| It's wonderful to see this on the front page. I'm currently a student at the Lassonde School of Engineering at York University studying software engineering and heavily involved in the school community. The Lassonde School of Engineering opened 8 years ago with a fervour for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I suggest folks give the school a Google search as it has rapidly developed to become a phenomenonal environment with its own startup incubator and entrepreneurshi' degree with courses from VCs. I digress, but feel free to ask me any more questions about the school. The dev degree program started its first cohort last year actually and it now is in its second year. It is structured so students work 20 hours a week at Shopify and take 3 courses per semester at school. Students are required to work and go to school through the summer which allows them to complete the degree in the standard four years. My peers in the program have I said great things. One of the key parts of the program is how one switches between different teams to get a better understanding of the software engineering landscape. Moreover the mentorship is very helpful and not only developing your technical skills by yourself skills. One question that students and parents asked me a lot is if there is a requirement to work at Shopify following the completion of the program. Luckily Shopify has made it clear that they will not be expecting students to stay once they complete their degree, but it is my intuition that many people from the program will stay on after their large time investment into the Shopify ecosystem. Overall, I would have entered this program myself for it for engineering students as well. Sadly, the program is restricted to computer science students as the Canadian accreditation requirements for engineering are not fulfilled while in the dev degree program. Although people may say "why do you need a degree?", it is difficult to find a job without the qualification of showing your ability to complete post-secondary in a field of candidates that did. With initiatives such as Silicon Valley trip for students run by the Lassonde co-op Department, I am sure that lassonde will continue to innovate and engage students in meaningful ways beyond the traditional methods. |