Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio and for
today's episode we cover Codam, a revolution in computer
programming, education, no teachers, no tuition, and still
a great education. How do they do that?
While listening to Find out Joining me today, I have two
guests, Victoria House, Head of Partnerships and Talent over at
Codam College, and David Guerre, director at Codam College and he
was part of the founding team over at the 42 Network where
they invented this model. All their socials in the
description below. Check them out.
And with that being said, enjoy the eisode.
I'm out of breath. Beyond coding you.
Will come home often. Once a week?
Once a week, Yeah.
OK, Yeah. And all the other days you're on
campus? Yes, this is because, you know,
we are a small team. We're only 12.
Yeah. And we have 400 students, right.
So you need to be there, yeah, To make sure that in case if
something happens, there is somebody one on campus to to
jump right in. Yeah, then that makes sense.
But still, 12 people is, isn't that too little?
Yeah, I it blows my mind, honestly, how you do that with
12 people. Yeah, but 400 students?
12 people like you don't have any teachers on staff.
How do you do that? Each of the student is a
teacher. Yeah, right.
So they have each other's backs. The peer-to-peer model.
That's what it says, that they need to interact with each other
and exchange knowledge. There is no ultimate teacher in
there. Everybody has a bit of a
knowledge that they can share with each other.
Yeah, and help each other out. Exactly.
Before we zoom into the peer-to-peer model, can you
explain it a little bit on how you got in touch with Codem in
the first place? They've been around for.
Two or three years before I joined them and at the beginning
they were like a pretty well known because the the school was
opened by the queen of course couldn't figure our founder
who's the cofounder of TomTom, she is a big figure within the
tech ecosystem and I've been working in the the startup and
investment scene in the Netherlands since the beginning
of my career. So they were already making a
lot of waves in the in the ecosystem.
So yeah, that's how I joined them.
That's really cool. How long ago was that?
Three years now. Three years now, Yes.
Yeah, That's a good time actually.
What about you, David? Well, I was actually the first
employee of Codem when it was founded back in 2018, but my
story goes a bit more back in time.
I'm actually part of the founding team of the, let's say,
parent school of Codem. That's called 42.
Maybe you've heard about the 42 network that is all over the
world now. So back in 2013, I was part of
the team who created the concept, and back then I was the
head of study at that school. So I was in charge of designing
the educational model, the content and so on.
And well, one thing led to another.
And no, I'm the director of the beautiful school in Amsterdam.
It's just the best thing that happened in my life ever.
That's awesome. I love hearing that.
But walk me through kind of back in 2018, you conceptualized this
idea. You were involved with that.
Yes, definitely. So the the, the way it works
that when I was still working 42 in Paris, we were often
approached by people from other countries who wanted to export
the the model into their the country.
And one of my roles was to to help them do that.
So to to explain them how it works because there's a lot that
people see about the school but the model, but it's actually
much more than me to be eyes, so to make sure that they really
understood that they were setting foot in.
Also to train their staff and to go on site to to help them open
the the place, help them with the the design of the building
of course, but also if training the the staff, welcoming the
first batch of candidates and students well, making sure that
the the school can start actually.
Yeah, I mean, I've been on campus with with you, Victoria,
and when you explain the model to me, it kind of blew my mind.
But I still have I I still have a struggle kind of explaining it
to other people because it it. How do you say that?
It's a lot the model and it's very different from what you
would expect. Like how would you explain what
the model is in and of its own in the first place?
Sure. So I would say that we try to do
something that is radically different from traditional
education. In traditional education it is
teacher centered. So that means that the students
are facing some kind of passive learning experience.
We are sitting in a classroom listening to teacher, usually in
front of the white board or. In the classroom.
And we wanted to get away from that, try something else where
the student would be at the very center of their education
experience. And we have nothing against
traditional education, but we wanted to try something else and
that's what we did with this model.
So we decided to go for a peer-to-peer learning model.
So as Victor explained, the students are learning with each
other's and from each other's. We tried to to get entirely rid
of all the teaching approach. That's actually a word that we
tried not to use. We do not teach our students.
They learn by themselves altogether and for that they
they rely on the community of students.
Well, to go a bit further in details, so they don't have any
kind of lectures or anything like that.
All the learning experience goes through solving projects.
So we created a bunch of projects that are crafted in
such a way that the students don't need to have previous
knowledge in order to be able to give a try to that project.
So contrary to regular education, where a project's
just applying the knowledge that you acquired from the lecture or
the practical session. Here the students have first to
understand what is expected from them, because most of the time
they have no clue at all and understand or identify the bits
of knowledge that they don't know yet, that they lack what
What is it that they need to learn?
And that is something that is really relevant at every stage
of your career afterwards, and then acquire that knowledge.
So it should be through their peers, through the Internet or
whatever other means they can find.
The point is that eventually we need to get that knowledge and.
Finally they will apply to the project to solve solve the
problem. If they if they have any
questions, what do they do? Because there's no teacher.
Yeah, going. To ask.
They ask to the person to their left, and if they don't know, if
they ask the person to their right.
And if they don't know you know, move away, go somewhere else in
the room, and you start over. Yeah, but we shouldn't forget
about the online community that we have.
So, OK, so maybe in house right now at this specific point in
time, there is nobody that can help you out.
Then we have this Slack group. With all the Codam students
first right. So you can ask over there if
nobody picks it up. We are part of the 42 network
right? This big network of students.
I think right now we are at 13,000 around the world 40
seventeen 18,000 I'm. Sorry, yeah.
And so basically somebody from Korea could know the answer,
right? Or Brazil, you name it.
So it's fully. Global actually.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
You know, like I believe, if you want to be a good software
engineer, you need to learn to work in communities.
