They were easily the best junior developers we had hired, and all have done quite well in their careers.
Perhaps we just got lucky?
He had a mech engineer background, two years out of engineering school went to code camp.
Ceo was an idiot and payed him 90k starting which was a lot more than one of the other seniors who was an self taught English grad. He worked his ass of an was performing as a senior. Ceo stiffed him on the raise, he didn't know any better until he found out code campers salary and was gone in two weeks.
My director left shortly after and so did I. They haven't kept a lead for more than 6 months since, that was 3 years ago... Sorry I digress.
Bear Stearns had a hiring mantra of not liking MBAs and instead hiring PSDs: "Poor, smart and had a deep desire to be rich" :-)