Starting the New Year Stronger and More Mature than Ever Before

József Boda, Codecool co-founder and CEO tells us about why he thinks we should count 2020 as a „dog year”, how Codecool will shift to rocket gear in 2021, and what he wishes for all us for the new year.

2020 was a really good year for us at Codecool. I am actually admitting this with some reservedness in the middle of a global pandemic. When we were deeply shaken to witness the collapse of whole sectors, the shutting down of hundreds of companies around us. Thousands losing their jobs, all of us worrying about our loved ones’ and our own health. But we at Codecool have delivered all our key targets last year, and exceeded our own expectations by going online practically seamlessly, and growing our business at the same time.

If you asked me around this time last year, if we would be able to enroll our students fully online, take all our classes online, build partnerships online and place our alumni at those partners also online, I would have replied: „Are you kidding me? We surely would not be able to do that.”

And to do this all practically from one day to another? When our very essence is the Codecool vibe at the school where we spend long hours together everyday? And at the same time achieving a record number of yearly enrollments in the 3 countries with a 1.000 students joining us in total? Never ever. But then we did just that. Successfully. We were the most amazed that this was not all impossible.

After the first shock we quickly switched to agile mode. We wanted to help at once. We developed two apps for the National Ambulance Service in Hungary, and support guides about online education for public school teachers in Poland and Hungary. In the meantime, we have moved all our courses online without any considerable hiccup, and enrolled over 300 students to our government supported courses in the autumn. These courses are still going strong in all four specialisations, and we really hope that this forward-looking, popular programme will be continued in some way. In Poland, we have scaled up our weekend courses, and launched our first ever strategic corporate partnership programme with great success – a new service which we would like to roll out in all the other countries, too. In Romania, our first students have completed our first courses, we have forged new partnerships, and the first Codecoolers have started in their first IT jobs. Huge successes to all of us!

Let’s make something clear: these things have not just accidentally happened to us.

We must remember that all of us who have survived last year have been lucky. The only „mistake” that many others made was just being in the „wrong” industry, or they simply became the victims of circumstances.

On the other hand, the huge work done by our colleagues, mentors, students and obviously, our partners all contributed to our success. While, just like many other companies, we were running on non-stop crisis management. In Romania and Poland even without a „Summer break”. (In Hungary we had a chance to literally breath a little freely between the first and the second waves of the pandemic.) I personally felt like on an emotional roller coaster, daily fluctuating on the wide scale between desperation and „yess, com’on, we can do this!”. And I’m pretty sure I was not alone. But all this just made us stronger and brought us closer somehow. And I am so very grateful for this. Without the tireless work, infinite enthusiasm and full trust put in Codecool by everyone in 2020, we would not be anywhere near, where we are today.

Because today, we are actually starting the year stronger than ever before.

Stronger and more mature. Today it is not only the last year, but already five years behind us. (Though I used to say sometimes jokingly that we should count 2020 as a „dog year”, because it really felt like seven, but let’s just count it as one.) And these five years were spent learning not only by our more than a 1000 graduated students, but also ourselves. We have learnt to grow up to our goals, tasks, and the endless trust we have received. And so we have been getting ready for the new year in a much more structured manner this time, with much more detailed plans and in general, with much more control, than ever before.

And to say that our 2021 plans are ambitious would be an understatement.

We will open schools in two further countries next to Hungary, Poland and Romania – one planned for the first half of this year and one for the second. Having listened to our partners, we are widening our corporate services in each country, and enhancing our strategic partnerships. Building on last year’s learnings and international best practices we are lifting the online Codecool learning experience to a new level. And as soon as possible, hopefully by the summer, we are slowly, gradually returning to our favourite places, to the offline schools, too. Stabilisation and growth – these two words summarize our 2021 plans for me best.

However, if we have learnt something last year it is that anything unexpected can happen and overwrite our plans in a flash. We have also learnt, on the other hand, that we will probably be very much able to manage even such unexpected situations. We have learnt to trust ourselves better, than before.

