I am a web apps developer with no CS degree, and much of my knowledge has come from self-directed study. I'm currently working in a place that doesn't have much focus on software craftsmanship as I understand it. My hand-wavy definition would be something like: an ongoing and management-endorsed effort to make the code easier to understand and maintain, and to make the developers better at writing such code. However I don't have a lot of experience to help me flesh out what this vision of better dev culture looks like.
I'm looking for a new job in the next few months (in Denver), and I'd really like to find somewhere invested in software quality, and in ongoing employee education. I try to study on my own but I feel like I would benefit much more from a mentoring relationship of some kind. So far my only thought has been to look for companies where software is part of the product, so as to stay on the profit-generating side of the books and at least have a chance to make a business case for ongoing training.
Do any of you have suggestions for finding companies like this? Do they exist, in any kind of numbers? Or am I asking for too much? Thank you.
