Rackspace reaching out to women with ‘Linux for Ladies’

Law wasn’t proving lucrative for Jodi McMaster, who at 54 found herself eking by with contract legal work and freelance copy-editing gigs.

So when her son and daughter-and-law, both employees at Rackspace, encouraged her to apply for the company’s Linux for Ladies scholarship boot camp, she decided to take the plunge.

It was daunting and intense, and she was in a classroom with students half her age and a lot more likely to catch on to lingo littered with gaming references.

“You’re not just learning a foreign language, you’re also learning a foreign concept at the same time,” McMaster said, taking a break from one of the eight-week course’s labs. She described them as a series of “arm wrestles” that she ultimately mastered.

“You take things on a certain amount of faith, that OK, eventually this is going to make sense to me,” she said. “And as the weeks have gone on and on, things have become clearer and clearer.”

McMaster’s LinkedIn account now lists her profession as entry-level Linux administrator, with certifications in CompTIA and Red Hat. She and the 21 other women in her cohort are interviewing for jobs in an industry that, according to a 2015 survey, is paying boot camp grads an average starting salary of $75,000 yearly — about a 44 percent increase, on average, over what they were making before.

Rackspace started the program last year to help recruit more women, said Deborah Carter, senior manager of Rackspace’s Open Cloud Academy, a fee-based boot camp with tracks in Linux and network operations.

Rackspace so far has hired about 47 percent of the academy’s approximately 270 graduates, with many others landing jobs at other San Antonio tech companies.

“We do see typically men that are gravitating toward IT (information technology) subject areas,” Carter said. “We’re hoping to shift the percentages there.”

According to a 2015 study by New York City-based Course Report, boot camp enrollment across the nation will grow by 138 percent in 2015, with about 16,000 expected to graduate.

The study found that tech boot camps are booming in popularity, with more and more people taking a gamble that an investment averaging 11 weeks of time and a cost of $11,063 will move them beyond the quagmire of stagnant wages and the rising cost of living.

It’s a nascent industry, Course Report co-founder Liz Eggleston said, but with an estimated half-million tech-field job openings, it’s one with plenty of room for growth.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of initial success, and right now we’re kind of at a point where we’re three years in and we’re starting to think more about like accessibility for these boot camps, and how we can get more people into them,” she said.

Rackspace’s OpenCloud tuition is $3,500 for tracks that fill the company’s greatest hiring need. Codeup, a for-profit boot camp that turns out entry-level software engineers proficient in PHP, JavaScript, Laravel and jquery, costs $16,000.

The Labor Department and city of San Antonio have stepped in with grant programs to help people train for tech jobs, such as with the national $100 million TechHire initiative, which was announced in April and is being funded by the H1-B visa fees employers pay to import tech workers. San Antonio won $6 million in grants over four years.

Project Quest, a San Antonio nonprofit, is acting as liaison for the federal grants and is reimbursing Rackspace for some of the Linux for Ladies scholarships. Project Quest also is using the funds to offset costs for training programs such as USAA’s Java boot camp for veterans.

But tuition may not be the only requirement to get in. For example, OpenCloud and Linux for Ladies applicants must achieve CompTIA certification to be considered, though Rackspace offers a free self-study program to help make that happen.

Only about 35 percent of those who applied to CodeUp made it into the program, which boasts a 97 percent rate of job placement.

Potential students need to do some research, Eggleston said.

“Ask a ton of questions,” she said. “Connect with alumni on LinkedIn. … Ask about job placement.”

Students also need to decide if it’s a career path they can be passionate about, she said.

“People should try coding and go to workshops and things like that before they take the plunge and write the check,” she said.

“If you’ve tried it out and it’s something that you can see yourself doing as a job, day to day, these boot camps are a great option.”