting from a base of software engineer, cloud engineer, data
engineer, they're all adjacent to fundamentally software
engineering at the end of the day.
But even within software engineering and software
engineers, you have always your starting position.
I started off very much blank because I came from operations
and the question was, OK, what do you want to focus on?
Front end or back end? And I got the option because I
learned on the job and I was like, well, in university I
always like more of the logic part.
So I focused on the back end. And later on I tried two years
of front end development and now I'm more focused on back end or
not even because now I do product management basically.
But for people that start off, do you have kind of an advice or
even a preference for them to focus on either front end or
back end? Because some people even said
full stack and that surprised me.
Maybe I can give my own example that the I was thinking being a
back end engineer actually because I had some prejudices
about front end being so simple and wouldn't really satisfy me.
Then I started in a internship in KLM and after seeing the the
complexity of the project and the tech stack they are using
the the architecture of the application I just got amazed.
Like I said, OK, this is something really I should be
doing and it was the front end, digital front end department.
And I was just thinking, OK, I can, I already found the
internship and I can just switch the back end.
But I just didn't do it. And I, I just continued because
yeah, I think maybe it depends what are you looking for?
And it's a preference actually for for our trainees, we I think
we don't really encourage them which one to choose and they,
they are just their own preference and how they feel
themselves when they look at the Node JS module, if they enjoy it
more than React. So for example, they can just
compare themselves. Yeah, exactly.
That's exactly what's happening here.
When they graduate, we see this kind of preference.
Some people really like design and UI, so they they want to be
front end. They want to make things that
looks nice. And we also have the other way
around that they just want to be back end.
They really like node GS model, maybe because of the great
mentor Ootku and and they just want to do back end.
That's really shows in the final project.
There's this kind of split OK, and I think there's a junior
position available for both, for both edges.
We actually get talk to some companies that we tell them
like, OK, we have those people that are really interested into
like front end and they told us, oh, we're actually looking for a
junior back end. Yeah, for a junior back end, I
think speaking specifically for junior back end, I think they
need to do an extra learning because we the hecka future
program is a little bit focused for front end.
So to be back end, maybe we encourage them to like learn
maybe Java or Python, something that's our goal and something
that's is more commonly used as a as a back end technology
because we see the requirements in the market for those
technologies. But if you're looking for a job
and you don't know, just pick something that you like.
Opinion. Do you think there's equal
opportunity because you also said your education is more
tailored towards front end rather than back end
specifically? Is it because then people
transition to a first role then more easily compared to a more
back end heavy education system? I think the transition to front
end is easier in my opinion. Also probably the barrier like
to the, it's easier to get into to the front end positions
rather than back end because back end, well, the back end
really depends on the company. It can be really like a small
API or it can be a full blown like banking system with so many
like micro services. And of course those tend to take
someone maybe from the university who has done maybe
four years of education. That's I think there's a little
bit, I see a little bit more for front end, but there are there
are some back end positions as well.
And also there's a lot of small companies that they only have
like a four or five engineers that kind of do everything.
Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, at the end of
the day, I think the smaller companies usually are harder to
fit in a junior position on that front because they do
everything. They also need people that can
do everything because they don't have many I think people or even
the capacity to educate others. I think actually, actually we
have a lot of small companies who want to have an.
Intern. That's nice.
Because they establish already a functioning team of five for
senior media engineers. They have the back end guy, the
front end guy and and they're now ready to maybe have an
impact. Maybe they want to have a
diversity in the team and they want to have an intern.
So that happens a lot. Actually, a lot of companies
that we place in the Netherlands, they are small,
medium companies. And usually what happens is the
big companies, those companies who are actually most of the
time looking for university graduates and their bar is
really high. It's really hard to get in those
companies. And actually the small medium
companies, the one that also a really nice environment for an
interest because it's usually smaller, cozy and the inter can
get exposed to many, many different technologies and learn
a lot of more and also find his way right what his preference
maybe comes to the company and falls in love in AI or back end
or something else. Does that internship then also
transition into that first job experience later on where they
actually stay there indefinitely?
Or how have you seen that transition?
This is the goal. We place them as an interns with
the intent of the company to hire.
So and the vast majority of the cases we they hire the interns
unless something is happening. Yeah, unless there's like either
budget reason or maybe it's not a good fit, but that's that's a
rare case. That's great.
Yeah. I want to thank you guys so much
for coming on. This has been a blast.
Before we round off in kind of the software education
conversation, is there anything you still want to share?
I just would like to thank for giving this opportunity.
I'm the long time follower of the.
The old coding I know. And yeah, I really appreciate it
for for the invite. Thank you, Ann.
I appreciate you. Has this kind of been what you
expected since you've been a listener before actually coming
on for long? I was.
Just not expecting sitting really close with you from the
videos it. Was like, I just the person, I'm
not anything out of the ordinary.
Yeah, I appreciate that, man. How about you, Eustace?
Any thoughts? It was a great experience.
Thank you so much for having us. I also want to thank the hacky
feature community, all the volunteers because we are them.
Hacky feature would not exist. We're only four people on the
payroll and dozens of engineer and volunteers who are doing
amazing job. Yeah.
And also shout out for our trainees who are like also
amazing of passing this intense program and, and going through
it. So yeah, thank you so much.
Thanks for coming on, both of you.
I'm going to round it off here, then I'll put all their socials
in the description below, as well as a link to Hack your
future. Check it out.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
There's no comments on Spotify actually, which is interesting
and we'll see you in the next one.