'You can’t acquire hard skills in technology overnight'

First, I’d like to talk a little bit about SoulCode Academy. How does the edtech work and what are its main goals?

SoulCode was born from a collaboration between a group of technology executives. I’m the founder my three fellow partners have all spent many years in this market. I usually say that it was born out of huge frustration with this Brazilian dichotomy, that on the one hand we have nine million unemployed, 30 million invisibles, and on the other, there is talk of an official number of almost 800 thousand vacancies, but we know that with all the post-pandemic movement, this number has already exceeded one million. That there are a million job vacancies going unfilled in our country is due to lack of training. The SoulCode Academy was established to bridge this gap.  There is clearly a problem and we are proposing a humanitarian solution.

We are a Brazilian edtech with a mission to boost digital inclusion, social impact, diversity and employability. To bridge the skills gap in the Brazilian economy, we carry out training through bootcamps that people can take part in free of charge. And as we are all specialists, we know that, when it comes to technology,what counts are the amount of hours of training put in. You do high intensity training – we are talking about three months, 800 hours, 10 hours a day, starting with one hour of English for technology, as this is a great challenge, and working on an agile methodology for problem solving. Each trainee joins a squad, and each squad is assigned a problem to solve. 

On top of this, and perhaps our biggest difference compared to other edtech is we work to have a real social impact through diversity – I am a woman who has spent 25 years in the technology field, which has traditionally been male-dominated. When I entered the job market there were hardly any women in tech  positions. I entered as an analyst and left as a vice president. Of course, these are still positions that are rarely occupied by women, so this is a very strong cause for me.

When we talk about inclusion, we have two types of issues in Brazil: social inclusion and a term that we will finally start to hear a lot, which is digital inclusion. When we talk about digital inclusion, we are talking about facts and rights. This digital vulnerability is very focused not only on people who are socially vulnerable, but on those who, if we don’t bring them immediately into a digital profession, they become unemployed, or underemployed. We are not, then, only talking about young people, but about a very large age range. We are talk about diversity in a very broad sense.

Our biggest differential is this: we are not only concerned with training, but that it is deep and fast. We work extensively with the unemployed. And when we talk about the unemployed, each class always has more than 50% women, more than 40% black people, and we also work very hard to be inclusive from a geographical perspective. We believe  the power of technology to creat a more inclusive Brazil. 

You worked have at large tech companies such as Oracle and Aon. How diverse are large corporations such as these?

When I look back, I think it has improved a lot, but there is still a long way to go. Today, only 20% oftech positions in technology companies are occupied by women. Of these only 5% by black women. And there is talk of 2% or 3% of women in leadership positions. So, when we look at this number, it is clear there is still a lot of growth that needs tro take place in the technology sector. A lot of efforts are being made, including in the companies where I worked – when I look back, I see that many changes were made during my time. But there is a market issue, which I would say is a cultural, conceptual and academic issue; it’s about searching in the bases for this diversity to happen. And I’m not just talking about women, I'm talking about general diversity. 

In the past year, Brazil has experienced a massive wave of layoffs in startups. How did this situation impact SoulCode?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, its that, when it comes to the startup world, we must think all the time about new solutions, look for new markets, understand new industries and trends. When we talk about big tech there is a sense that they made these layoffs in the development area – here I am talking about developers. As a general rule, and we did a pretty robust study, developers were the ones that were impacted the least. First there was a movement in which everyone took the opportunity to cut what was left. And there are no developers left. This is a very nice point to talk about, because it has a mystification. Companies are hiring; the developer is the core of the business. Just look at Twitter itself, which fireda lot of people away but made sure the developers were not among the casualties.

In Brazil, in most big techs, the development area is not here, it’s abroad. They have only a support here. So, these cuts didn’t directly affect developers here, although you’re right in about start-up job losses, but these were back-office positions. The core staff of a typical startup, are tech workers and its it’s hard to fire developers and still have a functioning startup. Thiss very important point to clarify because there is a lot of doom-mongoring out there.

At the end of their time training at the SoulCode Academy, I usually tell graduates: “nobody can take away what you learned here”. And a person who has a technical and technological background has if not a job for life, at least the guarantee of regular employment going forwardbecause they will be able to use it in different ways – from getting a job at amultinational to working on a website for members of their local community.

