An old time office remedy
Old time office healing
Holistic medicine has been getting much more attention in the last 5 years. These remedies for the most part have been around for many generations. I would like to bring back another practice from those days of old “apprenticeship.” For those of you not aware of this concept it would go like this.
Step 1, go to school. There is no other option,
Step 2, after graduation get associated to someone in the profession.
Step 3, learn the tricks of the trade from that person, but more importantly get graded as though you are good enough to be called a professional in whatever trade you have chosen.
Step 4, Once you are good enough to be called a professional, start your own business or work with someone else’s for at least 5 years.
Step 5, Once you have made a name for yourself and probably made most of the possible mistakes and had to correct them (or get sued). You get to be a team lead or supervisor.
Step 6, After 10 years in the industry if you want a change of pace, then you can teach or apprentice the next generation of professionals.
Step 7, Retirement
If at any point you decide to change professions (from programmer to plumber for example) you start from scratch. you might move through the apprentice period in a shorter time because you already have the professionalism and would only need to hone your technique.
When I went back to college for a refresher several years ago it absolutely sickened me that one of the instructors was a graduate of the program the previous semester and before taking this job he was in high school. I gave him an absolute hard time, with questions like “so how does this work in the real world” and “what happens when your customer wants…” I did it at the time to be a prick but really as I am working with the newest generation of programmer’s class of 2000 on up, no one had taught them some very basic computer professional skills. I had an Cobol programmer teach me the basics of software development and I am damm glad I did as I have been able to trouble shoot in languages I know nothing about because, of the basics Paul taught me.
Holistic medicine has been getting much more attention in the last 5 years. These remedies for the most part have been around for many generations. I would like to bring back another practice from those days of old “apprenticeship.” For those of you not aware of this concept it would go like this.
Step 1, go to school. There is no other option,
Step 2, after graduation get associated to someone in the profession.
Step 3, learn the tricks of the trade from that person, but more importantly get graded as though you are good enough to be called a professional in whatever trade you have chosen.
Step 4, Once you are good enough to be called a professional, start your own business or work with someone else’s for at least 5 years.
Step 5, Once you have made a name for yourself and probably made most of the possible mistakes and had to correct them (or get sued). You get to be a team lead or supervisor.
Step 6, After 10 years in the industry if you want a change of pace, then you can teach or apprentice the next generation of professionals.
Step 7, Retirement
If at any point you decide to change professions (from programmer to plumber for example) you start from scratch. you might move through the apprentice period in a shorter time because you already have the professionalism and would only need to hone your technique.
When I went back to college for a refresher several years ago it absolutely sickened me that one of the instructors was a graduate of the program the previous semester and before taking this job he was in high school. I gave him an absolute hard time, with questions like “so how does this work in the real world” and “what happens when your customer wants…” I did it at the time to be a prick but really as I am working with the newest generation of programmer’s class of 2000 on up, no one had taught them some very basic computer professional skills. I had an Cobol programmer teach me the basics of software development and I am damm glad I did as I have been able to trouble shoot in languages I know nothing about because, of the basics Paul taught me.
posted by Anonymous at 1:21 PM
9 Comments:
I removed the above comments as they were in no way related to the blog or the topic dicussed.
I play poker, bad pokers complain when they lose to "rank" amateurs and say that the people who aren't skilled aren't fit to play, good poker players say to the people with weaknesses "have a seat, would you like a drink" because they are confident over time their array of poker skills will ultimately make them money over the weaker player
So, how would you compare your argument related to years of experience to my poker analogy?
Dear Anony-moose
I wish to make sure I understand your comment correctly, so I will make some assumptions before I reply.
I assume you are a poker player with a few years of playing under your belt, not enough to be called a pro but enough to know the fundamentals around the odds of certain cards and the like. If I am wrong in this assumption please say so as I would hate to have people think anonymous was not who they said they are.
I also assume that these seasoned players are getting annoyed with losing to you, (good for you BTW.)
This is where my assumptions stop and I will try to respond to your question.
First, I find it compliments my rant in that there are many people who perform jobs that they are not suited for and therefore it cost them in time and effort or in your case poker winnings. The premise being you would never sit down at a $100,000 dollar a hand table unless you had a lot of wins at the $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $25,000 tables. Chances are that unless you got noticed at these other tables you wouldn’t even know about these other games until someone deemed you worthy.
