Redefining the Refugee Story with Brenton Strine of Refcode

Refugees face enormous challenges. Completely starting over. Learning a new language and navigating a new culture. Finding work and attempting to redefine their careers. For most of us, it is hard to even imagine.

After being exposed to Atlanta's large refugee population and drawing from his own life changing experience with software engineering, Brenton Strine founded Refcode, a non-profit that introduces refugees to computer programming. As Brenton explains, it is not just about teaching refugees how to code. Setting off on a new career in tech requires so much more. Refcode continues to expand its broader programming and currently offers not just classes but labs, mentorship, access to paid projects and apprenticeships, and more.

In this episode, we speak with Brenton about his mission to change the typical refugee story. He shares lessons he's learned along the way, how software engineering transformed his life, and how he hopes to open that opportunity for others.

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Brenton Strine

💡 What he does: He is the founder of Refcode.

💡 Company: Refcode

💡 Noteworthy: Brenton holds a master's degree in Theology, but he began teaching himself to code in the ‘90s and has gone on to have an extensive career as a software engineer. For the last 20 years, he has been involved with non-traditional software engineering education as a learner, a teacher, a creator, and an innovator. Now he is working to solve the opportunity gap for refugees in tech by creating an ironclad talent pipeline that teaches skills that are usually only gained through traditional education or extensive experience.

💡 Where to find Brenton: LinkedIn | Website 

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Transcript

E661389B_18 - TT - Digital Footprint - Brenton Strine

[00:00:00] Brenton Strine: Teaching people is really hard, starting a software agency is hard, starting a non-profit is hard. You're trying to do all of those at once. That's, like, compounding the difficulties of what you're working with,

[00:00:09] but the fact that so many people recognize the scope and the magnitude and the impact of this problem has been an asset. It's almost like if you tell people that we're working on a solution, people come together to make that solution possible. Hello, welcome to the Digital Footprint. I'm Richard Simms, and this podcast is brought to you by Tyrannosaurus Tech, an award-winning technology partner dedicated to designing and developing high-impact software products. Today, I am joined by Brenton Strine, Director, and Founder of Refcode. Welcome, Brenton.

[00:01:16] Brenton Strine: Hello, welcome. I mean, thank you for welcoming me. Welcome to our viewers. 

[00:01:21] Richard Simms: Yeah. Very glad to have you on the show. So, we've known each other for a few years now. It's always been great catching up with you and hearing how things are progressing with Refcode. It seems like, especially in the last few years, you've really doubled down, there's been a lot of exciting developments, so I'm excited to hear more about what you're doing, and yeah,

[00:01:41] really thrilled that you could make the time to do this. So to get started, do you mind just briefly introducing yourself? Tell us just a little bit about Refcode.

[00:01:51] Brenton Strine: Yeah, so, my name is Brenton Strine, and let's say I, I've had a career in software engineering. Another way I can put it is I've been coding for something like 20 years, most of those as an enterprise software engineer for millions or more users, and only 5 of those years of experience are still relevant just because of the speed at which things change in this industry.

[00:02:15] but yeah, I'm self-taught, and I landed a job kind of almost by accident, out of college, as a web developer, and it changed the trajectory of my life, really. And I've been interested in teaching, and so I bounced around from different places. I've been in California most of my life. I worked at Amazon, NASA and came to Atlanta and worked at MailChimp,

[00:02:40] Brenton Strine: those are the ones you've probably heard of. But when I came to Atlanta, I learned about Clarkston, which is, I had no idea, a resettlement site for the UN. So, there've been people that the UN has been placing here in Clarkston, which is just part of Atlanta, really, a little town right outside of Atlanta for, for decades.

[00:02:58] I'm not even sure when they started doing this, but, so there's people from all over the world right here in Atlanta, in Clarkston, and there are, many of them are refugees, technically. There's a difference between a refugee and other types of immigrants, but displaced people. And I was very, very excited to find out that these people are here bringing their culture and their flavor and all of the cool things that come from all those different cultures being here.

[00:03:22] And oftentimes they have distinguished backgrounds and careers that were interrupted for one reason or another, almost always not their fault, I mean, really, always not their fault, and they're having to start over because, you know, legal degrees and engineering, certifications and bar things, bar exams don't really translate across international borders always, especially if you are fleeing for your life and you don't have time to go through your filing cabinet on your way out. So, they're starting over, and so it just seemed like, I felt the pain of that, and I saw the opportunity of these really smart people ready to start over, who already have, you know, establish themselves in a career, um, and so I just saw the opportunity of code. So, started Refcode after many conversations with people, and Refcode is exactly, the goal is not just to get refugees and immigrants a job but actually to help them start a new career in software engineering and experience what I experienced, which is a change in the trajectory that you would have expected, you know, for me coming out of poverty and, and a family that wasn't educated,

[00:04:26] Brenton Strine: software engineering changed the trajectory you would have expected for me, and a lot of people expect refugees to kind of have this, at least economically, and employment-wise, future that's not, uh, very great, and I want to see that change. So, Refcode does that classes, education, mentorship, and mostly community and some of the exciting things that I'm sure we'll get into. 

