That creates a major roadblock for entry-level employees. No matter how much formal training somebody's had, they've still never actually performed the role before. That makes it substantially riskier that they won't fit. Even just a couple years of experience is a credible signal that the person has basic competence in the actual job.
What we need is another category of transitional employment, with both much lighter regulatory barriers to turnover as well as more relaxed cultural expectations about job security. In the olden days we'd call this an "apprentice". Today it might be an "intern", but the general expectation is that only applies to very young workers- not those reskilling to make a lateral move.
This used to be the the way people thought, but the trend I've seen is it's becoming more and more common to just continuously fire people.
In my last two jobs at very different companies it was pretty insane the rate that good employees got fired based on "culture mismatch" related issues. Amazon and Netflix have basically normalized PIP culture at larger places, where the strategy is basically hire like crazy and then find a reason to pip anyone you don't like. The most recent startup I was at was absurdly trigger happy, gleefully firing anyone that wasn't able to read the minds of "leadership" or in anyways challenged the status quo (even if they were supposed hired to do just that).
It used to be my experience that anyone who was let go within a year was obviously a bad hire to anyone at the company. Now I see constant confusion among employees about why some of their favorite coworkers are being let go. Maybe I'm just unlucky in places I've been recently, or very lucky about places I've been before, but it certainly looks like a strange shift in the environment.
Transactional employment exists in FAANGs and other big tech. They are called contractors.
That “bad apple” could have a grievance no one is willing to listen to.
That “bad apple” could have a better idea that was shutdown during an “open discussion” meeting.
Before you go and point the finger at the new hire, it’s best to fully examine yourself.
I’m not saying this is how it should be necessarily, but it’s the reality for employers in the existing system.
The way contractors are currently used isn’t really anything like an apprenticeship, and functionally couldn’t be as contractors are usually required to produce specific results on a timetable. That’s not to say that contracts couldn’t be used to create this kind of relationship, something like a “work-to-hire” agreement, or a co-op/internship with more well-defined way to transition to full employment. From a legal perspective though, that could involve the same (or new) risks, especially when it’s a new and untested kind of business relationship.
A friend is a senior manager at one of them and he loves it, he's been really impressed with the calibre of the apprentices and how quickly they've picked things up.
I'd usually call this a „trainee”.
> The biggest thing from the employer side is that the cost of a single bad hire can be potentially enormous.
You haven't mentioned the „lost” time for other developers. Unless the hiring company has a very efficient onboarding process, any new and „bad” hire will cost _a lot_ in terms of productivity. Some people are certainly able to contribute meaningfully after a 3 month bootcamp and continue their self-study on the job. But many just won't cut it in an environment where everyone else had a 3 year acadamic/vocational training or other meaningful experience before even being considered as a hire.
Morale is an issue. The constant understaffing and overwork of current employment is often much more taxing than a bad hire. Yes, a bad hire can have a spoiler effect but in those circumstances it is worth the paperwork to remove them. I argue that an indecisive manager who refuses to do the work necessary to manage and staff for the need is far more detrimental than one lower level employee.
Employment regulations protect employees, not the company, and for good reason. Removing them is not going to make it easier for job-seekers, it just makes it easier to exploit them.
In the USA (based on COBRA mention I assume you're in the USA) employees can be let go for no reason whatsoever effective immediately and without any notice.
There can't possibly exist a "lighter regulatory barrier" than that!
It's the reason so many companies prefer contractors to short-term full-time employees. You avoid all the new-hire overhead, and you can always renew someone's contract for another six months, but if/when you want to let them go you just let the contract end and that's it.
I agree that this is a good idea, but the market won't accommodate this kind of labor change without government help. Employers have been able to shift responsibility for training off onto other organizations (i.e. coding bootcamps) to get individuals trained and prepared for jobs. Nowadays, workers themselves largely have to bear the financial burden of training in hopes that they land a good-paying job.
What you're suggesting essentially places the financial burden of training and skill development back on companies through apprenticeship programs. That's not going to happen voluntarily.
Why do you think that? It seems to me it is the government that is creating the financial and legal risk of hiring the wrong person or the base cost of hiring an unskilled laborer.
You also seem to be thinking about a subset of jobs that require some sort of advanced training/skills. But things like a universal minimum wage are examples of government regulation that increase the cost of labor for even the most basic of jobs.
I subscribe to the Keynesian philosophy that the government should at the very least hire displaced workers to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up. Even better - use that effort to build roads, clean our cities, provide services, etc.
Keynes didn't actually advocate this. He just said that it would be stimulative to do this - i.e. that it was sufficient as a means of escaping a liquidity trap.
He was much more keen on public works programs "government as an employer of last resort" that built things like the Lincoln tunnel.
