6 ms·

Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that what should be happening is appren

by rswail 6y ago

Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession. I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that what should be happening is apprenticeships. If "industry is crying out for more people", then it should be investing in that in the same way it does in every other part of the supply chain. They should be hiring and training programmers, not externalizing their costs.

nikanj 6y ago
Junior programmers suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Why waste $$ training juniors, when for a fraction of that $$ you can poach a ready-trained senior from the company next door? Every company wants someone else to take apprentices and carry the burden of on-the-job training
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Also tragedy of the commons: Why invest in training when you can expect employees to get poached by the company next door in only 1-2 years?
  - bennysonething 6y ago
    Most of the poaching happens (well to me anyway) because the jobs became unbearable. And because it was the only way to get decent salary increases.
    - nikanj 6y ago
      It's easier to afford bigger salaries for seniors if you don't have to carry the budget burden of unproductive juniors
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  I did work briefly work for a small consultancy that decided to take on juniors, even though it was anticipated that for probably a year they woudln't be billing enough to cover their salary; because there weren't a lot of qualified applicants anyway where we were located, and as a sort of intentional public service to help people get into the field (especially underrepresented people etc). Of course, the most skilled juniors quickly left for higher paying jobs elsewhere around when they started to actually make back their salaries in billing. There were no hard feelings, the company knew that could happen and could afford it, and of course, why wouldn't they? (I mean, I guess it was hoped that sometimes they would prefer working for the consultancy for a while). But it was a kind of experiment, and indeed the experiment showed it was not really a sustainable model, I think they stopped doing that.
  - mcculley 6y ago
    I also did this with my consultancy along with reimbursing employees for passing certifications and paying for tuition. Three of them work for Microsoft now and one works for Amazon. Others are at other big firms. I don't regret how I invested in them and I think it is great that they are doing so well in their careers, but I will not make an unsecured investment like that again.
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      Yup. I guess one way to "secure" it would be to try to make them promise to keep working for you for a certain amount of time, but even if there's a legal way to do it, that just seems icky, who wants to force people to keep working for you when they don't want to, or the environment that will come from working with people who would rather be somewhere else but are being forced to stay. That's not a good solution.
      - wyclif 6y ago
        In a standard tuition reimbursement situation, you have to stay at the company (even if you don't want to) and maintain a certain grade point average. Why can't software companies adjust to this but other kinds of employees can?
    - wyclif 6y ago
      It's sad to read comments like yours because I'm a junior dev myself. I can't blame you, though, because as I pointed out above, it's all due to perverse incentives in this industry.
      - polishdude20 6y ago
        This must be why I don't see many junior dev jobs on HN or many other places. The software industry is very lucrative IF you're not a junior.
  - wyclif 6y ago
    The problem, which I've commented on and experienced many times, is that companies don't have enough incentive to fund training of junior developers. In a culture where devs switch jobs every 2-3 years, there doesn't seem to be enough runway to train a junior to senior level before they get poached. I wish there was a realistic solution to this problem other than bootcamps, but I don't know what it could be.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think junior salaries need to come down a little bit (or senior salaries need to go up). When I was a Junior, I was making about 75% of a Senior role. There was no way I was worth 75% of a senior role. Better to have a true Junior role with lower salary, lower bar to entry, and more mentorship.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  That's why there's a vesting schedule and stock compensation for engineers. Unless you are Netflix and can attract and afford world wide talent, if you have no bonus or stock compensation you are much better hiring contractors for software.
jacobion 6y ago
The way apprenticeships traditionally worked is that the apprentice was bound to the master for a certain number of years, and his parents also often had to pay to have him taken on. The tension between needing trained labour, but not wanting your trained labour to walk out the door and seek employment elsewhere (literal meaning of 'journeyman') was resolved firstly by extremely severe constraints on the apprentice and his freedom, and secondly by pretty severe regulation of the master, to ensure quality of training, and prevent exploitation. In practice there still was a lot of exploitation. Today neither employers not bootcamps would be able to take on risk/exert control over the apprentice's career to the extent optimal from a strictly economic point of view. You can look at the service-for-education deals offered by the military (for both low-skilled and highly skilled people) to get an example - no other organizations would be allowed to restrict a trainee's liberty to the same extent. While I don't agree with the moral spin that is sometimes put on this of 'greedy juniors' getting trained up and then abandoning their benefactors for higher salaries, this is a real collective action problem, not just shortsightedness in behalf of employers.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  I don't think we need to look at apprenticeships through a lens that is quite out of date. For example you can look at the apprenticeship schemes in the UK: https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/ https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    This only works with a lot of government support. If you don’t have the government’s ok to take more of the trainee’s surplus in year three than you could if they could just leave why bother training them in year one or two when they’re bloody useless or of marginal value? Unpaid internships exist for the same economic reason; for a long time in many fields the training being provided is worth more than the labour of the trainee. If you can’t get a return from the training why bother? That’s where the government comes in, either by allowing those kinds of contracts or by mandating apprenticeships or levying industry wide “taxes” so everyone pays for trainees’ development and gets the return from it more or less equally. Otherwise the logical thing to do is let someone else pay for the training and then immediately hire away the trainees without paying the costs of the training.
degrews 6y ago
I agree, but I think that in order for that to work, we would have to accept much lower salaries for junior/apprentice engineers (until they've proven they can add value). And maybe also a higher tolerance for firing engineers who are not working out early. As it is, I'm not surprised companies are reluctant to bet on the potential of untrained engineers, _and_ the chance that they'll stick around long enough to make the investment worthwhile. I'm sure there are a lot of inexperienced, uncredentialed engineers out there who would take a low-paying job with a significant chance of getting fired in 3 months. I was one of them. The alternative is to not get hired at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- confidantlake 6y ago
  I agree completely with this! There is no real onramp for junior people. Personal anecedote incoming... feel free to skip. For example my brother is a talented person with devops/sys admin/cloud skills. As someone who is more in the pure coding side of things, I go to him often with questions in his area. He has been tech oriented since a young age. He is also 30 with no comp sci degree and no work history besides driving Uber. No company would take a chance on someone like that if they have to pay a huge salary for it. But for a startup it would be a perfect moneyball opportunity to pay like $25 an hour or whatever. If he works out great you got a smart productive person for a cheap salary. It is a huge win. If not, dump him and try with someone else.
908B64B197 6y ago
> industry is crying out for more people At a certain price-point they are. > Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession Sure. Learning to code is pretty much a trade at this point. Engineering isn't. There's a pretty big gap between a real engineer and someone who "learned to code" in high school.

