RSE work rotations
Let’s say you want to start a Research (Software) Engineer team in your own unit. How do you set your new hires off on the right path? A proposal is outlined below.
This is a companion post to Future RSE collaboration in Finland.
Getting started
You need to find the right person to hire for the role. Most likely, this means someone with the skills you need but the mindset to transition from their own work to making other work possible. You can find hiring resources on the Aalto RSE page and some brief thoughts in the companion post Future RSE collaboration in Finland.
Let’s say you have hired someone. What’s next?
An apprenticeship proposal
This proposal is much easier for someone inside of Aalto University than outside, but possibly could be negotiated for others.
Your new hire works as part of the existing School of Science RSE team initially, perhaps ~1 year.
The hire is paid, organizationally supervised in, and sits in your own unit. It is absolutely critical that they maintain close connections to your own unit, the membership in our team is only virtual. (Our team is remote-first, so this is easy).
They focus on projects from your own unit, but as part of our daily flow. This could mean asking your audience to join our Scicomp garage for help and requesting that new big projects come via our project management systems.
Your new hire will learn all about how we work.
Your new hire will experience a tremendous diversity of projects and work with experts on them.
After the initial ~1 year period, we sit down and decide what is next. Does your new hire stay working as part of our team (with a greater focus on your own unit’s projects)? Or do they split off and start doing their own thing in your unit? Or some combination?
This gives you the most important part of our onboarding and training. There is no better way to develop the right mindset. If we split later, your staff will know who to ask for harder problems that come up later.
What’s next?
If this sounds interesting to you, contact the author of this article
(first.last@aalto.fi or various chat systems).