Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

As an engineering manager, this is what I expect my top performers to do and encourage my junior folks to do the same. It benefits the IC, the delivery team, and the company at large.

You can't heads-down slam out code for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Be responsible with your time and use it to push forward the vision & mission of the company by taking your professional development into your own hands.

Very much this. If the management culture at your workplace is so sick they feel the need to make this behaviour a problem, there are probably other things wrong with the culture there.

> I subscribe to those weekly emails for the programming languages we use at work

--

Are these an internal thing for your organization? is it Just joining a mailing list for X language? Or is there some aggregation service you could share?

This over anything else. I wouldn't get to be a CTO multiple times if I wasn't in this mindset.

I sort of felt embarrassed when my manager told me to stop solving so many tickets and spend more time learning and improving my skills. He was so right.

Me too. The company benefits in the long run. I've never had any complaints. In general I've found no one ever complains if you spend time learning.

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.

I used to do this, and then we "switched to be more agile." (This just meant using JIRA and tracking sprint efficiency wrong).

Companies do think "It’s your responsibility to be on top of whatever’s going on in your field" and they might even claim that learning and development on the job is important, but when it comes time to log JIRA hours, they tend to show how much they really believe in this.

What does "learned on the job" mean, though?

Were you reading Stackoverflow? Taking a digital course and watching lecture videos? Reading a textbook with a pencil and paper out? Attending in-person trainings?

All of these things are scrutinized very differently in the workplace.

You're correct that it's our own responsibility to be on top of whatever is going on and to train ourselves. However, plenty of companies think that expect for training scheduled and provided by the company, that it's not appropriate to train ourselves on the clock.

Personally I agree with you, and find that discouraging people from training themselves during business hours just results in most employees not fully applying themselves.

> never asked permission

That's a key thing.

Even in the most high pressure environments, where "project management professionals" are breathing down your neck for "deliverables" it is your responsibility to learn stuff and evolve.

It's nice if there's time and resources for people to better themselves, but these are typically limited to activities which are "related" to one's work function and are subject to "approval" from people whose interest in your career stops hard at what you can do for them in the roles they assume you're best-suited for.

The good news is most places are NOT rank-and-yank hellscapes where every minute you do something that's not on somebody's gantt chart will cause you harm in the long term. In most places you can lift your nose off the grindstone... but you have to be willing to impose your own self-direction and structure.

Same but I've also been in places where they do look over your shoulder and I ended up fighting the tide. Everyone around me was in a constant panic mode, so I slowed my work output for 2 weeks (most I could get away with without ending up in a room talking about my work performance) where I studied and optimized the tasks consuming most of my time. Then automated them (this involved working what felt like two jobs at once pushing well over 80h a week)....

When I finished I had so much free time I could finally start doing the interesting projects and my work output was consistently 2x my co-workers. I considered explaining this to management but they had just admonished a co-worker for not doing the thing they asked and trying to improve process. So I kept it to myself.

Obviously this was a bit of a toxic work environment (early in my career) and I was luckily switched out of this group.

My point is that you can fight bad management to make a better working environment for yourself but it takes a lot of effort and you need to be strategic in what you tell them as it can backfire.

I really think this is the way to do it and it's also how I've always approached this. So much so that now the other members of the team I'm on joke about how I'm the guy that likes jumping down rabbit holes - which they're perfectly fine with!

Something very important to this approach IMHO is paying your learning forward. Mentor other devs, write guides for your team/organization, etc. Make the benefit of your learning visible to everyone else.

That means that yes, your learning has to have value to the business and to the team. If that aligns, I can't imagine many problems arising. Your learning becomes an act of giving and taking, rather than just taking, which is a win-win for everyone involved.

This is research, it's valid part of anyone's job.

Someone who is great with how to develop good processes at work recently said something that made me think a lot about this as well.

Why have WIP limits? Well one of the reasons is to be able to create downtime where you can go watch a video or read a newsletter. So I've been trying to spread this message in my team when someone has asked "The WIP is blocking and I can't really help anywhere at the moment" by answering "Go watch a video or read or take a walk for 10 minutes".

