
The future of work requires a return to apprenticeships - max_
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/apprenticeships-future-work-4ir-training-reskilling
======
gen220
I graduated college in 4.5 years, with 6 different short internship stints at
companies and research groups.

At my first internship, I was more dead weight than productive, but by my last
three I was a contributor to many nontrivial projects.

Those experiences (1) were absolutely invaluable in my growth into a capable
engineer (2) gave me a sharp perception of what life is like at different-
stage companies (headcount 5-10 to headcount 5000+), and (3) gave me an idea
of how “industry trends” actually manifested in different companies. By the
end of my years in college, it seemed like these experiences had put me on a
different track, career-wise, even though I was no smarter than my peers.

Friends who had maxed out their investment in GPA and personal projects were
in a relative bubble. They could crack the coding interview, but didn’t know
their way around a shell, or what the relative risks of adopting one database
over another might be. In hindsight, I guess these internships might have
leapfrogged me past the “junior engineer” phase. In any case, the experience
had positive impacts on my career.

I guess it might not be a path for everyone (and I’m very grateful for those
first few companies that paid me for those relatively unproductive summers),
but I agree that these kinds of expected-to-be-unproductive incubative periods
are under-looked milestones to growth that I can’t recommend enough,
especially if you get them at completely different places.

~~~
iffybookmark
>Friends who had maxed out their investment in GPA [...] were in a relative
bubble.

Yep 1000% agree

> Friends who had maxed out their investment in [...] personal projects were
> in a relative bubble.

-0% agree, I'm actually a bit baffled that you mention it in the same breath. I've found, in my own xp and in others', that personal projects on your own are almost the only way to learn how to be high-impact.

In many companies, they've already decided their db, their frameworks, etc.
and you'll need a lot of political capital and technical trust to be able to
start a real conversation about splitting the stack and so on. So, here,
you'll learn about how to work on existing rails doing n+1 tasks and
bugfixing.

In a personal project, you start with an empty dir and work from there. You
end up knowing why you like pg over mysql. You know why it was worth it to use
rails instead of rolling your own. etc etc.

I have some social friends who also do software who don't really have it as a
hobby (just a job) and while that's totally fine, they're unable to answer
questions like "what framework does your work use?" (answer I found later:
Spring). To their credit, it's probably a good thing at some level that the
company has managed to shield people from that much detail.

Obviously everyone's journey is different, but I've always found that
individuals who can go "I want to build <thing>" and then google/IRC until
it's built are generally pretty impactful people.

~~~
gen220
I pretty much agree with you and second guessed including it.

My only justification for including it is that personal projects teach you
about how technologies work at the 0-to-1 step (and _maybe_ 1-10). I knew
smart people who were extremely confident in the superiority of tool/framework
X, because they could write unreadable boilerplate in it for all of their
personal projects. Everything was a nail for the hammer.

I generally agree that it’s good practice to start with an empty dir and build
from there. But IMO it is no substitute for working on or around projects that
have been in prod for at least a couple years.

I agree that working on your own projects is a great way to develop instincts
that lead you to being high impact, but it probably took me a year of working
experience context (2 or 3 internships) before my side projects actually began
training that muscle. I can easily imagine mileage varying there, however.

------
keiru
Related: Samo Burja is a sociologist with a pretty tidy and poignant YouTube
channel. He has a lot of stuff on human institutions (from corporations to
civilizations), their underlying social mechanics and what makes or breaks
them. He emphasizes the importance of patronage and apprenticeship viewed as a
"social technology" that allow for the correct passing of knowledge that is
essential to maintaining institutional life-cycles.

Short introductory videos:

Why We Still Need Masters & Apprentices:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribdRDO75Rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribdRDO75Rk)

Dynasties:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIYEhjI2xE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNIYEhjI2xE)

Functional Institutions are the Exception:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fanjkT3pi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fanjkT3pi0)

Intellectual Dark Matter:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPAD1UjpsE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KPAD1UjpsE)

Longer and very worthwhile talks:

Civilization: Institutions, Knowledge, and the Future:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdYmuFyjWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdYmuFyjWM)

Institutions And Intellectual Dark Matter:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aA-
YeBb5V4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aA-YeBb5V4)

------
Hokusai
> While C-3PO and WALL-E might be good at processing algorithms, they can
> never replace living, breathing, thinking humans entirely in the workplace.

I always read that "never" as "in the next 50 years". Never say never.

