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Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

codemanship.co.uk

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Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#61

Post by delinquentme »

I've run into this exact issue.

However when you've got the managing parties who have degrees, they seek out justification for their expenditure, through self-seeking-self activities, consciously or subconsciously.

Additionally when grad students are willing to work, and have been trained in the shadow of those who are managing, all the gears in the system work as expected.

The issue comes into play when you've got kids like myself. We are ITCHING to learn, fail to see the benefit in 4 years of learning. And most of all:

We know the fastest way to the bleeding edge of research is NOT through the "tried-and-true" channels. It is most efficiently attained through jumping right into the fray and working with said researchers.

THIS is what will create that innovation that we seek. The degree system simply is the easy answer and a way to continue with the entrenched system, by providing slave labor.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#62

Post by andylei »

akmiller wrote: post #50

I think it says something about the kinds of employers that look at people who have spent upwards of 100k to obtain a piece of paper that implies some arbitrary level of understanding in a given subject. The same level of understanding that I could get on my own for probably a few hundred bucks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against higher education in theory. We've gotten to a point though were it's not about the educ…

> says something about the kinds of employers that look at people who have spent upwards of 100k to obtain a piece of paper

great you're an employer. for fun, let's say you're google, except you just ignore the 'education' line resumes

> The same level of understanding that I could get on my own for probably a few hundred bucks

oops, now, you have 10k resumes of people claiming they have knowledge of computer science. but you only need to hire 10 people. what do you do?

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#63

Post by aidenn0 »

The problem with this is that universities get away with screening processes that would be problematic at a company. For example, screening applicants based on SAT scores is a legal gray area for a lot of companies, but the college you went to is a proxy for your SAT score.

I'm convinced that more than half of the value of hiring someone from a top-tier college is who they admit, rather than what they teach.

Frightening true story: Someone I know at a government contractor startup was hiring a fortran programmer. As part of the interview test he was giving a simple fortran sritten test. The company lawyers found out and had him stop. Apparently tests that haven't been vetted for cultural/racial biases are a potential source of liability for government contractors.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#64

Post by randomdata »

munin wrote: post #42
ohyes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from any other job application? The job will clearly go to the boss's nephew, who is totally great at computer stuff because he plays so much WoW. (Though it is a well known fact that the best middle management comes from Eve Online). Seriously, you will generally want to look for people who are intelligent and good at abstract thinking. In my biased opinion, you should be shooting for the best…

> Currently, CS courses at top universities have very little to do with the business of actually programming, they are more based on mathematical theory. SE courses tend to look more like 'software engineering management.' Where does this meme come from? If you get a CS degree from CMU, you are going to program your ass off. You are going to write at least one of a compiler, a HTTP proxy, or an OS kernel from scratch…

There are, of course, exceptions, but programming in industry is typically a design job. Your focus is on designing an infrastructure for the application that will allow it to be functional and maintainable, and survive massive refocusing of scope without determent to the prior two points. Things like compilers, HTTP proxies, and OS kernels are plugged into the infrastructure, not written as part of it.

Your concern, as an industry programmer, is not whether merge sort of bubble sort is the right algorithm for your problem; you will just hand that off to the built-in sort function. Your concern is whether or not MVC is the right design pattern for your application. Again, there are exceptions, but that is fairly typical of the average programming job.

So while you might pick up some design skills during your study in a CS degree, it is not the focus of the program. That is where the meme comes from.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#65

Post by gfdgfdgfd »

brudgers wrote: post #14

Posing Apprenticeships as a significant alternative to higher education is delusional. First because a true apprenticeship requires a contractual relationship between the apprentice and the master. That sort of contract is extremely problematic to modern business entities because it does not allow flexibility in staffing levels, requires a significant investment in training (several years), and because indentured ser…

"Posing Apprenticeships as a significant alternative to higher education is delusional."

This is absolutely absurd and just shows pure ignorance of the economic realities beyond your grasp. Germany thrives off of apprenticeships. You can't find a job without having an apprenticeship under your belt in Germany. Students spend between 50% to 70% of their time at a company, while the rest is spent on traditional education. Apprenticeships are a vital source to Germany's economy. Dismissing it based on your pet theories is bordering on asinine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#66

Post by jbooth »

gaius wrote: post #39
ohyes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from any other job application? The job will clearly go to the boss's nephew, who is totally great at computer stuff because he plays so much WoW. (Though it is a well known fact that the best middle management comes from Eve Online). Seriously, you will generally want to look for people who are intelligent and good at abstract thinking. In my biased opinion, you should be shooting for the best…

Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. I'm guessing you're in a right-to-work state, in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard. Hiring someone who "just doesn't work out" is a huge risk for an organization that can't afford to shuffle them off into a "VP of Paperclips" position.

