To help our city's new developers, fresh out of local universities and programs like Starter School, find the best opportunities, Built In Chicago is highlighting some our city's great tech companies. The companies on this list go the extra mile to push new developers to constantly learn and showcase their talents. To see what developer positions are currently open at these growing companies, visit our job board.
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Orbitz’s flat structure allows new devs to impact millions of travelers by having their own code released into production within just a week of joining the team. “We’re impatient and hate to wait so we’re quickly moving to deploying code whenever we need to,” CTO Roger Liew said. “A typical week sees 20 to 40 code deployments.”
Though they are working on their own code, young developers at Orbitz aren’t thrown out to sink-or-swim completely on their own: during their first year or two, new devs are also paired with an engineering mentor. “They aren't buried in layers of management,” Liew said. The teams are self-contained and can deploy new features so new devs can see their work in the wild quickly. The best learning comes from real work deployed to real customers. Our philosophy is that the best ideas can truly come from anywhere.”
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About two years ago Signal started to hear from a lot of great budding developers who had just finished Dev Bootcamp, Starter League or who were self-taught and freelancing but who wanted to be part of a bigger, more experienced team. “They weren’t quite ready to be hired as developers with us but we knew they had real potential,” Talent and Culture VP Lisa O’Keefe said. “To just walk away from people like that seemed wrong. So, we started our apprenticeship program.” Now, the dev team hires two six-month apprentices every four months. During the apprenticeship, the apprentice works on a small team of developers and participates fully in the Signal dev life (which means they demo their work at Demo Day every other Thursday, participate in code reviews, etc ).
Many apprentices start off doing work on the front-end and then move on to work in Java, node.js or to do work with the ops team. “Our apprentices come to us with a wide swath of experience; we’ve had teachers, artists, stock brokers, writers, mechanics, new devs who’d only worked in WordPress or PHP,” O’Keefe said. “As we grow as a company, we will continue to support and expand our apprenticeship program. We have a small number of developers in Brooklyn and adding apprentices there is next on my list.”
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Newly on-boarded developers at Emmi Solutions are taken through a company-wide rotation process that puts them in the middle of what Emmi Solutions does on Day One, which includes a healthcare 101 course led by CEO Devin Gross. New devs then get access to recorded sessions that cover topics like data hierarchy, tools, security, technology stack, front-end frameworks, development process etc. Devs are also given the opportunity to constantly rotate between back-end, front-end and integration type projects to better their skill set. “We encourage continuous growth opportunities through training, peer programming, conferences, personal passion technology projects, team lunches and code challenges,” CTO Nimesh Patel said. “We do all of this by keeping our development processes light and flexible. We really listen to what our developers want and accommodate it by organizing initiatives based on what is best for the team and project.”
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At GrubHub, each new dev is presented with a checklist of important company topics and a list of key contacts and then tasked with setting up meetings with the subject-matter experts to learn more about these topics. This way, devs move beyond just talking with other developers to get to know the company’s technology inside and out. Typical meetings for devs include meeting with a product manager, the director of UX and one of the earliest employees of the tech team. Also, just to keep it interesting, new devs go through customer care shadowing just like every other new hire does: they are paired with a member of the customer care team for the day, helping to take calls from our diners and restaurants.
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In Soltice Mobile’s summer internship program, the company focuses on getting new developers’ hands dirty with building real-world mobile apps. This summer, for example, dev interns are working with R&D and IP teams to build out applications using emerging technologies. “They don't just sit in a back room maintaining apps, they gain experience with the latest technologies in the mobile space - ultimately putting them far ahead of other graduates.”
Last year the internship team built an app called SmartOffice that smart-enabled the entire office. The app, which is still in use today, allows employees to see if conference rooms are occupied, book meetings on-the-go, capture and send whiteboard images and order office supplies by scanning QR codes.
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Groupon invests in the growth of its devs by providing them with a dedicated personal development stipend, which is especially convenient for new devs looking to quickly beef up their technical skills. Some devs attend conferences with their stipends, like RailsConf, StrangeLoop and AdaCamp or others centered around Java/JEE, Node, Ruby, Clojure, HTML5, Agile and Functional Programming. Devs also participate in training courses or complete certifications such as PMP or ACP (Agile Certified Practioner) with the stipend.
