Updated in early June to include complete May 2023 placement information.
Juno within the tech landscape
As the founder of Canada’s first web development Bootcamp and the person at Juno with the most experience placing our graduates (I worked individually with our first 500+ graduates to help them land their first development jobs between 2014 and 2019), I was excited for the opportunity to take on leading Juno’s Graduate Outcomes department in early October of 2022. Though placements were already starting to trend slightly downwards at that time from a high point in July, I hoped that all that was needed was focused hard work and some improved processes and I dove in head first. We knew from years of experience that January tends to be a great time to job search, so we focused our graduates on that - getting ready for the January spike in job postings, which we’ve seen every other January for the past 10 years.
Each week this past January, I waited for the spike. And each week, when it didn’t come, I thought to myself, “it must be delayed this year.” (After all, since the pandemic first hit, so much has been “unprecedented.”) But by the end of January, I had to admit to myself and everyone that the spike wasn’t coming.
What we’re seeing now
The past few months have been difficult for Bootcamp graduates and other early career folks, not just at Juno but also at other Bootcamps, as well as at universities and colleges. In January, we placed 5 graduates, very low for us when compared with a historical average of 10-20. Then in February, we placed 13 - we thought maybe things were coming back. Then in March, we placed 3, but we also saw 10 Juno grads who had been searching for more than 6 months accept job offers. (We call these folks “long-term job seekers” and don’t count them in our official stats, which only consider placements within the first 6 months post-graduation.) In April, we placed 9 graduates, plus five long-term job seekers.
| Month | Placements within 6 Months of Graduation |
Placements beyond 6 Months of Graduation |
|---|---|---|
| January | 5 | 0 |
| February | 13 | 1 |
| March | 3 | 10 |
| April | 9 | 5 |
| May | 14 | 1 |
Softer, but not gone
So as you can see, all is not lost - far from it! Juno graduates are still landing jobs. But it is far from predictable, as it once was. And with Shopify’s announcement a few weeks ago that they’re laying off 20% of their workforce (approximately 2300 people) and more layoff announcements coming every week, we’ve had to face the fact at Juno that it is not responsible for us to continue graduating Junior Web Developers in today’s softer tech job market, especially because we don’t know how long this will last.
So, as of last week, we are not admitting any new students into our Web Development Bootcamp or any of our Continuing Education programs. Our wonderful instructors are staying on until our last three Bootcamps wrap up, and Career Services will be delivered by myself and our Career Success Specialist until the end of June, at which time I’ll work with all graduates directly (back to my roots!). We’ve been open about being unsure about what summer has in store - July and August tend to be quiet months for job hunting, and being solely focused on the job search in those months may lead to burnout and frustration. Part-time or summer jobs may be a good idea so that job seekers can extend their job search into the fall, and creating new portfolio pieces this summer would be a worthwhile focus (something we will be helping graduates with through project sprints).
Throughout all this, we care most about the student experience, and that sentiment is shared by our whole team. We want everyone who enrolled in Juno to get what they came here for, and we’re going to continue working towards that goal.
Looking forward
Ceasing enrolments and hitting the pause button on kicking off any new courses is going to allow us to focus entirely on two things: 1) helping our current students and grads succeed and 2) developing the program that will help young people get ahead in 2023 and beyond. 2012 was a very different time than 2023 - in 2012, when I launched Juno, then HackerYou, I saw and felt an acute need for the school of the future, a school that was laser-focused on helping young people get ahead, a place where everyone could genuinely be themselves, be safe, have fun, and launch their new careers with the support of a welcoming community. At the time, the opportunity was in tech, and there was so much demand for tech skills that our graduates could reliably land jobs within months of graduating from a nine-week program.
2023 is very different. Though the need for an inclusive school of the future focused on young people has not gone away (and might be even more important today?), now that we’re teaching students in Cohort 50 (50!), the softer hiring market for Junior Web Developers is a great opportunity for us to go back to the drawing board and develop and design the program for young people in 2023 and beyond.
What will that program be? We're not sure of the exact details, but we’re certain it won’t involve training people for jobs or specific vocations.
Looking out at today’s landscape and seeing the layoffs hitting so many industries, and with the knowledge and experience gained over the past 11 years of building Juno, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that there’s a need for a school of the future that helps young people to take control of their own lives and incomes through working for themselves. We’re going to be focused on training people to become solopreneurs by starting micro-businesses, with the goal of “income replacement”. We believe we can help people make $60K, $70K, $80K working for themselves, with all the freedom that comes from that (and no boss to answer to). I started my entrepreneurial journey at 22 because I was making $37K working for someone else, and I thought, “I bet I can figure out how to make $37K working for myself.” And within a few months, I was. We want to deliver courses that will help others experience the same thing I did - and, going back to Juno's roots, we'll be starting out with in-person courses, led directly by myself and Farzad. I genuinely believe that solopreneurship is the safest and best path forward for young people, with tons of potential upside to boot.
We’re calling this Juno 2.0. We’ll post occasional updates, but if you’d like to hear from us more often as we develop Juno 2.0 and be first to know when we launch, sign up here to stay up to date with Juno 2.0.
FAQ
What is happening to the Juno Alumni Slack community?
Absolutely! No changes expected to the Juno Alumni Slack community. It remains a place Juno alums can gather, get help and support, and connect with each other.
Will the Bootcamp content hosted on Github continue to be available to students and alumni?
Definitely! No changes expected to our various Github repos or to student or alumni access to them.