[00:04:47] Richard Simms: Awesome. Yeah. I love what you all are doing. So, let's jump in with a big question. You touched on this a little bit, but I want to kind of dig in on just the heart of your mission. So, I think, you know, you don't have to be a news junkie to know there are a lot of ongoing refugee crises in the world

[00:05:06] and certainly now with the war in Ukraine, it is a specialty top of mind for a lot of folks, but more broadly, I mean, this has been going on throughout history. It's a complex problem, to say the least. You mentioned, you know, the challenge of coming, obviously your credentials, not translating or being easy to leverage here, et cetera,

[00:05:25] but I love to just expand since you're working really hands-on with a lot of these folks, like, the struggle of coming somewhere new, it's just multifaceted, I'm sure, so can you expand a little bit more, like, based on all your exposure to just all the challenges that refugees would face coming into Atlanta or anywhere in the US, really?

[00:05:45] Brenton Strine: Yeah, I mean, I think that probably everybody has an intuitive sense of some of the challenges of, I mean, just do, just imagine that you drop everything and go somewhere else and you don't even know where you're going, that's something that I learned about refugees is it's not like they choose to come to the United States.

[00:06:04] They flee for their lives, land in a refugee camp, and then the UN puts them somewhere, you, sometimes without, you know, weak with, with only a couple of weeks of notice, so it's not like they can even start learning the language or anything. So, there's, there's a lot of challenges. I mean, language is probably one of the first and biggest ones.

[00:06:21] The, the complete starting over, even if you do have skills that are valuable, doctors, lawyers, judges, civil engineers, these are all professions where those skills may be valuable, but you would have to start over, and you'd have to go through another eight years of school to become a medical doctor again, you know?

[00:06:41] And so that just, you really are starting from ground zero on that. There's, you know, and I don't even know if I am qualified to go into the aspects of just being in a different culture, a different society with having to learn new expectations of, I've just how to, how to interact with people on a basic level

[00:07:00] and then, you know, racism, a lot of people don't have white skin, they're coming into America where racism exists, but a lot of what I see is, and this is a motivation in rough code, is isolation. You come from somewhere where you got family and connections, and you've been building a network, you come to a new place, and you don't have that network

[00:07:20] and a lot of refugees do build strong, small, like, sort of like local networks. Um, so, for example, the Ethiopian community is really strong and active in Clarkston and you talk to Ethiopians, and they all seem to know each other. They've got a really strong community, but a lot of these communities are sort of like

[00:07:40] Brenton Strine: insulated. So, they connect with people because they need to connect, but that doesn't necessarily give them the connection is outside of that community. And so connections lead to employment. That's professional connections, that's finding out about opportunities, that's knowing somebody who can teach you the right thing, are pointing in the right direction

[00:07:59] and so that's one of the disadvantages that I think refugees have, especially as they're newer and as they haven't had time to make connections. That really puts them at a, at a big disadvantage to somebody like me. If I've been here, you know, for years and years and years, even if my connections are kind of dispersed around, I know how to ask around to get help, to, to figure out,

[00:08:22] Brenton Strine: what job to apply for or what job to think about studying for and preparing for, or, you know, opportunities that might come up. And those, those aren't necessarily available. If everybody you know is also somebody who's new to the country.

[00:08:35] Richard Simms: Yeah, that all makes a lot of sense, and yeah, I think I would struggle if you just dropped me into another major US city with, you know, essentially nothing but the clothes on my back, so I can't imagine, you know, a whole new culture and just completely different system and society, so that makes a lot of sense.

[00:08:52] So, you talked a little bit about how you got exposed to the problem here in Atlanta. Tell me a little bit more about, you know, what led you to really want to personally take action, you know, there's a big, big gap there, right? You might have said, "Oh wow. That's a really difficult situation," and done nothing.

[00:09:11] Richard Simms: You might've just looked for an organization where you could volunteer here and there, but you've really gone a lot further, obviously, to set up Refcode and really build something. So, tell us a little bit more about how you got there to kind of take that leap.

[00:09:26] Brenton Strine: Yeah, I think I can answer that

[00:09:27] by kind of reflecting on two sort of aspects of my personality. The one I already touched on just kinda my background is, you know, I was raised in a family that was not educated. Looking back, I realized we were in poverty, although I didn't ever think of it that way at the time.

[00:09:42] I didn't formally study this, and I didn't even pursue becoming a software engineer intentionally, but it was just something I was interested in. So, it has the power to change your economic trajectory, and importantly, in that, it doesn't require you to kind of be rich to get into it. You don't have to go to law school or become, you know, go through eight years of medical school, you can just, if you have a computer and internet connection, you can teach yourself.

[00:10:09] If you have some additional resources being like time and interest and, and mentorship and community and, but the tools are free, like, the learning resources are free online, so it's, it's an amazing opportunity. And so, when I reflect on my own life and how this changed me, I just see this as a, as a really particularly useful thing for making the world more equitable.

[00:10:31] It's a, it's a job that pays really, really well, and it doesn't have a huge barrier to entry. You don't have to go to Harvard to become a software engineer and be paved successfully. So, that's one big thing. And the other thing is that, I think maybe partly because I never studied computer science formally, I've always been interested in teaching it.

[00:10:49] Brenton Strine: Maybe part of me has been trying to make up for not getting the education I should have, and so I've been, you know, I kind of have a heart of a teacher, and I'm always thinking about ways to explain things, and for years I've been trying to, trying out different sort of strategies for teaching in a non-traditional way.

[00:11:05] So, I did a Skillshare, I was actually one of the first, I was one of the pilots online Skillshare classes. They used to be in person, and I did that as well. I did one of the early Codecademy lessons, I was part of their code year. I've done, like, in-person workshops, I've done big, big workshops.

