Like many other markets, France struggles to have sufficient developer resource to meet demand. Over the course of 2012/2013 France’s unemployment agency Pole Emploi received 16k offers alone for the job of web developer, of which 75% of the roles were for full-time, permanent hires (ie the infamous CDI status). While most of these roles did ultimately go filled, some 6k tech oriented roles went unfilled last year due to lack of sufficient, qualified candidates. 3W Academy, a quick cycle development school started by experienced businessman and entrepreneur Djamchid Dalili, is hoping to change this situation by quickly getting aspiring web developers employable in a quicker period of time.
Based in Paris’ 15th arrondissement, 3W Academy offers a short-cycle, fast-paced learning experience in that it covers an extensive amount of content in a very short period of time, namely 400 hours of training over three months. Given this shorter timeframe and the desire to respond quickly to the practical demands of the job market, the emphasis at 3W Academy is heavily on practice rather than theory (ie ratio of 90 / 10 practice to theory). The professors also reflect this philosophy as they all are experienced practitioners of the web. So all have learned and honed their craft via doing which they look to transmit to their students. In terms of content, the direction have decided to focus on the most sought after technical areas / skills by recruiters, specifically – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP.
3W Academy has welcomed 100 students since launching just one year ago. Most of the students aren’t completely new to the world of technology having perhaps taken a couple of tech related courses in the past or did an internship in a startup. However, many choose 3W because they are looking to quickly develop the skills and know-how to actually secure a job and be fully operational as a web developer in a short period of time. Although not the robust, in-depth degree that many choose, 3W Academy does offer an interesting alternative to tackling the lack of developer resource problem. It is likely that if we ever want to have enough talent to fill the increasing number of roles in this rapidly growing space, there will be various types of educational models that will need to emerge and be embraced.