The Israel Innovation Authority has announced the winners of the competition for selection of coding boot camps - non-university training schemes for software developers - for a government-sponsored training program with a budget of NIS 10 million for the coming year. Instead of three years study, the boot camps will train programmers within a year, after which they will start work at a monthly salary of at least NIS 14,000. The state will participate in the cost of training and afterwards in salary costs for the first two years. The boot camps can receive up to NIS 40,000 for each participant who succeeds in finding a job. The Innovation Authority expects the scheme to add 2,000 software developers to the technology labor market within five years.
The seven organizations selected to run the boot camps are: Appleseeds Academy; Experis Kickstart; ITC (Israel Tech Challenge); Infinity Labs; Elevation Academy; Kav Mashve; and Primrose, a new coding boot camp for training people with second degrees in the sciences in machine learning.
A professional committee consisting of representatives of industry and government chose the seven from among 24 candidates. The organizations gave commitments on the numbers of high-quality trainees they would be able to recruit, at least half of them from among university science graduates, and on their achieving high-paying jobs in software development. The amount paid to the boot camps by the state will be higher the higher the eventual salary obtained by the trainee, and there will be additional payments for placing women, people aged 45 and over, Arabs, haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), people from the Ethiopian community, and people with disabilities, in the high-tech workforce.
Minister of the Economy and Industry Eli Cohen said that the program was expected to produce 280 graduates in the first year, about 10% of the annual number of university graduates in technological disciplines. "Our aim is to increase the number of alternative ways of entering the high-tech industry as a response to the shortage of software developers in the industry, which is the Israeli economy's growth engine, while broadening the opportunities for joining the industry for people of high potential with different backgrounds."
Dr. Ami Appelbaum, chief scientist in the Ministry of Economy and Industry and chair of the Israel Innovation Authority, said the programming boot camps, which had succeeded overseas, could prove a real breakthrough in providing high quality but relatively swift training for software developers. Innovation Authority CEO Aharon Aharon said the Authority was working on devising additional tracks that would increase the supply of skilled manpower for high tech from among people trained abroad and under-represented sections of the population.
Naomi Krieger-Carmy, head of the Societal Challenges Division at the Israel Innovation Authority, said, "The test of the coding boot camps will be the results test, and we call on the technology industry, which is crying out for high-quality skilled manpower, to be a genuine partner in this track."
The coding boot camps track was set up following a government decision in January 2017 to launch a national program for expanding the skilled work force in the technology industry. One of the means of doing so is support for relevant training outside of the academic institutions. For the purposes of this program, the Innovation Authority has defined certain areas as currently in high demand in the market and as the areas in which the boot camps should train their students: machine learning; RT embedded; data science; algorithms; mobile (Android/iOS); full stack; front end; back end; and DevOps.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 4, 2018
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