Courses vs internship. How do we teach midbells at SimbirSoft
We have several development centers, and we are constantly looking for talented middles in the regions. Since 2013, we have been training developers - we conduct mitaps, hackathons, and intensives. The article tells how study helps make friends with the middle, as well as who and why comes to external and internal internships.
According to the Internet Initiatives Development Fund, there are 1.9 million specialists in the field of information technology in Russia. The share of IT people is only about 2% of the working population, while in the USA, Germany, Great Britain - 4.2%.
Russian universities and secondary schools graduate up to 60 thousand specialists a year. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communications in the project for the development of the digital economy speaks of the need to prepare a million IT people by 2024. Developers are in short supply, especially experienced ones, and the competition is highest in IT regions.
A striking example is Ulyanovsk, which is called the Volga Silicon Valley: about 200 local companies work in the IT sector. The main office of SimbirSoft is located in Ulyanovsk, and the demand for capable developers is always higher than the offer. Educational institutions - first of all, Ulyanovsk State University and Ulyanovsk State Technical University - graduate no more than 500 IT students a year. Total no more than two graduates (not yet specialists!) Per organization.
This is far from the real needs for personnel: for example, in 2018 we expanded the company - from 450 to 600 people - and opened branches in Samara and Saransk. We share our experience how our educational project helps in this.
IT.Place is a platform where we help students, as well as experienced IT specialists, to study for free. Among our events are courses, intensives, hackathons, mitaps, quizzes. The program includes all the main areas of development, including Java, C #, C ++, Mobile, as well as QA, analytics, design.
Our seven-year result is 4,400 listeners. We invite the best graduates from each stream to an interview and internship.
There is an opinion that programming courses are for beginners. We do not agree with this stereotype. Developers with different requests come to us. Experienced IT professionals, as a rule, try themselves in a new direction, they need maximum practice. Intensive students are popular with students and novice specialists.
Our company has many areas - Backend, Frontend, Mobile, QA, SDET, analytics and others. Each of them has developed their own practice of how to teach novice specialists and help them “pull themselves up” to the desired level. For example, Frontend and Mobile most often hold mini-conferences - mitaps. Meanwhile, quality assurance specialists are trying to give as much practice as possible - in the format of intensive studies or courses (from 5 to 15 lessons).
We started by conducting development courses and lectures for everyone. The first listeners had a different level of training, even the minimum.
Courses were held twice a week, from one to two months. As a result, a lot of resources were spent on teaching, while some of the students were eliminated along the way.
Thanks to the feedback, in 2018 we found a new format - intensive. This is a short “advanced” program of 4-5 lessons led by our mentors. Intensive participants perform a test task.
To whom is intensive?
Pros for listeners:
Pros for us:
Intensives and courses can be booked throughout the year, but Summer Intensity is best known - it takes place during student practice.
Summer intensive is, first of all, team development of an IT product. In just two weeks, the participants in the teams create full-fledged applications. Our specialists act as customers and mentors.
Both students and established specialists, including those who want to work with us, come to the Summer Intensive. Each year we receive about 500 applications and give test tasks for Web Java, Android Java, Frontend (Java Script), C # Desktop, QA and analytics. Gradually add new directions, for example, test automation (SDET). With the help of test tasks, we select candidates who are ready for real project work in a team.
Results:
In the Summer Intensive 2019, 17 teams participated. To protect the projects, we asked them to calculate how many resources were required for this. It turned out that each team worked on average more than 200 hours, wrote up to 3000 lines of code, completed dozens of text cases.
This year, one of the most striking projects is the travel application. It helps to make a route, book a hotel or hostel, and even pack things on the road based on weather forecasts. Also among the projects are services for buying tickets and checking information on the latest movies, managing a hotel, tracking achievements in online games.
Summer Intensive Statistics
Experienced developers, unlike students, are more focused on the exchange of experience, rather than on training. For them, we hold one-day conferences and hackathons, experiment with entertaining quizas.
Mitap is a synthesis of a lecture and a conference. During the evening, participants listen to 3-5 reports, ask questions, get acquainted and communicate. This format has proven useful and in demand. Since the beginning of the year, we have held nine meetings in Samara, Saransk and Ulyanovsk - in the areas of Backend, Frontend, QA & SDET, analytics, mobile development. In September there will be a meetup on SDET - join us!
Hackathons are popular with both beginners and experienced professionals. Participants work in teams and compete among themselves. For them, this is an opportunity to learn new skills and just spend a day off profitably.
