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Comment by devKnight | Hacker News Reader

I think the hesitation is that your skills might atrophy as well as your ability to work in non-chill environments, in case it becomes necessary to move on in the future. Company could go under, get acquired etc etc

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>I think the hesitation is that your skills might atrophy

Sounds like OP has more opportunity than the average person to keep skills up to date on company time.

True, but not the support of colleagues and work that puts it into practice.

Reading about Foobars at Scale isn't the same as working on them at Netflix or wherever. (Even if you try to put what you read into practice and it's somehow free/cheap to deploy at massive scale and load test it, it's still not the same.)

This is reasonable, though on the flipside, the commenter could also become stuck in a role at a large corporation where either the work is repetitive, or the skills are non-transferable to other companies (i.e. the work is highly specific to internal tools not used elsewhere), with no on-the-job time to improve one’s skills.

You’re right that conditions could be far better for skill improvement, though having paid free time is also a great environment (e.g. for potentially earning a graduate degree online from a reputable institution).

I agree and wouldn't turn such a position down :') - I just wanted to point it that it's not a completely rosy skill-building scenario. Depends also on what you want to be learning, and how you learn I suppose. (E.g. I think I learn best from textbooks, at least as a first step, so I might fare better than someone who learns better with instruction, or less theoretical more hands-on stuff.)

> as well as your ability to work in non-chill environments

This is a real thing, at least for me personally. I've been self-employed for the last 4 years and have been lucky enough to live a very cushy life. I make twice as much now than any job I had in the past, but all my income is more or less passive and has nothing to do with how much I work. That being said, I know my current situation won't last won't last forever and every so often I get pretty stressed out at the idea of having to go back to a regular job. As a result I probably work 40-50 hours a week on other projects trying to find something else that will 'stick' in case my current income source disappears. It's still cushy in the sense that I get to pick and choose when I work and what I work on, but the thought of going back to a full time job, or god forbid an office, is pretty stressful.

I was once in a similar position as handmodel, for about two years, and absolutely terrified that my skills would atrophy. But now I realize that was just fear-driven and everything cycles, or is replaced, every five to ten years. So if you can skip one of those cycles you can avoid wasting a lot of effort.

That is sorta how I hope it gets resolved. I do think I'm a quick learner, still. My job sounds extremely impressive on paper though when it comes to nuts and bolts I feel like I have atrophied for several years.

I do feel like my skills have atrophied. I've def taught myself some skillsets over the years - I love to learn - but mostly things that seem fun/interesting/challenging and not things that would transfer into a similar paying job.

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