Maybe. But sometimes "the reading" means doing research during personal hours in order to solve work problems. And while the me of 20 years ago would have been

Maybe. But sometimes "the reading" means doing research during personal hours in order to solve work problems. And while the me of 20 years ago would have been perfectly fine doing work that I wasn't going to be compensated for, that shit doesn't fly with the me of today and if it got weeded entirely out of corporate culture, especially software development, we'd all be better off for it. Raise your hand if you've never had any real formal workplace training in your supposed area of expertise. Raise your hand if you've watched the same managers who can't find a budget for your personal training go to training seminars and / or conferences. Raise your hand if your employer decides to adopt some new bit of technology that nobody on your team has familiarity with and then give an incredibly aggressive timeframe to integrate it into your current systems. Most developers don't have enough hands to raise.