Last winter, we held a mobile hackathon in Ulyanovsk. Participants wrote geolocation applications, tested them on city streets, searched for virtual equipment to combat the winter cold (for example, fur coats and flamethrowers). The teams that managed the fastest received thermoses and other warming prizes. In our group in Vkontakte you can watch the video report of the Mobile Hackathon .
For students, we conducted the hackathon RoboKot together with the Polytech (UlSTU). Participants in the teams programmed virtual robots in Java for participation in the tournament, prescribed algorithms for behavior in combat, an attack and retreat strategy.
Presentation of diplomas to the participants of “RoboCot-2019”
Some developers want to look into the internal "kitchen" of the company before concluding an employment contract. In these cases, we conduct an internship. It is divided into two categories:
Both June and Middle come to the internship, and sometimes we invite graduates or senior students. For them, this is an opportunity to test how suitable a new profession is for them, and what skills need to be pulled up.
Dmitry, project manager
- What are the most popular destinations?
- Most of all, interest in Java, C #, Frontend, mobile development, quality assurance (QA).
- Do you accept listeners of any age?
- Everyone who is willing to study comes to us. Experienced, beginners and even people from other professions. The latter, we are willingly taking QA courses and analytics. We build their training in such a way as to immediately consolidate all the acquired skills in practice. Yes, it’s a bit more difficult for adult specialists to remember new information, but they have a more responsible approach to training and further work.
- Are there any online courses?
- So far, only an external internship can be done remotely. If you live in another city and want to study, come to visit us for meetings and intensives!
- How will the site develop?
- We continue to study the feedback and wishes of the participants, conduct the most popular activities in all regions of SimbirSoft's presence. This year, for the first time, we spent the Summer Intensive in Kazan and were satisfied with the result: almost three times more participants came than we expected! We have involved our Samara colleagues in the organization, now we are planning intensively in Samara.
In autumn, we plan to rebrand IT.Place - we will soon announce a new name! We plan to expand the boundaries and become a universal educational platform for IT-specialists from different cities. With us, every IT specialist will be able to learn, learn new things, get acquainted and communicate on topics “about IT”. We want to develop the community and raise the level of not only our employees, but also the external audience, in order to qualitatively increase the level of IT in the regions. We invite everyone who wants to develop and become better with us to our events . Well, stay tuned!
Thanks for your attention! We hope that our experience was interesting and useful for you.
Million IT specialists
According to the Internet Initiatives Development Fund, there are 1.9 million specialists in the field of information technology in Russia. The share of IT people is only about 2% of the working population, while in the USA, Germany, Great Britain - 4.2%.
Russian universities and secondary schools graduate up to 60 thousand specialists a year. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Communications in the project for the development of the digital economy speaks of the need to prepare a million IT people by 2024. Developers are in short supply, especially experienced ones, and the competition is highest in IT regions.
A striking example is Ulyanovsk, which is called the Volga Silicon Valley: about 200 local companies work in the IT sector. The main office of SimbirSoft is located in Ulyanovsk, and the demand for capable developers is always higher than the offer. Educational institutions - first of all, Ulyanovsk State University and Ulyanovsk State Technical University - graduate no more than 500 IT students a year. Total no more than two graduates (not yet specialists!) Per organization.
This is far from the real needs for personnel: for example, in 2018 we expanded the company - from 450 to 600 people - and opened branches in Samara and Saransk. We share our experience how our educational project helps in this.
What do we do
IT.Place is a platform where we help students, as well as experienced IT specialists, to study for free. Among our events are courses, intensives, hackathons, mitaps, quizzes. The program includes all the main areas of development, including Java, C #, C ++, Mobile, as well as QA, analytics, design.
Our seven-year result is 4,400 listeners. We invite the best graduates from each stream to an interview and internship.
There is an opinion that programming courses are for beginners. We do not agree with this stereotype. Developers with different requests come to us. Experienced IT professionals, as a rule, try themselves in a new direction, they need maximum practice. Intensive students are popular with students and novice specialists.
Our company has many areas - Backend, Frontend, Mobile, QA, SDET, analytics and others. Each of them has developed their own practice of how to teach novice specialists and help them “pull themselves up” to the desired level. For example, Frontend and Mobile most often hold mini-conferences - mitaps. Meanwhile, quality assurance specialists are trying to give as much practice as possible - in the format of intensive studies or courses (from 5 to 15 lessons).
From courses to intensive courses
We started by conducting development courses and lectures for everyone. The first listeners had a different level of training, even the minimum.
Courses were held twice a week, from one to two months. As a result, a lot of resources were spent on teaching, while some of the students were eliminated along the way.
Thanks to the feedback, in 2018 we found a new format - intensive. This is a short “advanced” program of 4-5 lessons led by our mentors. Intensive participants perform a test task.
