So the question I wanted answered about The Iron Yard Academy powered by Smashing Boxes coding school, which held its first graduation and demo day on Friday at the Full Frame Theater in the American Tobacco campus in Durham, was this:

Would any local company actually hire one of the graduates? Would the graduates be more suitable for startups or larger companies or both? And could they make an impact right away or would they be more like project hires, with a bunch of upside at a lower price?

Sorry, that’s actually multiple questions, but you can see where I’m going.

I thought about it in terms of my own technical hiring needs at Automated Insights. Our hiring needs, much like every other company in the Triangle, are plentiful. I emailed a bunch of my founder and management friends at the more technical startups with traction, those whom I believed might benefit the most from one of these hires (especially the lower price part). And I asked several questions of a few of the Smashing Boxes people who had helped get the school off the ground in Durham.

I actually got my answer during the first break in Friday’s presentations, when I asked Drew Schiller, CTO of Validic, about the team he had mentored. That team had just presented an app called Pladel, which used the Validic API and a bunch of Ruby and other technologies to crunch a person’s personal health data into something they called a “Health GPA.” That was pretty slick, I thought.

So selfishly, with Automated Insights in mind, I asked Drew if he thought the backend developer on that team would be a solid hire.

“I hope so,” he said. “I hired him.”

Validic recently announced the closing of a $5 million Series A round. They, like Automated Insights, who announced our own $5.5 million strategic raise in July, are using a portion of those funds to hire.

That seems to be a sweet spot for a school and a class like Iron Yard – startups with some traction, means, and the fortitude to take a chance on a recent grad from a 12-week crash course.

Riding the Rails 

But make no mistake, these graduates aren’t wide-eyed kids tinkering with script. The average age of the class was 31, and each student had at least familiarity with, if not an affinity for, the area of technology they were studying.

One inspiring student, Kent Lovelace, the oldest at 55, is a former print designer trying to expand his digital capabilities to improve his chances at rebooting his career. Michael Byrd, a student who used Ruby to create a sound engineering sandbox was already a music theorist and audio synthesis expert.

The presentations themselves were professional – tight enough to keep people interested, but not too technical as to go over the heads of people in the room who might know what Ruby is, but maybe not a gem.

That’s part of the program, instilling the confidence needed to be able to discuss what you can do.

Pladel, the aforementioned Health GPA app, was presented much like what you’d see at a startup public pitch. No wonder, as that team was led by serial entrepreneur Andrew Hooge, an experienced product engineer (Push Active, Fitsistant) who wanted a firmer grasp on the technology he was already using, and who did some front-end and back-end work on Pladel.

He told me he’s not necessarily planning to run with Pladel, but from what I saw, he’ll be able to go much deeper with the next thing he does run with, getting much of it done on his own. Proof-of-concept? Check. MVP? Check. Alpha? Beta? Probably. All before he has to make his first hire.

That’s what entrepreneurs do. And, coincidentally enough, that’s who startups hire.

But not all startups are at that point.

Experienced or ,, 

When I brought the notion up with Spreedly CTO Nate Talbott, he admitted that he’s just not there yet.

“Part of my hiring thesis is that I need 10 or more senior devs — with two or more of them excited about mentoring — before I can start responsibly hiring junior devs. Thus, coding schools aren’t really even in view for me at this point. We have a technical staff of five today.”

Elliott Hauser is the founder and CEO of trinket, and he knows both of the Iron Yard instructors rather well. While not in a position to hire out of the class yet, he’s got no qualms about doing so when he’s ready.

“Clinton (Dreisbach) and Julia (Elman) are both excellent instructors, and I know they’re doing a kick— job with the students. If we were looking at a hire from the school, I’d apply the same criteria I would for anyone. They’ll be light on experience but I’d view them as a talented, driven candidate who might be less expensive than a more experienced candidate. Experience really is the key in tech, and a hack school gives students the skills they need to start developing in the workplace.”

Spreading the Word

There were 30 potential employers in the room, we were told (31 if you count me), but for the most part, the people I saw and recognized were from the advisory board. According to one of the Smashing Boxes people, the employers were brought in mostly by word of mouth, via emails to connections of the instructors, Smashing Boxes, and the advisory board.

Ultimately, it felt like a well-kept secret.

I brought back one of my colleagues for the reception that followed the presentations, and he agreed that while the graduates didn’t blow us away, they were more impressive than we thought they might be.

So I don’t expect it to remain a secret for long. The next class, Python, is in January, and if there were 30 potential employers at the demo day on Friday, I expect double that for the next demo day.

In the meantime, I’ll be following up with at least two of the students.

And I’m not naming names, so you can back off right now.

Editor’s note: Joe Procopio is a serial entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. He is VP of Product at Automated Insights and the founder of startup network and news resource ExitEvent. Follow him at @jproco or read him at http://joeprocopio.com