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Learn about Chingu: A Free Collaboration Platform to Boost Your Career

· 3 min read
Oluwatobi Sofela
Oluwatobi Sofela

Gone are the days when developers could excel all alone. Now, a key factor to success is collaboration. And Chingu teaches you how. Below are some helpful insights I learned from Sara's interview with Chingu's co-founder, Jim Medlock.

Video: Sara Baqla's interview with Chingu's co-founder, Jim Medlock.

You’ll never experience lasting success without solid relationships. No one alone can match the cooperative effort of the right team.

—John Mason, Believe You Can

What Is Chingu?​

Chingu sponsors and organizes a series of 6-week-long remote projects called Voyages, where developers:

  • Are matched together in remote teams
  • Are given a framework to follow
  • Create an application

In the process, you learn about teamwork while the Chingu admin provides lots of guidance on:

  • Collaboration
  • Agile workflow
  • Dispute resolution
  • Planning
  • Organization

What Do You Get from a Chingu Experience?​

The 6-week collaboration program equips you with soft skills you usually learn only when you get a job. Chingu helps you build up some experience that is more than how to use technologies but how to:

  • Get things done.
  • Work with people.
  • Resolve problems.

So, a Chingu experience makes you stand out from other applicants by equipping you with a working knowledge of:

  • Agile software development practices
  • Team conflict management
  • Project planning and management

What Is Chingu's Methodology?​

Chingu is organized around areas of responsibility—not titles. For instance, Jim's responsibility is coordinating Chingu's admin team members.

Chingu encourages members to:

  • Make mistakes because you gain deeper knowledge from mistakes and remember them far longer than things you would learn from successes.
  • Work outside of your comfort zone.
  • Have the freedom to try things out and experiment.
  • Avoid attacking or making fun of someone for the mistakes they make.

What Is Jim's Advice on the Current State of the Tech Industry?​

  • Developers need to learn how to adapt to the new technologies like ChatGPT.
  • Think about how to exploit new technologies to solve users' problems.
  • Be a lifelong learner: "What you know today isn't what you need to know tomorrow."

Where Can You Learn More About Chingu?​

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