For Apprentices: Join us in the apprenticeship.io community!
So you’re a past or present software engineering apprentice in the United States?
Awesome! We’d love to connect with you.
Right now, we’re the largest community for software engineering apprentices in the United States. Scroll down to learn more about us!
Are you a past or present apprentice in another functional area besides software engineering based in the United States?
You might be a past or present apprentice in UX/UI or product design, project, program, or product management, sales, data science, etc.?
Right now, in order to focus our work in order to be as effective and efficient as possible, we’ve centered our work in software engineering, but we’re looking to expand into additional functional areas in technology in the near future. If you’d like to join us now, we’d love to have you, too!
Why technology oriented careers only? Because these are the roles that are high paid and future proof.
Are you a past or present apprentice based outside the United States?
Right now, apprenticeship.io is only intended to be a resource for apprenticeships in technology in the United States.
What’s the purpose of this community?
1. Advocacy (noun) — public support for or recommendation of a particular cause or policy.
Vocational training and experiential learning have been proven models for affordable, relevant training for centuries. We’re not kidding —we’ve known this model works since literally the Medieval blacksmiths.
Today, developed countries around the world, especially England, Germany, Canada, and Switzerland, already have corporate tax supported apprenticeship programs starting as early as midway through high school, so young people can earn a living wage and receive school credits at the same time.
It is a requirement by law in many of these developed countries that corporations either pay up in taxes (to provide funds for public educational benefits) or hire and train entry level candidates (as a direct corporate contributor).
Either pay up in taxes or participate in workforce development via hiring and training: those are a corporation’s options in a healthy, equitable society.
It is not up to a CEO’s charitable whim to decide where or to whom funds are donated outside the company in order for a select few to receive scholarships to re-train. It is not on the candidate, either, to sacrifice 4 years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in a university degree program before they can qualify to be considered. It is not on the candidate, again, to do this ridiculous arrangement later in life, should their existing career suddenly become irrelevant, underpaid, or boring. It is not on the candidate, as a mom with young kids who took a career break, a mid-career professional returning from sabbatical, or a former public school teacher who quit to study something higher paid, to convince university recruiters or hiring managers that they should hire someone in their later years of life as an entry level candidate because they’ve recently re-trained, and there are no dedicated corporate programs for people outside university age.
In apprenticeship, entry level candidates looking for work experience are not treated as charity cases to be relegated to schools and non-profits, excluded from companies, but instead, entry level candidates are offered clear, modern career paths and dignified, paid instruction, training and work experience. Companies must be accountable to the public to contribute funds, participate in hiring and training, and share results. Imagine that.
Apart from countless examples in other countries, we also know that in America, the greatest economic growth in U.S. history was fueled by an unparalleled extension of public education benefits called the GI Bill, signed into law in 1944. Historically, this public economic investment basically solely benefitted white men. Costing the country roughly $14.5 billion, each military serviceperson who took advantage of their public education benefits saw about a $10–15K per year salary increase, resulting in a 10x increase in tax revenue for the U.S. government. It is often cited as the best investment the U.S. has ever made. (Learn more about the GI Bill!)
In other words, someone’s white dad, grandpa or great grandpa in the 1940s to 1950’s in America received:
- 1 year of unemployment compensation
- a tuition stipend to attend college and/or vocational training
- a living stipend during their college and/or vocational training
- zero interest, zero down payment loans to buy homes and businesses
Sounds pretty great, right? Why can’t we just get the exact same public education and financial benefits someone’s white dad, grandpa or great grandpa got in the 1950s?
It’s time to cut the bullshit. We have the answers; we know the policies and models that work to create more equitable, accessible, and affordable models of education and workforce development in the United States. We’ve done it before, and many countries around us are doing it now. We need to re-invest in public education benefits for all Americans who need it immediately, especially during COVID-19, and we need to hold powerful corporations accountable for their participation with either their money or their direct contribution, and build a functional, modern vocational training system in America again.
2. Transparency (noun)— operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed.
In the tech industry especially, we tend to fetishize data driven decision making, but humans don’t measure what we don’t feel. It took until a then 26 year old Tracy Chou felt alone and marginalized at work on her engineering team, before asking at the 2013 Grace Hopper conference if tech companies could report the identities of the people building their companies and their technologies, primarily focused on gender and race.
We know why tech companies’ employee composition has remained unchanged, or in some cases worsened, in the 7 years since. It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s a continued overall ideal about what a “qualified” technologist looks like, acts like, and knows. Racism and sexism certainly play a big factor, but there are additional insidious inequities and biases to root out.
Too often, we mistakenly label educational inequity as a “pipeline problem.”
Companies, and the technologists inside them, wield enormous power in defining what a qualified technologist should know and be able to demonstrate at the time of hire (and time of promotion!). Most companies approach this problem visualizing an imaginary bar they haphazardly, arbitrarily, unevenly, and often dangerously put up based on their own beliefs, preferences and feelings, as opposed to actual data.
And so, entry level positions routinely ask for 3–5 years of experience, shielding more senior and experienced engineers, often with poor interpersonal, communication, and teaching skills, from vital growth and mentoring in the name of individual productivity. A belief about individualism over interdependence. Job descriptions ask for more React experience than the framework has been in existence, when most of the team is still mastering the framework themselves. A preference for expertise over learning and growth mindset. The list of technologies and tools a candidate should know at the time of hire goes on like a 5 year old’s wish list for Santa Claus. So many feelings of fear and inadequacy, in a constantly changing world.
