Tag Archives: Career

Skills

Turning from Mining to Coding for New Careers

Coding offers plenty of potential for those looking to change careers later on in life. Consider a recent article for Arkansas Online titled “Miners switch from coal to coding.”

Tim Loh on behalf of Arkansas Online writes, “Today, he rolls into an office at 8 a.m., settles into a small metal desk and does something that, until last year, was completely foreign to him: computer coding. ‘A lot of people look at us coal miners as uneducated,’ said Ratliff, a 38-year-old with a thin goatee and thick arms. ‘It’s backbreaking work, but there’s engineers and very sophisticated equipment. You work hard and efficiently and that translates right into coding.’ He works for Bit Source now, a Pikeville, Ky., startup that’s out to prove there’s life after coal for the thousands of industry veterans who’ve lost their jobs in an unprecedented rout that has already forced five major producers into bankruptcy. Bit Source has hired only 10 coders, but almost 1,000 responded to its ads as the realization spreads across Appalachia that coal’s heyday is over. What fills its void is a challenge so immense that presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have cited the industry’s woes on the campaign trail. ‘We’ve got a lot of high-skilled hillbillies here,’ said Rusty Justice, a 57-year-old co-founder of Bit Source. ‘We want to prove we can run a tech business from the hills of eastern Kentucky.’ Few places are as steeped in coal lore as Pikeville, a town of 6,900 wedged into a narrow bend in the Big Sandy Valley. Over the years, surrounding Pike County has produced more of the fuel than anywhere else in Kentucky. In 1996, when Ratliff was still a teenager and his father worked in the mines, the local producers dug up 35.6 million tons, a state record. He eventually followed his dad into those mines.”

When it comes to customized coding education, your best bet is CodeRev Kids. At CodeRev Kids, our lessons focus on computational thinking, which encompasses a wide variety of programming languages and concepts.

Our lessons build upon one another and we adjust starting points to each student’s level of expertise. Thus, the entire curriculum is customized. We are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, but we also keep the focus on having fun. As a result, students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

Sign up for one of our winter camps today!

Coding Curriculum

From Low-Wage Worker to a Six-Figure Income Coding

Transitioning to a career in coding can literally transform a person’s life. The Tampa Bay Times takes a look at this in a recent article titled “Low-wage workers turn to coding to find lucrative jobs.”

Steve Lohr of the Tampa Bay Times writes, “After Paul Minton graduated from college, he worked as a waiter but always felt he should do more. So Minton, a 26-year-old math major, took a three-month course in computer programming and data analysis. As a waiter, he made $20,000 a year. His starting salary last year as a data scientist at a Web startup in San Francisco was more than $100,000. ‘Six figures, right off the bat,’ Minton said. ‘To me, it was astonishing.’ Stories like his are increasingly familiar these days as people across a spectrum of jobs — poker players, bookkeepers, baristas — are shedding their past for a future in the booming tech industry. The money sloshing around in technology is cascading beyond investors and entrepreneurs into the broader digital workforce, especially to those who can write modern code, the language of the digital world. Internet giants like Google and Facebook have long fought over the top software engineers in the country, and that continues. But now, companies in most every industry, either by necessity or to follow the pack, are pursuing some sort of digital game plan — creating lucrative opportunities for computing-minded newcomers who, like Minton, want to reboot their lives.”

WSOC examines jobs in the coding industry in a recent article titled “9 Investigates: Companies seek computer coding knowledge.” Stephanie Maxwell of WSOC writes, “Some of the highest-paying jobs in the country are going unfilled, because not enough college graduates possess the skills to fill them. Computer programming jobs are growing two times the national average and in North Carolina there’s more than 18, 000 vacant positions. John Sutton is president of the digital unit at Red Ventures, a technology company in Indian Land, South Carolina. Sutton said despite explosive growth in the past few years, Red Ventures struggles to find employees to fill their coding jobs. ‘The coding and engineering market is probably the hardest market out there today in the USU.S. Specifically in the Southeast, we’ve found it really difficult to attract good talent,’ Sutton said.”

When it comes to providing a quality coding education, we’ve got you covered at CodeRev Kids. With our customized curriculum, your child will receive a solid foundation in coding and have plenty of fun in the process.

At CodeRev Kids, we emphasize computational thinking, which encompasses a wide range of programming concepts and languages. With us, students have the opportunity to use their newfound skills to create apps, games, robots, and much more.

Furthermore, while we are known for saying we are the most educational tech camp out there, we also keep the focus on having fun. By doing this, our students stay engaged while learning to blend creativity with technology.

When it comes to quality coding education, no one does it better than CodeRev Kids!