I find it deeply ironic that this myth of what he said is most popular among gold bugs - people who advocate digging up gold and subsequently burying it.
I believe many on Native American lands still don’t have running water, internet, or power. Should be a top priority for such a jobs corps.
This is what the TSA is and largely the US military/defense (based on dollars spent compare to task success rate)
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/works-progre...
Government as employer of last resort.
Also: "In a 2018 paper, he and colleagues showed that only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM, dropping to between 10 and 50% for those studying life sciences, physical sciences and maths."
I can't imagine that someone whose sole credential in software engineering is a three month course is going to be offered any amount that is too low for their current skill level. You are basically hiring someone to train on the job. That can work out well for both parties, but imagining that 3 months of training makes you worth $100k per year is delusional.
AND
only about 60 to 70% of US computing and engineering graduates land jobs in STEM
I don't know man?
The implication there is that there exist up to 30-40% of new computing and engineering grads who on the one hand are without jobs in STEM, and on the other are willing to leave the STEM jobs that offer lower wages on the table.
It's been decades since I was a new STEM grad, but I still remember being a new grad. Only my opinion, but I feel something else must be going on.
When I graduated with a CS degree in '07 (US) the first job offer I received was for $25k. I was so angry at that offer. I told the hiring manager that I couldn't possibly work for less than $35k they scoffed at that, I told them no thanks. I could make more money flipping burgers.
I kept looking for work.
Had another offer for $32k with one week of vacation a year, and no health care.
It took me over a year to land my first gig, only making $45k a year. No job since has paid me more.
I had phone interviews that last for less than two minutes because I didn't have industry experience when the posting clearly no experience needed/ will train.
I've had my time wasted by recruiters who send me to interviews that I'm not qualified for.
Interviewed with Amazon at one point, got invited to onsite interview, when my contact ghosted me while trying to arrange travel.
I've worked some programming jobs, all of them have been horrible in their own way. Alcoholics, cliques and fiefdoms, to being left to my own devices working alone often forgotten.
At this point my wife thinks its time for me to go back to school and get another degree, leave programming behind. I love computers. I'm a good programmer. I have no idea what I would do if I wasn't in technology.
What frustrates me the most, is the number of people I know in my personal life, that never got programming degrees that are now well paid programmers. All of them have degrees in non engineering fields, started non programming jobs that turned into programming jobs because they needed something coded up.
The second thing that frustrates me is the sheer number of people that I have interacted with that have pulled the ladder up behind them once they make it out.
It is frustrating knowing I am a good programmer and seeing bad programmers getting well paying jobs.
I guess where I'm trying to go with this, is that for some of us, we just can't seem to get ahead. Maybe we are just unlucky. Maybe we have been beaten down by the interview process or jobs and we don't want to deal with it anymore.
I know for a fact that had I just taken a regular 9-5 non-stem job I'd be ahead of where I am right now. And what scares me is the thought that if I keep trying, I might not ever do better in STEM.... I love STEM...
The large number of low salary jobs available doesn't mean there are any jobs for anyone not in the top quartile or many jobs someone in the top quartile should take.
If an engineering grad decides to become an actuary or management consultant or investment banker, that doesn't necessarily mean they couldn't find a STEM job.
I've worked with incredible engineers from France... here in America. And yet the other day there was this poster whining he couldn't find great engineering talent in France.
He blamed it on French people being lazy, of course.
That said, I couldn't agree with the closing more: "You've got to work so hard at it and do all these extra activities and just immerse yourself fully. Without that passion, I can't see them getting anywhere." Trying to gain new skills with the mindset that it's a burden does not pan out. Instead, finding a topic that has lots of natural interest yields the best results, and is way more fun!
As for younger versus older, I'd say this is a screening process that filters young people out even more if anything. When it comes to students in a MS program, older students are much more able to handle it in my experience.
Again, probably not the route if you aren't interested in it though... Not saying you need to wake up, hack, sleep, repeat, but you probably won't be able to "tough it out for a paycheck"... There needs to be a substantial level of passion/interest in the subject for it to work. IMO, that's where it goes wrong for a lot of people. They get excited about buying a bootcamp or whatever, but then quickly find out that it isn't for them and lose interest, or worse, go through the motions and then wonder why it isn't working...
Did you have working projects you could show them? Usually the reason companies are looking for someone with job experience in a technology is because they want to see if know how to get things done beyond the syntax.
Showing a web application you are running for fun, or other hobby projects where you've demonstrated your ability to deliver is a good way to do that if you don't have the job experience to point to.
I have only been asked once to answer specifics about the idiosyncrasies of a particular language or framework. Everything else I’ve been asked is about generic algorithms and data structures. Sorry that this doesn’t help much, I just find the kind of interview you encountered pretty frustrating.
