Code Platoon celebrated six years of helping train Veterans, active duty Servicemembers, and military spouses for software engineering careers with our Celebrate Code Platoon 2022 event. The event was held on September 22 at Artifact Events Chicago. Over one hundred alumni and supporters gathered to recognize Code Platoon’s impact on the Veteran community and raise over $118,000 for our military coding bootcamp scholarships and curriculum development.

The Program

Kicking the program off, Iggy Khan, Head of Digital Products at JPMorgan Chase and Treasurer of Code Platoon’s Governing Board, introduced our Full-stack Software Engineering program offerings and shared his experience transitioning to the civilian workforce from the U.S. Navy.

Rodrigo Levy, Code Platoon Founder, and Executive Director, recapped the efforts of the organization over the last six years. The program has over 300 graduates. Eighty percent of graduates found jobs in software engineering within six months of graduation. The median starting salary for those graduates was $80,000 – twice their median salary before starting Code Platoon.

Code Platoon has also given out over $1.2 million in scholarships over the last two years. These scholarships are made possible by our corporate partners, grants, and donors.

Accenture, Partner of the Year, 2022

One highlight of Celebrate Code Platoon 2022 was honoring our 2022 Partner of the Year, Accenture. Paul Knudtson, Major in the Army Reserve and Technology Consulting Manager at Accenture, gave the keynote address. He discussed the opportunities available to Veterans and military spouses in the technology industry. 

Accenture answers the call to help the military community by providing grants, expert resume coaches, and talent pipelines for Code Platoon graduates. 

Paddle Raise and Alumni Stories

The program ended with our paddle raise, led by Michael Dorsey, Code Platoon’s Alumni Association president and Navy Veteran. The paddle raise featured the stories of Megan Genauldi and Kenneth Malley, recent Code Platoon graduates who launched software engineering careers at DRW and HelloFresh after attending our Full-stack Immersive program. 

Guests raised their paddles to contribute donations for Code Platoon scholarships. Code Platoon received over $50,000 in donations during the paddle raise. The total raised from this event was over $118,000.

For those who couldn’t join us at Celebrate Code Platoon 2022, it’s not too late to show your support by donating to the Celebrate Code Platoon fundraiser. All donations are tax deductible.

We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of our supporters, and we eagerly anticipate next year’s event! 

Pat Craven is Code Platoon’s Chief of Staff. He brings with him a family history of military service dating back to the Revolutionary War. Pat has spent the past 30+ years helping children and families as a C-Level executive for national and international nonprofit organizations like the Boy Scouts of America, (ISC)2 Center for Cyber Safety and Education, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in Washington D.C. He enjoys traveling, golfing, discovering new craft beers with friends, and watching documentaries and crime drama shows with his wife. 

Celebrate Code Platoon 2022 was made possible by our event sponsors:

Graduates from our Immersive, Full-stack Software Engineering Bootcamp, Romeo Platoon, spent the last two weeks completing their final group projects. The Romeo graduates formed teams and harnessed their new software engineering skills to develop full-stack web applications. 

Here are their project demonstrations:

Our first group is Fishtories, an app for anglers. Users can log info about their game fish catches and view each others’ catches on an interactive geo-map featuring images, catching methods, and records from the International Game Fish Association.

Check out Fishtories by Daniel Reither, Robert Puentes, Jacob Hill, Nathan Leathers, and Michael Lambert. They are Active Duty Marine Corps, a military spouse, a Marine Corps Veteran, and two Navy Veterans.

 

The next project is Zesty Tamales, a web app designed to reach an online audience of Latin street food vendors. Those looking to get food from a street food vendor can order through the app and process their payments online through Stripe.

The team behind Zesty Tamales is Chris Volar, an Air Force Reservist; Kevin Bui, an Air Force Veteran and Evan Garcia, an Air Force Veteran.

 

Gamer’s Haven is the third project in this showcase. Gamer’s Haven offers gaming and anime content for users to explore, discuss with each other via interactive forums, create and respond to polls, and create and join local or online events.