> We have a surplus of people who are educated but don’t quite have the skills
> to fulfill companies’ needs.

Yes. That is why there is entry level positions like 'junior developer'.

BTW, apprenticeship should be also a full-time paid job. If you have
difficulty finding people maybe is that you are not paying enough. Trying to
get starters in a field to accept very low pays or not pay at all makes the
profession less desirable and reduces the number of candidates in the long
term.

~~~
collyw
> apprenticeship should be also a full-time paid job

What makes it different from a job then?

~~~
Finnucane
Primarily that it is a job-training position. You're not expected to really
know how to do the job when you get it.

No one is really expecting it's going to go back to like it was in Ye Olde
Dayes when apprentices started as children shoveling coal into the ovens (I
worked for a while in a cooking school where some of the instructors had
actually gone through that).

~~~
C1sc0cat
Or as my dad said you spend the first year filling and fetching the Tea

------
015UUZn8aEvW
Someone I know well, who owns an engineering company, used to be a big
proponent of this but has soured on it.

It absolutely is possible for people to learn complex technical skills (like
mechanical or software engineering) in a professional setting. The problem is
that the trainees are mostly dead weight for an extended period of time. The
employers who hire them need confidence that the trainees will remain with
them for long enough to provide a payoff for the initial investment. If the
trainees can just leave whenever they feel like it (my friend's experience),
the whole thing is a waste of time and money.

I'd be interested to know how this is handled in countries where
apprenticeships are more common. There must be some combination of legal and
cultural restraints on trainees bailing after the employers have invested in
them.

~~~
skadamou
If the company doing the training pays their trained employees a competitive
wage and promotes a positive company culture than they really shouldn't be too
worried about losing employees once the apprenticeship is finished. IMO people
job hop mostly because of poor leadership (ie poor direct management or poor
company culture) or because their current company wages fail to keep pace with
industry standards.

~~~
hinkley
From my knothole it seems like people generally leave when they have learned
all they can. They'll leave anyway, but I believe I've had better luck holding
onto teammates longer when they got to continue padding their resume.

The safer you feel about your employability, the less anxious you are to test
it.

------
k__
In Germany we never went away from them.

But I have to admit, most teach rather outdated jobs no companies are hiring
for anymore.

Also, the IT apprenticeships often aren't good quality. The schools use
outdated material and if the companies can't compansate for that, the students
are on their own.

~~~
smnrchrds
> _most teach rather outdated jobs no companies are hiring for anymore._

Could you please elaborate on this? What do they teach?

~~~
k__
A few of my friends learned trades like optometrist and cosmetician and never
found a job.

~~~
barry-cotter
Germany has an unemployment rate of 3.2% so it seems something’s working.
Youth unemployment is also far lower in Germany than the European average,
7.6% rather than 23.5%, and unemployment among those who finished
apprenticeship schemes rarely lasts longer than six months[1].

[1] Youth Unemployment After Apprenticeship Training and Individual,
Occupation and Training Employer Characteristics

