On 5/28/06, Steven Joseph stevenjose@gmail.com wrote:

why cant companies give development hands on practice by making trainees work on some opensource project. That way the trainees can get to see some real community approved style of coding. That will improve their coding skills and technique also. Its like the trainees having the whole opensource community as mentors.. till they are ready to work on internal projects that is. After which it depends on the company policy whatever.

I was put into the Marketing dept for a bulk of my training period. My job profile included small (really really small, like correcting grammatical mistakes in pages, slapping on content, etc.) HTML changes first. This was menial work for me since I had prior work experience, but was not considered since I was a trainee.

I guess their main aim with trainees is to get that work done out of them that is generally rejected or put off by the senior guys. There are also some who simply fill up excel sheets all day for their entire tenure and then submit some dummy excuse of a project in college.

And yeah, spot talent early ;-) (I got my offer only when I told them I was leaving. Needless to say I turned it down)

However, developers on float could be kept sharp with some small projects, FOSS or otherwise (preferably FOSS, as they themselves will get valuable feedback from a much larger audience). Its really pathetic to see talented people sit for days in the library just because it's "their turn" this time.

Siddhesh