As a remote company we're dedicating a 1-hour video call every week to learning. On top of that we've 2-3 voluntary video calls that we call MJ Talks (similar to TED Talks) talking about all kinds of topics ranging from technical and software related topics, but also health, fitness, personal finance, etc.

On top of that we dedicate one week every year to something that we call MJ University. We rent a hotel in a location and fly everyone in to that location. If you're interested on all the details, we've written them up here: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/mj-university-staying-ahead-of-t...

Same here - i keep all the deadlines and use the spare time to better myself. Or even implement new ideas in production code.

Also latter half of Friday is officially, by company policy, set up for such tasks - learning, and finishing internal tasks that always get pushed back.

The more i learn, the better value/cost ratio for my employer.

I would immiedetly change jobs if they didn't challenge me, or at least provide an environment where i can learn.

If you are actually paying them to learn, which is the key issue here, then they shouldn't complain and i'd have a hard time believing they would.

So the solution is to make it clear you pay them to learn.

I empathize and don't have any clear solution. One thing that has helped is actually setting a schedule and following up on it. If Tuesday mornings have two hours booked then you can actually just ask if that was followed any time you follow up with that person. It sort of hacks the categories by turning those moments into clearly work tasks with boxes that need to be ticked.

Reduce pressure. When I don't have 7 customer deadlines I'm much more inclined to spend the hour daily I'm meant to on training.

Reward learning with career advancement.

Send your people on relevant training courses out of the office as often as is useful/practical.

Oh and if you have timesheets make sure you can "bill" to training!

I recommend making it part of regular cadence. Every Friday or every other Friday (or part of the day). You can encourage them to share learnings or summaries with the teams. These days can also be used to attempt to apply learnings in ways that improve the team or org. These don't need to be formal courses or books either: it can be exploring and learning systems at work, or understanding system telemetry or customer use cases better.

Hire me. I love to get paid to watch MIT lectures that will benefit my work.

As an employee I’ve felt like it’s hard in the past to take initiative and do things that aren’t immediately and clearly justifiable as strictly necessary work. Reading a book might or might not be useful but doing something boring but mandatory is certainly not slacking. With that said any time I tried to take more initiative and take more risks (while making a sincere effort to work on the thing that’s going to move the group/project forward) and then just accept correction if I make the wrong call, usually work was more enjoyable and I was more productive (by estimation of me, other coworkers, and my manager).

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.

>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

Does this apply to skills that might be more applicable to another team?

My current manager encourages learning, but shoos me away from topics that are handled by other managers. Frustratingly, he's blocked transitions of mine to other teams with work that I've found interesting and educated myself on.

How do you prioritize learning, and balance it against your interests as a manager to keep your resources focused on your objectives?

I've just had a preliminary conversation about people's next set of objectives.

Training is on there (with a 5% of time budget for it), and if they don't achieve their objectives, their next appraisal will go badly. Pay rises and promotions and so on depend on good appraisals, and I anticipate some quarterly review meetings in which I tell people that they're on track to do badly because they're not meeting their training objectives.

If having their training objectives written in black and white, and being reviewed quarterly and appraised annually on whether or not they're meeting their objectives doesn't make it "okay", well, I guess I'll have to come up with something else, but I sure hope that will make it clear.

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

Maybe instead of having them read something, make them give a presentation on it to the rest of the team?

Then they have deadlines and produce content. Sounds just like work to me.

Part of it is just people - I had a co-worker once that their supervisor (remote) did the same thing, bought training courses for them, instructed them to make it part of their schedule to do the courses and learn more, assigned another developer to try to mentor, etc. But this person was also overloaded by said supervisor with day-to-day operational work and felt responsibility to accomplish that work at the expense of their own personal development. [and had personal life situations that they could not easily spend extra time outside of the time they were in the office] They sat next to me for a few months, and so once on whatever afternoon that they had blocked off on their calendar for training, I physically went over to their desk while they were gone, unplugged their phone, and when they came back, reminded them this was their training time and they needed to spend the time the company was giving them on it. They did that day, but then got some flak from another non-co-located employee for not getting enough operational tasks done, and I don't think did much training again after that.