I agree. And we put community at the
core. Yeah, so that's really, really
cool. I mean, I can imagine the
students have a very different experience from either previous
education or maybe they haven't even had any previous education.
Like, what has been the feedback from the students that have gone
through, got him and graduated in that way?
Wanna take this one? So first of all, we as mentioned
earlier, we are providing a different education model,
right, because our kids or the youth is different.
Back in the day education was like a belt industrial belt and
we give the same education model to all of them and then we
expect that some of them are gonna perform better than the
others or you know the same. Cookie cutter.
Yeah, yeah. But that's not the way it works.
So we wanted to provide, you know, something that is more
efficient, works better for different type of people.
So if we look at this diversity as its core, just because we
give a different educational model, the students that come to
code on they this is their way of learning, right?
They are curious by themselves, interestically, so they can.
They don't need a teacher to stimulate the the, the curiosity
or the commitment towards coming to school because they don't
feel like, you know, somebody's. With a stick behind and like you
have to come to school attendance you know and if you
look how to like perform afterwards and what they say is
basically that this is like a unique way that gave them a real
chance of this rediscovering learning right.
So they for them it's it was been the way.
That they could actually stimulate this curiosity and
implement it and then get the knowledge the way they wanted
it, not the way somebody else imposed on them, right?
Exactly so. I like that a lot because also
the first time you explained it to me, I feel like it translates
a lot then, like your educational journey stops and if
you come from a traditional university.
Your work experience is gonna be very different cuz there is no
teacher and you have to interact with your peers and there is no
focus on that. More so on traditional education
but with code on with kind of a peer-to-peer learning model.
I feel like you're already step of head because that is.
That's for sure. That is more in line with what
happens actually. I would say that's where our
education model shines the most. Companies are extremely
satisfied with the students. Well, actually so much that we
cannot provide enough students just lining up.
So that's a rather comfortable position to be in, but I would
say it comes from one core idea in our model that is this
learning to learn line. I know it's a bit cheesy say
like that, but that's actually what we really do.
And I would even go as far as say that the software
engineering part is just an excuse for this learning to
learn approach. The languages, the technologies,
the frameworks that the student learned, they don't really
matter in the end. What do matter though is the
learning process. Like facing something they don't
know about, understand what it is about, understand What they
lack is knowledge. Acquire the knowledge like I
explained earlier, and this really makes a difference later
on when they get their first jobs and work for the first
companies because. Every day of the day feels like
a Monday at school. Like when you join your company,
you don't know the people there. You don't know the project
you're going to work on. You might not be completely
familiar with technology, You're not sure it's new for you and
well, it happens to be like that every week at school.
So there is no like big gap between the school and the
company. It's pretty similar.
Yeah, very interesting. One thing that I actually I
wanted to ask what in your opinion is the role of education
providing hard knowledge? Providing a full on skill set
for you to deal with external world and professional world.
Yeah, I think that's a great question actually.
For me, it's a combination of factors, right.
But where I think the traditional education is
lacking, it's always based on a certain grade or a certain goal.
And there's no emphasis on like finding enjoyment in the
learning process itself. Because I feel like if you
cannot find joy in whatever you're doing, more so on a
day-to-day, then you're always gonna chase certain accolades.
And once you hit those. Like, even marathon runners are
people that, like, do sports on a really high level.
When they win a gold medal, all of a sudden they've achieved
what they wanted to achieve and they get depressed, right?
Because this was, this was the luck highest part they would go
to and maybe they didn't find as much enjoyment in the process.
They just really wanted that accolade and yeah, they get
depressed. I feel like if you take kind of
part of the journey and make that more enjoyable, it's more.
Sustaining, that matters, not the destination.
Exactly, that is. But I don't know what what
education wouldn't tell. What do you think, David?
The way see things that you could see education from 2
radically opposite angle, one that could be just learning for
the sake of learning, like you can see that a bit like a hobby
you just want to improve yourself, you like learning.
And at the other end of the spectrum I would say that raise
the learning approach toward the specific goal like for instance
to be industry ready work for a good company.
And I think that if you keep only one of these sites.
It's not complete. You should find a good balance
between the two so you can improve yourself as a human
being, but you can also be useful for the time we are at
with the technology we have, with the industry that we have
right now and have a good career.
Yeah, exactly. For me, for example, education
is formed of like 3 elements. The main goal of the education
is to create. Individuals that are prepared to
face the real world challenges, right?
And mainly professional ones, right.
But also like working together and so on.
So that's why it's three. Number one, of course, it's
knowledge, right? We are here to provide
knowledge. It's not kumbaya type of, you
know, education. Yeah, #2, it's about skills,
soft skills. And #2 #3 is about how to deal
with your mental health, right? But it's again skills, specific
skills that help you navigate and don't get burned out.
You feel when you're getting burned out and so on and so
forward. And then you know how to cope
with it. And Codem, how does this is
basically, first of all, the knowledge, the way the first
one, right? The knowledge, the way they get
it is they go and search for it. It's not like passive, but it's
active learning. It's not given to you.
It's not given right? And you are allowed to go as
deep as you want. We are.
We don't impose per se deadlines for every single project, we
pace them. But if you want to take three
months, build the most insane video game that you want, who am
I to tell you? You're not allowed to do that if
your interest lay within the gaming industry, right?
So in this way, we actually allow the students to go in some
of the topics as deep as they want and in others, you know,
they're like okay, Yeah, okay. I need to know how to establish
a virtual machine and then I'm going to do it for three weeks
and then just go go over it because it's not something that
I'm interested in, right. But I need to know that.
I need to know that because we consider that that's important
for you to know as a software engineer.
Now the the second part was like the peer-to-peer model
establishes this connection. With your peers, with the team,
with the. SO when you plug this student
into your team, they know exactly how to ask questions and
how to ask which type of questions, right?