Kaleb Varnes, Dalton Eggleston, Terrance Carter, and Angel Felix–Active Duty Navy and Air Force Servicemembers, a Navy Veteran, and a Marine Corps Veteran, respectively–created Gamer’s Haven.

Jobify is the next project by Romeo graduates. Jobify is a one-stop shop where users can navigate the application and interviewing processes of getting a new job. Users can search for jobs, add them to a personal progress board, and prepare for interviews via open-source forums and other users’ shared interview experiences.

A team of two Marine Corps Veterans, a Coast Guard Veteran, and two Air Force Veterans–Dennis Corral, Facisco Avila, Miah Clay, Luis Manzo, and Rexford Wiafe –developed Jobify.

The fifth project is GAMENIGHT. GAMENIGHT helps users plan public or private game night events and search for public game nights in their area. Users can create private groups, invite friends, or create general game nights that are searchable by location.

Check out the GAMENIGHT demonstration by Michael Heinzinger, an Active Duty Air Force Servicemember; Alisha Burgfeld, an Army Veteran; Megann Herdegen, an Active Duty Navy Servicemember; Kaylee Burch, a Navy Veteran; Daniel Pizarro, an Army spouse; and Craig Bucher, an Air Force Veteran.

Romeo’s Adventure is next up in the showcase. Romeo’s Adventure is an online fantasy role-playing game based very loosely on the team’s experiences in Code Platoon. The game includes an interactive map and story, turn-based dueling with animations, and puzzles about coding to solve.

The team behind this project is Justin Peterson, Meredith Hall, Skyler Scott, Garrett Adams, and Zack Fair. They are two Active Duty Navy Servicemembers, an Army Veteran, an Active Duty Marine Corps Servicemember, and an Active Duty Air Force Servicemember, respectively.

 

The final project is Paw Platoon. Paw Platoon connects Servicemembers with base access to provide needed pet care during travel and deployments. Paw Platoon also tracks pet sitters’ walk times and locations.

Check out the Paw Platoon presentation by Hunter McReynolds, an Air Force Veteran; John O’Keefe, an Army Veteran and Nathan Marquis, a Marine Corps Veteran.

Congratulations, Romeo Platoon graduates! We’re proud of the accomplishments showcased during this cohort’s final project demonstrations.

The entire graduation and project showcase is available to watch on YouTube.

Agile software development methodologies have become the norm in large tech companies. Self-managing Agile teams develop software incrementally to align with consumer needs. Agile is primarily a mindset and can be difficult to learn. 

That’s why product strategist Judith Sol Dyess introduces Code Platoon students to Agile development principles and practical starting advice. Judith structures her one-day workshop around four key steps: the elevator pitch, sketching product ideas, scope prioritization, and writing practical user stories. 

If you’ve wanted to learn how software engineering teams develop products quickly, you can follow Judith’s suggestions to hone your skills.

Elevator Pitch

Elevator Pitches share concise ideas. Starting with this pitch helps you develop the essential project framework: who should use it? What will it solve?

Answer these questions and follow Judith’s template from The Agile Samurai to draft your elevator pitch:

For [users] who [users’ problems], [product name] is a [product category] that [main benefit]. Unlike [competitive alternative] our product [most differentiating benefit].

Let’s see an elevator pitch in action. Students from Code Platoon’s Papa Platoon created The Daily Planter using Judith’s techniques. Here is their elevator pitch:

“For gardeners and farmers who need crop management for their area, The Daily Planter is a gardening app that helps users grow crops. Unlike Garden Manager our product scales to a range of plot sizes and manages soil data.”

Fit your product details into this template, and you too have an elevator pitch. 

Sketching

With the elevator pitch in hand, now it is time to visualize your ideas. Judith teaches a process called Ide8ts–inspired by Crazy Eights from Google Ventures–to sketch rough outlines for each screen a software product will have. 

