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Iron Yard Hopes Coding Helps Populate Tech Sector in Little Rock

6 min read

Jacklyn Carroll of Little Rock has a diploma from the University of Memphis and a graduation certificate from the Iron Yard coding school in Little Rock.

One of the two is about to land her a good job.

Carroll, who attended Parkview High School, graduated from Memphis in 2013 with a degree in English. In the first year after graduation, that degree got her internships in Little Rock and Memphis but no permanent job leads.

Within days of receiving her graduation certificate from the Iron Yard’s three-month coding school in Little Rock, the first installment of which ended earlier this month, Carroll was fielding interview requests. She went on two of them last week, at least one of which she expected to result in a job offer.

Carroll was one of 12 graduates who completed the Iron Yard’s inaugural Little Rock cohort — a highly intensive, three-month boot camp in which students attend class and work for 60-plus hours a week and are trained to come out of the course job-ready.

The Iron Yard’s first local cohort ended in early October — the second session begins Monday — and Carroll and six other Little Rock students completed a front-end engineering course while five others took back-end engineering. Two students were employed before the courses were complete, and the rest have received offers or completed multiple interviews. Nine of the 12 were mid-career students; the rest recent college graduates.

For Carroll, coding represented a way to change career paths and stay true to her creative roots. Coding wasn’t boring technical jargon but rather another way to create things. An Iron Yard digital billboard that she drove by in Little Rock was both a literal and figurative sign and convinced her to launch the new career path.

“I love being able to create, whether through writing, art or design,” she said. “Web design is a field that really interests me, and I wanted to learn skills that would help me create a website on both ends — the design end and the coding end.”

Mary Dunlap, director of the Little Rock campus, said courses are determined by local demand. Right now, that means front- and back-end engineering, which is where most Iron Yard locations start.

For those whose language skills are limited to the spoken and written word, “back-end engineering” focuses on the databases and user interface frameworks needed to run Web apps. Back-end developers deploy fully formed products to the cloud, integrate them with online services, and enable mobile and front-end apps, according to a course description on the Iron Yard website.

“Front-end engineering,” meanwhile, creates the experiences in Web browsers with which users interact. Front-end developers deliver the “user experience.”

Dunlap said the school wants to help its students tap into what it sees as an emerging tech market in Little Rock.

“We believe in creating exceptional growth and mentorship for our students, which allows them to seek and launch a career in technology,” she said. “Our students pursue a new career because of the immense growth in technology, as well as a passion for starting a new career.”

Much has been written in the last few years about the state’s emerging tech startup ecosystem. Little Rock Tech Park Director Brent Birch believes Arkansas has the potential to become a regional if not national player in the tech sector. But an emerging tech ecosystem needs developers to populate it.

Mike Smith, a former Stephens Inc. executive who advises and invests in Arkansas tech startups, believes aspiring entrepreneurs need to have easy access to tech talent.

“If you’re gonna start up, most of the time you need some tech talent on the team,” he said. “There are development talent shortages everywhere, and we’re not immune. We have talent here that’s just as good; we just need more of it.”

Degrees, Certificates and ROI

As more Americans suspect traditional college degrees are delivering less return on their investment, coding schools like the Iron Yard are filling a fast-growing niche. More than 80 in-person coding schools exist now in the U.S. The Iron Yard, which started in Greenville, South Carolina, has 19 U.S. locations and one in London.

More growth is planned; Iron Yard founder Peter Barth wants to open an Iron Yard campus in every U.S. metropolitan area with a population of at least 500,000. The school has graduated more than 650 since it was launched in 2013, and Barth said graduates are finding employment within three months of completing a course.

And in almost all cases, those students are finding jobs with salaries well above the local median annual income. PayScale.com says the average annual salary for software developers in the U.S. is more than $67,000. The median household income in Arkansas, according to the 2012 U.S. Census, was $40,531.

Iron Yard spokesperson Lelia King said local graduates should find plenty of opportunities to land high-paying jobs.

“There are at least 20 companies in Little Rock hiring software developers right now, so demand is definitely there,” she said.

One of those companies looking for local tech talent is digital creative agency Few, the outfit behind the annual Made by Few tech conference. Few has partnered with the Iron Yard to offer a $2,000 scholarship and a paid, three-month internship for a member of the front-end cohort that begins this week. (Iron Yard tuition is $12,000 per course, and financial assistance is available. See Arkansas and the Federal College Scorecard for a look at costs at Arkansas colleges and universities.)

Chuck Foster, vice president of technology and operations for corporate incentives program provider Perks, based in Little Rock and with offices in Seattle, Miami and the U.K., believes the market can support an influx of developers. More local tech talent is right up his firm’s alley.

“Perks is excited about the Iron Yard starting a Little Rock campus,” he said. “We’re glad to have them producing quality, local candidates with experience creating ideas, working on teams and working on projects solving real-world problems. We believe the Iron Yard can play a role in creating and retaining development talent in central Arkansas. We’re looking forward to having their graduates join our team.”

Coding Catches Fire

Coding has caught fire in Arkansas beyond the walls of the Iron Yard’s River Market campus.

In addition to Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s computer science initiative for Arkansas high schools and his emphasis on STEM education, the Blur State coding school was opened this past summer in Fayetteville; 100 Girls of Code chapters were launched in central and northwest Arkansas; central Arkansas resource centers such as the Innovation Hub and the Venture Center are offering programs designed to assist and train local coders and developers; companies such as Young Coders Academy in Cabot are teaching coding to younger students; and the fast-growing Little Rock Tech Fest took place Friday at the Statehouse Convention Center.

Recent Iron Yard grad Corbin Otwell of Little Rock earned a degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas in 2009, and like many recent college grads, was interested in branching out. Post-graduation, he interned at CJRW in Little Rock and worked for Comcast Spotlight before leaving in June to enroll in the Iron Yard’s front-end course.

Otwell had a job lined up soon after he finished the class. He starts his new career as a developer for a Little Rock company, which he declined to name, this week.

“The Iron Yard definitely helped me get meetings with people that otherwise wouldn’t have been as interested,” he said. “Employers who had been to open house events and our Demo Day were very receptive to meeting with us and always had many questions about the program.”

Otwell said the Web is the medium where the most exciting things are happening, and coding seemed a smart way to be a part of those changes.

“It’s pretty clear that the future of journalism and marketing are headed toward more engaging experiences that the Web and now apps afford,” he said.

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