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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

> That's good news for all of you people because you're in Stanford and that means you learn really, really fast.

> Personally I don't think that's a very good way to hire. The people who are doing the same thing over and over again often get burnt out and typically the reason they're doing the same thing over and over again is they've maxed out.

Anyone else who feels like they haven't learned a thing in their field of work since they left university?

Once you get hired for and do what you're good at while there's nobody else at the company you can learn from it just feels like gradual regressing.

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Complete opposite. University was theory without application and I generally hated learning CS theory. Now that I'm actually building things, I find the theory more interesting because I can apply it.

Aside from theory, I've also learned infinitely more about software development.

If there's no one else at your company you can learn from and you want to have that it sounds like you should check out some other companies.

> Anyone else who feels like they haven't learned a thing in their field of work since they left university?

Professional self-training is important in this field. I've started taking many courses online that are high quality in order to upgrade my skills. Of particular note:

- Epic React by Kent C Dodds: Very useful for learning advanced React patterns such as composite components, HOCs vs hooks, inversion of control etc.

- CSS for JS Devs by Josh W Comeau: Most people hate CSS because they don't actually learn it properly, they just pick it up as they go along, then wonder why it's hard. It's like learning to build a house by stacking wood instead of learning the parts of a house, planning the house architecture and construction, putting down a foundation, etc.

- ThreeJS Journey by Bruno Simon: This is more for fun, but I always wanted to know how people do those wild 3D websites (which are more like interactive experiences than informational sites), and this teaches you pretty well.

- Flutter State Management by Vandad Nahavandipoor: Free on YouTube, this is a deep dive into all the various ways you can do state management in Flutter, which most people don't really know about. They just pick a paradigm and stick with it instead of assessing pros and cons. The best thing though is this is not Flutter specific, it is more about overall software architecture than Flutter concepts.

- Teach Yourself CS: This is a much longer "course" (more like a collection of books to read) but it makes you learn a lot of foundational concepts, even if you've taken them in a college CS program already, and if you haven't, it teaches you anyway.

It's the exact opposite for me. I learned so much after graduating from university. And there isn't really much from my studies that I could use today.

Absolutely not. I have learned all sorts of things. But I have to seek them out.

Maybe that's the main difference. In the student days you're forced to learn enormous amounts of new skills in impossibly short time spans. Afterwards you kind of have to self motivate if you want to continue, and dive into research papers to get up to speed on the bleeding edge stuff since there's no real other study material available yet.

I've found myself mainly focusing on learning things from adjacent or unrelated fields instead, since I guess it's easier to get a grasp of the pre-grad stuff. It sure isn't making me any better at my job though lol.

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