I have often wondered at the lack of apprenticeship programs in our industry. We use unpaid interns at my day job and they basically sit on the other side of t

I have often wondered at the lack of apprenticeship programs in our industry. We use unpaid interns at my day job and they basically sit on the other side of the building do whatever odd jobs management can come up for them to work on, instead of actually learning the specifics of what we do. The one intern that we ended up hiring full time has slowly started working towards picking up development skills, but it's definitely secondary to his other duties, even though it would benefit the agency considerably if we could get him up to speed. I understand companies don't want to invest in people if they are just going to leave, but on the other hand they spend so much money trying to find good talent. I suppose you would have to take steps once they are up to speed to make sure you're paying them enough to keep them around. If I knew that a company had really invested in me and gotten me to where I am, I would be more willing to stick around, certainly more so than for a company who hasn't really invested in me (conferences, bootcamps, books, etc).