Coding Dojo: A Global Leader in Education Technology, Corporate Training, and Workforce Development.

Coding Dojo was established to regularize learning and transform lives through digital literacy. Co-Founder Michael Choi had trouble hiring skilled and talented software engineers for his startup, so he decided to create a program to train his own engineers. When CEO and business Co-Founder Richard Wang met Michael in 2013, he instantly recognized the power of the curriculum he had developed. It provided accessibility for anyone to learn how to code and pursue the amazing career opportunities that come with these skills.

Since then, Coding Dojo has successfully scaled, growing from 30 to 175+ employees, an ever-expanding B2B program, and a global footprint through programs in Latin America, Kosovo, Chile, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere.

Today, Coding Dojo upskills and reskills workers by training them with in-demand technology skills. Millions of workers around the world are either unemployed or underemployed – meaning they’re working dead-end jobs with little or no way to improve their situation.

Meanwhile, employers are hungry for tech-savvy talent. Coding Dojo exists to fill this vacuum by training workers for the digital economy and fulfilling the talent needs of employers around the world. Companies pursuing digital transformation can use the Coding Dojo curricula and proprietary learning management system, the Learn Platform, for in-house training and onboarding programs to increase their talent pools, employee retention, and lower the cost of recruitment.

“Coding Dojo works with organizations ranging from universities and governments to Fortune 100 companies and startups to fully manage and deliver their reskilling, upskilling, or other digital transformation initiatives.”

Richard Wang, CEO, helped us getting a deeper understanding of the company

Tell us about your full range of services.

Coding Dojo is a leading education technology company that offers a three-full-stack computer programming bootcamp, as well as courses on Data Science, Cybersecurity, and other emerging technologies. We offer self-paced, part-time, full-time, and onsite (once it’s safe in light of COVID-19) programs that are designed to train students to become self-sufficient technology professionals, regardless of their technical background.

In addition to the above, we have invested 7 years and millions of dollars into the creation and refinement of the Learn Platform. Years of iteration driven by market feedback has yielded a robust educational experience for our corporate partners and B2C students alike.

The Learn Platform is used by organizations ranging from universities and governments to Fortune 100 companies. Our partners utilize it to fully manage and deliver their reskilling, upskilling, or other digital transformation initiatives. The Learn Platform is AI-enabled to provide unmatched insight and management options to, CIOs, CLOs, or other education-focused professionals. By using entrance exams and surveys, in tandem with machine learning algorithms, we utilize predictive analytics to identify top performers or learners who will need extra assistance before the program even starts.

The machine learning capabilities can also identify where learners are struggling and what content we can improve. By creating heatmaps of time spent on each assignment or task, the Learn Platform enables both a micro and macro view of a program’s success. Surveys and other feedback loops can easily be implemented to gauge participants’ satisfaction levels or suggestions for areas of improvement.

We continually update and iterate tools and technology on the Learn Platform based on programmatic learnings and new technology offerings. Custom machine learning algorithms can also be implemented to further boost the platform’s predictive analytics and learning science capabilities.

Q. ‘Coding Dojo is a global educational institution that is transforming lives through digital literacy.’ Splendid. Would you like to talk about this a bit more?

Many people feel they have been, or will soon be, left behind by the growing importance of technology in our economy. Through accelerated training programs, our proprietary Learning Management System, and dedicated career services, Coding Dojo is helping retrain and upskill workers to address the growing workforce skills gap, and empowering individuals to pursue meaningful careers in the digital economy. We’re also helping companies big and small transform their organizations by providing bespoke education and corporate training programs to reach their desired learning outcomes.

Q. What are the innovative courses you offer to students that motivate learning?

For our B2B partners, we offer everything from content creation and delivery, to program management, tracking, analytics, and much more. We deliver tailored and all-inclusive learning solutions that can quickly retrain or upskill workers to prepare them for a 21st Century economy and organizations in need of a technically skilled workforce.

For our B2C students, Coding Dojo offers two full-time programs and six part-time programs, all of which are fully online. All students, including online, enjoy live, immersive instruction, mentoring and career services, and a robust employment network. In addition to Coding Dojo’s full stack, data science, and cybersecurity bootcamps, the school also maintains an introductory workshop teaching web development, and four self-paced courses in Python, Java, MERN, and C# .net.

