Tyler Wasden is a software engineer with an unusual proposition for you: Move into his new house with him and he’ll help you get a job as a developer.According to his Craigslist ad and a website he made for the place he calls Dev House ATX, Wasden doesn’t bill himself as a bootcamp. He points to the risk involved in taking time off from work and spending tens of thousands of dollars on a coding school. And as far as the results you can expect, he favors pragmatism over promises.
“The house isn't a bootcamp and I won't be lecturing,” he wrote in the ad. “It is a place for you to set your goals and work towards them at your own pace.”
If there’s a catch, it isn’t the house. It’s new construction in a development about a 13-minute drive from Easy Tiger downtown. A community pool is set to open this spring.
And you’ll have time to use it, because Wasden (pictured above and right) doesn’t have a set curriculum or teach structured classes. Instead, he wants to help you achieve your own goals. He’ll point you to the right resources to help you learn the skills you need to complete the projects you want to do, and even pair program with you on them so you get a feel for coding on a team.When you get far enough along, Wasden will invite you to pair program with him on his projects, and eventually even shadow him in his office for a day and sit in on a sprint planning meeting.
Wasden doesn’t have anything against traditional coding courses. He graduated from MakerSquare a couple years ago, which is how he got a job as an application engineer at a late-stage startup called BedWatch.
After volunteering as a mentor at Railsbridge, which encourages women and minorities to learn Ruby on Rails, he coached a couple friends who were trying to change careers and get into tech.
“I loved the learning environment I experienced at MakerSquare,” Wasden said. “I thought it'd be fun and beneficial to my own professional development to create a similar environment where I live.
“I figure I'll learn just as much as the people I mentor.”
He’s had two responses to his ad since posting it on Sunday.
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