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How To Become An Apprentice Developer

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Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#31

Post by HugoMelo »

ruggeri wrote: post #9

[Instructor at App Academy here] I'm really proud of Hugo; he came in to App Academy as an 18 year old kid with no coding experience, and through sheer force of will, learned enough to land a junior dev job in nine weeks. If you're interested in the course that Hugo took, check us out (appacademy.io). Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program. Hugo's fellow students are doing great. 11/15 of our…

nicholasreed makes a good point. Let me make some stuff clear:

- I paid a $500 refundable deposit by mailing them a check they never cashed.

That was legit. A $3,000 deposit is silly though.

- To the best of my knowledge no jobs were found from App Academy's partner companies.

- I don't believe the $83k average salary thing.

That said, Ned is one of the greatest mentors I've ever met, and he's radically changed my life.

:)

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#33

Post by [deleted] »

freework wrote: post #28
welder wrote: post #8

[Hugo's Hacker House roommate here] Hugo went from zero coding experience to holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs in 9 weeks. I'm not sure if he's just an exception, but it sure paints app academy in a positive light for me. I hope more of these "Learn to Code for Free" camps pop up around here.

That depends on what is meant by "holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs". In my experience, the only thing that makes you a good programmer is building things. What has this guy built? A handful of project euler solutions? That doesn't make you a valuable programmer. There is no free lunch. There is no magic bullet.

[deleted]

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#34

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

nhangen wrote: post #12
xiaoma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting into App Academy was already a huge filter he passed. I say this as a junior dev who was rejected or ignored by many other dev training groups. IRRC, App Academy accepted less than 10% of their applicants.

I can sense your frustration; I feel similarly. I got a degree in Psychology of all things, which makes my self-taught programming skills even less desirable compared to most. Reason I went to shipping my own code for clients and customers is that they don't care about my degree or programming practices...they only care if I can ship or not.

Join the club. I also got a degree (and almost a PhD) in psychology. I'm now working as a web analyst, learning hadoop and various other things for big data. Seriously though, one thing a psychology degree tends to give you is a solid understanding of experimental design, which is an extremely marketable skill in this world of AB testing. So stick it out, and you'll get there.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#35

Post by rprasad »

hnriot wrote: post #18
atomical wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important piece of advice I can give you is to go directly to the decision maker. Call them if you have to. Make up some excuse to talk to them on the phone. Tell them your e-mail bounced but you really like what they are doing and give them a short summary of who you are.

No, this is terrible advice. Companies have hr and recruiters for a reason, if you jump over them it just shows you're pushy and impatient. If someone calls me and tells me their email bounced I'd immediately think they were lame. Seriously? "Did you get my message?" Is circa 2001. These days if an email bounces you go back and read sent it properly with th right address. Emails don't bounce on their own. When I lost…

Definitely important.

You only skip the HR process if you have a pre-existing relationship with a decision-maker in the company. Cold-calling can work, but the most likely outcome is getting black-listed if they think you're one of the crazies.

If you really do want to go the cold-call method, use the cold-call to establish a relationship (i.e., ask for career advice, to talk about their technology stack, etc.) Once you have a real connection, then it may be appropriate to give them your resume.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#36

Post by peteretep »

Purely from a hiring side, can someone sell me on the value of hiring junior developers and training them up? It feels to me like there's real potential for them to gum up the development team, it's going to take years for them to be senior (and nothing stopping them leaving when they are)...

I understand people want Junior jobs to exist, as junior developers. As someone hiring, why should I hire one? Serious question...

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#38

Post by TeamMCS »

peteretep wrote: post #36

Purely from a hiring side, can someone sell me on the value of hiring junior developers and training them up? It feels to me like there's real potential for them to gum up the development team, it's going to take years for them to be senior (and nothing stopping them leaving when they are)... I understand people want Junior jobs to exist, as junior developers. As someone hiring, why should I hire one? Serious questio…

This is an interesting response and one I'm pondering myself. It clearly is of extreme importance to seed new developers in the industry and how should small shops shoulder their share?

Young/junior developers often have a lot of spirit and enthusiasm which is injected into an existing team. They'll also tend to bring the 'latest new ideas' which while not already ideal does get the old guard thinking. If anything it's interesting to watch people adjust their proverbial footing to stay relevant.

On a similar note, I often wonder how does a senior/lead developer take a different direction? I took the JVM + Web stack and I was giving it serious thought to jumping ship into another area of software development. Now understandably you wouldn't be a lead but rather a born-again junior yet any interviewer will automatically assume (with evidence to the direct contrary) you've been doing it for years.

Tricky our industry...

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#39

Post by justincormack »

peteretep wrote: post #36

Purely from a hiring side, can someone sell me on the value of hiring junior developers and training them up? It feels to me like there's real potential for them to gum up the development team, it's going to take years for them to be senior (and nothing stopping them leaving when they are)... I understand people want Junior jobs to exist, as junior developers. As someone hiring, why should I hire one? Serious questio…

Ok so if

1. You have no trouble hiring senior developers whenever you need one

2. You have no shortage of money to pay them

3. You are running a short term business, so your time horizon is only a year or so

4. You have no work that has been put aside as high risk given the uncertain benefits

5. You dev team is fragile, and liable to be gummed up

Then by all means do not hire junior people.

But if any of those do not apply, you will find all sorts of advantages. Look at the Google Summer of Code as a model, say. You get enthusiastic people willing to learn, who you can teach your way of doing things, and fast track their dev skills so they become senior sooner. So long as your codebase is slightly modular there must be something people can start on, and do not forget that teaching is a great way to help you think about things in more detail, and that meta thinking is the most important way in which you become a better programmer.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#40

Post by peteretep »

justincormack wrote: post #39
peteretep wrote: post #36

Purely from a hiring side, can someone sell me on the value of hiring junior developers and training them up? It feels to me like there's real potential for them to gum up the development team, it's going to take years for them to be senior (and nothing stopping them leaving when they are)... I understand people want Junior jobs to exist, as junior developers. As someone hiring, why should I hire one? Serious questio…

Ok so if 1. You have no trouble hiring senior developers whenever you need one 2. You have no shortage of money to pay them 3. You are running a short term business, so your time horizon is only a year or so 4. You have no work that has been put aside as high risk given the uncertain benefits 5. You dev team is fragile, and liable to be gummed up Then by all means do not hire junior people. But if any of those do not…

To summarize your points:

Cheap but enthusiastic (and perhaps plentiful) labour, who may be able to work on non-critical path items, and there may be ancillary learning benefits from mentoring to existing senior devs.

Is that about the size of what you were saying?

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