In the apprentice program at thoughtbot, known as apprentice.io, you'll work alongside the rest of the team for three months on actual shipping software. At the end of that period you may receive an offer for a position as a full designer or developer at thoughtbot, or one of the many sponsoring companies. A qualified design apprentice will have experience with graphical design as well as HTML and CSS. The well-qualified developer candidate will have some experience with Ruby on Rails.
During your apprenticeship you'll be paired directly with Designers or Developers who will serve as your mentor. You'll work directly with your mentor on a day to day basis for everything from technical issues to determining what you'll be working on and what you'd like to learn.
This paid apprenticeship is ideal for students, recent graduates, or more experienced candidates making a technology or career change, and is a great opportunity to work with a forward-thinking company and one of the best Ruby on Rails firms out there to grow your skills.
We limit client work to four days/week and provide unlimited time off. Creating well-designed, well-written software requires a well-rested mind and body. We do not want to burn out or inflict repetitive stress injuries. Fewer hours means we won't hit arbitrary or unrealistic deadlines. [Read more]
For the kinds of projects and clients we work with, sales people and project managers get in the way. The people who sell our work also write significant amounts of code, usually more than 30 hours/week. They don't sell projects they wouldn't want to work on themselves.
Our fundamental expectation is delivering excellent work on client projects. Exceeding expectations requires improving thoughtbot and your teammates by contributing to open source projects, mentoring apprentices, sharing lessons learned on the blog, and making things we haven't dreamed up yet.
The company is split up into small teams. Our ideal team is one designer, two developers, and an advisor. Each team focuses on only one client project at time. The remainder of everyone's time is managed by each individual. [Read more]
We are actively diversifying our revenue. Consulting is our bread and butter. We love our clients. Their needs have grown to team building and education services, which we offer to anyone around the world.
In order to spread knowledge of best practices, we rotate people among projects about every two months. We have to leave our projects in excellent shape at all times so new team members can get up to speed quickly.