If the entire org doesn't encourage learning, grant the time for it to happen, and protect employees from operational reprecussions of spending time learning, it is hard for individual employees to make it happen.

Decrease expectations in other areas? If it takes me 8 hours a day to do all the work you expect, and you say “oh it’s fine if you spend time learning”, am I supposed to stay for 9 hours a day to do the learning?

You give them a stack in the companies long term success.

Once the goals align, it will become clear to everyone that employees must both have deep understanding of the current company and an eye towards the future.

I think scrum, jira, backlogs and always tight deadlines condition people to never sit back and systematically learn something. Instead you feel the urge to always “produce” and feel guilty if you don’t. At least his happened to me. Lately I am making a conscious effort to work from home for a day and take a Udemy class or read a book about something where I feel i don’t have enough background in. The modern frenetic workplace discourages sitting down and systematically learning something.

So as manager take a look and see if your environment makes people into ticket closing machines or into people who have the freedom to allocate their time where they feel it’s most useful.

Probably Parkinson’s Law in action.

You are providing the “option” but not literally scheduling the time. Employees need cover otherwise you are “learning” but nervous something will “slip” because “Learning” isn’t business critical.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

Tie it to deliverables, like reporting back to the team about the content or giving seminar style talks.

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

Be seen doing it yourself.

Can and have seen agile teams just create user stories for this. With estimates and acceptance criteria (yes having your people pass a quiz can be acceptance criteria). They even did an end of sprint demo where they had to present (without a deck) on the concepts of what they learned and answer questions.

Check out my comment re: learning spikes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21763789

Having an actual story to back the learning process might help making employees feel more comfortable with it.

Put it in expectations, quantify it, and reward it at performance reviews. In a self-review, I should be able to write that I took Andrew Ng's Coursera ML course and be rewarded for how that makes me a more valuable team member. On the employee end, I should be able to explain what I learned, how it increases my value to the team, and how I've applied or will apply it.

Too often, companies "expect" their employees to take advantage of the fact that they allow them to learn on the job, but only reward short-term performance.

Several companies that friends of mine work at institute a 10% personal project time policy. Where 10% of their week is devoted to personal projects. They pick any topic of interest related to programing, learn something new, and when they are done they show the project to the team to present what they've learned. I don't think they have a time limit per se. Some people I know have done work with the raspberry pi, or learned a new framework, or implemented something they were doing at work in a different language. Leaving it open ended allowed for people to pick something that was of interest to them.

The problem with this approach I think is you get more buy-in, but might be arguably less directly applicable to work.

For me and my people, learning never works when it is a task independent of actual work, meaning I only learn something new when I see a place I can use it.

Learning must be optional, never required. And must have incentive: I learn programming because it makes my work faster. But if I can't use my program, I feel like I wasted my time.

Learning should tell me that I am increasing my value.

I can never learn new stuff just because I am supposed to. Nor will anyone suffer a book if there is no IMMEDIATE benefit.

I'm at a new place; the managers there did it by picking particular topics and instituting a group learning time (blocked off everyone's calendar for the time, let people select one of two topics, are soliciting new topics for future versions). It's working reasonably well.

If you want your reports to learn on the job:

1. Make it part of their annual goals (e.g. attend a conference, get a certification, compete in a competition).

2. Throw them in the deep end, a little beyond their edge, and be okay if they fumble around a bit.

3. Make them teach. Give them stuff to understand and present to your team or other teams. That forcing function will give them a mechanism to immediately exercise their newfound knowledge/skill.

4. Make room in your project schedules for it. They'll learn on their own if they have the time, or they'll invent something. The ones that don't are your bottom tier.

