
Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it - sarapeyton
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/learning-for-a-living/
======
aczerepinski
I’ve always learned on the job and have never asked permission. I guess I’m
lucky that I haven’t worked in the type of places where somebody’s looking
over my shoulder every minute of the day. Somewhere around an hour a day every
day and I’ve been doing it for years and nobody has ever said anything about
it.

I subscribe to those weekly emails for the programming languages we use at
work and I read them when they come in. I sometimes watch a conference talk
about implementing something similar to whatever I’m scheduled to do next.

If I were running a company I’d expect this of all high level employees. It’s
your responsibility to be on top of whatever’s going on in your field.

~~~
protonimitate
I've started using Friday as a "personal development" day at work.

I do not write any code on Friday (unless it's a severe production level
issue). Instead, I spend the mornings reviewing PRs that I wasn't included on
(to keep up with whats happening, but also to learn more about how other
people write and review code) and the afternoons are spent
reading/researching/online classes.

This has really helped me avoid burn out. I go into the weekend less exhausted
and more motivated to return on Monday and implement new stuff. It has also
helped generate some inspiration for weekend/personal projects.

~~~
paracyst
This sounds like a good idea that I would really like to try, for my own
sanity if for nothing else. For me, the issue—imagined or not—would arise in
the Friday morning daily stand-up. I’m not sure it would go over well if I
said that I intend to spend part of the day doing PRs (this is fine and
expected) and the other part learning/researching (likely not).

Oh the joys of the JIRA sweatshop. We have JIRA pulled up on the big screen TV
and the product guys cycle through the status of each dev team members’ items
during each daily standup. This is my first development job, surely it’s not
like this everywhere?

~~~
vorpalhex
It's not like that everywhere

> product guys cycle through the status of each dev team members’ items during
> each daily standup

Something has gone horrible off the rails. Standup is supposed to be a quick
time for every team member to raise any blockers primarily, with a quick
"here's what I did, here's what I'm doing" type blurb. The benefit of standup
is identifying blockers and if engineers are getting mired in problems (so you
can fix those issues outside of standup).

~~~
BigJono
If this were the case then standups would be totally useless unless the org
was so cooked that nothing gets done unless someone is made accountable in
front of the entire team.

If I run into a blocker why would I wait until the next morning to try and get
it resolved?

~~~
travisjungroth
I had a new manager start his first weekly meeting by asking if there was
anything on fire. People filled the ensuing silence with recent annoyances.
_Of course_ nothing is on fire right now (and I get it’s a metaphor). If
something is “on fire”, I’m not waiting till the Monday meeting to bring it
up. I’m not even going to attend the mandatory meeting while I put it out, if
that’s when it happens. That’s the definition of on fire.

~~~
tempestn
To be fair, your new manager doesn't know that's how you operate. It seems a
reasonable question to me, with the expected answer being no. But why not ask
just in case? You wouldn't want to be the new manager who just launches into
new business not realizing that one of your developers is too timid to
interrupt you with the major breaking bug that's currently live, or whatever.
Once they get to know the team and can trust that you'd be on top of that kind
of thing, it's another story.

~~~
travisjungroth
Maybe I’m too sensitive to the phrase “on fire”. I can’t imagine someone at a
factory starting a meeting the same way.

------
ChuckMcM
That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-
plasticity and keeps you engaged.

That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept
sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new
things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give
time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel
like they are “Working” even though I explain to them that as long as its
work/business related I will expect to be able to call upon them in the future
with this new knowledge.

So what can I do as a manager to make it more “okay” to spend time at work
learning?

~~~
habnds
It's because when annual reviews happen they aren't talking about the books
they read they're talking about a project that they contributed to.

In my experience formalizing "learning" in the work place doesn't work because
it requires the performance of learning for management types rather than real
learning which involves working through real new problems over an extended
period of time.

The real way to get employees to learn is to hand them responsibilities they
are not fully prepared for along with the pay that goes with them and see how
it goes. Right or wrong managers are rarely comfortable doing that.

