This grooming of professionalism is what’s missing in the common internship today, which is why I believe in apprenticeships as a more productive model. The blacksmith was responsible for teaching Johnny how to be a professional. Teaching all of these responsibilities were under the purview of the blacksmith, not just the craft. Johnny would live with the blacksmith for about 7 years, learning the trade of blacksmithing but also learning the business of blacksmith, as well as life skills like cooking, cleaning, and generally how to function in society. A parent would indenture their child-little Johnny, typically around 10 years old-to a local master blacksmith. Here’s how a blacksmith apprenticeship would work in those times. Wikipedia defines apprenticeship as “a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study.” Apprenticeship originated in medieval times and were largely governed by guilds. I believe there’s a great solution to bridge this ever-widening gap, and it’s called apprenticeship. That results in the skilled becoming even more skilled as they move from job to job, creating a wider gap between those at the top and those at the bottom. In looking to fill vacant job openings, many tech companies look to the upper echelon of this graph. 2Īs a scatter plot measured against a spectrum or skills, that may look something like this (approximation-not drawn to scale): Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 7.9 million unemployed in the United States as of April 2016. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1 million programming jobs in the U.S. In the 2012 report “ A National Talent Strategy” ( PDF-1.7 MB), Microsoft reports that “the country’s higher education system is currently producing only 40,000 bachelor’s degrees in computer science annually.”.We’re looking for a designer that’s a bit of an underachiever, someone fairly average.ĭon’t worry about being a self-starter if you can follow orders, that’s good enough for us. Imagine a job description that sounded like this: The prerequisite for greatness is as crippling as it is sparse.Īnd for good reason. The subtext is clear: you must be amazing before we hire you, because you certainly aren’t going to gain those skills here. Our job pages are strewn with solicitations for “extraordinary people,” prior work of “high quality,” an enthusiasm for those who can “champion ideas,” and countless other superlatives. If you are revved up to apply for Sparkbox’s apprentice program, here’s your link: Consider the way we hire. We nerd out on documentation and discuss how being on the “design system team” can be a great part of company hazing >cough, cough onboarding. Of course, we get into design systems, too. (Team leaders, please take notes.) We also talk about taking time to tinker and figure yourself out-while the world seems to change right underneath your feet. We talk about how that awesomeness came to be and what’s working well today. At Sparkbox, Ben has created an amazing workplace that facilitates learning, exploring, asking questions, and pet projects. This is our last episode of 2020! We are revisiting the December 2019 episode with Ben Callahan.īen is a design system expert and the founder and president of Sparkbox.
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