[LRUG] Juniors

[Andres]

Hi all,

What do people think about a platform that would allow companies to post such work to CS undergrads/dev school alumni (verified)? 

In a nutshell:
Project duration 2-6 months
Clear spec with acceptance tests
Little internal dependencies
Remote work

CS grads are given the opportunity to work on group and individual projects. A list is normally proposed by the supervisors, however, if one has another idea it's not terribly complicated to do that instead. The main problem is that students are bad at estimating the scope of the idea and the supervisor can't help outside her domain.

The problem here is that many students end up being lazy and choose something from the list. These projects are often reinventing the wheel (I had a friend who was doing Scrabble for a supervisor who had been getting students to do it 5 years in a row to the same spec).

A project with a real client actually would fit the curriculum better because of the write-up accompanying the code. People usually work backwards and write the requirement spec and use cases after finishing the code.

What the clients (that is you) would need to do is provide some input. That is nailing down the use stories, objectives and milestones so the student has a well defined project and APIs to work with.

Any other input like mentoring and code review would be optional (the students usually get none), however, this is where you could make a difference.

Students would be willing to work for an honourable compensation. The fee would depend on the level of involvement you would be willing to contribute. If you're willing to do weekly code reviews, provide mentorship and write acceptance tests then I can see that fee being negligibly small.

Andres