Clyde Freeman had a traditional education. He graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in finance. From there, he jumped from job to job, applying his financial knowledge at various companies. While he was working at Fidelity, the Boston-based wealth management giant, he realized he had another calling.
“My ideal position,” Freeman said, “would be a full-stack software engineer.”
Freeman enrolled in CodeSquad, a Boston nonprofit that trains adults in full-stack web development through a bootcamp. It was there that he began to combine his artistic background—he likes to draw—with his new technical know-how. He began to envision a career in tech.
The founder of CodeSquad evidently saw Freeman’s potential: After the bootcamp graduation, he told Freeman about a new program that was coming to Massachusetts. It was called Apprenti, and it would be the first-ever tech apprenticeship program in the state.
Apprenti has been around for four years, having originally launched under the Washington Technology Industry Association in Washington state. In 2016, the program won a $7.5 million contract from the federal Department of Labor to expand nationwide. Today, Apprenti has active operations in 12 locations.
Through the program, students go through a bootcamp that lasts some four months. Then, they are placed in a yearlong apprenticeship with corporations that have partnered with Apprenti. Apprentices are guaranteed employment, comprehensive health benefits, a training wage that is at minimum 60 percent that of regular employees, and a certificate of occupational competence upon completion of the program. Employers often hire apprentices full-time afterward.
Freeman is part of Apprenti’s first Massachusetts cohort. He is one of 14 trainees (there were originally 15; one had to drop out for personal reasons).
Next month, Freeman will begin on-the-job training at online furniture retailer Wayfair, one of six partners signed on to partner with Apprenti in the state. The others are Carbon Black, Cengage, Harvard University’s IT division, PTC, and RSM.
“In Massachusetts, I think many employers are rethinking how to hire and recognizing that to stay competitive, they need to explore alternative pathways to find good talent,” said Lauren Jones, Apprenti’s Massachusetts state director. “They appreciate the registered apprenticeship model, because it is a resource that combines both the technical training followed by the on-the-job training, and for the employer, they should really be investing in their future talent by training them on the job with the goal of retaining them.”
Retention continues to be a problem for the Boston area. Millions of students come to the Hub for state-of-the-art education, and many train locally with companies through internship and co-op programs. Yet, those same students often leave once they have their degrees in hand.
“Massachusetts is obviously a very highly educated market,” said Jennifer Carlson, Apprenti’s executive director. “But what's being produced and what’s staying local, and even the amount of [talent] being imported, still isn't enough to meet the needs of all the companies in the market.”
Last year, Carlson says, there were 2.97 million tech job postings nationwide but just 65,000 computer science degrees earned from public and private four-year colleges and universities. Apprenti is designed to fill that gap.
The employers working with Apprenti recognize that, too. Nicole Breen, director of human resources at Harvard, has been coordinating the university IT department’s partnership with the program.
So far, it’s been a collaborative process: Apprenti’s team shared a draft of a training curriculum with Breen, who gave feedback that was then implemented. Breen’s team also took the lead on building out Apprenti’s business analyst apprenticeship. (Harvard will have both developer apprentices and business analyst apprentices; training for the latter will begin in September.)
It’s also not lost on Breen that Apprenti’s disruption of the talent pipeline has the potential to bring in nontraditional candidates.
“As part of our focus at Harvard University on diversity, inclusion and belonging initiatives, diversity hiring is important to us,” Breen said. “We were really impressed with all the support Apprenti offers to the apprentices and to the employers.”
Colleen Simonelli, PTC’s vice president of inclusion and diversity and organizational development, agreed.
“The Apprenti program is outstanding,” she said in an email. “At PTC, we’re excited to tap into this diverse talent pool. The shortage for high tech talent is real. Apprenti is helping to address this issue while assisting high tech companies in building a more diverse workplace, which ultimately leads to greater innovation.”
For the apprentices, Apprenti offers a clear path into tech. Freeman is using the program to facilitate his career change from finance into software development. His classmate, Kat Manser, is doing the same; she comes from the public health world. Before this, she was feeding her interest in tech by taking free online classes through Codecademy, Coursera, and Lynda.com. “I really fell in love with what I was learning,” Manser said.
Now, she can learn from in-person instructors, classmates, and soon, managers at her employer. Manser will begin training at Carbon Black, a cybersecurity company based in Waltham, next month.
“Coming from a background where I felt like I was helping people, this is another transition where I feel like the products that I'm working on will really make a difference for individuals and for organizations and the common good,” Manser said. “It’s been life-changing.”
