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foreign
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foreign
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why are we afraid to hire Junior rails
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developers or
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why does it seem like all the junior
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devs are learning JavaScript
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so
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I'm Joe mazzolati I'm the founder of
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rails dubs which is a reverse job board
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exclusively for Ruby on Rails Developers
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the goal of this talk is to kick start a
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culture shift to include more Junior
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developers in the rails community
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the most important thing to take away is
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that every single person in this room
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can help
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hiring managers are going to learn what
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to look for and how to hire Junior devs
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senior developers are going to learn how
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to level up Juniors to their own benefit
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and Junior devs are going to learn how
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to land their first job and stand out
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from the crowd
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this talk is what I've learned from
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helping companies hire via rails dubs
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for the past year and from being a
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developer myself for the past decade or
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so not claiming to be an expert but
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these are techniques and stories that
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I've seen work over the past 12 months
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of hiring
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the best time to plant a tree was three
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years ago the second best time is now
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I'm sure you've seen this on your Airbnb
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wall or scrolling through your Instagram
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feed
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it's pretty it's pretty common
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it's kind of late
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I like to make one tweak to it
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the best time to hire a junior developer
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was three years ago
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second best time is now
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we're gonna dive into this and talk
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about hiring Junior developers is a
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future investment it's not for now it's
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not for today it's not for tomorrow it's
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for a little bit down the road
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before we do that
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let's touch on what makes Junior
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developers especially Junior rails
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developers so special
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well
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I for one started off as a junior
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developer
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this is May Circa 2012.
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cameras were not what they used to be or
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are
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I think this is about a two megapixel
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camera and also zoomed in so thank you
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Facebook for that but working with
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Juniors is very near and dear to me not
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only because I was once one
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but because my first rails job was
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working at the little Labs I was hired
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knowing absolutely zero Ruby zero Mike
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d'alessio some of you may know the name
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over at Shopify now gave me my first
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round interview and we paired on how to
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create
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an array in Ruby via tdd
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I knew what one of those words meant at
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my interview
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but they took a leap of faith when they
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hired me they saw something in me and it
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wasn't my experience with rails or Ruby
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because I had zero but it was something
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else
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and I'm forever indebted to them because
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they were able to jump start my career
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and get me into this amazing ecosystem
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and community that we all know and love
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the Riser wouldn't be here today
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so
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more explicitly
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why junior Developers
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first off
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they offer a fresh perspective
