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.
You assume all 'tech jobs' worth having are in SV. There's a great need for technical experience outside of these hubs. The most experienced and high demanding jobs however will be at these hubs. Data centers need engineers as well as the software to maintain it which may not be a priority for 'hub' locations.
Embedded software engineers are also scarce, many employers are trying to train their EE guys which lead to the IOT security fiasco as they try implementing plug and play tech without much thought.
I don't read AC
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/
More accurately, IBM doesn't see a skills shortage, they have India.
Embedded software engineers are also scarce, many employers are trying to train their EE guys which lead to the IOT security fiasco as they try implementing plug and play tech without much thought.
Really? I recently signed up with Upwork, and they rejected me. "Unfortunately, at this time there are already many freelancers with a similar skillset to yours and we cannot accept your application."
I listed embedded experience in 6809, PIC, MIPS, and the Trimedia PNX1302 VLIW processor. I am pretty sure I also listed four device drivers for Linux and FreeBSD. I guess there must be a glut of people with these skills.
A dingo ate my sig...
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.
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."
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.
The solution to the problem of "too poor at $60k" is pretty obvious. MOVE! The free market will quickly fix this problem if people would make smarter decisions. I'm a perfect example of this.
I got a B.S. in Computer Science in 2008. Right when everything was collapsing I turned down a lucrative job in San Diego. It was my dream job too. I did the math and concluded it wasn't cost effective to take a "good" salary offer when I potentially could do better on my own. The salary was actually really good too even for an expensive area like San Diego- probably too good given I had just graduated. In any event I decided to stick to NJ and start a business instead. I took a part time job making just $9 / hr while working on a start-up. Within six months I quit the part time job and within three years I had two very successful businesses. So successful in fact I shut down one of them in the process of moving to New Hampshire to take part in the Free State Project.
Why would I shut down a business and move??? Easy. Smarter decision. In New Hampshire I basically got twice the house for half the money. I'm 33 now, sold my $500,000 house in 2006 and moved to New Hampshire. Here I bought a $200,000 house that would have gone for $350,000 where I was living. My taxes are lower. I don't have ANOTHER 7% tax added on to my income above and beyond what others pay, etc. Yea- the business I closed up shop in NJ when I moved was getting taxed another 7% because it was IT service work. The service IT industry in NJ started getting taxed another 7%. Unlike accountants and lawyers and others. So I said f'c it. Closed up shop and moved to NH. I had two successful businesses and one was a highly successful online operation. In New Hampshire I make more money than I did in New Jersey even though technically my income temporarily went down. Six figures goes a lot farther in New Hampshire than it does in New Jersey, California, New York, or Massachusetts. Basically big government states.
The moral of the story is take responsibility for your own actions. If somebody else won't pay you what your worth where they're offering you the job don't take it.
I've got numerous employees and friends who understand this. Some are making what seems like a terrible wage too- but in reality ain't that bad here. Can you afford a house on $12 / hour salary? Turns out here you can. I've got multiple employees who can and do have condo and houses. In fact some very nice houses at that. Neither of the two people I'm thinking of in particular have a significant other with a 2nd income either... which is very telling.
You can look elsewhere other then SV but then you need 10 years exp in 2 year old software, be an admin, device ops, slash programmer and fit into their budget of 45k