So you final­ly decid­ed to learn how to code so you could become a pro­gram­mer and still be able to find a job once the robots take over every­thing else. After all, you can learn how to code online for free, so you did­n’t even have to wor­ry about tak­ing out stu­dent loans that would­n’t be paid off for decades. Great! Now, how do you find a job once you’ve honed your skills?

Believe it or not, tech­nol­o­gy has actu­al­ly made the hir­ing process hard­er for com­pa­nies in most cas­es, not eas­i­er. They put out a job list­ing and get back a pool of resumes which all look pret­ty much iden­ti­cal, with the excep­tion that half are unqual­i­fied accord­ing to their require­ments. Then comes the tedious process of inter­view­ing sev­er­al or dozens of appli­cants and try­ing to fig­ure out through div­ina­tion which one is the right fit. It’s frus­trat­ing, maddening.

Mean­while, here you sit. You don’t have a degree from some ivy league school, and you’ve nev­er worked in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Why even apply, know­ing you’ll get filed with the sec­ond half — oth­er­wise known as the trash bin?

Just when you’re ready to give up hope and go back to flip­ping burg­ers (anoth­er job the robots will be tak­ing over, btw), we’re here to give you some good news. A com­pa­ny called Code­Fights has heard your plea, and the plea of untold busi­ness­es in need of a good devel­op­er. Their plat­form allows for bud­ding devel­op­ers and those who are ready for the big leagues alike to get bet­ter and even find jobs, all while hav­ing a lot of fun.

Code­Fights is a gam­i­fi­ca­tion plat­form for pro­gram­ming. In the Code­Fight Arcade you can brush up on your skills and move through high­er lev­els of chal­lenges at your own pace. In the Code­Fights are­na you are pit­ted against oth­er coders, and even bots, in timed chal­lenges that aren’t for the new­bie or the faint of heart. In either sit­u­a­tion, once you pass cer­tain lev­els you are noti­fied that you now qual­i­fy for cer­tain jobs, and com­pa­nies are noti­fied as well. Those com­pa­nies can then reach out to you to offer said jobs. They already know you’ve got the chops they need because the Code­Fights sys­tem is set up to make sure of that.

And it’s work­ing. Code­Fights report­ed­ly con­verts can­di­dates into hires at a 5:1 ratio, much bet­ter than the 30:1 ratio of a tra­di­tion­al hir­ing fun­nel. 80% of placed can­di­dates did­n’t come from an elite school or a tech hub, and 30% are women — three times high­er than the Sil­i­con Val­ley aver­age. Code­Fights intends to even­tu­al­ly expand beyond pro­gram­ming and extend gam­i­fi­ca­tion to oth­er appro­pri­ate fields such as account­ing or finance.

So for­get about ask­ing if they want fries with their order and get back to cod­ing. Just remem­ber that Code­Fights does­n’t teach you how to code — that’s on you. But they do offer you a way to get bet­ter and hone your skills, and ulti­mate­ly might land you that devel­op­er job you’ve been dream­ing of.