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Comment by barce | Hacker News Reader

I paused for a bit when I read, "A programmer can't acquire this kind of knowledge without slowing down." It seems that many businesses that rely on programmers are unwilling to give them the time to be better.

I have seen coders with CS degrees from top-tier schools believe that they couldn't code anymore when placed in environments that do not mentor them, that treat them as horses to be run until their backs break.

If you feel this way, take a part-time job and focus on becoming a better coder. If you are a business that does this... no wonder you waste money on recruiters.

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I'm in this position now. I'm not a great developer, and I love learning new tricks, but because I'm billed hourly, am constantly interrupted, and get brought in to useless meetings, I'm left with zero time to learn.

The other problem with this is that you never have the opportunity to improve the business, either. Often, management wants the rank and file to improve processes ("because they know them best") but it's hard to find the time for that when you're already working full time (and more) on your deliverables.

No doubt. In fact, this is exactly what happened to me today. I'm supposed to have great ideas, but when trying to implement them, told that I need to focus on paying the bills. I don't know how people manage this long-term.

By jumping ship and landing at a less-dysfunctional workplace.

If their business plan doesn't include time for improvements of the processes it's a failure. Leave now. Don't try to make up for their mistakes. They won't see it (positively), let alone reward you for it.

Do good for your old co-workers by recruiting the good ones into the more-functional company.

This. Don't ask me to make process improvements when you are expecting me to be billable 115% of the time.

Fortunately, my group typically allows for 10%-20% of my time to be used for either training (learning new tech/languages) or process improvements (mostly internal tools). Other groups at the company don't have it so lucky, and those are the groups that desperately need improvements.

Depends on what process you are talking about. If you are trying to improve a process which will hurt the time to deliver of a major project costing a company money, then is it really right to call the company a failure?

Every company/division/organization has priorities and while there maybe inefficiencies in their processes, they maybe a minor cost in relation to the other priorities. (I can't believe I actually just played devils advocate/defended this).

No, I stand by it. If a company doesn't include time for process improvement they have failed. Maybe they haven't tanked yet but the first bend in the road will finish them.

This doesn't mean they have to stop and fix every non-problem, but if there's no time budgeted to fix what comes up the first real problem will ruin everything.

I think you'll still learn much from osmosis, anyway.

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