[00:11:19] Brenton Strine: I've done, I almost was going to build a boot camp, start a boot camp, back when boot camps were the latest and greatest thing, although I was far under-resourced and underqualified at that 

[00:11:28] time to succeed there. So, I, I've been wanting to teach, um, and was excited about this and had been building curriculum in my mind for a long time,

[00:11:36] so it just kind of, it fit, that I had this impulse and I had, I've made a lot of mistakes. Like, for example, I did a class on Educator, very similar to, like, Linda or even, you know, some of the newer video, like a Treehouse style things. And I did, I did an intro to HTML, and I made the mistake of kind of just going through the syntax of HTML.

[00:11:59] In fact, we actually went through the W3C specification, which not even all web developers go through that, and I just went tag to tag, starting with anchor, and just went through and explained to every single HTML element all the way to, I think the last one is like WBR alphabetically, and what I learned from that experience of teaching it the wrong way is that there's a lot more to learning to code than learning the syntax.

[00:12:23] And in fact, the syntax is really easy compared to the problem solving and the creativity and the communication and the teamwork and all these other issues. And so when I finally came to, you know, Clarkston and was thinking about helping these refugees, I was looking at other things that already existed because they didn't want to duplicate

[00:12:41] Brenton Strine: in effort. And so you mentioned like, "Why didn't I just volunteer?" I actually talked for over a year to different people, looking for opportunities like this, and nothing existed that was what needed to exist. There was some computer literacy, and there were some, you know, there's, there's things online where you can teach yourself, there's boot camps, and there's free code camp, and there's all these things, but they were missing community and that opportunity for mentorship and teaching and, and supporting each other and introducing because you have to know about free code camp first before you can take advantage of it, right? And they were also missing that, that, that whole other realm of what is important to learn beyond just the syntax, all of that other intangible stuff

[00:13:25] that's even beyond soft skills. There's, there's a whole realm of technical skills that have nothing to do with the code itself that you need to learn. And nothing existed in Clarkston that gave people what they needed and so I had to start it myself. 

[00:13:40] Richard Simms: Awesome. Yeah. It's a great story, and I love that you went through that process, as you said, of having engineering really change the trajectory of your life, and I think that's such a real thing. I've certainly seen it with, you know, folks that are breaking into tech or junior engineers that really

[00:14:00] put in the time, the energy, and just a few years down the road. They're in a different situation in their life and the opportunities before them. So, I love that, and you're right, of course, that the barriers to entry are lower than I guess they've ever been, right? It still requires a tremendous amount of work and buckling down and really investing the mental energy and honing the skill set,

[00:14:22] but it's all very accessible, you know? Increasingly companies are less concerned about if you have a CS degree if you have a degree period, all of those things, especially in today's market where engineers are just in such high demand, it's if you have the skills and can demonstrate that, you know, you're in, right?

[00:14:42] Brenton Strine: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:14:44] Richard Simms: So, with Refcode, you know, where it is now as compared to the initial vision and how you got started, like, can tell me a little bit more about how it's evolved? 'Cause you really started, I think, like, five years ago, right? But, as I mentioned,

[00:14:58] Brenton Strine: Yeah. 

[00:14:59] Richard Simms: I think especially in the last few years, it really beefed it up,

[00:15:02] so I'd love to understand how it's changed over time.

[00:15:06] Brenton Strine: Yeah. You know, it's amazing how little division has changed in some ways because I started out with very audacious vision. Um, I wanted to, I mean, basically, I wanted to change the typical story of the refugee. I want people to say. I want people to stop saying, "Refugees come here, and they work for the chicken factory,"

[00:15:24] and that's the typical story. I wanted them to start saying, "Refugees come here, and they become software engineers, and they start, you know, tech startups, and it's like, this is like our own little Silicon Valley here." That was my initial vision, and so that's, that's, I mean, that's transforming an entire landscape of a city,

[00:15:39] so obviously that was, like, very, very big and early on, a lot of factors go play into that that are far more than one person can do, obviously. But at the beginning, you know, we just started with a simple class that taught code, and I would, I would tell people, "We're teaching refugees how to code," which is a massive oversimplification,

[00:15:59] but what I did that was a little bit different is that tagline we teach refugees to code was actually a little bit of a trick to pull people in, and then what we actually did was we taught them communication skills and collaboration skills and professional skills and, you know, problem-solving and creativity

[00:16:15] and a lot of other things that gave them an idea of if they had the interest, the aptitude, and the ability to, to really pursue this. And so the goal of this intro class was we did teach like we, I mean, they, they learned some amazing technical skills, they built websites from scratch, uploaded it on Github, deployed it to a domain, in this little 10-week class,

[00:16:37] Brenton Strine: but the goal was not that, the goal was for them to know if they were ready to pursue this career and go all-in on it. So, that in combination with doing it in a way that, that built their connections to each other, to other refugees and to established professionals from Atlanta, who, by the way, often were also refugees or immigrants.