We have learnt that we can carry out our business plans, and we can save our good spirit in our personal lives.

Just like when together with my wife, we managed to carry on performing in our jobs, even with our three kids at home in ad hoc arrangements controlled by changing elementary and middle school closure regulations. It was quite a ride some days, I must say, though surely not as much as for single parents. Or, when I had to help out my English teacher mother remotely, with no tech skills whatsoever about how to hold classes online. This is actually Codecool core competence, which I had the chance to practice in real life. But besides the challenges there were really pleasant things, too. I felt incredibly lucky to spend every night at home with my family, and I actually put more miles in my bike last year than ever before. (7.500 kilometres. Not a world record, but my personal best by far. 🙂 ) The reason was that I stopped travelling around our offices on a weekly basis, a big change after only sleeping at home max. four nights in a row last year.

In the meantime, we have also learnt that besides managing challenges, we can also keep our promises.

Because what do we promise every day again and again? A new profession to our students. A new career, hobby, self-realisation, even the chance for a better life. New talents to our corporate partners. Talents that are not only easy to work with, but also a pleasure to have in the company. Corporate trainings which can help them keep and get the best out of their own employees. And a workplace to our Codecool colleagues, where each and everyone is equally important, where we trust each other and where we feel like in a second family together.

And I wouldn’t promise anything more for this year, either – would rather just have a single wish if I can.

To see each other again, soon. After all the hardships, the excitement and all the plans, I miss this one thing only – our personal, offline gatherings. So this is my wish, not just for myself but for all of us – that we meet again, as soon as we can in our offices, our schools, at interviews, at meetings, at personal get-togethers. Until then, I just wish a little bit more strength and patience on top of this, and rewarding work. And a happy, successful and hopefully a little bit easier new year.

2020 in Retrospective – 3 Unexpected Success Stories

To end this difficult year on a high note let us we present you with the short recollection of three of our success stories.

With the new year approaching, we have started looking back and making account of everything we’ve been through in 2020. All the ups and downs, the unforeseen challenges and unexpected successes, big moments and big learnings.

We decided to give you a short recollection of what we at Codecool are really grateful for today.

There are actually too many things we could mention and too little space for listing all of them. First of all, our invaluable partnerships with our amazing clients surviving our arguably toughest year yet with us. Then the over 1000 new students trusting us with their dreams and ambitions starting in our school this year, and 160 graduates landing their first tech jobs at our partners and our companies. And also our continuously growing international team of 140 colleagues working hard to make everything happen.

We’ve been through together a lot this year.

There are just 3 success stories we would like to mention in more detail below, that make us proud and grateful around this holiday season. The first one is about how we got to help out those fighting the new pandemic in the front line. The second is about how we took part in changing the lives of those losing their jobs as the crisis rolled on. And the third one is how we got invited to shape digital education and vocation strategy in Europe in the coming years.

1. Sussess Stories: Assisting front-line heroes – saving lives with the national ambulance service

In the beginning of March, Hungarian National Ambulance Service (NAS) were suddenly faced with an unexpected technical challenge. With the global pandemic already full on, their colleagues fighting an increasing demand for urgent medical help and unprecedented health risk in the front line, it turned out they also missedsufficient technical support. Not being able to monitor the real-time stock levels of protective equipment on different locations, the ambulance staff on duty was not sure where they could find masks, gloves and other essential supply at their disposal, on their actual route. Also, supply management lacked the necessary status info to arrange timely stock-up everywhere. This slowed ambulance services down considerably, risking additional lives.

We jumped to help. Our developers created a new app for the ambulance colleagues to report and monitor protective equipment stocks in real-time, by location. We delivered a working prototype of the app in just 2 days and finalised it in another few days. By the end of March it was in use nationwide.

By this time our developers and students have already been working on another app for the ambulance service: tracking the work status of their 8000 employees in real-time, further improving the effectiveness of their front-line work.

We were glad we could help the work of our everyday heroes in our own ways. We are here to help in the future, too.

