Hello and welcome to the next phase of your Umuzi journey :) You are reading this because we believe that you have the potential to have a high value career in tech, and we want to help you get there. Congrats for making it this far!
In this phase of your journey you’ll be doing a bit of learning on your own. We have a bootcamp coming up and if you aren’t well prepared you wont be able to shine, and we wont be able to get a clear picture of how good you can be.
So please hit this stuff hard! Drive your own learning, hold yourself accountable, and always focus on UNDERSTANDING! This isn’t like high-school, memorising stuff and getting hints isn’t the way to go, understanding is golden.
We’ve shared a bunch of content with you already. Get yourself comfortable with that stuff. Basically you’ll need to:
We want to make sure that our bootcamp helps you in your career. Even if you don’t get into Umuzi you’ll have a few nice things to put on your CV.
But only if you follow our Honor Code.
We at Umuzi really value professional behavior. A lot of professional behavior has to do with: communication, being on time and getting your stuff done.
Be responsive: If someone sends you a message, make sure they know when you have read it. Don’t ignore people. If talking to you feels like talking to a brick wall then you wont fit in here.
Be clear: Whenever you send someone a message, read over it before you press send. Think about it from the perspective of the person who is reading it. Will they understand you? Are you giving them enough information?
Example of bad communication:
applicant: I have a problem
staff member: What is your problem?
applicant: the code wont run
staff member: Is there an error message?
applicant: here is a shakey, blurrey video of my computer: [attatchment: suuuuucks.zip]
staff member: Please send me the error text as actual text
applicant: here is is: [one tiny useless part of the error message]
staff member: Sometimes I wonder how we got this far as a species (quits job)
Example of good communication:
applicant: Hi. I'm struggling to get my code to work. I'm working on this project [link to project]. When I do [X] then [Y] happens. I expected [Z]. It's giving me the following error message: [The full error message as text]
staff member: Here is an explanation [explanation], and here are some resources so you can learn more [resources]. And... I love you (+2 to faith in humanity)
Be Kind Be polite. We aren’t ridgid and formal here, but we do expect you to act respectfully towards the staff and your colleagues. No form of abuse will be tolerated. We are about helping each other to grow.
The ideal: Don’t be late for meetings. And if you are given a deadline then make sure you meet it.
Life is messy sometimes being perfect isn’t always possible. That’s ok, we’re all human and we can understand when thngs are hard. But it is on YOU to communicate effectively.
I’m sure you see the pattern…
Remember that you are here to learn and understand. You will be given projects to do and there will be requirements that you need to meet. Don’t give us half-finished code that doesn’t run.
Write good code that meets all the requirements, and make sure that you understand the code you give us!
The first step is to try to help yourself. The resources we sent you to learn from are pretty great, but Google is also your friend. And StackOverflow is a fantastic resource. https://stackoverflow.com/
Again I’ll say, please focus on understanding! Copy-pasting code you find on the internet will not get you very far.
Once you have attempted to solve your own problems feel free to reach out. You will be connected with some staff members who will be able to support you.
Watch your inbox. You’ll get a few invites.
You will be divided up into groups and each group will have an online meeting. Try arrive a couple of minutes early.
Agenda:
It would be good for you to look at this content ahead of time so you can ask good questions.
The bootcamp will be a 2 week process. We’ll introduce that to you seperately. Try to free up your time so that you can focus 100%. If you have a job, take some leave. During bootcamp we expect you to behave like this is your full-time gig.
Take a look at the following link. It’ll tell you a bit more about what you are signing up for :)
TOPICS: The journey of an Umuzi recruit