To whom is intensive?
- those who are willing to study the theory on their own
- those who need practical skills
Pros for listeners:
- practical exercises only
- theory can be studied at any convenient time
Pros for us:
- better results in less time
- those who are really ready to work come.
Summer intensive
Intensives and courses can be booked throughout the year, but Summer Intensity is best known - it takes place during student practice.
Summer intensive is, first of all, team development of an IT product. In just two weeks, the participants in the teams create full-fledged applications. Our specialists act as customers and mentors.
Both students and established specialists, including those who want to work with us, come to the Summer Intensive. Each year we receive about 500 applications and give test tasks for Web Java, Android Java, Frontend (Java Script), C # Desktop, QA and analytics. Gradually add new directions, for example, test automation (SDET). With the help of test tasks, we select candidates who are ready for real project work in a team.
Results:
In the Summer Intensive 2019, 17 teams participated. To protect the projects, we asked them to calculate how many resources were required for this. It turned out that each team worked on average more than 200 hours, wrote up to 3000 lines of code, completed dozens of text cases.
This year, one of the most striking projects is the travel application. It helps to make a route, book a hotel or hostel, and even pack things on the road based on weather forecasts. Also among the projects are services for buying tickets and checking information on the latest movies, managing a hotel, tracking achievements in online games.
Summer Intensive Statistics
Get it done in one day: mitaps and hackathons
Experienced developers, unlike students, are more focused on the exchange of experience, rather than on training. For them, we hold one-day conferences and hackathons, experiment with entertaining quizas.
Mitapa
Mitap is a synthesis of a lecture and a conference. During the evening, participants listen to 3-5 reports, ask questions, get acquainted and communicate. This format has proven useful and in demand. Since the beginning of the year, we have held nine meetings in Samara, Saransk and Ulyanovsk - in the areas of Backend, Frontend, QA & SDET, analytics, mobile development. In September there will be a meetup on SDET - join us!
Hackathons
Hackathons are popular with both beginners and experienced professionals. Participants work in teams and compete among themselves. For them, this is an opportunity to learn new skills and just spend a day off profitably.
Last winter, we held a mobile hackathon in Ulyanovsk. Participants wrote geolocation applications, tested them on city streets, searched for virtual equipment to combat the winter cold (for example, fur coats and flamethrowers). The teams that managed the fastest received thermoses and other warming prizes. In our group in Vkontakte you can watch the video report of the Mobile Hackathon .
For students, we conducted the hackathon RoboKot together with the Polytech (UlSTU). Participants in the teams programmed virtual robots in Java for participation in the tournament, prescribed algorithms for behavior in combat, an attack and retreat strategy.
Presentation of diplomas to the participants of “RoboCot-2019”
Internship
Some developers want to look into the internal "kitchen" of the company before concluding an employment contract. In these cases, we conduct an internship. It is divided into two categories:
- internal - training with a mentor, on average from 3 weeks to 3 months, depending on the direction.
- external is a brief introduction to our development processes, it can be done remotely.
Both June and Middle come to the internship, and sometimes we invite graduates or senior students. For them, this is an opportunity to test how suitable a new profession is for them, and what skills need to be pulled up.
Dmitry, project manager
FAQ
- What are the most popular destinations?
- Most of all, interest in Java, C #, Frontend, mobile development, quality assurance (QA).
- Do you accept listeners of any age?
- Everyone who is willing to study comes to us. Experienced, beginners and even people from other professions. The latter, we are willingly taking QA courses and analytics. We build their training in such a way as to immediately consolidate all the acquired skills in practice. Yes, it’s a bit more difficult for adult specialists to remember new information, but they have a more responsible approach to training and further work.
- Are there any online courses?
- So far, only an external internship can be done remotely. If you live in another city and want to study, come to visit us for meetings and intensives!
- How will the site develop?
- We continue to study the feedback and wishes of the participants, conduct the most popular activities in all regions of SimbirSoft's presence. This year, for the first time, we spent the Summer Intensive in Kazan and were satisfied with the result: almost three times more participants came than we expected! We have involved our Samara colleagues in the organization, now we are planning intensively in Samara.
Important news!
In autumn, we plan to rebrand IT.Place - we will soon announce a new name! We plan to expand the boundaries and become a universal educational platform for IT-specialists from different cities. With us, every IT specialist will be able to learn, learn new things, get acquainted and communicate on topics “about IT”. We want to develop the community and raise the level of not only our employees, but also the external audience, in order to qualitatively increase the level of IT in the regions. We invite everyone who wants to develop and become better with us to our events . Well, stay tuned!
Thanks for your attention! We hope that our experience was interesting and useful for you.
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