Typically it's laid off or terminated without cause, in which case the person gets unemployment, the business takes a hit on their unemployment insurance but it's typically no hassle as long as it wasn't for a reason that's explicitly against the law, like discrimination.

"Terminated with cause" avoids the hit in unemployment insurance to the business, the person doesn't get to collect, but they can sue you for wrongful term if it really should have been the first category -- here's where you need to document gross negligence.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#67

Post by akmiller »

andylei wrote: post #62
akmiller wrote: post #50

I think it says something about the kinds of employers that look at people who have spent upwards of 100k to obtain a piece of paper that implies some arbitrary level of understanding in a given subject. The same level of understanding that I could get on my own for probably a few hundred bucks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against higher education in theory. We've gotten to a point though were it's not about the educ…

> says something about the kinds of employers that look at people who have spent upwards of 100k to obtain a piece of paper great you're an employer. for fun, let's say you're google, except you just ignore the 'education' line resumes > The same level of understanding that I could get on my own for probably a few hundred bucks oops, now, you have 10k resumes of people claiming they have knowledge of computer science…

Surely I could filter those resumes just like many employers currently do anyway. First of all we'd likely be talking about some type of entry level position as education plays less and less of a role when looking for experienced engineers. So I start with some type of test before I'll even look at your resume. In fact, if I'm an employer as popular as Google, I may have more than one level of tests to get through based on the job before I give any resume's a look. It's not hard to test for knowledge in Computer Science and I'm sure companies like Google already do to some extent anyhow.

Once you've done the initial filtering it's not too terribly hard to spot some potentially good candidates. Especially in the field of software development where it's easier than ever to build products and make them available for others to see and use.

I'm also not saying to ignore the education lines...I'm just suggesting that I don't like it as the main criteria for filtering out candidates.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#68

Post by stonemetal »

gaius wrote: post #39
ohyes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from any other job application? The job will clearly go to the boss's nephew, who is totally great at computer stuff because he plays so much WoW. (Though it is a well known fact that the best middle management comes from Eve Online). Seriously, you will generally want to look for people who are intelligent and good at abstract thinking. In my biased opinion, you should be shooting for the best…

Also, you can always fire them if they don't work out. I'm guessing you're in a right-to-work state, in the UK and EU firing someone for anything other than gross negligence is very, very hard. Hiring someone who "just doesn't work out" is a huge risk for an organization that can't afford to shuffle them off into a "VP of Paperclips" position.

Do they not have contract to hire in the EU?

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#69

Post by brudgers »

gfdgfdgfd wrote: post #65
brudgers wrote: post #14

Posing Apprenticeships as a significant alternative to higher education is delusional. First because a true apprenticeship requires a contractual relationship between the apprentice and the master. That sort of contract is extremely problematic to modern business entities because it does not allow flexibility in staffing levels, requires a significant investment in training (several years), and because indentured ser…

"Posing Apprenticeships as a significant alternative to higher education is delusional." This is absolutely absurd and just shows pure ignorance of the economic realities beyond your grasp. Germany thrives off of apprenticeships. You can't find a job without having an apprenticeship under your belt in Germany. Students spend between 50% to 70% of their time at a company, while the rest is spent on traditional educati…

The German apprenticeship model doesn't scale well to less affluent and less homogenous countries (i.e. pretty much the rest of the world) - and it is my impression that German Hauptschule students don't apprentice in professions such as computer programming. Then again, if one accepts the idea that it is o.k. to channel children into career paths at the age of nine or ten and generally reserve the best schools for the upper social classes, then the German model might be as successful as you suggest.

Re: Apprenticeships - Employers Must Get Past Degree Snobbery

#70

Post by a3camero »

a5seo wrote: post #36
brudgers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a college degree does is that it provides a more equal opportunity for people to obtain a minimum qualification. Let's face it, Ben Franklin's apprenticeship as a printer for his brother more or less typifies the way in which people have obtained apprenticeships - through close personal connections between the master and the apprentice. This is unsurprising when one considers the degree of upfront investment by…

One of the best decisions I ever made was to hire a high school dropout into a de facto programming apprenticeship. The guy dropped out for family reasons, went to work in factories, got a job in IT eventually, but was really bright and hard working, but stuck in a dead-end help desk job. One of our other devs knew him and suggested we give him some programming projects on contract- like $10/hr. So we did. He did a g…

Good for you for giving someone a chance.
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