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Tech Companies Try Apprenticeships To Fill The Tech Skills Gap (thehill.com)
Slashdot reader jonyen writes: For generations, apprenticeships have been the way of working life; master craftsmen taking apprentices under their wing, teaching them the tools of the trade. This declined during the Industrial Revolution as the advent of the assembly line enabled mass employment for unskilled laborers. The master-apprentice model went further out of focus as higher education and formal training became increasingly more valuable.
Fast forward to the 21st century, where employers are turning back the page to apprenticeships in an effort to fill a growing skills gap in the labor force in the digital age. Code.org estimates there will be a million unfulfilled tech jobs by 2020.
jonyen shared this article by IBM's Vice President of Talent:IBM is committed to addressing this shortage and recently launched an apprenticeship program registered with the US Department of Labor, with a plan to have 100 apprentices in 2018. ... Other firms have taken up the apprenticeship challenge as well. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example, has called for creating 5 million American apprentices in the next five years.
An apprenticeship offers the chance for Americans to get the formal education they need, whether through a traditional university, a community college or a trade school, while getting something else: On-the-job experience and an income... Right now, there are more than 6 million jobs in the U.S. that are going unfilled because employers can't find candidates with the right skills, according to the Labor Department.
IBM says their apprentices "are on their way to becoming software developers in our Cloud business and mainframe administrators for technologies like Blockchain, and we will add new apprenticeships in data analytics and cybersecurity as we replicate the program across the U.S."
"Ninety-one percent of apprentices in the U.S. find employment after completing their program, and their average starting wage is above $60,000."
Fast forward to the 21st century, where employers are turning back the page to apprenticeships in an effort to fill a growing skills gap in the labor force in the digital age. Code.org estimates there will be a million unfulfilled tech jobs by 2020.
jonyen shared this article by IBM's Vice President of Talent:IBM is committed to addressing this shortage and recently launched an apprenticeship program registered with the US Department of Labor, with a plan to have 100 apprentices in 2018. ... Other firms have taken up the apprenticeship challenge as well. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, for example, has called for creating 5 million American apprentices in the next five years.
An apprenticeship offers the chance for Americans to get the formal education they need, whether through a traditional university, a community college or a trade school, while getting something else: On-the-job experience and an income... Right now, there are more than 6 million jobs in the U.S. that are going unfilled because employers can't find candidates with the right skills, according to the Labor Department.
IBM says their apprentices "are on their way to becoming software developers in our Cloud business and mainframe administrators for technologies like Blockchain, and we will add new apprenticeships in data analytics and cybersecurity as we replicate the program across the U.S."
"Ninety-one percent of apprentices in the U.S. find employment after completing their program, and their average starting wage is above $60,000."
So a work experience program? This is nothing new.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
For generations, slavery have been the way of working life. Because that's what apprenticeships is about; not paying people.
Good luck living on this in Silicon Valley. Welcome to the world of the working poor.
Quite frankly, it's getting ridiculous. This is, by the way, also the reason why you can't find tech workers. Why bother learning something when you can make more money in management?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It took them until *6 million* unfilled jobs to figure out this might be a good idea?
how about they stop lobbying for tax cuts that gut funding to public Universities? When I was a kid a year of college was $1500, now it's $11,000 for the first 2 years and $15,000 for the last two. That's a direct result of funding cuts. I remember reading about what the cost of college was going to be in 20 years in my school's newspaper and being glad I wouldn't have to pay it, being too young and naive to realize I'd have a kid someday.
Besides, this entire thing makes me nervous. I can't imagine they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I'm too tired right now to bother figuring what the angle is on this but I'm sure there is one. About the only other thing that's kept pace with rising educational costs is my cynicism levels.
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Yet another attempt at producing more workers without doing the one thing that is guaranteed to work: raise salaries.
Alternatively, they could nix the employee abuse: no more mandatory long hours because sales committed them to a deadline without even bothering to get an estimate on how long it will take. No more shenanigans like adding more work to the plan every time the team is ahead or even on schedule.
Or hows about encouraging employee loyalty by offering, I dunno, pensions? Or meaningful employee stock ownership programs?
Nope, all reasonable options are dismissed out-of-hand. This pie is OURS and we WILL NOT SHARE IT with the likes of you. We will just keep pushing the education agenda...with enough workers in the field we will have all the power and you will have none, which is as it should be.
There are millions of skilled tech workers who are willing to work, able to work, and who cannot find work because companies post FAKE JOBS and REFUSE TO HIRE.
Stop posting FAKE JOBS.
Start HIRING.
