Alice Lieutier of Makers Academy discusses the issue of retraining with the Problem Busters, and explains how teaching the world to code (in perfect harmony) is so important right now.

As Head of Coaching, Alice describes the boot camp model for learning to become a software developer and contrasts semester length courses with the traditional route of 3 years at university.

She shares what she has discovered about the process of teaching, talks diversity and we discuss how we need more women in tech.

Finally we discover how anyone can learn to code and break down perceived barriers to "becoming a software engineer".

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About the show:

Problem Busters is a show that explores solutions to the biggest and the smallest of problems. Hosts Jonathan Goodwin and Oliver Happy discuss making the world a better place with guests from far and wide.

About our guest:

Alice Lieutier is a software engineer who after a career including a role at Facebook and time spent as Chief Technical Officer at a start up, turned her attention to being a software coach at Makers. She now leads the coaching team and lives in London UK.

Show notes:

• maths and it leading to an interest in problem solving, then engineering and finally software engineering
• coaching as a way to do something completely new, but related to engineering
• 03:30 Winning a hackathon at Facebook and then joining their team
• Facebook and the Women in tech hackathon
• The role of a good pain au chocolat as a way to entice new potential staff
• Burn out and the need to rebalance your life
• SheCanCode as a women-run business
• The shortage of women in technology
• Why are there so few women in technology?
• 09:30 The experience of being a co-founder and the difficulty in solving a problem for users
• Trying to grow a business as a life lesson in business and diversity
• 11:00 The problem: the tech industry needs more people and more diverse people at that
• 13:37: The core of the problem: the idea that you need a computer science degree and if you didn't have it early in life, it's too late
• The problem of representation in technology
• Makers.tech as a training option for people wanting to learn to code.
• 14:00 The role of Makers and making a career change a reality for people wanting to get into tech
• The fact that there are self-taught developers, unlike doctors!
• Coding bootcamps as a way to learn in a year, what might take 4-5 years via the computer science degree alternative
• Mental health and maintaining balance in your life as key to the successful software engineering career
• An alumni community and a Slack workspace as a way to support people in their new career
• 23:00 Learning so much about education and how people learn since becoming a coach <----
• Moving beyond teaching and beyond the idea of knowledge transfer
• 24:00 The learning concept: That people build their knowledge based on their own experiences
• Modelling as a method of observational learning
• Coding challenges as a method of experiential learning
• Pairing as a method of team work, of two people working on a problem together.
• 26:30: Pairing as a way to get more done, to do your best work and a way to learn together
• 99% of bugs as a beginner developer are going to be typos. They are hard to find when you are new, so pairing is a great way to avoid them.
• Powerpoint and death by powerpoint as something to avoid in the learning process
• 31:30 As a developer you have to learn throughout your life, learning about new technologies is a constant thing. So learning to learn is the key.
• 34:00 The levels of mastery of a concept in software development
• The need for people to complete their studies