Overview of the Dev C Academy

The Dev C Academy is a training course that all new developers who join teams working on our SNS product must follow – whether they’re on permanent contracts or service providers. Before this, new starters would be directly integrated on a squad (a team working in agile mode) within R&D. But with such large numbers being recruited, it was starting to become difficult for our existing teams to take charge of all those induction responsibilities, in addition to their daily workloads.

The Dev C Academy is therefore a special squad made up exclusively of new developers, led by two people responsible for training them. “Our goal is to have a common base where people can learn our processes, technologies and the way we do things at Stormshield in a uniform manner, in order to avoid there being too many differences in the way people are trained”, explains Nicolas Masse, one of the leaders of the Academy. “It’s important to be able to standardise how we work.”

 

On the training programme

Initially, new developers start by discovering and starting to work with our firewall firmware. Once they’ve got to grips with everything, their supervisors then introduce them to coding and how it all comes together.

“From the start, we do lots of presentations in groups or individually, depending on the new arrivals”, explains Antoine Duquesnoy, the second Academy leader. “Then we move onto practice through a series of exercises, fairly simple to start with, gradually becoming more and more complex, whilst staying fairly general”. Ideally, the exercises can then be incorporated into our long-term firewall roadmap.

“The training course is constantly under construction; either we share topics with them that we’re dealing with in practice, or they work on things that are already in the Mantis database (our bug tracker)”, Nicolas adds.

 

Who is in this initial cohort?

Seven developers make up our first batch of trainees; three working full time remotely, one in Paris and another three on our Villeneuve d’Ascq site. There is a mixture of junior and senior profiles, which creates a certain buzz. “There’s a good atmosphere”, explains Antoine. “There are a few people from a French school called ‘école 42’, who are quite close and interact well together. But even those working remotely full time are well integrated. They come together for the first two weeks to get to know the team, before returning home to work on their topics”.

The experience has also been well received among the course leaders. “I’ve been with Stormshield for a year and a half now”, explains Antoine. “For me, this is an opportunity to gain some comprehensive skills and do in-depth research when necessary. I also like this new approach where I have to create documentation”.

 

Initial results

A month and a half on, the training has started to bear fruit. Two Academy developers have just joined a squad dedicated to the ongoing roadmap for our Stormshield Network Security product.

“Joining squads is decided on the basis of a checklist. When all points on the list can be checked off, new arrivals are officially ready to join one of our R&D teams”, explains Nicolas. “As we follow them and get to know them better, we look at what interests them most and what they’re most comfortable with”, Antoine adds. “Based on these observations, we then advise managers by recommending they join this squad or the other. The Academy helps everyone reach their full potential and unleash their skills, guiding people as best we can within R&D as a result”.

Besides enriching the documentary aspect, the Academy also helps us create a common knowledge base.

I was very interested in being able to join Stormshield via the Dev C Academy. It means you can come together with other academy trainees as part of a comprehensive integration process; sharing and helping each other as you go. On the course, time is set aside for both discovery and practice, as we work with firewalls and code small features and bug fixes. Throughout the various stages, the leaders are always by our side and available to us, giving clear and quick answers to all our questions. Today, my training course was signed off and I’ve just joined R&D as part of the Product Dev Team. A whole new programme!

Julien Moucadel, our new developer who arrived in early September

 

Would you like to join us too? The Dev C Academy is a squad full of talent with passionate and motivated people. If you’d like to join us, you can apply here!