It seems to me that the author comprehends the quote perfectly well. His point is that since Buffett was adding negative value to Graham out of the gate, he'd have needed to do something extra to make hiring him worth Graham's while. And that doing that something extra would have been a good investment because of the learning opportunities it would bring. That's the apprenticeship part. Disagree with the argument if you like (I do too), but don't read it unfairly and then rip him for it.
Perhaps what we disagree on here is semantics. When I read,
> you have to make sacrifices to take on an apprenticeship
I understand that to mean that in order to even apply for / commit to an apprenticeship, you have to make sacrifices. In the context of the rest of his narrative, that means sacrificing a safer, better paying, more conventional career for being a gopher for a would-be titan of Silicon Valley.
Obviously, if you have the chance to be the gopher for an actual titan of industry, it's probably worth any reasonable sacrifice. But that's not what the author is promoting. He's promoting the "hustle 24/7" mentality even as a barista in the hopes that your manager will reward your entrepreneurial sprit--or, more likely, a newbie founder who will at best will exit their startup somewhere in the high six to low seven figures and leave you with little more than a few hundred thousand dollars of opportunity cost.
I totally agree that the value of such an apprenticeship depends on how titanic the master is, which means it's mostly not going to be all that valuable.
I still think Naval understood the point about negative value perfectly well.
