7 ms·

The Rising Appeal of Apprenticeship

72 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

micheljansen 11y ago
Apprenticeships are surprisingly suitable for highly skilled professions as well. I work at a creative agency in London and we started taking in apprentices a few years ago, with great success. In my opinion, apprenticeships work best for people who either already know they are interested in a particular craft and want to specialise quickly or for people who don't know what they want at all and want to try out a career before committing. I work in UX myself and while there is definitely a place for solid theoretical foundations, I have found that it's a field that develops so quickly that experience is much more important than knowledge. Because of this, it's very suitable for the kind of on the job training that apprenticeships offer. Personally, I loved every minute I spent in an academic environment at university. I know it shaped my thinking and personality in very real ways and I enjoyed the freedom of doing research without direct applications (while getting my practical fix through part time jobs on the side). If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea because you are more practical, you can totally skip it if you can get a relevant apprenticeship with solid mentorship and genuine job opportunity at the end of it. I work with two people who entered in apprenticeships at my company instead of going to university (saving a load of cash) and they both have since been offered permanent positions. I don't know how their long term career prospects are, but I would definitely hire them over a recent graduate with 0 years of experience under their belt.
- 49531 11y ago
  You can definitely be an effective professional software engineer via apprenticeship. For me, being able to get into the workforce and then double back via the university to get more fundamental / theoretical training in computer science was much preferable to taking the traditional route.
- pstadler 11y ago
  In Switzerland it's common to start an apprenticeship after 9 years of school if you have an idea what you want to do. Turning just sweet sixteen I did one myself as an "Application Developer" in the airline industry. This lasted four years and gave me some kind of diploma - not exactly a degree in CS, but I gained enough experience to get a well paid job with some responsibilities afterwards. During the apprenticeship the salary is more or less symbolic. Now at the age of 30 I've almost 10 years of experience in the real world, and never had any debt to pay off (although higher education is also very affordable in Switzerland). The nature of software engineering (e.g. contributing to open source projects, learning by doing, etc.), a sense of responsibility and a natural hunger for wisdom is in my experience enough material for a good position. Many of my friends, including myself, never did a bachelor or master degree but became great engineers and project leaders nevertheless. What often matters more than deep theoretical understanding is actually doing things such as dealing with pressure, deadlines and customers, getting along with a team and solving complex problems in an pragmatic way, because that's what actually happens in most of the jobs. I don't say this is the better way to go, instead I want to say that having a certain academic degree should not be seen as the only promising career path.
  - fla 11y ago
    Same here. It works really well if you are passionate about what you do.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  I was a high school teacher in a past life and always felt like apprenticeship would be an excellent model to replace the very-much-flawed teaching credentialing system.
roymurdock 11y ago
I have an old, 1970's era mechanical watch that I've been trying to repair recently. I called around a couple of stores in the area (Boston) and many of the clock/watch shops have backlogs anywhere from 8 weeks to 8 months. They were all basically family-run (old husband/wife couples) and most said they were struggling to keep up with demand and that there were simply no young men entering the business. The one guy who had an apprentice later clarified that his apprentice had been working for him for 20 years! I wonder how/if tech might be applied to these craft-heavy markets to make things more efficient.
- progmanal 11y ago
  Or they could raise prices.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Open case. Dump out the cams, cogs, and gears. Insert custom PCB, e-ink display, battery, and user input devices. The 555 was first sold in 1971. Why the hell would you still rely on complex mechanical linkages to track the time when you could just start believing that digital watches really are a pretty neat idea instead?
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    They work without electricity.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      There is a very high correlation between needing to know the exact time of day and having easy, commoditized access to electricity. If you don't have electricity, and you are not navigating an antique wind-powered ship, you probably don't need a mechanical timepiece. Also, I recall, from way back in the 1980s, a digital clock that was "powered by a potato", using zinc and copper probes. Even if we lost all grid power, and solar cells, and low-head hydro, we could still manage a zinc-copper cell battery. Didn't you see that episode of Breaking Bad?
  - 11y ago
aristus 11y ago
That's how I got my start: two unlikely ad-hoc apprenticeships in applied EE and CS. http://carlos.bueno.org/2013/06/apprenticeship.html http://carlos.bueno.org/2013/06/apprenticeship.html
abakker 11y ago
Hiring skilled labor in the cabinet business is quite difficult, also. In many ways, our industry now relies on what are essentially apprenticeships where you start as a basic worker and learn skills on the job. Unfortunately, the "learn skills on the job" isn't necessarily part of the employment contract, but an unspoken perk. And the employers frequently need part-time work, or can't afford to maintain full-time employees under training. Having a system that produced trained woodworkers would make this labor market much better, since most small businesses can't really afford apprentices. They could, however, likely do well to have fully trained employees available. Of the handful of cabinet makers I know, all but one of them were hobbyist woodworkers first. The one who wasn't is Swiss where he grew up and was trained in cabinetmaking instead of university.