My first boss sent me to Siggraph my first year to drink from the fire hose. He also asked me, on my first day, what I was worst at of all the areas of programming I was aware of (Windows UI) and assigned me three months of work writing custom controls... I did it in six months, and I've never been able to thank him enough for teaching me, right off the bat, that your people are your greatest investment, that optimizing for the project is rarely the right choice.

Make sure they have time to do it. If they feel like they have a lot on their plate or a higher-up breathing down their neck, then new learning will not be a priority.

“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.”

I had the same experience. asked for 32 hours week with corresponding pay cut. The HR people barely could comprehend the idea and certainly didn’t have a process for dealing with such a request.

I would just take the job and spend 90 minutes a day doing the things you mentioned. If anyone objects, well that’s conflict about how the flow of work will proceed, and dealing with those conflicts is everyone’s job.

You’re presuming that you’re not allowed to do the things you think are crucial as part of your daily work, but that’s already conceding too much to your superiors.

You do have to wait for the right time to do things, so it is justifiable as part of some near-term team goal. And be willing to wait when it’s not the time.

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.

> 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.

It's a society wide thing. I don't work in tech, I don't do anything CS related, for certification/licensing that will assist us in our jobs (and that is used to prioritize applicants for positions) we are expected to do it on our own time, outside of work, on our own dime which if you actually get the license/certification they will then refund a portion of a course you took IF it was graded and the only ones that carry grades require you to attend in person for 40 hours where you'd have to take a week off then go put yourself up in another state... and then annually the exam for the one with a license has a 3-20% annual pass rate, with the average around 15%.

Someone who asks for reduced hours is probably shooting themselves in the foot wrt comp. It suggests you are negotiating against yourself. If you aren’t asking for more money you are leaving money on the table. Just work effectively for 30 hours and nobody is going to know you aren’t working 40. Measurement of productivity in software is very vague.

Bad. Went I went from JS front end to iOS, I was put in a learning period on my own + internship in the iOS team and that worked great. It’s how companies like Spotify also did it. They paid companies like the Big Nerd Ranch to travel to Stockholm and give workshops to future iOS devs.

They benefited and I also did, as it helped me evolve into a full-stack (web, mobile & server) developer. This was essential for me to transition into building my own company [1] at a later point, as I could build the product on my own both for web and mobile.

[1] https://standups.io

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.

Your lead made a mistake there. Someone with understanding of both FE and BE is worth as much as one of each, especially when they have intimate knowledge of your actual code.

What if someone learned something on their own time, do they get to be reimbursed from the employer?

Or, can I ask my employer to reimburse my under-graduate and graduate tuition?

Your team "leader" sounds more like a team "director".

Unfortunate approach.

My company not only encourage transitions, we actually "pay" for them. That means we will assign a senior developer that will have responsibility for growth of the new mentee and we purchase any educational materials the person requires.

We have quite decent amount of transitions within last few years and all were successful. They do require commitment and investment from both sides.

I do believe we are stronger for it as people appreciate the opportunity for growth and support we provide. We, on the other hand, re-gain skilled colleague that is not looking elsewhere.

So what about the server team lead? What did they say? Seems to me it doesn't matter what your existing frontend guy has to say about it.

The middle ground here is that I'd try to grasp the basics on my own time, then ask the switch.

I can understand your boss though: would you swap a competent employee for an incompetent one, paying the same amount? Probably not. Yes, you retain your knowledge about the front-end, but you wouldn't be using that.

My advice would be to work out the basics on your time and then ask somebody in the backend team to be involved, baby steps.

If you actually become useful for the backend team, they will advocate themselves for your switch, and bring you up to speed once there.

It looks like you have a pretty inexperienced lead.

I'm extremely happy when my team members want to expand their horizons, it keeps them engaged in their work and makes the team as a whole stronger.

Your lead should have paired you with a backend developer and have had simple backend tickets assigned to you. This works really well in turning Windows developers into Web developers (together with some coaching).

