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I feel like many companies are afraid to do this because there's no guarantee their newly trained people will stay for so long as to make it worthwile. What if

I feel like many companies are afraid to do this because there's no guarantee their newly trained people will stay for so long as to make it worthwile. What if instead of "literally anyone" they trained non-technical colleagues that have already proven commitment? Anecdote: next to my Information Science studies, I worked as a community manager for a few years. This was at a small startup so I was in practice doing more than that (marketing, data analysis, QA, etc). Once I finished my studies my CTO asked me to become a developer - he knew I was dedicated to the mission, knew just a little about coding but had the right personality for it. Sadly, in the end they realised that they didn't have enough time to train me and had to withdraw the offer. I think it would be great if more CTOs made such offers, though in practice it seems unlikely. Small companies are less likely to have the resources to train and in larger companies perhaps the CTO is less likely to know community managers and such well enough to make such offers.

MCRed 11y ago
Good developers aren't trained, they are self taught. This can be on the job. I would be happy to pay people who aren't quite yet developers $30k as the article suggests, and then mentor them. I spent much of the past year helping interns who were college students, some of them freshman, learn a new programming language. I think that isn't ideal for a variety of reasons, but instead of hiring one junior person at $90, hiring 3 near programmers at $30k could work well. (Though that last bit is a dichotomy-- it wouldn't be either or, it would be both-- if there are good people, hire them, whether they can code or not.)
dkarapetyan 11y ago
That fear is unfounded and is a good example of short term thinking. My number one goal now is to make sure wherever I work the people I work with "level up" in some way. I'm going to be working with these people at other jobs and if they suck then I'm not doing anyone any favors. Having proper mentoring and training pipelines are indicators of a healthy company. The alternative is companies shuffling mediocre workers amongst themselves which is again not doing anyone any good.
- namenotrequired 11y ago
  Just for the record, I do agree, but I don't think all companies realise this (enough).

MCRed 11y ago

Good developers aren't trained, they are self taught. This can be on the job. I would be happy to pay people who aren't quite yet developers $30k as the article suggests, and then mentor them. I spent much of the past year helping interns who were college students, some of them freshman, learn a new programming language. I think that isn't ideal for a variety of reasons, but instead of hiring one junior person at $90, hiring 3 near programmers at $30k could work well. (Though that last bit is a dichotomy-- it wouldn't be either or, it would be both-- if there are good people, hire them, whether they can code or not.)

dkarapetyan 11y ago

That fear is unfounded and is a good example of short term thinking. My number one goal now is to make sure wherever I work the people I work with "level up" in some way. I'm going to be working with these people at other jobs and if they suck then I'm not doing anyone any favors. Having proper mentoring and training pipelines are indicators of a healthy company. The alternative is companies shuffling mediocre workers amongst themselves which is again not doing anyone any good.

namenotrequired 11y ago
Just for the record, I do agree, but I don't think all companies realise this (enough).