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Comment by Fomite | Hacker News Reader

"Do you see any other professions having to do that in order to stay employable? Can you imagine lawyers having to practice law in their free time to "keep their skills sharp"?"

This is a profoundly ignorant question to ask:

- Lawyers do essentially have to practice law in their free time. Many, many state bars require continuing legal education in order to remain barred. Can you imagine having to pay money for classes or be legally prohibited from programming?

- This is also true for doctors and nurses. Continuing medical education is mandatory for both to be allowed to practice.

- Most professional academics spend a huge amount of their "free time" thinking about their field, reading journal articles to stay current, and taking classes to stay current on new statistical software, programming skills, etc.

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I don't quite buy your argument - yes these professions may work long days, but generally the upkeep of skills falls into those allotted working hours. Programmers should do this too, when it is helpful to their work. But suggesting that someone should add a whole new project to their resume on the weekend is akin to saying a lawyer should take on a pro-bono case just to buff their CV. If they want to do that, more power to them, but it shouldn't be expected of everyone.

As to academia... don't get me started. That is a strange and unusual profession which lies somewhere between 'hobby as job' and 'slave until you're tenured'.

I don't know, most professionals I know spend at least some of their "free" time (or at least the time they spend at home) reading journals or publications.

The idea of a profession is that one is not generally paid by the hour for "work" even if one bills a client by the hour so time spent on professional development whenever it takes place is part of work and covered by a salary rather than a wage.

Of course it might be true that other professions do less non-billable practical work though this is probably more due to the fact that programming doesn't require a significant budget.

The issue I think is one that many companies want programmers to work more like wage laborers and take care of the professional side for themselves.

For example a law firm is probably more likely to allocate budget for associates to use for professional development than an IT contracting company.

CEUs required for licensure are not nearly the same as what the OP or GP are talking about. For Texas:

- Medical professionals require 48 hours of continuing education per two years, of which 24 may be informal self study or hospital lectures - Legal professionals require 15 hours of continuing education per year - Professional engineers require 17 hours of continuing education per year

CEUs are obtained either through classroom instruction or attendance at recognized conferences or seminars. This is not the same as doing your day job after hours for fun or because you feel you must in order to actually get a new job. It certainly does not keep your skills sharp.

Doctors, lawyers, and PEs also have professional societies and often employers to facilitate obtaining CEUs in the most efficient manner.

Almost every doctor or lawyer I know would likely gladly trade CE for "programmer-style" self study - and CEUs can keep your skills sharp if you do them right.

They can, and are supposed to, but they have morphed into a box-checking exercise used to keep politicians and professional guilds happy and management asses covered. Hence the reason most of these professionals see the requirement as a burden. I felt the same way back when I was actually working as an electrical engineer.

That said, self-study is a different animal from the side project nonsense that the thread root is referring to. I personally engage in a significant amount of self-study. Some of it a roll back into my day job, some I experiment with in my free time, the rest is purely academic knowledge acquisition. I don't have anything tangible to show off, though, because most everything I have done off hours is the software equivalent of a carver or welder practicing with scraps.

Maybe that isn't the right attitude for a programmer, but in that case a programmer is a different animal than any of the professions listed previously.

I think plumbers would be a better example than lawyers. Do you expect them to unclog toilets in their free time?

toilets in europe are not the same as in north america. a north american plumber will say screw europe, I will never work there. What if you need to move to europe?

Exactly

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