An Inside Look at Japan’s Curious Coding Bootcamps

The developed world is facing a severe programmer shortage. Around the world, coding boot camps have stepped into this gap to teach newcomers basic programming skills quickly.

But in like so many other areas, Japan is different.

Coding boot camps have been slow to take off here, and programmers are taught by a patchwork of academic degrees, on the job training, and informal meetups and study sessions.

Kani Munidasa, the co-founder of Code Chrysalis, is changing that. He's started one of the first Western-style coding boot camps in Japan, and the ecosystem is already seeing the results. Code Chrysalis has an amazing placement rate with grads receiving above-average starting salaries, but there is something more going on here as well.

Kani and I talk about how the job market for programmers is changing in Japan and, more important perhaps, how their place in society is changing as well.

It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Show Notes

Why Japanese engineers don’t participate in open source projects The differences between Japanese and US junior developers Diversity on a programming team does not main what you think it doe How to learn to learn Why Code Chrysalis turns down 80% of its applicants Why Japanese enterprises are getting behind boot camps Why developer pay in Japan is so low Why so many engineers want to come to Japan anyway How to overcome the need for degrees and certificates

Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about Code Chrysalis The Code Chrysalis blog Friend Kani on Facebook Follow him on Twitter @munidk A research-based approach to coding education How to Get Into Code Chrysalis

Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

One of the most important developments in Japan over the past 10 years and perhaps, the most important way that things are different for startups today than they were 20 years ago is the existence of a startup ecosystem. Now, let me explain that because it’s not obvious, especially to younger entrepreneurs who have never had to run a startup the absence of a startup ecosystem.

A startup ecosystem is not just a group of startups that operate in the same city. We had that during the dotcom era. There were even VC investments, occasional meet ups, and some mentoring, but we didn’t really have an ecosystem back then. We had a community for sure, but not that ecosystem.

An ecosystem comes into being when startups start buying from and selling it to each other. When startups can target other startups with their innovative products, where our pool of employees move from startup to startup, taking their ideas and best practices, and work ethic with them. When an ecosystem developed, it’s an amazing cross-pollination of innovation and growth that is just awesome to be a part of. This is happening in Japan. It’s a relatively new and it’s fantastic.

Today, I’d like you to meet Kani Munidasa, co-founder of Code Chrysalis, a startup that can only exist within a healthy startup ecosystem but also one that any healthy startup ecosystem needs in order to grow. Code Chrysalis is a coding boot camp where over 12 weeks, students learn of the skills they need to get jobs as programmers in Tokyo and as you will soon see, they are really getting jobs.

In fact, after our conversation, there is something I want to ask you and I mean you, personally because it’s something that you might understand better than I do. I would ask you right now, but the question won’t really make a lot of sense until after you sit in on the conversation with me and Kani, and we cover a lot of ground.

We talk about how to get a programming job in Tokyo, how to ramp up skills quickly, and why diversity in programming might not mean what you think it does. But you know, Kani tells that story much better than I can, so let us get right to the interview.

[pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] Interview Tim: Cheers! So, I’m sitting here with Kani Munidasa, the co-founder of Code Chrysalis, a Tokyo-based coding boot camp. So, thanks for sitting down with me.

Kani Munidasa: Thank you for having me, Tim.

Tim: Well, listen, before we get started, you can probably explain it a lot better than I can: what exactly is Code Chrysalis?

Kani: Sure. Code Chrysalis is a 12-week software engineering boot camp. We focus on creating versatile and autonomous software engineering leaders. The hard skills are given: you will be able to create full-stack software applications by the time you graduate, but we also have a very strong focus on soft skills like leadership, empathy, communication, and teamwork.

Tim: Okay, that is a lot to condense into 12 weeks.

Kani: True.

Tim: Okay, and it’s a full-time program or is it a part-time program?

