Creating a student organization of software developers

At the end of the second year of my studies at the Faculty of Information Technologies and Automated Management Systems of NUST "MISIS" I have not worked in my specialty. I didn’t know what “adult” programmers actually do, and I didn’t have a clue about what tasks they face in practice. I felt that during these two years my university didn’t advance me to learn the profession I chose. Unfortunately, this is a common situation in many, even specialized Russian universities.

Problem

I read programming books and regularly received good grades in this discipline at the institute, but I worked as a sales assistant in a sports store, not even an enikeyschik. And in the next lull between the flow of clients, I thought about how great the gap between my current qualifications and the one that the employers want from me. I understood that between learning tasks on sorting arrays and real industrial problems there is a significant difference. Then I identified for myself the first problem: the lack of real projects .

... practice is a special thing, you cannot buy it with books. Otherwise, these books would be in great demand.
Irving Stone Thirst for life

Many employers ask candidates to show their own code, to tell about their projects. As it turned out later, the experience of working on real projects does not go to any comparison with academic studies, or even with all sorts of Practical guide. This problem was really relevant.
However, people become programmers, and not born, which means that I simply do not invest enough in my own development, unlike them. I have never denied this; I understood the importance of cultivating a professional in myself, but rarely went beyond understanding me. Lack of motivation kept me where I was.
Another factor inhibiting me was that my classmates for the most part did not experience any problems with it. Someone got a job, being an Olympiad programmer, someone quietly sat in his pants in MMO games, someone did not get out of the bars with the money of their parents. I felt lonely, because even if I had a sudden brilliant idea for the project, there was no one who would share my hypothetical enthusiasm. It was the absence of the community that prompted me to start solving these problems.

Decision

At the end of the summer holidays, I was interviewed for a vacancy in a C # teacher. Due to this, I got extremely useful communication skills, which gave me confidence that I can create and support a student association, in which I will gather all people who are not indifferent to programming and their own career, give them projects and monitor their implementation. At the time of implementation, the niche was not occupied: the only community of programmers we had were olympiads, whose craft also did not fit into such a desirable enterprise.
The original model of the organization’s work was this: we “play in an adult way”. We have a project manager - I took on this role, we have teams, one for the project, led by team leaders - the most intelligent guys, we have deadlines and we have Github. We do not see each other on a regular basis, but work at home, carrying out all communications online. We sometimes conduct training events, and we meet again when deadlines are burned. I invent projects from my head (the very first distribution of projects was ranked by complexity, or rather, according to my subjective assessment of it).
As a prototype, I gave the name of the organization: "The League of Developers", which, in the absence of the best ideas, remained with us. I asked a friend to draw a logo.

He launched an advertising campaign in the VC, tired of all his acquaintances with requests to distribute, but this had its effect. On September 2, after the open day, I had 120 names of those who wanted to join the League, although almost no one at the institute knew about it (for freshmen this is not important).

The number of people shocked me so much that the remaining month before the first meeting I was completely straining my imagination in order to come up with an acceptable number of projects.
The spacious conference room, which the Department of Cybernetics Engineering lent us, was completely full, some had to stand or sit on the floor.
It was then that the first bell rang that I was doing something wrong: I could not convey my enthusiasm to these people, they sat with stone faces all the meeting, no initiative, no ideas. I saw these same faces in a few lectures that I gave.

A little bit about motivation

I could not solve one of the problems that had been set before me: I could not motivate people. The more I did it, the more I realized how important it was and the more hopeless the situation seemed. Students left, threw projects, did not have time for deadlines, lectures were attended less and less. The problem that I solved for myself was not solved automatically for these people. For students who barely left the schoolyard, motivation is important, the guys do not have a firm position regarding their own profession and their place in life in general and help in finding it at first even more important than their direct training. A failed person in this field, even if it is not serious, the young man gets a very unpleasant dose of doubts about his own actions and forces. I did not do anything like this and I did not have to deal with such a person. I have not thought over this aspect of our work.
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Result

“Plus or minus-plus” - this is how the trainings teach teachers to report on the result.

A plus

This idea is successful and has high potential. The League of Developers occupied an empty niche in NITU "MISiS" and is able to solve all the problems stated at the beginning. The institute is full of various projects, programmers are in short supply, the software for the institute is bought on the side for huge money, although the quality of this software is sometimes no better than the students could offer, many of the processes at the institute can and should be automated. With this idea we won the competition of student projects, received funding, which we spent on repairs and equipment of our own premises. In the future, the organization may cooperate with employers and headhunters, it may attract personnel for external training.

Minus

Pumped up the performance. The work model was a failure in almost all parameters. I was a manager for fifteen projects (!), And could not pay enough attention to everyone, not to mention the fact that I was not a manager by vocation. As a result, five projects were put into effect. The guys did not know how to work in a team, and I threw them right into the thick of industrial programming, in which they were not comfortable. The deadlines were mercilessly trampled by coursework and sessions, the development died out because the guys did not feel involved enough in the process: educational artificial projects interested people no more than sorting arrays. We met twice in a semester, and only by the time when there are less than a dozen active developers and three projects, I realized that it was with these numbers that I could work.

A plus

We will do it better. We have experience, we have mistakes on which we have learned, we have a spacious equipped room and a concrete plan for the next season:
-We will carry out the selection, eliminating all the idle, making the process of joining the League a challenge, and membership in it - a privilege.
-We will carry out preliminary training, without loading children from the very first day, letting them get comfortable and learn to swim. This training will also serve as an additional filter and additional challenge.
-We will not invent projects. Apparently, the institute will always have something to ask us for, and this should be more than enough to satisfy the need for training for a small number of students.
-We will meet every week, and even more often - as often as needed in order to succeed.
-We will listen to your criticism, advice and suggestions.

Conclusion

A couple of months after the start of this activity, I found out that I hadn’t been the first to come up with a similar idea - there is a similar organization in HSE, I learned a lot from its leader. I think the creation of such organizations is an excellent help for the personal development and development of the industry as a whole, and if you want to learn from our experience in your school, I will be happy to share everything I know.
Thanks for attention.