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The traveling German carpenters
- zinssmeister 15y agoYeah I experienced this growing up as a kid in Germany. I remember these people from other towns in their "strange" outfits. Over the years they got less and less but you can still find a few. Now living here in the U.S. I wonder how something like this would maybe translate over to coders and designers in startups. Seeing that we have these startup heavy areas across the country. Why not have people work a year in the Valley, then move a year to NYC, followed by another year in Boston or Austin. Would be a fun and rewarding program for young talent.
- nir 15y agoNo need for a program - you can just do it. Even go outside the US (some countries have a work/holiday visa program, eg Australia). It's a great learning experience.
- zinssmeister 15y agoYes of course one can just do it. But having a bit of an umbrella organization around this would help get the word out.
- plastics 15y agoWhat would we need to create one?
- zinssmeister 15y agoI think the most critical step towards success of such a thing is getting a few bigger companies in each of the startup areas to offer exclusive intern/entry/mid-level positions to these kinds of people.
- plastics 15y agoI guess a lot of hacker news reader work in said startup areas. So is anybody willing to give it a shot? I am located in Munich, Germany, not exactly a startup hup, but I have some connections to Berlin and would be willing to annoy my contacts there until they agree. Also should the plans for my own company work out in the next months, I would be willing to offer exclusive intern/entry/mid-level positions.
- eru 15y agoI'm in Cambridge, UK, but come from Germany and have seen the Walz. I'd be interested.
- plastics 15y agoOk, I will start to pitch the idea to the best of my abilities and will let you know what came out of it. :)
- zinssmeister 15y agoI was born and raised in Germany as well but am now in Dallas getting ready to move to Palo Alto. Besides this digital Walz it might also be interesting to start a small network for "Global German Tech Talent" or something. I know there are a few germans in the Valley.
- eru 15y agoThat might actually work in practice. But in principle selecting on the basis of nationality always sounds silly to me. (But I guess I'm just being a good German here. Where not even our President is a patriot.)
- mhd 15y agoI've got the feeling that it's getting more frequent in the last few years. Just like you see more people dressed in traditional garb (in beer-related festivities here in Bavaria for ex.). I think for a while anything "traditional" was regarded as way too conservative, but we're moving beyond that. Tattoos and Lederhosen... But yes, some kind of umbrella organization would be quite neat, some organized internship outside of colleges. A "communist" consultancy…
- StudyAnimal 15y agoThe software craftsmanship movement is starting to get this sort of thing going. At least the idea of apprentice, journeyman and master are taking shape, and a number of software development companies have done craftsman swaps. Corey Haines http://www.coreyhaines.com/ http://www.coreyhaines.com/ in particular has done a lot to actually live like the software equivalent of these carpenter journeymen.
- vidar 15y agoReminds me of a proverb from Nassim Taleb: "Skills that transfer: street fights, off-path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. Skills that don't: school, games, sports, laboratory - what's reduced and organized."
- dylanz 15y agoMy good friend is a journeyman, and I always wished there was a US equivalent, especially in the realm of software engineering. I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy coding with brilliant programmers and traveling around the country. Anecdotally speaking: My friend has a "wunderstick", which is a hand made walking stick. When we go into bars in Germany, he taps it, and the bartender gives us free drinks. Before we leave, he taps his stick again, and says some big speech in German (about how grateful he is, etc). Most bars and hotels cater to the journeymen quite well. While we were in Berlin, he also had girls run across the street to him and kiss him on the cheek or lips. I guess it's good luck to kiss a journeyman.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThe day it's good luck to kiss a journeyman software engineer... will be quite the day indeed.
- robyates 15y agoActually, there are journeyman software developers. Here are some links: 1. Corey Haines: http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/ http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/, http://www.coreyhaines.com/ http://www.coreyhaines.com/, http://www.coderetreat.com/ http://www.coderetreat.com/ 2. Journeyman Programmer Description: http://teamdoty.us/journeymanwp/?p=4 http://teamdoty.us/journeymanwp/?p=4 (from http://www.thejourneymanprogrammer.org/ http://www.thejourneymanprogrammer.org/) 3. Software Craftsmanship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship, http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/ http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/, http://www.softwarecraftsmanship.org.uk/ http://www.softwarecraftsmanship.org.uk/
- mrspandex 15y agoDid anyone else read that title as "time traveling German carpenters?" Does the internet make this less relevant for those in the software field?
- Palomides 15y agowell, one can certainly wander the internet, working with various people on open source projects; dunno about the not paying for food or housing part though :P
- plastics 15y agoThe "Walz" is not for building primary skills (i.e. in our case Software Development or in their case Carpentry). It is assumed that carpenters doing it are already quite skilled in their respective profession. The reason of the "Walz" is to teach self reliance, soft skills and to round out ones primary skills by being exposed to practices of their craft that have evolved/developed differently from those they learned during their apprenticeship. In short the goal is to become a "Master" which in the german vocational tradition originally meant having your own shop and not needing to be an employee any longer (so in our case to become a founder). I think the internet undermines these goals, because, well IMHO it is becoming more and more a gigantic echo chamber (we all read the same blogs/books, admire the same persons, use remarkably similar tools etc.) I think it is astounding that a lot of very smart people assume that currently hip and promoted best development practices, say for a Web 2.0 whatever platform are relevant for other areas (e.g embedded, big iron, medical, aeronautic, finance) because there is not much evident push back in the blog sphere from practitioners in these spheres... which AFAIK is more a result of these people tending to much less likely to blog or work on open source software, than of the universal applicability of said practices (and if the push back, the results I have seen so far have been highly embarrassing for the hipster crowd).
