When Elixirized was still just a vague idea, the goal was to provide ourselves with real world development experience. We already knew that companies want junior developers(or any developers for that matter) to be ready to contribute day 1.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of junior developers aren’t necessarily ready to be thrown in the deep end, and a lot of companies, especially where Elixir is concerned, don’t have the manpower to bring a junior up to speed in a reasonable amount of time.

This becomes the chicken and egg problem, where a junior needs experience to find a job, but companies won’t hire one without experience. Even jobs that are posted for juniors often list way more experience than is possible for someone fresh out of a bootcamp or with some months of self study.

So how do you get experience without having a job to begin with?

Common wisdom says:

• work on open source
• build projects

There are problems inherent to both of these ways. The advice on the internet says “go work on open source”, Although nobody tells you how to start, and like anything else it takes awhile to get the skills needed to do it properly.

Building projects is always a great thing to do, and it is good experience, but most people work on toy projects, or even worse, don’t build any because they aren’t sure how to start. This happens more often then not, causing people to get stuck in Tutorial Hell(tm). As someone who once upon a time had been stuck there, I can attest to this.

The other issue is that while both working on open source and building projects are good to do, neither provides a 1:1 experience when it comes to working in a job style environment.

That’s where Elixirized comes in.

A Bridge to a Job

What we came to realize is that what we are doing for ourselves can also benefit others as well. People coming out of a bootcamp will have enough experience to get started solving problems and building personal projects.

What they won’t get doing in doing those things, is the kind of environment that emulates a job. A bridge is what is needed. An experience bridge, to span the gap between the lack of job experience and actually landing a job. If we can just fill in that gap with enough experience working on real projects with a team, and picking up the skills needed to do it well, the overall challenge of landing a job will be much easier.

This work experience can then be added directly to a resume as such, instead of YAP(Yet Another Project).

In essence, Elixirized will be able to provide “on the job training”. Our hope is that, over time, ELixirized will become a bridge to getting a job.