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Comment by stillbourne | Hacker News Reader

I think we should bring back the guild system. Start a job as an apprentice, mentor with a journeyman, progress your way up, mentor apprentices while learning from others higher up, gain sufficient knowledge to build your masterpiece, graduate as a master in your field, mentor journeymen. Move on.

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8th Light is a software company that's been explicitly practicing apprenticeship for like 12 years

https://8thlight.com/blog/ryan-verner/2019/01/15/evolution-o...

As someone who came into the industry through the vocational track this is interesting.

But it is confusing are 8th Light acting as a source of training for other companies or just internal use.

How many years is it 4 / 5 what certification do you get at the end?

Why are you using "trade" terminology normally those doing "advanced apprenticeship" where associate professions and calling us "apprentices" would have got you a hard look.

when I did mine in the UK I was a Junior member of the IMECHE on the path way to full chartered (PE) membership

It does seem a bit light how long is the apprenticeship

If FANG companies where serious about training / diversity this is what they should be doing take bright high school kids at 18/19 and sign them up for a proper 4/5 year apprenticeship.

Guilds are awful for immigrants and racial minorities, who are often the new entrants excluded by the guilds. Many “Jewish law firms” exist to this day because Jews were excluded from existing WASP law firms.

I’m trying to think of why it would be worse. Is it because skills become less transferable, thus making it harder for an apprentice to move from one master to another?

Perhaps that is by design - companies are wary of investing time and money training junior employees because they can just leave before the investment pays for itself?

Not sure what the answer is here; just playing devil’s advocate.

It’s because it gives guilds the power to control the pipeline of skilled labor and exclude new entrants to limit supply. Guilds are generally run by their members, and the existing members are much more likely to be white and native born than potential new entrants. Their management structure also makes it more likely that prejudices will be acted upon.

When public unions became a thing in the 1960s and 1970s, they systematically excluded Black people, for example.

A federal government can dictate what it thinks morality should be, but in practice cannot enforce morality in a free country.

Even in the US South, the vast majority of millennials and gen Z are not racist. They aren't in political power yet, but in the next 20 years or so, they will be and the zeitgeist of the area will finish its shift (even the people currently in power are abolitionists compared to the previous generations). Travel the world and you'll see that (perhaps outside some European countries) the US of today is just about the least racist country in existence.

Guilds/Unions formed today won't have the same issues as ones from 50-60 years ago because the general view of people today isn't what it was back then.

Guilds and unions are not the same thing.

No matter what the "zeitgeist" is 20 years from now, guilds will still have the effect of artificially limiting the supply of labor to the fields they control, which has been a disaster for fields ranging from medicine to cosmetics.

Craft unions, like in construction, are more like guilds than the industrial unions. You must qualify in one way or another to be a union member before you can get hired by a union company.

But in an industrial union, as an example get hired by an automaker with a UAW contract (and not in a so called right to work state), you are a UAW member.

I think you mean the very early years 1870's and 80' unfortunately the AFL did discriminate against Black and Female Workers.

Guilds reflect the societies they are in. Society had more bigotry in the past, and so did the various institutions within it.

Also, it's weird that you call out guilds for being discriminatory but then give an example of discrimination in employment. We have fair employment laws to prevent this type of behavior and arguably could have "fair guild membership" laws if it became a problem.

It's fair to argue against guilds for driving up prices by limiting membership.

You’re overlooking that the non-white population is much younger (the median white person is 42, the median Hispanic person is 28) and they are driving all population growth in the country. (The absolute number of non-hispanic whites started declining in 2010). Given those changing demographics, when guilds act to limit membership (as you acknowledge they do) the bulk of those excluded are going to be non-whites.

And employment discrimination laws won’t solve the problem because the discriminatory effect arises from the legal practice of protecting existing members at the expense of potential new entrants.

I proposed guild discrimination laws similar to employment discrimination laws, making it illegal for guilds to exclude on the basis of protected categories.

That wouldn’t help. In a country where the non-white population is rapidly growing and the white population is shrinking, and also is trying to catch up in terms of education and income, the population of guild members will be whiter than the population of potential new members. Limiting supply (favoring existing members over potential new members) will in practice disadvantage non-whites.

There was a very clear example of this recently in Chicago. Lori Lightfoot explained that she wouldn’t pursue police funding cuts because under the union contracts, cuts would have to be made from newer employees first. (Last in First out.) That would mean that 2/3 of the cuts would be Black and Hispanic officers, even though less than half of the overall force is Black and Hispanic.

Oh interesting. That's a good point.

Who's going to pay for someone to be unproductive at their job? Corporations surely don't want to anymore.

You mean you can't have lower level people working on bug fixes and small tasks while you save bigger more difficult work for more advanced people? Who says they won't be productive? What is your measure of productivity?

I'm talking about the fact that hiring managers expect applicants to have 100% of the listed skills for any position because their corporations would rather spend money on stock buybacks than employee training.

Maybe this is one area where legislation can help enforce a social norm. Corporate training used to be practiced at prior generations of generations- IBM, GE, HP, etc. With corporate profits at the levels at they are today, Big Tech can afford to spend a little more on expanding internship and training opportunities.

People also used to stay at the same company for 30-40 years.

Personally, when I look for a job, I'm not willing to commit to 30-40 years. I think that part would have to change as well.

I'm not sure it went anywhere, because this is a pretty accurate description of the PhD system.

I wouldn't know, I'm just a high school dropout, but if they barrier of entry to getting into a PhD "guild-system" is to also go through Associates, Bachelor, and Master degree, then I don't think its worthwhile for 90% of jobs that only require technical mastery.

Ph.D's get paid a pittance relative to what they do... and for like 3-5 years.

Apprenticeships for things like plumbers and electricians pay a decent wage interspersed with education.

On the long term a Ph.D may do better than a Master Electrician, but in the short term it's a way better deal. My friend out of HS who started working for Nissan and then Infinity was making 60k+ before he was 21. He's capped at around that much -- like 60-70k -- but most of our high-school friend circle wasn't making that kind of money until our late 20s (and at least one became a teacher, and still doesn't get that much in terms of pure cash comp).

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