[00:16:57] So, with a community to support them and the human resources that are needed to make that career decision and a little bit of a taste to know, that was, that was what that initial class, was just an introduction. And then, early on, that was it. We didn't have anything else. So, they would graduate from this class with not even really just a tiny introduction of technical skills, not even anywhere close to where they could be looking for a job yet, but they would have a mentor, and they'd have a community, and they'd have some direction and some ideas of what the future looked like

[00:17:31] and then they would just kind of, we'd set them free, and they would find their own path. And we always knew that that was a problem because it's hard to find your own path, but you know, people were succeeding with it, and we, we've been just trying to build that, more and more parts of that path. So, we've been watching the sort of journeys that people take and finding the paths that make the most sense

[00:17:52] and we've been trying to, you know, turn the dirt path into a little sidewalk, and the goal is to turn it into, like, a five-lane superhighway and to make it really easy to go down that path. But one of the earliest things that really stuck with me, I've actually, this was after our very first class ever, Mustafa, who was both a student

[00:18:10] and he helped me run the class, he was, like, our lab manager, he said, I wish that we could pay students to participate. And that was so key to the struggles that, that refugees face often, is they're long hours, often late hours or, or even early hours, like, very, very early, 3:00 AM. 4:00 AM hours,

[00:18:31] that are taxing jobs to put food on the table, and even though we offer this, this class for free, we're asking them to take time away from that, take time away from their ability to recover afterwards, take time away from the, the little time they have to have relationships and, you know, live their lives, to study this new thing

[00:18:49] and so offering it for free just kind of wasn't good enough. And so I've had this goal for a long time to be able to raise the funds somehow, to give them that, to, to be able to pay, like, a learning or a program so that people can actually learn well, without having to worry about how they're getting food on the table.

[00:19:06] And so, that's, that's been a really exciting thing to be able to see, start coming together recently. And also farther down the line, getting, getting connected to actual employment opportunities. Again, like, it's hard to do, and everybody finds their own path, but we've been working towards finding ways to help make those connects. 

[00:19:25] Richard Simms: Yeah, that's awesome. And, of course, I love the idea of paying them to be in the class. I'm sure it's not easy to find the resources for that, but, of course, I understand, I mean, I'm sure many folks who would love to do it and have the most sincere intentions, I mean, they, you know, the opportunity cost of doing that versus something that has a more immediate pay schedule, very difficult to navigate.

[00:19:49] So, as far as, like, the history of Refcode, again, I know you've been out a while, fairly recently, you really took the plunge and went full time, and you, of course, we're coming from a very successful software engineering path and job. So, you're, you know, you're taking a big risk and making a big change.

[00:20:09] what got you to the point of jumping in full time and kind of being ready to commit at that level?

[00:20:15] Brenton Strine: Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know if we've mentioned on this call yet, this, everything that I did until January of this year was in addition to my full-time job, I was doing it on the sides, you know, nights and weekends and stuff. And so, this was something that I always knew I wanted to be big, but it grew kind of faster than I was ready for.

[00:20:34] I would tell people about it, and people would jump in and say, "Hey, I want to help," and so suddenly we had a bunch of volunteers, and we kind of expanded from a class into multiple programs really, really quickly and I always had the human capital available to almost, like, anything I could dream up.

[00:20:48] We could do it, as long as it didn't cost money. We had, like, infinite human resources but no money. And so, with that rapid expansion, I was seeing, "Wow, there's so many possibilities here," but also I was making, building these relationships with people, with students, and you know, they would go, they'd go through the class, but then they'd come back and volunteer,

[00:21:09] Brenton Strine: so I was having multiple year-long relationships develop, really meaningful relationships. A lot of the people that started out as just a student in one of my classes are now somebody that I consider a legitimate close friend. And so when you start building those relationships and caring about the people, that's, that's our trick, is

[00:21:26] volunteers come thinking they'll just help out once or twice, and then they meet somebody, and they could connection, and then they're hooked. Well, I was, I was in it deeper than anybody else, and so this became kind of, like, the primary focus and passion for my life over the years. And I wanted to do this full-time, but it's really hard because again, we weren't working with, like, a real big budget.

[00:21:46] We are partnering with, like, for example, Tecton to use their venue. So, we have these strategic partnerships, so we could use resources, but we, we weren't, like, getting grants for, like, a million dollars or anything. We're getting small, small donations, less than a thousand dollars, so there was no way that I was going to be able to just quit my job and do this full-time and get paid for it.

[00:22:07] And even if I did, it does not look good for a non-profit to have a hundred percent of their funding go to paying director and then none of the money go to anything else. So, I shot myself in the foot there with building a program that doesn't cost anything to run, other than giving my own free time for free, which is very valuable, obviously.

[00:22:25] But yeah, this, this is something that I've been working towards for a long time, building up the resources and sort of like the, starting to think through the ability of maybe someday to, to grow this to the point that we actually could get grants and legitimate, you know, donations from places like MailChimp, or I was thinking about Home Depot.

[00:22:45] And so, in January, I did take the plunge. I quit my job, and I, I didn't just quit. I quit without a plan for any income, and I've got some runway to continue working, being financially solvent for a while. Again, thanks to an incredibly, like, surprisingly lucrative career that I never planned for and saving, saving for the ability to do something like this. But as we've been building Refcode out, I'm starting to see ways that we can kind of expand and grow and maybe get it to the point someday where we can pay me for this to be my full-time thing. And actually, what I, my dream, even beyond that, is for Refcode to mature to the point where it doesn't depend on me.

[00:23:31] Brenton Strine: I don't have to be the executive director. If I leave, I want somebody else to be able to step in and say, "Okay, I'm going to be the executive director now. I'm going to run this, and it's going to continue to thrive and, and serve the refugees and immigrants just as well, and it's not all gonna fall apart."

[00:23:47] And that can't happen if we're expecting that person who follows me to also be a hundred percent volunteer. So, we have to, in order for this to meet its mission, we have to develop some income stream enough to pay the, you know, the people who are running it. 

