Preannouncing Yireo Academy 2023

The concept

The goal of the 2023s academy is simple: To deliver new developers to various agencies in The Netherlands by educating them a couple of months on a row. Numerous topics fly by including practical PHP, advanced OOP, store management, Magento 2 backend development (including MSI, Extension Attributes and other complexer topics), Luma, Hyvä, PWA Studio, design patterns, testing and much more. The goal is to make sure that in the end an attendee knows Magento, so that she/he is able to start working for the agency right away.

The format is different than a regular classroom though. Every attendee is admitted via an intake. There will be evaluations in between and exams afterwards. And there is ongoing communication via Slack, code reviewing and additional Q&A sessions. And even better, the video hours included with Yireo On-Demand courses exceed already 90 hours, and all participants get access to all content for self-study.

It's not an open classroom model: There is no open subscription, there is a collaboration between chosen agencies and Yireo instead. The costs are spread, the bureaucracy is kept to a minimum and the focus lies with quality of the final end result (the developers doing their job).

Finetuning

We are not about recruitment, so a requirement is that the agency finds its own developer. However, we've got contact with various HBOs (Dutch), colleges and even the UWV (Dutch) to help onboard fresh developers - so we will aim to help out where we can. Still, the developer needs to be on the payroll of the agency and the agency is paying Yireo for the education part. As simple as that.

Another point that makes this program special is that every week there is a specific focus (or topic): A couple of days of teaching, then a couple of days of self-study and practical assignments. However, this does not mean that a student needs to participate in all sessions. For instance, if Hyvä or PWA Studio are not part of the agency its portfolio, those topics can simply be skipped. Likewise, if the student already has specific knowledge about a topic (like advanced OOP) an assessment is made in advanced and the topic could be skipped based on the outcome. In short, the program is custom-tailored to the needs of both participant and agency.

There still needs to be finetuning of a lot of things: For instance, I'm already investigating various tools for group programming, diving into pair programming, wondering whether we should start with TDD from day 1, etcetera. Also the length of the entire program is uncertain as of yet: It might be 3 months, it might be 4 months. And the starting date still needs to be determined. Well, it will be in 2023 somewhere in the Netherlands.

Coinciding with MageUnconference NL 2023

In 2023, Yireo will also be organizing MageUnconference NL. One idea that I now have is to make sure that all participants of the Yireo Academy also join this unconference. It is a great way for them to meet the community and to learn even more about various topics. The dates and location of this unconference also still need to be determined. But because the aim is to organize the unconference around May/June, the academy will definitely take place before that.

Current signups

I'm proud to state that already a few agencies are more than interested in this academy:

• Elgentos
• MaxServ
• appcomm
• epartment

With their commitment, I can already say that this Yireo Academy is surely going to take place. But still, it is open for more attendees and more agencies.

Things are moving fast. The program still needs to be made more concrete and many decisions are still ahead of us. However, because the demand is high, I felt it was time to make this preannouncement.

Join us?

Are you an agency in The Netherlands? And are you looking for new developers to become Magento developers that you can rely on? Let's start talking then. Contact us and we'll see how we can join forces.