2. Helping the unemployed to future-proof careers – government supported tech courses

In the shadow of the health crisis, an economic crisis also emerged at the same time. Wide-scale layoffs started and thousands of people found themselves on the street everyday, from one day to another. As an emergency reply, financed from the European Social Fund, the Hungarian government lunched the Redesign Program on 11 May, 2020. In the scope of the Program, unemployed people got the opportunity to attend top quality digital courses free of charge, to build a future-proof, tech career for themselves.

Codecool has applied to take part and was finally selected as one of the partner schools in September. We enrolled over 300 pre-selected students in the following weeks and started their four-month training in October.

We are super proud to be part of this initiative about digitalising Central-European workforce, actually changing individual lives day-by-day.

3. Contributing to a digitalised EU work force – European Software Skills Alliance membership

The skill gap in Europe today is above 50%, meaning that over half of the European workforce needs reskilling to fill open positions. One of the areas with the biggest gap is software development.

To tackle the challenge on strategic level, DIGITALEUROPE and an alliance of 26 software partners launched the European Software Skills Alliance (ESSA), to design and implement the new Software Skills Strategy and vocational curriculum for Europe.

Codecool is proud to have been selected as one of the 26 partners in the Alliance. We will work on creating more flexible, shorter, more diverse educational paths benefitting both individuals growing their digital skills and businesses building their digital future.

Having recollected these stories we are looking forward to a hopefully less challenging, but equally rewarding new year.

We wish you happy holidays with lots of grateful moments looking back and celebrating your own success stories.

Follow us for more on Linkedin!

Whether you need IT specialists or you are looking for company trainings, you will find the solution with us.

More Women into Tech!

There are still much fewer women participating in the software development projects of the future than what would be healthier for society. Learn how Codecool strives closing the gender gap in IT.

There are still much fewer women participating in the software development projects of the future than what would be healthier for society.

The IT sector has been struggling with gender diversity problems for a long time, and in spite of the fact that this issue has been discussed more and more often in recent years, no significant change has taken place. In Hungary, the rate of women working in the IT sector is still around 10-15%, which deeply underrepresents society – although by now it has become a fundamental truth that diversity is desirable on the basis of both moral and business considerations.

Technology and diversity

Technology influences all aspects of our lives from healthcare through traffic to personal relationships. Programming has an impact on an increasing proportion of our lives, while only a tiny minority of mankind understands code, algorithms and artificial intelligence. This small group of the population has an enormous responsibility for creating code that take the problems of entire societies and the differences within society into consideration , as well. An unbalanced representation of coders may indeed affect our future!

Most programmers, of course, do not create biased apps deliberately. But our own experience and past inevitably influence us when we make decisions; and such decisions are then integrated into the technology we build. It will form the way we live and might cause significant damage without diversity. For instance, underrepresented social groups may be put at disadvantage – including the social group of women.

But the lack of diversity raises not only ethical questions. It may significantly affect business results and innovation capability, as well.

“Several studies and our partners’ experience also prove that more diversified management teams are more likely to have higher profitability than companies run by homogenous C-level managers. The teams within Codecool also operate by putting this principle into practice: the proportion of our female managers is 50%. More diversified teams bring new points of view to the discussion and come up with alternative solutions that could not necessarily have been developed by a more homogenous group. The multilayered approach and the ability to solve problems more successfully contribute directly to better business performance at the end. We strive to provide our corporate partners with a more colourful and versatile coder and tech talent base in the well-known Codecool quality, so that they could benefit from the advantages of diversity, too,“ said Lea Kalocsai, Head of Sales at a leading Hungarian programming school Codecool.

Education is the key

There will be more female programmers only if more women are trained. However, in Hungary the rate of female students in IT training is only 10-15% today. This ratio is in line with the also ver low rate of women working in IT, and is still far from the 30% threshold, above which minorities do not feel disadvantaged.

There are still several stereotypes associated with coding. People tend to visualise coders as men wearing glasses and sitting in a dark room all day long. It’s a long process to change an image like this, and besides IT companies, educational institutions must also take an active part in changing this mindset.

