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The traveling German carpenters

blog.intellum.com

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Re: The traveling German carpenters

#21

Post by roel_v »

gwern wrote: post #17
intellectronica wrote: post #11

It's worth keeping in mind that the travelling carpenters are a souvenir from dark times in Europe, when economic progress remained extremely slow because craftsmen were evaluated by their belonging to a guild and would not compete.

It's worth noting that those 'dark times' were periods of perfectly ordinary economic growth compared to the rest of the world and all the millenniums previous. Comparing those times to the Industrial Revolution that came shortly after is a little unfair - no tradition or souvenir compares well.

Eh, no. The first explosion of efficiency and economic prosperity was in Roman times, when there was peace in much of Europe and cities flourished, complete with sanitation systems, elaborate transportation networks etcetera.

When that crumbled, city states took over, and economic life was once again dictated by the whims of rulers who in reality depended on keeping the ruling classes of the cities in their empire happy; in these cities, tradesmen classes operated in rigid, protectionist and mercantilist guild systems. There was stagnation and in many fields enormous regression until the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (when freedom brought back the drive for progress).

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#22

Post by intellectronica »

gwern wrote: post #17
intellectronica wrote: post #11

It's worth keeping in mind that the travelling carpenters are a souvenir from dark times in Europe, when economic progress remained extremely slow because craftsmen were evaluated by their belonging to a guild and would not compete.

It's worth noting that those 'dark times' were periods of perfectly ordinary economic growth compared to the rest of the world and all the millenniums previous. Comparing those times to the Industrial Revolution that came shortly after is a little unfair - no tradition or souvenir compares well.

millennia

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#23

Post by jsilence »

Luc wrote: post #16

I really wanted to see those beer-giving sticks, and found that the magic google word for more pictures is 'Wanderschaft': http://www.google.com/images?q=Wanderschaft

Sorry, but "Wanderschaft" is a rather old fashioned word for hiking. It is the noun version of the verb "Wandern" (to hike).

The stick is called "Wanderstab" or "Stenz".

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#24

Post by zwieback »

ugh wrote: post #18

This article talks only about journeymen and women who are truly exotic and rare but it doesn't really emphasize that vocational training — the alternative to college — still is alive and well in Germany. You usually don't got to college if you want to become a hairdresser or a mechatronic engineer. After they finish school, the apprentices work three or four days per week at some company and go to a vocational schoo…

The German system indeed has a lot more options between a full blown academic career to learning a craft in a structured 4 year program all the way to being an unskilled laborer with 10 years of school.

The drawback is that career paths are also more structured than in the US and take a long time. Want to start a painting business? Better get your Meisterbrief first and that will take a good while.

Here in the US things are more fluid, which leads to people changing careers and going back to school at a later age more willingly. The flipside is that almost everyone is an amateur and quality of work varies wildly.

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#25

Post by plastics »

zinssmeister wrote: post #9
plastics wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would we need to create one?

I think the most critical step towards success of such a thing is getting a few bigger companies in each of the startup areas to offer exclusive intern/entry/mid-level positions to these kinds of people.

I guess a lot of hacker news reader work in said startup areas. So is anybody willing to give it a shot?

I am located in Munich, Germany, not exactly a startup hup, but I have some connections to Berlin and would be willing to annoy my contacts there until they agree.

Also should the plans for my own company work out in the next months, I would be willing to offer exclusive intern/entry/mid-level positions.

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#27

Post by fab13n »

intellectronica wrote: post #11

It's worth keeping in mind that the travelling carpenters are a souvenir from dark times in Europe, when economic progress remained extremely slow because craftsmen were evaluated by their belonging to a guild and would not compete.

At this time, to create an incentive against the culture of secrecy that prevented the sharing of technical progress, a system of temporary monopolies called _patentes_ has been invented.

Its descendant--now spellt _patent_--is today used precisely to prevent technical progress from spreading.

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#28

Post by plastics »

mrspandex wrote: post #7

Did anyone else read that title as "time traveling German carpenters?" Does the internet make this less relevant for those in the software field?

The "Walz" is not for building primary skills (i.e. in our case Software Development or in their case Carpentry). It is assumed that carpenters doing it are already quite skilled in their respective profession. The reason of the "Walz" is to teach self reliance, soft skills and to round out ones primary skills by being exposed to practices of their craft that have evolved/developed differently from those they learned during their apprenticeship.

In short the goal is to become a "Master" which in the german vocational tradition originally meant having your own shop and not needing to be an employee any longer (so in our case to become a founder).

I think the internet undermines these goals, because, well IMHO it is becoming more and more a gigantic echo chamber (we all read the same blogs/books, admire the same persons, use remarkably similar tools etc.)

I think it is astounding that a lot of very smart people assume that currently hip and promoted best development practices, say for a Web 2.0 whatever platform are relevant for other areas (e.g embedded, big iron, medical, aeronautic, finance) because there is not much evident push back in the blog sphere from practitioners in these spheres... which AFAIK is more a result of these people tending to much less likely to blog or work on open source software, than of the universal applicability of said practices (and if the push back, the results I have seen so far have been highly embarrassing for the hipster crowd).

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#29

Post by wazoox »

In France there is a related system, "les Compagnons du devoir". However, it exists for carpenters, masons, sculptors, bakers, etc. Almost all hand crafts, in fact. They must travel around the country to learn their craft, and present a "masterpiece" as a proof they master it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France

Re: The traveling German carpenters

#30

Post by DanielH »

jsilence wrote: post #23
Luc wrote: post #16

I really wanted to see those beer-giving sticks, and found that the magic google word for more pictures is 'Wanderschaft': http://www.google.com/images?q=Wanderschaft

Sorry, but "Wanderschaft" is a rather old fashioned word for hiking. It is the noun version of the verb "Wandern" (to hike). The stick is called "Wanderstab" or "Stenz".

"Wanderschaft" is the German noun used especially for the carpenters journey.
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