New candidates joining the tech industry shouldn’t bear this confusion, expense and fear in the hiring process.
The reality in America is: Educational attainment (whether or not you finish school), education level (how high you go on the educational pyramid), and education type (which school and area of study you choose and why) are all deeply, historically linked with gender, race, and socioeconomic status in America. What you have learned and can demonstrate in a technical interview, in many ways, is quite literally determined by who you are.
The candidate with an Associate’s degree from Houston Community College biffed the HackerRank challenge about git, not because they can’t learn or won’t understand git, but because the local community college they can afford while working 2 part time service jobs works out of a book about Java. They turn in their homework on paper. The candidate from UC Merced struggled to whiteboard about dynamic programming because it was never included in their Computer Science curriculum, and the online Grokking the Coding Interview course they could afford didn’t really cover DP in depth.
Most people in tech come from elite educational backgrounds, as evidenced by the most famous predominantly white male technologists who were so privileged they could dropout and still be wildly successful. The majority of us in tech don’t feel the pain and struggle of educational inequity as much as those who are outside it trying to break in. So, we don’t measure it. We don’t report about education as an identity marker, we don’t create transparency around the list of educational institutions we spend large budgets with every year recruiting, and we continue to fail in equity, belonging, and diversity.
Until we confront the realities of our broken education system in America, we won’t make systemic change in the demographic composition of the tech industry. This community exists to create transparency about the tech companies who willingly and actively participate in dismantling educational inequities (and the correlated issues therein including racism, sexism, and classism) in the United States. Our transparency enables accountability and celebrates progress.
We start with apprenticeships, because job descriptions sans educational requirements are not enough to demonstrate commitment and understanding to the breadth and depth of the challenges in the American education system.
By dismantling educational biases, acknowledging underlying reasons for knowledge gaps, identifying meritocratic and performance based evaluations and hiring strategies, and creating re-imagined and dignified entry level pathways for people from a diverse variety of backgrounds, the companies we work with are choosing to tackle some of humanity’s greatest educational and workforce development challenges and creating a more equitable future.
3. Empowerment (noun) — authority or power given to someone to do something.
Once we know the problem exists, and can see it more clearly and accurately, what do we do? This is when the hard work of taking action begins.
Within this community, past and current apprentices can share stories and experiences about where and how their apprenticeships were successful and helpful, and areas where these programs and employers can improve. We can examine and analyze program lengths, conversion and retention data, and salaries, and improve individual outcomes for current apprentices through group support. For many past and current apprentices, you might find people like you, with similar stories, experiences, and identities, for the first time.
As a baseline, this community must create sufficient transparency, while still respecting individual privacy, and provide overall accuracy about companies’ hiring patterns in past and present apprenticeships in tech. We need to see what we’re working with in each apprenticeship, in each city for the first time.
After that, we’d like to start forecasting and estimating companies’ potential impact for 2021 and 2022, especially in cities like the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago. These cities are most likely to have enough established companies with established apprenticeships to inspire greater action locally, as well as serve as models for other cities where these opportunities don’t exist yet.
We’ll continue educating employers about successful apprenticeship models through our Resources page, webinars, and podcasts, especially through our most successful tactic with companies to date: peer pressure. Hey Lyft, I guess you heard about Uber’s apprenticeship now. We’re proud of you! Asana and Quora, excited to see what you do to expand your next cohort. Twilio, are you tracking towards 100 apprentices on time? Hubspot and Shopify, where are you? Google and Facebook, we’ve been waiting for you for years now… what’s up? You get the picture.
For candidates, we aim to create an application portal to track anticipated program openings and funnel candidates to open applications throughout the year. To date, candidates haven’t been able to anticipate and aim for programs in advance, so these features will be crucial to creating more access and equity in apprenticeships in tech. We also aim to share many, many more apprentice stories through our podcast and infographics for potential candidates to inspire further individual action.
As this community grows, we can create local groups in our most established cities to gather to connect, share, and support apprentices, employers, educators, voters, and candidates. We want to advocate for better local policies and tax structures, in order to grow and expand opportunities for non-traditional technologists.
All of this starts with a passionate, connected group of past and present apprentices in tech.
Why should I join?
1. Relationships
As non-traditional engineers, it’s not everyday we meet people, much less fellow engineers, who have followed similar paths as us. That’s why it’s so crucial that a community like this one exists. You’ll be welcomed, supported, and encouraged by non-traditional technologists who get it, and maybe, have been there, too.
2. Learning
Learning looks different for everyone. For some of us, learning might look like a specific language, framework, library or API. For others, learning might look like stepping into leadership, mentorship, and developing better interpersonal skills. No matter how you’re trying to grow and develop yourself, you’ll be met with feedback, ideas, resources, and peer experiences. We’re a community centered in growth mindset, and we’re all lifelong learners.
3. Impact
It can feel really hard to create meaning and purpose in our lives. How can my background and experiences be helpful to someone like me? We work to make your impact clear and tangible, especially by highlighting the local opportunities near you to make an impact with your time, your money, your hiring choices, your votes, and your commits.
We can’t wait to welcome you to our Slack community!
Do you have a question or concern?
Feel free to reach out to our Founder, Kam via kam@apprenticeship.io!
