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There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today

There is something I cannot understand and this has already become a cliche: > Technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Engineering is a great career for passionate individuals who like to learn. Why would anyone give this advice? Can we stop handing out this advice and encourage everyone to stand up for their rights instead? If you think about it, by proxy this gives you the following advice: as a programmer you will have no life outside of work and you are supposed to be an idiot who spends his time working and studying outside office hours even when you could spend time with your family. So yeah, go for it and suck it up you idiot. At least that's how most employers handle this problem. And interestingly by comparison no-one tells a MBA diploma holder that it's a great career for passionate individuals who like to spend their whole life studying. And before you think that I am against studying, that's not the case at all. If my company pays for it and I can kick back on a sofa during working hours to study I am fine with it. But I cannot see any value studying something on my own expense on my own time which will be outdated in 3 years anyway and so by definition it only benefits my employer.

username90 7y ago
MBA holders is a bad example since many of them happily work many hours of overtime, so I am pretty sure that they work more hours than software engineers even if you include the time it takes to study for interviews. > It turns out that the median number of hours racked up by an MBA in his or her first year of employment is a whopping 54 hours a week https://www.forbes.com/sites/poetsandquants/2018/03/06/the-60-hour-work-week-do-mbas-really-work-this-hard/#3486d7663d49 https://www.forbes.com/sites/poetsandquants/2018/03/06/the-6...
- fogetti 7y ago
  I am confused. Why do you think software engineers stop working as much as MBAs when they land a job? That's when they have to start studying even more beside working. 54 sounds about average for an engineer anyway. In Germany for example it's not rare to have 9 hour working days, with 30 to 60 minute lunch breaks in between. If it's so then basically one week comes to about 45 hours / week. If you study 2 hours a day, read books or read the news, follow trends, watch recordings of past conferences, etc which are pretty standard things that you are supposed to do on your job then it easily comes to 54 hours / week. So that's not high at all.
  - alchemism 7y ago
    Or maybe you put that time into raising your family, or otherwise being a well-rounded individual. It’s easy to do, if one assumes that the employer pays for the time required to keep an employee’s skills current.
gtirloni 7y ago
I didn't read that as saying you have to spend hours outside of work to learn. Learning on the job is pretty much a given these days, no? At least in my experience. Even decades ago I was always given time to research/study new things and I really like that about our industry.
- fogetti 7y ago
  Where did you work if I may ask? In the companies where I worked there was never such a thing. I worked in 2 companies in Hungary, 2 companies in Germany, 3 companies in Japan and one in the US. It was always basically assumed that you will study all the necessary things on your own time and when you sit in the office then you make productive things, a.k.a. as you deliver. You always had to code and show some progress of a specific development task each week. There was never such thing as time to research/study.
  - alchemism 7y ago
    Let’s explore that a bit with an example. If your boss instructed you to learn a completely new language and refactor an existing production service in it, you would be expected to learn that language on your own time, or purchase training with your own money, outside of the office?
    - fogetti 7y ago
      Yes. I would have to take an online course on my expense and/or read some books outside of office hours until I can use the language. Until that time I would have to work on something else which doesn't cost money for the company and I can deliver right away. But that's the norm. Every company works this way.
      - alchemism 7y ago
        Strange — it’s been the norm at every US company I’ve been in since the dot-com boom to allocate time and money to training staff in new technologies if it’s a serious initiative. That’s the thing about assumptions, I guess :-)
lr4444lr 7y ago
I agree, and I think you hit on exactly why white-boarding persists (the least of all interviewing evils, IMHO): if this industry is so fast-moving, the fundamentals are the most reliable thing we can measure that has lasting value for (what we hope) are long-term hiring decisions.
bushido 7y ago
Why would anyone give this advice? It seems relevant to getting a tech job. If one is looking for a job, chances are that things have changed since the last time they looked for a job, which on an average for most people these days is every 2-5 years. This is not limited to engineering or tech, and extends to most specialized jobs in most industries. Can we stop handing out this advice and encourage everyone to stand up for their rights instead? In the right context absolutely. In general, its possibly a bad idea. You could always balance it out and educate the folks about the rights of an employer If you were on my team, I would not expect you to sacrifice any of your rights. But if you kept falling behind your peers, to the determent of the team's performance, at some point you would be put on a performance plan. The unfortunate thing about performance plans is that by the time its enforced things are close to unrecoverable. And if you did find yourself failing, I hope someone tells you that: The technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Because, I will not.
- fogetti 7y ago
  I don't know what is a performance plan. Can you elaborate? I have never worked in a company where there was such a plan. Is this public to employees or you just simply whip everyone until they work themselves to death without telling them the reasoning? Also I assume you are in the US. In most European countries you can absolutely do nothing about someone who works full time on your team unless they let's say causes you financial losses or punch you in the face, so you can basically shove up your plan to your bottom part in other cases.
  - bushido 7y ago
    Performance plans, or performance improvement plans, are extremely verbose formal documents that are used as a last step to tie up all legal requirements before terminating an employee. These are most commonly used in countries outside US. Most of the US follows At-will employment[0], so generally no performance plans are necessary. This is not public. We've only used it twice, one person was suspected of misappropriation of funds (and later proven), and one that's currently in motion is an employee that misrepresented their technical knowledge i.e. cannot write code, convinced other employees to do 90% of their contributions. I get that there is this impression of the US whipping everyone until they work themselves to death. Anecdotal, but I've never really experienced that. If anything, the folk in the US like being busy, and workplaces (at least in tech) are overly happy, in something that reminds me of a cult. I have lived an worked in 5 countries in 3 continents and worked with people living in many more countries. In my own observations, the US colleagues have usually exhibited the highest level of happiness/satisfaction. They also tend to find their next jobs the quickest. And are paid the highest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
nickthemagicman 7y ago
There are no employee rights in modern capitalism. In the 19th century, they worked 80 hours a week in mines, had child labor, no vacations, women were ignored, indentured servitude existed. All this and more until unions and labor laws. Karl Marx's entire philosophy was based on the abuses of workers he observed. Nowadays people mock progressive causes as 'socialism', mock unions and worker protections, demonize progressive politicians, and idolize oligarchs. Even though it's all against their own best interest. Your idealistic notion of 'rights' doesn't exist and will never happen. You have no rights as long as someone controls your purse strings, which with booming inequality is more and more people nowadays as well. I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next.
- visarga 7y ago
  > I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next. We have to figure that out much sooner than all jobs are automated.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Totally agree but it's been my experience human beings (as a whole) never do anything about abstract problems until they feel the pinch themselves.
closeparen 7y ago
Teachers, doctors, lawyers, professional engineers, and many others get their licenses revoked by the government if they fail to go back to college and take classes every few years.

