The demand for developers is rising every single day. Between taking a ride home with Lyft, getting that last minute gift on Amazon, or telling Siri to play your favorite song, the world is becoming more and more reliant on technology. With all of these new and exciting services, the demand for developers to build these services increases as well. The growing market shows in the statistics from the Department of Labor: software jobs are growing at over three times the average job growth rate.
The growing market is excellent for current developers, but it introduces a gap in the workforce. With the skyrocketing demand, it’s difficult for the current workforce to provide companies with enough technical skills, and person-power to be able to keep up. Here at SDG, we are continually filling that gap with new, excited and passionate developers. We are constantly iterating and creating ways to fuel the workforce. Unfortunately, the standard model of a standard tuition-based program is not a one size fits all solution. There are still gaps in the training of new developers.
Consequently, the gap in skill places enormous constraints on companies’ ability to grow. A specific example of this is our Advisory Board member, Proforma. Proforma was looking to grow their existing developer team rapidly, with highly skilled individuals. To achieve this, Proforma and SDG worked together to pioneer a workforce initiative. Together, we created a training course outside of our standard tuition-based program to help build up their development team. This unique education model allowed our academic team to work with existing Proforma developers and craft a tailored course to build full stack web developers who were ready to contribute on day one.
After the success of the workforce initiative, Proforma has sponsored two other students through the tuition-based program to continue to build up their dev team.
Our mission at SDG is to provide web development education to any individuals looking to skill-up or change careers, and teaming up with companies has proven to be a way to not only help build up the tech community but also to help strengthen and grow companies from within. Workforce initiatives, joint training, and sponsorship, ideas pioneered in collaboration with Proforma, create opportunities for local companies and the community to build or augment their existing dev team with fresh talent, that have new ideas and a drive to succeed. SDG’s joint training and workforce initiatives assist companies in identifying, training, onboarding, and improving their software development team. We are focused on being a program that meets the needs of our community and excited to have companies such as Proforma that we can help make that focus a reality.
Don’t take our word for it, see what Proforma has to say:
The Academy at Suncoast Developers Guild Testimonial from Proforma
As the Tampa Bay technology community continues to expand and become a center for innovation and software development, the current workforce is not keeping pace with the required technical skills and the available resources are inadequate to support the demand. When Proforma looked to rapidly expand our Technology team, we decided to partner with Suncoast Developers Guild to create an integrated approach to talent acquisition and skills development essential for entry-level employment.
The result was an innovative workforce preparedness program that provided Proforma with an influx of well-trained talent and provided motivated candidates with a valuable educational program that guaranteed full-time employment upon successful course completion.
The Proforma/SDG partnership selected passionate junior level candidates and created an intensive training curriculum. This customized curriculum would fine-tune technology concepts and focus on the skill sets necessary to be successful at Proforma.
SDG’s core curriculum of modern web development, as well as full-stack applications, was a perfect fit for Proforma. SDG’s approach to education is grounded in a solid base of research and best practices. Their performance-based learning curriculum guides students through an intense 12-week process that demands the mastery of concepts in a fast-paced environment. The curriculum culminates with a final capstone project that will actually be implemented in Proforma’s technology.
Central to the success of this program was the true partnership that developed between Proforma and SDG. Frequent interaction between the Proforma technology team, the SDG instructors and the candidates created an exceptional learning environment. The partnership allowed for incoming candidates to receive detailed exposure to Proforma’s technology stack and receive an experience that is hard to create in a classroom environment.
This program was extremely successful for SDG, Proforma, the candidates and the Tampa Bay technology community at large. Proforma would highly recommend the SDG program to anyone looking to further their career in the technology field. We also look forward to partnering with SDG on many more projects in the future.
Suncoast Developers Guild is looking to take successes to next level. If your company needs quality developers, contact us and let’s set up an exploratory meeting and see what magic can happen.