[http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp14052.pdf](http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-
docs/dp/dp14052.pdf)

~~~
k__
Yes, the problem is, people learning optometrist, and then end up working in
retail.

------
blunte
From what I have observed, the shift away from apprenticeship and on-the-job
training to "must hire on with every imaginable skill already" corresponds to
the corporate shift from 5 to 10 year views to quarterly views (the almighty
quarterly earnings pet share report).

------
generalpass
The issue I have observed is that management at many companies, most
especially in tech, is so terrible that they don't know how to train people
(e.g., it used to be assumed that when a company hired a new employee, the
employee would need to be trained on the company's computer systems, but now
it is required that the employee be hired already proficient in the company's
computer systems).

Coupled with being located in very expensive regions, tech companies have to
hire at high wages, making training very expensive already.

Something will really have to give somewhere for this to change.

------
ggregoire
IT, software engineering and project management apprenticeships are very
common in France (and in Europe I guess). 1) In addition of not paying
anything for your education, you actually finish your education with a non-
negligible amount of money on your bank account. 2) Also you are pretty sure
to get job offers even before finishing and higher entry salaries than other
students (since you already have a few years of professional experience). 3)
Finally, apprenticeship is just great if you think school/college is kinda
boring.

------
iamcasen
This is obvious for all but the most obtuse. A university education does very
little, if anything, to prepare someone for a career. After all, that's not
the purpose of a university.

Many big tech companies hire candidates straight out of school for very high
salaries and signing bonuses simply because they need the raw intellectual
material. These new grads are mostly useless in terms of what they are capable
of contributing, and the company uses signing bonuses as golden handcuffs to
keep them at the company long enough to make their sunk cost worth it.

Take it from me, when I'm hiring people with little experience, I'm hiring
them for the energy they possess. Are they passionate, curious, and good at
working with others. Do I think they will fit in, and will they enjoy the kind
of work they will be given. Then I place them on easy starter projects and
they progress from there.

That is essentially a de-facto apprenticeship. The only difference is that
apprenticeships of old were a much more intimate relationship between the
master and apprentice. Wouldn't that be nice! Our culture has really,
drastically, moved away from intimacy on all levels.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think the PhD is the best example of a modern knowledge-worker
apprenticeship. Three or more years with an expert passing on their knowledge
to you one-to-one, finished by a magnus opus to show you’re ready to work on
your own.

------
Paianni
My last apprenticeship was four days working plus a day of college per week.
My employer...had little for me to do most of the time and I was restricted
from finding things to get involved in outside our office (about 15 people).
The structure of the department and the difference in qualification meant I
had no one to work or learn with on a continuous basis.

At the end of the two-year contract there were no positions available for me
so I moved on.

------
spodek
We can also switch to project-based learning from a coercive educational
system based on tests, factual recall, abstract analysis, reading and writing
papers, and other things divorced from life.

Project-based learning doesn't just teach practical skills. It also teaches
how to learn, how to find your priorities, self-awareness, and other social
and emotional skills.

------
Traster
>But if you put the intelligent, intuitive individual on the factory floor or
trading floor to learn the complex supply chain and shadow the most skilled in
the business, then you not only give them a well-paying job with growth
potential, but you also give them the bespoke skillset to flourish in the role
and the industry.

>This model isn’t new. It’s apprenticeship

This model is the existing model for every new graduate who starts a job
today. Any new hire in a decent company is going to be getting taught the
industry skills from more senior members of the team. Plenty of companies have
mentoring programmes. The fact they have a degree which provides the basic
mathematical and theoretical pre-requisites for their job doesn't mean they
turn up at Google on day one and are expected to sink or swim. Even beyond
that, plenty of companies provide new college graduate schemes where you
rotate through the business.

I just don't understand what this article is bringing to the table that's new,
other than maybe informing us that some Swiss banks were failing to run their
business properly for a while.

~~~
crispyambulance
> Plenty of companies have mentoring programmes.

Not sure which decade your time machine brought you from, but no, I would not
say that "plenty" of companies do this.

Far more common is a sink-or-swim scenario where new hires are expected to
learn from overworked and not particularly interactive senior-level folks,
while everyone gets their noses pushed into a grindstone by project managers.

~~~
huanwin
> new hires are expected to learn from overworked and not particularly
> interactive senior-level folks, while everyone gets their noses pushed into
> a grindstone by project managers.

n=1, this is my experience too.

The senior embedded engineer here is reputed by our technical management and
technical clients to be a pleasure to work with.

He is, whether as a client or as a junior engineer! And while he's willing to
interact, people are reluctant to speak to him because he's in (too) high
demand. So we grind our projects on our own and only reach out if we can
justify interrupting his work.

I think this is a great way to develop some generalist breadth, but not a
great way to develop specialist expertise, like an 'apprenticeship' might.

Also, on a less technical level, not having the 'apprenticeship' means people
can more easily move around to roles/circumstances that may fit them better.

~~~
mtberatwork
> people are reluctant to speak to him because he's in (too) high demand. So
> we grind our projects on our own and only reach out if we can justify
> interrupting his work.

Sounds like your company needs to hire and retain more senior engineers. What
happens if this person ever decides to leave the company?

------
Bombthecat
Was thinking about it. I think at the end we go back to pay the "master" to
train the junior.

Why? If computers, ai etc take over more and more "simple" tasks. You won't
need a junior anymore.

You only take one if you get paid..

------
beardedman
Been saying something similar for ages.

One thing they're not replacing soon though; is creativity. Designers,
strategists, architects, technologists, problem solvers, etc. - these people
will always be needed.

~~~
ken
I don't know what to make of this. Are you implying there's some conflict
between apprenticeship and creativity?

~~~
beardedman
> One of the major concerns of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is that
> artificial intelligence and automation – robots – will eliminate jobs, both
> blue-collar and white-collar roles across a variety of sectors.

I wasn't implying anything. I was commenting on the general content of the
article.

