The traveling German carpenters

http://blog.intellum.com/2011/04/traveling-german-carpenters.html

by luccastera • 15 years ago

180 42 15 years ago

blog.intellum.com

Yeah I experienced this growing up as a kid in Germany. I remember these people from other towns in their "strange" outfits. Over the years they got less and less but you can still find a few.

Now living here in the U.S. I wonder how something like this would maybe translate over to coders and designers in startups. Seeing that we have these startup heavy areas across the country. Why not have people work a year in the Valley, then move a year to NYC, followed by another year in Boston or Austin. Would be a fun and rewarding program for young talent.

nir• 15 years ago

No need for a program - you can just do it. Even go outside the US (some countries have a work/holiday visa program, eg Australia). It's a great learning experience.

zinssmeister4• 15 years ago

Yes of course one can just do it. But having a bit of an umbrella organization around this would help get the word out.

mhd2• 15 years ago

I've got the feeling that it's getting more frequent in the last few years. Just like you see more people dressed in traditional garb (in beer-related festivities here in Bavaria for ex.). I think for a while anything "traditional" was regarded as way too conservative, but we're moving beyond that. Tattoos and Lederhosen...

But yes, some kind of umbrella organization would be quite neat, some organized internship outside of colleges. A "communist" consultancy…

StudyAnimal• 15 years ago

The software craftsmanship movement is starting to get this sort of thing going. At least the idea of apprentice, journeyman and master are taking shape, and a number of software development companies have done craftsman swaps.

Corey Haines http://www.coreyhaines.com/ in particular has done a lot to actually live like the software equivalent of these carpenter journeymen.

vidar• 15 years ago

Reminds me of a proverb from Nassim Taleb: "Skills that transfer: street fights, off-path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. Skills that don't: school, games, sports, laboratory - what's reduced and organized."

dylanz• 15 years ago

My good friend is a journeyman, and I always wished there was a US equivalent, especially in the realm of software engineering. I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy coding with brilliant programmers and traveling around the country.

Anecdotally speaking: My friend has a "wunderstick", which is a hand made walking stick. When we go into bars in Germany, he taps it, and the bartender gives us free drinks. Before we leave, he taps his stick again, and says some big speech in German (about how grateful he is, etc). Most bars and hotels cater to the journeymen quite well. While we were in Berlin, he also had girls run across the street to him and kiss him on the cheek or lips. I guess it's good luck to kiss a journeyman.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

The day it's good luck to kiss a journeyman software engineer... will be quite the day indeed.

robyates• 15 years ago

Actually, there are journeyman software developers. Here are some links:

1. Corey Haines: http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/, http://www.coreyhaines.com/, http://www.coderetreat.com/

2. Journeyman Programmer Description: http://teamdoty.us/journeymanwp/?p=4 (from http://www.thejourneymanprogrammer.org/)

3. Software Craftsmanship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship, http://scna.softwarecraftsmanship.org/, http://www.softwarecraftsmanship.org.uk/

mrspandex• 15 years ago

Did anyone else read that title as "time traveling German carpenters?"

Does the internet make this less relevant for those in the software field?

Palomides• 15 years ago

well, one can certainly wander the internet, working with various people on open source projects; dunno about the not paying for food or housing part though :P

plastics4• 15 years ago

The "Walz" is not for building primary skills (i.e. in our case Software Development or in their case Carpentry). It is assumed that carpenters doing it are already quite skilled in their respective profession. The reason of the "Walz" is to teach self reliance, soft skills and to round out ones primary skills by being exposed to practices of their craft that have evolved/developed differently from those they learned during their apprenticeship.

In short the goal is to become a "Master" which in the german vocational tradition originally meant having your own shop and not needing to be an employee any longer (so in our case to become a founder).

I think the internet undermines these goals, because, well IMHO it is becoming more and more a gigantic echo chamber (we all read the same blogs/books, admire the same persons, use remarkably similar tools etc.)

I think it is astounding that a lot of very smart people assume that currently hip and promoted best development practices, say for a Web 2.0 whatever platform are relevant for other areas (e.g embedded, big iron, medical, aeronautic, finance) because there is not much evident push back in the blog sphere from practitioners in these spheres... which AFAIK is more a result of these people tending to much less likely to blog or work on open source software, than of the universal applicability of said practices (and if the push back, the results I have seen so far have been highly embarrassing for the hipster crowd).

mhd2• 15 years ago

In short the goal is to become a "Master" which in the german vocational tradition originally meant having your own shop and not needing to be an employee any longer

Not just originally, for some professions you're still not allowed to have your own business without your "Meister" degree. Never understood why this included hairdressers…

Totally agree with your assessment of the web subsection of the IT profession. And it's quite splintered, with the "young turks" against academia against the enterprise, with plenty of small areas of expertise vanishing in the cracks. It does get a bit better if the forum of discussion is sufficiently abstract and spread over different niches (e.g. programming languages that transcend specific fandoms).

intellectronica2• 15 years ago

It's worth keeping in mind that the travelling carpenters are a souvenir from dark times in Europe, when economic progress remained extremely slow because craftsmen were evaluated by their belonging to a guild and would not compete.