Because first what they will do, they will try to search the
answers on the Internet and only then they will actually come to
the manager, right? So they don't expect that the
manager would be all like the teacher, the new teacher,
because of the tradition model you take away the teacher and
the and the student or the kid is getting.
Overwhelmed, right? We should not forget that youth.
They have a big imposter syndrome.
Is some person that they don't know.
They somehow look up to the people and then they feel that
whatever they currently know is not enough, right?
But they actually have great knowledge already.
So for us, even the third element remember what I said
about the mental health. Of helping them out.
To go, like, get over that imposter syndrome is super
important. For example, we say is the
education that we need to teach our kids to fail.
But then you don't pass your exam.
Once you're done, you're no. I think you have three chances
because then you have to redo the course next year, which is
sad kids are not taught to. Play right?
Especially programming right? I mean, you're in front of your
terminal and then you just submit code and then you see if
it's working, you know? So you shouldn't take it.
Like if if the computer says no, you should not take it personal
or anything like that. So the same thing at code.
I'm like every Friday there is an exam you didn't pass this
Friday, come next Friday, next Friday, we don't care.
We don't judge. It's acceptable to fail.
It's okay. You learn something.
Now you know what you don't know, right?
You go back in front of the computer, you learn it, You try
it again. Yeah.
So having knowledge, soft skills, and skills that could
regulate your mental health like these are the three top
priorities for education for me. For us to teach them, right.
Yeah, beautiful. I like that a lot.
I think maybe if education was different, maybe even my career
path would have been different because I always wanted to go in
the gaming industry. But then my choices through our
education didn't allow me to go to that university course,
basically. And I tried and I was years
behind and I failed and I was like okay.
For me to catch up, I would have to redo a year or redo multiple
years basically for me to be able to go in the game industry.
And I didn't like that. I didn't like also going through
certain courses where I didn't feel.
Enthusiastic about the content of it, right?
Because always when you have education, there's a fundamental
knowledge that you need to have. But exactly as you say, I might
be passionate about certain aspects and not as passionate
about certain aspects, but if they're all equal time wise,
yeah, it's going to be kind of a dreadful experience, right?
I want to spend most of my time in the things that I'm really
enthusiastic about. And sure, I still need
fundamental knowledge because that's just going to help all
around, I feel like, but because of those choices.
I didn't want to do multiple years throughout that same
educational system, so then I just went ahead with a different
kind of choice of circumstances and I ended up here.
Now I'm really happy I ended up here, but it could have been
completely different. Might the education system have
been different as well? If I may ask, yeah, what did you
study before university? Before university, I was in high
school. You have different educational
systems in the high school. Yeah, right.
Which we, for example, also find a bit weird that the kids are
already filtered, yeah? You know, I've heard that
before. Your choice is already limited.
Yeah, for some of them, right? That's why we at Code On.
We don't have a prerequisite of a diploma.
We don't care what you dropped out from school, who knows?
What happened back then? Now you're a different person.
You should get a chance to study.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. So the people that know, like in
the Dutch educational system, and I explained this to my
girlfriend, she's from Italy. Like when you're about 11 or 12,
you do like a certain set of exams and that already kind of
filters you out basically. That's gonna say, OK, you can go
to this school where they have this level of education and you
might go to a different school where they have.
Like an easier level of education, basically more
tailored towards what you can do in your capabilities.
But those are all based on the exams that you did, so you are
kind of filtered in your education and you can move up or
down based on your performance. But that might require a few
more years here and there. Yeah, I I I have a a personal
experience like that. So I've been born and raised in
France and when I was about 17, almost 18 years old, that was
the the time when we're supposed to decide what kind of studies
we wanted to do. Long story short, we had this
orientation moments with some of our teachers and in particular
that was the math teacher in my my classroom that was in charge
of that and when it was my turn to come to his desk and talk
with him about what I wanted to do later.
I told him that I wanted to do programming and I will never
forget. The mind looked at me dead in
the eye and said, Mr. Jean, you will never do programming, never
do something else. Very painful.
Yeah, but that's crazy. And if I had listened to that
man, I would not have had my master in computer science and I
would not be the director of a software engineering school.
I mean, how can you say that to a kid?
And even if it that was true? Why would you say that?
Why are you trying to crush the dream of that person?
That's just no, it just mean at some point.
There there is no reason to do. That no, you shouldn't, yeah.
I feel like like if you really want something, you can still do
it, even though the educational system might be against you.
Like I have a cousin and she always wanted to be a dentist.
Like, she's two months younger than me.
We grew up to get there. My family's pretty close and she
always wanted to be a dentist. But you have to enroll in the
university for dentistry, right? And it's how do you say that?
It's like a lottery. Some people get it, some people
don't. Based on grades or just based on
random chance and year after year she didn't get in.
She finished her bachelor's in biomedical science year after
year. That's a four 3-4 year bachelor.
She finished the bachelor because she year after year
didn't go into dentistry. Now she's Armenian from heritage
and she was like, I can get into a school in Armenia, it's going
to take me 5 years. Now this year exactly, she's
going to have been there for five years.
She finished completely her dentistry education abroad and
she's going to come back to Holland.
It makes me really, really happy that she's been able to do that.
But like, the period of her education is way longer than it
might have been or should have been in that aspect.
That makes me a bit sad. Plus, she's been away for five
years. That was a waste of time.
That was pretty hard. Yeah.
But I'm really happy she's gonna come back.
Yeah. For the students, that
onboarding code, I don't know what their mindset is coming
into this. I'm assuming they're super
enthusiastic. But what is that onboarding like
ramp up process for them because they also coming from high
school or from different educational backgrounds.