“Codecool would like to make girls and women be aware of the fact that they are welcome in technological, digital and programmer training and career paths. As an open-minded, transparent company, we strive to get rid of the stereotypes connected to technology, programming and managerial roles in Central and Eastern Europe. One of our main objectives is to continue increasing the 20% rate of our female students – which otherwise even now exceeds the local averages in this sector – and to help a generation of much more diversified professionals and start-ups to start and develop their careers,“ says Codecool’s Head of Marketing, Anna Ferenczy.

From the economic performance’s point of view, it is crucial to have more and more coders in Hungary. Similarly to international trends, the number of IT graduates is less than the vacant positions in Hungary, too. There are about 22-22.5 thousand IT positions to be filled in the labour market, currently. From the aspect of companies’ competitveness and the establishment of social equality, it is essential to fill many of them by women in the future.

For more inspiration take a look at our blog post on Forbes’ ’30 Successfull Coder Women under 30’ list, and meet 11 super talented female coders who studied at Codecool.

This article was published on forbes.hu on 7 December 2020.,

3 ways to fight digital burnout in 2020

Let’s just make clear: burnout is not a new thing. It was a possibility even before 2020, too. You could be burnt out with your job, with family obligations, with life in general and even then, with too much time online. WHO recognises burnout as “an occupational phenomenon … that can influence health status”.

What’s new is how many of us went all-online and home office based this year, without having a chance to getting prepared for the risks. According to Gartner 88% of the organisations worldwide made it mandatory or encouraged employees to work from home after the pandemic has been declared, many of them practically from one day to the other. One of the risks we have not been prepared for is digital burnout, which you or your friends could already experience.

What is digital burnout? 

Digital burnout is exhaustion from being in a digital environment „too much”. How much is „too much” varies, just like burnout symptoms. 

In general, if you work, connect and seek fun online pretty much all the time, that sounds like „too much”. Human beings are not designed to be sitting at the same place, staring at a screen for hours. If you are a manager, then you are also under constant pressure to motivate and support your team, juggle new challenges and keep your business running in the middle of a pandemic at the same time.

Possible signs of burnout vary from boredom to total demotivation, include anxiety, low energy, low concentration or low tolerance. Not wanting to sit down to work on Monday again, show your face on another video meeting or hear about another new, exciting business innovation. Just wanting to scroll mindlessly, listen to podcasts or run away – based on your temper and the situation. 

Some things are for sure: digital burnout is real. Any one of us working online might go through it, and it only goes away if you do something about it.

 

What are the 3 ways to fight digital burnout?

No magic is required. We believe in starting as the basics: taking control of your digital experience, moving your body and taking it easy. 

Let’s dig in.

1. Take back control

What’s especially tiring about being online is that your default control is at best limited. 

  • Push notifications and reminders keep you in a constant state of false urgency,
  • your news feed is filled by algorithms with highly engaging propaganda, negativity, fake perfection and bullshit, and 
  • you’re more connected than ever to more strangers than ever.

 

The solution is to first notice the problem, and next to step up. Takes some time and thinking through, but it is well worth it.

  • Kill notifications that are not absolutely necessary, and set the rest around your daily schedule.
  • Cancel subscriptions you don’t need and also save some money.
  • Ban email junk and clean your mailbox.
  • Delete apps you don’t use (including social apps) and again, set notifications wisely.
  • Unfollow negative connections and worthless accounts, and pick valuable people and topics to follow, 
  • And so on …

 

You get the idea. Take back control in an environment designed to control you. You can do it to quite some extent. Give it a go and you might be nicely surprised.

2. Move your body

Even if you made sure that all your time online is spent well with meaningful interactions, undisturbed work and quality fun, you still may realise that you’re overwhelmed, tired and tense.

Don’t be surprised: sitting in front of your screen all day every day is not okay for your body and not okay for your mind. Your back and neck might hurt, you might have trouble getting a good nights’ sleep, your eye sight can weaken and even your brain cells and neurons stop working properly. 

Sounds pretty serious, right? So, it’s time to move it!

