Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
More accurately, IBM doesn't see a skills shortage, they have India.
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
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.
In general, it seems like the only way to get a job without needing "10 years of experience in 50 different buzzwords" seems to be as a NCG.
Makes me wonder if there's a market of people who go back to school to "reset" their NCG status bit just so they can get a job in something other than "exactly what they were doing at their previous job."
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."
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's more to tech than computer, software and the internet.
Au contraire. My skills are too high as are those of virtually anyone that has been in the business since the 80s. The employers would just prefer to pay script-kiddie wages and don't want any influences around that might tell them they are working for peanuts. So they won't even hire us for peanuts. Nor will they hire any experienced adults. The idea that people can retrain when their jobs are replaced is a lie. Only kids are hired at the training level.
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.
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.
>Makes me wonder if there's a market of people who go back to school to "reset" their NCG status bit just so they can get a job in something other than "exactly what they were doing at their previous job."
Yes, that's what many people do - sometimes it is a MSc, other times it is simply a 1 week training course. Enough to make new contacts and gain some skills. I did a MSc when career promotions at my employer were blocked by small-town political interference. Back then, that was enough to gain skills in C++ and parallel programming. Modern day, people have done this to become data scientists.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/