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a junior Dev is eager to understand
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they ask new questions they shine light
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on previously made assumptions that a
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senior Dev or someone more senior might
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have
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they don't really know how it's always
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been done
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to the question that they ask why is it
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this way why are we doing it that way
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why don't we try this we bring that New
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Perspective into it
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one of my favorite things to do with the
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junior Dev on day one is bring them into
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code review
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have them ask those what might seem like
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silly questions because I can almost
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guarantee that they're going to make
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that code easier to understand for
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everyone on the team
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because if a junior can understand it
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you better bet a senior can understand
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it
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second up is that Junior Developers
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increase senior developer retention
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this is done through one of two ways
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first up is mentorship we'll talk a lot
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more about mentorship in a little bit
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but
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helping others creates a sense of
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accomplishment
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it creates an emotional tie
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I get asked time and time again from
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senior dubs who want to increase their
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impact
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but have kind of hit their limit what do
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I do how do I find out what's next time
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and time again I recommend them to
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mentor and delegate
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and it shows
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having a strong emotional tie to someone
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that you've watched grow and and
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flourish and Foster and that you've
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leveled up yourself
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creates an emotional tie to them as well
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emotional tie to them equals emotional
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tied to your employer which means
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they're less likely to leave
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second up here is that having Juniors on
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your team frees up your senior
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Developers for higher level projects
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earlier
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think about almost every pull request
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you've ever submitted
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probably that last five percent of code
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that you don't really want to write
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maybe it's fixing Ci or making a design
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tweak or one of your CSS variables was
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out of whack or maybe a test is failing
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putting a junior on that
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finish up that PR and then get your
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senior onto the next big thing
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goes a long way in creating lasting
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value and ownership and code for those
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senior developers that they might
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otherwise be bogged down by finishing
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that last five percent
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finally
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a junior developer makes easier future
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hiring there's going to be a Common
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Thread that we come up with through this
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talk on that the best time to hire a
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junior was three years ago because
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this happens time and time again when
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I'm working with companies hiring on
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Rails devs they tell me they want a
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senior developer five years experience
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who knows their stack
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knows their domain
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and knows their business processes also
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and it's like what that doesn't exist
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you can't hire that senior that's a
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junior who you hired three years ago who
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now became your best singer
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your Juniors will become your best
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seniors because they are your singers