I think they need to get used to this kind of way of educating.
Yeah, we do one month selection. We call it actually a PC in the
French. It's a mean swimming pool.
So what we do, we just throw them into the water and then we
see which one swims. Yeah, but it's sort of the same
like the logic behind it is like.
You throw them into the deep waters and they need to figure
it out by themselves. Don't forget, the majority
already went at least through school.
Maybe they didn't finish high school, but they went through
school. The school system says you have
a teacher in the front here, there is nothing, and they are
confronted with a model for the first time.
So each candidate has to decide for themselves two things.
Number one is programming for me, because they already Start
learning C, right. So yeah, and #2.
He's the educational model for me.
And then they have four weeks. They have to come to code in
person every single day, included weekends too.
So it's very intense. On average, they spent 10 hours
of learning per day for you to understand.
So I think when they come, they don't know what to expect.
They have no idea. But then throughout time.
They become best friends. It's like such a community
because they have to engage with each other, right?
There's no other way. So then for them even having
this 10 hours in in the building, it feels like, Oh
yeah, I'm like hanging out here, you know?
It's a summer campus. It's a summer campus and the
beauty is also that we do not segregate, right?
So sometimes we have candidates that have some social
engineering education, you know, from from before.
Maybe they did the Coursera. Or something like that.
Others never heard about it, others are like 55 year old with
like experience working in teams and so on and others are 18 that
comes straight from high school right?
Because we do not segregate and because we have the peer-to-peer
model the the connection between them happens and the exchange of
knowledge happens. So the guys that did some
Coursera course. They will be the first ones to
actually help out the the novice people in in programming to to
to get some knowledge. But at the same time the 55 year
old right will actually share you know knowledge about like
how do we divide tasks in the group.
Okay you do this because it's going to work every two hours we
meet and we we exchange what we did again you know so because we
do not segregate the the this cohesion happens and knowledge
happens. Yeah, everyone comes together
and kind of leverages their experience, and their experience
is different. Yeah.
And I can imagine that the group that comes together is quite
diverse as well. If you don't really have a bar
for entry, then everyone just comes and everyone that wants to
come can enter. Well, the the rule to join Kudan
is actually to be 18 of age. That's the only rule.
That's the only rule the. Only rule, it's free.
No background, no, no diploma whatsoever.
It just come as you are. Yeah.
And then after that four weeks would.
Sounds quite intensive I must say.
People have decided, OK, this educational is for me and this
is what I want to do, right? I want to be a software engineer
or something in the tech related field.
In that way, what is the educational system that you
already said? It's like a peer-to-peer review
model. The people have to be on campus.
Let's start with that. You mean during the selection
time? Not after after those four
intensive weeks. OK, so your question is about
how does it work on the campus afterwards during the?
Okay. So basically the the, the
curriculum itself is divided into several levels, let's say
of progress and each level features a set of projects and
obviously the more your progress the more difficult it's going to
be. And that's about all the
structure. They varies really.
There are no timetables or anything like that.
You can the school is open 24/7. So you come when you want and
you start to work on a project that you like, that is at your
level right now. Obviously you will work with
other people. They will help you, you will
help them. If it's a group project, you
will join your team and work all together.
Until the moment you're pretty much done with it and you decide
to to submit your work, and then we engage what's called the peer
evaluation system. So that's something that is
loosely inspired from academic peer reviewing.
The idea is that when the scientists want to publish a
paper or an article, it is reviewed by their peer and there
are several iterations until the content is good enough.
So here the idea is pretty similar like when a project is
complete and then it goes through several rounds of
evaluation with a random with some random people.
So it can be between 3:00 and 5:00 depending on the scale of
the project, and then the project is evaluated according
to a grading sheet that the staff provides.
But it is students evaluating other students, and thanks to
the randomness of it, we can ensure that it's not like your
worst enemy or your best friend was going to evaluate you.
We can detect the anomalies over there and in the end we
calculate the grade and if it's high enough, the project is
validated and the student or the team can move on.
If it's too low, then the project is failed.
And in that case, I think that's one of the the most interesting
aspects of code. The only consequence is that the
students or the team can start over.
And that's all that happens. No shame, no thing like that.
That's okay. You are not ready yet.
So give it another try and come back when you're ready.
And so the impact of that is that obviously all the students
are not progressing at the same pace.
But thanks to that, all the students are not progressing at
the same pace. You can take their time.
If you're a slower learner, that's fine.
It doesn't matter. It's not the race.
If someone needs a week or a month to complete a project, I
don't really care. What I do care about though is
that in the end they all required the knowledge.
Yeah, I like that a lot, that not everything happens at the
same pace, cuz that's also something I've experienced
throughout my educational journey.
It would be like okay, you would be done.
You would have to play around and wait for the other people to
also be done before you can go and the next thing would be
explained to you. For sure and there also the
problem of if you have a string of sequence of projects if you
fail the first one. It makes no sense to try to do
the second one. You didn't manage to do the
first one. I mean, come on, take the time
to learn the basics and then you can move on.
Yeah, so all the modules they need to be completed for them to
move on to like a subsequent one, yeah?
Or should I imagine like a linear path?
Or is it more like graph? No, it's like a graph.
Like a graph, it's. Like a graph, right?
It's even bit more complex. Like I said, you have several
levels of projects, so they are laid out as a concentric
circles. You start at the first project
at the very center, Then once you beat it, you can move it to
the next circle that features three projects.
You can beat the projects in the order you like, but you need to
beat all of the projects in order to move on to the next
layer. And so on and so on until you
reach the outer circle. And then that's the final
project of the curriculum. That is the internship.
