At Clearly Innovative, developers are hired with little practice and much passion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/at-clearly-innovative-developers-are-hired-with-little-practice-and-a-lot-of-passion/2014/04/18/310b3f72-c58a-11e3-bf7a-be01a9b69cf1_story.html

by jboynyc • 12 years ago

38 6 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

mikegioia• 12 years ago

I think this is a great idea and oddly something I was just talking to a coworker about. There's little incentive right now for a company to hire inexperienced developers. The company takes on the responsibility of training the developer and the developer can just leave at any time for greener pastures.

Ethics and feasibility notwithstanding, I think there's something that could be taken from the sports industry with respect to new player development. The team brings in young players and takes on the responsibility to train them at no cost to the player. The player benefits because he gets to train and learn with the best, and the team benefits by either getting a great player for X seasons, or selling him on the market to another team.

If a company could take the risk of training new developers for 6 months, they should also get the benefit of selling the employee. As an example, if I brought 10 inexperienced hires in and train them for 6 months, I should be able to take (say) 25% of their first year salary, or anything over $50k that they make in their first year. It could not only get more talent into the market, but I think both sides would benefit greatly from this king of arrangement.

tm33• 12 years ago

Very interesting idea. I think where this breaks down is the fact that you can learn a lot from reading/studying outside of work. A person who spends all their spare time studying and doing side projects shouldn't be held to the same restrictions as someone who just learns at work.

krakensden• 12 years ago

I think this is a great idea and oddly something I was just talking to a coworker about. There's little incentive right now for a company to hire inexperienced developers.

Yup. The primary objection I can see to this is "this privileges people who can spend three weeks learning to do something new, who probably already have privilege," but it seems better than "we will never hire you" by a country mile.

The company takes on the responsibility of training the developer and the developer can just leave at any time for greener pastures.

I suspect this danger is overstated, especially in the first few years. Even people with Computer Science diplomas- but nothing in particular to point at- are in far less demand than people with experience.

a company could take the risk of training new developers for 6 months, they should also get the benefit of selling the employee

Why would you write this in response to an article that begins with a photo illustration of two African Americans.

DatBear• 12 years ago

Why would you write this in response to an article that begins with a photo illustration of two African Americans.

That photo is of the CEO and the lead designer of the company... it isn't even of the developers hired. His comment likely didn't have anything to do with race unless you put an emphasis on it.

soAsian• 12 years ago

This is nothing new. IT consulting companies have been doing this for years. I was at Avanade briefly and the a lot of people hired are fresh grads who work with more sr. devs on client project.

NAFV_P• 12 years ago

This is nothing new. IT consulting companies have been doing this for years. I was at Avanade briefly and the a lot of people hired are fresh grads who work with more sr. devs on client project.

From my experience with IT in general it is the opposite case, experience is required, qualifications don't matter.

At Clearly Innovative, developers are hired with little practice and much passion

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