Right now, there are more than 6 million jobs in the U.S. that are going unfilled because employers can't find candidates with the right skills, according to the Labor Department.
Bullshit.
I'd like to say that IBM has been lying about shortages of skilled people for many years and in the meantime, laid people off - SKILLED people like myself - and sent the jobs to India.
The happiest day of my life was when my science gifted daughter said, "Daddy, I'm going into medicine."
I took "shitty haiku 101", then I'm taking "sprinkling amazon affiliate links everywhere", and "being an obnoxious turd" as an elective.
R.I.P. Malcolm Young, founding member of AC/DC. Rocked the world for forty years. Sad.
Basically, apprenticeship is a fancy way of saying that the company is willing to give a person on the job training for an associate level position. That is not new. That's how things were 10 years ago before the stupid Great Recession. We're just returning to that model. I can tell you from working at very successful companies that this worked in the past. The only reason companies ditched it was to cut costs. Now they're just bringing it back essentially under a new name.
We'll make great pets
Almost all of their job openings for external candidates in engineering seemed to be for what they called NCG's (new college graduates). The only openings for "mid career" engineers seemed to be for hot specialties like IT security, or (hot at the time) Hadoop devs.
All the starter jobs went oversea's so people no longer want to work in tech, And of course after you hit 40 you are to old to work tech.
Firstly, with open source software no need to pay so many developers. Just grab the software and have a few developers customize it a little.
Secondly, with the modern cloud offerings no need to pay so many IT people. Just have one or two handle it.
So, why pay extravagant salaries for them?
Being a mid-career techie, I often find myself in a teaching role because our department takes in a few new grads once in a while. I really enjoy doing it and am happy that I can pass knowledge down so people don't have to learn things the hard way. Having a CS degree or a technical certification from a vendor is only one predictor of success. The vast majority of IT jobs could be taught in the apprenticeship model, and I think most would benefit from it.
I'm very skeptical of IBM doing this just because they've spent the last decade sending every US technical job they could to India. But, one thing I think they might be seeing is that IT and technology isn't just a cool add-on to the world around us...it needs to be treated more like a utility, at least for core systems. That's the big difference...cowboy-coded phone apps with parts written in 11 cool new JavaScript frameworks are very different from things that control life-safety systems and process mundane stuff like payroll that must run no matter what.
An apprenticeship that allows a new hire to come in contact with a broad range of new and old, exciting and boring stuff would make a very well-rounded technician level worker who can provide competent help. IBM's still printing money with their mainframe business and they see that mainframers are retiring...maybe this is a good way to get new recruits. Even if IBM has 50,000 new grads in India who will learn whatever they're told to, having someone domestically who's under 60 and understands what customers need can only help.
IT folks and developers walk a fine line deciding what to learn and what to specialize in. Rightfully so, they're worried that if they take time off to go down this path or that, they'll miss out on something else and no longer be the top resume on the pile because they're not doing new shiny stuff. Maybe apprenticeships can fix some of that.
Apprenticeship has always been - an continues to be - one of the cornerstones of Germanys economical success.
See somewhat older here: https://www.ft.com/content/1a82e8e0-04cf-11e7-aa5b-6bb07f5c8e12
Seems like some kind of progress if you ask me... Before this they used H1B visas to mass import people with skill sets so basic they were the equivalent of a random person taken off the street and put trough a 3-6 month long training program and now they seem to have moved to doing just that.
However knowing the greedy bastards that run IBM and Salesforce the reason they're doing this is mostly because the Trump administration is now actually trying to ensure that the H1B program is run the way it was always supposed to be run (one of the few good things he's doing) and offering ridiculous tax breaks to companies who put up some token hiring effort.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Almost every programming job will have different domain skills from the next one. That's something you more or less have to learn on the job.
However, when I look to younger programmers now many are missing what I consider core skills: understanding time complexities. Being able to synthesize novel algorithms suitable for the problem in question. Not all are like that, but probably 80-90%, because they seemed to be taught with "frameworks", where what the framework was actually doing is opaque to them. They don't understand if the thing they are using is a really poor fit for the problem. They'll happily put a super heavyweight thing doing scads of dynamic memory allocations inside the inner loop of a performance critical part of the application - because that thing works on magic! They don't realize why the one line they added just tanked performance ("but it's just one line of code!").
Sure, let's train people on domain skills on the job. Well and good. We also need programmers whose skill extends beyond lashing together components someone else has built which they don't deeply understand.