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they've been groomed to work in your
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company to work by your you know
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restrictions in your environment
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and the geographers produce the best
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work for you
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and if they started as a junior there's
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also a better likelihood they will stay
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as a senior
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because you've been helping them level
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up
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so quick respite one of my favorite
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tweets
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I only recruit senior devs the trick is
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I recruit some of them earlier in their
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career
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sits home really well it shows
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that senior devs usually aren't so easy
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to pick up off of other companies unless
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you have a lot of bankroll or a really
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awesome company and sometimes it's a
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little bit easier to recruit them when
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they're juniors have them level up into
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your company
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so we all agree on this we all agree on
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the benefits of Juniors I probably
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didn't tell you anything new just there
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businesses and interviewing folks and
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talking to people time and time again I
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hear the same pushback
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I hear
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well we can't hire a junior we need
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someone to deliver features today
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yeah that's that's totally valid ramping
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up a junior requires significant work I
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will not beat around that bush there is
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no way around this if you don't put the
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time in you will not have a good Junior
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developer
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I hear that not everyone has time to
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Mentor
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well not every senior developer wants to
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manage either
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that seems to be okay there's individual
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contributors there are folks that want
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to Mentor there are folks that don't
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want to Mentor I think that's okay
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but if you have a junior on your team
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you will need mentorship
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you need buy-in from the whole company
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on how that mentorship works
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I also hear that interviewing Juniors is
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even harder
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I know I built an entire business around
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hiring just rails developers I know how
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hard it is to hire I know how hard it is
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to interview
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and hiring Juniors has its own unique
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challenges
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what I'm going to do over the next
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couple slides is walk through some
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techniques that I've seen work
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to mitigate some of these risks to talk
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a little bit about how you can hire
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Juniors a little bit easier make better
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guesses on who's going to be a good fit
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for your company and how to work through
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mentorship into your company to make it
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be part of your system
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first
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quote from that guy over there
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I'm Jason turns
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it's hard to recommend rails to people
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changing careers because there are no
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jobs for juniors
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go learn JavaScript instead
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this makes me very very sad
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one of the biggest names in Ruby in
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rails hosts of amazing podcasts is not
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recommending rails to people
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it's really sad that shows that there's
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something going wrong in our community
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there's something that's off if we can't
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recommend rails to people because they
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won't be able to get a job
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and all of you that are here that are
