Europe's Newest $1.7bn Tech Company Is Launching Free Coding Classes for Women

London-based digital bank and financial tech (fintech) start-up Revolut, which recently raised $250m to reach a ‘unicorn status’ $1.7bn valuation, has announced it will begin running free coding classes for women.
After its latest successful funding round, UK-based digital bank Revolut, Europe’s most successful fintech start-up, is ‘looking to hire an army of engineers’ based in London as they begin to scale the business globally.
However, the brand is ‘concerned with the lack of female engineers in the market’, and has decided to run free night classes for women to learn code, with employment opportunities to follow.
Last year, research found that women make up just 17% of the UK’s tech workforce, and are particularly poorly represented in engineering roles.
‘While a lot of tech companies talk a good game about how important gender balance is to them, we’ve identified our own imbalance within our engineering teams and are taking action ourselves to help tackle this issue,’ said Revolut’s CEO and founder, Nikolay Storonsky. ‘I hope Revolut can really kick this kind of initiative off in the hope that other tech companies follow suit and provide more opportunities for women who are keen to learn code.’
The classes will begin in the next six to eight weeks, once the start-up settles into its new Canary Wharf office space. Sign up will be available on an Eventbright page run by the brand, and classes will be led by the company’s ‘best engineers’. Lessons will have around 15–20 students and will take place in the evenings, outside of normal working hours.
According to the brand, lessons will cover ‘web, mobile and server development as well as providing practical advice for those women looking to break into the tech scene as an engineer’.
London-based non-profit Code First: Girls is also looking to increase the number of women in tech. In December 2017, the group launched the Girls 2020 Campaign, which aims to teach 20,000 UK girls and women how to code for free by 2020.