by rswail 6y ago

nikanj 6y ago

Junior programmers suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Why waste $$ training juniors, when for a fraction of that $$ you can poach a ready-trained senior from the company next door? Every company wants someone else to take apprentices and carry the burden of on-the-job training

brandmeyer 6y ago
Also tragedy of the commons: Why invest in training when you can expect employees to get poached by the company next door in only 1-2 years?
- bennysonething 6y ago
  Most of the poaching happens (well to me anyway) because the jobs became unbearable. And because it was the only way to get decent salary increases.
  - nikanj 6y ago
    It's easier to afford bigger salaries for seniors if you don't have to carry the budget burden of unproductive juniors
jrochkind1 6y ago
I did work briefly work for a small consultancy that decided to take on juniors, even though it was anticipated that for probably a year they woudln't be billing enough to cover their salary; because there weren't a lot of qualified applicants anyway where we were located, and as a sort of intentional public service to help people get into the field (especially underrepresented people etc). Of course, the most skilled juniors quickly left for higher paying jobs elsewhere around when they started to actually make back their salaries in billing. There were no hard feelings, the company knew that could happen and could afford it, and of course, why wouldn't they? (I mean, I guess it was hoped that sometimes they would prefer working for the consultancy for a while). But it was a kind of experiment, and indeed the experiment showed it was not really a sustainable model, I think they stopped doing that.
- mcculley 6y ago
  I also did this with my consultancy along with reimbursing employees for passing certifications and paying for tuition. Three of them work for Microsoft now and one works for Amazon. Others are at other big firms. I don't regret how I invested in them and I think it is great that they are doing so well in their careers, but I will not make an unsecured investment like that again.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    Yup. I guess one way to "secure" it would be to try to make them promise to keep working for you for a certain amount of time, but even if there's a legal way to do it, that just seems icky, who wants to force people to keep working for you when they don't want to, or the environment that will come from working with people who would rather be somewhere else but are being forced to stay. That's not a good solution.
    - wyclif 6y ago
      In a standard tuition reimbursement situation, you have to stay at the company (even if you don't want to) and maintain a certain grade point average. Why can't software companies adjust to this but other kinds of employees can?
  - wyclif 6y ago
    It's sad to read comments like yours because I'm a junior dev myself. I can't blame you, though, because as I pointed out above, it's all due to perverse incentives in this industry.
    - polishdude20 6y ago
      This must be why I don't see many junior dev jobs on HN or many other places. The software industry is very lucrative IF you're not a junior.
- wyclif 6y ago
  The problem, which I've commented on and experienced many times, is that companies don't have enough incentive to fund training of junior developers. In a culture where devs switch jobs every 2-3 years, there doesn't seem to be enough runway to train a junior to senior level before they get poached. I wish there was a realistic solution to this problem other than bootcamps, but I don't know what it could be.
confidantlake 6y ago
This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think junior salaries need to come down a little bit (or senior salaries need to go up). When I was a Junior, I was making about 75% of a Senior role. There was no way I was worth 75% of a senior role. Better to have a true Junior role with lower salary, lower bar to entry, and more mentorship.
908B64B197 6y ago
That's why there's a vesting schedule and stock compensation for engineers. Unless you are Netflix and can attract and afford world wide talent, if you have no bonus or stock compensation you are much better hiring contractors for software.