[00:24:01] Richard Simms: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Well, kudos to you for, you know, doubling down on it, and I'm sure it's going to continue to succeed and get to that point where from a standpoint, you can build a full-time team and further the mission. So, let's pivot a little bit and talk about the programs

[00:24:19] specifically and the students themselves. So, you know, just looking at your site, you have a pretty extensive set of resources for the students, so actual courses, structured mentorship, like, you said, it seems like it's become a lot more than just, you know, kind of one introductory class. 

[00:24:36] Brenton Strine: Right. 

[00:24:36] Richard Simms: Can you expand a little bit on the details and, you know, what you're trying to provide from an education standpoint, but also the community

[00:24:43] aspect, which you've mentioned a few times and I am sure is instrumental to their success.

[00:24:49] Brenton Strine: Yeah.

[00:24:50] Well, I can kind of break things into three categories, and two of those three categories are more future-looking that don't exist yet. And I think it's kind of interesting that all of the stuff that exists now, I'm now in my mentally grouping into one category, which I'm calling the community category, the Refcode community. And the Refcode community is all of the things that we do that are supported by the community by, by volunteers, which are, again, like, professionals, seasoned professionals from Atlanta,

[00:25:19] people who are refugees or immigrants, who have either come through the program or came with, in their country of origin, some previous experience and want to support other refugees and immigrants and then the refugees and immigrants, the participants themselves. So, in that category of community-supported events,

[00:25:37] Brenton Strine: I mentioned the class, which, which I sometimes call a discernment class because again, it's, you do learn a bunch of technical skills, you're learning a bunch of really cool stuff, but the real purpose of it is to discern if you want to do this or not and if, and if you are able to do this or not. You may be good at math but not good at creative problem solving,

[00:25:55] you're not going to succeed as a software engineer unless you can learn that. If you're really motivated, maybe you can learn that, so a lot of it comes down to motivation. And you mentioned the structured mentorship, that's really important for people who are really thinking about moving forward, but there's not a clearly defined path, and they need to make decisions,

[00:26:13] "Do I go to school? Do I do a boot camp? Do I try and build something on my own?" We've done some opportunities where we give people real-world work to, to kind of practice collaborating on a team. We call that team code and so, like, for example, the refcode.org website, if you look at it, that was actually built by a team that was, actually, it was really fun.

[00:26:32] It had somebody from every cohort in that team, and the whole purpose of that was to learn collaboration skills, and so technically, we actually designed it so that they could build that website with very simple HTML and CSS. My goal was for them to not learn anything new, technically, no new code because they were struggling just with the, with, you know, I was, I was pretty evil,

[00:26:54] Brenton Strine: I set them up for so many merge conflicts. It was bad. It was, they really suffered through a lot of every single possible way that teams can go wrong, I forced them to experience. But at the end of it, they came out with, you know, having built a real project that they could put on their resumes and being able to say in an interview, "Oh yeah, I know how to get my, work myself out of a merge conflict.

[00:27:18] I know why it's important to structure your PR this way. I know why it's important to announce to the team what you're about to work on and which files and why." So, that's a big thing. And then the other things that I'm excited about are the lab, the Refcode lab, which is kind of the same thing as our class, but with no, no structure in terms of when you have to come. And everybody being on the same page, so anybody can come into the lab on Wednesday nights, at any level, and just go into a room full of people where there's a bunch of other people at different skill levels and get help on anything. So, you can come in and work on your PhD-level

[00:27:55] python thesis, although you might be, be, you might be asked to give help if you're at that level. Um, or if you come in, you know because you've gotten halfway through a boot camp and you're wanting some help on something, or if you come in asking how to use a mouse and a keyboard and there's, and you spend time both receiving help and giving help. On the early end, you're probably receiving help more, but over time you gain skills, and then you start giving help. So, I really love the concept of the lab because it, we don't have to gatekeep entry into the class and we don't have to start everybody on the same day and if somebody misses because, you know, they have something come up, which happens, your, your boss says suddenly, "Oh, you have to come in on this day,"

[00:28:34] you can't say no to that. If you miss, if you miss a week of the lab, it doesn't matter. So, those are, those are some of the programs we have. I'm probably missing, like, three or four. There's so many different things we do. Like, during the pandemic, we ran tech talks because we couldn't meet in person. And so we would have experts present on a different topic, like, artificial intelligence or no-code development, and people would just come and listen and interact and ask questions.

[00:28:58] So, that was another fun thing, another community-supported 

[00:29:00] thing. 

[00:29:02] Richard Simms: That's awesome. Yeah, I think it's great, of course, kind of the breadth of things you all have going on, and I a hundred percent understand this reality that it's not strictly about being able to write code. And we kind of go through this too, when we're bringing on folks, especially that are more junior level, just running sprints, you know, knowing when you're blocked, when to ask for help, managing all your poll requests, et cetera.

[00:29:26] Yeah. Like, you got to hit of those things to give folks a good chance when they actually come out into the real software engineering world. One question I had for you, for your students, like, give us a sense, like, what countries are represented, you know, one thing I'm also curious about is are all your classes in English, to what extent can you really realistically accommodate for a range of languages?

[00:29:53] Just get, I want to get a sense of, like, the diversity of the group of students typically.