Employees need to be comfortable failing in front of you and few are because
there are few good examples of that turning out well. When it does go well,
all too often the raise they were promised doesn't come through.

this isn't to say you're a poor manager, just that it's unusual to have a
healthy environment for on the job learning.

~~~
8ytecoder
At least one big company I know of, learning is part of performance reviews -
agreed upon in advance by the manager and engineer. It didn't usually help (at
least AFAIK). Part the fault of the engineers and rest the culture of the team
to always be fighting fires.

~~~
habnds
I don't know the exact situation you're talking about, but my guess is that
this is exactly the type of formal "learning" I would argue does not work.

------
rectang
I'm currently negotiating with two potential employers, one of them one of the
bigs. It would be great if they would pay me to learn at work, but I don't
feel like I'm in a position to ask for that — that's an industry=wide problem.

So I'm trying to hack the system to get fewer hours: 30-32 per week. That
gives me enough time to self-study, handle some of my own training and
overdeliver, yet still have a life.

I have extremely strong open source bona fides, I'm an inveterate organizer of
study groups both at work and elsewhere, I speak regularly at meetups in order
to force myself to learn new things well. Giving me the space to train myself
is a _great deal_ for potential employers.

But they aren't biting. 40 hours is what they are set up for and it is hard
for them to figure out how to be flexible, even if they want to.

At my last job with a small growth-stage startup, I successfully negotiated
for 32 hours, and it worked out great for all parties. But it seems harder
than I think it should be to close such deals.

~~~
downerending
Voice of experience: Companies are incapable of thinking this way. Instead,
take the 40 and simply siphon off 8-10 for your personal education.

As long as you're not actually working for a different company during this
time, it's all good. If company doesn't like it, move on.

~~~
thrav
Yep. Prove that you can do your job in less time, and use the slack for
learning. Dip out early on days you need to speak at things. Work from home on
days you know will be slow and do learning while no one is around.

It’s not difficult to pull that off at a big company.

~~~
stronglikedan
> Prove that you can do your job in less time

If you _prove_ it, they may just expect more from you in the same amount of
time.

~~~
thrav
I’m not advocating for announcing completion and broadcasting your efficiency.
I’m just saying, ensure you won’t fall behind working on your real job 32
hours a week. That shouldn’t be too difficult in most cases, given all the
research on productivity.

If you can’t do that, they were right to refuse the 32hr/wk proposal. If you
can, just do it, sneak in some studying, and act like it took you 40.

------
Bootwizard
I'm currently a frontend engineer. I told my team lead a while back that I'd
like to transition to the server side, especially since our server team is
woefully understaffed and our frontend team is overstaffed.

He told me "Sure but you'll need to learn all that stuff on your own time". So
I never did it because I'm interested in doing other things at home.

~~~
ken
I’m amazed to hear this from programmers. You can learn this for free,
anywhere, at any time.

I’m no longer in software and when I want to upgrade my skills, I’m doing it
on my own time and my own dime. Often doubly so if I have to take time off
work (hourly) for training.

