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Telepat North

Telepat North Handbook

Ranks & Benefits

North membership has three Ranks. Each Rank grants a member access to a distinct set of benefits and opportunities.

The CADET Rank

Cadets are outstanding coders with substantial professional experience, good language skills, and an ambition to improve continually.

Cadet benefits:

  • Access to the North community;
  • Access to Workshops and Special Events;
  • Access to books, courses and certifications via the O'Reilly Learning Platform - unlocked when member reaches 30 experience points;
  • Two one-to-one professional coaching sessions with our senior members - unlocked when member reaches 60 experience points.

The STAR Rank

Stars are outstanding coders that have proven their skills and determination to improve and grow. Stars get all Cadet benefits listed above, plus:

  • Access to top remote work opportunities via the Telepat network;
  • The North Mystery Swag Box, shipped internationally;
  • Access to mentorship sessions with industry professionals.

The SUPERSTAR Rank

Superstars have proven their abilities within real-world, remote work projects, identified via North. They get perpetual, non-limited access to all club benefits.

Commitments & Ranking Up

North members of all Ranks commit to honor the Code.

North members are skilled enough to efficiently communicate in technical language with people from around the world. Members are proficient in English.

CADETS will strive to reach STAR Rank. To do this, they must accumulate at least 70 experience points over the course of 40 days since onboarding. Points are earned via the following possible activities/projects:

  • The Code Showcase Session: 10 points. Read more about this session here.
  • North Workshop & Special Event attendance: 3 points per event, capped to 24 points. Events are ongoing, regular activities, and are advertised via Slack and email bulletins. Note: some events are mandatory for ranking up.
  • GitHub Showcase Projects: 10 points per project, capped to 20 points (2 projects). Read additional details here.
  • Coding Skill Assessments: 5 points per assessment, capped to 30 points (6 assessments). We accept any legitimate assessment that we can verify, including Linkedin, TestDome, SkillValue and others.
  • Original Content - professional articles, blog posts or videos: 5 points per post, capped to 10 points (2 posts).
  • Open Source Contributions: 10 points per contribution, capped to 20 points (2 contributions). The more popular the project you contribute to, the better.
  • A Personal Video Introduction: 10 points. Read additional details here.
  • Additional Tests available via the 360 profile: 3 points per completed test, uncapped.

STARS can reach the SUPERSTAR Rank by onboarding with a remote work opportunity identified via North.

The Code Showcase

The Code Showcase is a recorded one-hour session that will be attached to the member's North 360 Profile. The objective is to provide a reference for the member's coding as well as reasoning abilities and language skill. A North crew member will act as a session moderator.

Members can choose between two possible scenarios for the Code Showcase:

  • The Open-Source Project scenario, where the member walks through the code within one of his publically available GitHub repos and engages in a discussion with the moderator around project highlights and challenges. Ideally, the project should follow the guidelines described here.
  • The Challenge scenario, where the member receives a coding challenge that he solves live with support from the moderator, using any programming language and IDE of choice.

Depending on the outcome of the session, the moderator can choose to assign the new member to the CADET Rank or to the ASPIRANT Rank.

Members also receive a link to the full recording to review and consider ways they could improve.

GitHub Showcase Projects

We encourage members to always have one or more public, open-source projects featured on their GitHub profile, to showcase their abilities and stand out from the crowd.

The project code should be representative of the member's current experience and skill level. This means that the code should be revisited and updated at least yearly to make sure it reflects the most modern paradigms and best practices:

  • The code should be readable and extensively documented inline.
  • The project should have an extensive README file, outlying:
    • A raison d'etre - what problem does the project solve, what is the target audience;
    • A procedure for installation;
    • A "Getting Started" section with quick usage examples;
    • Full API documentation - inline within the Markdown file, using GitHub Wikis, or, preferably, a link to external docs, automatically generated from code.
    • Notes on setting up the project in development mode and contributing to the project;
    • Notes on submitting issues;
    • Any applicable shields.
  • Particular attention should be paid to commit and branching practices. Have granular, well-written commits, use semantic versioning, create Releases.
  • The project should incorporate a CI pipeline (e.g., Travis or CircleCI).
  • The project should make use of automated tests, and aim for 80% or above code coverage.

The Personal Video Intro

We encourage members to record and publish a short introduction video about themselves. This can be hosted on Youtube or any other hosting platform, public or unlisted.

The video should highlight your professional experience and achievements, as well as offer a glimpse into your personality and goals:

  • Ideally, the video should be around 5 minutes in length.
  • Make sure that there's plenty of light on your face and in the background. Make sure the background is neutral, clean, and free of any distracting personal items.
  • Wear softer, solid colors - avoid distracting attention from your face.
  • If you wear glasses, make sure that they're glare-proof, so there's no reflection.

Recruitment & Onboarding

Membership is free and invite-based, with batches of ten to twenty invites being issued periodically.

Members can recommend persons they judge worthy of North membership.

Candidates that choose to pursue membership will need to read the Code and have a 30-minute video call with the North crew. The talk will revolve around:

  • drive, motivations, goals
  • vision on best practices
  • professional skills
  • communication skills

Depending on the outcome of the interview session:

  • The member can be directly assigned to the ASPIRANT Rank;
  • The member can be directly assigned to the CADET Rank;
  • The member can be assigned to schedule a Code Showcase session that will decide his entry Rank.

North Aspirants

ASPIRANT is a special, limited-priviledge North Rank.

Aspirants are coders that are new to the field, don't have extensive experience, or need to expand or improve their professional skills to advance in rank. Aspirants get access to the North community and can attend workshops and special events.

Aspirants can strive to reach the Cadet Rank. There are no set minimum requirements or timeframe for the transition, but Aspirants will generally be expected to impress by improving and extending their professional experience:

  • Working towards becoming an expert in at least one domain (technology/language/tool);
  • Knowing and following all modern best practices in this chosen domain;
  • Solidifying their GitHub profile with projects relevant to the selected domain;
  • Gathering more work experience within various teams and projects;
  • Improving their English language skills.

Etiquette

Members should:

  • Observe the #code-updates and #handbook-updates channels for essential updates to document sources.
  • Use #overflow to ask for technical support.
  • Use #random for funny or personal messages.
  • Use #lobby to distribute knowledge. Any great professional content you want to share also belongs here.
  • Use #general to post notifications and messages that don't fall into categories above to the entire community.

For every received benefit, members will contribute the sum of their gained knowledge and experience back to the community.

  • Post a message on the #lobby channel about how your club benefit impacted you:
    • How did the perk (book, course, subscription, etc.) make you better?
    • What are the most important things you've learned? Share some quotes or some learnings.
    • What tips do you have for other club members that might be interested in the same benefit?
  • Don't lurk. Finish reading books, attend the courses, do the hard work to become a better you.
  • Be present on the North Slack and ready to share knowledge with your peers that ask for help.
  • Apply learnings to update your North 360 Profile.

Members are expected to refrain from posting advertisements or job opportunities to any channel.