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The missing piece seems to be some way to ensure the apprentice sticks around once they become valuable. If they are immediately poached with a high salary you
by ip26 7y ago
The missing piece seems to be some way to ensure the apprentice sticks around once they become valuable. If they are immediately poached with a high salary you can't afford to pay, you get nothing for your troubles of teaching them.
- BiteCode_dev 7y agoSee my other comment, this is no different that keeping any other employee around.
- ip26 7y agoAnd ordinary employees leave all the time. But they "pay off" sooner, because the up front investment is lower. Even in Germany today there are additional assurances to make sure an apprentice isn't immediately poached after becoming a journeyman.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe obvious solution to this would be to charge them for the apprenticeship, financing it yourself with a loan from master to apprentice (which then immediately goes back to the master as "tuition"). If they are immediately poached at a high salary, they'll have to pay back the loan. The traditional solution, enslavement, has a bad reputation today.
- lawl 7y agoApprentices can be profitable. I was one and later had access to invoices we sent. Ok that company did some ... creative ... billing. But even without that I believe it's not too hard to break at least even. Doing low-priority work, stuff at the bottom of the backlog is im my exerience totally possible fairly quickly, billable and can offset the senior time used because code reviews require more feedback and some general guidance usually. Apprenticeships here have a fixed government set duration if you want your degree. And it's difficult to change companies. The durations are set in a way it's profitable to take apprentices. During the last year they're usually as productive as any junior dev, at a pocket change salary.