Regarding the reading/watching list: I have one on my blog here: http://ryanbigg.com/2015/04/getting-started-with-ruby-and-rails/. It’s not very long, but it’s a good start I think.
Regarding the whole hiring crisis + juniors: I’ve loved the idea of Turing (http://turing.io/) before it was Turing — when it was Hungry Academy and ran out of the basement of Living Social. The Program Structure outlined on their site (http://turing.io/program) is the best of its kind that I’ve seen. Training juniors within our own companies is a great idea and I encourage it completely. At Marketplacer we have a handful of juniors and we’re about to get another onboard with us here. It’s a good idea, although sometimes I feel like it’s solving it in a “fragmented” kind of way. What I would like to see the community doing as a whole is investing in something Turing-like here in Australia. Train up a class of 20-30 students who know _nothing_ (or next to nothing) about programming into people who can be good developers. Their “job” for the 7 months is to attend lessons and learn about web development. This tutoring would be funded by companies who are looking to hire new talent, and potentially by those who wish to be a part of the course. It’s not a short-term investment for those companies like recruiting can be. It’s a longer one: after 7 months, you have a developer (or three) come join your team who has a great foundation. Companies who invest in this course could get first-pick of the graduates. That means that rather than having companies train up 1-2 juniors, you’d have a dedicated team of people who are training up groups of developers and then letting them loose on the community. At the end of the course, they get mentored though the interviewing process, go and interview at some of the best companies in Australia and then choose where they’d like to go. Repeat the course every 7 months and get a constant churn of new developers going through the course, graduating and getting placed at jobs. I’d absolutely love to start something like this in Australia. On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 1:55 PM, Jo Cranford <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Duncan, > This is something that's also close to my heart, and I believe many it's > also true of many others in the community. > The best thing we can all do to help with this is to work with our own > employers to encourage them to make graduate positions available in our own > companies. I've been doing this since I started at Culture Amp, and we've > recently taken on two graduate level developers within a comparatively > small team. > The key for us was to figure out the right path for them to be able to > learn, while at the same time contributing as quickly as possible, which is > not an easy problem to solve. For us, it's meant that they start out in a > technical support role, with a senior engineer as second level support to > help them. It does need extra time from senior devs, but I believe that > it's absolutely worth the effort both for us as a company and the community > as a whole. > There is a reluctance in general within teams to take on juniors, and a > belief that adding juniors will slow the team down. If we can find > practical solutions to this within all of our companies and encourage them > to take a risk by opening even just one junior role that they wouldn't have > otherwise, it will be a step forward, IMO. > In answer to Dito, I would suggest searching the archives from this list > for suggested reading because there have been great threads in the past. > Perhaps there are also others in the community willing to present talks > targeting the kind of subjects you suggest, I tried in my RSpec talk last > night to make it accessible to all levels, and I'd be happy to present more > on code quality (anybody who knows me will also know this is a passion of > mine!) > Cheers > On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Dito Hartoto <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi Duncan, >> >> As a Junior dev it is awesome to hear that these discussions are being >> had. It's another example of how proactive and awesome the Ruby community >> is. >> >> Apart from jobs, another thing that would be helpful for a junior is >> guidance. Guidance on how to write good code, how to write good tests, and >> how best to design an application. The proliferation of courses like >> Tealeaf Academy and General Assembly have made learning Ruby and Rails >> easier and more accessible, but on completion we are able to build an MVP >> but not necessarily one that is easily scalable. Maybe it's just me ;) >> >> Finding a mentor would be a way to get such guidance but some juniors may >> not have the confidence in seeking out a mentor. I'm not even sure if there >> are enough mentors out there. I don't know what the best solution is but >> here are a few ideas: >> >> 1) A recommended reading list curated by Senior devs. >> 2) Group mentoring sessions with set tasks. >> 3) Feedback from employers on what skills are most important or lacking. >> >> I would be interested in hearing the experience of other juniors. >> >> Thanks for starting the conversation. >> >> Cheers >> Dito Hartoto >> >> On Thursday, 25 June 2015 09:09:19 UTC+10, Duncan Bayne wrote: >>> >>> Last night over a few^W^Wseveral^Wmany drinks, a group of us got to >>> talking about the state of Ruby in Australia. >>> >>> Some of the points raised were: >>> >>> - there are a lot of companies looking for Rubyists >>> - most of those companies are looking for mid - senior developers >>> - it is very hard to break into the market, but once you're >>> established, work is much easier to find >>> - very few companies have coherent strategies for hiring, developing >>> and retaining juniors and grads >>> - the difficulty companies experience in hiring mid - senior Rubyists >>> may put them off Ruby as a technology >>> >>> My (vague, beer-attenuated) recollection is that some folks are already >>> working on this problem, and I'd love to help out. >>> >>> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > -- > Jo Cranford > Skype jocranford > AU: +61 428 190 881 > Chronicling my adventures in Oz at *http://www.beachesbarbiesandbogans.com/ > <http://www.beachesbarbiesandbogans.com/>* > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. 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