First, fold an empty piece of paper three times to create 8 rectangles. Then, use a marker to sketch one screen per box. Your results may look something like this example from The Daily Planter team:

This exercise typically generates a lot of different ideas. In Judith’s workshop this is the primary conversation starter for the features the teams are going to build. It’s not intended to be a consensus on the finished product; it’s about ways to solve the problem at hand. 

Scope Prioritization

Next comes prioritizing all your ideas. In Agile development, the project’s scope is managed in terms of its goals, features, and user stories. 

 Typically product owners create the goals for a development project. They often start with user research to determine the essential features. The project team will then break up these features into smaller, actionable items detailing the deliverables.

User research usually yields more features than a team can include in the product’s first version. So, to prioritize the project’s scope, Judith recommends creating a MoSCoW method board detailing the “Must,” “Should,” “Could,” and “Won’t” haves.

“Must haves” are the deliverables essential for a product launch. “Should haves” are important but can be “fast followers” to launch. “Could haves” could be helpful, but it’s worth waiting on user feedback after launch, and “Won’t haves’’ won’t be done at all as part of this project.

Here’s an example of a completed MoSCoW method board for The Daily Planter:

Once you’ve pitched your stories and organized them according to the MoSCoW board, you can focus on developing the “Must haves” into more detailed user stories.

User Stories

User stories are a critical tool to help you plan how you’ll deliver your features, how you’ll code them, and how you’ll test them from the user’s perspective. 

Judith recommends following this story template:

As a [type of user], I can [perform this action] so that I can [gain this value from it]

Here’s one of The Daily Planter’s user stories:

As a user, I can input the location and amount of each crop so that I can receive reminders to fertilize, water, and harvest my crops.

Each feature on the MosCoW board will necessitate several new user stories, each detailed enough to be clearly understood, actionable, and testable. 

When you’re done, you’ll have most of the information you need to code your tech projects organized enough to get right to work.

To see more of our graduates’ final projects developed from Judith’s workshops, check out our Quebec Platoon final projects.

Kayla Elkin is the Marketing Content Specialist at Code Platoon. In this role, she utilizes her marketing, writing, and editing skills developed from previous positions in higher education and educational technology. Kayla has degrees in English and Sociology from Clemson University and completed the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad. She lives with her partner in northern Chicago.

As you may know, Code Platoon recently launched its DevOps Engineering program,  the first new program since we began with our Full-stack Software Engineering Bootcamp.

But along with a new program and curriculum comes new questions about which one of these to choose if you want to get started in the tech world. What skills are important for each?? How are the disciplines different? And what the heck is DevOps, anyway??

Both a DevOps developer and a Full-Stack developer are highly sophisticated experts who work towards the same goal – delivering software applications on time with zero bugs. The philosophies and methods that they choose to achieve the goal are what set them apart from each other

With that, an analogy is helpful. Imagine the world of military tech procurement.

Let’s say you want to develop a new tank (because tanks are pretty cool, right?). There are several levels at which this process begins.

First, individuals propose a need for a new tank and why that is the case. The old tank is too slow, not well-armed enough, not reliable enough, etc. So, a new model is proposed to address these shortcomings. 

At the initial levels, engineers are needed to understand material construction and recognize how to be creative. Where can more rockets fit?

This is where engineering and artistry come together. It is not creating something entirely new necessarily, but rather using existing concepts in a new, functionally-superior way. 

But if you want this project to be done both well and efficiently, then you need what is called a feedback loop. It will not work to have a project initiator say, “I want this thing to do X” and then have engineers design it perfectly on the first try. You need the initial plan, feedback from engineers to inform that plan, response from the planner, and constant tweaks in that manner that form the cycle of feedback, planning, and implementation. 

Think of this as where both software engineers and DevOps specialists come in. The software engineer has to understand the needs of the owner and make sure the tank functions operationally. A DevOps engineer has to then ensure that it’s actually running and continues running in its environment. 

