EmberConf 2018 talk on how to effective hire and train Ember developers, but also how to create team cultures of teaching and learning.

1. Hi.

2. I’m Taylor Jones

3. This is a Talk Called:

4. How To Build A Bonfire
On Hiring And Training New Devs
In The Ways of Ember

5. Its Safe To Assume We
All Use Ember
Since we’re at EmberConf,
Right?

6. Ember isn’t exactly the first
thing new developers are
running towards these days
To be honest,

7. Stability > Stagnation

8. For those who already
use Ember, this is a
wonderful argument
But how do we convince
others to feel the same
way?
🔥
🔥

9. Bonfire
They’re central
areas of heat
that a
communities
gathers around
Think about the idea of a

10. We strive the rally
our team around
the Bonfire of
Ember. We also invite
others outside our
fold to join us.
🔥
🔥

11. Hiring.💰 💰💰 💰💰💰 💰💰

12. Odds are, its difficult
for you too.
Using Ember has made hiring a bit
challenging many companies I’ve worked for.

13. Creating jobs that
keep up with trends
can feel somewhat
futile.
Not all trends are healthy!

14. We’ve gotta hire somebody
Either way,
How do we hire well and still
make awesome stuff with Ember?
should have been talk title

15. So, who am I to
talk about this?

16. A Brief Personal History
•Born in Atlanta, grown in Birmingham, AL
•Auburn University - Computer Science
•Currently in Orlando, FL
•Largely working with Ruby, Python, Rust,
and Javascript

18. How Did I Get Into Ember?
•Popularity among Ruby and Rails folks
using Ember for their products.
•A lot of my early gigs involved writing APIs
for Ember apps.
•Started actually writing Ember in
professional context at IZEA.

20. Let’s talk about IZEA
So, with that said,

21. What’s Going on at IZEA
•We’re slowly taking apart of Rails view
layer and converting into an Ember
frontend. Right now, that involves
injecting Ember into our view layer -
not replacing it.
•While a lot of our team constantly uses
Ember, there are still people we’re
teaching and training.
•This includes new hires and long-time
engineers

22. Present
Rails monolith w/ injected Ember
New project w/ completely new
Ember frontend
We sort of inject the new app into
our monolith
Its kind of weird, right now

23. Future
No more Rails monolith
100% Ember frontend supported by
Microservices
No more injection
Lord haste the day

24. We’re pretty
invested in Ember.
The point of all of this is:
And we don’t plan on slowing down
this investment anytime soon.

25. IZEA is looking for more
Engineers to help us
achieve higher goals
with Ember.

26. Your Company is likely
looking for more
Engineers to help you
achieve higher goals with
Ember.

27. “Well, why don’t you just hire more
engineers?”
Its tempting to think is the right
answer to your staffing needs.

28. You can’t just throw people at a problem.
The
Mythical
Man
Month
Really good book
about team
management, hiring,
and dinosaurs.
This remind me of…

29. You can hire
experienced
developers but they
cost more and still
take time to train.
One developer might
cost twice of that as a
lower level developer.
🤑 🤑 🤑
🤑
📖 📖
📖📖

30. You can hire more
less experienced
developers, but you
have to teach and
train them.
Employee development
takes a bit longer to pay
off - in terms of results.
🙇&
📖📖
🙇&
📖📖
🙇&
📖📖
🙇&
📖📖
🙇&
📖📖
🙇&
📖📖
💰
💰

31. All of these things assume
that you have a vibrant
talent pipeline outside
your front door.

32. Its not all about trying to
hire within your salary cap
either.

33. At IZEA,
We Hire Local To HQ
This somewhat restricts the
immediate talent pool we can
draw from.
Specifically, if you’re looking for a
really good Ember developer and
your HQ is in Orlando.

34. Developing A Culture That Lasts

35. It Starts Small
Like a spark.
First takeaway:

36. Developing a culture
of teaching Ember
in small steps

37. Taking Small Bets
• For us, the idea of integrating Ember into what we did was
a pretty big deal. We started small as a trial to see if it
would fit.
• As we scaled our investment, we began to slowly teach
and draw in new developers to this effort.
• This allowed for teaching in a smaller setting rather than
“just read the docs because we’re all busy here”

38. In hindsight,
professional ember
training would have
been extremely
beneficial.

39. We’ve Started
Ourselves a
Small Fire
Anyways,
We’re seeing more and more
developers starting to grasp Ember
and how to ship features in it

40. How Do We Scale It?

41. How do move on to
helping our whole team
become skilled at Ember?
The idea of not merely shipping features in Ember, but shipping
excellent user experiences in Ember.