jacobion 6y ago

The way apprenticeships traditionally worked is that the apprentice was bound to the master for a certain number of years, and his parents also often had to pay to have him taken on. The tension between needing trained labour, but not wanting your trained labour to walk out the door and seek employment elsewhere (literal meaning of 'journeyman') was resolved firstly by extremely severe constraints on the apprentice and his freedom, and secondly by pretty severe regulation of the master, to ensure quality of training, and prevent exploitation. In practice there still was a lot of exploitation. Today neither employers not bootcamps would be able to take on risk/exert control over the apprentice's career to the extent optimal from a strictly economic point of view. You can look at the service-for-education deals offered by the military (for both low-skilled and highly skilled people) to get an example - no other organizations would be allowed to restrict a trainee's liberty to the same extent. While I don't agree with the moral spin that is sometimes put on this of 'greedy juniors' getting trained up and then abandoning their benefactors for higher salaries, this is a real collective action problem, not just shortsightedness in behalf of employers.

meheleventyone 6y ago
I don't think we need to look at apprenticeships through a lens that is quite out of date. For example you can look at the apprenticeship schemes in the UK: https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/ https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  This only works with a lot of government support. If you don’t have the government’s ok to take more of the trainee’s surplus in year three than you could if they could just leave why bother training them in year one or two when they’re bloody useless or of marginal value? Unpaid internships exist for the same economic reason; for a long time in many fields the training being provided is worth more than the labour of the trainee. If you can’t get a return from the training why bother? That’s where the government comes in, either by allowing those kinds of contracts or by mandating apprenticeships or levying industry wide “taxes” so everyone pays for trainees’ development and gets the return from it more or less equally. Otherwise the logical thing to do is let someone else pay for the training and then immediately hire away the trainees without paying the costs of the training.

degrews 6y ago

I agree, but I think that in order for that to work, we would have to accept much lower salaries for junior/apprentice engineers (until they've proven they can add value). And maybe also a higher tolerance for firing engineers who are not working out early. As it is, I'm not surprised companies are reluctant to bet on the potential of untrained engineers, _and_ the chance that they'll stick around long enough to make the investment worthwhile. I'm sure there are a lot of inexperienced, uncredentialed engineers out there who would take a low-paying job with a significant chance of getting fired in 3 months. I was one of them. The alternative is to not get hired at all.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
confidantlake 6y ago
I agree completely with this! There is no real onramp for junior people. Personal anecedote incoming... feel free to skip. For example my brother is a talented person with devops/sys admin/cloud skills. As someone who is more in the pure coding side of things, I go to him often with questions in his area. He has been tech oriented since a young age. He is also 30 with no comp sci degree and no work history besides driving Uber. No company would take a chance on someone like that if they have to pay a huge salary for it. But for a startup it would be a perfect moneyball opportunity to pay like $25 an hour or whatever. If he works out great you got a smart productive person for a cheap salary. It is a huge win. If not, dump him and try with someone else.

908B64B197 6y ago

> industry is crying out for more people At a certain price-point they are. > Learning to program is more like an old fashioned trade than a profession Sure. Learning to code is pretty much a trade at this point. Engineering isn't. There's a pretty big gap between a real engineer and someone who "learned to code" in high school.