Then I think I'm going to give the state to Victoria to tell
you about that part. Yeah, it's basically a
professional experience. Remember again about the
impostor syndrome. These guys are like every time
when they come to me, when they get to that last project, you
know, they come to me and they're like I don't even know
what what, what am I good at? I don't know like what what,
what, what kind of, you know, job do, do I want or do I like
and so on. So we are using this
professional experience to give them a safe way to test what
they like and what they are good at.
So I always tell them, like, create three sets, 3
assumptions, basically. Number one, what kind of company
do you believe you will like? Because some of them come and
they believe that they know. But I'm like, wait, you never
worked in a startup. You gotta know that, you know,
it's a good fit for you. So I say okay.
What kind of companies, maybe governmental organization, maybe
corporate, maybe scale up, you know, and so on and so forth.
And then the second assumption is what kind of industry?
Like, choose something that is aligned with your passions.
And of course every student says no.
But I don't know what I like. And then I'm like, okay, if you
read Tech Crunch, right? What are those articles that you
know pop into your mind and you actually read the entire article
exactly right? Is it something related to
fintech? Is it about crypto?
Is it about, you know, like AI? So then you choose make the
assumptions that you will like this right?
And then the third, of course, because we provide only C&C
knowledge. So for them it's a bit difficult
to choose like a back end front ender maybe.
I want to do app development, so I always encourage them to
choose one or two. They usually go for the back end
or full stack. Very few of them like front end,
don't ask me why. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And then and then based on these three assumptions, I tell them
to search something Okay. At first when we implemented,
when we started in 2018, we called it internship Okay Okay.
Because also the companies, when they looked at us, we were like
so alien to them, right? And when the students would go
and say like Okay, I'm looking for an internship, blah blah
blah. And they would look saying like
what is this Kumbaya type of education, right, like you don't
have teachers and so on. So for us, actually at first it
was very difficult to find the first batches of companies that
would take the interns. Yeah, I can imagine.
Time passed. Where?
What is it, almost five years now, right?
The word is out. The companies that worked with
cotem students, they just, they're just waiting for the
next one, you know, they're just waiting for the inbound.
And since September last year, I noticed that the majority
actually get permanent contracts or one year contracts rather
than internships. So this is actually a great
indicator. That actually they are ready for
a junior position. They just do not believe in
themselves that they do and they believe that if it's the title
of internship it's a fail safe environment.
Even though most of the companies if you hire a junior
it's a fail safe because you don't you know like he's a
junior. So you need to to put a bit of
more effort in learning and and development of the person.
I would like to add something there because it works also the
other way around for us. We need a way to make sure that
our model actually does work out there, because it would be fair
to question what we're doing like.
Okay, It works within our building, with our students,
with our staff, with our content, with our educational
model, in our time frame, blah, blah, blah.
So does it still work out there? And that's a very fair question.
Maybe we're just living in a bubble and if you go outside
into real company, none of this will hold.
So through these internships, we also alert that also allows us
to test our model, do our student perform when they're in
these companies. And let me tell you that yes,
they do. The feedback from the company,
the evaluation from the companies are like through the
roof. So for us, it's also a way to to
to make sure that what we do is actually what is wanted out
there, that it actually does work and Oh yeah, it does.
Yeah, I like that a lot. And also props to those
companies for offering like either a fulltime or a one year
contract because that meets them more halfway, right.
That already shows that, OK, we want you and we're willing to
distinguish ourselves from other organizations by offering this
to you already because we see the value add.
Yeah. And you know we leave in
different times, five years in tech scene, it's a lot we we
have to agree upon that, right. So five years ago everybody was
hiring based on diplomas and we we do provide a certificate
okay, but we are not an accredited organization.
So for them for for the companies to hire the students,
they didn't want to because they didn't have a diploma.
Now, five years past with Pandemic, in between, right when
everybody started realizing how important you know software
engineers are and how difficult it is to actually find some,
they started. They shifted the the recruitment
process towards skill based hiring, right.
Fantastic. And imagine if the student is
actually used to have only projects, no books, no nothing,
Just give the student an exercise and see what's his or
her level of knowledge. And that's why right now with
students, for them it's very easy with this technical
interviews because this is just another Monday at Cordham, but.
Yeah, exactly. I thought a lot, but you
mentioned it's not an accredited university.
That also means like no one in the Dutch education system.
If you go to university, you get studio financiating.
It's basically a lump sum of money to help you throughout
your education, right? It can help you either just
finance all the books and all the material you need, or like
travel, you even get a travel pass, which basically allows you
free public transport. You don't get any of that.
No, no. That's actually the pain point
of students currently. Yeah, And we are working since
day one to actually mediate this with the Ministry of Education
and so on. But it's difficult, Okay, I can
imagine so. In order to get accredited, you
need to have teachers. You don't have teachers.
Well, how are you going to to to get that accreditation?
That's so weird, yeah. At the same time, if you get
accredited, then the government imposes different criteria on
you. Standards.
Standards, right. And here we go.
Then you lose the model, right? But because we still want to
provide a different way to educate youth, yeah.
We need to to maintain our flexibility, our agility.
We try to not take things for granted.
If there is something in our approach that doesn't work, we
just change it. We don't want to stay like that
because we need several levels of validation because before we
can change anything. So we've a set of constraints
that would kind of kill what we're trying to do.
If something doesn't work, we change and that's it.
Yeah, yeah. I think that makes you more
flexible than the traditional education and it's also that's.
As a software engineer, that's what I see in practice as well.
Of course you don't like bang up against the wall.
If there's a wall, you move, you move out of the way.
That's what you do. We pivot.
But we do work on lobbying a lot.
Do you want to talk about the French model that we are trying
to advocate for? Oh, yes, sure.
