[walshemj]

Do German tech companies not participate in the much vaunted Apprenticeship system?

In the UK we normally think of Germany as having very good technical education that puts us to shame - for some reason does this not work in IT?

[rmk2]

They don't. The German apprenticeship system[1] requires formal certification and a coordination with Berufsschulen (trade schools). This would require a far longer existence and half-life than most startups have.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany

[Xylakant]

I know some that do. The certification is not bound to the company, but rather to a person - our designer here is certified and she could have an apprentice. The coordination is manageable, you just shouldn't expect your apprentice to be a full time employee.

[walshemj]

Why is that? has the chamber of commerce which appears to be in charge not been doing It's job and defining an apprenticeships for IT or where they to concerned with traditional engineering?

Why are not larger companies in Germany not training IT apprentices.

A start up almost by definition requires more experienced workers.

[junto]

The apprenticeships schemes are great, but very very rigid. This is fine when you are learning to become a Tischler (joiner or cabinet maker) because the techniques of joining haven't changed much in the last 100 years, so if your apprenticeship under a Meister Tischler take 5 years then the technology is still the same.

Try that with IT. Did MongoDb exist 5 years ago? Did Node.js? The list is endless.

Information Technology moves too fast for the German style and concept of apprenticeships (in my opinion). There are apprenticeships for Informatik, but I see them much like undergraduate Computer Science courses.

My experience of CS undergraduate studies are that you will learn the basic concepts, and a bunch of bullshit thrown in that you'll never use again in the workplace, but that is about it.

[walshemj]

So you do an apprenticeship to learn the basic underlying principals of the trade/profession not to get taught by rote the latest new shiny thing (tm).

Having more people who have been taught properly from first principals rather than only learning the latest trendy thing woudl be a very good idea! You would certainly have less of the "developers who cant program fizz buzz problems"

And I would expect a competent person to be able to pick up mongodb or nodejs even before they had finished the 4 year apprenticeship.

I started my career on the vocational track track (in mech eng) and on my second day at work they said "pop down the the company library there is a book on FORTRAN learn it"

[tbolse]

There are quite some apprenticeships in the field of IT! They are existing for quite some time now - at least for 13 years:

(sorry for caps lock - this is copy and paste) - FACHINFORMATIKER ANWENDUNGSENTWICKLUNG (software eng./dev.) - FACHINFORMATIKER SYSTEMINTEGRATION (sys. integration) - IT-SYSTEM-ELEKTRONIKER (IT technicians) - IT-SYSTEM-KAUFMANN (IT business) - INFORMATIKKAUFMANN (again IT business) - Mathematisch-technische Software-Entwickler - Informationselektroniker - Fachangestellte für Medien- und Informationsdienste - Mediengestalter Digital und Print

In conclusion: the chamber of commerce ideed did its job. If they did it very well is a question of perspecitve.

To bring this into startup context: Most very early Startups won't take apprenticeships as this is an additional workload and overhead (apprentices want to be tought...) that might not pay off in the short term. As an apprentice I would also think twice about joining a startup as one needs at least 2 1/2 years to finish the apprenticeship. (Startups might not exist that long.)

my 2 cents

[walshemj]

Wow some of those are a mouthful ;-)

But your right a startup with say 5 developers trying to develop a product in a short time scale is probably not suitable for trainees.

How how do the apprenticeships is it day release or block? 1 day a week at college and working 4 days a week is not that to much to ask from an employer? especially as apprentice's probably are paid less.

I am assuming there is a system of training levies so that the cost is born across the whole of industry - when I did mine (in mech eng) we joked that the government gave the employer more in grant subsidy for us than our actual salary.

[xenonite]

Actually these apprentices exist. ("Fachinformatiker", "Duale Hochschule")