Putting Up
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about the return of craftsmanship. It was my position at the time that we need to think about how to bring people into the emerging job market in ways that may or may not include the traditional education path.
I am pleased to announce that this summer, I will be putting my money ( and my time ) where my mouth is. My nephew will be joining me for an apprenticeship in software development, technology and business. I am woefully under-qualified to teach anyone about any of these things, much less all three, but that has never stopped me before. I am really stoked about the opportunity for a number of reasons:
- He approached me about the idea after getting to the end of his college career and not really knowing what he wanted to do next. Instead of taking the easy way out and becoming a corporate drone, he is spending his own money to move closer to me and hang out for a few months. That decision in and of itself shows remarkable cojones, and I could not be more thrilled. How cool is it to be 22 and know that there is more to it than just making money and getting a couple weeks off a year? I wish I had been that smart.
- It will give me the chance to really think about how to teach someone what I know and pass it on. Not just how to write code or solve technical problems, but how to handle different situations, how to think about problems, and other stuff I have absorbed over the years.
- It will hopefully lead into something else that neither of us know about right now, not including a murder-suicide kind of ending
- It’s a chance to do something new I haven’t done yet
We get started in mid-July and it will run until ( a ) we hate each other or ( b ) he has what he needs to do it for a living or ( c ) he realizes he does not want to do it for a living or ( d ) some combination of the above.
Rock and roll.
