Code Fellows is heading south.
The Seattle-based programming bootcamp that guarantees its students a salary of at least $60,000 after graduation is expanding to Portland, Ore.
Code Fellows will initially offer its 4-week Foundations I course beginning Nov. 3 until Nov. 26 in the Rose City. The program will then expand its curriculum and offer more advanced courses that teach specific software stacks, including “Foundations II,” “Bootcamp,” and “Dev Accelerator.”
Code Fellows CEO Kristin Smith, who took over in May, called Portland one of the “fastest-growing tech communities in the country with a wealth of software programming and app development job opportunities.”
“Our aim is to help cultivate local programming talent by teaching the skills that companies of all sizes in Portland are seeking,” Smith said in a statement.
The rise of tech startups in the Portland area is something we’ve documented on GeekWire for the past few years. In fact, we noticed it again last month when we drove down to PDX and hosted the final leg of a Tech Crawl, where we had the opportunity to meet countless entrepreneurs and engineers from the Portland area.
“The tech community is attracting young people from all over the country,” Abby Collins, senior account executive at Open Sesame, told us in August. “Even though there’s a really entrenched core group of people, you’re always going to see new faces because companies are growing so rapidly that it’s really changing the face of our whole economy, quite frankly.”
Some of the Portland’s founders and CEOs think that their home can one day become a top destination for entrepreneurial innovation thanks to not only the fast-growing tech scene, but also its unique cultural qualities.
“We won’t compete with Facebook and Google on starting salaries,” Elemental CEO Sam Blackman said at TechFestNW last month. “But we will compete on being a great place to live, work, and raise a family.”
This marks the first time that Code Fellows has offered classes outside of Seattle. The organization is also considering expansion to Detroit, Chicago, New York and Kansas City, but nothing is set in stone.
Code Fellows, which launched in January 2013 and has graduated more than 250 developers from its 8-week advanced training program, is holding an Open House in Portland on Oct. 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Addo Building.
