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Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

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Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#121

Post by wool_gather »

znpy wrote: post #74
Bootwizard wrote: post #9

I'm currently a frontend engineer. I told my team lead a while back that I'd like to transition to the server side, especially since our server team is woefully understaffed and our frontend team is overstaffed. He told me "Sure but you'll need to learn all that stuff on your own time". So I never did it because I'm interested in doing other things at home.

The middle ground here is that I'd try to grasp the basics on my own time, then ask the switch. I can understand your boss though: would you swap a competent employee for an incompetent one, paying the same amount? Probably not. Yes, you retain your knowledge about the front-end, but you wouldn't be using that. My advice would be to work out the basics on your time and then ask somebody in the backend team to be invo…

> would you swap a competent employee for an incompetent one, paying the same amount?

But this is the glass-half-empty boss. The glass-half-full boss is happy to have a competent employee who can be called upon when needed for important front-end stuff and is picking up backend work at a faster rate than the intern the team would have otherwise, because they're already an experienced engineer (with knowledge of the front-end no less!) and there is skill beyond just writing code that transfers between domains.

And that's to say nothing of swapping a competent employee who's already onboarded for an empty seat and a talent search, when the employee quits to expand their skills elsewhere.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#122

Post by K0SM0S »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #99
Braggadocious wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ever think about how much we subsidize businesses by paying for college ourselves? The older I get the more I think the university to corporation pipeline is a fucking racket. It also sucks for employees because here comes these kids who were allowed to learn about all the new technologies you wish you knew with zero distractions and other obligations, now comin' in hot on your heels to take yer jobs en masse, an…

You're correct but the difficulty is finding an alternative. Training employees who are then free to take their skills to another company that didn't bother with training gives that company the ability to lure workers away with higher salaries. There is a bit of tragedy of the commons in the skilled labor pool.

Well it's also a pool, meaning it rotates, you get some, lose some, get some, lose some, etc. Maybe a dev will take 2-3 jobs to learn the trade (PHP here, Js there, some fundamental web stuff to top it off, and here's your "professional-grade developer". Great.) But you get to hire equivalent devs at each step, then it's just about $/skill.

Now, if all companies made it part of their "offer" to train people "enough" (say, 1d/w), then you'd expect all the workforce to become more qualified, better in time and in age.

You could actually pay/recover the "investment" of training the equivalent of university/grad/postgrad/etc for all employees simply by the fact that everyone else would do it too (and it would certainly lower wages a bit for the early years of these newcomers, since they'd skip the idling 20's decade of many youths currently).

I don't know, it's clearly not something you could do overnight or even over a generation, it's likely to be deeper and more 'revolutionary' than that in people's minds; but mathematically, economically, it tends to make sense (we've done that for years with "guilds" and "companions" in the medieval ages and actually since forever in some trades).

I think the current mainstream / massive education (take hundreds, thousands, and grad them each year) is just the result / need of industrialization (requiring an educated workforce), a novelty of the late 19th and 20th century.

I think the cursor is moving and the explosion of alternative means and times/ages of learning is a strong indicator of that.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#123

Post by mdiesel »

Bootwizard wrote: post #9

I'm currently a frontend engineer. I told my team lead a while back that I'd like to transition to the server side, especially since our server team is woefully understaffed and our frontend team is overstaffed. He told me "Sure but you'll need to learn all that stuff on your own time". So I never did it because I'm interested in doing other things at home.

Where I work (mechanical engineering business, not just software) there's a training course that people are encouraged to take up in their own time. However, the company does support staff taking the course with teaching time from senior engineers - and they make a big deal of having completed it with a certificate, bonus and pay rise. That's in addition to the apprenticeship scheme which represents a more sensible approach to industry funded education.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#124

Post by mgr86 »

aczerepinski wrote: post #83

I’ve always learned on the job and have never asked permission. I guess I’m lucky that I haven’t worked in the type of places where somebody’s looking over my shoulder every minute of the day. Somewhere around an hour a day every day and I’ve been doing it for years and nobody has ever said anything about it. I subscribe to those weekly emails for the programming languages we use at work and I read them when they com…

> I subscribe to those weekly emails for the programming languages we use at work

--

Are these an internal thing for your organization? is it Just joining a mailing list for X language? Or is there some aggregation service you could share?

