Just like an internship, you'll get paid, gain valuable experience, and have a great item to put on your resume. Unlike an internship, this program is focused on people early in their coding journey who might not have enough experience to get a real internship yet. The focus is entirely on helping you prepare for your future career.

We are looking for applicants who meet the following two criteria:

1. The fellowship is open to individuals from groups that have traditionally been excluded from the tech industry, such as people who identify as women, Black, Latin American, Indigenous, etc.
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2. The fellowship is meant for people who have already begun learning to code (e.g. a college student majoring in computer science or someone who has gone through a coding bootcamp) but isn’t experienced enough to get a job or internship yet.
   

Aside from that, we’re just looking for talented people who are eager to learn. If that’s you, please apply!

We are Less Annoying CRM, a small tech company based in downtown St. Louis. We make Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software which helps small businesses stay organized and productive. If you'd like to learn more about what a CRM is, you can read up on it here.

We have a team of experienced software engineers who are eager to help you get started in the tech industry. Many of our engineers come from non-traditional backgrounds, and we have a lot of experience mentoring people early in their careers. As a matter of fact, our lead software engineer started working here as a customer service rep, learned to code on the job, and now leads the entire technical team. We know the journey you’re on, and we’re ready to help.

The coding fellowship is meant to fill the gap between what you learn in school (or other ways of learning to code) and what you actually need to know to work in the industry. We'll teach you the things everyone else seems to know, but that isn't covered in typical classes, like what front-end vs. back-end really means and how GitHub is used on real engineering teams. Here’s how we do that...

The summer will be broken into two sections:

Intro (2-3 weeks) - This period will be fairly structured. We’ll arrange a number of meetings and activities for you including the following:

• Getting to know the other fellows - We normally have 4-6 fellows each summer. The stronger your relationship with the other fellows, the more you’ll learn and enjoy your experience here.
• Getting to know the team - We’re a small company of about 20 people. By the end of the summer, you’ll know each and every one of us including the CEO and each of our developers.
• Learning the tech basics - We expect you to already have basic coding skills, but we want to make sure everyone has the basics down. We’ll cover the core principles of web development, our tech stack, and more.
• Learning how to thrive in a professional environment - Working in tech isn’t just about being able to code. To succeed, you need to learn the language, tools, and etiquette of the industry, so we’ll walk you through all of it.

Project work (the rest of the summer) - After the intro period, you’ll pick a project to work on for the summer. You’ll have weekly check-ins with a mentor to help make sure you stay on track, and you’ll have a whole team of people to go to for help anytime you get stuck. But you’ll need to be self-directed and ask for help when you need it. That’s an important skill for you to have later in your career, so we’ll make sure you get used to it here.

Final presentation (the last day) - At the end of the summer, you’ll present to the whole company on what you’ve built. Even if you’re a programmer, communication and public speaking are valuable skills, so we’ll provide mentorship to make sure you’re ready to present.

The main thing you’ll get from this fellowship that you don’t get from taking a computer science class is mentorship. There’s no better way to learn to be a successful programmer than to work alongside experienced professionals.

For example, in school, you turn in an assignment, the teacher gives you a grade, and then you move on to the next topic. In this fellowship, you’ll submit code, we’ll review it and provide tons of feedback, and then we’ll work with you to help you make the suggested changes. Sometimes it takes several back-and-forth cycles of this before the code is truly professional-quality. You’ll experience the exact same process we use internally to make sure that our software is ready for our customers.

Your main points-of-contact for the fellowship will be Eva Jeliazkova (a former coding fellow who is now a full-time software engineer here at LACRM) and Tyler King (our CEO whose background is in software engineering and design). They will teach lessons on a variety of technical topics, share their experiences working in tech, and provide mentorship throughout the summer.

In addition to Eva and Tyler, you’ll be paired with one of our software engineers who will be your technical mentor. They’ll help you out with project planning, finding the right learning resources, code reviews, etc.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to make this summer a success, but you’ll have an entire team of people behind you providing the support and encouragement you need to succeed.