What if your new language is coding?

Learn more about our engineering mentoring program, Babbel Neos. The solution for aspiring software engineers.
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What if changing your entire career was easy? If it didn’t come with a host of uncertainties and questions, would more people do it? 10 years ago, was it viable to decide years down one career path, that you want to pivot completely? Maybe. Was it easy? Definitely not. Today, this happens on a daily basis, but it still doesn’t mean that it’s easy. However, the idea of companies taking the leap of faith and hiring people with very little experience in a certain role or industry is more common than ever before. There are startups founded left and right, and bigger companies are going digital. Millions of tech jobs are being created in Germany, and globally, but not nearly enough tech talent to support the demand. With the treasure chest of online resources at your disposal, it’s not always difficult to get started, but what happens after you’ve started? What happens when you have had some practice and are starting to feel confident about your newly acquired tech skills? Job time, surely? The thought of starting out as a junior for the first time, or again, can be enough to rethink your newly thought out plan, right?

With the support that is out there today, it is 100% viable to start a career as a software engineer even if you didn’t study computer science. Bootcamps provide 3-12 month programs to jumpstart the learning, focusing on the aspects that will get you coding quickly, and online courses provide the flexibility of learning at your own pace and in your own space. With resources like this at your disposal, what happens next? Are companies really ready to take the chance on someone with no or little professional experience?

Looking back at 2018, teams at Babbel realised that senior software engineers are as scarce as a list of German grammar rules, but the problem quickly turned into an opportunity. Babbel Neos was born. An engineering mentoring program that is the bridge to a career in software engineering. If seniors are hard to come by, let’s think about the future and turn our core into a solution for the future. Everyone. Learning. Languages. Does it have to end at linguistics? Being a learning company inside and out, believing that diversity makes us stronger, Babbel created an engineering mentoring program to guide you from the learning environment to becoming a junior engineer in one of our awesome engineering teams.

An introduction to Babbel Neos

Babbel Neos is a 6-month paid training program to provide an environment where you will receive mentorship and guidance throughout the process of getting ready to join an engineering team. It is aimed at bridging the experience gap for self-taught career-changers, graduates of developer bootcamps, or fresh computer science university graduates, who often find it difficult to land a job as a software engineer. Even though it is not a guarantee, the goal would be for Babbel to offer the Neos a full-time contract as a junior software engineer after the program.

The reason behind Neos is simple:

  • Attract and cultivate junior talent
  • Increase diversity within the engineering team
  • Support engineers in strengthening their mentoring skills

What to expect

You’ll code. A lot. But more importantly, you’ll learn what it means to be part of a multifunctional engineering team. You’ll problem-solve, brainstorm, break things, fix things, and build more epic things. The first months (roughly 3 months) will be focused on learning, while the 2nd phase will be focused on integrating into the teams. You’ll work on an actual project while solidifying some basic computer science concepts, as well as learn new ones. You’ll work with the other trainees in the program, your dedicated program lead, as well as mentors from the actual engineering teams. Coding dojos, agile ceremonies, and other cool workshops will be part of your weekly routine, and you will learn how to be comfortable with being a junior (again). Curiosity is key. Be brave enough to suck at something new. Chances are that if you’re reading this and thinking about joining the program, you have already made the decision to suck at something new, and it’s one epic journey that lies ahead. To become part of this journey, head over to our careers page to apply. 

Looking back at 2018, we hired all 8 Neos, and 7 of the 8 are still with Babbel today. Following Babbel Neos, the 2018 group got to look back at how far they’ve come, check out what they had to say about the program!

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Aimee Nortje

Aimee, a software engineer originally from South Africa, is leading the Neos engineering mentoring program at Babbel. Aimee is passionate about learning and education and anything that promotes creating equal opportunities in the tech world. In her free time, Aimee does yoga, is out rock climbing somewhere in the mountains, or is just spending as much time as possible outdoors.

Aimee, a software engineer originally from South Africa, is leading the Neos engineering mentoring program at Babbel. Aimee is passionate about learning and education and anything that promotes creating equal opportunities in the tech world. In her free time, Aimee does yoga, is out rock climbing somewhere in the mountains, or is just spending as much time as possible outdoors.