Meta

Some of the most incredible talent works at Facebook. Incredible technology stack. In-house libraries, tools, and more are top-class.

Contingent Workers do not get the famous "Bootcamp" experience. I spent the first three months struggling to make a difference, and when things started getting into gear, I'd still run into gaps in my knowledge that were ridiculous.

To give a specific example: I was writing React web code in JavaScript and was using data from their APIs in the client. I didn't read about any way to find these data interfaces defined elsewhere. What could I possibly search for in their internal documents and Q&A boards?

My teammates didn't understand what I was asking; the only one who wrote React did so only occasionally. So I wrote these data interfaces myself by hand. It was only two weeks later that I discovered, in someone else's uncommented code, the solution I needed. I had to go back and replace my hand-written work with the automatically generated interface code. This was something I had no doubt was covered in Bootcamp for front-end developers.

But because CW's aren't people to invest in, they let them stew in mediocrity for months as they "just figure it out" themselves.

If you can't give them the full bootcamp experience, give CWs some taste of the bootcamp and give them a mentor beyond their manager, who can't do much more than teach the overall picture of the tech stack.