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The tech course that will change your life in 12 weeks

CAUTION: Only read this article if you’re ready for a challenge and want a fulfilling career.

The tech course that will change your life in 12 weeks
Students on the Data Science program at Propulsion Academy.

‘Code’ and ‘data’ are two words you can’t escape in 2018.

Why? From the apps you use to the websites you visit (and even many of the products you use in today’s digital world), a combination of the two is often involved.

Whether it’s the code used to build an app or the data wrangled to design more specific products, coders and data scientists are integral to many businesses across almost all industries.

But is it really so easy to just step into these covetable careers if you don’t already have a degree in computer science?

At coding bootcamps like the ones offered by Zurich-based Propulsion Academy, you can become a Full-Stack Web Developer or a Data Scientist in 12 weeks no matter what your background is.

The intensive programs are challenging, require commitment and passing a series of interviews, but at the end of the three months you can sail straight into your new career.

What’s more, it could be the key that opens the door to a previously inaccessible job market.

Just ask Michał Żurczak.

Originally from Poland, Michal says the Full-Stack Engineering program changed his life and helped him to land his dream coding job in Switzerland.

Read more about Propulsion Academy’s Full-Stack Engineering program

“For me, Propulsion Academy was the hope of finding my place on the Swiss job market,” he explains.

Over the course of just 12 weeks, Michal gained valuable insights like coding best practices. The program currently includes learning JavaScript on the front-end and Python for the back-end, two of the most in-demand programming languages. It starts from the basics of HTML and CSS and ends with data structures and algorithms.

“From the prep-work through to the classes, the program is very carefully structured,” he commends.

The twelve-week Full-Stack Engineering program is intensive but rewarding.

And indeed, each week is designed so that when you graduate you can hit the ground running in your coding career.

In part, that’s because the course isn’t based simply on theory. While studying, you’ll build up a portfolio of products that give you something tangible to show future employers or clients.

Much of the project work is team-oriented, so you’ll learn to use collaboration tools and agile development concepts, both of which come part and parcel with a coding career.

Michal heartily praises the Propulsion Academy’s tutors, whose many years of experience meant that they always had the right answers to his questions. Teaching assistants, too, were always on-hand to offer the support and guidance he needed to excel on the course.

“During the whole program, you’re supported by teaching assistants who help you to understand new materials and solve challenges,” he explains.

Michal is now working as a software engineer for global research and business intelligence provider RepRisk, a role he believes he couldn’t have landed without the support of the tutors and teaching assistants at Propulsion Academy.

“They not only taught me how to code, but they also helped me believe in myself.”

Propulsion Academy’s Data Science program comes highly recommended by Enrico Paterna, an Italian national living in Switzerland, who has since gone onto forge a career as a Data Scientist at eBay.

“The course is very valuable, well-structured and it allows you to gain practical experiences in different areas of Data Science,” says Enrico.

The challenging three-month program teaches the core concepts of data science such as Machine Learning, Data Visualization, NLP, and Deep Learning/Neural networks as well as dynamic programming languages R and Python.

Find out more about Propulsion Academy’s Data Science program

In the final weeks, students complete a hands-on “Capstone” Data Science project that allows them to put their learnings into practice in a real-world scenario. They work on real data provided by companies within the Propulsion Academy network.

“The final project further provides students with a unique opportunity to demonstrate their developed skills towards potential employers,” adds Enrico.

Samuel Glauser, a Swiss national who got hired as a Data Scientist by Swissquant after the program, also talks about the importance of the network created during the course. 

“The network developed among the students, lecturers, and faculty proved to be extremely valuable when it came to looking for new roles and broadening one’s data science knowledge base.”

Find out more about the programs offered at Propulsion Academy and kick-start your coding career in just 12 weeks. Click here to visit the Propulsion Academy website.

This article was produced by The Local Client Studio and sponsored by Propulsion Academy.

 

TECH

Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

Five years after Europe enacted sweeping data protection legislation, prominent online privacy activist Max Schrems says he still has a lot of work to do as tech giants keep dodging the rules.

Cookie fight: Austrian activist in tough online privacy fight

The 35-year-old Austrian lawyer and his Vienna-based privacy campaign group NOYB (None Of Your Business) is currently handling no fewer than 800 complaints in various jurisdictions on behalf of internet users.

“For an average citizen, it’s almost impossible right now to enforce your rights”, Schrems told AFP. “For us as an organisation, it’s already a lot of work to do that” given the system’s complexity due to the regulators’ varying requirements, he added.

The 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes strict rules on how companies can use and store personal data, with the threat of huge fines for firms breaching them.

While hundreds of millions of euros in fines have been imposed following complaints filed by NOYB, Schrems said the GDPR is hardly ever enforced. And that’s a “big problem”, he added.

He said the disregard for fundamental rights such as data privacy is almost comparable to “a dictatorship”. “The difference between reality and the law is just momentous,” Schrems
added.

‘Annoying’ cookies

Instead of tackling the problems raised by the GDPR, companies resort to “window dressing” while framing the rules as an “annoying law” full of “crazy cookie banners”, according to Schrems.

Under the regulation, companies have been obliged to seek user consent to install “cookies” enabling browsers to save information about a user’s online habits to serve up highly targeted ads.

Industry data suggests only three percent of internet users actually approve of cookies, but more than 90 percent are pressured to consent due to a “deceptive design” which mostly features “accept” buttons.

Stymied by the absence of a simple “yes or no” option and overwhelmed by a deluge of pop-ups, users get so fed up that they simply give up, Schrems said. Contrary to the law’s intent, the burden is being “shifted to the individual consumer, who should figure it out”.

Even though society now realises the importance of the right to have private information be forgotten or removed from the internet, real control over personal data is still far-off, the activist said. But NOYB has been helping those who want to take back control by launching
privacy rights campaigns that led companies to adopt “reject” buttons.

 Shift of business model 

Regulators have imposed big penalties on companies that violated GDPR rules: Facebook owner Meta, whose European headquarters are in Dublin, was hit with fines totalling 390 million euros ($424 million) in January.

One reason why tech giants like Google or Meta as well as smaller companies choose against playing by the GDPR rules is because circumventing them pays off, Schrems said.

Thriving on the use of private data, tech behemoths make “10 to 20 times more money by violating the law, even if they get slapped with the maximum fine”, he added.

Contacted by AFP, both companies said they were working hard to make sure their practices complied with the regulations.

Schrems also accuses national regulators of either being indifferent or lacking the resources to seriously investigate complaints. “It’s a race to the bottom,” Schrems said. “Each country has its own way of not getting anything done”.

Buoyed by his past legal victories, Schrems looks to what he calls the “bold” EU Court of Justice to bring about change as it “usually is a beacon of hope in all of this”.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is considering a procedures regulation to underpin and clarify the GDPR.

In the long-run, however, the situation will only improve once large companies “fundamentally shift their business models”. But that would require companies to stop being “as crazy profitable as they are right now,” Schrems said.

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