In the summer of 2004 I did an apprenticeship of sorts at a place called Object Mentor. At the time “Uncle” Bob Martin and his son Micah Martin were in leadership positions at the company and I somehow convinced them to let me work for free over the summer in exchange for teaching me software development. It wasn’t a very structured program, nothing like what Micah would later put together for 8th Light, but I was a pretty motivated learner. I also had the advantage of coming from a teaching background so I knew how to learn.
All this has been covered in daily detail, if you'd like to read more.
After ten years of software experience I’m becoming a mentor to an apprentice and documenting the experience via podcast. Backstop Solutions has graciously allowed me to pay our apprentice (the same rate we pay interns) as he is doing real work on a daily basis in addition to outside learning experiences. From 9-5 he will be working on production code with 100% supervision as he will always be pairing with an experienced developer. It’s a six month program with 2 month check-ins.
The apprentice, Jonathan Howden, knows that should he fail to meet expectations we may end our relationship at 2, 4, or 6 months. This is a bit scary, but if Backstop is going to be taking a chance on an un-credentialed employee we, as a company, need to be able mitigate the risk of such a person polluting our codebase. It is therefore our responsibility to provide constant feedback to the apprentice so that he will know exactly what is needed to succeed. So far he’s been doing great: He just finished his 3rd week of apprenticeship so we just recorded our third podcast and will be on a weekly schedule. Assuming he survives the six month apprenticeship, Jonathan will be offered a full time job at a damn good starting salary. Interested in such a job right now? Check out https://careers.backstopsolutions.com/
In the first episode, Jonathan talks quite a bit about Dev Bootcamp (DBC). I’ve known, worked with, and read the book of one of the founders so it seemed natural to reach out to Dave Hoover and DBC to help Backstop find its first apprentice. We asked their “fairy job mother” to spread the word that we were looking for apprentices and ten applied. They were all given coding homework challenges which were evaluated code review style with the whole InvestorBridge team allowed to attend. We judged three submissions good enough to warrant an in-person interview. Jonathan made it through this gauntlet and was rewarded with a brand new, much longer, gauntlet. Of learning. Look, there's no way not to make this sound hokey as we're trying to do a good thing here.
On a weekly basis I hope to capture what an apprenticeship is from the inside and perhaps provide some value to proto-developers and prospective mentor companies who may be wondering what this “apprenticeship” business is all about. Changing careers is, like it or not, the future. I did it in 2004 and I hope Jonathan will too in 2014.
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