5 ms·

My anecdotal evidence does not match your anecdotal evidence. I'm approaching 50, and I've had about a dozen jobs in tech starting in my teens. I've never worke

My anecdotal evidence does not match your anecdotal evidence. I'm approaching 50, and I've had about a dozen jobs in tech starting in my teens. I've never worked anywhere that didn't allow on-the-job time for learning, and the majority of my employers have both actively-encouraged it and financed it. I also learn on my own, for fun, as my career started as a hobby and still interests me, but the vast majority of my education has been paid for during normal work hours. I also actively seek out new and interesting technology when switching jobs, and I switch jobs when things stagnate. It's what you have to do in tech, regardless of your age. If you stay too long at a company that isn't advancing your career, you're going to go stale. This isn't specific to tech either. How many mechanics, lab technicians, chefs, marketing people, stock brokers, architects, lawyers, etc. could find a job today if they hadn't learned anything in 20 years?

sukilot 6y ago
No field reinvents itself as frequently as software.
- dpc_pw 6y ago
  That's only true if if you consider SWE as "learning a JS framework". The core methods and principles of SWE are almost timeless, other things are well documented and can be learned on the go.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    It's extremely difficult to communicate this to a team exclusively populated by those who do not have cross-language experience. As an anecdote, and not to boast: I have occasionally had to write data visualization and function plotting software at least a half a dozen times in as many languages and frameworks, from QuickBasic as a teenage hobby, to C in DOS, Java (Swing and JavaFX), OpenGL, WebGL, JS with charting libraries, Linux raw framebuffer... Also tweaked MRTG charts back in the day, wrote a super basic 3D editor in highschool for games I never ended up making, etc. A team I was on once had to add a simple chart to a webapp. When the task came up in meetings and was causing the dev assigned the task some grief, I mentioned that I've had to do some charting work before, and offered to help with any details if they got stuck. Instead of saying something like, "Ok, I'll let you know if I have any questions," they said, "Yeah, but was it D3?"
pmiller2 6y ago
If by "anything" in the phrase "hadn't learned anything in 20 years," you mean things like legal principles, rather than specific new precedents and laws, I suspect a lawyer probably doesn't have to learn much after they clear the bar exam. If any lawyers read this, I'd love to be proven wrong. :)
- ksdale 6y ago
  I think you're underestimating how fast the law changes. In a lot of practice areas (I work in tax), there can be substantial changes every few years, and in between, daily work changes as everyone converges on optimal strategies, and then the law changes again. Then there's new software constantly, which you generally need to be familiar with or get left behind. Then there are the gimmicks of the day that your clients find on the internet that you need to be familiar with or risk looking like you don't keep up with best practices (even if the new stuff isn't anywhere near a best practice, or is only applicable to Fortune 500 cos.). I would go so far as to say that a lawyer who just recently passed the bar exam is substantially worse at the practice of law than a paralegal with 20 years of experience. The legal principles learned in order to pass the bar exam are akin to... basic algorithms (maybe?) for a software engineer. They're important, but they're also not really what the job is on a daily basis.
Alex3917 6y ago
> I've never worked anywhere that didn't allow on-the-job time for learning I think the issue is more just that there aren't any clear ethical standards that have been set industrywide, and since developers tend to have limited oversight, at this point it's really just a matter of what standards you set for yourself. IMHO for things you're learning that will materially benefit your career, a reasonable standard would be that for every hour you spend on your own time teaching yourself that thing, you can spend an hour of paid time. Whereas for things that only benefit your employer, e.g. niche libraries or outdated frameworks, that should happen entirely on the employers dime.

sukilot 6y ago

No field reinvents itself as frequently as software.

dpc_pw 6y ago
That's only true if if you consider SWE as "learning a JS framework". The core methods and principles of SWE are almost timeless, other things are well documented and can be learned on the go.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nitrogen 6y ago
  It's extremely difficult to communicate this to a team exclusively populated by those who do not have cross-language experience. As an anecdote, and not to boast: I have occasionally had to write data visualization and function plotting software at least a half a dozen times in as many languages and frameworks, from QuickBasic as a teenage hobby, to C in DOS, Java (Swing and JavaFX), OpenGL, WebGL, JS with charting libraries, Linux raw framebuffer... Also tweaked MRTG charts back in the day, wrote a super basic 3D editor in highschool for games I never ended up making, etc. A team I was on once had to add a simple chart to a webapp. When the task came up in meetings and was causing the dev assigned the task some grief, I mentioned that I've had to do some charting work before, and offered to help with any details if they got stuck. Instead of saying something like, "Ok, I'll let you know if I have any questions," they said, "Yeah, but was it D3?"

pmiller2 6y ago

If by "anything" in the phrase "hadn't learned anything in 20 years," you mean things like legal principles, rather than specific new precedents and laws, I suspect a lawyer probably doesn't have to learn much after they clear the bar exam. If any lawyers read this, I'd love to be proven wrong. :)

ksdale 6y ago
I think you're underestimating how fast the law changes. In a lot of practice areas (I work in tax), there can be substantial changes every few years, and in between, daily work changes as everyone converges on optimal strategies, and then the law changes again. Then there's new software constantly, which you generally need to be familiar with or get left behind. Then there are the gimmicks of the day that your clients find on the internet that you need to be familiar with or risk looking like you don't keep up with best practices (even if the new stuff isn't anywhere near a best practice, or is only applicable to Fortune 500 cos.). I would go so far as to say that a lawyer who just recently passed the bar exam is substantially worse at the practice of law than a paralegal with 20 years of experience. The legal principles learned in order to pass the bar exam are akin to... basic algorithms (maybe?) for a software engineer. They're important, but they're also not really what the job is on a daily basis.

Alex3917 6y ago

> I've never worked anywhere that didn't allow on-the-job time for learning I think the issue is more just that there aren't any clear ethical standards that have been set industrywide, and since developers tend to have limited oversight, at this point it's really just a matter of what standards you set for yourself. IMHO for things you're learning that will materially benefit your career, a reasonable standard would be that for every hour you spend on your own time teaching yourself that thing, you can spend an hour of paid time. Whereas for things that only benefit your employer, e.g. niche libraries or outdated frameworks, that should happen entirely on the employers dime.