Tobi Lütke

> get a few interns Pretty much agree, but not sure Internships are the best way to do it. Expecting people to work for no pay means you only get those that can afford to work for no pay. I remember an article on HN from few years ago, about the German apprentice system. Paid work, coupled with college education. https://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5314268

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. [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…

Surprising. Tobi Lutke, Shopify CEO, does use hacker news [0]. May be he reads this and elects to respond, like he's done before [1]. Given his profile, he doesn't come off as someone who'd make or approve of such decisions [2]. -- [0] xal [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10549279 [2] https://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280225-good-at-making-decisions

Isn't this what they do in Germany? http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer

Here is a nice article written by Lütke himself about how he got into computers and how his then boss Jürgen was probably the most important thing that happened to him in his professional life. http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer Really enjoyed reading this piece. I can partly see myself in his story except all the achievements. We'll see.

Shopify's founder wrote an interesting article on his experience apprenticing in Germany: http://tobi.lutke.com/blogs/news/11280301-the-apprentice-programmer

Tobi Lütke of Spotify - http://tobi.lutke.com/ Dalton Caldwell of App.net - http://daltoncaldwell.com/ Suhail Doshi of Mixpanel - http://sufficientlyadvanced.net/ Jack Groetzinger of SeatGeek - http://jackg.org/ Eric Koester of Zaarly - http://ekoester.com/