Just another way of saying "We want young (gullible) people that will work 70 hours a week for half of the 'reasonable and customary' wages this position normally pays"
I have been saying this for over a decade at this point. The only reason that I have been able to achieve the level of success that I have in my career is because I have been fortunate enough to have had good teachers (bosses) who were willing to pass along their knowledge in the form of on the job training. Being successful in IT requires continually learning and developing skills and abilities. It also requires humility and being willing to learn from, and work with others. There is too much for any one person to know. You can easily get lost in a single segment of IT, be it networking, servers, programming or even project management.
There is no 'talent' gap, there is a 'salary' gap.
Companies don't want to pay higher salaries to attract people.
This 'we just can't find able bodies' line is getting really, really old. Like the industrial wide ageism.
... America concentrating on education from elementary and middle school through high school.
That's the track that fails.
Students don't know the difference between bullshit and wild honey as it is.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The claim they can't fill jobs, then post job listings that are so highly detailed and specific as to work experience, education, and software skills that the jobs go unfilled. Duh! Not to mention unwritten age requirements . . .
Work for chump change because you're an apprentice.
Companies should shut up about lack of qualified programmers and simply own up to the fact that they don't want to pay people what they're worth.
IBM has undercut that, to only bringing in Indians to destroy US labour market. They do not want anyone in the US market. Coding in Poland and Chec. Up charge US companies for $100/hr labour and pay $20/hr to oversees.
Basic lie of H1B
My group has posted positions and immediately had a flood of applicants.
Of course what has ruined them has been their education was pretty much 'sponsored by microsoft', because microsoft 'helps' college students, and so they are mostly useless outside of using Visual Studio to do some C# programming. Not only is that their training, they seem terrified at the prospect of growing into new technical skills, as their curriculum failed to have them do different things. My education was largely self-directed, but even formally I was made to do Pascal, C++, Java, Perl, lisp, x86 assembly, and Python while learning the underlying theory (granted, the Pascal/C++/Java was just them changing their minds about the 'right' language, but the others were explicitly to give students broader experience).
I also see plenty of teams that are way too big. Companies don't understand software development and thing more cheap people == better product with more business continuity. They like having a team of 20-30 useless devs, spending more time misunderstanding requirements and not knowing who is supposed to be doing what. Instead they could have a good team of 4 or 5 skilled and motivated people and actually get better results.
See subject: The poster you replied to didn't merit your bullshit. It's prick trolls like you that drive people away from posting online where others might pick up a thing or two. YOUR KIND is what is ruining the world & just because YOU fucked up your worthless life doesn't mean everyone else has and yes - it's very apparent you are a total miserable little fuckup!
* He didn't deserve your crap.
APK
P.S.=> Sorry everyone, but I read the person he replied to's post & thought it was a decent sentiment he was sharing + fairly well thought-out & along came the stupid little douchebag that needs to be knocked the fuck out that I am replying to now... no questions asked! apk
Isn't this that thing were you pay your employer to be allowed to work?
My degree and experience is in management. I did the interviewing and hiring for my dept. I retired about 5 years ago, but I'm skeptical about this "can't find candidates with the right skills" explanation I'm hearing these last several years.
The impression I'm getting, admittedly from anecdotal evidence, is organizations have "streamlined" the interviewing process to make it easier for their HR depts. They appear to be using filtering algorithms based on their job descriptions. Consequently there is a large number of people getting overlooked for tech positions. If this is the case, then that explains the shortage. IOW, they've created a narrowly focused requirement for hiring. And I'm sure they're also limiting the pay which is another limitation for filling a position which allows them to say they "can't find candidates with the right skills."
When I was hiring people, I knew I would never find an exact fit based on the job description. IMO that's just not realistic. However, what was most important to me was how well the individual would fit into the dept. My emphasis was on personality and I had questions that were geared toward understanding that. Also when somebody interviewed for my dept, they had to spend time with several of the more senior people who were working there. Afterwards those people and I would have a discussion to compare impressions.
The point I'm trying to make is the emphasis was on how well the person worked with others. Their technical skills were important too, but I knew if they were clever (usually exposed via the resume and the interview questions) they could pick up whatever they might have lacked. And truth be told, every business has different SOPs, policies, etc. The new employee will have to learn something new no matter what.
The impression I get re today's HR hiring methods is they've chosen a lazy way to do it. I even hear ads on the radio promoting how a service will filter people for the hiring firm. I'm sure that one of the reasons for this approach is management has limited staffing for HR forcing HR to do more with less.
So the "can't find candidates with the right skills" excuse sounds bogus to me.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Never mind recent graduates, long-term jobless would also benefit.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Hey APK, are you really so utterly dense and self-absored? Do you perhaps survive by Drive-By Dumpster Dick Diving?