Second, while poker is a game of luck, no matter how you slice it if you continually draw a 3 of a kind 8 times out of 10 you could see how luck could be construed as skill at least until it ran out. I do acknowledge that there is some skill involved if you wish to truly make money at this. Those skills include math (calculating odds), psychology
(counting a player’s blinks and twitches) and acting (looking beat even though you have a straight flush).
I would think that someone being trained by an expert, lets say Annie Duke (For those of you who don’t know who she is see http://www.annieduke.com/ ) could learn how to be even better than if they worked from potential alone. I wouldn’t want to sit down at Ms. Duke’s table with $100,000 at stake, armed only with the knowledge that I am good at poker.
For the rest of us; there is the lottery, where they take our money in much smaller chunks at a time.
You missed the point...
What is your measuring stick for experience, number of years someoen has been collecting a paycheque? How do you decide the relevancy of the years? Where does natural ability come in?
Experience is a fickle thing. You definitely want to have someone with at least 10 years varied experience to be the mentor. I mean 10 years of doing the same occupation at a variety of sites and not 1 year’s worth of experience repeated 10 times. Also take into account 10 years of making the same mistakes at different places doesn’t make you a master either, but how would you know the difference unless someone of skill and experience points it out.
I go to a mechanic that has 15 years of experience. I don’t go just because he’s been a mechanic for 15 years. I go to him because in his first 3 years he apprenticed in a diesel garage working on the big rigs and small rigs. Then he worked for a garage as the junior mechanic before starting his own garage. (Yes I interviewed him first; as I am particular about who touches my cars.) He always had the mechanical aptitude but those years under the masters taught him tricks he would have never thought of. (Tricks I admit have saved my butt more than once, including building parts from scratch for my old beater.) Other people might have taken 5 years in the first job before they were good enough to move on, but any less than 2 years would probably not be enough to teach all things, that a good mechanic needs to know.
I am going to use the field I know about because I have been in it for 19 years now in a variety of roles producing software including analyst, programmer, network manager, delivery manager and project manager so I feel qualified to speak on this field. I have seen good programmers who suck at the job of programming, what I mean by this is; these people create brilliant software that can’t be maintained by anyone including themselves.
All jobs require more than just one skill in order to be good at it even, as I found out with mechanics, they have paper work to do and this is one of the many things taught during the apprenticeship. Let’s not forget the soft skills that are part of working. There is no such thing as an instant superstar they might have the talent but talent is not the whole package.
Forgive me if I am missing "anony - moose's" original point; are you saying that when druid bitched about the office, he is bitching because he is a bad office druid, being usurped by lesser office people? Or that he should welcome the less capable individuals because then he would look all the better, or be more successful because of being surrounded by the less capable?
I am kept in steady work because of the less accomplished. It is not because I am that much better, in most cases these are still very smart people who are well educated, or are self taught but they still lack many of the peripheral skills which one can only gather from expending much time and effort to learn the whole of the industry and not just from the single focus of a book, or of a game.
Our government agencies are top heavy with years of collecting a pay check individuals, so time served can not be an acceptable factor, (20% of our population could be considered employment insurances guru's were that the case).
The "trades" industries support and promote apprenticeship and mentoring knowing full well that this produces a far superior tradesman, (I make no exceptions for gender in titles). This mentorship builds upon the natural abilities of individuals, direct them to use these skills to a productive means and ultimately keep the bad players from the wrong table.
So to compare the poker analogy to a mentorship is not quite up to par; unless I can add to it the time spent pissing off bad poker players and spending time learning the nuances of the game from the experienced and more successful players as well - in effect, mentoring.
That’s my two cents worth!
you changed the wording of your post sinc the lat time I read it... why?
Other than adding comments in the comment section I don't think the main text has changed at all.
I must say I agree to disagree. In the trade I know for a fact that experience isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
If you don't know any better than you could be learning wrong things with out knowing it. As well with age I hate to say it comes forgetfulness. Age doesn't mean every thing. A Tech that is only a year in the trade some times corrects the older sopousively wiser.
Each person is so individual you can't group no matter what. Other than to try and see error. (if any)
Even the wise make mistakes.
Human's make mistakes no matter what. Even when they try not to. Perfect isn't perfect all the time.
Perfect is a bad word no matter what or how you look at it.
Your perfect is different from mine. In the end you will never get the same answer from everyone on the plant.
That is why experience is some times good but not always.
Even knowledged people can't always do the job right. We aren't programmed like robots. (yet!!)
Post a Comment
<< Home