~~~
darkwater
Well, not doing it on your own time is the exact point of the article linked.
I mean, if you want to pivot into a completely different career in a
completely different company you should do it on your own, sure, but GP wants
to change position within the same company, and wants to move in an
understaffed department. Why should they do it on their time and dime?

~~~
markus_zhang
Well maybe talk to the backend lead at the same time. His own team lead <> the
company and the company might not even realize it. From the pov of his own
team lead, it might be a purely damaging move (has to find alternative, has to
explain to upper management, etc.).

TBH I wouldn't expect any manager (especially it's just a lead, not even a
mgr) to sacrifice for my own benefit. I thank them and provide material reward
if they do, but I'm 100% with them (and study on my own, then leave the
company) if they don't. It has to be mutually beneficial, or at least looks
like. So my feeling is that both OP and his team leader are not good at
communication.

------
AcerbicZero
Maybe I just had a different career path, but so far it seems that my job is
learning, and the work is a byproduct of that.

I spent a bunch of years in the USAR doing basic computer stuff, both in
training, and then learning from others as I went along. I was the US Army
version of a general purpose "IT" fellow. Once I got out of the military and I
interviewed at a few private sector jobs I realized I was not overly well
equipped for IT, but if I could show I wanted to learn they would usually
bring me on-board. I did desktop support for ~2 years before I landed a
veryyyy basic SysAdmin job. I did that for a year, and rolled it into a real
SysAdmin job. Did that for a year and turned it into a Server Engineer job
(Super sysadmin?) I did that for ~2 years....you can kind of see where this is
going.

I've been out of the military for ~10 years now, and every job I've had has
been about learning, (and then learning that my current job wasn't going to
pay me what I was actually worth) while trying something new. I got paid to
"learn" every step of the way. It just wasn't a direct "learn X and you get Y"
process, but even then, most companies offered some level of college
reimbursement (I never really did that college thing) or will pay for
certifications/training, and really, IT is one of the few fields I can think
of where all of the knowledge needed to do it is open, accessible, and
available to _everyone_.

~~~
kqr
This is how I approach it too and I think it's a healthy approach. I get into
a job mainly for the learning opportunities it provides. I'll happily take a
pay cut if it means I get to grow in a direction I need. Once I feel like the
opportunities become fewer and farther between, and management cannot change
that, I'll find a new job that can provide me with the right learning
opportunities again.

Of course, I'm not even in my thirties, so I can afford to optimise for
learning now to have the compound interest pay off for it when I'm older.

------
jdlyga
It's all a holdover from assembly-line factory jobs. You need to start at a
specific time and work hard the whole shift. If you're 3 minutes late, the
line is delayed by 3 minutes. Software development is a very different
profession.

~~~
TrackerFF
If you ever find yourself in a position or company where your boss says to you
"You're not here to learn, you're here to work", and measures productivity by
how many hours you sit behind a screen, or LOC pushed, then you'r more likely
than not working in a sweatshop.

The problem, in my experience, is when they bring in non-technical managers
in, preferably from completely other environments (production / manufacturing
/ industry).

Luckily it's getting more rare these days, but I've seen managers that were
hired on the basis "a good manager is a good manager, no mater where he/she
comes from", only to manage production floor like a factory.

------
tarellel
My employer encourages using around 20% of our time learning. Lower level
developers can manage this pretty easily. But most of the level 3’s are kind
of expected to just know stuff, plus the heavy work load. We still manage
about 10% of our time to learn. But if we want to take Udemy classes, paid
tutorials, or something else they’ll gladly reimburse us for the costs. They
prefer their developers to “be on point”.

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
20% time is a day of the week. Why not just say "Wednesdays are learning and
development day" or something?

------
ENOTTY
Frankly, if your workplace doesn't already think so, it's a red flag.

~~~
gambler
Many managers believe that learning is something that you should do on your
own time. Even when "learning" boils down to memorizing idiosyncrasies of some
framework/protocol/micro-controller _they_ force you to use.

~~~
bagacrap
How is this possible? I'm often asked to do something I don't know how to do.
Figuring it out ("learning") is part of the process of accomplishing. I don't
know how you can separate learning from doing.

~~~
Ajedi32
Yeah, I don't understand that either. As a developer, learning _is_ my job.
Writing code that I already possess all the prerequisite knowledge to write
requires almost no time at all, so 99% of my time is necessarily going to be
spent learning how to do things I don't already know how to do. If I had to
wait until I got home to learn those new skills, I'd never get any non-trivial
amount of work done.

