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>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to deve

>Some people should not be in this industry -- not because they don't have the chops; but because they don't actually want to put in the time and effort to develop their skills. And it is an overwhelming task. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna take the opportunity to rant on it a bit. There are quite a few high-paying and fast-moving fields. Pretty much everything under medicine or law moves is moving on a week-to-week and even day-to-day basis, just like software development. Unlike software development, practitioners in these fields get paid to stay up to date, as part of their day jobs. Lawyers spend a good chunk of their days just reading the latest case reports that are relevant to their field, and boy howdy do our legal systems churn out a lot of reading for them to do. It's pretty much only in software development that we expect professionals to stay up to date and develop new skills /in their spare time/. There would be a lot more 1% developers out there (or rather, we'd be able to look for the 5% or 10% rather than the 1%) if companies were willing to have their teams spend 4 hours a week training, but no one is willing to do that. I have guesses on the causes of this industry-wide unwillingness to train, but one thing is for sure: this situation will never resolve itself as long as we honestly and unironically expect members of the field to spend their evenings and weekends learning new algorithms and languages instead of playing with their kids or chilling with their mates. You know why so many developers settle for mediocrity? Because mediocrity pays the rent, and no one is supporting their path to excellence.

eutropia 9y ago
One of the advantages that doctors and lawyers have over us is that their field is no longer nascent. Their professions have existed in some form or another since ancient Greece, and were cornerstones of western society. We programmers have existed barely half a century, so we (rightly or wrongly) don't have that same sort of social gravitas. We also don't necessarily (some of us do) go through specialized graduate education systems to be a part of the field. I guess I say all that to say is that people trust lawyers and doctors to be professionals. If they say that they need something, such as time to self-improve -- or the right tools, people listen. The respect their profession bestows upon them gives them an amount of personal clout that most of us don't get by virtue of simply being a dev.
Clubber 9y ago
>I have guesses on the causes of this industry-wide unwillingness to train My current theory is it's at least somewhat a result of unions losing power. A union's strategy is to have as many people employed for as long as possible, so it's inherently a long term strategy. The better the company does long term, the better the union members are. I would say unions are the champions of long term strategy for self preservation. If the company goes out of business, all the union members are out of jobs. Executives are more short term thinkers today. They want quarterly results and they have incentives based on those results (both quarterly and annual) and almost no long term results outside of accumulation of short term incentives. Executives also have the notorious golden parachutes which further shields them from the personal costs of short term thinking. This of course rewards short term thinking rather than long term thinking. Training is a long term investment, not a short term investment. Short term thinkers want to find someone who will 'hit the ground running,' as I've sure you've heard. Ideally that's what anyone would want. The trouble is, that rarely happens once, much less for an entire team. Short term thinkers can't think outside of that strategy and therefore, we are where we are.
darioush 9y ago
Every job I've had and encourages engineers to have reading groups, on any topic they want. It's also my experience that most people ignore these opportunities Is this also what others see? Some reasons I can think are people: - don't want any more meetings; - are bad at having a merit driven discussion
- watwut 9y ago
  Majority of meetings are not merit driven discussions.
seabird 9y ago
There are very good reasons developers aren't encouraged to study on the job. The biggest one I can think of (that is especially prevalent today) is that not all studying results in usable knowledge, at least in software development. Every verdict is effectively the new rules that lawyers will play by the second that it is made; you could lose the case for not knowing a specific verdict. Medical professionals practice an ancient field that has no interest in gung-ho, extraneous solutions to problems that have already been solved. Software development is one of the few fields where people working it think that learning some oddball, corner-case framework that got its start because the original developer didn't like the code style of some other oddball, corner-case framework is necessarily and always desired by an employer. Mediocrity is honestly what many customers need. They don't need developers of Herculean strength that can create software of unfathomable complexity, they need a patch to their billing system (or something similarly trivial).
watwut 9y ago
I dont think medicine or law are good examples for that. Medicine has you sleep deprived for years as a matter of policy because you are expected to work so much and law tend to be quite similar. At least in USA. I mean, yeah, you are expected to learn on the job, but the job is 100 hours a week. Contrary to that, all older developers I know learn on the job and developed strategies how to make it possible to learn on the job.

eutropia 9y ago

One of the advantages that doctors and lawyers have over us is that their field is no longer nascent. Their professions have existed in some form or another since ancient Greece, and were cornerstones of western society. We programmers have existed barely half a century, so we (rightly or wrongly) don't have that same sort of social gravitas. We also don't necessarily (some of us do) go through specialized graduate education systems to be a part of the field. I guess I say all that to say is that people trust lawyers and doctors to be professionals. If they say that they need something, such as time to self-improve -- or the right tools, people listen. The respect their profession bestows upon them gives them an amount of personal clout that most of us don't get by virtue of simply being a dev.

Clubber 9y ago

>I have guesses on the causes of this industry-wide unwillingness to train My current theory is it's at least somewhat a result of unions losing power. A union's strategy is to have as many people employed for as long as possible, so it's inherently a long term strategy. The better the company does long term, the better the union members are. I would say unions are the champions of long term strategy for self preservation. If the company goes out of business, all the union members are out of jobs. Executives are more short term thinkers today. They want quarterly results and they have incentives based on those results (both quarterly and annual) and almost no long term results outside of accumulation of short term incentives. Executives also have the notorious golden parachutes which further shields them from the personal costs of short term thinking. This of course rewards short term thinking rather than long term thinking. Training is a long term investment, not a short term investment. Short term thinkers want to find someone who will 'hit the ground running,' as I've sure you've heard. Ideally that's what anyone would want. The trouble is, that rarely happens once, much less for an entire team. Short term thinkers can't think outside of that strategy and therefore, we are where we are.

darioush 9y ago

Every job I've had and encourages engineers to have reading groups, on any topic they want. It's also my experience that most people ignore these opportunities Is this also what others see? Some reasons I can think are people: - don't want any more meetings; - are bad at having a merit driven discussion

watwut 9y ago
Majority of meetings are not merit driven discussions.

seabird 9y ago

There are very good reasons developers aren't encouraged to study on the job. The biggest one I can think of (that is especially prevalent today) is that not all studying results in usable knowledge, at least in software development. Every verdict is effectively the new rules that lawyers will play by the second that it is made; you could lose the case for not knowing a specific verdict. Medical professionals practice an ancient field that has no interest in gung-ho, extraneous solutions to problems that have already been solved. Software development is one of the few fields where people working it think that learning some oddball, corner-case framework that got its start because the original developer didn't like the code style of some other oddball, corner-case framework is necessarily and always desired by an employer. Mediocrity is honestly what many customers need. They don't need developers of Herculean strength that can create software of unfathomable complexity, they need a patch to their billing system (or something similarly trivial).

watwut 9y ago

I dont think medicine or law are good examples for that. Medicine has you sleep deprived for years as a matter of policy because you are expected to work so much and law tend to be quite similar. At least in USA. I mean, yeah, you are expected to learn on the job, but the job is 100 hours a week. Contrary to that, all older developers I know learn on the job and developed strategies how to make it possible to learn on the job.