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

sloanreview.mit.edu

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

#231

Post by swiley »

protonimitate wrote: post #227
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've started using Friday as a "personal development" day at work. I do not write any code on Friday (unless it's a severe production level issue). Instead, I spend the mornings reviewing PRs that I wasn't included on (to keep up with whats happening, but also to learn more about how other people write and review code) and the afternoons are spent reading/researching/online classes. This has really helped me avoid bu…

This is a brilliant idea! Hopefully it becomes popular.

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

#232

Post by hinkley »

ryanmercer wrote: post #189
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.

At my employer: -- "Get your brokers license" ok provide me with a course "well, we've got a limited number of people that can do it at a time" ok so make the material available to me for learning at home and I'll do it on my own time "We appreciate your feedback. You could purchase a course on your own, with your own money, and study on your own at home" -- This is an actual event, with the person parroting the 'we…

Follow the money.

Lots of companies blow smoke about a lot of shit, especially after a merger. What they actually value is what they're willing to invest in. If an initiative has no funding, it's not an initiative.

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

#233

Post by senko »

mgr86 wrote: post #124
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?

Folks over at CooperPress maintain several dev weekly newsletters with pretty good overview of week's news: https://cooperpress.com/publications/

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

#234

Post by hkmurakami »

philjr wrote: post #102
sasper wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineering manager, this is what I expect my top performers to do and encourage my junior folks to do the same. It benefits the IC, the delivery team, and the company at large. You can't heads-down slam out code for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Be responsible with your time and use it to push forward the vision & mission of the company by taking your professional development into your own hands.

110% agreed I've always felt a level of entitlement around that. You (the business) want me to learn and get better. You get more value over time that way.

I think we're lucky that many companies have this attitude.

I've experienced the polar opposite in a Japanese bigco where we were given extensive material to learn (generally about the industry, or certifications), and it was very clearly understood that we were to learn the material off company time. As an American naturally I had an allergic reaction to this culture.

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

#235

Post by hinkley »

tarellel wrote: post #10

My employer encourages using around 20% of our time learning. Lower level developers can manage this pretty easily. But most of the level 3’s are kind of expected to just know stuff, plus the heavy work load. We still manage about 10% of our time to learn. But if we want to take Udemy classes, paid tutorials, or something else they’ll gladly reimburse us for the costs. They prefer their developers to “be on point”.

My boss 'encourages' us too, but then they pack the schedule with other stuff. I think I get maybe 4% (friday afternoon, a couple weeks a month).

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

#237

Post by abjKT26nO8 »

I write C++ at work. And that means I wait a lot for the compilation to end. Sometimes, there is also a big file to download from the other end of the world over FTP. Recently I've started spending this time on reading books. That's how I went through "The Little Schemer" and "The Season Schemer" so far. Now I'm going through "Real World Haskell".

I used to have second thoughts about it, but after some time I just thought fuck it, other people spend this time scrolling Facebook on their phones or whatever, there is no reason to feel guilty about it. Since I started doing it, nobody made a problem of it.

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

#238

Post by jpincheira »

jamil7 wrote: post #34
jpincheira wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad. Went I went from JS front end to iOS, I was put in a learning period on my own + internship in the iOS team and that worked great. It’s how companies like Spotify also did it. They paid companies like the Big Nerd Ranch to travel to Stockholm and give workshops to future iOS devs. They benefited and I also did, as it helped me evolve into a full-stack (web, mobile & server) developer. This was essential for me t…

How did it work out for you? I'm also trying to do the same.

It worked out great, but you have to want to do this. You have to set out time for it. No wonder why people from Lambda School get well-paying jobs: it's because you have to be motivated to reach the goal.

Educational materials/courses are out there, it's all about you, wanting to smash it on the wall and work hard for the goal.

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

#239

Post by uxp100 »

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 used to do this, and then we "switched to be more agile." (This just meant using JIRA and tracking sprint efficiency wrong).

Companies do think "It’s your responsibility to be on top of whatever’s going on in your field" and they might even claim that learning and development on the job is important, but when it comes time to log JIRA hours, they tend to show how much they really believe in this.

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

#240

Post by paracyst »

protonimitate wrote: post #227
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've started using Friday as a "personal development" day at work. I do not write any code on Friday (unless it's a severe production level issue). Instead, I spend the mornings reviewing PRs that I wasn't included on (to keep up with whats happening, but also to learn more about how other people write and review code) and the afternoons are spent reading/researching/online classes. This has really helped me avoid bu…

This sounds like a good idea that I would really like to try, for my own sanity if for nothing else. For me, the issue—imagined or not—would arise in the Friday morning daily stand-up. I’m not sure it would go over well if I said that I intend to spend part of the day doing PRs (this is fine and expected) and the other part learning/researching (likely not).

Oh the joys of the JIRA sweatshop. We have JIRA pulled up on the big screen TV and the product guys cycle through the status of each dev team members’ items during each daily standup. This is my first development job, surely it’s not like this everywhere?

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