Reminds me of Shopify's Tobias Lutke– also German, also took an off-beaten path. I transcribed a Keynote that tobi once did.[1] Let me dig up the relevant bit:
Within my little world, within this school, the most obvious/profound thought I had was that I needed Air Jordan sneakers to be part of the popular kids.
That seems really silly from the perspective of adults. I was lucky- I got out of school (you can leave school after 10th grade in Germany- you can choose to do an apprenticeship with a company for a couple of years and then join University- really good system.)
Middle of the 90s, Germany realises computers are getting more important, and we have no clue how to educate computer programmers. Science faculties of universities? Or address in a more traditional, hands-on craftsman kinda route? Lucky- one of the first class of kids to join this kind of thing, then I joined Siemens, and met a really great mentor there.
"I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any effort into it. They diagnosed me with all sorts of learning disabilities and started to medicate me. I wanted to leave it all behind."
"I decided the best thing to do was to drop out and start an apprenticeship as a Fachinformatiker - computer programmer. This might sound like a stupid decision to people in North America, who often go to College or University to get a degree in something like computer science, but in Germany leaving high-school for an apprenticeship is not out of the ordinary. It is called the dual education system, and it is likely one of the main reasons for Germany’s success."
Comments
Reminds me of Shopify's Tobias Lutke– also German, also took an off-beaten path. I transcribed a Keynote that tobi once did.[1] Let me dig up the relevant bit:
[1] http://www.visakanv.com/marketing/tobi
UPDATE: I remembered something else [2]:
"I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any effort into it. They diagnosed me with all sorts of learning disabilities and started to medicate me. I wanted to leave it all behind."
"I decided the best thing to do was to drop out and start an apprenticeship as a Fachinformatiker - computer programmer. This might sound like a stupid decision to people in North America, who often go to College or University to get a degree in something like computer science, but in Germany leaving high-school for an apprenticeship is not out of the ordinary. It is called the dual education system, and it is likely one of the main reasons for Germany’s success."
[2] http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-pro...
One question: In what companies do Fachinformatikers' work and what kind of problems do they work on?
Added as a read, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9020335 great post.
I work for T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. I work in a team that does SAP. So most of the problems are "CRUD". ;)
Toby is quite the legend among devs in Toronto. Bruder. Bauer.