

Ask HN: Why Aren't More Companies Starting Apprenticeship Programs? - zachgersh

We've all seen the complaints around lack of good development talent.  Lack of developers is usually due to the companies strict hiring standards.<p>Why aren't more of these companies bringing on developers and then developing them into the employees that they want?  Is it due to most company cultures not accommodating this sort of thing?
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lsiebert
I wish there were. That is what I feel like I need.

This used to be how every company worked. Manufacturers trainedt people. But
companies have pushed the cost of training onto workers. Now there are tons of
positions requiring training going unfilled. NPR had a story about this not
too long ago.

I think that there is also an issue with training people, then losing them to
successful companies that don't have to train people. H1-b visa holders are
the obvious exception... Cheaper than Americans. And they need an employer
sponsor to stay in the country which makes leaving for another job difficult.

I think training programs that feed into jobs ala hacker school are at least a
step in the right direction.

Ultimately, I would like to see companies form coalitions to support training
people. I think that that could work. Get some economies of scale combined
with attempts at innovation. Have tracks for devops, testing, project
management etc. Do research on how to train people. And do it cheaper and
better than an academic institution by teaching both concepts and
implementation and having certification to industry standards, not academic
ones.

~~~
zachgersh
Sponsored training programs that have multiple companies supporting them sound
like a good idea.

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AldousHaxley
Effectively a lot of companies already do something approaching this,
particularly larger ones that can afford to invest the time in an employee.

When I started at my current position I was pretty good at hacking away at
whatever coding task they gave me, but as far as the intricacies of working
with a cross functional team of dozens of developers and business people,
balancing priorities, coordinating timelines, independently identifying needs,
taking initiative, and so forth, I had to learn all that on the job.

To actually respond to your question, though, I think the need for apprentice-
style programs is gradually becoming more apparent. The day to day of an
average working developer is way different than you might expect from going
through a university CS program. Really, on the job training is already
happening, the cost is just being absorbed with the first n months of a junior
developer starting a job, so it's currently hidden.

~~~
zachgersh
I can definitely see this as factored into the cost of a first year dev. I
wonder how much more talent companies would recruit by just making that
investment more apparent?

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codeonfire
Lack of developers are due to lack of developers. If you loosen standards even
a little you get faker developers who don't code and are planing to exploit
'political inneficiencies' rather than build products. If someone is not
already coding at a high level I can guarantee their intentions are not to
code, ever, if they can get away with it.

~~~
zachgersh
The suggestion wasn't to loosen standards it was to start cultivating
developers that are up to your standards. If you put them in an apprenticeship
program because you see something in them it is an investment that will lead
to higher standards.

------
ayers
7digital [1] decided to do something about this issue and started their own
academy.

Companies that do not have a heavy internal tech focus will be far less
inclined to invest in this sort of thing.

[1]: <http://about.7digital.com/jobs/academy/>

------
mooreds
Internship programs also fulfill a similar purpose. See
<http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html> for more.

~~~
zachgersh
I think internships are slightly different. Paid apprenticeships where you are
expected to delivery production ready code for clients and work along side
developers is what we are after.

Most internships I have seen generally treat the intern as the grunt; no good
projects / most of their work can be discarded at the end of their internship.