- dublinben 11y ago
  As usual, it sounds like employers are unwilling to actually pay to train their employees, but still expect all prospective employees to have real-world training. This applies to pretty much every industry right now, the skilled trades are no different.
abakker 11y ago
If anyone is interested in some vocational training in metal fabrication, check out The Fab School - http://thefabschool.com http://thefabschool.com I've not seen any equivalent programs in the US for woodworking.
beat 11y ago
My daughter is doing informal apprenticeship toward being a chef, working as a line cook under a famous chef. It's a better learning experience than culinary school, and she's getting paid rather than paying for it!
chipgap98 11y ago
I think it would be interesting to see apprenticeships become more popular as a post college option. As someone who just graduated and is seeing friends struggle to have enough experience for entry level positions, it would be cool to have opportunities to do this in a variety of industries like tech, finance, ect.
mildweed 11y ago
Years ago I wanted to make an apprenticeship locator / pairing service website. It also was going to have apprenticeship certification mixed in there. I believe apprenticeships done well can replace the majority of (but certainly not all) college degrees. Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!). So many fields, it would probably be better: advertising, insurance, journalism, programming. If anybody wants to take this and run with it, please do. Just hit me up to brainstorm at some point, I'd love to flesh out the idea more with like-minded entrepreneurs.
- dugditches 11y ago
  The blood of this Site has been 'streamlined' with Bootcamps. Who certifies these apprenticeships(assuming you're not talking about the Trades)? The typical Trades are typically handled by the State/Province. It's easier in Trades, where things are fairly static and there's set standards.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > It's easier in Trades, where things are fairly static and there's set standards. You obviously haven't been following the National Electric Code for the past ten or so years.
- eropple 11y ago
  > Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!). It could be good way to turn out trained people. Maybe, anyway; I have my doubts. But consider that training will never provide the same kind of endorsement as a liberal education--while reasonable, if perhaps short-sighted, people may disagree, for my money that's a worse endorsement for creating well-rounded people who can be dropped into a foreign situation and thrive. This criticism extends to the glorified tech-school approach of many bachelor-of-science degrees, thinking about it; I have a B.A. in computer science, not a B.S., and the most valuable classes I ever took, not just in my work life but my personal one, were microeconomics and political science. I wouldn't have had time to take either within a B.S. program.
bryang 11y ago
It makes quite a bit of sense to go back to more archaic learning methods. I don't mean that in a snarky way, but only for lack of a better term to describe very very old. Apprenticeships were how the average population learned prior to colleges becoming a normal thing. If you wanted to learn how to make chainmail, you had to get an apprenticeship with a blacksmith - learning was done on-the-job. You didn't go to college and learn how to make armor, farm, write literature and then just get whatever job when you got out. You started at a filthy young age in that one craft. Nowadays, college educations are worth basically nothing. You're not thought to be any smarter than the next guy and unless you go to a really well known institution that provides you esteem and wealthy connections, it's essentially just an advanced High School degree. The point I'm getting at is - and I've seen this in the occasional job search I've done - the Generalist role is dead. In theory, it makes sense, wouldn't 5 people with general knowledge more slowly build a worse product than 5 different experts? Experts are always wanted and that only comes through years of dedication to that craft. And you simply cannot get that in college. On a side note... I think College is just a 6 figure right-of-passage into adulthood and learning how to feed yourself, become responsible enough to wake up on time, and find good friends.
- Retric 11y ago
  The problem with Apprenticeships is they evolve slowly. AKA, you probably don't want to be a buggy whip apprentice. The real advantage of a high level generalist education is it enables on the job training. Someone with a 2.5 GPA from a reputable collage can do most jobs in the US with an additional 1 year of training. But, someone with a 8th grade education plus 8 years working as a landscaper is far more limited should say a back problem force them into a more sedentary occupation.
  - msandford 11y ago
    > Someone with a 2.5 GPA from a reputable collage can do most jobs in the US with an additional 1 year of training. Oh really? Which employers will pay to train you for a year?
    - 11y ago
fsloth 11y ago
And the wheel of history turns. The bleak view is that first industrialists got rid of the apprenticeship because they wanted to pay only skilled craftsmen. The need for craftmanship was reduced when processes where dehumanized through splitting work into trivial tasks and workers became - not masters of a trade - but replacable cogs in the machine. It's nice to see this becoming more mainstream again. Learning by doing - and observing skilled workers - is a great way to learn most of the practical aspects of a trade.
thirdtruck 11y ago
I would love to apprentice someone at my next job but please, theoretical future employer, leave me time and energy enough to actually train them.
Apocryphon 11y ago
So what's the state of apprenticeships in Silicon Valley? Certainly, there are internships galore, though how often do they actually provide training for the intern, as opposed to expecting that the intern already know everything aside from the specifics of the firm's codebase? And you normally are only an intern if you're a student, so.