So well, it's a bit different. So in France there is like,
let's say this organization. That has been founded to help
education that are bit out-of-the-box that are a bit
different and obviously the school 42 in France is the
flagship of that model. So it kinds of mimic all of the
advantage that regular education would have but without being
within the Ministry of Education.
So it's called Grande called numeric.
And through that system, the students can still have the
status of students, get grants or expencing the travel cards or
things like that. And that is indeed something
that we're trying to lobby to bring to the Netherlands.
I like that a lot. Yeah, that makes all sense.
Because what we like to say is like, we don't, we don't need
the money from the Ministry of Education, right, Because you
get the funding, the public funding.
We care about our students. Yes, they put equal amount of
effort, you know, in their studies as traditional
education. And they need to get, you know,
those benefits because for them it's really tough.
You might say, hey, but Kodom is for free.
Fantastic. But the amount of expensive
expenses that they have, right? I mean, how, how do they live?
Right. So they have to work even though
we say that this is a full time education.
Yeah. So for them, it's not easy.
No, the cars are stacked against them and also have to have the
mindset of because I was like that I wanted at the end of the
day, I wanted the paper. Basically, I did my education.
I wanted to be graduated so I can actually get a job and say,
listen, I graduated. That was it.
Basically, it was part of it. I still enjoyed the educational
process, otherwise I wouldn't have graduated.
But I really wanted that paper. Just by notion of okay.
If I have a paper, then getting a job is going to be easier,
right? And you don't get an official
recognition. At least that's kind of the
mindset and I'm glad it's changing and it has changed, but
that still might be a barrier of entry for people.
Definitely, yeah. And we try to to help them too.
So besides the fact that we are a nonprofit and you know like we
don't have any tuition fees, we actually have set up a separate
fund where we allocate sort of scholarships, right.
And it can be of whatever the the student need.
It can be an cheap card, it could be you know like 400 year
allowance or a bit bigger allowance you know per month.
And initially it was established again by it by Corina Figueroa
like the the founder of code on. And recently we started noticing
that there are corporates or like bigger companies that come
to us and are willing to put money in there and give you know
a set of scholarships to to specific target groups and
that's okay, right. So we are happy to see that
there is also a transition of understanding from the companies
that. It's time to support, you know,
some of the students and give back and give back, yeah.
Absolutely. So if you're listening out there
and you feel like you could be helping us, please get in touch.
We would love that. Yeah, absolutely.
Cuz one of the things that for me was still, like, hard to grab
was how's the education Free in the 1st place.
It's a nonprofit, doesn't make money.
So there's no income, It's completely a charity.
It is privately founded by the Stirtting Codem.
And that is itself founded by Madame Coin Vigre, who we
mentioned earlier. And that's it, that we are just
living on the foundation. Yeah, simple as that.
Yeah, that's amazing. I think it's an amazing way of
giving back. To the community, it is a very
beautiful project. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Then when it comes to the educational system, how long is
it, and is there some kind of thing like a masters or like a
specialization afterwards as well?
So it is in in two parts. So first we have this curriculum
that we call Kodemco that lasts for up to two years.
It is the the fundamentals of programming here.
The students will mostly learn about C programming and story
move towards C But as I mentioned, the languages are not
really what matters. It's all that varies around
yeah, Long story short, when they finish this curriculum they
have to pass the internship. That lasts for six months and
upon validation then they graduate from the Kodemco
curriculum and they're facing a choice.
We can choose to move on with a career and stop there, which is
perfectly fine, or we can decide to come back for more.
And we have the 2nd curriculum that we call Kodem Advanced that
is an expertise track that lasts for about two years as well.
And that will really focus on more state of the arts topic, so
it's much more advanced. And in this regard, you can kind
of compare the Kodemco to a bachelor and advance to a
master, even though it doesn't map 11 obviously, but that gives
you a ballpark idea of the level.
Yeah, yeah, very interesting. And then the first batch of
people if I my column that were either in 2018 or 2019 graduated
and now have been kind of in the workforce for four years.
Do you keep in touch as well as kind of an alumni of?
Course. Yeah, Yeah.
We, we do like a homecoming every year, OK, in the March.
And we always invite them for the graduation because they have
to welcome the new album. Nice.
I like that a lot. That is aside from a community.
Yeah, we have some of the alumni who also come back more on other
occasions just to just to to be back in the in the school and to
to give a hand when necessary. For instance, I'm thinking about
Hope was back for the selection round.
This guy is being out of the school for a few years now but
decided to come back and help us welcome the newcomers like to
train the. The candidates and I find it
amazing that he's taking the time to do so, so.
One thing that I like to post is when they become managers, okay.
So then they become managers and then they come to me and like
Victoria, I'm a manager. I made it.
I need interns. Yeah, yeah, I was like, look at
you. You know, look at you.
Yeah, exactly. That's amazing.
So we actually see this as well that actually the alumni is
prefer to hire from Godam. We have this event series, it's
called called Talent Day which happens on a quarterly basis.
It's like a speed dating with companies always you know we
have three or four companies that are from Alumni's.
So they keep on coming back. I'm not really sure why right.
It could be also this community feeling or the fact that they
are so used to work with Codam. People, students or with this
mentality that they still want to bring those type of people in
their team. Yeah, because for them, maybe
it's easier to collaborate with a student rather than with
somebody that is a bit more like stiff or you never know, Right,
So. And also, you know what kality
you're buying? You're right.
Yeah, but when it comes to organizations and let's say they
want interns. Or junior engineers even.
Do they come to code and ask for them?
Or do you work with any organization?
Like is there a certain set of organizations you don't work
with? Not working with, Not really,
no. I think there is one company
that I blacklisted just because you know, a couple of students
have bad experiences with them. But I'm not gonna say names.
But overall, we are very open to collaboration and we don't
really differentiate much. One thing that I love about my
job is that it's not like sales, right?