Q. What makes Coding Dojo unique in the Coding Boot Camp space?

Flexible and modular curriculum design: Through our B2B, B2Government, and B2University programs, we provide educational content, learning analytics, progress tracking, assignments, and instruction for live, onsite, online, or blended learning to deliver outcomes-driven experiences. Organizations have full control and customization of their learning initiatives so they can manage and deliver employee onboarding, reskilling or upskilling programs, and other educational content.

Number of stacks taught: We teach three while our competitors teach one. When students learn more stacks, they emerge as more versatile developers with more job options. Additionally, by learning three stacks our students start to notice the lexical similarities between each one, and it’s easier for them to learn more stacks or technologies in the future. This is similar to learning spoken languages – if you learn Spanish, learning Portuguese is a bit easier due to the lexical similarities.

Curriculum: We continually refine our course materials to reflect new or rising technologies and corresponding job demand in our markets. We provide our corporate partners and students with a veteran curriculum that is proven to work as the most effective approach to training both experienced technologists and students new to the space. Plus, the program is delivered via a proprietary Learning Management System that features powerful machine learning capabilities, 100s of hours of content, and modular learning tracks that can be customized based on the partner’s or student’s desired outcomes.

Career support: We work with our students to identify their strengths and provide a wide range of career services that not only land them a job, but also put them on a path toward their desired career. Additionally, our career services are offered to all alumni for life, there is no expiration date, so alumni can get assistance for their second, third, fourth jobs and beyond.  

Inclusion: We proudly train students from all walks of life, and that’s because anyone with the necessary drive should have an equal opportunity to start a career in technology. We regularly launch initiatives, partnerships, scholarships, and other campaigns to make our technology education more inclusive and accessible. Through these programs, individuals who otherwise would not have the means to participate gain access to the training and resulting skill set.

Q. How does Coding Dojo foster an entrepreneurial and growth-focused environment for its team members?

We also live by our Execution Culture Principles of speed, continuous improvement, measurement, focus, accountability, doing complete work, and attacking the gap. These values are our North Star when making decisions or working through problems.

Even as we continue to grow, our primary focus is finding new and innovative ways to better serve our students. Customer obsession is central to the entrepreneurial mindset and this helps frame how each and every Coding Dojo employee tackles a challenge or accomplishes their goals.

Q. In what industries are your clients? Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

Our corporate partners range from governments and NGOs to corporations and universities. The need to train a tech-savvy workforce is widespread across many industries and organization sizes. Due to our innovative curricula and learning science, as well as the breadth of our content and flexibility for delivery, we are able to deliver rich and adaptive corporate training experiences for any type of learning outcome, organization, or industry.

Our B2C students come from all walks of life and prior professions. Through our programs, anyone from construction workers to fashion designers to business consultants and more can learn the skills they need to start a career in tech.

Q. How do you empower your employees to grow? Tell us about the company’s work culture.

Empowering employees to grow and achieve their potential is a central focus. We trust our employees to do their jobs professionally and efficiently. If they make mistakes, that’s fine, as long as there is a lesson to learn. For every initiative, we either succeed or we learn something new – both are wins. With this mindset, we are not afraid of taking risks to pursue innovation, and we encourage our employees to think the same way. In doing so, we not only grow as a company but also each of our employees grow in their professional capacity.

Q. Will Coding Dojo be expanding, bringing on any new products or services that we should be aware of?

Coding Dojo will continue iterating its current curriculum to match industry trends, as well as expand our courses to offer new programs for our corporate partners, as well as reach new B2C students.

Q. What is the next step for the company as it continues to grow?

We are determined to continue growing Coding Dojo as a preeminent source of technical training around the world. There’s massive demand for engineers and developers in the digital economy, and Coding Dojo will be a major supplier of that talent and provide economic opportunity for workers and organizations globally.

Meet the man behind the success of Coding Dojo

Richard Wang is the CEO of the national technology education company Coding Dojo, a Venture Partner with NextGen Venture Partners, and serves as a Committee Member for various Future of Work and education focused leadership councils. As a leading education and technology executive, Richard is committed to creating economic mobility for underserved communities and increasing opportunities for individuals to reskill or upskill so they can participate in the digital economy. At the age of 13, he was the first member of his family to immigrate from China to the United States. Richard believes programming literacy could offer the same economic lift for those in the U.S. and strives to create opportunities to help others transform their lives.

“The innovative curricula and learning science, as well as the breadth of content and flexibility for delivery, enables rich and adaptive corporate training experiences for any type of learning outcome, organization, or industry.”