How? Start with the simplest things.

  • Walking is a gift to your body. Even if only for just 10 minutes, to just to grab a coffee or make a circle around the block, go and get outside. Leave your phone home for a change and take the stairs. Once outside, just put your right foot after the left. Either go alone and let your mind free up, or meet up with somebody and have a real life chat. Keeping a safe social distance is easier outside, anyway.
  • Stand up right. You may not have the time to leave home as often as you would like to due to work and restrictions. Even then, make sure to stand up for 5 to 10 minutes every hour. Actually, any change in your position might be good for your body time to time. Or even better – get a standing desk. The point is to stop just sitting in the same place all day.
  • Sit and move. Even when you’re just sitting at your desk, try to switch from typing and scrolling to something different time-to-time. Take notes on paper with a pen. Scribble. Correct your posture and stretch your muscles. Do not cross your legs, do not bend over. Be mindful of your body and move it, even if it’s just a tiny movement. It all adds up in the end.

3. Take it easy

Finally: don’t stress over it. Don’t treat digital detoxication and rehabilitation as another project you have to solve perfectly. You’d just worsen the situation. Staving off digital burnout is tough, and you have to get out of your comfort zone to succeed. Give it time and accept your progress and failures the same. What’s a good approach?

  • First: think and plan. Make a list of what you want and what you do not want to change. Take time to create your own digital burnout fight plan.
  • Next: pick some easy targets or your favourite ideas for a quick start.
  • Finally: start somewhere. Go step-by-step. Start with cancelling some notifications, deleting some apps or just get up from your chair for a 15 minute walk. Appreciate the effort you made and accept if you failed. In the end, this is about freeing you up not to bring you down.

 

Inspired yet? We hope so.

 

We at Codecool know a trick or two about how to make computers work for you to gain even more control. To learn more, check out services and methodology.

 

Take care and take control!

From Mess to Bless – Organise Your Slack in 7 Easy Steps

 

We at Codecool use Slack for daily collab and communication. It’s an amazing tool, we can only recommend it, if you have not yet started using it or any similar apps.

As opposed to email, Slack allows for a much more flexible view of your communication threads and you can follow conversations of work teams you are not even part of. There is a lot of extra potential in integrating it with different apps, and obviously the customisable emojis are really cool, too.

However, with the default settings you can easily end up with a chaotic sidebar and a disturbing amount of notifications, causing more pain than gain.

Especially when you start missing important tasks and messages in the noise.

Let us just share with you some tricks that worked for us. So that you, too, can quickly regain control over your Slack, by making it so neatly organised that even Marie Kondo would approve it.

The whole thing should not take more than 5 or 10 minutes max. And you can save that time daily from tomorrow just not having to fish for the latest important updates in a chaos.

So, let’s get to it!

Pick Your Stars

You can and should, as a first step of this clean-up, set the priority level for each slack channel and direct message on your sidebar.

1) Select max. 5 to 7 most important channels and messages that you want to keep an eye on at all times, and „star” them. Keep this list short and sweet to allow for a real quick overview at all times.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Star channel” or „Star conversation”.

So this happens: The starred item moves up to the top of your sidebar! It will be in your sight all the time.

2) Then, from the rest delete those you don’t need anymore. They should not be on your sidebar at all.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Leave channel” or „Close conversation”.

So this happens: The deleted item is gone from your sidebar.

3) Finally, mute those channels and messages that you don’t have time to follow on a regular basis. Mute as much as you can, you’ll thank yourself later.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel or direct message on the sidebar, and then
2) click „Mute channel” or „Mute conversation”.

So this happens: The muted item stays where it is, but gets a faded colour. You will not get notifications about new messages from this channel or conversation.

Basics done.

Next, you want to make sure to only receive useful notifications from the rest of the channels.

Say No to (Some) Notifications

Now you should take care of annoying and useless alarms. Anyways, you can always set up a reminder to any single message item, or follow a thread. So it is only wise to cut down on those notifications.

4) First, set general notification rules for your Slack.

