Which is more a symptom of bad apprenticeship and i believe we don't acknowledge enough that there are too many shops doing a bad job on training the apprentice.
* How do we ensure that a non-predatory apprenticeships are able to keep their staff for a long enough duration that they're not losing out?
There is a part B to the first question on preventing predatory apprenticeships. There was an anecdote told on reddit of a person who was trying to get out of tech support and so signed with Revature for becoming a software developer, went through their bootcamp and then got placed at a company. That company found that he was rather skilled at doing tech support (rather than as a junior dev) and so moved his contract over to do tech support... getting paid less than he was getting paid doing tech support prior to joining Revature. Furthermore, the locked in two year contract meant that he did tech support for two years. At the end of this, he's got two more years of tech support on his resume that paid him less than what he was making before and no additional software development accomplishments.
So yea... Predatory apprenticeships are a problem.
The way that the "stay around long enough" of old was a signing bonus. When I started in '96 with Taos ($54k/y), I got a $5k signing bonus and $1/mile moving bonus (Mapquest was a new thing - HR was amazed at how much easier that was going to make their job in calculating the moving bonus). If I left before a year was up, I'd have to pay it back.
That works reasonably well enough when salaries are about balanced overall. But it works poorly when there are some jobs that can either offer a much larger bonus or the new pay can quickly repay the bonus. If you're making $75k/y and have a $10k bonus to repay and then get a job for $150k that bonus can be repaid within a month or so (by the time accounting sends out the "pay us back" the bonus is ready to be paid back with the increase).
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