72 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

Apprenticeships are surprisingly suitable for highly skilled professions as well. I work at a creative agency in London and we started taking in apprentices a few years ago, with great success. In my opinion, apprenticeships work best for people who either already know they are interested in a particular craft and want to specialise quickly or for people who don't know what they want at all and want to try out a career before committing. I work in UX myself and while there is definitely a place for solid theoretical foundations, I have found that it's a field that develops so quickly that experience is much more important than knowledge. Because of this, it's very suitable for the kind of on the job training that apprenticeships offer. Personally, I loved every minute I spent in an academic environment at university. I know it shaped my thinking and personality in very real ways and I enjoyed the freedom of doing research without direct applications (while getting my practical fix through part time jobs on the side). If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea because you are more practical, you can totally skip it if you can get a relevant apprenticeship with solid mentorship and genuine job opportunity at the end of it. I work with two people who entered in apprenticeships at my company instead of going to university (saving a load of cash) and they both have since been offered permanent positions. I don't know how their long term career prospects are, but I would definitely hire them over a recent graduate with 0 years of experience under their belt.

49531 11y ago
You can definitely be an effective professional software engineer via apprenticeship. For me, being able to get into the workforce and then double back via the university to get more fundamental / theoretical training in computer science was much preferable to taking the traditional route.
pstadler 11y ago
In Switzerland it's common to start an apprenticeship after 9 years of school if you have an idea what you want to do. Turning just sweet sixteen I did one myself as an "Application Developer" in the airline industry. This lasted four years and gave me some kind of diploma - not exactly a degree in CS, but I gained enough experience to get a well paid job with some responsibilities afterwards. During the apprenticeship the salary is more or less symbolic. Now at the age of 30 I've almost 10 years of experience in the real world, and never had any debt to pay off (although higher education is also very affordable in Switzerland). The nature of software engineering (e.g. contributing to open source projects, learning by doing, etc.), a sense of responsibility and a natural hunger for wisdom is in my experience enough material for a good position. Many of my friends, including myself, never did a bachelor or master degree but became great engineers and project leaders nevertheless. What often matters more than deep theoretical understanding is actually doing things such as dealing with pressure, deadlines and customers, getting along with a team and solving complex problems in an pragmatic way, because that's what actually happens in most of the jobs. I don't say this is the better way to go, instead I want to say that having a certain academic degree should not be seen as the only promising career path.
- fla 11y ago
  Same here. It works really well if you are passionate about what you do.
stevesearer 11y ago
I was a high school teacher in a past life and always felt like apprenticeship would be an excellent model to replace the very-much-flawed teaching credentialing system.

