Being part of Cycle #1 of the SkaeHub Developer Program
Africa’s digital economy and scene is rapidly growing. Based on a GitHub 2019 report, developers from Africa recorded a 40% growth in open source repositories. This is prime time to take advantage of the digital revolution. I recently was lucky to be one of the candidates for the first cycle of the SkaeHub Developer Program. SkaeHub is a developer talent program that is joining the digital revolution in Africa by providing talent as remote workers. Developers that join the program go through a detailed recruitment search of assessment and training. Companies looking for extra resources are then matched with developers from the vetted pool based on their requirements. SkaeHub recruits talent who work with the latest technologies then train them with technological and soft skills that are key in working in the industry. The developers can then onboard and integrate with the companies easily and start providing value in the shortest time possible. The training program ensures the developers are tech stack and language agnostic making them flexible to learn new tools as needed.
The first cycle of their Developer Accelerator Program began in May 2021, of which I am lucky to be a part. The program involves a four-stage process:
- Online application.
- One month of remote self-study.
- Two weeks of on-site Bootcamp.
- Seven months of onsite tutelage.
At the time of writing this post, we are at the end of the second stage, going through the self-study curriculum. The aim of this post is to provide a retrospective of my personal experience with the program thus far.
The self-study curriculum uses Python as the programming language of choice to help in the demonstration of several Computer Science and programming concepts. The curriculum is a list of resources from several platforms and sources. I thought was a good thing as you get a taste of different voices and point of views. It is a good resource for code newbies as it takes you through the basics that help you get started with software development. I liked that the curriculum also covered working with git for version control and GitHub. There was also a resource on remote work referring to tools and tips on how to effectively work in a remote environment.
I primarily work with PHP but occasionally use Python when writing personal automation scripts and code solutions for CodeWars Katas. I was only going through selected chapters to give myself a refresher on concepts like sorting and recursion. Even though I had knowledge of Python, I still managed to learn something new. If you are interested you can check out the full curriculum using this link.
We were given two weeks to go through the material after which there was a timed assessment on what was covered. The questions covered analytical questions based on the Python programming language. There were some questions with hidden gotchas that if you weren’t careful you would think you aced but actually did not. However, I believe I managed to go through the questions without a problem after going through the material.
One thing I like about the SkaeHub team is how they handle their communication. Having explicit and clear instructions that do not leave room for assumptions. I really appreciate that and has made for a good experience with the process thus far. I am looking forward to progressing further in the process and see what I can learn from their tutelage.