------
MattyRad
I agree making time to learn at work for a job you've had for a while is
important, but we should probably make a distinction for newhires. Software
has a low barrier to entry and I'm sure many of us have been victim to people
who earnestly, but mistakenly, believe they are capable programmers. As a
result, they're constantly "learning", in effect turning the job into a
classroom, and leaving embittered peers who have to pick up the slack
indefinitely. This type of "learning" can be toxic. (Of course, good hiring
practices should be able to filter those sorts of people, but hiring practices
can be its own can of worms.)

~~~
comicjk
This is a good point: the tradeoff for learning vs doing depends on how good a
learner the individual is. You're describing people who are not efficient at
learning. Therefore allocating a lot of learning to them is a bad idea.

Maybe this is why programming interviews are infamous for arbitrary puzzles:
the more unexpected and weird, the more the interview tests adaptability
rather than current skill.

------
swarnie_
This is why i love my current employer and i won't leave unless i'm forced to.

We have a policy of "Chargeable work always comes first but if you've got
nothing to do go learn something, we'll call you when something comes in"

This has lead to times before where we go dead around the same time every year
and you spend 2 months being paid to independently upskill. Come the busy
November-February period its really obvious who spent their time wisely and
who goofed off.

~~~
mrlala
>but if you've got nothing to do

I wish that was ever the case with me! One of the downsides of being part of a
very small team.. there is always too much to do. But it is important to take
advantage of any times where it's a little less crazy than others to continue
to learn new stuff.

~~~
swarnie_
I think its the benefits of my sector and my teams place within it. 90% of
sales get made in w46-w52 and then my team and first in a long chain to action
after a deal is signed.

This means by July/August its a mad scrap to find work.

------
sealthedeal
I’ve been noticing my employees recently will walk away from there desk and
find a nice cranny to read some type of business book to help them improve in
there personal and professional career. I LOVE it. The craziest thing is we
have never had any discussions about continued education, but we do keep a
library of great books and resources readily available. My take, when your
employees continue to learn on the job, it’s just them investing in themselves
which in turn will be an investment in your company, and will ultimately make
them better asset to the org. It’s a win win. I love it.

------
lycidas
The thing that annoys me the most is that tech companies, mine included, will
reimburse gladly books, but no one is ever allowed to be seen reading books at
their desk on company time. Whereas being on hacker news, reddit, NYT visibly
is okay. I've just started reading PDF's on my computer screen but I'd prefer
a real book of the same thing most of the time.

~~~
strstr
Really? I’ve seen coworkers reading, but it’s rare. I occasionally encourage
people to read at work. People tend to not follow through, since it’s often
hard to find good books on niche subjects.

At one point I was in a reading group on Quantum Computing (we were working
through some classic text book). I eventually stopped since I was bad at
making time to do the exercises.

------
izietto
I'm so lucky to work at a company where every Friday is dedicated to study. My
company pays even for English lessons (it's an Italian company).

------
chewyshine
Folks, there's so much cynicism here. If you want to learn and invest in
yourself, do it! If you want to sit back and wait for your employer to invest
in you, don't be surprised when it doesn't happen. Orgs need to make smart
investment decisions. If you're not feeling supported it may be that the org
doesn't view you as HiPo and that's clear feedback on your current value to
the organization.

~~~
fogetti
The problem with your argument is: what if the organization doesn't support
anyone in learning? (Just like 99% of companies and society in large) Would
you say then that you are a low performer? Because based on your argument
that's the only logical conclusion.

You seem to have jumped to a conclusion but I don't think this has anything to
do with being high performer or not.

------
r34
I divide my working time sth like 50/50 for actual tasks solving and learning.
My company doesn't understand it, but I work remotely and no one notices. But
soon I'm back to office.

I've joined my current company two years ago. We are small (but constantly
growing) company - about 10 programmers at the moment. 10 separate
programmers, lack of notion of any "team". Time (and money) lost on problems
arising from that fact is XXX% or even XXXX% per project.

The most important thing about learning is not accumulation of knowledge by
individual, but accumulation of knowlege by group, making knowledge common,
therfore creating higher level being called "team".

~~~
mebr
I have also been working remotely for multiple years now. Since I started
taking learning new things as part of the work, I can say my efficiency has
increased drastically. That has added value to myself and companies I have
worked for.

