Creating Software Plumbers
I just read this tweet this morning:
which leads to this article advocating that young people look to entering an apprenticeship program and not continue school. It says, in part:
Universities are the typical place that established businesses expect to find these high-potential beginners. While many software developers finish college with a good education, they’re often burned out, deep in debt, and understandably eager to cash in on their hard work. Apprentices, on the other hand, inject enthusiasm, hard work, and a thirst for knowledge into your teams. They will consistently launch from your apprenticeship program with context, momentum, and loyalty to your organization.
While I can understand the point of the article, and you should read it to get that it's not saying people shouldn't go to higher education, it's saying that you, as a business owner, can capitalize on the cost of higher education, and get those people that might go to college and get them into the workforce.
But is that what we want to have happen, as an industry? I don't think so. I think it's robbing the future to staff the present, and that's a mistake. A big one.
I'm biased. I've got the higher education and the advanced degrees, and I think they are the right thing to do. But even if you discount my position, and do what the author suggests, aren't we just creating a bunch of Software Plumbers? They'll know what they see, and will be able to work with it, but their understanding of how to solve new and unusual problems will be very limited. Oh sure, you'll have a few percent that naturally think outside the box, but their exposure to new things and new ideas will be incredibly limited.
This is the exact purpose of those liberal arts classes for engineers - to broaden a student's horizons. If we just allow people to learn what we want them to learn, aren't we really just forcing ourselves to re-train them when we want to change technologies? Of course we are.
While there are times to have an apprenticeship program - for those that can't make it into college, I think it'll be overused and draw the real future of the profession into one where only a few can really think creatively. And that would be very bad.