roymurdock 11y ago

I have an old, 1970's era mechanical watch that I've been trying to repair recently. I called around a couple of stores in the area (Boston) and many of the clock/watch shops have backlogs anywhere from 8 weeks to 8 months. They were all basically family-run (old husband/wife couples) and most said they were struggling to keep up with demand and that there were simply no young men entering the business. The one guy who had an apprentice later clarified that his apprentice had been working for him for 20 years! I wonder how/if tech might be applied to these craft-heavy markets to make things more efficient.

progmanal 11y ago
Or they could raise prices.
logfromblammo 11y ago
Open case. Dump out the cams, cogs, and gears. Insert custom PCB, e-ink display, battery, and user input devices. The 555 was first sold in 1971. Why the hell would you still rely on complex mechanical linkages to track the time when you could just start believing that digital watches really are a pretty neat idea instead?
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  They work without electricity.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    There is a very high correlation between needing to know the exact time of day and having easy, commoditized access to electricity. If you don't have electricity, and you are not navigating an antique wind-powered ship, you probably don't need a mechanical timepiece. Also, I recall, from way back in the 1980s, a digital clock that was "powered by a potato", using zinc and copper probes. Even if we lost all grid power, and solar cells, and low-head hydro, we could still manage a zinc-copper cell battery. Didn't you see that episode of Breaking Bad?
- 11y ago

aristus 11y ago

That's how I got my start: two unlikely ad-hoc apprenticeships in applied EE and CS. http://carlos.bueno.org/2013/06/apprenticeship.html http://carlos.bueno.org/2013/06/apprenticeship.html

abakker 11y ago

Hiring skilled labor in the cabinet business is quite difficult, also. In many ways, our industry now relies on what are essentially apprenticeships where you start as a basic worker and learn skills on the job. Unfortunately, the "learn skills on the job" isn't necessarily part of the employment contract, but an unspoken perk. And the employers frequently need part-time work, or can't afford to maintain full-time employees under training. Having a system that produced trained woodworkers would make this labor market much better, since most small businesses can't really afford apprentices. They could, however, likely do well to have fully trained employees available. Of the handful of cabinet makers I know, all but one of them were hobbyist woodworkers first. The one who wasn't is Swiss where he grew up and was trained in cabinetmaking instead of university.

dublinben 11y ago
As usual, it sounds like employers are unwilling to actually pay to train their employees, but still expect all prospective employees to have real-world training. This applies to pretty much every industry right now, the skilled trades are no different.

abakker 11y ago

If anyone is interested in some vocational training in metal fabrication, check out The Fab School - http://thefabschool.com http://thefabschool.com I've not seen any equivalent programs in the US for woodworking.

beat 11y ago

My daughter is doing informal apprenticeship toward being a chef, working as a line cook under a famous chef. It's a better learning experience than culinary school, and she's getting paid rather than paying for it!

chipgap98 11y ago

I think it would be interesting to see apprenticeships become more popular as a post college option. As someone who just graduated and is seeing friends struggle to have enough experience for entry level positions, it would be cool to have opportunities to do this in a variety of industries like tech, finance, ect.

