The Developer Farm System
Image via Hungry Academy
As the startup bubble in Silicon Valley continues to inflate, so does the mad scramble to hire developers to build those startups. This is not news. What’s news is the recent revelation that Facebook is offering first-year engineering hires a $50,000 signing bonus on top of a $100,000 salary and stock. Facebook is the Yankees, and you’re not going to be able to hang with them in a spending war.
So some companies are taking a cue from Moneyball and trying a new approach: spend a small amount of money to hire driven, quality candidates, and then teach them to code. Livingsocial’s Hungry Academy is like a farm system for developers. They start with great overall candidates, and then put them through a five-month coding academy. No experience required. If you make it through, you get a job. Others are following suit; is 2012 the year of the internal Codecademy?
Do you know how to code? Any interest in learning? What programs are you using? Tell us @WIREDInsider.
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