# Nekko Dojo > Train into tech. Grow your engineering career. On a mission to help you break into software engineering and never stop growing. Learn in a community of career-changers and working engineers, guided by experienced leaders who have done the hiring. Nekko Dojo ("dojo" = training hall) is the learning arm of Nekko Labs. It exists to get people into software engineering and keep them growing once they are in, with a bias toward career-changers in Japan (often coming from English teaching). Everything is free to read, and the community lives in Discord. ## What is here - **Courses**: structured paths through the dojo. The Guide is the flagship, taking you from never having coded to your first engineering job. Applied AI Engineer teaches you to direct agents once you can already build. - **Articles**: director-level perspective on engineering, AI, and how to grow a career while the market shifts. - **Community**: a curated directory of real open-source projects and communities where you get professional team experience beyond personal projects. ## Pages - [Home](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/): what the dojo is and where to start - [Courses](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/courses): the two paths through the dojo - [Articles](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles): every article, newest first - [The Guide](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide): the flagship course, chapter by chapter - [Community](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/community): open-source projects and communities to learn in ## Courses - [The Guide](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide): From never having coded to your first engineering job. For: Career-changers, beginners, and job hunters. Status: available now. - [Applied AI Engineer](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/courses/applied-ai-engineer): Engineering when the code writes itself. For: Working engineers, and anyone who finished The Guide. Status: in progress, not open yet. ## The Guide, chapter by chapter ### Getting Started - [Introduction — How This Guide Works](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/introduction): What this guide is, who it is for, and how to get the most out of it. - [Why Software Engineering in Japan?](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/why-software-engineering-in-japan): The honest case for switching into coding in Japan — the pay, the environment, and the reality checks you should know going in. - [See If Coding Is Right For You](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/see-if-coding-is-for-you): Before you commit months of your life, spend a few hours actually writing code to find out whether you enjoy it. ### Foundations - [Learn to Code: Bootcamp or Self-Taught](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/learn-to-code): The two real paths to the foundations — a Tokyo bootcamp or self-teaching with online courses — and exactly what to learn first. ### Building Real Things - [Build Your First Project: The TODO App](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/build-your-first-project): Why a humble todo app is the perfect first project — and how to build it twice, first in vanilla JS and then with a modern stack. - [Build Your Portfolio](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/build-your-portfolio): Your GitHub is your developer portfolio — and most interviewers will actually look at it. Here's how to make it count. - [Get Involved in the Community](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/get-involved-in-the-community): The single biggest differentiator — joining a real, production open-source project and getting genuine team experience. ### Interview Prep - [Data Structures & Algorithms](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/data-structures-and-algorithms): How to prepare for the coding whiteboard — the data structures, algorithms, and Big-O fluency you need to pass technical interviews. - [System Architecture](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/system-architecture): How to prepare for the architecture/system-design interview — the building blocks, the scaling story, and how to reason out loud on a whiteboard. - [Cracking the Interview](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/cracking-the-interview): Pulling it together — study Cracking the Coding Interview, then practice the whiteboard, architecture, and behavioral loops until they're second nature. ### Landing the Job - [Get Ready to Apply](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/get-ready-to-apply): Sharpen your résumé, then apply strategically — including a candid tier list of companies in Japan and how to sequence your interviews. ### Practice - [Practice Interview Questions](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/guide/practice-interview-questions): A couple of real interview problems to practice with — and an open invitation to work through them together. ## Articles - [Project Dark Factory](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/the-dark-factory-comes-for-code): Factories went fully automated in 2001. Now the same pattern is arriving in software, and a handful of teams are already shipping production code that no human wrote or reviewed. (2026-07-24, 10 min, by Philip) - [The Coming Shift in How We Pay for the Internet](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/how-we-pay-for-the-internet): When anyone can rebuild any app in a day, moats and money move. Cloudflare's new monetization gateway and the x402 protocol are the first signals of a pay-per-access web, and it could reshape the free internet we grew up with. (2026-07-19, 5 min, by Philip) - [From Bootcamp Grad to Full-Time Software Engineer: What Actually Worked for Me](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/bootcamp-grad-to-software-engineer): A career-changer describes how he became a software engineer at NekkoLabs after attending Tokyo's Code Chrysalis bootcamp. He credits three choices: not outsourcing his thinking to AI, investing in relationships, and contributing to open source where he met his current boss. (2026-07-11, 5 min, by Matt) - [Spec-Driven Development: The Workflow That Makes AI Coding Actually Work](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/spec-driven-development): Vibe-coding falls apart the moment a project gets real. The fix is spec-driven development — let the spec, not the chat history, be the source of truth. Here is how it works and which tools to use. (2026-06-25, 6 min, by Philip) - [The Engineer the AI Era Rewards](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/the-engineer-the-ai-era-rewards): AI is not replacing engineers — it is repricing engineering skills. Here is what is going up in value, what is going down, and how to position your career. (2026-06-18, 3 min, by Philip) - [From English Teacher to Engineer in Japan: What Actually Works](https://dojo.nekkolabs.com/articles/english-teacher-to-engineer-in-japan): I have helped a lot of people in Japan switch from teaching English into software development. The ones who make it share a few habits — and avoid a few traps. (2026-06-10, 3 min, by Philip) ## Elsewhere - [Discord](https://discord.gg/RCWm9DNQWd): the community, and the place to ask questions. - [GitHub](https://github.com/nekko-labs/nekko-dojo): the dojo's source. - [Nekko Labs](https://nekkolabs.com): the consulting firm behind the dojo.