Resilient Coders
We make meaningful change by training people of color for high growth careers as software engineers, and connect them with jobs.
🦾EQUITY IN ACCESS TO THE TECH ECONOMY🔌
Boston is the most economically divided city in the country. The median household net worth of a White family in this region is $247,500. The median household net worth of a Black family in the same region is $8. We need to bring back the Black middle class that was eradicated in the sixties and seventies. We need to elevate our Latinx neighbors to economic empowerment. We cannot wait for college to suddenly become the great leveling force that it pretends to be. We must build our own path.
Resilient Coders is the future of workforce development: One that is unapologetically and radically equity-led. The vehicle through which we do our work is a highly competitive nonprofit coding bootcamp for PoC that connects graduates with high growth careers as software engineers. We do this work not because we think tech is cute; but because our city needs to build pathways to prosperity that are equitably accessible, sidestepping the artificial and racist/classist barriers that preclude too many Bostonians from participating in the city's wealth generation. Our current system is both morally and economically unsustainable. We represent an alternative.
ALWAYS ACTIONABLE🚀 NEVER PERFORMATIVE🎭
We are Resilient. We are Activists. We embrace Diversity. We build Community. We work with Urgency. The most important thing to each of our team members is the fight. That's the "Why." Everything else is detail.
Diversity is just the vehicle to Equity. It's a Trojan Horse: Totally meaningless without the subsequent battle for Troy. Without the intentional recalibration of power, diversity is an elaborate piece of decoration.
Equity suggests intentional adjustment to power dynamics so that we may eventually have justice. For example: A coding bootcamp for people of color is an adjustment of power. It's a temporary intervention. If we're successful, a few years from now, coding bootcamps for people of color won't have to exist. That will be justice.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are all different facets of the same effort: The recalibration of power such that we may one day have justice. Inclusion means inclusion in power. It means this person has real authority, or is on track to have real authority. Hiring a Black person into a dead-end temp job is diversity without inclusion. Placing that person on a track towards a position of strategic leadership and influence within the organization is Inclusion.
✨We are the Trojan Horse✨ We have infiltrated the walled city of Troy. Our work is to prepare the generation of new leaders, whose first task will be to tear down the wall.
REPRESENTATION AND INCLUSION MATTERS🌎
All of RC staff currently are Black or Latinx. All of our students are People of Color(POC). Our alumni have real power and influence over the strategic direction of the organization. We have alumni representation on our Board, and are building a discrete Alumni Council with authority over the classroom and the staff, students, and mentors in it.
🧘🏾♀️LEADERSHIP X EMPLOYEE SUPPORT🧘🏽♂️
Our people come first. We believe a company's output or product is just a vehicle through which you can sustain a company that sustains its people; in other words, work should work for the worker. We've written a little bit about this in our call to allies to organize for equitable employment at their companies.
Resilient Coders is a 6-person startup, so we have the benefit of being able to provide a personalized approach to support. We start by listening. And we provide the support that each person needs, whatever that might be.
OUR INTERVIEW PROCESS
Step 1: Please send an email to hiring@resilientcoders.org, with your resume attached and the initials of our Chief of Staff in the subject line, along with the position you’re interested in. Please let us know, in your email, why you’re right for this role.
Step 2: We may invite you, within a week, to respond to a brief online survey in lieu of a phone screen. We do regret that we’re unable to respond to all applicants.
Step 3: You'll be invited to interview remotely with our Chief of Staff and our Director of Community Engagement.
Step 4: Quick assignment: For the Development Associate position, we'll want to see your writing. So we may ask you to prepare a short blurb (500 words max) telling a prospective funder why we're interested in equity, not diversity. For the sales role, we may ask you to record a short video, pitching to a hypothetical CTO about hiring one of our alumni.
Step 5: You'll meet (separately) on the same day with our Executive Director, and then with the rest of the team, all remotely.
BENEFITS 🏥 ✈️
Health insurance plus vision and dental
401k, plus matching
Regarding PTO: We technically have a minimum (not maximum) of 2 weeks PTO, and we encourage everyone to take the time they need to bring clarity, energy, and focus to their work.