Technology is fast becoming the way of the world, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vast majority of the global workforce is working remotely, calling companies to need coders on hand. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of coders in today’s workforce climate, forcing employers to hire people who don’t have the desired experience required to do their job adequately. Much like medical students who recently graduated are being called on to help on the front lines before they’ve completed their residency or fellowship, coders are being thrown to the wolves and expected to perform like veterans. Hiring a novice coder has it’s benefits, but it also has security risks.
The practice of hiring a novice coder is unfair to coders and businesses alike. Setting proper expectations for coders not only lets them know what their goals are, but also lets managers know what to expect from their employees. Much like you wouldn’t entrust a pre-med student to perform double-bypass surgery, coders fresh out of school or boot camp should not be expected to perform like 30-year vets. Instead, businesses can implement measures to ensure their new hires are performing effectively.
Coders hired fresh out of school are at the beginning of their education. There’s no “real world” environment for teaching coding, everything is taught via exercises behind a wall, cut off from the minefield of the internet. Practical knowledge is learned on the job, so their education needs to be reinforced. Novice coders should be paired with experienced coders who are capable of teaching and mentoring. They should be in an apprenticeship environment for a minimum of six months, but even two years is appropriate. This allows them to learn the ropes and develop good habits while unlearning bad habits they should avoid in their careers.
The absolute most important aspect of this time is developing good habits. Learning how to code securely up and as a member of a team. Bad habit development is one of the biggest risks employers take when new coders are left to their own devices, so disabusing them of these habits is vital. It is even worse when a startup hires a novice coder with no experience to build a system on their own. They do not know how to practically apply what they learned in school, so while the system they build may function, it may not be secure and it may not fall in line with compliance regulations. The system might not scale, lack documentation, have no method of merging and deploying. They have never had to fix someone else’s mistake, so they have no idea that the methods they are using are bad.
If you’re a hiring manager and you’re looking at a coders certifications, don’t do that. There is no regulating body for these certifications. The more reputable certifications from language creators or cloud providers typically go deep into one language or practice, but almost everything is multidisciplinary. The future of coding is a polyglot generalist. Most silos no longer have any practical reason to exist so everyone has to know how to work through all development steps.
Continuing education can be a useful tool for novice coders. It’s engaging for new coders to attend conferences or specific training around security, testing, DevOps and Cloud. But any CE course should also be attended by senior staff to ensure that it is useful to new coders.
The final thing to note about hiring a novice coder is peer review. All coders should have their work peer reviewed for their entire career. This is akin to a writer having an editor, doctors having a second opinon and attending physicians, etc. But coders fresh out of school should see additional scrutiny for at least three years before they are given leeway to do much on their own.
Because there is such a shortage of coders on the market, it’s almost impossible for companies to hire only experienced workers. But if hiring managers go into the process knowing how to handle hiring a novice coder, the likelihood that coder turns out solid, secure code is greater than if they let someone with zero experience hit the ground running. Much like you wouldn’t expect a law student to defend someone in a courtroom, don’t expect your coders to apply textbook knowledge in a practical setting for which they have no frame of reference. Setting these expectations up front will help everyone work through the process together.