"The poster you replied to didn't merit your bullshit"
Or so you say. How's the Malware Business doing these days, "APK"?
"It's prick trolls like you that drive people away from posting online where others might pick up a thing or two."
At least I have a prick, unlike you. Just what slime or two progeny of yours are you spreading this time... what are we missing out on? Does it itch much? Does Penicillin help?
"* He didn't deserve your crap."
You fucking Moron; you haven't been keeping up. He is not necessarily a he. I have it on good authority that whatever it is, it bats both ways, on anything, anywhere, anytime. Twice on Sundays, during Bible Practice. Raping Kids is better than committing the Sin Of Onan by your reasoning. Just how are you dealing with your Forbidden Onan thing? A hint here- Depends Undergarments aren't just for pee and poop.
".S.=> Sorry everyone, but I read the person he replied to's post & thought it was a decent sentiment he was sharing + fairly well thought-out & along came the stupid little douchebag that needs to be knocked the fuck out that I am replying to now... no questions asked! apk"
What a surprise! Quel horrible surprise!!!
"apk" knows absolutely nothing about Sentence Composition! No questions asked!
APK is maybe one of those other illiterate Keene Free Staters!
That now makes a Grand Total here of... let me check... two.
APK, and his other brother, the other APK. Suck and suck like.
(Darl and the other Darl are already taken.)
And it works very well, in general. After apprenticeship peolpe can go on to study for bachelor and master degress, combining theory with first-hand practical professional experience. Many a times someone educated on this so-called 'second path to higher education' is much better qualified than your run-off-the-mill CS graduate who might know his black/red trees and sorting algorithms in-depth but has no clue of actual problems that matter in corporate software development.
So I say this is good news for US developers.
Turning off the H1-B spigot has a lot of people panicking.
But their solutions are predictable - wages aren't going up, instead recruiters are calling around to the other side of the country and trying to trick people into moving around in the hopes of finding something better, when, actually, they are jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
There's no lack of skilled people in Locality X.
There's no lack of opportunities to employ skilled people in Locality X, in environments which allow them to expand their skillsets.
Silicon Alley has been using apprenticeships for decades - until maybe 2000, all my learning was done by working with others who taught me what they knew, and I taught them what I knew, and we all shared our knowledge and solved problems together.
I started as a guy with a CP/M computer and some experience programming in BASIC, Pascal and 8080 assembler - all strictly amateur.
Then, I found a job as a UNIX systems administrator, and was taught the ropes by the systems programmer, who wanted to get back to programming.
That was 1986 and nothing has changed. There is still more work to be done and there are still too few hands to do it.
It would be child's play to employ a skilled person and assign them tickets in the queue that they CAN work on while they acquire their newest skillset (Python, or Chef, or, maybe, both) over the next few weeks or months, after which they would begin working on bigger tickets in the queue.
This is how information is transferred in an environment filled with cutting- and bleeding-edge technologies. There are no schools that teach these technologies - one can only learn them by using them.
However, this fact escapes the management, who think that everything good comes from a college, with a degree or a certificate attached, and that if you are learning on the job you are wasting money.
The fact that these stupid fucks go and hire an H1-B who does the exact same thing, but who takes the knowledge back to India, seems to escape them.
You can't fix stupid - against stupidity even the Gods struggle, in vain, they say - so I try to gain some entertainment by watching these assholes fuck up the economy, the workplace, and the country.
CAPTCHA: "mangers", and that's just what they are - not managers, but manglers.
Training staff instead of just poaching them from other companies is a good thing ?
See subject & this (my ware's proven clean/safe by a code audit by Malwarebytes' personnel & Google's VirusTotal) https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/ (self checking code vs. infection of it built-in also)
* EAT YOUR WORDS troll... Malware business has problems due to my work above since you asked (I put it away so it can't harm others the most efficient native way blocking it before it can get to you - You've done better, loser? No... lol!)
"Writing style"? Purely arbitrary loser - IF that's the "best ya got" produce PROOF of your PhD in English for us (not that THAT matters - I have relatives in grade school that can write too & IF YOU CAN'T DETERMINE THE MEANING OF WORDS &/or PHRASES WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE FRAMEWORK IN WHICH THEY ARE USED? YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM!
APK
P.S.=> As to the rest of what you said? You're MORE THAN WELCOME to come say it to my face directly (& I'll do everyone a HUGE FAVOR & hospitalize you)... apk
The world IS how it is (good & bad) but I agree that "Mr. Libertarian" as you called him did no harm vs. the "courageous" (not) unidentifiable troll doing his bogus reply the way he did.