- mhd 15y agoIn short the goal is to become a "Master" which in the german vocational tradition originally meant having your own shop and not needing to be an employee any longer Not just originally, for some professions you're still not allowed to have your own business without your "Meister" degree. Never understood why this included hairdressers… Totally agree with your assessment of the web subsection of the IT profession. And it's quite splintered, with the "young turks" against academia against the enterprise, with plenty of small areas of expertise vanishing in the cracks. It does get a bit better if the forum of discussion is sufficiently abstract and spread over different niches (e.g. programming languages that transcend specific fandoms).
- intellectronica 15y agoIt's worth keeping in mind that the travelling carpenters are a souvenir from dark times in Europe, when economic progress remained extremely slow because craftsmen were evaluated by their belonging to a guild and would not compete.
- Jamiecon 15y agoOnerous labour rules restricting economic progress in Europe? I for one am glad we've moved on.
- gwern 15y agoIt's worth noting that those 'dark times' were periods of perfectly ordinary economic growth compared to the rest of the world and all the millenniums previous. Comparing those times to the Industrial Revolution that came shortly after is a little unfair - no tradition or souvenir compares well.
- roel_v 15y agoEh, no. The first explosion of efficiency and economic prosperity was in Roman times, when there was peace in much of Europe and cities flourished, complete with sanitation systems, elaborate transportation networks etcetera. When that crumbled, city states took over, and economic life was once again dictated by the whims of rulers who in reality depended on keeping the ruling classes of the cities in their empire happy; in these cities, tradesmen classes operated in rigid, protectionist and mercantilist guild systems. There was stagnation and in many fields enormous regression until the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (when freedom brought back the drive for progress).
- arihelgason 15y agoExactly. Economic activity centered on agriculture where efficiency increases were minuscule. Because of this economic activity did not grow much. See this diagram for an idea of just how little growth there was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_GDP_Capita_1-2003_A.D.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_GDP_Capita_1-2003_A....
- arjn 15y agoBack when I was in undergrad, I met a German exchange student who mentioned something about this. He may have been part of it at some point. They have a special belt buckle or something which identifies them and he said it was almost a status symbol (the belt buckle). I believe he was a roof-shingler and not a general carpenter though.
- Luc 15y agoI really wanted to see those beer-giving sticks, and found that the magic google word for more pictures is 'Wanderschaft': http://www.google.com/images?q=Wanderschaft http://www.google.com/images?q=Wanderschaft
- jsilence 15y agoSorry, but "Wanderschaft" is a rather old fashioned word for hiking. It is the noun version of the verb "Wandern" (to hike). The stick is called "Wanderstab" or "Stenz".
- ugh 15y agoThis article talks only about journeymen and women who are truly exotic and rare but it doesn't really emphasize that vocational training — the alternative to college — still is alive and well in Germany. You usually don't got to college if you want to become a hairdresser or a mechatronic engineer. After they finish school, the apprentices work three or four days per week at some company and go to a vocational school the rest of the time.
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- zwieback 15y agoThe German system indeed has a lot more options between a full blown academic career to learning a craft in a structured 4 year program all the way to being an unskilled laborer with 10 years of school. The drawback is that career paths are also more structured than in the US and take a long time. Want to start a painting business? Better get your Meisterbrief first and that will take a good while. Here in the US things are more fluid, which leads to people changing careers and going back to school at a later age more willingly. The flipside is that almost everyone is an amateur and quality of work varies wildly.
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- rb2k_ 15y agoThere is even a mixture between the two. It was called "Berufsakademie" and recently renamed to "Duale Hochschule". It's basically a 50/50 split between studying at a college and working at a company. The company usually pays the study fees and public transport ticket as well as a somewhat limited but ok salary. The split is usually divided into 'sprints' of ?5? weeks of work followed by ?5? weeks of university. Here's some of their marketing material: DHBW possesses the unique characteristic of consistently and deliberately combining academic study with applied learning in the professional world. With this strategy, DHBW provides a route to sought-after academic qualifications while enabling students to gain extensive practical experience. This foundation equips DHBW students and graduates to take on challenging tasks early in their professional careers, helping to launch them on successful career paths.
- bobbywilson0 15y agoCorey Haines has done this with software development. In a similar fashion working for room and board. Which turns out to be a great deal for the company and I assume great experience for Corey.
- kragen 15y agoHe has a blog at http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/ http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/ but I don't see where he talks about programming for room and board.
- wazoox 15y agoIn France there is a related system, "les Compagnons du devoir". However, it exists for carpenters, masons, sculptors, bakers, etc. Almost all hand crafts, in fact. They must travel around the country to learn their craft, and present a "masterpiece" as a proof they master it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France
- fleitz 15y agoInteresting article, it's one of the directions I want to take with Answer in 30. We're very people focused so I think it's essential to be out and about with the 99% of people who aren't tech startups, getting work, getting to know our customers and seeing how our product can make their lives better and businesses more successful. I want to take a van and travel North America working on the startup and talking to our userbase and customers. What could be better from a community management perspective than to get a visit personally from the founders. I think it says a lot more than some silly badge you can display on your profile.
- WA 15y agoFunny, I have seen these guys in a bar a few months ago (in Germany). I didn't talk to them. However, that would've been interesting I guess. Anyways, interesting story.