I'm a bootcamp graduate, with all the good and ugly parts of the experience that that status entails (Good: I learned more in ten weeks than I might ever have before in my life. Ugly: I still feel a far-cry from production-ready.) and I wanted to propose something to the population of Hacker News: A mutually beneficial, adapted-to-modern-times apprenticeship.<p>The problem: I have the means to contribute professionally in development, but only small, personal projects (along with my bootcamp capstone) under my belt for experience. I need hands-on experience with larger projects in order to convince anyone to make a serious bet on my future and hire me, full-time.<p>The solution: I help you out. I write code, refactor, do the semi-technical grunt-work and scripting that always comes with dev projects. Anything that could help me be more attractive as a developer in the future.<p>What I ask: A recommendation and - on a larger level - career guidance. The opportunity to code meaningful things.<p>Who this is great for: open-source hackers, freelancing lone wolves, senior devs who want to outsource some things.
No, no, no. Don't work for free. Apprentices don't work for free in any other industry. Why should you work for free?<p>Go out and get a job that trains you to be "production ready." You will get to to work on bigger projects, "code, refactor", and do "grunt work". Plus you will get paid.<p>Nothing wrong with seeking an apprenticeship. I just don't understand why you would think that "free" is a good idea.
Go to github.com, find 1 project that fancies you (<i>any</i> project it doesn't matter which one). Find 1 way to improve that project and publish your fix either as a pull request or a plain issue on their tracker. Doesn't matter if it's just a spelling error or something trivial. Just DO IT!<p>Don't think you can do it? Well, try and try hard! Think you can do it, but think the exercise is to menial? Think again!
I'm building up a team to address this exact issue.<p>Most of the folks have that 'beginner' experience, but they just lack the real experience (think of this as the "next step" after learning basic stuff on Codecademy or Codeschool).<p>All the projects will (ideally) be open sourced and there's no charge to join either. I have about 40+ signups so far.<p>I will be posting a Show HN soon.
Maybe find an open source project to contribute to that interests you? I'm not active in the open source community myself, so I don't have any great suggestions - but maybe someone on here can suggest some projects with a good community that could use someone w/ your skillset?
If you provide a way to contact you, or I can provide a way to contact me, I am willing to offer some of that career guidance, as well as some paid intern work.<p>Lets get in touch, we can discuss some specifics, and my background so that you know what I bring to the table.
Your profile has an email field, but that is not shown to the world.<p>Put an email address in your profile in the about field and people can see it. (Although it's probably preferable to put your email in the post)
Thanks so much y'all for the response: I really value all of your input! My email, for those interested, is:<p>joseph.charles.marshall@gmail.com<p>And my portfolio site can be found at joecmarshall.com
How can I get in touch with you? :)<p>Also, is there something you are particularly interested in? Frontend? Backend? Databases? Specific technologies or programming languages? Specific industries?
Why not get an internship..? Get paid, get involved in the industry, learn, and create. Plenty of them.<p>If not, go to some local industry meet ups and I bet you can find one quickly.