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Someone is going to pay for that increased efficiency--either your Employer will pay in dollars, or you will pay some opportunity cost. Why should you pay? Aft

Someone is going to pay for that increased efficiency--either your Employer will pay in dollars, or you will pay some opportunity cost. Why should you pay? After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore. Your time is a commodity. Why give it away?

KronisLV 5y ago
> Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. Depending on how you look at things, this may or may not be necessary to be done on your own accord in your free time to avoid your skills getting dated and irrelevant. Essentially, you do have to keep up with at least some of the new developments within the industry to remain employable, especially if you don't have any of the FAANG companies on your resume. While your employer might not necessarily expect you to do it, you might have to do that in your own interest, without getting paid for it.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  We're in total agreement--that was probably not a great example.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Apart from that, this is a really nice way to put it: > Your time is a commodity. Why give it away? These things aren't even considered most of the time in regards to commute or other practices in the corporate world, just because they're "the normal".
- alchemism 5y ago
  I do that reading and skill-training for unrelated tech things on the company’s dime, not mine. They are paying me highly to be a professional.
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    If your company pays for that, then that's cool! Whereas with my workload and circumstances within the company, that's not realistic. In the past 2 weeks, i've: - worked on migrating large enterprise apps from Java 8 to Java 11 - worked on migrating those apps from Spring to Spring Boot - worked on containerizing them and carrying over configuration parameters - edited a whole lot of legacy code that was needed for all of that to happen and documented the process - helped people deal with external integrations and PKI related configuration and Ansible - helped onboard a person on the project and consulted other junior devs - got called in to work on a PHP project even though i'm technically a Java dev - consulted a person on how to use Figma to create designs for the app (even though i'll just have to develop it?) - realized that the app has literally no onboarding instructions or documentation whatsoever, so set out to create those - developed some scripts to seed the DB with test users and data, otherwise the app won't even allow logging in locally - consulted with the clients about all of these things, waiting for additional feedback on that - fixed a few bugs here and there, did the usual meetings, sprint estimation, architecture stuff etc. As for how well i'm paid, i wouldn't necessarily use the word "highly": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Regardless, that probably shows that there is a world of difference in both compensation and the workloads of people. While having the time to learn new tech on company time would be good, it simply isn't my current reality, nor is it the reality for many out there. Thus, if i don't want to have my skills become obsolete, i spend the occasional morning/evening/weekend working on pet projects. That needs to be taken into account. Curiously enough, i've heard some people voice the opinion that their workloads actually lessened in larger companies where they also happened to be more highly paid.

KronisLV 5y ago

> Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. Depending on how you look at things, this may or may not be necessary to be done on your own accord in your free time to avoid your skills getting dated and irrelevant. Essentially, you do have to keep up with at least some of the new developments within the industry to remain employable, especially if you don't have any of the FAANG companies on your resume. While your employer might not necessarily expect you to do it, you might have to do that in your own interest, without getting paid for it.

marcusverus 5y ago
We're in total agreement--that was probably not a great example.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Apart from that, this is a really nice way to put it: > Your time is a commodity. Why give it away? These things aren't even considered most of the time in regards to commute or other practices in the corporate world, just because they're "the normal".
alchemism 5y ago
I do that reading and skill-training for unrelated tech things on the company’s dime, not mine. They are paying me highly to be a professional.
- KronisLV 5y ago
  If your company pays for that, then that's cool! Whereas with my workload and circumstances within the company, that's not realistic. In the past 2 weeks, i've: - worked on migrating large enterprise apps from Java 8 to Java 11 - worked on migrating those apps from Spring to Spring Boot - worked on containerizing them and carrying over configuration parameters - edited a whole lot of legacy code that was needed for all of that to happen and documented the process - helped people deal with external integrations and PKI related configuration and Ansible - helped onboard a person on the project and consulted other junior devs - got called in to work on a PHP project even though i'm technically a Java dev - consulted a person on how to use Figma to create designs for the app (even though i'll just have to develop it?) - realized that the app has literally no onboarding instructions or documentation whatsoever, so set out to create those - developed some scripts to seed the DB with test users and data, otherwise the app won't even allow logging in locally - consulted with the clients about all of these things, waiting for additional feedback on that - fixed a few bugs here and there, did the usual meetings, sprint estimation, architecture stuff etc. As for how well i'm paid, i wouldn't necessarily use the word "highly": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Regardless, that probably shows that there is a world of difference in both compensation and the workloads of people. While having the time to learn new tech on company time would be good, it simply isn't my current reality, nor is it the reality for many out there. Thus, if i don't want to have my skills become obsolete, i spend the occasional morning/evening/weekend working on pet projects. That needs to be taken into account. Curiously enough, i've heard some people voice the opinion that their workloads actually lessened in larger companies where they also happened to be more highly paid.