Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by garrettdc » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

Braggadocious wrote: post #82

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.

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…

Not to undercut your point too much, but no one comes out of university learning about the latest and greatest tech unless they went to a graduate program where they did research in tech. They may have played around with it more on their own time, but most universities aren't teaching cutting edge stuff.

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

#142

Post by rooam-dev » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

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.

If you are interested doing other things at home, then why transition at all? I mean, how much time you will need to become good at "server side" and the company benefit from this?

Imho it's about 50/50, company should not expect employees getting new skills only on their own time and the employee should not expect learning only from 9 to 5.

Technically searching through the internet for examples, is already learning.

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

#143

Post by hindsightbias » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

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…

While I’m fortunate to work for an org that pushes training, my generation was not given much feature work at the start. We were expected to take over support and learn the systems and graduate into development/architecture some day. That’s how monoliths swung.

Today, that’s clearly out of fashion. Nobody seems to maintain anything and the next group wants to reimplement much of the same function in the new flavor of the month. Anecdotally, it does not all look more stable, bug free and performant but it does seem more fun.

/okboomer

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

#144

Post by shantly » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #110

GhostVII wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my school I was required to take many courses on broader topics. Personally I didn't like it, I took as many CS courses as I was allowed.

Yes, due to the vocational focus, the broader topics are often watered down introductions.

They were total jokes at my (admittedly) second-rate-at-best state school. Most of the gen-ed courses failed to go beyond material we'd covered back in 10th grade or so. The English courses were probably the nearest to being remotely "serious" since they at least expected writing and critical reading on a slightly-above-high-school level, usually pretty early in the course.

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

#145

Post by runninganyways » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

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're confusing me with somebody else.

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

#146

Post by kickopotomus » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

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?

It happened to my wife with a past manager (customer support). It was that manager's first supervisor role and they were trying to be "metric focused" which led to extreme micro management. That management style led to most of the team quitting, including my wife. We heard that the manager was demoted about a month later.

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

#147

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

That you should “always be learning” is absolutely true. It helps with neuro-plasticity and keeps you engaged. That said, as a manager I find it hard to get direct reports to accept sometimes that it is not only okay, but required, by me that they learn new things. I do what I can to encourage it, offer to buy books for people, give time to do online course work, etc. They often complain that they don’t feel like the…

Put it in expectations, quantify it, and reward it at performance reviews. In a self-review, I should be able to write that I took Andrew Ng's Coursera ML course and be rewarded for how that makes me a more valuable team member. On the employee end, I should be able to explain what I learned, how it increases my value to the team, and how I've applied or will apply it.

Too often, companies "expect" their employees to take advantage of the fact that they allow them to learn on the job, but only reward short-term performance.

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

#148

Post by naniwaduni » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

knightofmars wrote: post #126

rvense wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fron…

> This is the reality of having deep experience in a specific domain.

This seems like it should be true abstractly, but concretely I've never met anyone with deep experience in a specific domain who didn't in the process gain enough experience in other domains to have basic competence in multiple domains. Not necessarily as much as specialists in those domains, but it's practically required to achieve the depths of experience in the domain you think they specialized in.

(Which is not usually the domain they thought they were specializing in.)

This is particularly relevant where there isn't a clean separation of concerns and the involved skills are highly transferable.

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

#149

Post by turowicz » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

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…

This over anything else. I wouldn't get to be a CTO multiple times if I wasn't in this mindset.

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

#150

Post by PunchTornado » Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

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 sort of felt embarrassed when my manager told me to stop solving so many tickets and spend more time learning and improving my skills. He was so right.