In Episode 7 of Stories from the Hackery we catch up with Daniel Green from VitalSource Technologies at Ingram Content Group. Daniel’s development team was the first team at Ingram Content Group to hire a graduate from a coding bootcamp. We chat with Daniel about the products that VitalSource develops and why he felt it made sense to interview NSS graduates for his team. And we talk more broadly about the impact of the Nashville tech community on helping NSS become successful and how, in turn, NSS grads are impacting the community.

I asked Daniel to talk about how he has onboarded bootcamp grads into his development team. It was interesting to hear Daniel echo some of what we’ve heard from other hiring managers about throwing new bootcamp hires into the fire quickly without a long ramp-up period. He talks about how they use an agile development approach and how the team self-organizes to integrate the new developer.

Daniel offers some great insights into how junior developers help create a broader mix of skill sets and experiences on a development team that actually strengthens the team. His experience with using bootcamp grads to help grow a team is relevant to anyone managing developers. Check out Daniel’s advice on growing a development team and why/how to best take advantage of a mix of senior and more junior talent.

EPISODE 7 HIGHLIGHTS

1:00 Daniel Green introduction 2:43: Daniel’s history at Ingram Content Group - VitalSource Technologies 
3:40: VitalSource and digital publishing and analytics 
4:00: We build web applications that use all the technologies that you teach at NSS 
4:35: “Massive amounts of data” 
7:01: Ingram’s history with Junior Developers & bootcamp grads 
7:50: “Skill sets of NSS grads are relevant to what we do each and every day”
8:30: First NSS hire “She started a brand new commercial application in her first two weeks” 
9:15: What have you learned about bringing in junior devs - onboarding, ramp-up period, integrating into team, etc. 
12:00: “You really need a mix of skill sets and perspectives to be successful” 
13:40: “Not every sprint is full of super hard tasks” 
17:15: Do you interview c.s. grads and bootcamp grads differently? 
20:20: “NSS grads know how to contribute to a modern development team…” 
21:30: Finding a balance between education and experience in transitioning to the workforce 
22:18: Advice for teams/organizations that have not hired junior devs and/or bootcamp grads