A DevOps engineer would work with tank crews in a more developed stage of the process to ensure that the tank is running at an optimal level for the end-user. This is not to say that a software engineer would not have input at this level – they certainly would, as development and maintenance are continual. 

In the software world, that feedback loop is never closed. As one knowledgeable person put it, “if the app [or website] is worth its salt, it will be continually changed over time.”

Software engineers are specialists in both the front-end and back-end. They are proficient in both back-end and front-end languages and have detailed knowledge of frameworks, server, and network and hosting environments too.

DevOps engineers are basically IT professionals with expertise in coding, scripting, and managing the overall operation of product development and deployment. These engineers transform the traditional ways of software development, operations teams, and testing into a holistic environment for superior quality product development.

DevOps engineers combine their hands-on experience and in-depth knowledge in software development with core business analytics expertise to offer innovative business solutions.

All of this leads to a more fundamental question from the perspective of someone coming to Code Platoon: which one is right for you? 

This depends on some factors that can only be answered by the individual and are by no means consistent across-the-board. We have all seen examples of people who, at first glance, are very similar, but when we dig a little deeper, we recognize some fundamental differences that were not immediately apparent.

Are you a more creative, philosophical individual who gravitates towards the unique application of language and its nuances? Or are you a more structured type who enjoys the processes of keeping a developed project running at an optimal level?

Again, these are broad strokes from a 30,000-foot view, so take all of this into account, but don’t insist on any of it being hard-and-fast rules. The overlap is enough that an understanding of each area will be of great help to either path, and learning one may ultimately lead you to another.

But understanding yourself is a key element in any journey, especially when it comes to big choices about which path to choose. That is exactly why I am here at Code Platoon, so don’t hesitate to reach out and ask questions about exactly this. I am happy to help.

There’s a lot of opportunity in tech careers, but these can also be competitive positions. When preparing for your first interview for a tech position, you may be unsure what to discuss. How do you make yourself stand out? 

It turns out that tech employers look for soft skills as much as hard, technical skills during the interviewing process. If you don’t know where to begin, here are five in-demand soft skills that tech employers want to see in your next interview.

1. Communication Skills

Communication skills are essential for anyone to have. However, it’s particularly important for tech professionals. You’ll need to convert information and technical jargon into concise, understandable content for your company leaders to make high-level decisions without stumbling through complex charts, analyses, and other complicated data.

2. Teamwork

Communication isn’t just about talking to your boss. You’ll need to work as a team to get projects done. Many tech workforces use tenets of Agile team structures, so employers will want to see if you can manage projects collaboratively with your peers. 

Outside of technical projects, software engineers can help essentially every other area of a company. Sales and marketing especially benefit from their help with analyzing data and assessing digital possibilities.

3. Business Know-how

Tech workers process information every day about the company’s competition, sales, marketing trends, online capabilities, and other business-related topics. Going hand-in-hand with communication skills, understanding the business mindset will help you meet the company’s needs. Take the time to build up your business lingo, and you’ll find that understanding complex ideas from business leaders and other stakeholders will become easier than ever.

4. Product Knowledge

We often hear this term when talking about a salesforce. However, it’s also important for tech employees. Your software engineering work will be a product or service, so you’ll need to demonstrate a clear understanding of how it works, how it’s best used, and how the underlying company operates. If you go to an interview with the answers to these questions, your interviewer will appreciate your diligence.

5. Attention to Detail

A single line of bad code can render the entire project useless. An irrelevant piece of information can cause a business leader to make a catastrophic decision. Tech professionals need to be able to discern good information from bad, and pull only what’s necessary. You’ll need to show special attention to detail, especially during technical interviews, to prove that you have what it takes to work accurately and effectively.

We hope these five skills give you some insight into what your potential employer is looking for in a tech professional. Now you know what soft skills to work on for whichever tech career you may pursue.

Reese Jones is a freelance writer and blog contributor who covers topics in tech, business, finance, and general lifestyle. Following work in multiple tech startups, she is now pursuing a graduate degree in her hometown in the UK.