Joe Duncko's Blog

# How Dev Youngstown Started

Dev Youngstown is my consultancy that hires students to execute the YBI’s MVP Development Program.

This post is an attempt to capture how Dev Youngstown started and to celebrate what it has accomplished so far.

Naming

Up front, I want to address that despite the similarity in naming, Dev Youngstown LLC is owned by me and operates separately from Code Youngstown, which is Youngstown’s Software Developer community hub, funded out of pocket by Nick Serra and me.

However, Dev Youngstown does donate (read as: covers the cost of) developer time to Code Youngstown, as our students maintain the Code Youngstown website, Job Board, and Directory.

Background

I remember Nick Serra and I having conversations about what it might be like if Youngstown had a “Dev Shop” as far back as 2017.

The conversation grew out of our frustration at the lack of companies hiring software developers in the Youngstown area.

The challenge became clearer as Code Youngstown grew—students came to us looking for internships, and experienced developers sought upward (or even lateral) mobility. While we were able to make some connections, they were few and far between.

At the time, Nick worked part time at Drund, where I interned.

Drund itself evolved from YDEK Productions, a web development firm that brought business to Youngstown - and while there are plenty of dev-capable marketing firms in the Youngstown area, doing the same, no one focused on app development specifically.

Over time, a vision formed - a local consulting firm that brought work from outside of the Youngstown area and primarily hired students, with the goal of getting them enough experience that they could work remotely.

However, Nick dismissed it as a “retirement gig”, and I definitely didn’t have the time, so that’s where it sat.

Beginnings

Ryan Lalchand, a former HackYSU organizer, graduated Youngstown State University in May 2022. Unable to find a job, I tried connecting him with a YBI-associated startup.

This was a connection that was a perfect fit on paper, but the startup struggled to onboard and make effective use of Ryan.

I was frustrated - if Ryan couldn’t find a way to pay rent with programming, he’d need to look outside the industry. I had seen that before - and often it led to people never having their break in to the industry.

Coincidentally, I had recently received a solid salary bump at BlastPoint, and was contemplating on how best to utilize the money to improve my quality of life. I had also recently written my blog post on Code Youngstown, which ends by pitching a couple projects that would possibly move the needle for Youngstown’s developer community - a Job Board and a Directory of organizations that employ technologists. I was also experimenting with the idea of delegating, something I didn’t have much experience with at the time.

It added up to me funding Ryan’s rewrite of the Code Youngstown website in Next.js, where he added the initial implementations of the Job Board and Directory, now Code Youngstown staple resources.

By July Ryan had successfully found a software engineering role, and passed his responsibilities to Garrett Huggins - a student I had met at HackYSU in April 2022 who happened to be building his first Next.js site at the event.

In parallel, conversations with the original startup continued. They had secured some funding and wanted to have something built. By that time, Garrett and I had formed a solid working relationship, and he had an interest in taking the project on. Concerned about continuity, I asked Garrett if he knew anyone interested in backend development. By September 2022, we had onboarded Trong Ong to work on the Code Youngstown site.

It took some time to iron out the details - during which, Garrett and Trong were super patient with me - but plans solidified by December, and work on our first project began in January 2023.

YBI Partnership

In June of 2022, Corey Patrick reached out to me saying that the YBI had secured grant funding for a brand new program involving software development.

We finally met in July, where it became clear that the YBI would be looking for someone to help their startups actually build their technology. It wasn’t clear if the person would be full or part time, if the person would be hands on or just consulting, or even what title the person would hold.

At the time, I had mixed feelings around the possibilities. On one hand, I still had a bitter taste in my mouth since my time working within the startup entrepreneurial ecosystem space at my previous startup. On the other, on paper the position was very close to the description of my dream job.

Over the next couple months I was introduced to some YBI startups as a volunteer resource.

In September 2022, the YBI posted a Director of Engineering role on LinkedIn.

In November, we discussed what the role might look like in more detail. It ultimately sounded exactly like the stuff Dev Youngstown was already starting to do - consulting with startups, and running an internship program where students would execute the actual work.

January 13th, 2023 - during Code Mash - I was offered the role. The YBI committed to funding an MVP every quarter, and adopted Dev Youngstown and the consulting company to execute the work. I would be paid directly by the YBI by the hour for my time consulting with startups and running the program, so that 100% of the MVP development budget would go towards student internships.

Projects

Here are the projects we have completed so far:

  • A route planning mobile app for Pavé Routes (currently in private Beta)
  • A delivery management dashboard for Truk-Em
  • A drone imagery viewer and annotation tool for UAVistas

Future Plans

One of Dev Youngstown’s original goals is to give students the one year of experience they need to get a remote job so they could live and work in Youngstown, Ohio. Post-pandemic, one year is no longer enough experience to work remote.

I have two ideas to try to conquer this:

One is to hire a graduating Dev Youngstown student as a full time “Team lead”. That student would be responsible for planning and coordinating work, and hopefully get even more meaningful experience.

The second is to simply offer more hours to the students. Due to me being conservative with budgets, while we increase hours in the summer we don’t currently allow for students to work full time. I would love to change that.

Thank Yous

  • Corey Patrick for introducing me to Chandler and this potential partnership
  • The YBI team - especially Chandler, Heidi, and Barb - for being flexible and supportive
  • The YBI board, who have been massively supportive of the program
  • Ryan for trusting me with his first paid software gig
  • Garrett and Trong, for being patient as work trickled in to start and for forming so many of the initial best practices for the org
  • Reid at Truk-Em, for being willing to be the first to trust us with their business and flexible as we figured out what Dev Youngstown was and how it worked
  • Nick, Noah, Breydan, Austin, and Jenna for being on this journey with me
  • And of course Chris and Andrew, for being willing to jump in whenever I or a student is out of our depth