Are you tired of your soul-sucking commute, uninspiring workplaces that keep you from your actual life, or the daily grind of office politics and your controlling boss? Join us at BullCon18 for an interactive workshop + career assessment designed to get you out of the cubicle and into the freedom of a remote career ASAP.
We caught up with Maryn of Skillcrush to get a sneak peak on what to expect this year. Check it out below!
Hi Maryn, we’re so happy to be working with Skillcrush for The Bullish Conference! First: everyone at Skillcrush works remotely, right? Where are you working from now and how awesome is it?
We can’t wait to see you in Palm Springs for #BULLCON18.
Yes, all of our Skillcrushers work remotely across the map from Finland to New York City – we even have two team members traveling the world right now with Remote Year!
Confession: I woke up early this morning and worked a few hours in bed and then will be working from Pismo Beach, CA later today (hopefully in a jacuzzi). It’s my birthday week, so I’m treating myself to a little getaway.
So what exactly is Skillcrush, and who is it for?
Skillcrush is a digital tech education company designed for beginners to learn the tech skills they need to find higher-paying and more flexible careers. It is our mission to make tech more inclusive for women and to give them the tools they need to build the careers and lives they desire.
How did Skillcrush start? And how did you come on board?
Our CEO, Adda Birnir, taught herself to code after being laid off from her media office job. She looked around at all of her creative peers and realized that tech skills were the missing piece to having better job security, a bigger paycheck, and more flexibility. She started Skillcrush as a way to digitally empower women and all of those underrepresented in tech.
When I moved back to my hometown in LA, I joined a wonderful group called Tech Ladies and met so many interesting and talented ladies. This group led me to my current position at Skillcrush where I’m finally living out my dream of empowering women to have the careers and lives they’ve always hoped for!
Okay, if I have a friend in a dead-end job and I think they should really, really learn to code, what’s a polite way to hook them up with Skillcrush?
I would definitely invite them to sign up for our free 10-day coding bootcamp to get a taste of what our programs are like. From there, they can check out our menu of blueprints designed for various career tracks in tech (our Break Into Tech Blueprint is our most popular, all-inclusive program) and they’re free to try it out with a 30-day money back guarantee!
Your site has a pretty cool photo of a woman with tattoos and a baby. Can you learn to code while literally breastfeeding? Or, less literally, while being interrupted all the damn time? I know a little something about this.
Absolutely! In fact, many of our Skillcrush team members and students are moms (and dads) who began coding while their kids were at school or asleep. Since all of our programs are self-paced and 100% online, you can go at your own speed and on your own schedule. One of our star Skillcrushers ended up adopting a baby because of her new tech side hustle!
What’s feminist about learning to code? Or about online education?
Tech has historically been a world dominated by bros with so many barriers to entry (most coding bootcamps start at $10k+). Our core mission at Skillcrush is to make tech accessible to EVERYONE – including women, people of color, and LGBTQ+. By making our programs affordable, accessible from anywhere in the world, and designed for total tech newbies, we hope we’ll bring more diversity into the tech world and change people’s lives for the better in the process!
Personal question – what’s your motivational routine? Do you have a song, a caffeinated beverage, a special desk setup?
I mean, belting out the theme song from The Little Mermaid does it for me every.single.time.
What can we expect hangin’ with you and Hilary at The Bullish Conference, and from your session? And what can we expect if we sign up for a Skillcrush Blueprint?
Hilary and I will be diving into everything remote work – whether that means you’ve been wanting a little more flexibility in your work schedule or a full-blown career change to something you can do from home (or while traveling the world). Our session will be filled with lively discussions and exercises to help you pinpoint your next move towards more flexibility and freedom in your career and life.
I’m actually taking our signature Break Into Tech Blueprint right now and as someone with zero tech experience (and who dreaded all things math and science), I can say that learning to code is actually fun! There is a nice mix of video tutorials, exercises, and motivating GIFs along the way — and I especially love the Slack groups and instructor feedback throughout that are there to help breeze through any roadblocks. It’s so gratifying to see your code magically transform into an actual website! I love how all of the projects are super practical and by the end of each program, you’ll have a career-ready portfolio in hand.
Join Maryn, Hilary and the rest of the Bulliverse this year at the 6th annual Bullish Conference.
