{ The Rithm Blog }

Alumni Spotlight: Tyler Ketron

Before joining us for Rithm’s 7th cohort, Tyler Ketron got his hands dirty (and sometimes still misses it!) as a hydrogeologist at government agencies and a consulting firm. When he’s not busy at his new job as a Front End Engineer, you can find Tyler competitively weight lifting, raising chickens in his backyard, or flexing his classical musician skills with the oboe and piano. Luckily, we were able to catch some time to sit down with Tyler and discuss his journey from growing up in a small town in Tennessee to becoming a software engineer.

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January 30, 2019

Avoiding Burnout

In May of 2018, Blind (an anonymous community work app) released a survey that revealed that close to 60 percent of employees surveyed considered themselves burned out. With over 11,000 respondents from the biggest tech companies in the game, it verified what those in the trenches were already well-aware of: burnout in tech is ubiquitous.

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January 09, 2019

Student Interview: Sarah + Zac on Company Projects

At Rithm, we believe that one of the best ways to prepare students for jobs as web developers is by giving them opportunities to work on real-world projects. Working on personal projects can be fun, but working in a team or on an existing code base gives students insights into the day-to-day challenges of a developer that they might not otherwise learn. Our 8th cohort is nearing the end of working on these projects, so we spoke with our students Sarah Kaplan and Zac Bennet to get their perspective on the experience.

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December 18, 2018

A New Tuition Option: We Make Money Only When You Do

When we first started Rithm in 2016, we made a bet. We believed that there would be people willing to pay a bit more for an immersive coding program that placed the quality of the education and student experience first.

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December 11, 2018

MongoDB is Easy

MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database provider. Here at Rithm School we used to teach MongoDB in conjunction with Node.js. Recently, however, we have switched our Node.js curriculum to utilize PostgreSQL. For a taste of what that looks like, check out Joel's blog post or our free online curriculum on relational databases with Node/Express.

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December 06, 2018

Meet The Instructor: Alissa Renz

We are elated to have Alissa Renz join the Rithm instruction team! You can find her teaching and supporting students throughout the course as they take the leap into full-stack web development. Here we learn a little bit more about Alissa, her role on the team and her advice to all aspiring web developers (starting with, "you got this!")

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November 14, 2018

Error Handling in Express

Express is a flexible framework for building server-side JavaScript web servers using Node. We teach it here at Rithm School, and students often enjoy getting a chance to use their JavaScript skills on both the front-end and back-end, using Express to build API servers.

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November 05, 2018

Four Tips for Moving Faster as a Developer

When lecturing, I'm commonly asked how I move so quickly between windows, between tabs and in applications like Terminal or the browser. In this post, I’d like to briefly highlight four essential tips and tricks for becoming a faster and more productive developer.

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October 16, 2018

Five Tips to Manage the Emotional Side of a Coding Program

A lot of people who decide to come like a program like Rithm's spend a lot of time trying to prepare as much as possible for the technical curriculum. We'll often get e-mails from accepted students before the program starts asking what else they can learn or study so that they'll be ahead of the curve when the program begins.

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October 08, 2018

Does Emotional Intelligence Get You Paid More in Tech?

Until recently, many people thought the sole source of success boiled down to their intelligence (IQ). However, research has been emerging since the late 90’s that there is a definitive link between career success and emotional intelligence (EQ). Intelligence is your ability to learn, which remains the same whether you’re 15 or 50 years old. EQ is not a steadfast metric, it’s a flexible set of skills that can be learned and improved with practice. You may be saying to yourself “but my technical skills will speak for themselves - why should I care about this?”

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October 03, 2018

Post-Outcomes Blog: Top 3 Insights for Job-Seekers

Last Friday, Rithm School's seventh cohort finished the outcomes section of the course and graduated! 🎉 🎓 This was Rithm's second iteration of our in-house outcomes program, during which we had quite a few industry guest speakers come speak with students. Our guest speakers hailed from a wide range of companies from small startups like Desmos to massive corporations like Netflix. Most had substantial experience interviewing candidates, and all had sound advice to share with our students about the job search process. In this article, I have compiled what I believe to be the top three job search insights based on that experience.

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September 27, 2018

Staff Spotlight - Megan Lane, Operations & Events Associate

Meg Lane, our operations and events extraordinaire, has her thumbprint on every square inch of Rithm School’s financial district office. You can thank her keeping up our office space (and for our awesome tiki-themed kitchen decor!), running all of our free events, and most recently taking over all of our alumni activities. Here we learn a little bit more about Meg, her role on the team and what sweet treats she may have hidden around the office.

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September 11, 2018

Different Approaches to Using Relational Databases with Express

JavaScript is increasingly popular for developing backend servers, often using the Express library with Node. While many tutorials show using Node/Express with NoSQL databases, like MongoDB, these kind of databases are often not as good for common, relational data requirements. Many projects would benefit from a more scalable, transactional relational database.

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August 28, 2018

The Job Funnel

No matter where you are in your career, looking for a new job is an incredibly stressful time. It's common to experience feelings of inadequacy, rejection, and general imposter syndrome.

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August 20, 2018

Alumni Spotlight: Daniel Szabo

Daniel came to Rithm School with an impressive background as a university lecturer and researcher. Outside of his interest in coding, his love of cars and driving started at the age of three when he disengaged his family car’s parking brake and caused a traffic accident. Fortunately, his driving record has improved since then! Daniel’s job search is winding down (congratulations!), so he was able to take some time to share more about his experience with us here at Rithm School:

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August 08, 2018

Rithm School Interview FAQs

Last updated 09/27/2022

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August 01, 2018

BPPE Approval and Outcomes Numbers

We’re ecstatic to report that Rithm School has been officially approved by the Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE). Since 2010, the BPPE has served a regulatory function in California, ensuring that postsecondary institutions are legitimate organizations that meet certain requirements in order to operate within the state. We’ve been working with the BPPE on our approval since our founding in 2016, and this approval shows that Rithm meets the standards for educational quality, integrity, financial stability, and rigor of curriculum as determined by the California agency.

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July 25, 2018

What’s New in Python 3.7: Data Classes

In June, the Python Software Foundation released the newest version of Python,3.7. In this post, we'll look at one of the nicest new features, "data classes".

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July 11, 2018

Five Tips for Getting Yourself Unstuck

I've worked with hundreds of budding engineers and mathematicians. And while every student is unique, everyone I've worked with has at least one thing in common: at some point, they've all been stuck on a problem.

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June 22, 2018

A Roadmap for Learning How To Code - Part 3

This blog post is next chapter of the "Roadmap for Learning How to Code" series for beginners, check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven't yet!

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June 13, 2018

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