mildweed 11y ago

Years ago I wanted to make an apprenticeship locator / pairing service website. It also was going to have apprenticeship certification mixed in there. I believe apprenticeships done well can replace the majority of (but certainly not all) college degrees. Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!). So many fields, it would probably be better: advertising, insurance, journalism, programming. If anybody wants to take this and run with it, please do. Just hit me up to brainstorm at some point, I'd love to flesh out the idea more with like-minded entrepreneurs.

dugditches 11y ago
The blood of this Site has been 'streamlined' with Bootcamps. Who certifies these apprenticeships(assuming you're not talking about the Trades)? The typical Trades are typically handled by the State/Province. It's easier in Trades, where things are fairly static and there's set standards.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > It's easier in Trades, where things are fairly static and there's set standards. You obviously haven't been following the National Electric Code for the past ten or so years.
eropple 11y ago
> Completing a certified apprenticeship should be as good of an endorsement as a college degree (or better!). It could be good way to turn out trained people. Maybe, anyway; I have my doubts. But consider that training will never provide the same kind of endorsement as a liberal education--while reasonable, if perhaps short-sighted, people may disagree, for my money that's a worse endorsement for creating well-rounded people who can be dropped into a foreign situation and thrive. This criticism extends to the glorified tech-school approach of many bachelor-of-science degrees, thinking about it; I have a B.A. in computer science, not a B.S., and the most valuable classes I ever took, not just in my work life but my personal one, were microeconomics and political science. I wouldn't have had time to take either within a B.S. program.

bryang 11y ago

It makes quite a bit of sense to go back to more archaic learning methods. I don't mean that in a snarky way, but only for lack of a better term to describe very very old. Apprenticeships were how the average population learned prior to colleges becoming a normal thing. If you wanted to learn how to make chainmail, you had to get an apprenticeship with a blacksmith - learning was done on-the-job. You didn't go to college and learn how to make armor, farm, write literature and then just get whatever job when you got out. You started at a filthy young age in that one craft. Nowadays, college educations are worth basically nothing. You're not thought to be any smarter than the next guy and unless you go to a really well known institution that provides you esteem and wealthy connections, it's essentially just an advanced High School degree. The point I'm getting at is - and I've seen this in the occasional job search I've done - the Generalist role is dead. In theory, it makes sense, wouldn't 5 people with general knowledge more slowly build a worse product than 5 different experts? Experts are always wanted and that only comes through years of dedication to that craft. And you simply cannot get that in college. On a side note... I think College is just a 6 figure right-of-passage into adulthood and learning how to feed yourself, become responsible enough to wake up on time, and find good friends.

Retric 11y ago
The problem with Apprenticeships is they evolve slowly. AKA, you probably don't want to be a buggy whip apprentice. The real advantage of a high level generalist education is it enables on the job training. Someone with a 2.5 GPA from a reputable collage can do most jobs in the US with an additional 1 year of training. But, someone with a 8th grade education plus 8 years working as a landscaper is far more limited should say a back problem force them into a more sedentary occupation.
- msandford 11y ago
  > Someone with a 2.5 GPA from a reputable collage can do most jobs in the US with an additional 1 year of training. Oh really? Which employers will pay to train you for a year?
  - 11y ago

fsloth 11y ago

And the wheel of history turns. The bleak view is that first industrialists got rid of the apprenticeship because they wanted to pay only skilled craftsmen. The need for craftmanship was reduced when processes where dehumanized through splitting work into trivial tasks and workers became - not masters of a trade - but replacable cogs in the machine. It's nice to see this becoming more mainstream again. Learning by doing - and observing skilled workers - is a great way to learn most of the practical aspects of a trade.

thirdtruck 11y ago

I would love to apprentice someone at my next job but please, theoretical future employer, leave me time and energy enough to actually train them.

Apocryphon 11y ago

So what's the state of apprenticeships in Silicon Valley? Certainly, there are internships galore, though how often do they actually provide training for the intern, as opposed to expecting that the intern already know everything aside from the specifics of the firm's codebase? And you normally are only an intern if you're a student, so.