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#125

Post by gbrown »

settsu wrote: post #71
gbrown wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tie it to deliverables, like reporting back to the team about the content or giving seminar style talks.

> Tie it to deliverables That's a great idea in theory because tackling a real world problem tends to motivate towards a real world solution. However, learning invariably encompasses failure which rarely measures up well with typical (if arguably useful/useless) performance metrics that developers contend with.

If the deliverable is a team report, then failures are super useful and still count. "I tried implementing X as a test after reading about method Y, but found that for our domain there are serious drawbacks."

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#126

Post by knightofmars »

rvense wrote: post #28
Bootwizard wrote: post #9

I'm currently a frontend engineer. I told my team lead a while back that I'd like to transition to the server side, especially since our server team is woefully understaffed and our frontend team is overstaffed. He told me "Sure but you'll need to learn all that stuff on your own time". So I never did it because I'm interested in doing other things at home.

Your lead made a mistake there. Someone with understanding of both FE and BE is worth as much as one of each, especially when they have intimate knowledge of your actual code.

>Someone with understanding of both FE and BE is worth as much as one of each...

Someone with understanding of both FE and BE is valuable in certain situations. Companies love the idea of a "full stack engineer" because they believe they are getting two for the price of one. But in practice, and accounting for exceptions, that's not necessarily the case. A full-time FE with equal experience will be better at the front than a FE/BE and a full-time BE with equal experience will be better at the back than a FE/BE. This is the reality of having deep experience in a specific domain. As an attempt at an example, if you went to college and got an English minor and a CompSci minor you'd be capable in both areas but you would likely not be as knowledgeable as an English major nor a CompSci major within the respective domain.

This divide becomes much more visible when you see a FE/BE architect a solution versus a full time FE or BE. When fixing bugs and implementing straight-forward features a FE/BE has a handy skill set. But when you move past that point, deep experience within an area starts to show it's value.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#127

Post by markus_zhang »

darkwater wrote: post #33
ken wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m amazed to hear this from programmers. You can learn this for free, anywhere, at any time. I’m no longer in software and when I want to upgrade my skills, I’m doing it on my own time and my own dime. Often doubly so if I have to take time off work (hourly) for training.

Well, not doing it on your own time is the exact point of the article linked. I mean, if you want to pivot into a completely different career in a completely different company you should do it on your own, sure, but GP wants to change position within the same company, and wants to move in an understaffed department. Why should they do it on their time and dime?

Well maybe talk to the backend lead at the same time. His own team lead the company and the company might not even realize it. From the pov of his own team lead, it might be a purely damaging move (has to find alternative, has to explain to upper management, etc.).

TBH I wouldn't expect any manager (especially it's just a lead, not even a mgr) to sacrifice for my own benefit. I thank them and provide material reward if they do, but I'm 100% with them (and study on my own, then leave the company) if they don't. It has to be mutually beneficial, or at least looks like. So my feeling is that both OP and his team leader are not good at communication.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#128

Post by castlecrasher2 »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #58
rafaelvasco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Another big red flag is micro managing. Managers that want to control even the amount of coffee you drink or how many times you go to the bathroom, if you go out too much etc. Super annoying;

That happens?

Maybe they don't make quotas but if they comment on how many coffee breaks or bathroom trips you make, they obviously care about it.

Re: Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it

#130

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

wedowhatwedo wrote: post #103
runninganyways wrote: post #23

This is one of the reasons I quit programming. I could be spending time improving as a developer but instead they've got me doing some totally inconsequential "bug" fix (spend the next two hours updating this translation for the third time). I just got sick of someone rationalizing me doing non work by saying it's better for the business as though I have no broader perspective of what might be better for the business…

You do not understand what it is to be a programmer. Programmers fix bugs. It might be boring but it's required. Programmers document. It also might be boring but it's required. Programmers write unit tests. We've hired people that don't want to do the non-fun stuff. They don't last long, they generally come in, cause problems for the team and then leave. The people that are willing to do what's needed even if it isn…

I think you mean accountant.
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