Why We Believe in Tech Education

We set out to empower change-makers in the Singapore tech industry. One year on, this is how far we have come.

UpCode Academy was founded and fully operational in June 2018 with the mission to future-proof the careers of the people in Singapore, and contribute to the local technology and innovation industry.

Lee Zhi Peng, the founder and CEO of UpCode Academy, first saw the pain point in the technology scene when he was the cofounder of a tech startup: the tech industry is booming, but the demand far outstrips the supply.

While we have a world-class education system in Singapore, we found that many fresh graduates do not understand what the industry requires of them. As such, many of them usually experience a steep learning curve at their first job. Even in non-technical roles, it is not uncommon for jobs in the tech industry to require employees to know basic skills such as Structured Query Language (SQL) and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), or use tools like Metabase, Salesforce, or Facebook advertising pixel.

After Zhi Peng’s startup was acquired, he tackled this pain point. Being a self-taught programmer and a startup founder, he understood the industry requirements. His approach to this problem is to build a technology academy, where we could develop all curriculum and materials in-house with an academic team of industry practitioners. Currently, all our instructors and faculty heads are experts with many years of experience: practicing software engineers, Chief Technology Officers, PhD holders, and startup founders.

We have always worked hard to go the extra mile to teach students the right skills. We looked hard for the best instructors in the industry. Despite a busy schedule, Zhi Peng is usually the first to teach new courses to make sure that the course quality is good before passing the lesson plans and materials to other instructors. We sacrifice time, effort, and resources to go the extra mile to mentor and conduct make-up lessons for all our students.

Since June 2018, more than 1,000 people have graduated from our courses, empowered to make a change at different stages of their careers: Some of our graduates are full-time National Servicemen, preparing themselves for their university education; some are full-time university students, differentiating themselves for their job search; and others are full-time professionals, picking up tech skills so they can advance their careers, or they can do their work more effectively and efficiently.

It is genuinely humbling and satisfying to see some of UpCode Academy’s graduates experiencing the love of programming, winning hackathons, and discovering new career opportunities.

Tan Jin, for example, graduated from our Data Science track. While he was taking the courses, he even coded two simple games. He went on to take on a data science internship at a local startup and participated in the National Data Science Challenge organised by Shopee.

When we first started, we held our classes at the JTC Launchpad at one-north. To serve even more people, we expanded to our second campus located at The Cathay in December 2018, providing more venue options for our students to choose from. All classrooms at both locations are specially designed to provide a conducive environment for our students to optimise their learning experience.

We are also constantly on the move to develop more courses and materials, keeping pace with industry needs and training people in cutting-edge technology, filling a crucial and important educational gap in the industry. We are also looking at how we can improve and make tech more inclusive by experimenting with different mediums of learning.

With only 23 employees, it is a significant achievement that we have impacted 1,000 students within our first year of operations. We know our work is not done yet; we will strive to serve many more, enabling them to enter the tech industry or widening the horizons of their careers in the digital age.

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