username90 7y ago

MBA holders is a bad example since many of them happily work many hours of overtime, so I am pretty sure that they work more hours than software engineers even if you include the time it takes to study for interviews. > It turns out that the median number of hours racked up by an MBA in his or her first year of employment is a whopping 54 hours a week https://www.forbes.com/sites/poetsandquants/2018/03/06/the-60-hour-work-week-do-mbas-really-work-this-hard/#3486d7663d49 https://www.forbes.com/sites/poetsandquants/2018/03/06/the-6...

fogetti 7y ago
I am confused. Why do you think software engineers stop working as much as MBAs when they land a job? That's when they have to start studying even more beside working. 54 sounds about average for an engineer anyway. In Germany for example it's not rare to have 9 hour working days, with 30 to 60 minute lunch breaks in between. If it's so then basically one week comes to about 45 hours / week. If you study 2 hours a day, read books or read the news, follow trends, watch recordings of past conferences, etc which are pretty standard things that you are supposed to do on your job then it easily comes to 54 hours / week. So that's not high at all.
- alchemism 7y ago
  Or maybe you put that time into raising your family, or otherwise being a well-rounded individual. It’s easy to do, if one assumes that the employer pays for the time required to keep an employee’s skills current.

gtirloni 7y ago

I didn't read that as saying you have to spend hours outside of work to learn. Learning on the job is pretty much a given these days, no? At least in my experience. Even decades ago I was always given time to research/study new things and I really like that about our industry.

