“The university system today is not a good value. It’s really expensive and there’s still a lot of risk,” Arcweb CEO Chris Cera told Technical.ly Philly in a recent video interview.
That’s why his company is hiring people without computer science degrees and then training them on the job.
“They’ve turned out extremely well,” Cera said of his nontraditional hires.
Cera is not alone in the Philly tech scene in thinking about apprentice-style talent cultivation techniques. Software firm Tonic Design famously turned a former cell phone salesman into its dev lead.
Cera says in-house training increasingly makes sense in the fast-changing world of web development. Colleges just can’t keep up.
“Every three to six months there’s a new language, a new framework,” Cera said, “and you need to prove competence in learning new things very quickly.”
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