[00:29:57] Brenton Strine: Yeah, I'll start with the English thing. We only teach in English. Although when I teach, I do a pretty good broken English, so I can make things a little bit easier to understand for people who aren't super fluent. But it's actually important, I think, because, at least in the Atlanta tech job market, having English is one of the

[00:30:16] things it's going to make you far more employable than if you don't, and so, you know, I'd love to help everybody, and we, you know, we could maybe work on some of that down the line, but right now, at least, having English is already a major contributing factor to your success. And so we're requiring English, but I will say that we, one of the great things about having a community instead of just like, if it, a model where it's just a teacher teaching a bunch of students, if I don't speak Amharic, I can't help like there. And there's, like, a point that I am not communicating well in English, there's nothing we can do about it, but because we're a community, I may say something confusing, and somebody speaking Amharic doesn't understand what I'm saying,

[00:31:01] well, there's two other people in the class who also speak Amharic maybe, and maybe two or three of the volunteers also speak Amharic because it's not, it's not, like, only the Americans are, are volunteering, it's everybody that's kind of collaborating and building each other up. So, I see a ton of this happening, where the primary, the primary communication is in English, but then when something kind of breaks down communication-wise, there's little, like, gatherings that happen where they, where they switch to their native languages and communicate much, much faster.

[00:31:32] Have you ever seen that meme where the person is like, "You should see how smart I am in Spanish," which really, I mean, it's amazing to

[00:31:40] Brenton Strine: think that you could be learning something difficult and challenging technically and also trying to do it in not your native tongue. It's, it takes a lot of brainpower, right?

[00:31:50] And so I see that happen where they switch into their native tongue and things suddenly are moving much faster, the communication goes quickly, and then they pop back into English, and you're like, "Okay, we, we worked through it." So, I see that happen a lot. There's diversity. It actually, it changes every cohort,

[00:32:05] it seems like. I think a lot of that is because we recruit a lot from word of mouth and so, like, for the very, the very, very first cohort we had, we had people from Syria and Iran, I think, and some other places, oh, um, I'm forgetting where, somewhere in South America and then the next cohort, we had one person from Ethiopia and then the cohort after that, the, almost the entire class was Ethiopian because they told all their friends, um, and the class we're in right

[00:32:33] now is again, a lot of Syrians,

[00:32:35] people from Iraq, we've got some people from Afghanistan. By the way, the time that it takes for people to get in Clarkston from a national disaster or a war or something is longer than most people realize. So, like, for example, in Ukraine, I don't expect to see many people from Ukraine for a while.

[00:32:54] It just takes years, usually. Actually, the events in Afghanistan earlier were kind of rare because people got over not through refugee status but through an SIV special immigration visa, which, which is kind of this thing that Congress passed that allows them to come over much more quickly.

[00:33:11] So, we actually are seeing people from the American exit of Afghanistan already, and that's very rare for it to happen that quickly. But yeah, we get people from all over the world. Unfortunately, you know, disasters, natural disasters and wars and you know, all the bad things that can happen, there's no one country that has a monopoly on that,

[00:33:33] Brenton Strine: so people come from all over the place. 

[00:33:36] Richard Simms: Yeah, very cool. I'm sure you got some really interesting folks, and, you know, especially given how motivated they are to invest and make something new, I'm sure it's really exciting to get to meet some of them. So, one thing we talked a little bit about this earlier, even though software developers are in such high demand, it's, it can be really tough to break into the space because so many companies, even though they're desperate to hire, they want someone who has enough experience to jump right in,

[00:34:06] so it can be tough to, you know, get over that hurdle. Curious how you all are handling this. If I'm understanding correctly, like, recently, you've been kind of pursuing more of a small agency internally, where folks can start taking on development work and start to accrue some of that experience.

[00:34:23] So, you, can you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing there and what your plans are?

[00:34:28] Brenton Strine: Yeah, definitely. And that goes back to what Mustafa said after that first cohort, "I wish that we could pay them." And I've been thinking about that so much first, for many, many years and you know, beyond that even, watching the, the stories and the journeys of people who've gone through and succeeded. For example, one woman,

[00:34:47] you know, she, she graduated the class, she didn't have previous experience, but she, she got introduced to code, um, she graduated the class, had, you know, worked with our mentor and eventually decided to go get a master's degree in computer science. And so, now, now remember, I don't have even an undergraduate degree in computer science, so she's, like, outranked me twice in her, in her education level.

[00:35:07] And she did that, and she, and I was, you know, leveraging my networks to try and help her find a job, and she just couldn't find work because everybody wanted her to have two years of experience for the entry-level position. And it was just maddening to me, maddening to her, you know, just very, very frustrating.

[00:35:26] She's super qualified, she has tons of skills. I could vouch, like, she was teaching me things. Very very smart, very talented, very skilled, very educated, she had credentials, but she didn't have experience. And that just really shows, like, you can have all the, everything else in the world, but if you don't have the thing on your resume that says "X" number of years of experience, it's just hard.

[00:35:49] And so for her, she was able to eventually get an apprenticeship through a program called Code the Dream, they're in North Carolina, highly recommend Code the Dream to anybody who wants to participate or donate or volunteer or anything, it's a great program. But that apprenticeship gave her the, the experience she needed to get her first job.

[00:36:08] Brenton Strine: So, she went from, in a few years, she went from no experience to six-figure total compensation. Her first job was, like, over six figures. Her first real job, I should say. Which is amazing, but man, it shouldn't be that hard. And so, yeah,

[00:36:23] so the model that we're looking at now is we're going to start a dev shop

[00:36:27] and because I know the talents of, in the skills and the motivation of people going through this, we are actually able to hire people and start paying them. We can't pay them, you know, six figures, but we can pay them a living wage that, that means they can quit their other job and focus on learning and developing and gaining experience full time.