------
jillesvangurp
A better way of thinking of this is in terms of freelancers learning on the
job and charging customers for this openly. Often there is a mutual benefit
where even having access to a person with the ability and willingness to learn
is worth something to customers.

I recently did a python project for a customer where I was very open about my
limited python skills and the fact I hadn't really used it in over a decade.
But I got them to pay for me because I had other skills that they needed
(building search backends using Elasticsearch). In the end, I brushed up my
python skills on the job and had a happy customer. It wasn't a big deal but I
definitely spent some billable time googling the basics of using Python (I
literally had to google the syntax for e.g. for loops, lambdas functions, and
a few other things).

I would argue my ability to learn and adapt is actually what makes me
valuable. I can wrap my head around complex tech stacks, new languages, etc.
while applying skills I already have.

------
msluyter
When I was a dev lead I came up with the concept called a "learning spike,"
where a developer would pick a focused topic to dive into for a set period of
time[1] and then do a short[2] presentation of learnings to the entire team.
This would be backed by an official story in Jira or whatnot. The goal would
be for the developer to choose something that sparked their interest (within
the loose boundaries that it be at least marginally related to the team's
work.)

I figured this would be great in a number of ways -- developer deepens their
knowledge of some topic, possibly even has fun, practices their communication
skills by sharing with others, and the entire team learns something. Although
the idea was technically backed by management, it didn't really catch on. I
think the problem was that the short term opportunity costs were too high when
everything was on fire (which was often).

[1] 2-3 days max, probably.

[2] "Short" is the key word here.

~~~
Ididntdothis
“I think the problem was that the short term opportunity costs were too high
when everything was on fire (which was often).”

That’s such a sad way of thinking but pretty common. In addition a lot of
people seem to be thinking that if not everything is on fire all the time they
are moving too slowly.

~~~
gherkinnn
I found that a sustainable pace with short bursts of fire make for the fastest
progress.

Fires keep you on edge, show you what’s actually important, and help trim fat.
But without long period of calm in between, I can’t consolidate what I’ve
learned, nor build upon that wealth.

Quite like endurance training, actually.

------
eitland
My job gives us about 5K a year for individual training in addition to hosting
meetups after work etc etc.

The 5K can be used for training, conference and travel tickets etc etc.

This is in Norway so everything is mostly nice all the time, but to be honest
it is the first time I've had anything like this. Feels awesome.

~~~
weka
Dang. I asked my job for a PluralSight account or if they have one and they
said they'll "look into it."

------
orware
The full article has a cost associated with it, but it looks like the writer
has also given this past speech with (hopefully) similar content:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ellIRUe2mpU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ellIRUe2mpU)

------
settsu
My entire professional "office" career, if not my entire working experience
since starting full time as a bicycle mechanic at 16 years old, has been
wholly reliant on the opportunities to do something I wasn't perfectly 100%
qualified for (it should be noted that I am a white male.)

I wouldn't knowingly join an employer that pigeonholes anyone across their
organization. I'd also propose that a role with little or no horizontal or
vertical professional mobility is probably a good candidate for automation and
a human shouldn't be subject to it for longer than necessary anyhow.

------
insulanian
I call it "sharpening the saw".

If you're working at a factory, the time you spend to sharpen the saw, so you
can continue to work, is paid and no one is questioning that. Also, factory
workers are not learning how to use new tools at home. They get the training
paid by the company and that is normal.

So why would the learning on the job in the computer industry, as a way to
sharpen your skills, be treated any different and (I dare to say) almost be
stigmatized in some places.

------
nickfromseattle
The abstract looks great. How do we access the full article without an
account?

