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I have always been of the opinion that if someone is hiring me to do a particular job, it is incumbent upon me to show up with the skills and knowledge I need t

I have always been of the opinion that if someone is hiring me to do a particular job, it is incumbent upon me to show up with the skills and knowledge I need to do that job well -- at least the skills and knowledge that are not specific to their own organization. If they hire me to work with a particular language I don't have any experience with, I'm not going to sit at my desk on their time reading a book and doing Hello World programs. I'll spend my own time getting ramped up in the language as quickly as I can. In my long experience, the best developers I've encountered have had basically the same attitude.

geofft 9y ago
I'm curious - is that unique to tech? (It seems to be the common worldview from what I've seen, but I've only ever worked in tech.) It occurs to me that the Peter Principle implies basically the opposite: in companies where it applies, you're not promoted based on any evaluation of whether you can do your target job, you're promoted based on demonstrated ability in doing your current job, and a presumed ability to pick up new things as needed. If these companies handled promotions the way tech seems to do hiring (a lot of companies expect experience with large-scale deployments before they'll hire you for large-scale deployments, with specific languages before they'll hire you for that language, etc.), you wouldn't have the Peter Principle; you'd have the opposite problem of failing to hire/promote people who could be quite competent but have no experience to prove it a priori.
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  I think in professions that make use of lots of expensive, specialized equipment, the only way to stay up to date is through learning on the job or in a formal training/educational environment. Programming is not like that. Pick any mainstream language, and all of the resources you need to develop a deep level of expertise in it are readily available, for free or relatively inexpensively. And accordingly, many developers proactively develop deep levels of skill and expertise on their own initiative. And my observation has been that these are the ones sitting atop the profession.
ryandvm 9y ago
Bingo. As long as you stick with this mindset, you will continually be the kind of developer that companies will fight over. Relatedly, this is also the main ingredient for a successful career in consulting. Clients will pay handsomely for someone that shows up and can magically solve problems in disparate domains. They have no interest in hearing that you need to spend today writing "hello worlds" because you've never worked with this particular stack.
jakelazaroff 9y ago
> If they hire me to work with a particular language I don't have any experience with, I'm not going to sit at my desk on their time reading a book and doing Hello World programs. I'll spend my own time getting ramped up in the language as quickly as I can. Why is it ridiculous to expect your employer to give you the training you need to be successful? This is standard practice in many other professions, some of which even have ladders of apprenticeship. If for example the language they needed you to use changed, would you then learn it on their time?
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  > Why is it ridiculous to expect your employer to give you the training you need to be successful? This is standard practice in many other professions, some of which even have ladders of apprenticeship. If you expect that, I don't think it's ridiculous, but I have not observed any correlation between programmers who have that expectation and programmers who are in the top echelon in terms of skills and productivity. > If for example the language they needed you to use changed, would you then learn it on their time? I'll be happy to answer that question, but I need clarification. Do you mean, if my employer hired me to program in language A, and now they've decided that future development will be done in language B? Or do you mean that a new version of my current language has been released, and I need to learn and apply the new features?
  - jakelazaroff 9y ago
    > I have not observed any correlation between programmers who have that expectation and programmers who are in the top echelon in terms of skills and productivity. I don't think this is a debate about what makes a better programmer (although other commenters have argued that many skills gained with side projects are not the same skills needed to succeed in a company) but rather whether it's fair to penalize people who — for whatever reason — literally cannot devote their out-of-work hours to what's essentially unpaid overtime training themselves. > Do you mean, if my employer hired me to program in language A, and now they've decided that future development will be done in language B? Or do you mean that a new version of my current language has been released, and I need to learn and apply the new features? I didn't have a specific scenario in mind — IMO that's not a meaningful distinction and a company should not expect you to learn it on your own time either way. What do you think separates one case from the other?

geofft 9y ago

I'm curious - is that unique to tech? (It seems to be the common worldview from what I've seen, but I've only ever worked in tech.) It occurs to me that the Peter Principle implies basically the opposite: in companies where it applies, you're not promoted based on any evaluation of whether you can do your target job, you're promoted based on demonstrated ability in doing your current job, and a presumed ability to pick up new things as needed. If these companies handled promotions the way tech seems to do hiring (a lot of companies expect experience with large-scale deployments before they'll hire you for large-scale deployments, with specific languages before they'll hire you for that language, etc.), you wouldn't have the Peter Principle; you'd have the opposite problem of failing to hire/promote people who could be quite competent but have no experience to prove it a priori.

rhapsodic 9y ago
I think in professions that make use of lots of expensive, specialized equipment, the only way to stay up to date is through learning on the job or in a formal training/educational environment. Programming is not like that. Pick any mainstream language, and all of the resources you need to develop a deep level of expertise in it are readily available, for free or relatively inexpensively. And accordingly, many developers proactively develop deep levels of skill and expertise on their own initiative. And my observation has been that these are the ones sitting atop the profession.

ryandvm 9y ago

Bingo. As long as you stick with this mindset, you will continually be the kind of developer that companies will fight over. Relatedly, this is also the main ingredient for a successful career in consulting. Clients will pay handsomely for someone that shows up and can magically solve problems in disparate domains. They have no interest in hearing that you need to spend today writing "hello worlds" because you've never worked with this particular stack.

jakelazaroff 9y ago

> If they hire me to work with a particular language I don't have any experience with, I'm not going to sit at my desk on their time reading a book and doing Hello World programs. I'll spend my own time getting ramped up in the language as quickly as I can. Why is it ridiculous to expect your employer to give you the training you need to be successful? This is standard practice in many other professions, some of which even have ladders of apprenticeship. If for example the language they needed you to use changed, would you then learn it on their time?

rhapsodic 9y ago
> Why is it ridiculous to expect your employer to give you the training you need to be successful? This is standard practice in many other professions, some of which even have ladders of apprenticeship. If you expect that, I don't think it's ridiculous, but I have not observed any correlation between programmers who have that expectation and programmers who are in the top echelon in terms of skills and productivity. > If for example the language they needed you to use changed, would you then learn it on their time? I'll be happy to answer that question, but I need clarification. Do you mean, if my employer hired me to program in language A, and now they've decided that future development will be done in language B? Or do you mean that a new version of my current language has been released, and I need to learn and apply the new features?
- jakelazaroff 9y ago
  > I have not observed any correlation between programmers who have that expectation and programmers who are in the top echelon in terms of skills and productivity. I don't think this is a debate about what makes a better programmer (although other commenters have argued that many skills gained with side projects are not the same skills needed to succeed in a company) but rather whether it's fair to penalize people who — for whatever reason — literally cannot devote their out-of-work hours to what's essentially unpaid overtime training themselves. > Do you mean, if my employer hired me to program in language A, and now they've decided that future development will be done in language B? Or do you mean that a new version of my current language has been released, and I need to learn and apply the new features? I didn't have a specific scenario in mind — IMO that's not a meaningful distinction and a company should not expect you to learn it on your own time either way. What do you think separates one case from the other?