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listening to it are obviously on board
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and want to change that and here are
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some ways
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I've seen work that we can start to
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change that culture
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so first up
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here are some techniques and stories
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that I've seen
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about what works when hiring a junior
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rails developer
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first up is to prioritize a junior
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Developers
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hunger to learn over their existing
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knowledge
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by definition a junior Dev won't have
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much experience won't know very much
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they're Junior
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but what you should be doing is
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prioritizing the folks that want to
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learn that can't stand to say to hear no
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or to not understand something the ones
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that want have the desire to improve and
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be a sponge they want you want folks
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that show up every single day folks that
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ask a thousand questions fail a hundred
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times but learn something every single
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time they write a line of code or watch
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a line of code be written
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to look for these folks I recommend
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looking for people that are asking
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questions during interviews folks that
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are talking about rails in their free
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time or part time on Twitter it's a good
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indication that they're passionate about
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it seeing if they're contributing to
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open source projects
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folks that have a Blog those are also
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great resources to find folks
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and speaking of finding folks
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let's dive into a quick story about
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Jacob
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so Jacob was looking for his first
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job in the rails ecosystem
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he had experience in other programming
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languages and was doing some other work
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but he didn't really know where to start
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so we started contributing to the rails
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devs code base it's open source it's on
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GitHub
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he put in a public pull request he
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committed on a few issues or commented
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on a few issues and opened up a few
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discussions for new features
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his employer saw these commits saw how
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he interacted with me as the maintainer
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and how he took feedback and pull
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request review and applied that and
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learned and grew even in the public
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a few weeks later they hired Jacob for
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his first role this is an amazing story
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to hear that someone by just
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contributing to open source was directly
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hired through it yeah he had an
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interview process but that was his
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initial Outreach
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continuing on that note uh looking at
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boot camp graduates looking at career
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switchers there's a term that gets
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thrown around called second career Debs
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which I really love folks that have left
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somewhere else and they're looking to
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get into development or rails these
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folks show a different type of passion
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they've already been doing something and
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then have spent a bunch of time probably
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a lot of money through a boot camp and
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wanting to learn rails and dive in
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and finally
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direct Outreach it's one of the main
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premises of rails devs is businesses
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reaching out to developers directly and
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I've seen it work time again
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developers don't really want to maintain
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a resume anymore they don't want to
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apply to jobs themselves they want to be