~~~
dredmorbius
TYL: [https://outline.com/CDY6SD](https://outline.com/CDY6SD)

------
freezedance
I love the distinction between incremental and transformative learning.
Personally, I've experienced the most transformative learning through working
with a coach - a 3rd party who offers the space for reflective engagement, new
perspectives, and experimentation. Much of this is tough to do on our own
because we get stuck in the same mindsets and patterns of behavior. A coach
helps articulate what's going on in a new light, uncovers blindspots, and
holds us accountable for taking action, ultimately fueling transformative
learning.

(Side note: I'm on a mission to spread the power of coaching by making it
easier to find the right coach:
[https://uplevel.coach/](https://uplevel.coach/) Happy to chat with anyone
interested in learning more!)

------
tehjoker
True, but because competition drives relentless increases in productivity
business will cherry pick people that managed to learn off their dime rather
than train people. It's simple. Only force applied by people or governments
changes the rules enough to open space for these kinds of things.

------
jariel
This is a great point, but it poses an inherent competitive problem, not
unlike the prisoners dilemma: every company is seriously incentivised to cheat
(not train) because it gives them an advantage. This is pernicious, because it
almost forces other companies to do this as well.

The Silicon Valley has made an industry in a way out of 'cheating' by
encouraging super long hours far beyond normal labour requirements. As a
personal choice, this is fine of course ... but it's never just personal or
localised because it 'forces' everyone else to go to that level 'or die'.

I wonder if it might require legislation i.e. '3 weeks training / learning'.
Maybe better for the powers that be simply to put pressure on.

------
arminiusreturns
One caution though; learn how to limit the learning part, it can become a
trap. I have often in the past fallen victim to the pitfall of spending too
much time researching tooling and not enough time jumping in.

My methods for avoiding this are to have a core set of criteria that is
minimalized. It widens the possible tool list and makes it harder to get
caught up in minutiae. Then, I have found that actually just spinning up each
set of tooling in testing to find real world implementation issues first-hand
is a great first-gate narrower.

This is just a particular subset of learning at work though, so in general
what I would say is learn how to get better at learning in general. Learning
at work and elsewhere will get better if you do.

------
rajesh-s
I've worked at a few places. Something that I wished existed in all those
places is a library. It need not be filled with books. Just reserved room
space for people to come and read without interruption. I really wish someday
people give this a thought.

------
thomassantosh
Kind of disappointed with this article. I thought it would have more practical
advice vs. just defining categories of learning (i.e. incremental,
transformational) and talking about the need for learning. On this topic, a
great read is Scott Young's "Ultralearning"
[https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/ultralearning/](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/ultralearning/).
Well-researched, practical and the author has been successful following his
own advice. Highly recommend.

------
abjKT26nO8
I write C++ at work. And that means I wait a lot for the compilation to end.
Sometimes, there is also a big file to download from the other end of the
world over FTP. Recently I've started spending this time on reading books.
That's how I went through "The Little Schemer" and "The Season Schemer" so
far. Now I'm going through "Real World Haskell".

I used to have second thoughts about it, but after some time I just thought
fuck it, other people spend this time scrolling Facebook on their phones or
whatever, there is no reason to feel guilty about it. Since I started doing
it, nobody made a problem of it.

------
bobloblaw45
Learning I don't mind much. Actually enjoy it. Required training is a huge
pain. We're suppose to do our normal job duties along with the required
training. The training required by my company isn't connected to our customers
so it sort of looks bad when we're at our location and the customer sees us
doing something weird. Worse yet is when both the customer and our company
require the same training so we end up doing the exact same training twice
from two different training companies.

Yeah not gonna lie my job is lousy compared to most people here.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
It's weird to see the emphasis on workers rather than emphasizing employers.
My employer lets me learn and study during the 9-5. My previous employers
didn't. It makes an incredible difference.

------
austincheney
I have never been a fan of learning at work. It seems to impose a sort of
group thought where employees learn by following patterns in place under the
shadow of work culture and procedure. That has always struck me as highly
uncritical and non disruptive.

Instead if you need new skills or want to advance your current skills my
recommendation is to write an original application that solves some problem.
Then you are forced to make original decisions and own the resulting
consequences under risk of failure.