* I did my favorite tactic to him making him EAT HIS WORDS https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11375335&cid=55580921/ & asking him to PROVE he's done better + to produce proof of his certified PROOF of his "expertise in writing" (we all know that kind, wannabe PhD in English writing/spelling/grammar trolls - losers).
APK
P.S.=> I call his kind "NOT MEN", accomplishing nothing of worth & they KNOW it (so they try spread their misery of their wasted lives onto others)
There is no denying that tech salaries are high. Any decent programmer can make well over 100k a year.
This is classic supply and demand. When demand outstrips supply, prices go up. When demand is less than supply, prices go down. It follows, then, that there is indeed a talent gap, indicating that there is more demand for programming talent than there is supply.
This is not a bad thing, many of us benefit from the good pay that results. But let's not pretend that there are more than enough "good" programmers to go around!
I went to college in 95. If it kept place with inflation it'd be around $2600 for year 1-2 and 2800 for 3 and 4. And that's before we talk about the reasons why college should be paid for by the public (aka, "College for all", I refuse to say 'free college' because it just sets up a 'who's gonna pay for it' straw man).
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with a large increase in automation we're gonna need those 4 years to keep people out of the job market longer. The world does _not_ need ditch diggers. A backhoe is so much better at it that it's not even worth paying ditch diggers even if you make them literal slaves.
Beyond that there are benefits to an educated populace. An educated populace would be less likely to have have given us the Clinton/Trump shit show that was the last election. They could understand the importance of democracy and showing up at your primary for one. Not everybody can learn these lessons on their own. Actually most can't.
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This is IBM's idea?
So, what you're saying is that these "apprentices" will be coming from India?
The subject line was edited to fit length constraints.
The intended subject line: IMHO: IBM Management has been very dubious of the ethics, legality, and safety of unpaid labor, whether called internship or apprenticeship. From IBM's perspective, TANSTAAFL.
DISCLOSURE: I am no longer an IBMer. This post is opinion, not based in current knowledge.
IBM operates in many countries, with varying labor laws, including minimum wage laws. Managers, until they get a go-ahead from legal, are not going to pay less than minimum wage. Where terminating an employee is restricted and subject to messy reporting and regulations, the company has to weigh effort vs. value. Also, IBM values what comes along with a documented employer-employee relationship, namely the accompanying assignment of intellectual capital rights and work product to the employer, non-disclosure obligations, etc.
Don't demean what it means for IBM to embrace internships and apprenticeships. Assuredly there was a lot of work on the part of HR and legal at the global level and in each country to do it in ways that are legal and safe for the company, and then to communicate to departmental managers and HR staff exactly how to do it.
Disclosure: Over 40 years ago, I was a "summer student" at IBM. We were paid better than minimum wage. The expectation was that the company did not expect a lot of value from the students' work, other than the ability to observe a potential future employee, how the student learned, worked, and fit in with the culture. There was a lot of evangelizing by the employees to the students about how terrific IBM was as a company and an employer. It worked for me. After grad school, I came back for another 33 years.
If you're not here posting we don't feel the need to talk about your apparent support of 3rd world child marriage.
Remember when you said marrying underage Mexican girls was all about getting "the most bang out of your retirement dollars?"
Yes that was an odd thing to say.
I'm telling you what I paid. I paid out of pocket because I was too dumb to look for scholarships (dumb kid, what do you expect) so I very clearly remember it. e.g. I remember scrambling to work enough hours in the summer to get the money socked away and occasionally using a Credit card to make up the difference. Again, dumb kid.
It's entirely possible that chart was based on national averages that include overprices schools, like trade schools operating under the heading of a public Univeristy. There were lots of those when I was a kid until places like the "University" (no air quotes big enough) of Phoenix.
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Tech salaries are not high. $100k/year might seem like a lot, but it does not go very far in the Silicon Valley. Additionally, those jobs have extremely heavy competition and large numbers of very good applicants don't even have their applications reviewed by the employers simply because they are overwhelmed.
The average Goldman Sachs employee, the *average* is compensated in excess of $400k/year. How many people in tech even make half that these days? Not many.
It's slightly more than the national median, adjusted for cost of living 164% is $90,000.
So you should be able to get by on $100k but you won't be living like a king.
Well, in San Francisco proper you may be living like a queen...
This is coming from the same company that abused the H1B system for years.
I remember giving them my resume at a career fair once. I was a new grad out of top 10 school with a degree in computer science. I was told that they're not currently looking for software engineers.
Turns out they're looking for them, just not looking to pay software engineers and are trying to find anyway around that pesky little wage problem in any way they can.