Class of September 2020: Celebrating our First All-remote Cohort!

This week we graduated Alchemy's very first completely remote cohort, and we’re honored to introduce you to this group of incredible Software Developers.

Our Spring 2020 Cohort started training with us on March 23, which was also the week that Oregon went into shelter-in-place due to the pandemic. While the world was learning to do their jobs from home, this group had to learn to start an entire career change from home. We’re honored they put their trust in us.

Through a pandemic, unrest sweeping across the nation and in our town, they learned to connect and rely on team members they had never met in person. They stepped up and adapted to live-online classes and collaboration over Zoom. They learned to code and be great team members from afar.We’re amazed at what they accomplished while navigating world events over the last six months.

This talented group of developers built these final projects:

Songs About Humanity, a Cards Against Humanity type game in real-time with the Spotify API and Spotify web playback SDK

DropZone, which allows users to get straight to the action of earning in-game rewards by watching their favorite streamers live on Twitch

FloraFile, a pocket garden application allowing plant newbies and botanists alike to search for plants based on their common or scientific names

Check out all of these awesome developers along with their technical sites and apps here!

With diverse experiences and backgrounds from many areas, this group of 14 developers represent Alchemy well. Some have been in the service industry and one worked with exotic animals. Others have worked as a retina technician, an analyst, a content strategist, and a graphic designer. One has run an ultra marathon through Navajo nation in Chinle, Arizona, and wants to bring code to their community with their truffle hunting dog. We also have many who have transcended tremendous barriers to become software developers.

ALL of these people are changing their stories through a career in tech and will bring so much depth and excellence to their work teams.

During their time in the program, there was a lot to process in our nation. Someone on our staff shared this quote from Michelle Obama’s podcast:

“We are all going through a significant period of evolution, and it means that there’s an opportunity in that it feels burdensome right now, because so much has been taken from us. But there’s such an incredible opportunity, to decide how you want to show up in the new world. Because it will be a new world. And my greatest hope is that we don’t reach for normal, that we reach for better.”

And, with the passion this group has for change, we hope they use their new superpower as software developers to create positive change in the world.

Congrats to all! You should be proud of yourselves, and we can’t wait to see how your new career unfolds!