Ruby on Rails academy

To ease the visualization you can compare an academy with an online course you might have completed in the past. However, we’d like to strongly emphasize that it’s not the same as any regular course. Instead it is a combination of a supportive and structured learning journey and real-life work environment simulation. And last but not least: any partner company academy (the ones labeled with any other company name than nerds.family) aims to offer the best performing students a position as a junior dev within the very company. Not like any other course - told you.

Within an academy participants or students (that’s what we prefer to call our nerds ♥️) interact and learn professional coding skills, soft skills and technologies through simulated real-life employment conditions and live interaction with team members, alumni and mentors. Let’s point out some key facts on what an academy looks like:

• Learning what a Junior Developer’s work environment usually looks like, i.e. the project you’ll work on is based on business logic and your workflow aligns with the standard of any dev team
• User story and acceptance criteria to meet, i.e. the story context and the scope of tasks assigned to be performed.
• Each task has learning materials and hints that are supportive to solving the task, so you are never left alone with finding your way through the academy.
• Peer Review, i.e. you show your code to fellow group members to help you or provide you their feedback and vice versa.
• Mentor’s Code Review, i.e. you submit your code for review by your mentor (each of who are experienced Senior Devs) just like any Junior Dev submits his work for review to a Senior Developer (the so-called Pull Request).

Everything during the program is designed to best reflect the experience of working as a Junior Developer while abstaining new coding skills and professionalizing your competencies. Not to forget the most important parts: enjoying the growth journey with other fellow juniors, soon to be juniors, code enthusiasts and maybe soon to be friends and the probability of impressing your potential future employer while doing so (and landing the dream job).

There are several key differences between our academies and single projects that we offer. To name the most relevant, it would be the following: - projects do not include mentor reviews of your code (peer review only) - projects do not offer any team experience (you work your project by yourself) - projects are not tied to any talent referral or job application (but grow your portfolio and skill set) - no free career and learning consultation

As you might see, projects are simply speaking the ideal choice for you if you are on the look out for e.g. new experiences, skill growth, variety or portfolio extension. While academies are rather job-oriented and focused on professionalizing your skill set, providing you a real life work-environment experience and connecting you with the ideal employer to ease your career start.

For all people drawn to and familiar with computers, already having some first experience with code or anyone wanting to get started with it. Also beneficial to:

• Junior Developers who already work in other technologies and want to discover new ones.
• Junior Developers who are looking for a job (the very first one or up for a job change).
• Students who are serious about their IT career and want to take the initial step.
• Code-amateurs wishing to prove their potential.
• Everyone that is starting their adventure within IT and discovering code.

You can apply for jobs at our partner companies through their active academies to maximize your chances to actually land the desired and offered position (check our currently active academies for that). If you don’t want to invest the time and effort into academy participation, you can submit your application(s) directly to any available job offers on our job board (check our currently available job offers for that).

Please note:

• not every job offer is tied to an academy, some can only be applied to directly through your user profile
• not every academy offers the possibility of a direct application, without attending the academy
• our partner companies decide according to their needs and preferences whether they wish to offer both application ways or just one of them

Whether you will receive a job offer after academy completion depends on various factors but especially on your performance. Please keep in mind that only the best performing students receive a job offer by the concerned academy’s partner company (free academies) or even nerds.family (if you’re completing a paid academy or if we are in big need to grow our team. :))

Either way, if you give your best and show your dedication, chances are high that you will be the lucky one or one of the lucky ones to receive the job offer after academy completion. In case this won’t be the case, hold your horses - it’s not game over yet! There are two more options waiting for you: You might either receive a job offer from nerds.family to join our team (given we are on the lookout for new team members) or one of our partner companies might reach out to you thanks to the talent referral we do for our students.

FREE academy

Pros

• Self-paced learning
• Peer code review (grow by helping others grow and vice versa)
• Mentor’s code review (experienced devs will provide you feedback on your code)
• Real-world work environment experience
• Gain crucial soft skills (teamwork, constructive feedback, effective communication)
• Support by our active community of like-minded peers on Discord
• After completion: a ready-to-sell product built by you
• Job offer for Junior Dev position at partner company after completion (for best performing students)*
• Talent-referral by nerds.family after completion *for details please always check the concerned academy’s page

Cons

• Limited seats available (depending on our partner company’s needs of positions to fill)
• Application required (you need to successfully pass a test assignment to enter the academy)
• Receiving a job offer by partner company after successful academy completion is reserved to best performing students only
• Only available when open vacancies of partner companies need to be filled

PAID academy

Pros

• Unlimited seats available
• Easy access - no application or test assignment needed
• Available at any time
• Self-paced learning
• “Ready-to-sell” product after academy completion to upgrade your portfolio
• Peer code review (grow by helping others grow and vice versa)
• Mentor’s code review (experienced devs will provide you feedback on your code)
• Real-world work environment experience
• Gain crucial soft skills (teamwork, constructive feedback, effective communication)
• Support by our active community of like-minded peers on Discord
• Access to a private Discord channel
• Talent-referral to partner companies through nerds.family (after academy completion)
• Potential job offer from nerds.family* *provided we have open vacancies

Cons

• Not necessarily tied to any open vacancies (only if open vacancies are available; check the concerned academy’s page for details)

The average duration of an academy is 2-4 months with an estimated daily workload of 2 hours. It may slightly differ between some academies and very much depends on your performance and dedication.