[00:36:48] And so, we can hire them as a kind of learn and earn sort of a way to move forward. And I actually invented, uh, I think I invented this job description, you've heard a software engineer and the engineer is the person that has to know the whole, our overarching picture and solve all the problems of, you

[00:37:04] think about building a bridge, they have to know geology and air and weight and the physics of metal, like, everything they have to solve all of the, versus a technician is somebody who has very strong technical skills in a specific area and doesn't have to integrate all the different parts. So, I created this term "software technician,"

[00:37:23] and so that means we, that enables us to hire people at a lower skill level where they just know HTML and JavaScript. They just know the syntax maybe, and they're learning the more engineering principles. And I think that we can actually start to, you leverage these people in an environment, again, sort of like a community environment where they're receiving mentorship and teaching and growing and learning on the job,

[00:37:45] but I think that if we do it right, we can actually have them through the software agency, contribute enough that they pay for their own weight, if that makes sense, even at the very, very low level. And that's, that's really hard to do, and it's why most companies want two years of experience. And so the goal is that they start as a software technician 1 and really quickly level up to software technician, 2 and 3, and then get promoted to software engineer 1, 2, 3, and then Google will poach them and quadruple their salary. 

[00:38:12] Richard Simms: Right. 

[00:38:12] Brenton Strine: Yeah. 

[00:38:13] Richard Simms: That's awesome. So, let me take a step back for a second. You know, I shared with you, we started this podcast mostly to, you know, folks that are considering launching a startup or a new non-profit, or building out some type of tech products specifically in healthcare education, you know, we're hoping to give them kind of insights into that journey, the highs, the lows, the struggles. What have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced with Refcode, and how have you either overcome those, or maybe you're still in the midst of sorting them out, but what's been the toughest part

[00:38:48] so far?

[00:38:50] Brenton Strine: Yeah, I think that the toughest part

[00:38:52] is that I, I took on a very audacious task. I mean, try and basically trying to solve things that, I mean, think about it, there are a lot of people, like, you could make a lot of money if you can find a way to train untalented people in a highly desirable skill set.

[00:39:10] And a lot of people are working on this. Like, you know, like, you have to know that there are many, many, many smart people trying to figure this out because there's tons of money in it for whoever figures it out first. You can start a recruiting firm and become the next billionaire. And so,

[00:39:25] I'm taking on that

[00:39:26] task. That's just hard. Like, there, this isn't something where, "Oh, if we just bring a bunch of volunteers together and, and teach some code that this is magically gonna do this good in the world." It's not a matter of, like, we need more effort. It's a matter of there actually needs to be some serious innovation to solve some real problems that nobody has solved yet because if somebody has solved it, we would all know about it.

[00:39:51] At a higher level, if, if we can crack this challenge, we're gonna make the whole world more equitable, so that's, that's really valuable, and it's just hard to do that. It's so, that's been a big challenge, is just the magnitude of what we're taking on. I think that the magnitude of that has been hard, but that's been balanced by the magnitude of support that we've received,

[00:40:13] Brenton Strine: so many people willing to give their time. So, it's not like we had to raise a venture fund, fund of like a million dollars in order to experiment with something that may or may not work. We were able to have people give their time for free and build a community and watch the success of people and adjust and make, make changes and, and build something that worked that way.

[00:40:37] So, I'm very grateful for all the time that people have given to build this community and, and help us work through this daunting challenge. And I'm not saying we're there yet, but the way that people have come together has made this even possible, whereas, you know, it's, it's kind of

[00:40:56] Brenton Strine: almost impossible. I was talking to somebody who had started a software agency, and they were saying, "Yeah.

[00:41:01] teaching people is really hard. Starting a software agency is hard. Starting a non-profit is hard." You're trying to do all of those at once. That's, like, compounding the difficulties of what you're working with.

[00:41:10] But the fact that so many people recognize the scope and the magnitude and the impact of this problem has been an asset, and we've been able to, as long, it's almost like if you tell people that we're working on a solution, people come together to make that solution possible. 

[00:41:26] Richard Simms: Hmm, great. Um, and yeah, I think it's a big, challenging goal, which I think a lot of the best, you know, startups or non-profits or whatever it is, are based on something big and kind of audacious like that, so I definitely give you props for going forward. And, of course, I know firsthand what the

[00:41:45] potential is there, given how the talent market is and the tech space, and that's the disconnect there, you know, just supply and demand has been getting further and further apart for years and years and years, so it's not a short-term problem. And, of course, I agree that it's not simply a matter of putting money towards it, or, you know, resources or human capital,

[00:42:09] like, there does have to be a lot of creativity there because, as we know, there's a lot of really well-funded boot camps and stuff that have degrees of success, of course, but even a lot of folks coming out of those boot camps. I mean, even a lot of folks coming out of a true CS degree, they're not quite there where they can just readily jump in and start down that true career path.

[00:42:30] Brenton Strine: So, it's, it's tough. You know, I have to say too, as you was talking, I just thought even, an even bigger challenge, probably the biggest challenge of all of this is my own limitations, and I'm not just, like, trying to be humble, I've spent my career as a software engineer. I've not spent my career as, like, a director of a program or CEO

[00:42:50] and so in order for Refcode to succeed, we have to work in this big space. And I think about things like corporate partnerships to set up our, our participants with apprenticeships, um, or get grants, so that, there's a lot of big things that if I had a different background, Refcode could have been a lot more successful at. And even, you know, people might say, "Well, you could, you could grow a board, and you can get advisors."

