IT Grads Looking for Experience

amen

There are lot of full time developers on boards and most if not all probably have ideas for some community projects (not for profit) or tools (again free) that could be written but don't have the time.

There are a lot of recent IT graduates that need to some experience in order to gain work. I was thinking of a trying to match those grads with experienced developers who would help the grads develop some projects, tools etc thus providing the grad with experience and the community with new resources.

In terms of mentoring I would expect the developer to help the grad do documentation, specs, test plans, process flows, uml, testing (unit/system) etc providing the grad with some real world experience and a concrete project to show a prospective employer.

If you are interested as either a grad/developer then post here with your name followed by grad/developer depending on what you are with areas you are interested in if a grad and areas of expertise if you are developer and we can try to match.

If this was successful and useful maybe we could role out to non business grads as well.

After all it is nice to give something back.

NeverSayDie

Hmm, potential problem I'd see here is that you seem to be suggesting folks who don't have time to be developers on account of full-time jobs, be project managers or senior developers instead. Project management and other senior roles are even worse on time and energy than straight development, in my experience anyway

A better approach might be to get graduates involved in open source projects - they're always looking for help, and they'll already have structures in place (the better ones anyway). Somewhere like SourceForge or CodePlex should turn up a lot of projects looking for work of various kinds (usually a mixture of documentation roles and developer ones, either of which would be educational).

Fair play for trying to help in any case, need more folks like that around.

fergalr

In terms of mentoring I would expect the developer to help the grad do documentation, specs, test plans, process flows, uml, testing (unit/system) etc providing the grad with some real world experience and a concrete project to show a prospective employer.

Not to be a cynic, but... erm...

amen

why ?

Smoggy

most devs skip all the boring parts and get down to the good stuff.

Evil Phil

Amen, I think fergalr is commenting on the workload expected. Most devs have a poor enough work-life balance and it would be difficult to get people to dedicate enough time to provide everything on your list. Mentoring in this case, for me, would mean being there a couple of evenings a week to address any issues the grad is having and provide advice, your description sounds more like a technical lead role.

amen

I didn't mean it to. What ever worked for the grad/mentor would be fine.

Just wanted to see if there is anything we can do to help people get jobs or at least an interview

p

This is a great idea. It's always hard to get people signed up to stuff like this but I wish you all the best. I'm a designer so can't help myself unfortunately, but have volunteered as a mentor for other designers.

Good luck with it!

fergalr

amen wrote: »

why ?

I was trying to poke fun, but ended up being a bit obtuse - sorry!

What I was getting at is a bit like what smoggy picked up on - you mention real world experience, and list "documentation, specs, test plans, process flows, uml, testing (unit/system)" as things that developers could mentor grads with.


Now, I know this all depends on what type of development is being done, and who is doing it, but speaking personally, I've very rarely seen process flows or UML in real world development settings. Documentation and specs, in my experience, are also rarely the idealised creatures they are made out to be in college - they are rarely kept in synch with the current state of the project - if they exist at all. People are getting better at doing unit and system testing, which is great, and test driven development is probably well worth grads learning and using.


I'm not saying this because I've worked in trainwreck coding shops. Its actually because - and this is probably controversial - in many real world software development businesses, it is better economically to hack the product out, than to always develop it to 'best practices'. Trying to maintain heavyweight specs, process flows, UML, detailed documentation etc frequently just does not make economic sense in a modern development environment - and I think this is a large part of the move to more 'agile' development processes. Its just too expensive to develop a lot of software that thoroughly.


Now, don't get me wrong, if you are developing the space shuttle (or even embedded systems), everything gets fully specified and designed in advance, and very well documented and tested; but thats the exception for most CS grads, rather than the rule.


If I was to mentor grads to set them up for the 'real world', I'd probably say the following:

1) Ignore the real world when you are in college. This is your absolute best time to get your fundamentals solidly in order. You'll be so busy lurching from one firefight to the next once you start working that you won't get a chance to polish your fundamentals of algorithms, mathematics etc. Do as much of this as you can in college! (Obviously, I'm exaggerating here - and of course, you should try and continue learning your theory after you graduate, but many don't).

2) Try and learn to code before you finish college. As well as you can.
This might seem obvious, but a lot of people don't really do this in college, even if they are in CS. If they were just competent programmers in a range of languages, that would be a great start to becoming fully fledged developers.

3) If you do want to learn more 'real world' stuff in college, and you really think your fundamentals are great, and you've done 3 or 4 big projects, large enough to have some software engineering experience, then I'd say spend time trying to quickly read and learn large code bases, and navigate around them. This is a very much an acquired real world skill, something you don't see in college, and one of the most useful things you can learn.

4) Spending time reading a few best practice books on software engineering probably would also do more good than talking to an experienced developer.
The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, Rapid Development etc. Time spent reading these books in college is probably better than time spent with any one developer as a mentor.


Opinion thus dispensed, I have to say, fair play for trying to organise something.

From what I see of people in college, it would have to be at several levels.

There are many students, where just having experienced software developers tell people that its important they learn to program properly, would probably do them a lot of good.