Even the tech professionals that have been made redundant are being hired in other industries. And I would mention one in particular here, which is agribusiness,because it is an area of the economy in which technology has definitively arrived. And there is a huge shortage of manpower: there are more than 180,000 tech-related agribusiness jobs, 80% of which are not occupied. But we are talking about new professions, new careers. Considering the dramatic rise in  drone activity, you need operators and people who can process the data the drones provide.

As with any employee in any sector tech professionals must adapt and look for new opportunities. 

What are the main skills required nowadays in the market for a tech professional? Whether soft skills or hard skills. 

Concerning hard skills I would say that they musd must have depth, because we don't acquire hard skill in technology without having profound knowledge.  I see some campaigns proposing to : “train a thousand devs in 40 hours.” In 40 hours, even the most promising developer has barely learned the rudiments of programming logic. We are talking about a complex subject here. With a lot of training, 800 or 900 hours, (20-23 weeks) anyone can learns hard skills, because it’s a matter of practice. Artificial intelligence itself is supporting this a lot, and we are already working on this: for example AI allows for automatic code correction. Of course, this is not to say that becoming a software developer is easy, you have to put in the time, as we have seen, you have to be focused, you have to want it… but it is possible. 

Where I found the biggest difference is in soft skills. I come from a time when the stereotype of  the developer not being good working with anyone, just being left to their own devices,  was already a legend at the time, and definitely doesn't exist today. We work in squads, the solutions to problems need to be innovative, which require a totally diverse group, because if you are getting exactly the same suggestions, they will not be innovative. And the developer, the tech-head, is right there in the middle. You must work on the issue of communication very well; you must be generous with your time, an active listener – the ability to listen is  a very important soft skill. There is also the question of teamwork. And in our case, as we bring people from different places, the unemployed, the over 50 people from the favelas , we work a lot on the issue of self-esteem, so that these people understand that they can and should have these jobs. I would say that the biggest challenge is in the soft skills. There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of, “you hire for hard skills and fire for a lack of soft skills,” and I really believe that, and we work on the soft skills of our developers.”

We work with Instituto Ser+, which does a strong job weekly with all our students. And we have a group that we call “Sisters & Brothers” who are executives from all places and positions that we bring in to mentor our students, working exactly on the issue of soft skills, how to prepare them for an interview, how the corporate world will be. So, without a doubt, soft skills are finally being given due consideration by companies. 

According to the Data Favela 2023 survey released in March, Brazil has 17.9 million residents in these communities, whose financial turnover exceeds the R$200 billion mark. Given the size of this contingent, how important is democratizing technological teaching in the slums? 

Data Favela comes from people I respect a lot, Renato Meirelles and Celso Athayde. I work a lot on the topic of the favela – I am also a counselor at Casa do Zezinho, Gerando Falcões... Recently, together with Cufa and Favela Holding, we launched a great technology democratization project called Favela Code for exactly this purpose.

In 2015, while I was still at Oracle, , together with Edu Lyra, I gave the first programming class for favela residents and young people. Can you imagine, at the time, arriving at a multinational and saying that you are going to take a programming class into a favela? The favela was off the map back then, but that’s finally changed. And here is a very important provocation that I use a lot: we are talking about economic issues. We are not just talking about giving back to society, we are talking about an economic issue and companies definitely have to move on it. There is, as you said, R$200 billion in turnover related to this demographic. In a way, we are seeking to return to the favela the wealth that it has. I think this is the main thing. It’s not just going there to pick up that consumer, because they’re in the favela, not on the asphalt, so you, as a company, also must be in the favela. And, since you are looking for this consumer, you must return this wealth to the favela itself. We believe in that a lot. 

Obviously, not being from the favela, we must look to those from there, who understand and who definitely know what the community needs. What we do is take the methodology and this belief that anything is possible. And we have seen this among our students in our training courses – there are almost 2,000 in bootcamp. It doesn’t really matter about your social condition, your academic background : for you to be a programmer, the only thing you really need to be logical. And logic is something that has no explanation, either you have it or you don’t. . It doesn't matter how diverse you are: if you have logic, you can program.

By: Danilo Motta