Have all the companies you applied to been like that? Because clearly you and I have different interviewing experiences.
Or, they just didn't like you for another reason and that's an easy excuse.
Changing industries and stacks is massively difficult if you're doing it for getting a new job and not just for a hobby as most employers won't value your previous experience if it's not needed, so all that is just useless baggage now rather than an asset.
I tried going from algos/embedded SW development to backend/devops and it took me almost a year of rejections despite my best efforts to self study(in Europe).
Yeah, be careful into which stack/domain you pigeonhole yourself into as, depending on the market you're in, it might not be easy to change course later despite you being a skilled generalist. Not every employer will have the time and resources to verify or value your general skill set and will instead focus on going for sure-hires who better match their specific tech stack.
I recall one agency had a tagline "specialization is for insects" but the reality I've found for applying is a number of tech teams have pretty rigid requirements of x years experience with specific languages/libraries and won't consider what other valuable assets you bring to the table or how fast you're able to pick up material. Which I guess makes sense for senior level positions but junior/intermediate?
But eventually you finally get over the hurdle and it starts to click. I've done it a few times, and each time I have to remind myself that I've done it before and I can get through it.
Fortunately, so much of being an effective senior engineer is not about programming. But it's hard to remind myself of that when I feel like a "bad" programmer in a new stack for a while.
No matter how many training and reskilling courses they go on 5% of the dogs will remain unemployed.
The fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, because there is no market mechanism by which the private sector will create sufficient jobs to hire everybody who wants work.
It's time to restore the Beveridge condition. Jobs should wait, not people.
This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.
This does not sound to me a programme wherein they genuinely want people to get into software development.
But disprove me please, if you have experience about this.
Most applicants (probably 80% or more) have a computer science or information systems 4 year BS degree. The other 20% typically have a STEM degree with some programming courses or experience. Probably 20%-30% have some type of graduate degree as well - we sometimes have career changers who have picked up a MS in computer science from some coursework-only MS program at a small school.
My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate. The categories are broad ("Has this candidate written code in either personal projects or previous employment?") and minimally skill-specific. We do tend to have some bias towards database (SQL) skills and some hands-on experience with Linux, but not specific "hard" requirements for either (don't care if MS SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, or Debian vs Ubuntu vs CentOS, etc).
We have had success with non-traditional candidates - we have team members with backgrounds ranging from BS in History to PhD in Bioinformatics, so we aren't super-credential sensitive.
All these details seem to add up to a rather stark observation - there is NO shortage of highly qualified applicants for these types of jobs. Our geographic region has many tech employers so we aren't the only option for job seekers. We probably aren't even in the top 25% of employers for salary in our area.
Candidates with only three months of training are just not going to be successful getting to the front of the hiring line in the deeper pools of applicants we get.
Where is that?
> We are not a software company so we do not use deep algorithm testing as part of our evaluation process [...] My experience has been that of that candidate pool, we will have 3-6 candidates with well documented programming projects or job experience. These tend to be the candidates we interview - we use a simple rubric with yes/no for 5-10 categories we evaluate
You should try it. Right now it seems you are skewing toward hiring folks who already have experience vs fresh grads for entry level positions.
Whiteboard, if done right, gives a chance to college hires to prove themselves. Especially if there are other tech companies in the area. The pool of candidates that have one year of experience and are already looking to jump ship is very different than fresh grads (where everyone is looking for a job).
Our rubric is for deciding who to interview. We definitely have new grads who have resumes with meaningful programming projects who get into the interview pool. We have hired new grads over experienced candidates on the strength of the interview.
During an interview, we usually have a whiteboard abstract design and pseudo-code guided exercise. I also very much like to ask candidates to walk us through one of their projects and experience with that as well. Occasionally, someone who doesn't do very well with other parts of the interview will really open up on a school or personal project and show unexpected insight and ability.
I wish we could do a blinded work-sample test, but there are HR policies that prevent us from using one.
Many bootcamps have 90+% verified placements rates after graduation
Not only that, but Lambda (probably the most notorious bootcamp out there) seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1]
[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p...
To get to the point where they are on par with a college graduate, they would need to pay an employer to give them on the job training for several years and then try to get a paying job.
I think educational specialization is going to be a massive issue going forward. In the past, one industry had to compete with another for labor. As time goes on, it's increasingly only within-industry competition that matters, because workers have sunk too much time and money into simply getting their feet in the door to switch.
If you could spend three months and $20k to switch industries, you're much more likely to move compared to the friction of spending a few years and many tens of thousands (and who knows if that specialty will be flooded a few years later when you finish?).
Who would have guessed?
The inverse claim would be the interesting one. If reskilling regardless of how that was defined guaranteed you a job.