You ever think about how much we subsidize businesses by paying for college ourselves? The older I get the more I think the university to corporation pipeline is a fucking racket. It also sucks for employees because here comes these kids who were allowed to learn about all the new technologies you wish you knew with zero distractions and other obligations, now comin' in hot on your heels to take yer jobs en masse, and because of the larger labor pool they all undercut one another's bargaining ability, lowering wages. If I owned a company and I was lookin to hire I'd be callin that a twofer: free employee training and hiring discounts!

Maybe the lead made a mistake. Or, I hate to say it but...maybe OP isn't viewed as HiPo and worth the perceived investment. There's always another side to a story.

In my company, if you transfer to another team, you're a traitor. Your current mgr can block your transfer, so it's suicide to try to switch teams.

You should have said you already did and would like to start today.

I'm utterly dumbfounded at someone who manages people, stating this. I budgeted for training on a per employee basis when I created my yearly budgets.

Oof. I would honestly look for another job and tell them you want to be able to learn new stuff on the job. If you have a job you can go as far as saying, if "I'm not learning anything new I am wasting my time".

Companies should encourage people to learn stuff on the job, because no tutorials or classes can really teach you the day to day struggles.

From the POV of your team lead, this is perhaps not an advantage move on his side, so I do understand his concern, after all he is not the company, just an employee as you. And from your description it seems that you are a competent employee, thus even the less

Nevertheless he should give a more encouraging answer as a team lead. And if you still want to make the change (looks like you are not very interested in it too), maybe just ask to spend a little more time on server stuffs and see what's the reply.

It's all negotiation and sometimes it's difficult to ask the right question.

Where I work (mechanical engineering business, not just software) there's a training course that people are encouraged to take up in their own time. However, the company does support staff taking the course with teaching time from senior engineers - and they make a big deal of having completed it with a certificate, bonus and pay rise. That's in addition to the apprenticeship scheme which represents a more sensible approach to industry funded education.

>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.

When somebody says that to you, your responsibility is to either a) change jobs or b) learn during work time anyway.

If you are interested doing other things at home, then why transition at all? I mean, how much time you will need to become good at "server side" and the company benefit from this?

Imho it's about 50/50, company should not expect employees getting new skills only on their own time and the employee should not expect learning only from 9 to 5.

Technically searching through the internet for examples, is already learning.

If there's one thing I've learned between being a new engineer and a senior eng is that you can just take a small slice of time in your work schedule to learn. You don't have to clear this with anyone. You're salaried, take an hour or two a week to learn something new. You're getting paid for your technical judgement, use it to invest in something relevant and deepen your ability to judge. It pays off for both you and your employers even if they're not willing to formally fund training in large dedicated chunks.

Edit: clarified schedule to work schedule.

At my employer:

--

"Get your brokers license"

ok provide me with a course

"well, we've got a limited number of people that can do it at a time"

ok so make the material available to me for learning at home and I'll do it on my own time

"We appreciate your feedback. You could purchase a course on your own, with your own money, and study on your own at home"

-- This is an actual event, with the person parroting the 'we value degrees' line being the head of HR for our opco at the time, on the phone with me cutting me off every time I started to say anything, with me at one point saying a vulgarity and "would you give me some respect and allow me to finish a sentence":

applies to position above me that finally opened up and interviews

"We just wanted to let you know we went with another candidate, we suggest you get a bachelors degree and then an MBA if you'd like to move up"

at entry level position for 13 and a half years I don't want a degree, what sort of a degree

"Oh business is good"

How would a business degree benefit me in any role in this office, at all?

"We prioritize education"

I don't want to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to make an extra 10% so that would mean I could pay the loans off in a decade from the raise

"With tuition reimbursement you could get a degree in as little as 6 years"

In 6 years I'll be 40 and you'll give the job to a 22 year old that's been here 6 months, why don't you create some sort of system for advancement internally that is equal to degree work

"We prioritize education, if you want to move up you should really work on a 4 year degree and then an MBA"

Why

"We prioritize education, if you want to move up you should really..."

That's classism

"We prioritize..."