The registration process for any academy always requires you to create your free account with nerds.family as the very first step. Afterwards, the process differs a little, depending on what type of academy you decide to join (a free or a paid academy).

FREE academy

• Log in to your nerds.family account
• Open the academy page
• Click to join the academy
• Fill out the application form
• Complete a test assignment
• Wait for company’s feedback
• If your application has been accepted, you will receive the access to the academy
• Start your journey, enjoy!

Paid academy

• Log in to your nerds.family account
• Open the academy page
• Click to book a seat within the academy
• Complete your payment
• Receive the access to the academy right away
• Start your journey, enjoy!

There are several paths you can choose from at nerds.family to land your IT job successfully. Let's have a closer look on these:

Free Academies

By joining free academies you enter a determined and guided path of professionalizing your skills and simply leveling up within a short period of time. With the goal in mind of bringing yourself in the position of having the required skill set and experience to start working as a Junior Developer, you will be able to impress potential employers with your proven dedication and qualification. The traditional application is being replaced by your performance and completion of the academy - forget about endless writing of resumes, CVs or motivation letters. After having successfully completed one of the academies your user profile is being forwarded to your potential employer (our partner companies), providing you a great benefit compared to any of your competitors during job search and making the application as hassle-free as possible for you. On top of that, in case you happen to not receive a job offer, nerds.family will actively promote and refer you as a proven talent to our partner companies. Fingers crossed!

Paid Academies

By joining paid academies you enter a determined and guided path of professionalizing your skills and simply leveling up within a short period of time.

After having successfully completed your academy attendance, you will be in the position to land your desired job by having gained the needed skills, build an impressive user performance profile and project portfolio proving that, ready to impress potential employers. nerds.family supports you with that by actively promoting and referring you to our partner companies as a promising talent, until you land your dream job. So don’t be surprised when being approached by our partner companies right after academy completion. P.S. We even might send you an offer to join our team.

Job offers

By going the quickest way possible you have the possibility to see currently available jobs on our job board and apply right away. You benefit from nerds.family having trust in our partner companies and only cooperating with companies whose culture and work ethics we approve of. Though keep in mind that your chances of being the chosen one are significantly lower than by attending an academy (given there is an active academy for the concerned position). It’s up to you to go the very traditional way and submit a resume via email, but let’s not talk about the probable success-rate of that.

For developer work and functions performed, IT relies on both: individual and group work. The entire program of nerds.family academies was created around the goal of letting our students experience both - independent work and the benefits of supportive teamwork. What you won’t find is group assignments though.

However, if you wish to work fully independently (meaning all by yourself) you should check out our projects.

When talking IT, the communication language within the real world work environment is primarily English. In diverse teams and the day to day tasks of a developer, team meetings, demo presentation etc. English is often the only common language. Thus our academies are in English. This includes all materials, tasks and hints. Besides that our entire app interface is also created in English only.

FYI: Tasks and user stories are in text format and the mentor's solutions are video format.

Of course! You will be able to make the application available online immediately after the first sprint. Please note that during an academy we do not learn the front-end, so it is solely up to you how your application will look like.

When attending and successfully completing academies, you benefit from nerds.family actively advocating and promoting you as a proven and trusted talent towards our partner companies. That means that we actively approach and inform our partners about your qualifications and refer you as an ideal candidate to fill their open position (provided you meet the role requirements). That results in you having a much easier access to great, reliable job offers and employers. From our experience this also results in highly successful long-term employment and career development. Win-win!

The whole experience of nerds.family academies is unlike any other. Just like we perceive and value the uniqueness of our students, so is the set up of academies designed to meet those unique needs, strengths and weaknesses to help you grow in the best way possible. The assignments are somewhat “up to you” (interactive, conditional design). Throughout any academy, you will build your own fully functional application - by yourself but with our support at any step along the way. While doing so, each of your decisions on how to implement the current task and each line of code you write has a direct impact on what your next task will be. At the end of each academy there will be participants having built the very same application but each of their experiences and steps on getting there will be unique. Same applies to their learnings.