Detailed answers to the questions we get asked most.

Any student currently enrolled at a South African university in a CS, software engineering, computer engineering, or related programme. We accept second-year, third-year, and honours/final-year applicants. We also accept self-taught applicants on a case-by-case basis.

For Foundation Track, no — we assume you've had basic programming exposure but nothing more. For Professional and Honours, yes — you should have shipped at least a couple of projects on your own.

There's a 30-minute conversation with a TechTalk mentor — not a technical interview. We talk about your goals, time commitment, and a few specific questions about projects you've built.

About five minutes for the form. We respond within 14 days, and the full process from application to acceptance is typically 3–4 weeks.

Free for accepted students. Always. Partner companies fund the programme because they hire from our alumni network.

Yes — need-based stipends are available for students whose schedules require giving up paid work hours to participate. Apply during the standard application.

We're an internship in the educational sense, not the salaried sense. The compensation is the curriculum, the mentorship, the portfolio, and the direct path to a paid first job.

Foundation: 10 hours. Professional: 15 hours. Honours: 20 hours. We design around real student schedules, not unrealistic 'full-time' expectations.

Yes — most students do. The programme is intentionally compatible with a normal academic year. Many students work on TechTalk in evenings and on weekends.

Not currently — the programme structure depends on weekly rituals over 12–20 weeks. We may launch an intensive holiday version in 2027.

No. The AI mentor handles the always-on, immediate questions — it frees the human mentors to focus on judgement, career direction, and the things AI is genuinely bad at.

It can, but it's been deliberately tuned not to. It explains, suggests, and reviews. It hands you the path, not the destination. You'll be doing the writing.

Only the code in your TechTalk projects. We do not feed your work into third-party model training, and you can request a full export or deletion at any time.

78% of graduates are hired into engineering roles within three months of finishing the programme. We update this number every cohort and publish the methodology.

Scale-ups, banks, insurers, fintechs, and global companies hiring remotely. About 12% of alumni work abroad within two years of finishing.

No, and we'd be lying if we did. We do guarantee that we'll make direct introductions to our hiring partners and support you through interview prep.

Hybrid. Most of the work is remote, but we run in-person sessions in Pretoria and Cape Town for cohort kickoffs, mid-cohort hackathons, and Demo Day. Travel stipends available for students who need them.

A laptop capable of running modern dev tools (8GB RAM minimum, 16GB recommended) and a stable internet connection. We have a small loaner laptop pool for students who need one.

Tell us early. We'll either pause your participation until the next cohort or make a clean break with no hard feelings. The point is your career, not our completion stats.