Our REACH program is designed to give highly determined individuals with strong technical skills the opportunity to gain on-the-job experience they need to become full-time software engineers. It also helps us hire more talent to join our engineering team. I’m thrilled to report, now that our first REACH cohort has finished, the program is a success on both...

Co-authors: Shalini Agarwal, Joel Young, Ali Mohamed, and Yi Shen   Earlier this year, we kicked off our inaugural REACH program, which brings in software engineers from non-traditional tech backgrounds to apprentice at LinkedIn for six months. Our goal is to provide an entryway into a full-fledged engineering job for talented people that might otherwise be...

For many years, we in the tech industry have faced persistent challenges to meet our demand for software engineering talent. One hard to ignore aspect of this problem is that some people have a clear path into tech jobs, while others do not. A degree in computer science or prior technical job experience without employment gaps is often a prerequisite for...