Jamiecon• 15 years ago

Onerous labour rules restricting economic progress in Europe?

I for one am glad we've moved on.

gwern3• 15 years ago

It's worth noting that those 'dark times' were periods of perfectly ordinary economic growth compared to the rest of the world and all the millenniums previous.

Comparing those times to the Industrial Revolution that came shortly after is a little unfair - no tradition or souvenir compares well.

roel_v• 15 years ago

Eh, no. The first explosion of efficiency and economic prosperity was in Roman times, when there was peace in much of Europe and cities flourished, complete with sanitation systems, elaborate transportation networks etcetera.

When that crumbled, city states took over, and economic life was once again dictated by the whims of rulers who in reality depended on keeping the ruling classes of the cities in their empire happy; in these cities, tradesmen classes operated in rigid, protectionist and mercantilist guild systems. There was stagnation and in many fields enormous regression until the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (when freedom brought back the drive for progress).

intellectronica2• 15 years ago

millennia

fab13n• 15 years ago

At this time, to create an incentive against the culture of secrecy that prevented the sharing of technical progress, a system of temporary monopolies called _patentes_ has been invented.

Its descendant--now spellt _patent_--is today used precisely to prevent technical progress from spreading.

arjn• 15 years ago

Back when I was in undergrad, I met a German exchange student who mentioned something about this. He may have been part of it at some point. They have a special belt buckle or something which identifies them and he said it was almost a status symbol (the belt buckle). I believe he was a roof-shingler and not a general carpenter though.

Luc• 15 years ago

I really wanted to see those beer-giving sticks, and found that the magic google word for more pictures is 'Wanderschaft': http://www.google.com/images?q=Wanderschaft

jsilence• 15 years ago

Sorry, but "Wanderschaft" is a rather old fashioned word for hiking. It is the noun version of the verb "Wandern" (to hike).

The stick is called "Wanderstab" or "Stenz".

DanielH• 15 years ago

"Wanderschaft" is the German noun used especially for the carpenters journey.

eru3• 15 years ago

Actually, it is not `the' noun version, but `one' noun version. The more common contemporary known is Wanderung.

ugh• 15 years ago

This article talks only about journeymen and women who are truly exotic and rare but it doesn't really emphasize that vocational training — the alternative to college — still is alive and well in Germany. You usually don't got to college if you want to become a hairdresser or a mechatronic engineer.

After they finish school, the apprentices work three or four days per week at some company and go to a vocational school the rest of the time.

zwieback• 15 years ago

The German system indeed has a lot more options between a full blown academic career to learning a craft in a structured 4 year program all the way to being an unskilled laborer with 10 years of school.

The drawback is that career paths are also more structured than in the US and take a long time. Want to start a painting business? Better get your Meisterbrief first and that will take a good while.

Here in the US things are more fluid, which leads to people changing careers and going back to school at a later age more willingly. The flipside is that almost everyone is an amateur and quality of work varies wildly.

rb2k_• 15 years ago

There is even a mixture between the two. It was called "Berufsakademie" and recently renamed to "Duale Hochschule". It's basically a 50/50 split between studying at a college and working at a company. The company usually pays the study fees and public transport ticket as well as a somewhat limited but ok salary. The split is usually divided into 'sprints' of ?5? weeks of work followed by ?5? weeks of university.

Here's some of their marketing material:

DHBW possesses the unique characteristic of consistently and deliberately combining academic study with applied learning in the professional world. With this strategy, DHBW provides a route to sought-after academic qualifications while enabling students to gain extensive practical experience. This foundation equips DHBW students and graduates to take on challenging tasks early in their professional careers, helping to launch them on successful career paths.

bobbywilson0• 15 years ago

Corey Haines has done this with software development. In a similar fashion working for room and board. Which turns out to be a great deal for the company and I assume great experience for Corey.

kragen• 15 years ago

He has a blog at http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/ but I don't see where he talks about programming for room and board.

wazoox• 15 years ago

In France there is a related system, "les Compagnons du devoir". However, it exists for carpenters, masons, sculptors, bakers, etc. Almost all hand crafts, in fact. They must travel around the country to learn their craft, and present a "masterpiece" as a proof they master it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France

fleitz• 15 years ago

Interesting article, it's one of the directions I want to take with Answer in 30. We're very people focused so I think it's essential to be out and about with the 99% of people who aren't tech startups, getting work, getting to know our customers and seeing how our product can make their lives better and businesses more successful.

I want to take a van and travel North America working on the startup and talking to our userbase and customers. What could be better from a community management perspective than to get a visit personally from the founders. I think it says a lot more than some silly badge you can display on your profile.

WA• 15 years ago

Funny, I have seen these guys in a bar a few months ago (in Germany). I didn't talk to them. However, that would've been interesting I guess. Anyways, interesting story.

The traveling German carpenters

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