fogetti 7y ago
Where did you work if I may ask? In the companies where I worked there was never such a thing. I worked in 2 companies in Hungary, 2 companies in Germany, 3 companies in Japan and one in the US. It was always basically assumed that you will study all the necessary things on your own time and when you sit in the office then you make productive things, a.k.a. as you deliver. You always had to code and show some progress of a specific development task each week. There was never such thing as time to research/study.
- alchemism 7y ago
  Let’s explore that a bit with an example. If your boss instructed you to learn a completely new language and refactor an existing production service in it, you would be expected to learn that language on your own time, or purchase training with your own money, outside of the office?
  - fogetti 7y ago
    Yes. I would have to take an online course on my expense and/or read some books outside of office hours until I can use the language. Until that time I would have to work on something else which doesn't cost money for the company and I can deliver right away. But that's the norm. Every company works this way.
    - alchemism 7y ago
      Strange — it’s been the norm at every US company I’ve been in since the dot-com boom to allocate time and money to training staff in new technologies if it’s a serious initiative. That’s the thing about assumptions, I guess :-)

lr4444lr 7y ago

I agree, and I think you hit on exactly why white-boarding persists (the least of all interviewing evils, IMHO): if this industry is so fast-moving, the fundamentals are the most reliable thing we can measure that has lasting value for (what we hope) are long-term hiring decisions.

bushido 7y ago

Why would anyone give this advice? It seems relevant to getting a tech job. If one is looking for a job, chances are that things have changed since the last time they looked for a job, which on an average for most people these days is every 2-5 years. This is not limited to engineering or tech, and extends to most specialized jobs in most industries. Can we stop handing out this advice and encourage everyone to stand up for their rights instead? In the right context absolutely. In general, its possibly a bad idea. You could always balance it out and educate the folks about the rights of an employer If you were on my team, I would not expect you to sacrifice any of your rights. But if you kept falling behind your peers, to the determent of the team's performance, at some point you would be put on a performance plan. The unfortunate thing about performance plans is that by the time its enforced things are close to unrecoverable. And if you did find yourself failing, I hope someone tells you that: The technology industry is an extremely fast-moving one. Many technologies used today didn't even exist/were popular a decade ago; in 2009, mobile app development and blockchain were pretty much unheard of. Engineers constantly need to upgrade their skills to stay relevant to the demands of the job market. Because, I will not.

fogetti 7y ago
I don't know what is a performance plan. Can you elaborate? I have never worked in a company where there was such a plan. Is this public to employees or you just simply whip everyone until they work themselves to death without telling them the reasoning? Also I assume you are in the US. In most European countries you can absolutely do nothing about someone who works full time on your team unless they let's say causes you financial losses or punch you in the face, so you can basically shove up your plan to your bottom part in other cases.
- bushido 7y ago
  Performance plans, or performance improvement plans, are extremely verbose formal documents that are used as a last step to tie up all legal requirements before terminating an employee. These are most commonly used in countries outside US. Most of the US follows At-will employment[0], so generally no performance plans are necessary. This is not public. We've only used it twice, one person was suspected of misappropriation of funds (and later proven), and one that's currently in motion is an employee that misrepresented their technical knowledge i.e. cannot write code, convinced other employees to do 90% of their contributions. I get that there is this impression of the US whipping everyone until they work themselves to death. Anecdotal, but I've never really experienced that. If anything, the folk in the US like being busy, and workplaces (at least in tech) are overly happy, in something that reminds me of a cult. I have lived an worked in 5 countries in 3 continents and worked with people living in many more countries. In my own observations, the US colleagues have usually exhibited the highest level of happiness/satisfaction. They also tend to find their next jobs the quickest. And are paid the highest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

nickthemagicman 7y ago

There are no employee rights in modern capitalism. In the 19th century, they worked 80 hours a week in mines, had child labor, no vacations, women were ignored, indentured servitude existed. All this and more until unions and labor laws. Karl Marx's entire philosophy was based on the abuses of workers he observed. Nowadays people mock progressive causes as 'socialism', mock unions and worker protections, demonize progressive politicians, and idolize oligarchs. Even though it's all against their own best interest. Your idealistic notion of 'rights' doesn't exist and will never happen. You have no rights as long as someone controls your purse strings, which with booming inequality is more and more people nowadays as well. I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next.

visarga 7y ago
> I can't wait until most jobs are finally automated and we're done with this whole capitalist system entirely and have to figure out what to do next. We have to figure that out much sooner than all jobs are automated.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Totally agree but it's been my experience human beings (as a whole) never do anything about abstract problems until they feel the pinch themselves.

closeparen 7y ago

Teachers, doctors, lawyers, professional engineers, and many others get their licenses revoked by the government if they fail to go back to college and take classes every few years.