5 ms·

Aren't apprenticeship contracts functionally slavery? You think free money will be abused, but this won't be?

by kazagistar 10y ago

Grustaf 10y ago
Slavery? More like paid education. The best possible education in many cases.
ryanmarsh 10y ago
Graft is a constant in human endeavors. It's like a scaling problem, you deal with it as it presents itself.
brianwawok 10y ago
So I don't know about all fields, but I know about programming. Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10 an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take up and how much damage they do. If you run a small profitable business, even if you could get high schoolers to work for free to write you code, you should not do it. If you need to pay them minimum wage... even MORE reason not do it. I feel this is a situation that other industries have dealt with for 100s of years. For example the day 1 statue carver was probably a huge negative value also. I suspect they had to sign something like "I will work for enough pay to feed myself for 2 years, and then work for a industry standard wage for 2 years after that if you agree to train me". So all in agreeing to 4 years of work for training. (And some pay, but not really break the bank pay). At the end of the 4 years, the company got a decent amount of value out of the statue carver, and the statue carver learned a bunch of skills without going to college. Not really anything like this in programming. Not even sure it would be legally enforceable. But I think that is a big reason why there is a gap in needs of programmers vs people willing to train people to do the job. It really would suck for most people to train someone how to do a job for a year (losing tons of money), and then the person job hops to someone who pays higher and bears none of the training cost. This is why so many jobs advertise 1-3 years of experience required. They want people over the initial learning hump, but not making the big bucks yet. So perhaps I am proposing a way to bring back bonded labor apprentices? Hum, seems terrible. But also seems like it could work...
- kazagistar 10y ago
  It sucks for the big corps to not be able to contractually force labor out of workers who they have trained. But it sucks far far more if you are stuck in an abusive contract.
  - toehead2000 10y ago
    Yeah contracts suck in general. What if I sign a contract and then decide I don't like it? Contracts should be illegal.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Maybe. But the end result is where we are now. People go to college to try and learn a skill. Don't really learn the skill as well as an apprenticeship. Get a lot of debt.
- matwood 10y ago
  >Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10 an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take up and how much damage they do. I don't know. Motivated HS kids today could be pretty good employees. My first programming job happened when I was a sophomore in college, and code I wrote was going into production products.
- randomdata 10y ago
  > Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. I highly doubt it is negative. My first development job came when I was still I high school, and I worked on (even sole) projects that were put into useful production for a number of years. While I don't know what kind of revenue my work helped generate, I cannot imagine they made negative amounts of money. It did what was needed, and would have been pretty easy to throw out. Or maybe you at least need to qualify that statement? I suppose it could see it being true if the student (or anyone of any age, for that matter) has never touched a computer before. I came with programming experience even before starting that job. It is not like programming is particularly difficult to learn.
sremani 10y ago
Is apprenticeship where you do not get into debt but not remunerated for you work any worse form slavery than the 4-year degree that leaves the student with 100K debt, which the student has to service the next decade or so of his life? Not only you are cheapening "slavery" as a word, but mis-framing the issue.
- kazagistar 10y ago
  > Is apprenticeship where you do not get into debt but not remunerated for you work That is not apprenticeship, it is unpaid internship, and it is much worse then taking on debt to get an education because it creates a vast gap in opportunity based on existing wealth.
smoe 10y ago
Don't know how apprenticeships work in the US, but in Switzerland where they are very common (about two-thirds of youths coming out of mandatory school) for all sort of fields (carpenter, nurse, draftsman, business clerk, programmer, etc), they are paid and heavily regulated, since your are only 15-17 years old when you start. In Switzerland an apprentice on average costs the company more than what they bring in value for the first two years, but make that loss up in the final two.

Aren't apprenticeship contracts functionally slavery? You think free money will be abused, but this won't be?

Grustaf 10y ago

Slavery? More like paid education. The best possible education in many cases.

ryanmarsh 10y ago

Graft is a constant in human endeavors. It's like a scaling problem, you deal with it as it presents itself.

brianwawok 10y ago

So I don't know about all fields, but I know about programming. Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10 an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take up and how much damage they do. If you run a small profitable business, even if you could get high schoolers to work for free to write you code, you should not do it. If you need to pay them minimum wage... even MORE reason not do it. I feel this is a situation that other industries have dealt with for 100s of years. For example the day 1 statue carver was probably a huge negative value also. I suspect they had to sign something like "I will work for enough pay to feed myself for 2 years, and then work for a industry standard wage for 2 years after that if you agree to train me". So all in agreeing to 4 years of work for training. (And some pay, but not really break the bank pay). At the end of the 4 years, the company got a decent amount of value out of the statue carver, and the statue carver learned a bunch of skills without going to college. Not really anything like this in programming. Not even sure it would be legally enforceable. But I think that is a big reason why there is a gap in needs of programmers vs people willing to train people to do the job. It really would suck for most people to train someone how to do a job for a year (losing tons of money), and then the person job hops to someone who pays higher and bears none of the training cost. This is why so many jobs advertise 1-3 years of experience required. They want people over the initial learning hump, but not making the big bucks yet. So perhaps I am proposing a way to bring back bonded labor apprentices? Hum, seems terrible. But also seems like it could work...

kazagistar 10y ago
It sucks for the big corps to not be able to contractually force labor out of workers who they have trained. But it sucks far far more if you are stuck in an abusive contract.
- toehead2000 10y ago
  Yeah contracts suck in general. What if I sign a contract and then decide I don't like it? Contracts should be illegal.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Maybe. But the end result is where we are now. People go to college to try and learn a skill. Don't really learn the skill as well as an apprenticeship. Get a lot of debt.
matwood 10y ago
>Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. Say -$10 an hour or -$50 an hour, based on how much experienced person time they take up and how much damage they do. I don't know. Motivated HS kids today could be pretty good employees. My first programming job happened when I was a sophomore in college, and code I wrote was going into production products.
randomdata 10y ago
> Do you know how much value a high school type person has in writing computer programs for an actual software company? Something fairly negative. I highly doubt it is negative. My first development job came when I was still I high school, and I worked on (even sole) projects that were put into useful production for a number of years. While I don't know what kind of revenue my work helped generate, I cannot imagine they made negative amounts of money. It did what was needed, and would have been pretty easy to throw out. Or maybe you at least need to qualify that statement? I suppose it could see it being true if the student (or anyone of any age, for that matter) has never touched a computer before. I came with programming experience even before starting that job. It is not like programming is particularly difficult to learn.

sremani 10y ago

Is apprenticeship where you do not get into debt but not remunerated for you work any worse form slavery than the 4-year degree that leaves the student with 100K debt, which the student has to service the next decade or so of his life? Not only you are cheapening "slavery" as a word, but mis-framing the issue.

kazagistar 10y ago
> Is apprenticeship where you do not get into debt but not remunerated for you work That is not apprenticeship, it is unpaid internship, and it is much worse then taking on debt to get an education because it creates a vast gap in opportunity based on existing wealth.

smoe 10y ago

Don't know how apprenticeships work in the US, but in Switzerland where they are very common (about two-thirds of youths coming out of mandatory school) for all sort of fields (carpenter, nurse, draftsman, business clerk, programmer, etc), they are paid and heavily regulated, since your are only 15-17 years old when you start. In Switzerland an apprentice on average costs the company more than what they bring in value for the first two years, but make that loss up in the final two.