------
hysan
One of the big reasons I left my last job was because management talked a lot
about PD (professional development). However, the approval process for
learning resources was vague and long. On top of that, we were told to learn
on our own time and that at work, you were to work. I realized that to them,
PD was something they encouraged but did not support. I eventually found out
that the avg tenure was much shorter than the number I was told during
interviews. I wonder why...

------
chirau
I tend to disagree. You are hired AND compensated for your skillset. How you
acquire it is up to you. This is why experience and seasoning result in senior
roles and higher comp.

------
jjice
I was an intern at a relatively large retail company this past Summer and
there were quite a few points where I had nothing to do except wait on
database access to be approved. This took a few hours minimum.

I bookmarked the Rust book and started to learn the language in order to keep
me stimulated. I also read a lot of Wikipedia articles on older computer
scientists because I love history. Overall a good experience, but definitely
would have liked a more engaging job overall.

------
mikorym
I've noticed that some companies implicitly do this. Instead of hiring from
the pool of people with the skill they need, they hire someone else with
potential and whom they like better.

Then when it comes to the job, they don't tell you to learn specifically, but
subconsciously they do know this and as a consequence rather judge on the
quality of your work than "looking over your shoulder".

Of course, it's also cheaper to hire younger people.

------
rcaught
This factor almost exclusively led me to leave a company. They demanded
billing time to clients and also required a working day filled with billed
hours.

Where was I to learn? On whose dollar? Multiple clients need me to learn the
same thing? Who takes the hit?

In the end the system is setup to pressure me into taking the hit out of my
own time. I consider this one of the great evils of consulting companies.

------
modwest
Mods is it ok that this user ONLY posts links from paywalled
sloanreview.mit.edu links? Seems like spam to me. They never comment, they
only post every article from that website.

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gcpwnd
I've just quit my job after almost a decade. The fact that my employer did
absolutely zero to improve my skills, aside from conferences once a year makes
me really sad. The longer I think about it the more abusive it seems. In these
times there is no excuse to leave your employees behind. But it should be well
planned and not just jump every hypetrain.

------
jpincheira
Totally. And more companies should widen their budget for this. It’s pretty
clear that it’s also an investment for employers too.

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th0ma5
Ten years ago the sentiment was to not
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567115)
and I found that very offensive for some reason at the time. It is good to see
the HN community very much for learning at work now.

------
artsyca
We are "Knowledge Workers" for crying out loud our role is to create knowledge
and spread it that's all we're supposed to be doing all the issues that arise
are based on people not knowing what learning really is and not understanding
the value of the knowledge being created

------
ConfusedDog
I was publicly told by my immediate supervisor to stop once reading a
technical book on the job for a degree my company has paid for. Apparently
that was unacceptable behavior. I quit the company after I earned that degree.
My experience is that most people quit because of poor management.

~~~
commandlinefan
I was once publicly told by my immediate supervisor to stop reading a book
about XML (back when XML was new) when we started using XML for new web
services.

------
ryanmcbride
When I took my current job my manager told me that learning on company time is
encouraged, even if it's not directly applicable to what you're doing (within
reason). I didn't really expect that to be the case when I started, but it
actually is and it makes me insanely happy.

------
1337shadow
I would tend to agree, but from what I've read in Robert Cecil Martin's book
"Clean Coder": it's not the job of your employer to keep your CV up to date,
when you pay a musician for a performance, you don't pay them to practice
scales.

~~~
soft_dev_person
> when you pay a musician for a performance, you don't pay them to practice
> scales

A lot of professional musicians (e.g. permanent orchestra members) are
definitely paid to practice scales. A lot of instruments even require training
specific muscles to manage playing at all.

For gig-musicians (of any kind), the practice must be factored into the gig
payment.

I'd say your analogy is appropriate, but for the opposite point. I don't see
any reason for programmers to keep their relevant work skills up to date for
free.

------
mrbgty
In addition to having space to learn on a daily basis, more tech companies
should consider offering a week of study leave in addition to what they offer
in their vacation policy.