42. Teaching Well
Next up:
or Fanning The Flame

43. Newbies
Let’s look at two types of JS Developers:
Veterans
Folks new to Javascript or Javascript Frameworks
Experienced in Javascript - in some form

44. JS Newbies
• If Ember is the first Javascript framework they’re learning, you
have a pretty good opportunity to help introduce its ideas.
• Ember has opinions, but they’re less controversial if you really
don’t have anything that challenges it.
• Ember not only has opinions to learn, but you also have to teach
the fundamentals of javascript frameworks to them.
• The learning curve can be quite high because of lack of
programming experience.

45. JS Veterans
• For those with Javascript experience, you might have a
hard time ushering in Ember’s way of thinking with issues
• Those those without Javascript experience, you might
have issues dealing with those opinions plus explaining
the “why” behind Client-Side Javascript Frameworks.
• Learning with happen faster, but your experience may
vary depending on their general attitude towards learning
new things.

46. Foundations
vs.
Features

47. Foundations
•The core ideas of Ember
•The core toolset and the opinions or
requirements that exist behind using them.
•To fully understand, we’ve got to dig a bit
into Javascript design patterns.

48. Newbies + Foundations
•Are impressionable since they likely don’t
have much to compare to.
•Should be limited in exposure until they
actually dive into Ember for a bit.
•Follow up after some initial Ember work
has been done.

49. Veterans + Foundations
•Less impressionable and likely more
opinionated.
•Foundations might need to be explored
more upfront in order to sell and pitch
what the benefit of using something like
Ember is.
•Not much followup needed on concepts.

50. Features
•Things that make Ember stick out in the
moment.
•More general javascript styling like ES6
•Things that are buzz worthy but not really
core to what makes Ember unique.

51. Newbies + Features
•Often confuse them with the foundations.
•Might become a bit dependent on them
without understanding the foundation
beneath it.

52. Veterans + Features
•Features help cement why the foundations
matter.
•Can tell between feature and foundation
but may not be as sold on every feature.

53. What are some
practical ways we
can leverage this
stuff to effectively
teach Ember?

54. How Past Lives
Affect Ember
Understanding

55. “I’m used to React”

56. “I’m Used To React”
• Common threads around the idea of Components and the React
Router
• Ember’s design patterns are much more structured than React’s.
Redux is possible with Ember too!
• No more Webpack
• Ember Data and the idea of data modeling are a lot more
structured than React.

57. “I’m used to Angular”

58. I’m Used To Angular
• Explaining the consistency of Ember vs the drastic depreciations
of Angular.
• Moving away from Webpack
• Shared ideas around Controllers, Routers, and Services
• Component-based ideas might come off as foreign

59. “I used Ember 5 years ago”

60. “I Used Ember 5 Years Ago”
• This is something not a lot of folks think about.
• While a lot of Ember has stayed the same, a lot has changed.
• Ideas that often required a more javascript-centric approach may no
longer require that “brute force” approach
• Conversely, API methods that were previously available may or may
not be around.
• ES5, ES6, Whatever else is next also has influenced how Ember
works.

61. The Context of a
Developer’s Past,
Determines How
They Understand
The Future.
Leverage This to
Teach Effectively.

62. How Does This
Affect The Way We
Hire New Folks?

63. Hiring People
vs.
Hiring Skillsets

64. Hiring People
• How they work with people is more important than
their skillset.
• Looking for people who are both teachers and
students
• Looking for people who will make a positive impact
on team culture. Doesn’t always mean “culture fit”

65. Hiring Skillsets
• More concerned about hiring [x] skillset for [y]
position.
• Concerned about how open they are in
working on things.
• Looking for people who can make a positive
impact of creating products - results.

66. Champion People Who
Communicate
Empathize
Deliver Consistently

67. Hire Diversely
Different Sets of
People.

68. IZEA Doesn’t
Have This All
Figured Out.

69. I Don’t Have
This Figured
Out.

70. We Can Figure
This Out
Together.

71. Last
Thoughts.

72. The structure and
opinions that Ember
presents can be really
hard for folks to
adjust to.

73. It’s really hard to rally
folks around a new
idea of framework
when they’ve so
strongly bought into
something else.

74. Developers Will Often
Resort Back to Old
Ways of Solving
Problems If Not
Informed of a new Way

75. We can use the things
we’ve explored to help
break the cycles in your
teams

76. Have. A. Style. Guide.
and follow it.

77. Everyone isn’t
going to love
Ember as much as
you do
and that’s ok!

78. Teach Well.
Lead Well.
Love Well.
good things are coming!

79. Thank You.