Your career in coding is within REACH

Silicon Valley has a problem - we can't hire programmers fast enough. And, we do a terrible job of hiring an increasingly large group of programmers who love to code (and are really good at it)!

The Valley is known for many things, not the least of which is the amazing pool of talented individuals that flock here from around the world to pursue their dreams. But many of these individuals have built in advantages such as a strong network or a degree from a top-tier university.

If you don’t have those built in advantages, it can be hard to get a foot in the door, especially when it comes to a coding job at one of the top companies in the Valley. This means that there are incredibly talented individuals who are not able to break into something they have great passion for, only because of where they did or did not go to school. Which is crazy when you hear the technical leadership in Silicon Valley bemoan the fact that there just aren’t enough good engineers to go around. We need these great minds to help drive the next generation of growth and positive impact the entire technology industry has the opportunity to create.

To start to address this problem, LinkedIn is launching REACH. This pilot program is designed to give this pool of untapped talent a way “in”. I believe the foundation of a successful and diverse workplace is the inclusion and celebration of people with differing backgrounds and opinions - people whose core qualification is a passion for the job, and a drive and demonstrated ability to continuously learn and improve themselves. We’ve designed this program to give those with non-traditional software engineering backgrounds an opportunity to get their foot in the door and flex their coding chops with a goal of allowing them to start or re-start their career in software engineering.

Why REACH? We believe that for professionals from nontraditional backgrounds, transforming their careers and becoming an engineer is within their reach here at LinkedIn. We know top talent can come from anywhere, and believe that we will be better able to realize LinkedIn’s vision with greater diversity of background and perspective on our team. While I realize that this is a single step in a long and complex journey, I do believe it is an important one.

If you are interested or you know someone that is, we invite you to go to careers.linkedin.com/reach to learn more.