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At what size of company does this pay off? My experience of hiring juniors is generally that they are net negatives to productivity for quite a while, and the s
by thom 8y ago
At what size of company does this pay off? My experience of hiring juniors is generally that they are net negatives to productivity for quite a while, and the smaller the company, the more significant the impact of that is. How do people here go about mitigating that?
- mixmastamyk 8y agoDon't have proven techniques, but have been toying with an idea I'd like to try the next time I have the chance. Have been thinking of starting a "farm team" to develop green programmers. Have a meetup once or twice a week, work on a focused project together, do mutual code review. Read the classics (e.g. the MMM) as homework. Perhaps give out some Amazon gift cards for good work. When a participant levels up, move them to a paid role.
- theonething 8y agoWhat is the MMM?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y agoThe Mythical Man-Month, by Fred Brooks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
- thanksDr 8y agoThis sounds super fun! You're not in Toronto, are you?
- mixmastamyk 8y agoAgreed, however am in Los Angeles. Would recommend remote but this type of thing might be better in person. Perhaps each city can create their own. Even in LA there'd probably need to be a group in each part of town, like west, downtown, and/or Pasadena.
- busyra 8y agoI am interested in joining a group in the LA area. How can we make this happen?
- mixmastamyk 8y agoI'm game location-wise from about Hollywood to DTLA, however not in a hiring position right now. Will be looking for a gig of my own shortly as my current contract finishes. Let me think about it a bit.
- xtracto 8y agoThat's what I think Isaac (Sendgrid founder) is trying to do with JoyLabs. I had the pleasure to meet him when he came to Mexico and he talked about the idea of "pairing" a very junior Engineer (from Mexico) with a very senior one from top companies in the USA to grow them, even covering the English language teaching. The theory sounds very good but man, at least I was afraid that he was overestimating what "Junior dev" means down here in Mexico (from my experience hiring in MX and US, MX-Senior = US-Mid-Level, MX-Mid-Level = US-Junior). Still, it is a good project if done successfully.
- theothermelissa 8y agoThis sounds like such a great idea! I saw in a sibling comment that you might lean towards doing these in person, but I could see it working well remotely also.
- dfrage 8y agoIn my experience, at two developers. You just have to hire a junior capable of significant growth and who starts out at some level above "helpless", which I'll admit is hard. And of course be able to create small bits of work he can do on his own with a moderate amount of help. On the other hand, if the company is so overloaded that they really would like for you to put in 100 hours of real work a week.... And if they stick all the developers in an open office, forget about it.