13 lessons
Lessons
What we learned about training and hiring designers, in the order the story took us there.
2017 The first cohort
Read 2017 in the story- Student’s motivation alone won’t fuel an open learning environment Judging from previous experiences, I knew that motivation takes unstructured learning experiences very far. I had learned before that students with low…
- In an ever-changing industry, you have to be prepared for fundamental scope changes Back in 2014 when the concept of TNDS started taking shape, I was a Web Designer teacher and working as one myself. In the years before that, Web Design was…
- Student’s personal dramas will affect your program When you make a plan and then start executing it, you focus on what’s right in front of you. In the case of building a school, we knew more or less what we…
2018 The longer, improved version
Read 2018 in the story- It’s good to be (physically) near companies in your field When in 2018 we moved into a sort of startup incubator (scale-up, actually), we knew everyone at TNDS that year would benefit from being in touch with so many…
- It’s difficult to circumvent visa roadblocks to setup an in-person program It can be challenging to overcome visa roadblocks in Portugal, even if you’re a school. The process of obtaining the necessary visas for participants may…
- It’s difficult to maintain a mixed cohort of designers and developers By 2017-2018, the definition of what a front-end developer should do had expanded and grown, bringing engineers back to technologies that most of the times…
- We thought we could rely on partnerships but it was very hard to sell these No matter how specific we made the offer, the need just wasn’t there. I remember rewriting our partner program quite a few times and every time it made even…
- It’s very hard to get internships for students At one point, I realised I had overpromised something. When we announced that every student that year would get an internship, I daydreaming more than anything.
- No matter how well you prepare students, they still need to face the hiring market Thanks to Paulo Fonseca, we did an amazing workshop at one point in which we literally trained students for job interviews. Paulo even role-played his way…
2019 Cooldown & Re-strategise
Read 2019 in the story2020 to 2023 The online short version
Read 2020 to 2023 in the story- When aiming at maximum personal impact, the smaller the cohort, the better After our first in-person experiences, I was certain of a few things:
- More than knowledge, juniors crave wisdom and guidance When we welcomed our first masterclass host, we knew it was better way for students to learn but I couldn’t quite explain it. I referenced the fact these…
- Failing in real projects is worth hustling for partnerships As I’ve mentioned this in the main story, projects really were worth my time. Even when not the ideal ones or from ideal companies, just the fact that you have…