Kani: It is a 12-week full-time program, so there’s absolutely no way you can hold a job while doing this program, you have to definitely get permission from your family before doing it because you won’t see them much too, and also, before you come in, have you do what’s called a pre-course which takes about anything from like a month to two months to complete.

Tim: Just to make sure they have like, the minimum requirements to – alright.

Kani: Exactly, we want all our students in the classroom starting the same foundation.

Tim: What does the boot camp cost?

Kani: The boot camp for the 12 weeks at the pre-course, and if the admissions process before that all included is hyaku-san-man, so 1.03 million.

Tim: Hyaku-san-man – that’s kind of a weird number. Why not just even ¥1 million?

Kani: We don’t like rounding up. I guess, the engineers.

Tim: So, ¥1,030,000?

Kani: Correct.

Tim: Okay, and you guys are teaching everything in English, English only, right?

Kani: That is correct. So, we believe that English is the lingua franca of technology. Our industry changes so often that technology just comes and goes so often, it would be important for you to be able to read the documentation firsthand, and then leverage that new learnings into your products, and solving a problem.

Tim: I’ve noticed like, Japanese engineers tend to be able to read English reasonably well but speaking English and receiving instruction in English is a really different matter. So, has English only been a problem for some students? Has it really limited your pool of potential…?

Kani: It’s definitely a bad business decision. We could probably get more students if we do this in Japanese. To combat the problem though, we did create a part-time program, it’s two months, seven days, it’s called the English communication intensive and here, we teach students to just communicate in the English that they currently have. It’s more like a confidence school. Anyone who has done K-12 education in Japan, I believe can speak English, but they are worried about their pronunciation or their grammar, or they just want to sound sophisticated with the right words. In this program, we boost their confidence to just get your thoughts out to be able to communicate.

Tim: The instructor is now are all native English speakers. Do you plan on changing and then offering Japanese instruction and hiring Japanese instructors as well in the future, or are you planning on studying English only?

Kani: We want to try and stay English only as much as we can, but we also want Japan’s engineering ecosystem or communities to have a voice globally. So, there’s so many open source projects that Japanese engineers are not taking part in. There are big large forums where engineers discuss things but again, we don’t hear their voice. At least, when our students graduating, to be engineers who can go toe to toe with the world, complete with Silicon Valley engineers.

Tim: Okay, that’s pretty ambitious or a 12-week program. Actually, let us back up a bit and talk about you. So, I guess we have first met like, two years ago? Like, you were just thinking about setting this up when we first met, right?

Kani: I do a lot of courage to start this whole thing on some mentors in Japan, and while we had spoken a lot, I did read a lot of what you are doing here, and it actually gave me a lot of energy kind of jump in and do this thing in Japan.

Tim: Oh, thank you.

Kani: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, I mean, Japan is a lot more dynamic than most people realize, but let us see, this was early 2017? Yeah, it’s awesome to see Code Chrysalis up and running you guys having such an impact, but before founding it, you and your cofounder Yan Fan were both working at a coding boot camp in San Francisco, Hack Reactor, right?

Kani: Yan and I, we’re both graduates of the Hack Reactor. It’s another coding boot camp based out of San Francisco. She did teach at Hack Reactor and I actually also worked at Hack Reactor as a counselor after my graduation, but we weren’t working in the same time. She’s actually about two years my senior at Hack Reactor.

Tim: Alright, was Hack Reactor sort of your inspiration and your blueprint for how you wanted to run Code Chrysalis here?

Kani: Hack Reactor definitely inspired me want to get into education and do this in Japan. I know the cofounders very well, and we were initially actually talking about bringing Hack Reactor to Japan, but I also wanted to focus a lot on the soft skills. This is something that most boot camps, even in the US, do not focus on. It’s adequate to just teach the hard skills, and then find them jobs. What I want to do with this new concept of boot camp is to ensure the graduating class students to have the soft skills that will take them to the leadership levels, to be future CIOs and CTOs, and kind of lead Japan’s software industry.

Tim: So,