There is no business model. Right.
So one thing that I'm not allowed to is to push students
into companies. I cannot do a deal with
Microsoft that every year we're going to send 20 students to
Microsoft. Why?
Is because we democratize education.
We give a choice to the youth, right?
It's not about the money that are incoming into the school.
It's about giving the choice to that individual to choose
whatever they wish to. Because if I have to give. 10 or
20 students to a specific company.
I can easily manipulate my pitch in such a way that I will push a
bit the students into specific companies, but I don't wanna do
that. It's.
Very important, it's. Super important.
Yeah, it's part of the DNA of the school and actually of the
42 network is that the students are not a product.
So I know they're saying like when it's free, it's because you
are the product. But in our case that's not true
at all. We don't sell students anything
like that. We train them and then we can
choose wherever we want to go. It's just up to us to make sure
that they have interesting offers and diversity of offers
so they can find something they like.
And that's actually a good position to be in because the
students can be picky a bit like yeah, OK, I won't this company
or that company, you know, it's great.
I was gonna say that that is fascinating, right?
If there is no business model, normally when there is a
business model and things are tight, like if everything is
good, then everything is good. But when things are tight,
people do weird things and you'll notice and you get might
get pushed or someone might communicate in a weird way, it's
because they're incentivized. So they have a personal agenda
like all that nasty stuff comes out of there.
But if you take that out. And all of a sudden there's
freedom of choice. People can actually just go
where they want to go where they would like to go, where the
curiosity kind of drives them towards and make that choice
right. No one is there to be like, no,
you can't do that. You can do whatever you want.
And I think that's the best position.
Fortunately, that's the best position to be in.
It's amazing. Yeah.
A wall in the office with the thank you cards from the
students. Yeah, I think it speaks volumes.
Yeah, I can imagine That is amazing and I like that you
touched on it earlier as well, David that.
The educational model might not be might not only work
specifically for software engineers, right?
Oh yes, that that's a good point.
That actually something I'm interested into on a personal
level is what if we could apply this approach to different
topics. I don't know and the broadest
the better. So we could imagine, like don't
know, journalist school or or. Chemistry.
Entrepreneurship or dancing, whatever.
Like you have to be crazy to go crazy to really think something
interesting. And with time, I realized that
there is one challenge that needs to be solved in order to
be able to apply this approach to any kind of topic is that by
design, the students are going to fail a lot and retry a lot.
Okay, that's part of the way it works with us.
And a good thing about writing a program is that retrying to
write the program doesn't really cost any money.
You do not consume anything. But you could imagine that in a
profession or topic that consumes some material, it would
be different. For instance, imagine that we
are a woodworking school and one of the project is to build a
chair and then the students are building that chair and the
chair is failed. So now we used up some wood.
And we have to find what are we going to do with the, with the
broken chair, are we going to dispose of it, can we reuse the
wood and so on. So this would be the challenge
for this kind of education. If there is some consuming
consumables that are involved that that's a challenge.
Yeah, I can imagine. And if people pick up bad
habits, like, it's harder for them to get it out of there,
right? If you're doing more stuff with
your body, if we're talking about dancing, then that's hard
as well. Yeah, I like that.
Software allows us for kind of that simplicity, right?
For sure, because it kind of it kind of corners out those edge
cases for you it's more how to say that more sandboxing, you
can kind of manipulate what happens and it's easier to retry
and restart. It was the ideal context to
exactly go to that kind of education.
But still, I'm hopeful for the future to see what other teams
might come up with, maybe adapt the model.
I don't believe that it's with definitive answer, otherwise
that would be boring. We would have solved the problem
and hopefully we did not. Yeah, So that means that there
is still things out there to to to be found and to be tried.
And if we can inspire some people, that would be great.
Maybe even we can inspire the traditional education to
progress a bit. Maybe the the Ministry of
Education will draw inspiration from from us.
If you're listening, you can get in touch, aren't we?
We'll be happy to welcome you and have a chat.
But the joke aside, I really hope that we can bring something
new to the table to be an alternative to inspire over
teams and see what they come up with themselves.
Yeah. Do you think because the the
barrier of entry is still 18 years old, do you think you can
lower that as well? Would it work in younger?
So yes, for sure, for sure. So in our case, we want to have
only people 18 or above for for just legal reasons, yeah, but
obviously, especially in programming that that can be
adapted to too much younger people.
And there are other other groups who try to do that.
For instance, there is one team that we are really close to and
they are good friends of us. It's called Tumo.
They they originate from Armenia and they spread all around the
world and now they have centers everywhere.
And we we are helping them to to come to Amsterdam in the next
year. And it's it's very close to what
we do actually. But for younger students, I
think it's from 12 to to 18 or something like that.
Yeah, that's amazing. So yeah, wonderful synergy with
them. Yeah, beautiful.
We truly need such thing in Netherlands because one of the
toughest challenges that we have is to attract more females in
the school, right? So right now we are having what
is it? 30%.
Yes. And in order for us to get to
5050. You really need to go early on
and convince them that you know, like software engineering is an
option for you, right? Because normally girls are
brought up with like the idea that they need to study
languages or you know, artsy stuff.
And if we would have actually a school that would show to them,
you know, how technology can you know like help you or like
increase your skills, even creative skills, right?
Would be super helpful for us as as KODAM first of all.
And two more what they do is they have I think 16 programs
and the all of them are the convergence of arts things and
tech, right. So for example, you learn how to
become a DJ or you learn to make animations.
We've seen we visited the school in Yerevan, they created a full
anime. Yeah kids. 14 years old?
Yeah, insane. Or like they created this
cartoon with like, you know, clay figurines.
And then you take photos of like.
Oh, those are really hard. It's so hard, right?
