I simply never had an external pressure that would throw me into the necessity to know ins and outs of Haskell by heart This is the real problem then, isn't it

I simply never had an external pressure that would throw me into the necessity to know ins and outs of Haskell by heart This is the real problem then, isn't it. External pressure is not the only thing that can exert the necessary motivation to learn new things. But the crux of his argument seems to be that you have to have these external motivators, otherwise you'll never be any good at what you are learning. I suppose the argument could be made that if you don't have external pressures, you won't learn whatever you are studying well enough. This argument seems specious to me. I've heard plenty of stories which validates against my own more limited experience with people who are motivated to learning by extrinsic motivations; on the level, they just aren't as good, because the extrinsic motivation ends the instant you can convince someone else you are good enough. From there, you only have to convince yourself you are good enough, and the thresholds for this vary a lot. Having the intrinsic motivation to go beyond what others expect I could only see having an additive effect on one's ability. Or perhaps I am just making an attempt to validate my own intrinsic motivation to learn stuff in spite of a relative absence of external pressure. I can't help but think this author is attempting to validate the converse of that. Or maybe I'm missing the point. Maybe if I want a position at a bank being held to this sort of standard, then I don't really have to worry about teaching myself new things and I can survive without a motivation above and beyond getting paid. I don't know that I'd be so sycophantic toward that culture, though, if that is all that is expected of me. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to write an article claiming it is a waste of my time. One other point: First of all, banks are always a good indicator of the position’s value in business terms. How true is this? He seems to take the stance that banks are pretty much infallible when it comes to assigning proper value to individuals; the folklore I am exposed to here and elsewhere suggests this isn't anywhere near true. It seems rather odd, also, that he asserts that banks will fire people who have even short-term decreases in added value. This seems really foolish; value generation varies over time. I don't understand how organizations with such a intricate grasp of value production could miss this. That is, unless they don't have that grasp he claims they do.