I don't want your defacto dues card, I guess I'll just keep working for people above me that have been at the company a fraction of the time that I have because they have a 4-year degree in Artisan Baking Social Media Marketing with their minor in Mayan Whittling from 2000BC to 1990BC.

--

Sigh. There isn't even a degree in what I do, and the university my employer has partnered with only has one degree you can do, some random super-specific business degree that has literally nothing to do with what I do.

Even if I wanted to get a degree, by the time I do 8 hours of this work my brain is shot. Processing large amounts of data, with all sorts of legal and fiscal ramifications, while being under pressure to not only meet but exceed production... yeah do that all day and the last thing you want to do is go home and study/research/write papers that have to be in some asinine format scheme or you fail outright.

Then even if they did come up with some way to teach us on the job, it wouldn't even work because due to the nature of the job if someone leaves it can take 6-12 months to replace their processing capacity and business volume grows so we're always chugging along with no downtime and we hot bunk desks so when your shift is up, someone else will be along in a couple of hours to sit down and keep going.

I've shot down two companies in the past three days because they made it known during the recruitment that they expected more than 40 hours a week, sometimes well in excess of it.

It's always couched in some doublespeak about "ownership". Trust me, if I were owner or part-owner in the enterprise, I wouldn't mind. But I'm not.

People complain about entitlement attitudes among the young. They need to look at employers if they really want to see entitlement.

It sounds like your boss feels entitled to your time without taking an ownership stake in your professional development.

I worked on a small project where it was just two people: one back-end developer, and one front-end developer. The project was not important enough to hire more people, but important enough that the manager complained about the "bus factor" and asked us to plan our vacations responsibly (i.e. not more than one week at a time).

Because both of us were interested in the other part of the work, we offered a solution that we could spend some time teaching each other. At the end, both of us would know both parts of the work, and be able to substitute for each other during the vacation.

"No, that would be a waste of time."

Or just switch? The knowledge will come once you fix your first bug.

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

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.

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.

My boss 'encourages' us too, but then they pack the schedule with other stuff. I think I get maybe 4% (friday afternoon, a couple weeks a month).

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

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.

Yes it is. Another big red flag is micro managing. Managers that want to control even the amount of coffee you drink or how many times you go to the bathroom, if you go out too much etc. Super annoying;

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.

Yeah, here in my work, and all others i've worked, If you say that you don't have anything to do because you finished it all, people panic.

>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.

I've been lucky enough to work in two, maybe three, places with implicit or explicit policies like this. It's something I shop for now when job-hunting.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Makes me want to work in Norway.

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

I was able to access the full article by searching "Learning for a Living" on Google then clicking on the top stories link.

TYL: https://outline.com/CDY6SD

Something like 70% quite because of a shitty boss.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

I got the same idea during my last team lead gig.

I introduced a "interests & responsibilities" matrix, supposed to align team members skills with their interests.

Goal was to: * ensure all needed skills are covered within the team * foster collaboration between knowledgeable persons and those wanting to gain more expertise.

But it's quite hard to use if you don't tie it to the team processes. It has to be visible and integrated to the team's workflow.

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

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.

Can I ask what you do now? I'm programming for one and half decade and wonder about moving to something else. But it's bit scary as software is only thing I know.

Same here. I moved into Agile/DevOps coaching, where it's expected you learn in order to help your teams grow and improve their practices and products. Haven't looked back. I now spend a lot of time advocating on behalf of my teams to get them in-sprint time to learn and mature what they're interested in.

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.

Who is "they"? Did you not have product teams writing clear business cases for everything you work on? Like if a developer doesn't understand why something is important it isn't going to get done right.

At my first programming job, my performance suffered when management ran out of things for me to do because I was running the mobile department successfully while the web side of things was constantly on fire. When confronted about the lack of progress on my side, I explained that my sprint tickets were mostly pointless, with no business value. My manager said it's my job to do it anyway. Unfortunately I stuck around for a little while longer after that. I really shouldn't have.