Our ability to find, train and employ developers from non-traditional backgrounds struck a chord with Kaveh Waddell, report at Axios. In his latest piece, he writes:
In several midsize cities across the U.S., unusual software teams are programming apps and websites. In past lives, these workers delivered pizzas and parcels, tended stores and taught in schools, or drove Ubers and forklifts.
- They made the unlikely jump to tech by way of apprenticeships — free intensive training followed by jobs at the companies that taught them.
Why it matters: This train-and-hire model is a potential answer to a huge outstanding issue: how to get people whose jobs are likely to be automated into new, future-proof work that requires vastly different skills.
Kaveh also spoke with Alicia Waide, one of our amazing Baltimore-based developers. He was so taken with her story of transition from Baltimore City teacher to programmer, he featured her in a separate article.
Waide says that as an African-American woman over 35, she feels like a unicorn in the software industry. But at Catalyte, “I’m never reminded that I’m a unicorn.”
“I didn’t think there was a clear pathway for someone like me who’s a mid-career changer,” Waide tells Axios.
