StartFast Code boot camp graduates first class

SYRACUSE — I’m flashing back 58 years ago. Reveille sounds at Fort Bragg long before the sun makes it over the horizon, and our drill sergeant enters the barracks to encourage us with a colorful, two-line ditty, ending in “… grab your socks.” The army calls it basic training; the recruits call it boot camp. The purpose is to prepare us mentally, physically, and emotionally by providing the basic tools necessary to perform our military jobs. In retrospect, it was an intense experience.

The newest Syracuse boot camp — StartFast Code (SFC), an affiliate of Attend, LLC, headquartered in Cazenovia — has recently graduated its first class. The recruits don’t wear fatigues, handle firearms, disarm IEDs, or salute, but the training environment is as intense as any military boot camp. They signed up to learn web programming in as little as six months in order to help fill the growing need for web programmers.

StartFast Code 
(www.startfastcode.com)
“SFC is a coding boot camp that can take someone without any coding experience to a full-stack, web programmer in as little as six months,” says Nasir Ali, one of the two company principals. “The course combines a free online curriculum with 360 hours of classroom access to experienced instructors and proprietary, professional-development content. SFC graduates not only learn at their own pace, but they also learn both the technical and personal skills necessary to make a living as a professional developer. SFC doesn’t guarantee employment for its graduates, but we provide our students with the tools and networking opportunities they need to get hired. The program has three modules that are in high demand: front-end [web] development, data visualization, and back-end development. Each module costs $5,000; similar programs in large, metro areas can cost three to five times as much.”

The first class began on June 2 with 13 students ranging from 19 years of age to 50-plus. “In addition to providing education, SFC invites employers and recruiters to engage with the students; offers need-based, corporate scholarships for students; points students toward internships with local development firms; enables the students to earn income as contractors even while enrolled in the program; and assists graduates in landing full-time jobs,” continues Ali. “Everything is geared to the convenience of the students. We hold the classes every, weekday evening at Syracuse CoWorks [located at the CommonSpace Building, 201 E. Jefferson St., in downtown Syracuse]. This allows any … [enrollee] to hold a full-time job while either upgrading skills for a current job or for changing careers. SFC also offers a variety of payment plans, credit options, and the ability to perform freelance work to pay tuition while studying.”

Helping to attract students to boot camp is the industry’s compensation and long-term growth prospects. “Graduates of SFC are qualified as professional, junior-web developers,” notes Ali. “In the Syracuse area, the average starting salary [for junior coders] is $78,000 per year, and the Upstate salary midpoint, based on a report released by Robert Half and Associates, for all programmers is more than $93,000. Investing in our program will return annually four times the student’s original investment. At SFC, 80 percent of our students are already earning from coding even before they finish the course. I think there is no better investment than investing in yourself. If you enjoy computers, like to be creative, and have the aptitude to code, SFC can connect you with a life-changing opportunity, and this is the time to start. In the next four years, there will be 1 million more jobs than qualified programmers.”

Is there a shortage of programmers?
Ali cites the impending programmer shortage, which was popularized by a report released by Microsoft in 2012. The nationwide alarm bells were also rung by The Wall Street Journal and even the White House. The employment gap was based on statistics issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which projected 1.4 million open software engineering positions by 2020 and only 400,000 computer-science graduates. Despite the BLS noting that the total-employment and total-labor-force projections were two separate and fundamentally different measures, the idea of a 1-million programmer-job-gap persists.

Another problem with the gap projection is that it only counted those students receiving computer-science degrees from four-year colleges. Missing was the vast number of “non-traditional programmers” who were self-taught, never graduated college, or received a degree other than in computer science. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 36 percent of all IT workers do not hold a college degree; 40 percent of programmers on Stack Overflow, one of the largest developer websites, are self-taught; and 14 percent of some teams at Google don’t have college degrees. If there were a skills shortage, salaries for programmers should be rising as demand outstrips supply. On the contrary, the EPI reports that median salaries have increased less than 0.5 percent per year. Also, the unemployment rate for computer-science grads stands at 7.8 percent, well above the national unemployment level. Any employment gap may be exacerbated by employers who insist on only hiring programmers from prestigious institutions, assuming the degree is a proxy for talent, and by those charged with hiring who have little understanding of what a programmer really does. Many companies that are less rigid in their hiring requirements and rely more on vetting the candidates to prove their skill are finding capable programmers.

