Michael, wow! That's a lot of questions! I'll provide answers to the questions for which I have an immediate reponse...
What about the physical layout of your workspace in the studio? Does it have an Alexandrian quality? No, I would not claim that it has an Alexandrian quality. It's a war-room (open space) with a window that we can open and white boards on the walls. We have full control of the room so we've reorganized it a few times as the number of people in the office has risen and fallen. We will be moving to a larger (and better) office soon, so I'm hoping to apply some of Alexander's principles (I actually brought his book with me today).
What did you learn from your apprentices? There is no possible way I could write this all down after working with the caliber of people I've been with over the last 12 months. All I can say is that learning is our fundamental activity and that I guarantee I have learned at least as much as our apprentices during that time.
What are your experiences (+ other's stories) about beeing an
apprentice out in the field with less support by the company or
workplace? This book is the answer to this question. As soon as I read McBreen's book in 2002, I categorized myself as an apprentice which reframed my career and set me on the path that I am still walking, now as a journeyman.
Did you have a kind of curriculum or was it the practising/pairing at real world projects that did the job? The vast majority of the learning was done through pairing with them or guiding them (or sadly, nearly abandoning them) on real world projects. We do have a weekly mid-day Geekfest where we get together with a projector and do code reviews, watch peepcasts, experiment with new technologies, and share insights. The content of these Geekfests are team-directed and not prescribed by anyone in particular.
How much did your background in social work influence the success of the apprenticeship-program? I can't really say hom much my background has influenced our apprenticeship program. I can say that I have been thankful for my background on every team I've ever worked on. There are many similarities between family dynamics and team dynamics.
Which roles were the apprentices given? Just being apprentices to
someone or also full fledged developers in your client's projects? They were full-fledged developers on clients' projects. I should mention that every apprentice we've hired has had enough technical know-how to at least make a marginal contribution on day one.
How did you manage the learning process, and did you apply the patterns described in this book and to which success? The only learning process I can manage is my own. The patterns in this book can only be applied by the people doing the learning, not be their leaders. For instance, I cannot force one of our apprentices to Expose his Ignorance, but I can comment on it when he does.
Which degree of freedom (as of Paul Grahams (You weren't meant to have a boss)) did they have? Could they freely experiment, learn and try the stuff they wanted? I'd say way walk a pretty fine line here. It helps that we develop mostly in Rails, which means we're doing a lot of greenfield and/or we have the autonomy to choose our own tools and libraries. But ultimately we're choosing stuff based on value to our clients rather than experimentating purely for learning's sake.
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