I remember this one, there are lots of good articles on this blog. This one is a little aggressive, but this is a real phenomenon. In many companies, styles and

I remember this one, there are lots of good articles on this blog. This one is a little aggressive, but this is a real phenomenon. In many companies, styles and expectations fluctuate too much for anyone to get comfortable for long. Lots of others move glacially, and within those walls, the outside world can barely be heard. I've bounced around quite a bit myself, but some of the best work I've done has been in situations where I could have slacked off and phoned it in. That was typically prevented by the opportunity to perform challenging work that allowed me to learn, not by fear of falling behind some imaginary peer. The problem with many workplaces is that challenging, interesting problems are few and far between and that is by design. Why take on the risk to the business by having technical knowledge in-house to solve the hard stuff? It's expensive, and large chunks of that investment can just walk out the door. Most companies would happily pay for solutions from other businesses that specialize, and then ask devs to glue these mismatched pieces into a semi-cohesive whole. This sort of glue-work is ubiquitous, even in companies that ostensibly specialize in making their own software. How much time is spent wrangling all those amazing, productivity-enhancing dev tools that have proliferated? The goal is typically to offload work for a fraction of what it costs to keep a dev employed. New businesses are cropping up all the time trying to sell tools to the big boys, so they can in turn keep their devs focused on core competencies. The companies that specialize in tooling of course all sell to each other as well, it's a little bit of a cartel, but this endless cycle of tool churn is nothing new. If you approach this environment as a newbie, and you are concerned about becoming an expert, it's likely that you'll only make progress on that goal in fits and starts. Companies grow, job roles become both over-specified in their requirements and narrower in their responsibilities, and all the while you are expected to learn new tools that allow your employer to save on skilled labor. It's rare to find a job where mentoring and career advancement are given genuine care. Employers have an incentive to keep employees tuned for specific, ever-narrowing roles. One of the few consistent places I've been able to find learning opportunities has been in start-ups. The overarching trend is the same there too, but at the beginning those roles are not yet so clearly defined and you can bite off as much as you want. You probably won't be rewarded for doing so, and it's a bit of a crapshoot, but it is one small advantage to those environments.