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lazy they have businesses reach out to
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them
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and I encourage you to take advantage of
00:12:01.260
that and message developers directly
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through your through email if you can if
00:12:04.860
you have it Twitter DMS work really well
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it seems to be more open than it used to
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be
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and finding those folks on your own
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next up we have Rebecca
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so I was working with another rails devs
00:12:16.620
customer who was looking to hire their
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first Junior developer they weren't
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really sure if they were the right fit
00:12:23.519
if they could handle a junior Dev and
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they also really weren't sure how to
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evaluate a junior developer
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so you worked together to create a small
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program we did an eight-week part-time
00:12:34.200
trial that was paid as a part-time
00:12:36.660
contract
00:12:37.740
this would be Rebecca's first job as a
00:12:39.360
developer this would be the company's
00:12:40.800
first hire or a junior
00:12:43.139
what they saw happen was Rebecca was
00:12:45.060
committing pull requests directly to the
00:12:46.680
code base
00:12:47.700
they essentially got a practice run of
00:12:49.500
working with her
00:12:50.579
they were able to learn her
00:12:51.720
communication skills through async chat
00:12:54.000
like slack and GitHub
00:12:55.560
they saw how she was able to handle
00:12:57.180
feedback
00:12:58.200
through pull request review and how she
00:13:00.180
would take that and apply it and learn
00:13:02.519
and most importantly they saw her level
00:13:04.380
up over those short eight weeks and saw
00:13:06.180
how she had the ability and aptitude and
00:13:08.339
hunger to learn
00:13:10.500
they comment on it as one of the best
00:13:11.880
risk-free trials they've ever done
00:13:14.839
what they learned at the end of that was
00:13:17.519
that they can support a junior they had
00:13:19.320
to make a few tweaks their onboarding
00:13:21.240
wasn't as smooth as it could be their
00:13:22.800
Dev environment set up required a couple
00:13:25.380
extra things outside of the Brew file
00:13:26.880
and they had a document more of their
00:13:28.560
code review process so a senior Deb
00:13:30.660
wasn't a bottleneck but they learned
00:13:32.579
that during that risk-free trial that
00:13:35.040
enabled them that when Rebecca joined
00:13:37.139
she was able to hit the ground running
00:13:39.420
Rebecca joined and committed to
00:13:41.339
production on day one
00:13:42.779
why she had already spent eight weeks
00:13:44.880
onboarding she knew everything she
00:13:46.620
needed to know about getting the code
00:13:47.579
running on her machine it already was
00:13:49.260
how to submit pull request she already
00:13:51.000
did that and how to run CI she's been
00:13:52.920
doing that for eight weeks all she had
00:13:54.660
to do was go through the HR training and
00:13:56.399
compliance but her developer side of her
00:13:58.380
as employee is good to go
00:14:00.540
so in summary
00:14:02.639
how to hire Junior devs what I've seen
00:14:04.500
work
00:14:05.339
prioritizing hunger to learn over
00:14:06.959
existing knowledge
00:14:08.639
look in interesting and new exciting
00:14:10.920
places to find them
00:14:12.839
and if you need to evaluate for both as
00:14:15.120
a company and a developer a paid
00:14:16.740
part-time contract can work out really
00:14:18.600
well and has a much lower risk than
00:14:20.399
hiring someone full-time and having to
00:14:21.720
let them go if it doesn't work out
00:14:24.839
so
00:14:26.480
talked about what works how to hire what
00:14:29.040
about once you have them on board how
00:14:31.380
can you work with a junior to ensure
00:14:33.180
that they work best with your team and
00:14:34.800
how your team can work best with them
00:14:38.760
this might be the most
00:14:40.800
important four lines of this whole
00:14:42.240
presentation
00:14:43.380
small well-defined tasks are what enable
00:14:45.899
Junior developers to hit the ground
00:14:47.339
running
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I go so far as to say can you pinpoint
00:14:51.660
the exact line of code
00:14:53.760
can you submit a change this one to a
00:14:57.060
two or change this plus sign to a minus
00:14:58.620
sign because for that Junior developers
00:15:00.480
first pull request to your code base
00:15:02.699
the changing of the code is going to be
00:15:04.260
the least of their problems they're
00:15:05.820
going to need to know how to set up
00:15:06.899
their developer environment you're going
00:15:08.579
to need to add a SSH or sign in with
00:15:11.100
GitHub how to submit a pull request how
00:15:13.320
to approve a pull request how to get
00:15:15.060
their tests working how to run the app
00:15:17.100
locally the list goes on once they
00:15:19.260
finally get to that code
00:15:22.680
it might be exhausted and if you can
00:15:24.480
make that easy you're going to be in a
00:15:27.540
really good spot because that first that
00:15:30.180
absolute first change that developer
00:15:32.279
makes
00:15:33.959
building confidence is way more
00:15:36.360
important than actually getting stuff
00:15:37.380
done
00:15:39.360
building their confidence to be able to
00:15:40.740
come back tomorrow and know that they
00:15:42.060
can do it that they can that they hit
00:15:43.800
the ground running
00:15:44.880
and you know as time goes on you're
00:15:47.279
going to take off those training wheels
00:15:48.540
you're gonna broaden up your scope of
00:15:51.300
what is acceptable for submitting an
00:15:53.459
issue for them and they're going to
00:15:55.440
learn more and more and more as you
00:15:56.699
train them but that first one the
00:15:58.920
smaller and well-defined that task the
00:16:00.420
better
00:16:02.940
next up is that developer compensation
00:16:06.300
must continue to increase
00:16:08.579
one of the easiest excuses to leave a
00:16:10.440
job is if you're not getting paid what
00:16:11.639
you're worth
00:16:13.019
it's a lot of nodding right now
00:16:15.240
juniors are no exception and if you're
00:16:17.279
doing everything right a junior won't be
00:16:19.139
junior for very long
00:16:20.940
I encourage you to pay them for their
00:16:23.220
current skill level and the current
00:16:24.839
value they provide to your company now
00:16:26.459
they were hired at
00:16:28.560
this might not line up with your annual
00:16:30.600
