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Imagine you offered a job position of "software apprentice" and say you got a thousand responses. How would you identify the ones that would be worth gambling o

by ig1 15y ago

Imagine you offered a job position of "software apprentice" and say you got a thousand responses. How would you identify the ones that would be worth gambling on ? - there would be little to nothing to differentiate candidates. By and large you'll have candidates who didn't do well at school (because those who do well at school tend to go to university), have never done anything to show that they're capable of long term commitment, and have never done anything significantly intellectually challenging. CS & SE courses at top universities which get to have the pick of the best students still have a first year drop-out rate of 10-20%. Any company offering software apprenticeships can expect to suffer huge drop-out rates with minimal upside.

ohyes 15y ago
How is that different from any other job application? The job will clearly go to the boss's nephew, who is totally great at computer stuff because he plays so much WoW. (Though it is a well known fact that the best middle management comes from Eve Online). Seriously, you will generally want to look for people who are intelligent and good at abstract thinking. In my biased opinion, you should be shooting for the best humanities majors (In disciplines like English, music, philosophy and math), as the targets of such an apprenticeship. Not high-school graduates. Until it catches on, your competition for employing them will be Starbucks and grad school which means they will be a steal compared to programmers trained at Stanford or MIT (TM). A liberal arts major would be pleased to be making 30-40k a year out of school. Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. If it then catches on, you might be able to expand to people who are interested in making programming a career, then you might be able to catch some of the Currently, CS courses at top universities have very little to do with the business of actually programming, they are more based on mathematical theory. SE courses tend to look more like 'software engineering management.' In each discipline, you learn important skills... but they tend to have very little to do with the craft of sitting down at a computer and making your thoughts into working code. (I have a master of science in computer science, I learned many things that made me a better coder, but the degree didn't teach me to code, work experience did).
- gaius 15y ago
  Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. I'm guessing you're in a right-to-work state, in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard. Hiring someone who "just doesn't work out" is a huge risk for an organization that can't afford to shuffle them off into a "VP of Paperclips" position.
  - arethuza 15y ago
    "in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard" It certainly isn't difficult to fire people in the UK providing they haven't been working for you for too long (it's either six months or a year). Other countries in the EU can be a nightmare though.
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Typically it's laid off or terminated without cause, in which case the person gets unemployment, the business takes a hit on their unemployment insurance but it's typically no hassle as long as it wasn't for a reason that's explicitly against the law, like discrimination. "Terminated with cause" avoids the hit in unemployment insurance to the business, the person doesn't get to collect, but they can sue you for wrongful term if it really should have been the first category -- here's where you need to document gross negligence.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    Do they not have contract to hire in the EU?
- munin 15y ago
  > Currently, CS courses at top universities have very little to do with the business of actually programming, they are more based on mathematical theory. SE courses tend to look more like 'software engineering management.' Where does this meme come from? If you get a CS degree from CMU, you are going to program your ass off. You are going to write at least one of a compiler, a HTTP proxy, or an OS kernel from scratch (and if you choose to, you will write all three) as well as countless smaller applications (your own heap allocator, your own shell, etc). I didn't go to CMU and those are the project I know about. At UMD, the curriculum will have you spending most of your time, again, programming your ass off. I don't think there's a single class where you'll spend more time on "mathematical theory" than on programming.

by ig1 15y ago

ohyes 15y ago

How is that different from any other job application? The job will clearly go to the boss's nephew, who is totally great at computer stuff because he plays so much WoW. (Though it is a well known fact that the best middle management comes from Eve Online). Seriously, you will generally want to look for people who are intelligent and good at abstract thinking. In my biased opinion, you should be shooting for the best humanities majors (In disciplines like English, music, philosophy and math), as the targets of such an apprenticeship. Not high-school graduates. Until it catches on, your competition for employing them will be Starbucks and grad school which means they will be a steal compared to programmers trained at Stanford or MIT (TM). A liberal arts major would be pleased to be making 30-40k a year out of school. Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. If it then catches on, you might be able to expand to people who are interested in making programming a career, then you might be able to catch some of the Currently, CS courses at top universities have very little to do with the business of actually programming, they are more based on mathematical theory. SE courses tend to look more like 'software engineering management.' In each discipline, you learn important skills... but they tend to have very little to do with the craft of sitting down at a computer and making your thoughts into working code. (I have a master of science in computer science, I learned many things that made me a better coder, but the degree didn't teach me to code, work experience did).

gaius 15y ago
Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. I'm guessing you're in a right-to-work state, in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard. Hiring someone who "just doesn't work out" is a huge risk for an organization that can't afford to shuffle them off into a "VP of Paperclips" position.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard" It certainly isn't difficult to fire people in the UK providing they haven't been working for you for too long (it's either six months or a year). Other countries in the EU can be a nightmare though.
- jbooth 15y ago
  Typically it's laid off or terminated without cause, in which case the person gets unemployment, the business takes a hit on their unemployment insurance but it's typically no hassle as long as it wasn't for a reason that's explicitly against the law, like discrimination. "Terminated with cause" avoids the hit in unemployment insurance to the business, the person doesn't get to collect, but they can sue you for wrongful term if it really should have been the first category -- here's where you need to document gross negligence.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  Do they not have contract to hire in the EU?
munin 15y ago
> Currently, CS courses at top universities have very little to do with the business of actually programming, they are more based on mathematical theory. SE courses tend to look more like 'software engineering management.' Where does this meme come from? If you get a CS degree from CMU, you are going to program your ass off. You are going to write at least one of a compiler, a HTTP proxy, or an OS kernel from scratch (and if you choose to, you will write all three) as well as countless smaller applications (your own heap allocator, your own shell, etc). I didn't go to CMU and those are the project I know about. At UMD, the curriculum will have you spending most of your time, again, programming your ass off. I don't think there's a single class where you'll spend more time on "mathematical theory" than on programming.