[00:43:13] Well, I don't know how to do all that stuff. I've had to learn, you know, I've had to learn all of this. So, I've been learning and growing with Refcode to try and to try and give it what it deserves. And it's, it just takes time to, to develop and grow in so many ways personally and luckily, as a software engineer, I kind of, I'm used to learning and growing,

[00:43:31] so I'm able to do that, but it feels painfully slow sometimes. And that's, that's been really challenging, just my own limitations and seeing how, you know, I've seen a boot camp that's, they, like, guarantee all of their graduates' jobs at fortune 500's, and I'm like, "How do they do that?"

[00:43:47] And then I look at who's involved in that, well, they're all CEOs and, like, successful startup founders and all this. And I'm like, "Well, of course, they're going to be able to have the connections and the leverage to, you know, make that happen, and I don't. So, the. Yeah. 

[00:44:02] Richard Simms: Yeah, Yeah, for sure. But yeah, I think the good thing, of course, you are humble more than you should be because you've accomplished a lot, but also, yeah, just takes time, and I think that the good thing, as much as you understandably are eager to make as big of an impact as possible, as soon as possible is this, you know, this problem, unfortunately, is not going away,

[00:44:25] right? Whether it takes 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, you know, if you get there, it's going to be really transformative. So, I think, just stick, stick to it. So, my last question, what advice would you give to someone who's kind of in the early stages of launching a new business or a non-profit, you know, kind of, if you knew then what you know now, like, what, what advice would you share?

[00:44:52] Brenton Strine: It's the same advice that I would give to myself when I was in high school, and I started teaching myself to code. It's the same advice I give to our students who are starting out, which is don't do it on your own. Get, get mentors and advisors, and get plugged into a community that will support you and help you.

[00:45:10] It took me eight years to learn how to code before I got my job. It did not need to take me eight years, it was because I was, I had nobody directing me or helping me, telling me that I was going down the wrong path. And if you have a community supporting you that can redirect you, you know, show you your weak spots, show you opportunities that you wouldn't have found on your own,

[00:45:30] that helps. I think that's just across the board, helpful in everything. But, you know, as I've grown as a leader and as somebody who's actually running an organization, finding that support from other people who have been there before me and are farther along, all along the path and people who are in a similar path as me as well and people who are a little bit below, not just getting help from people above you down, but being part of a cohesive community all around. So, you're giving help to other people and advice which helps you, in order to explain something, you have to understand it yourself, and you see a different, you know, people have different problems than you do

[00:46:06] and so you see new things to learn about, and you have mentors who are above you, who can help, so just being a part of as much of a community of people who are in the same space as you as possible and can support you in it is the advice I would give, especially when you're in a place where, like me, where you're, you're trying to grow into the shoes that you have found yourself in or the shoes that you're hoping to step into.

[00:46:30] Richard Simms: Well, that's great advice. I think, of course, it's very true, and I do feel like, fortunately, in Atlanta, in Atlanta, especially, I think a lot of people want to help, you know, if you're willing, willing to ask and kind of give them a place to get plugged in. So, that's great. Okay. So, looks like, yeah, we're about out of time.

[00:46:48] This has been great. Thank you so much, Brenton. Really appreciate you coming on. So, before we sign off, where can listeners go to connect with you, learn more about Refcode and what specifically can they do to support your mission?

[00:47:02] Brenton Strine: Yeah, you can go to refcode.org. We did not buy the.com. Somebody made that mistake recently. Refcode.org has tons of information about ways to plugin. If you're close to Atlanta and want to come in person, we would love to have volunteers across the board, all kinds of volunteers, even with not a lot of technical knowledge, we all, you know, we have roughly two volunteers for every student, sometimes three per student in our classes

[00:47:27] and all of our programs moving forward are very community-based. So, come and volunteer and be enjoying our community. Be a part of that. You will grow more than you realize, and you will find that you are enjoying it rather than just feeling like you're giving. Also, you know, you might expect me to say donate,

[00:47:43] but what we really need is, uh, big donations. 

[00:47:47] Richard Simms: Yeah. 

[00:47:48] Brenton Strine: But it would be great if, you know, the greatest somebody logs on and you can, you can donate a hundred dollars or whatever, but I'm trying to figure out how to get, you know, some big company to give us a million dollars, um, which has not happened yet. So, if you have strategic partnerships or,

[00:48:02] you know, some sort of professional connection, and you know that they care about something like this and they might want to help in a big way, that would be amazing. Think about your

[00:48:12] personal network, maybe you know somebody who knows somebody and reach out through, I think we've got a forum where you can reach out on our website.

[00:48:18] And yeah, you can donate if you want through that, that's very appreciated, but we are in a place where we're, we're starting to raise money to support people going through a boot camp. We didn't even mention, we're starting a boot camp. 

[00:48:29] Richard Simms: Awesome.

[00:48:29] Brenton Strine: We're, we're hoping that it'll be actually a residency.

[00:48:32] So, they will not only come and take this boot camp for free but they'll get paid a living stipend while they do it, and that's going to be a hundred percent supported by donations. So, donations will definitely help. But even more valuable than donations is the right strategic connection. 

[00:48:47] Richard Simms: Right, right. Very cool. Well, we will spread the word and appreciate everything you're doing. It's awesome. And thanks again for being on the Digital Footprint.

[00:48:56] Brenton Strine: Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me. It was great to talk to you. I'm really happy to be here. 

[00:49:00] Richard Simms: Awesome. Thanks, Brenton. 

[00:49:01] Brenton Strine: My pleasure.