review cycle I've seen companies do
00:16:33.000
quarterly review Cycles even for nightly
00:16:35.639
review cycles for juniors because
00:16:37.440
they're moving so fast their change is
00:16:39.959
so high
00:16:41.040
if you're doing everything right you'll
00:16:42.899
be rapidly improving and rapidly blowing
00:16:45.360
through those tiers
00:16:48.300
next up is mentorship
00:16:51.180
scary word in the developer industry
00:16:52.920
coming from both sides it has a lot of
00:16:54.959
connotations associated with it it's
00:16:56.759
very heavy word folks kind of cringe at
00:16:59.339
it if they're not totally sure what it
00:17:01.800
means or are a little scared of how
00:17:03.120
structured it could be
00:17:04.500
but this is how I think about mentorship
00:17:06.480
personally me as a developer Mia is
00:17:09.059
running a business for a year on hiring
00:17:10.980
folks
00:17:12.179
foreign
00:17:18.240
being a good Mentor involves two things
00:17:20.939
being available and coding with people
00:17:22.559
if you can do those two things
00:17:24.660
you can be a great mentor
00:17:27.000
being available and coding with people
00:17:28.980
is in practice
00:17:31.020
practical everyday advice on projects
00:17:33.120
and code it's hey can you help me with
00:17:35.280
something I'm stuck let's pair for an
00:17:36.600
hour hey I need a couple questions on
00:17:38.580
how this pull request review you know
00:17:40.140
went can we chat for a little bit it
00:17:42.240
doesn't have to be a weekly Cadence
00:17:44.100
where you come prepared with questions
00:17:45.720
it can be more casual and fun and
00:17:47.760
organic those would be the best Mentor
00:17:49.559
mentee relationships and the best
00:17:50.940
relationships that you can create and
00:17:52.679
cultivate in the company
00:17:55.220
I had a mentor back when I worked at a
00:17:57.960
big bank before I got into rails and we
00:17:59.940
met every Thursday at 1 pm for an hour
00:18:01.679
and every Thursday at 1 pm for an hour I
00:18:04.020
had to come prepared with questions
00:18:06.600
and I was judged on those questions
00:18:08.160
those were determining how much I was
00:18:10.200
leveling up in the company and what I
00:18:11.760
was learning
00:18:12.720
I was one of the worst experiences of my
00:18:14.700
professional career I learned nothing
00:18:16.440
from it my mentor gained nothing from it
00:18:18.600
and it was a broken relationship because
00:18:20.640
the expectations weren't the same they
00:18:22.740
were in charge of making sure of
00:18:23.880
evaluating me I was in charge of showing
00:18:26.160
my worth that's not a mentor mentee
00:18:27.539
relationship
00:18:28.500
the ones that work are the mentors that
00:18:30.240
are selfless and the ones that want the
00:18:32.160
juror to succeed on their own with a
00:18:34.919
little bit of help
00:18:36.780
it's also very difficult to retain
00:18:38.220
Juniors about mentorship
00:18:40.200
nigh I would say impossible
00:18:42.480
on top of that it must be a safe space
00:18:44.760
it must be a safe space for a developer
00:18:46.980
to feel comfortable to ask all the silly
00:18:49.620
little questions and get genuine answers
00:18:52.020
to each of them
00:18:53.400
every single question that is dismissed
00:18:55.320
is suppressing 10 questions down the
00:18:57.600
road do not dismiss a question take
00:19:00.360
everyone seriously and offer your advice
00:19:03.000
as if you had that same question
00:19:04.799
yourself
00:19:05.880
there's guarantee you probably did ask
00:19:07.440
it a few years ago
00:19:09.840
and finally
00:19:11.460
company buy-in
00:19:14.160
it's a tough one
00:19:15.660
mentorship without company buy-in
00:19:17.880
is extra work and not much mentorship at
00:19:20.340
all
00:19:21.840
companies need to know businesses need
00:19:23.760
to know that if it's developers time
00:19:26.400
working is like this you can't just tack
00:19:28.799
on mentorship at the end that's too much
00:19:30.840
hours that's too many hours that's too
00:19:32.100
much time you need to take away coding
00:19:34.080
time
00:19:34.980
or email time or you know meeting time
00:19:37.260
or whatever you do
00:19:38.580
and dedicate that to mentorship what
00:19:41.520
that means is that your short-term
00:19:43.740
productivity will go down you will be
00:19:45.660
delivering less features
00:19:48.299
I like to think of it that the best time
00:19:50.580
for a company to hire a junior is when
00:19:52.740
they can make that sacrifice they can
00:19:54.360
sacrifice a little bit of short-term
00:19:55.740
productivity now for long term maybe
00:19:58.320
even medium-term investment in the
00:19:59.760
future
00:20:00.600
come back to this again and again in
00:20:02.340
three years you might now have a senior
00:20:03.660
developer on your hands in one year you
00:20:05.460
might have a mid-level developer and if
00:20:07.020
you can sacrifice that little bit now
00:20:09.299
for higher retention velocity down the
00:20:11.280
road you're in a really good spot to
00:20:12.900
work with juniors
00:20:15.600
last up
00:20:18.179
power repair programming one of my
00:20:20.280
favorites
00:20:21.840
pair programming is two devs just like
00:20:24.600
this user designers actually two devs
00:20:26.880
working on a machine passing the virtual
00:20:28.799
or physical keyboard back and forth
00:20:30.360
working on the same piece of code doing
00:20:32.340
all of that design trade-off
00:20:34.260
optimization feature discussion that
00:20:35.940
goes on inside your head verbally with
00:20:37.860
each other
00:20:39.539
this is Josh from Jacqueline I was there
00:20:41.640
at pivotal labs when this photo was
00:20:42.900
taken hiding in the corner because I was
00:20:44.640
afraid of the camera
00:20:45.720
and I paired with both of them
00:20:47.460
throughout my tenure at pivotal and one
00:20:50.520
of the best experiences of me growing up
00:20:52.679
as a developer
00:20:54.240
was that it enabled me to go from
00:20:56.580
knowing zero Ruby code
00:20:58.740
to a senior developer in two years
00:21:01.980
yes I was pairing eight hours a day five
00:21:03.960
days a week it was exhausting and
00:21:06.299
extreme
00:21:07.500
but what it did was it took me on a fast
00:21:10.080
track from Junior to senior it was two
00:21:12.059
years after I left I was hired as the
00:21:13.799
lead developer for a small startup
00:21:16.200
being the only developer writing rails
00:21:17.760
code on the team that says a lot about
00:21:19.799
someone who knew absolutely zero two
00:21:21.240
years ago and I encourage you to look at
00:21:23.100
that when you start to bring on Junior
00:21:24.840
developers can you pair with them maybe
00:21:26.520
an hour a day maybe two hours a week
00:21:28.140
maybe four hours a week the more pairing
00:21:30.299
you do you can almost guarantee that the
00:21:32.280
more and more quickly that developer
00:21:34.200
will become a senior
00:21:36.419
which leads me to my next point
00:21:38.580
is that
00:21:39.780
pair programming expedites onboarding
00:21:42.900
it expedites onboarding because you
00:21:45.059
learn more
00:21:46.140
by doing than by reading
