Coding is largely done in a solitary manner, sans the perfunctory “collaboration” and “teamwork”. And in an era when Agile project management methodology is all the rage, a coder’s tangible exposure to team collaboration seldom goes beyond giving a 40-second status update in the morning Scrum standup.

Tech firms Zoosk and Zendesk pledged to hire interns from the neighborhood. Zendesk expected to hire at least two each in 2012 and 2013. Zendesk did hire a pair in 2012, but only one last year. Zoosk executed its first CBA in 2013 and fulfilled its promise to hire two interns. All the interns got only summer jobs, and all came from the neighborhood’s Vietnamese Youth Development Center.