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I did an apprenticeship in software engineering in Switzerland. Afterwards I did not go to university. My experience was positive. I did not make a lot of mone

by href 9y ago

I did an apprenticeship in software engineering in Switzerland. Afterwards I did not go to university. My experience was positive. I did not make a lot of money during my apprenticeship but that was before I was 20 years old and still lived at home. Since then I make the same as others with bachelor/masters degree in the same company. Though at the beginning my salary was quite a bit lower. The jobs I can take are also somewhat limited, since I won't be hired for a machine learning job that requires lots of math. Still, I barely had the grades for my apprenticeship and I also barely made it through. So ultimately if it wasn't for my apprenticeship I probably would have an office job that is much more boring.

igk 9y ago
Intersting. Do you know what is required to take on apprentices? If I moved to switzerland and started a company there, could I just start training people?
- href 9y ago
  Not quite. There are two requirements. First is a "Ausbildungsbewilligung" from the canton your company resides in. This is basically a cert that verifies that your company is able to provide an apprentice with the proper environment. Depending on the canton this can mean that your company needs to be of a certain age (e.g. two years) and that the work that you are doing actually qualifies your company to provide the apprentice with relevant skills (so a restaurant can't train engineers). The second requirement is a person that has completed the "Berufsbildner" course. I haven't done it myself, but from what I hear it's a one-two weeks course that teaches you the basics of the apprenticeship system (your rights and duties). After that you hire a 15-16 year old you think would be a good fit. The first two years the kid will be in school for up to three days a week and you will probably pay a salary of around 500 - 1000 CHF (you would usually increase the amount each year). The second two years (assuming you are training a software engineer) you might pay a bit more, but by then you might be lucky and the teenager is a young adult that can do good work for cheap. Of course 16-20 is a time where lots of things change, so you might not be so lucky. From my experience you can't predict this either. I've seen kids that started great and dropped out later and troubled kids that found their calling in year three. To find out more you want to search the web for "Ausbildungsbewilligung", "Lehrbetrieb werden" and "Berufsbildner". From what I've seen all information is in German/French however. I didn't find any good sites in English.

by href 9y ago

igk 9y ago

Intersting. Do you know what is required to take on apprentices? If I moved to switzerland and started a company there, could I just start training people?

href 9y ago
Not quite. There are two requirements. First is a "Ausbildungsbewilligung" from the canton your company resides in. This is basically a cert that verifies that your company is able to provide an apprentice with the proper environment. Depending on the canton this can mean that your company needs to be of a certain age (e.g. two years) and that the work that you are doing actually qualifies your company to provide the apprentice with relevant skills (so a restaurant can't train engineers). The second requirement is a person that has completed the "Berufsbildner" course. I haven't done it myself, but from what I hear it's a one-two weeks course that teaches you the basics of the apprenticeship system (your rights and duties). After that you hire a 15-16 year old you think would be a good fit. The first two years the kid will be in school for up to three days a week and you will probably pay a salary of around 500 - 1000 CHF (you would usually increase the amount each year). The second two years (assuming you are training a software engineer) you might pay a bit more, but by then you might be lucky and the teenager is a young adult that can do good work for cheap. Of course 16-20 is a time where lots of things change, so you might not be so lucky. From my experience you can't predict this either. I've seen kids that started great and dropped out later and troubled kids that found their calling in year three. To find out more you want to search the web for "Ausbildungsbewilligung", "Lehrbetrieb werden" and "Berufsbildner". From what I've seen all information is in German/French however. I didn't find any good sites in English.