

Ask HN: Suggestions for companies that mentor junior developers? - stuntgoat

I am a self-taught programmer that would like to get a job at a startup. Small startups do not often have the time or resources to mentor a junior programmer.<p>Do you have any suggestions for companies( startups or not ) that have a great track record for mentoring junior devs?
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nostrademons
If you want mentoring, you're better off with a big company. They have the
time and resources to invest long-term in employees, and often have extensive
explicit mentoring programs in place. I suspect any of the major players will
do, but I've heard Microsoft and Google have the best reputation for bringing
interns and junior devs up to speed. Facebook gives junior devs a lot of
responsibility, but you really have to be a self-starter to succeed there,
since the pace is such that there really isn't much time for focused
mentoring.

When I was working at a startup, the lack of time for mentoring was one of the
parts I hated most. I joined initially because their chief architect literally
wrote the book on Java (and wrote curses, and rogue, and worked on vi and BSD
UNIX), but he ended up quitting between my internship and when I started full-
time. And the CEO offered to train me as a quant when I was hired, but time
for such training never materialized because he was always busy with business
stuff.

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swah
Could just say Ken Arnolds.

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nostrademons
Does everybody know his name more than his work, or do you just have good
Google skills?

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swah
No, I just meant that you could have saved me some reverse searches, since I
just want to get to his wikipedia page anyway :)

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benjreinhart
<http://obtiva.com/> is huge on mentoring apprentices

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ontouchstart
github

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diolpah
Serious question, no troll.

Why do so many young developers insist on getting mentoring when there is _so
much_ high quality code available to be read?

I can accept the proposition that reading books is insufficient for becoming a
spectacular developer. But code itself is so precisely clear about its use and
intention, that it's effectively equivalent to peering inside the mind of its
author.In addition, reading through changelogs can give an excellent view of
how good software evolves from version to version.

I would argue that doing so would be roughly equivalent in effect to actual
mentoring.

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swah
I thought about doing something like this with projects I'd like to
understand. Checkout the first version, try to understand that, checkout the
diff to the next, etc.

I have some trouble understanding what exactly I'm looking at, at each point
of the history. It would be easy if the developer told me, but not trivial to
grasp by looking at it.

Also, the value of this early code might be questionable, since it will
probably be dumped in the later versions, and you probably won't have access
to the insights the author had to dump it.

And I'm not even a young developer. :/

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swah
I'd love too see a screencast (Peepcode?) where some programmer attempted
exactly that. Checkout an interesting project he never seen the code, and
"think out loud" while trying to understand it. And don't throw the screencast
away just because he can't grasp it, because that's exactly what happens with
newbies who try to understand medium-to-large projects written by others.

