LEVELING UP DEVELOPERSWhy and how to hire junior developers

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WHY HIRE JUNIOR DEVS?

WE NEED MORE DEVELOPERS

This is a great career and there is plenty of work to be done. !

It shouldn’t be relegated to a uniform group of people.

NEW DEVS COME FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS

• Diverse teams are more creative.

• Diverse teams can solve complex problems better and faster.

• Diversity has been scientifically proven to increase sales, customers, market share and profits.

Source: http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_au/au/87c4e2a523340310VgnVCM3000001c56f00aRCRD.htm

THIS STUFF ISN’T SO HARD ANYMORE!

Yes, there are engineers out there building compilers, search engines, and recommendation engines.

But I don’t. I mostly make social webapps.

And even recommendation engines are easy now.

Just use Redis.

http://00f.net/2011/03/10/redis-as-a-recommendation-engine/

IT’S ALSO EASY TO LEARN

Spend 5 minutes trying out Dash and tell me I’m wrong.

https://dash.generalassemb.ly

THESE PEOPLE THINK SO TOOEverybody in this country should learn how to program a computer because it teaches you how to think. — Steve Jobs

Source: code.org

Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today. — Mark Zuckerberg

At a time when people are saying "I want a good job - I got out of college and I couldnt find one," every single year in America there is a standing demand for 120,000 people who are training in computer science. — Bill Clinton

HAVE A CONTINUUM OF SKILL LEVELS

SKILL POLARITY IS BAD

• Junior developers will never feel like they can reach senior level

• Senior developers will never respect the junior developers

GET RID OF TITLES

• Titles polarize teams destroying learning culture.

• Nobody is 'senior' with everything.

• I would rather be a junior anyways.

!A learning culture isn’t just about getting smarter developers.

A learning culture allows engineers to learn more about the product. Have your team finding problems, not solutions.

DO THIS BY EXPERIMENTING

• Have a hack day.

• Build crazy experiments.

• Prototype new ideas.

• Throw shit away.

ALLOW EXPERIMENTATION WITH YOUR TECH STACK

• GitHub provides Pull Requests to ‘suggest’ changes without forcing them.

• Git allows feature branching to play with new ideas along with normal work.

• Automated testing provides confidence nothing will break when experimenting.

NEW EMPLOYEES ARE EXCITED

They’ll never be as enthusiastic as they are on day one. Make sure you pile their plate so high they have a ton to crunch on.

SPEAK IN NARRATIVESStorytelling is a much more effective means of explaining

concepts than info sessions.

GIVE THE NEW DEV A MENTOR

Someone willing to be bothered at any moment, for any reason (headphones or not)

PAIR!Anyone that’s paired will say it’s the most effective way to learn

a platform.

TRY PAIRING ON OTHER THINGS

• Support

• Design

• BD

Cross-functional employees will learn faster and be more engaged.

@dickeyxxx