Can coding boot camps graduate qualified programmers?
Whether there is a national programming gap today or a hiring mismatch is debatable, but what’s not debatable is the growing demand for more web developers. “There are 30 billion computing devices worldwide [for a population of 7.4 billion people],” opines Ali, “and the number is growing exponentially. The demand for web developers is being driven by increasingly interactive web sites, applications, and social networks. The growth of global web and mobile-consumer markets is forcing Fortune 500 companies and micro businesses alike to develop web platforms in order to market and deliver their products and services.”

Can boot-camp programs such as SFC train qualified web programmers? “The answer is yes,” Ali contends. “Just look at the progress of the first class. Zoe was paid to work on web-development projects for a number of clients while enrolled as a student. She also started a digital agency with a classmate and two more experienced developers. Dan found paid work with a startup. Kent found an internship with a local consulting company that does web development. Lauren has new opportunities at her current employer, and David is seeking more advanced positions with his employer as well,” he says, naming several boot camp students by their first names.

Ali’s experience at SFC is confirmed by Triplebyte, a San Francisco startup that works with tech companies such as airbnb, Facebook, Quora, reddit, and Apple, helping employers find skilled, software programmers. The company, which evaluates tech skills through online-coding tests and matches them against employer interests rather than relying on credentials, compared graduates from boot camps against candidates who had traditional, computer-science bachelor degrees. In an interview printed in Fortune magazine, Triplebyte found that candidates who went through coding boot camps had the skills needed for most, junior-level programming jobs. It turns out that the majority of companies is looking for programmers who can solve practical, web-development problems.

The principals
Ali co-founded SFC with Chuck Stormon. “We have worked together for several years on the StartFast Venture Accelerator here in Syracuse,” explains Ali, “and were wrestling with the … [dearth] of area web programmers. The shortage was slowing the progress of our startup companies. While on vacation in Hawaii, Chuck contacted me with the idea of launching our own coding school. This is why we started SFC.”

Stormon
Stormon taught himself how to code while in the 6th grade in order to develop computer games. In 1983, he received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University and; in 1986, he earned a master’s degree; and completed his course work for a doctorate degree in computer engineering at the Syracuse University Center for Advanced Technology in Computer Applications and Software Engineering. He left the program to co-found and lead his first company, Coherent Research, Inc., which produced a mobile, data-management system for utilities and telecoms. The company was acquired in 2000. Stormon then garnered international experience working for the subsidiary of a private, telecommunications software company followed by a position as the VP of strategy and business development for Tekelec, a telecommunications company that provided IT services to mobile carriers. Stormon joined PacketExchange in 2008 as a VP and chief marketing officer. He left PacketExchange in 2011 to devote full-time to being a serial entrepreneur and mentor, launching a number of companies —Attend, StartFast Venture Accelerator, and RushTera. Today, he also finds time to be an angel investor, a mentor for multiple accelerators, and an author. Stormon and his wife live in Cazenovia.

Ali
In 1988, Ali earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton University. Three years later, he added an MBA from Yale in finance and operations management. He spent five years with Arthur D. Little as a senior consultant and the next nearly three years with MGA, Inc. working on advanced-technology programs before starting New Think, Inc., a mobile-commerce-services firm. In 2001, Ali co-founded Writerspoint, an offshore technical writing company. The following year, he joined Booz Allen Hamilton as an associate. The Syracuse Tech Garden wooed him to Syracuse in 2004, where, for nearly six years, he was the nonprofit business incubator’s president. In 2010, he co-founded Upstate Venture Connect and serves as the CEO. Ali is also a founder and executive director of the Seed Capital Fund of Central New York, a post he has held since 2007. In 2011, he joined with Stormon to launch StartFast Venture Accelerator and serves as the co-managing director. He is a board member of the Upstate Venture Association of NY and also advises a number of startups located in Upstate, Silicon Valley, and New York City. Ali and his family live in Fayetteville.

What’s next?
Ali and Stormon are not resting on their laurels. The second SFC class began Dec. 1. “With the successful completion of our first class, we want to draw 15 to 20 students to our second class,” asserts Ali. “SFC isn’t just for engineers: It’s also for artists, musicians, writers, accountants, lawyers, bankers, in short, everyone. It doesn’t matter what your gender, age, or ethnicity is; anyone should learn to code. SFC gives our students the skills, introduces them to the developer community, and connects them to employers. In just 24 weeks, our revolutionary boot camp can take total beginners and mentor them into employable, junior developers. But SFC does more: We improve people’s lives, empower individuals, and contribute to make the community healthier.”

Contact Poltenson at npoltenson@cnybj.com