Yeah, they just did it and they learn these sort of things.
And it's not a school. Please notice, not something
that it replaces school. It's after school, OK, after
school, two hours after school, you go there and you play
around. And it's also peer-to-peer
based. Yeah, it's peer-to-peer based,
which is also beautiful. I think I would have loved that.
Like, I mean the Parkcast is an artifact of it.
I've always been innately curious and just by curiosity,
by these conversations, it gives me fulfillment.
I don't know where it comes from, but it has always been
like that. Even as a kid I wanted to
understand why are things like they are.
Why would I have a no instead of a yes?
I would always want to understand and some adults did
not like that, but I was always the same.
And I feel like throughout your childhood you might have that
and some people might lose that right throughout their.
Educational system throughout their adulthood, throughout the
workforce, basically. But I feel like programs like
that that stimulate creativity. You can do whatever you want as
long as you do it basically right.
Let curiosity Dr. you and see how far you come.
I think that's beautiful. Also recently there is this
trend of going into dream based education, right?
Like, we're always, so as kids put in a box that you can do
this, but you cannot do the other thing, right?
Or you're very influenced by whatever you see at home, right?
If your mom is a doctor and your dad is a lawyer, that's
everything, you know, right? And this sort of programs,
actually you you see like an anime, right?
And then you say, oh, I want to create this an anime, you know,
myself, it gives you an opportunity to do so.
Why not? Yeah, why not?
And then you can become a videographer.
You can be a DJ, you name it, you know, So beautiful.
Yeah, so impactful. I love that.
I've really enjoyed this
conversation. I must say, I've loved learning
about code. I mean, even before this
conversation, I really got really enthusiastic about it.
So I'm glad we got to do this. Actually, I'm really fortunate.
Is there anything you still want to share that we kind of left
off? Before we round off.
Yes, there is one topic that I would like to touch as well.
It is the future of education because I like to believe that
we are kind of pioneering, I can't speak.
Yeah, pioneering. Thank you.
The next level of education, what we apply effectively at
Codem has been. Has been in the field for a
while. People talk a bit about it for a
long time, but The thing is that it's difficult to apply,
especially when you take traditional education.
The momentum is huge. So it's really difficult.
So we are in a very blessed place for that.
But the question is then what next, what comes next?
And you probably been quite aware of the latest.
Advent of ChatGPT and the like, and these large language models
are kind of a big deal now for education and also for software
engineering as a whole. So in our situation, it opens a
lot of questions and I find it quite exciting.
I've been doing a few conferences lately or talks with
other educators, and I realized that people don't really
understand what's coming, like there is a revolution, a big
parting shift that is coming ahead of us.
And the question is not do you like it or do you not like it or
whatever, It's just coming. So what are you going to do
about it? How are you going to change the
the practice in your school to to to adapt to it because your
students, they will use these tools and what are you going to
do? So for us it's a big question,
we want to to be ready. So obviously these tools are
completely allowed and encouraged within our education.
But also believe that it should be framed in such a way that we
we train, we coach, we encourage our students to use these tools
in a meaningful and really useful way.
And that there is also the question afterwards of how it
could impact the job that our students will have in the
future. Because as software engineers,
if there is a software that can write the code for you, then
what are you going to do? And here I have hopes as well,
because I do not believe that software engineers are going to
disappear as a whole. I believe that the job will
change in the future. We'll see what comes.
But so far that's my opinion that that the the current
software engineers will be more like problem solvers.
Like you have to understand what is the problem at stake, be able
to express your problem in such a way that is understandable by
the large language model that will be able eventually to to
generate the code and so on. So I feel that it's a new
chapter of education, in particular software engineering
education. It is opening in front of us and
I'm quite excited to be there. Yeah, I like that a lot.
I. I love that you'd highlight
that. It's not a question of if it
will come or will it come. It is coming, right?
And you can think it's scary or you can think it's exciting
because it opens up a lot of doors.
Sure, what you've understood or how you might do things might
change. They will change actually.
But what it can open or or kind of increase in possibilities is
kind of incredible. It is like when I played with
it, I was like, oh, this is different.
Like this is something that is quite.
People always talk about disruptive.
No, this is disruptive for sure. It is, for sure.
It's changing the way students can learn.
It's coming and like it or not like it.
It doesn't matter. It is there.
Just adapt to it and the kids will, yeah.
And one thing that I like is the educational model that Codem
already has, like a safety switch when it comes to GPT.
Because when you do the peer-to-peer evaluations, you
need to explain every line of code.
Yeah, so you could have used JGBT to actually copy paste the
code, right? That's fine, it's possible,
right? But if you didn't understand
what you wrote and why you chose this over the other.
You will fail. And the beauty is also it's not
that you put the three people, the three evaluators in one room
and you create a presentation, No, no, no.
It's one hour with each evaluator.
So if one will fail you, I mean you have to do it again.
So this sort of systems actually help educators to, you know,
avoid this sort of problems with JGBT because our educational
model is not based on memory. Is based on understanding and
the peer evaluation checks if you understood or you just
memorized it from somewhere. Stack Overflow, you know.
Exactly. And then if someone asks you a
question, it will not work, no, because if you don't have the
understanding, you won't be able to answer.
Exactly. And also the exams as well,
right? So those are like exercises or
programs that you have to write at the computer.
There is no multiple choice, no nothing like that.
It's pure coding, right? These sort of things help to
alleviate the the effects of JGBT, you know?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's exciting times for sure.
Thank you so much for coming on. This was a lot of fun, actually.
Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you.
So I'm gonna round it off here. Victoria and David and Code.
I'm going to put all their socials and some extra links in
the description below. Check it out.
Let them know you came from our show.
And with that being said, thank you for listening.
We'll see in the next one.