One of our core values is lifelong learning. Growing ones skillset and capabilities is at the heart of the Cantilever identity. That’s why we place such importance on growing junior talent, and why we have the Apprentice program.

The Cantilever Apprentice Program allows talented newer developers become junior developers at Cantilever. This involves both general skill-sharpening and a familiarization process with Cantilever methodologies. Apprentices are not newbies. It takes a talented individual with sharp skills and a good amount of real-world experience to begin as an Apprentice, and Apprentices are expected to contribute to production projects shortly after joining.

The program is ideal for developers who:

Apprentices are paid team members and work full-time, though we can make arrangements for apprentices who wish to work less often. A full-time apprenticeship should last around six months, which can be accelerated or lengthened on a case-by-case basis.

Cantilever will most likely extend a Developer offer to apprentices who meet all the Apprenticeship goals (barring unforeseen financial barriers), but Apprentices are free to leave the program at any time and are not under any obligation to join Cantilever long-term when finished with their apprenticeship.

All Apprentices will enter the program with a varied range of experience and expertise, and the program should be flexible toward what they are particularly interested in learning. As baseline standards, an Apprentice should demonstrate:

Outside of those guidelines, an individual Apprentice will have their own goals according to the specialties they wish to focus on in their career. Cantilever’s development team will tailor the program to these specific interests.

An Apprentice should spend about half their time learning/growing, and half their time contributing to Cantilever projects. The first few months should feature more learning time, and the last few months more contributing time.

Non-project time might include:

Project time should include any work a typical junior developer might do:

Due to the nature of our client agreements, Cantilever requires time tracking for all working hours. Apprentices should be able to log their time to non-billable “Training“ tasks, to avoid their hours being billed directly to clients. Instead, project managers will determine how many hours to bill for an apprentice’s tasks, and will shift the timesheets and invoices appropriately.

Especially since our Apprentices are talented, and one of our core values is Self-Reliance, it will be tempting to ask them to do too much too quickly. This slows down learning, which means the Apprentice needs longer to be truly productive, and places unreasonable expectations on Apprentices from clients and teammates. Apprentices must be allowed to grow and learn independent of internal deadlines or schedule crunches. It is useful to have an Apprentice on a team which is pushing for a deadline, so they have a sense of what it takes to deliver real projects on time. But their deliverables must not be mission-critical, and we must have a backup plan for them if it takes longer than expected.

As with any team member, in keeping with our value of Transparency, Apprentices should have a clear sense of their goals and responsibilities at any given time. Advisors are responsible for ensuring that is the case.

Apprentices can and should:

All apprentices should have a single advisor (in lieu of a manager). The advisor is responsible for setting up an apprenticeship kickoff, biweekly 1-1s and monthly Apprenticeship Reviews. The advisor is responsible for approving graduation from the program and coordinating a possible job offer for graduates.

During the kickoff, the Apprentice and Advisor should:

During a review, the Apprentice and Advisor should assess:

As the Apprentice completes their goals, graduation and a job offer should become possible. For an Apprentice to graduate, the Advisor must:

Apprentices should be given the time and help to produce production-level work, and consequently will be expected to deliver just that. The difference in being an apprentice is that a 1-hour task might take four of their own hours, plus two hours of pair-programming to complete, and that’s totally OK and expected.

At the outset, we expect the rate of true billable hours produced by an Apprentice to me minimal. But as the apprenticeship progresses, Apprentices should increase their ratio of project to non-project time, and should begin producing more efficiently during their project time.Individual apprentices will have varied benchmarks for production depending on their situation and goals.

The development industry does not have the patience to cultivate junior talent, nor a culture and methodology to train that client in. Agencies want “mid-senior” developers who can hit the ground running with no time for mentoring. But how are juniors meant to reach that point?

Our goal is to be an ideal landing place for elite junior talent. We win by ending up with exceptional developers; they win by having a place to learn and grow while getting paid and working on real projects. Building an incredible Apprentice program is pivotal in our vision of making the web industry better.