By Fatos Çoçoli
As demand for software engineers in Albania skyrocketed in 2020-2021, the opportunities that the Fourth Industrial Revolution provides to our youth are considerable. All our young people need is to learn how to become coders.
Why a coder?
A coder is a professional who uses computer programming languages to communicate with computers and software and make them perform certain tasks. Many coders around the world are self-made. They do not have any kind of formal training and instead teach themselves how to write and interpret a coding language.
There are countless books, web pages and how-to videos on writing code. Most coders begin by learning HTML and CSS. These are two most basic coding languages that allow a youngster (and not only him/her) to create websites. The next step is learning how to create an interactive website. For this, you can learn JavaScript, Python, PHP or SQL.
A coder can then easily become a developer, application developer, programmer, software engineer and full-stack developer.
A lot of young people in Albania think to enroll in university and wait for four long years, before becoming a software engineer. Many universities here in Albania or abroad teach coding skills, offering a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in software development. The chance now in Albania is to not wait for long years, but become a coder through intensive and special training in 9-12 months. These training centers (schools) are called coding bootcamps. It is an experience that comes from Silicon Valley in the USA and has proved successful in many parts of the world. Now this experience is available also in Albania.
How?
Grant Van Cleve is an entrepreneur who happened to see Albania first in 1991. After experiences with more than 30 successful start ups in Silicon Valley in the USA, he returns to Albania as Chairman of the Board and Co-founder of Holberton School Albania, to start “breeding” these “coders”, these software engineers that our economy needs so badly.
Mr. Dritan Mezini, a promoter of start ups in Albania, says that there are tens of Albanian consolidated companies, perhaps even hundreds of them, that declare to be in need for at least one to two computer software experts. According to him, training coders is the right way to catalyze and motivate hundreds, if not thousands of young people to stay in Albania and get employed from local or international companies by working from here.
“The demand in the Albanian market for software engineers has doubled in the last year. Add to this the gigantic need for additional tech workers from nearshore markets. Holberton School provides the perfect platform for scaling up such coders’ training and producing talent to enter at a higher level than either bootcamps or traditional university programs. A true game-changer for Albania, and then the region!”, highlights Mr. Daniel Schroeder, CEO in Silicon Valley enterprise and co-founder and investor of Holberton School Albania.
From January 2022, Holberton School, the well-known Silicon Valley bootcamp starts in Tirana with the first group of students. It is the first of its kind in Southwestern Europe and Albania is the 20th country to host such a campus worldwide.
It is not a regular school and it has no traditional teachers. Every student becomes a mentor, as helping each other is the safest way to cross the finish line towards the desired career in computer science and software engineering. Mr. Mezini says that given the demand, a coder formed here can get a job of USD 1,200 per week in a couple of weeks, while working from her/his home in Albania.
Holberton School Albania seems to have a platform to quickly escalate the training of software developers and produce talents capable of entering the job market at the highest level, within a period of 9 – 12 months. Students are provided with the contemporary skills required to compete successfully in local, regional and international markets. Through the global network of this school and the mutual collaboration between them, every student becomes an integral part of a worldwide community of computer software developers and employers.
Holberton in Albania plans to enroll 100 students for 2022 and 3,500 students in the next 5 years. It will provide best-in-class Full-stack Web Development, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), Linux Programming, Advanced Algorithms, and Blockchain curriculums.
The hope is building ground to keep the youth in Albania, while from here employing it in hundreds and hundreds of companies here, in the region and around the globe.
