2020 - A Year To Remember
Some of you might think we are writing this blog just for you, our dearest readers, but the truth is that it mostly serves documentation purposes so in 10 or 20 years we can look back, reminisce and wonder how young and naive we were about starting a coding school in 2020. This post is basically a collection of events of the first 8 months of Pipeline Academy that Daniel and I consider significant in some way, so if you are new to our journey this might be a good starting point.
We started working on Pipeline Academy in March 2020. One could say our timing was not optimal, and I would wholeheartedly agree. As for many, the last year was about figuring out ways to make our business work despite of all the mess that was happening in the realm of the global economy, and our private lives. But it's all about attitude... they say.
Right at the very start we've organised a mini online-bootcamp for data engineering for a lovely bunch of people, and we called it the Summer Camp. Here's part #1 and part #2 about how it all happened what we've learned. (Btw: stay tuned, the dates for summer camp 2021 are already marked in our calendars…)
There are plenty of unspectacular things that kept us busy, however they were necessary: developing and testing the curriculum, dealing with Berlin's very own bureaucratic Kraken when founding a company, setting up corporate partnerships, updating Zoom every single day... just to name a few. The launch of our bootcamp was originally planned for the second half of 2020, but we've decided to postpone as a result of the volatile outlook caused by corona. But spreading the word about what we're about to launch was never put on hold.
We've started a monthly Open House meetup session (virtually for now), so we can talk directly with folks who are interested in joining our training. It's happening every first Tuesday of the month. It helped us bridge the long cold Berlin winter without the beloved corona-compatible Data Stacks Picnics in the Park, which turned out to be a huge hit.
The need for clear guidance for navigating the world of the data engineering profession seems endless, so we put a lot of effort into sharing our POV. Daniel's monthly curated reading recommendations (aka The Data Janitor Letters) received a lot of positive feedback from the data engineering community. Also, if you are trying to get access to the competences of a data engineer, check out his highly successful guide about getting started with data engineering on a budget.
Yours truly has penned some words about learning paths for data engineers, about the state of bootcamps in general and about data engineer salaries in Germany to increase transparency within the field.
Not enough, you say? We got you: here are some of Daniel's favourite keynotes and you can see him on the stage of various conferences right here. Plus the chat with Tobias Macey from the Data Engineering Podcast about Pipeline Academy's pragmatic and commonsensical approach to data engineering challenges and the bootcamp itself.
Our merchandise was very 2020 as well:
Oh, I've almost forgot: we've launched a short podcast series called #idataengineer to share the perspectives of other data engineers, and for Christmas we’ve opened the 24 tiny virtual windows of our data engineering advent calendar with hints and drops of engineering wisdom for everyone.
Looking at my calendar, we've actually met a lot of tech and data professionals both in-person and via video calls. To those of them reading this: your encouragement and input has been essential for our progress, so shout out to you, the humble and decent people of the tech/data/startup scene of Berlin!
We've been even featured on the popular and trashy @bestofkleinanzeigen instagram account. Everything happened so fast...
We've started supporting companies with their upskilling programs and consult data teams on data engineering topics like infrastructure design and architecture. It's an exciting journey and we're very happy to have smart and engaged startups and scale-ups in our growing clientele.
But our drive to explore and to learn goes even further: currently we're deeply involved in a transatlantic coaching-mentoring program, but this is something for the 2021 recap I guess...
At the very end of 2020 we've been greenlit as an official partner of the Agentur für Arbeit, which means that we can support people who have been made redundant during the pandemic or have to work in Kurzarbeit. Bildungsgutschein is the name of the game.
Kicking off 2021 on a high note: incorporating sustainability into our methodology and data engineering curriculum is something we’re extremely proud of, and we truly believe that it will deliver tangible benefits to our future bootcamp participants.
And there is so much more to come in 2021.
Stay healthy, folks.
