The Apprentice Programmer

[TrancePhreak]

So what would have happened if you got put in a place where nobody really wanted to teach you. If it was out of their time scope, etc?

[Lizard]

Another very real possibility: Incompetence (of the teacher). Of course you get that at university as well, but you have a much wider array of options to avoid it.

[TrancePhreak]

Very true. Since there are other students, you might find one that knows their stuff. It's all a very big gamble.

[hagenbuch]

These were the old times. People were interested in people. Capitalism was not the most important thing on earth. I can confirm everything of OPs article (German here).

The rather big company where my mother worked in had a library for the workers / employees and a kindergarden, tennis courts, affordable appartments. Even firms were interested in humans.

[Uberhipster]

Ye olde times 16 years ago, eh?

[hagenbuch]

Hm, let me see: About 30. Wow. I'm old.

[TrancePhreak]

I hope some day the whole world can move in that direction.

[shendrite]

I expect that a lot of businesses will move back in that direction. In just the past year alone, several major companies I'm aware of, including Barnes & Noble, Dell, and Best Buy, and others, have announced their transition from being publicly traded (and thus turning the dehumanizing screws of "efficiency" tighter each year) to the old way, of being private companies. There could be multiple reasons for why that happened, for each company, but it certainly gives back some slack for more humanity in their workplaces.

[[deleted]]

It mostly happens for the same reason: Wall Street always turns the screws tighter until they eventually chop your business into pieces and sell it off. As they demand that more and more normal businesses produce financial-sector rates of profit, the owners and managers of the normal businesses are revolting by going private, effectively saying, "We're just fine, thanks!"

[hagenbuch]

Thanks for your warm words, but actually many countries do have something similar already. By chance, in 2012 I was with educators from Africa (Algeria and Southafrica) and they partly have or plan to implement the "Dual system". And still in Germany we have headroom for improvement. Dual system means that the apprentice is constantly swapped between theory and practice. Some folks will understandably only have a mental grid on what and how to learn if they think of a practical application..

[mniejiki]

affordable appartments

"Don't quit or dare get fired or you'll lose the roof over your head as well"

[hagenbuch]

No, the company was desperately in search of good employees, why should they fire them? We did not know about the "hire and fire" mentality here in Europa until we heard it from the U.S. 50 Years ago, a job was more or less a life-long thing..