00:21:48.299
the best way to learn how to do
00:21:49.679
something is actually doing it yourself
00:21:50.820
so what better way than to have someone
00:21:52.799
sitting next to you telling you click
00:21:54.900
this button type in this command hit
00:21:56.400
enter I haven't gone through the muscle
00:21:58.080
memory on your own
00:21:59.640
developers who pair program are going to
00:22:02.100
learn the team processes they're going
00:22:04.020
to learn techniques how to solve
00:22:06.059
problems they're going to watch a senior
00:22:07.380
developer do it and then they can
00:22:09.000
replicate it on their own
00:22:10.500
so they're going to learn how the actual
00:22:11.640
work gets done not by reading an
00:22:13.320
onboarding documentation by going
00:22:14.940
through GitHub PR or read me but by
00:22:17.400
doing it themselves experiencing it
00:22:19.200
firsthand
00:22:22.500
one of my favorite coding memories
00:22:25.440
love saying that out loud is at pivotal
00:22:28.740
on day one where we had paired all day
00:22:30.900
on something don't remember the project
00:22:32.280
wasn't relevant
00:22:34.440
and my pair typed in git push
00:22:37.020
and slid the keyboard over to me
00:22:39.600
I could hit enter
00:22:40.919
I get to hit enter and push my you know
00:22:43.080
R code to production and I'll never
00:22:44.940
forget that that even though I didn't
00:22:46.559
contribute very much to the code I was
00:22:48.900
given that excuse that that excitement
00:22:51.960
of actually getting my code out there
00:22:54.120
and into the world and I was able to hit
00:22:55.740
enter and see my first real world real
00:22:57.720
world contribution to rails to a rails
00:23:00.120
app
00:23:00.840
um happen
00:23:01.860
and I encourage you to employ that same
00:23:03.360
thing I want someone standing up here
00:23:04.799
giving the same exact talk saying the
00:23:06.299
same question saying the same excitement
00:23:08.400
that I'm doing right now
00:23:12.299
last up on the power pair programming is
00:23:15.240
that learning goes both ways
00:23:19.140
because you're more senior than someone
00:23:20.220
does not mean you have nothing to learn
00:23:22.320
I learned time and time again from folks
00:23:24.539
that consider themselves Juniors about
00:23:26.220
ins and outs of rails we dive into
00:23:28.500
documentation together we dive into
00:23:30.059
source code of gems sometimes rails
00:23:31.740
itself sometimes devise recently for
00:23:33.960
whatever reason and
00:23:36.000
and learn way more than if I was just
00:23:38.220
working on my own
00:23:39.780
but one of the main benefits to all of
00:23:41.400
this
00:23:42.179
is that in the process of a senior
00:23:44.039
working with a junior the senior is
00:23:46.320
forced to slow down
00:23:48.240
in the process of explaining something
00:23:50.100
they uncover potentially invalid
00:23:53.039
assumptions
00:23:55.559
you don't really know it until you have
00:23:57.299
to teach it
00:23:58.440
this couldn't hold more true than when
00:24:00.539
you're paraprogling with someone and you
00:24:02.220
have to explain why something's always
00:24:04.260
been done
00:24:05.460
or why this helper works the way it does
00:24:07.559
or why view components are better than
00:24:09.960
this or why Erb is better than slim or
00:24:12.419
vice versa so you actually have to
00:24:14.340
explain it
00:24:15.299
teach it
00:24:17.720
so in recap
00:24:21.299
four tips for what works once you hire a
00:24:23.520
junior developer
00:24:25.020
having that first task given to them to
00:24:27.059
be as small and well-defined as possible
00:24:28.559
and slowly taking the training wheels
00:24:30.360
off and watching their confidence soar
00:24:33.120
ensuring that their compensation
00:24:34.440
continues to increase as their skills
00:24:36.659
and value provided to the company
00:24:38.280
increase with them
00:24:40.440
mentorship and how I like to think about
00:24:42.059
it or how you like to think about it
00:24:43.620
whatever works but definitely mentorship
00:24:46.080
and how much parent programming can you
00:24:47.700
squeeze into a day with them at the
00:24:49.320
beginning to get them on board as
00:24:50.700
quickly as possible
00:24:54.179
sometimes when companies
00:24:55.860
and Junior developers I want to shake
00:24:57.120
them by their Hood
00:24:58.320
Danielle where do you think senior
00:24:59.700
developers come from
00:25:01.260
I love this
00:25:02.820
but it also Rings something a little
00:25:04.140
scary underneath it
00:25:06.120
if no more juniors are getting jobs in a
00:25:08.700
few years there won't be any more
00:25:10.380
singers
00:25:11.760
seniors don't magically pop out of the
00:25:13.200
thin air nope they start as Juniors and
00:25:15.600
they work their way up
00:25:17.240
I know this was said tongue-in-cheek and
00:25:19.740
excitedly but there's a lot to unpack on
00:25:22.020
this
00:25:24.480
so
00:25:26.279
my challenge to you
00:25:28.620
my challenge is that you do one of these
00:25:31.620
in the next six months
00:25:35.640
Can you hire one Junior developer on
00:25:38.340
your team at your company at your
00:25:40.020
startup at your single person SAS in the
00:25:42.960
next six months
00:25:45.480
it's too hard I don't work on the hiring
00:25:46.980
team I don't I'm not part of those
00:25:49.140
decisions that's fine
00:25:50.880
can you instead bring on an intern for a
00:25:52.740
few months
00:25:53.880
give the power to bring on an intern for
00:25:55.440
just a few months to help someone who's
00:25:56.760
looking for their first rails job get
00:25:58.980
some real world experience have
00:26:00.600
something on their resume that says I
00:26:01.919
worked here for X months to get their
00:26:04.080
foot in the door for their first real
00:26:06.059
Junior job
00:26:07.919
okay fine you don't do interns at your
00:26:09.419
company you're too low on the totem pole
00:26:11.460
to have influence on this I don't buy it
00:26:13.980
but if you say that
00:26:16.020
can you Mentor a junior developer
00:26:17.460
looking for their first job
00:26:19.020
can you find someone on Twitter on the
00:26:21.179
Ruby friends hashtag on slack on Discord
00:26:23.340
or all the thousands of communities that
00:26:24.779
exist and Mentor someone
00:26:27.120
take them from no rails job to rails job
00:26:29.820
spend the time with them be a selfless
00:26:32.279
Mentor apply the tasks and the
00:26:35.520
mentorship techniques that I outlined
00:26:37.320
earlier and get them their first job
00:26:40.080
every single person in this room has the
00:26:43.020
power to do that
00:26:44.520
my challenge
00:26:45.960
is William
00:26:47.220
thank you very much my name is Joe
00:26:48.600
mazzolati I'm the founder of rails dubs
00:26:50.880
this is my Twitter handle this is my
00:26:52.559
email address this is an open invitation
00:26:54.480
to email me if you're interested in
00:26:56.159
hiring need some expert pairing tips or
00:26:58.980
want to share your story I'm here to
00:27:00.539
help if you enjoyed this talk please
00:27:02.340
tweet me or send me an email thank you
00:27:13.860
foreign