Do this:
1) Click your profile pic in the right top corner,
2) choose „Preferences”,
3) set „Notify me about …. Direct messages, mentions and key words”, and
4) add your own selection of keywords.

So this happens: You’ll not get notified about just the above: direct messages, mentions of your name and keywords. However, channel-specific settings override general settings. So you have to check those as well to make sure it all works nicely.

5) Next, (re)set channel-specific notification rules for your unmuted channels.

Do this:
1) Right-click the channel,
2) click „Change notifications” and
3) set the notifications you prefer for the specific channel.

So this happens: You’ll not get notified about things you really want to be notified about, from unmuted channels.

Almost there!

Now you just have to set a nice, organised view of your sidebar, with the most important things already at the top.

Level Up Your Sidebar Game

Last, but not least, set your sidebar in a way to get a clean view at your priorities. The starred items are already sitting at the top of your sidebar. Now you just need to make sure the rest of the sidebar is organised, too.

6) First, set the general sidebar view for your Slack.

Do this:
1) Click your profile pic in the right top corner,
2) choose „Preferences”,
3) click „Sidebar”,
4) set „Always show in the sidebar …. All DMs”, „Mentions & reactions”, „Saved items”, and
5) tick „List private channels separately”.

So this happens: Your sidebar will show you important info only. Your conversations will be shown in a separate group from your channels.

7) Finally, hide muted channels and conversations from your view.

Do this:
1) Click the 3 dots next to „Channels” category header,
2) move your cursor over „Show”,
3) choose „Unread channels only”, and
4) do the same for „Direct messages” („Unread direct messages only”).

So this happens: Your sidebar will not show you muted channels and conversations anymore. (Note that you did not change the setting of „Starred”, so you will still be notified about everything that happens in your starred channels and conversations.)

That’s it! This is how some of us at Codecool like to organise our Slack.

And now you did it, too. You made Marie Kondo happy:

marie_kondo_emoji_slack

Now grab a coffee, sit back, and enjoy you new, re-organised Slack!

You deserve it.

Codecool Named Most Promising Scale-Up in Hungary

Codecool Programing School has been shortlisted among the 100 most exciting scale-up companies in 20 European countries by The Next Web. These are predominantly IT enterprises that are already successfully over the startup stage, have already demonstrated their multiple growth potential and have succeeded in raising significant capital in several phases. What is even more significant is that Codecool is considered to be the most promising scale-up in Hungary.

Started as a tech blog, Amsterdam-based The Next Web has become a leading professional IT forum by now. In addition to providing news, informing about events and having professional registries, what draws the most attention to them is their Tech5 list, which has been published annually for seven years. Every year they select 100 companies that they believe are especially noteworthy. The preconditions of the selection are that the companies must have a history of at least 5 years and must have been able to raise significant capital to prove its viability. Every year five enterprises are selected from each of the twenty countries, then the top companies of this list of 100 are chosen. Not surprisingly, the winner of the year 2020 is the Finnish company Wolt, which has been able to overcome the pandemic situation by creating a new model of food delivery.

Codecool in the Tech5 2020 shortlist has been awarded as the Number 1 Hungarian enterprise.

Last year its income exceeded HUF 1 billion (for the first time), and during this year’s epidemic it successfully switched for online training in a few days and extended its range of courses by offering shorter trainings focusing on special fields of expertise.

“Although startup companies manifest modern innovation in the eyes of the public, the most serious investors pay special attention to enterprises that have entered the phase of scale-up. By that stage the idea behind the setting up of the enterprise has already been validated, and the company has proved its viability. From now on, the success of the company no longer depends primarily on good luck and the capricious changes of market demand, but rather on the aptitude of professional management,” explains Co-Founder and CEO of Codecool József Boda. “We owe a significant part of our growth in the past years to investors and consultancy companies that supported our work by providing professional advice and, in particular, capital. No international expansion or the extension of our portfolio can take place without them.”

Follow us for more on Linkedin!

Whether you need IT specialists or you are looking for company trainings, you will find the solution with us.