I am giving a talk on introducing an apprenticeship program in your company at Ruby Hoedown this weekend focusing mainly on my experiences. I would love to know if anyone else has had an experience with a successful program or have implemented one in their company. Also, what were the biggest problems you have seen associated with these programs?
I'm at a 60-ish person agency, and we're in the beginning stages of implementing one. The goal is to bring in junior level developers and teach them what they need to know to grow as a developer inside the organization. We brought aboard a junior developer about 4 months ago, with myself and a colleague responsible for training him and helping develop his skillset.<p>It's been an interesting and successful experience thus far.<p>* A training schedule, similar to a degree plan in university - just something that outlines where the organization expects them to be at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months during their first year of employ.<p>* Coding standards defined by the organization. Telling any developer, but particularly a junior, that your standards are "I know it when I see it" doesn't fly.<p>* Formal code reviews. This is something we could definitely do better. I'm working getting Atlassian Bamboo to make the reviews easier on everyone involved.<p>* Regularly scheduled meetings with the trainers and the junior. We do every 3 months, with less formal meetings more frequently. It's important to let them know how they are progressing, and to give them tips on how to improve any deficient skill sets.<p>Overall, I think the most important thing is to maintain open lines of communication.
I had a fantastic internship many moons ago concurrently with my studies, which could be a synonym for an apprenticeship. If not for that, I'd probably be teaching Latin somewhere. I still keep in touch with a couple of the engineers from there.<p>Mapquest does not currently have anything like that, and I'm not sure we're set up well for that sort of thing at the moment (I'm not sure what they'd do). We have interns in our marketing department and I think the new, very young looking dude in finance is an intern, but nothing in development.
This is definitely the kind of thing I'm looking for as a graduating senior with above-average (for a student) skills looking to get into startup-ish companies. I COULD get a job with Big Blue, but I don't really want that. I worry that because I'm not a master of any particular language/stack, I'm not a good fit for startups. I know that with a team of strong devs that I can rise to that level. I feel somewhat weird applying for an 'internship'.
Late to the convo, but you might want to reach out to the guys at Thoughtbot. They've had good success with their apprenticeship program. apprentice.io