I'm imagining the type of week that Bill Gates and John Carmack take.

~~~
commandlinefan
> a week of study leave

Nice thought, but if my wife can see me, that week will become "fix stuff
around the house leave" or "visit her parents and don't read anything leave".
If my coworkers can see me, that week becomes "fix these bugs for me leave".
They'd have to fly me somewhere for that to work.

~~~
mrbgty
yep, should include a hotel room

------
jammygit
Some companies claim to own any skills you develop that would not have earned
at a usual job - I don’t really want some former employer claiming I can’t
work at my next job because of the time they gave me to do online courses...

~~~
sojournerc
If you're speaking of a non-compete agreement, I understand them to be largely
unenforceable. In the US it depends on what state you're in.

------
mekazu
Employees are valued by businesses more for their expertise than for their
work. I’d rather have one dev who knows how to solve difficult problems than a
hundred who don’t. Roughly.

------
geocrasher
“The moment you stop learning is the moment you begin to die.”

This quote MADE the article for me. I've been saying something similar for a
long time now.

------
keeptrying
I even setup my reports with a skills matrix which shows the skills they need
to get to. Still find them not really pushing themselves.

~~~
commandlinefan
Well, I’ve been in situations where I was expected to learn this or that, but
I was also expected to complete 30 or so “story points” per two-week sprint,
and be available to troubleshoot production problems, and attend planning
meetings - and the only things anybody ever asked for statuses on were the bug
fixes and new features, so I always had to end up choosing before meeting my
mandatory learning goals, meeting my mandatory feature implementation goals,
meeting my mandatory bug fixing goals or meeting my mandatory meeting
attendance goals; “learning” always ends up taking a back seat.

~~~
keeptrying
Yes. Very true. Scheduling learning is hard. And incentivizing it is even
harder.

I personally love to learn. It’s what I do best. If I don’t do it I get bored.

------
michalu
No it's not work. It's an investment by the employer taking the risk it will
pay off in the future.

~~~
randomidiot666
An investment with no guarantee that the employee will stay to provide a
return.

------
taurath
“We” assumes a level of cooperation and mutual goals that I think doesn’t
exist even for most high end jobs.

------
madsbuch
What is the distinction between learning and developing? Can you develop
software without learning?

~~~
tombert
With more menial jobs, you can definitely develop without learning much or at
all.

I have quit a job because it felt like my day devolved into a glorified "copy-
paste monkey". We had a basic template we used for clients, we just did a bit
of copy-paste-modify crap to it, and then gave it back to them. I rarely if
ever learned anything, but it was technically development at some level.

------
blackflame
If you aren’t learning on the job, you’re missing out on a better way to do
things

------
espeed
Working and learning at the highest level: What's the difference?

------
gatestone
By "learning" you mean "reading Hacker News"? ;-)

------
runninganyways
This is one of the reasons I quit programming. I could be spending time
improving as a developer but instead they've got me doing some totally
inconsequential "bug" fix (spend the next two hours updating this translation
for the third time). I just got sick of someone rationalizing me doing non
work by saying it's better for the business as though I have no broader
perspective of what might be better for the business. It was just bullshit.

~~~
wedowhatwedo
You do not understand what it is to be a programmer. Programmers fix bugs. It
might be boring but it's required. Programmers document. It also might be
boring but it's required. Programmers write unit tests. We've hired people
that don't want to do the non-fun stuff. They don't last long, they generally
come in, cause problems for the team and then leave. The people that are
willing to do what's needed even if it isn't fun are much better to have on a
team.

~~~
re-actor
You do not understand what the parent comment meant. It's not bug fixing he's
opposed to. It's busywork and the idea that a programmer themselves have no
idea how their time might be well spent. So much human potential wasted by
corporate efficiency tyrants that do nothing other than burn out their
employees.

------
tylfin
Anyway around the paywall?

------
Faction
I am still learning.

