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Ask HN: How do you find craftsmanship-oriented dev jobs?

by scmoore on 2/25/15, 2:42 AM with 3 comments

Hi HN,

I am a web apps developer with no CS degree, and much of my knowledge has come from self-directed study. I'm currently working in a place that doesn't have much focus on software craftsmanship as I understand it. My hand-wavy definition would be something like: an ongoing and management-endorsed effort to make the code easier to understand and maintain, and to make the developers better at writing such code. However I don't have a lot of experience to help me flesh out what this vision of better dev culture looks like.

I'm looking for a new job in the next few months (in Denver), and I'd really like to find somewhere invested in software quality, and in ongoing employee education. I try to study on my own but I feel like I would benefit much more from a mentoring relationship of some kind. So far my only thought has been to look for companies where software is part of the product, so as to stay on the profit-generating side of the books and at least have a chance to make a business case for ongoing training.

Do any of you have suggestions for finding companies like this? Do they exist, in any kind of numbers? Or am I asking for too much? Thank you.

  • by mod on 2/25/15, 7:05 AM

    I haven't been in the industry long, and I'm a web app developer as well.

    I haven't worked at a place that cares about code quality very much. We talk occasionally about best practices, and our lead dev actually writes very quality code, but the focus is nearly always "get it working, get it not-horrible, ship it."

    Sometimes the "not-horrible" gets skipped over.

    I'm right there with you and I've just decided that I'm not done with a piece of code until I'm not embarrassed of it. If it takes longer to ship, fine. The problem is I'll continue to be self-taught in that regard--there's virtually no code reviews or solid feedback for me.

    I'd guess that if you want that, you're going to have to look at either 1) a very well-respected, high-volume agency or 2) a well-established web biz where the product is a pretty complex application.

    For instance, Shopify or Twilio or somewhere like that is likely to have a pretty decent code base, if I had to guess. Of course, it's definitely not a guarantee...

    Maybe look over their open-source code? Look for history involving refactors and simplification?

  • by dkarapetyan on 2/25/15, 3:42 AM

    In my experience such a place doesn't really exist. The best you can do is find a place that has a balance between business and technology needs and there are people in upper management that understand people like you and try to nurture the technical side of the company. How to get a feel if a place is actually like that from the outside is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • by mcx on 2/25/15, 3:51 AM

    You're more likely to find this at consulting shops. For example, in Chicago some names might be like: 8th Light, DevMynd, Hashrocket (also in Jacksonville). I think if you go to some meetups and talk to some people or see who the sponsors are, you'll be able to find what you're looking for.