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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

#341

Post by hnick »

uxp100 wrote: post #239
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.

We didn't use JIRA (very much a NIH-company with our own job tracker) but we always had a job number to log training/learning hours against.

IIRC, management actually questioned people who didn't log much time on it. There were a lot of problems at this place but I liked that.

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

#342

Post by Ididntdothis »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #337
Ididntdothis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“40 hours is what they are set up for and it is hard for them to figure out how to be flexible, even if they want to.” I had the same experience. asked for 32 hours week with corresponding pay cut. The HR people barely could comprehend the idea and certainly didn’t have a process for dealing with such a request.

I also tried to get a 32-hour week, interviewed with multiple companies, and at the end got a deal for mere 50% of my usual (40-hour) salary. And the company still felt they were doing me a big favor. Within my probationary period I decided that 50% of money for 80% of time is too much of a discount; that I could simply work full-time for a year or two and then take a break for a year or two instead. But I never actu…

I don’t think they would even lose much productivity. When I count the number of useless meetings I have to attend I could probably produce the same results with a 3 day week.

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

#343

Post by hnick »

habnds wrote: post #20
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…

It's because when annual reviews happen they aren't talking about the books they read they're talking about a project that they contributed to. In my experience formalizing "learning" in the work place doesn't work because it requires the performance of learning for management types rather than real learning which involves working through real new problems over an extended period of time. The real way to get employee…

I agree, I personally have similar problems with formalised learning. Nothing sticks until I use the knowledge practically, and toy projects don't seem to count. Solving a real issue is the perfect time to learn (especially if someone else is around who can mentor or verify the result).

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

#344

Post by hnick »

downerending wrote: post #192
rectang wrote: post #76

I'm currently negotiating with two potential employers, one of them one of the bigs. It would be great if they would pay me to learn at work, but I don't feel like I'm in a position to ask for that — that's an industry=wide problem. So I'm trying to hack the system to get fewer hours: 30-32 per week. That gives me enough time to self-study, handle some of my own training and overdeliver, yet still have a life. I have…

Voice of experience: Companies are incapable of thinking this way. Instead, take the 40 and simply siphon off 8-10 for your personal education. As long as you're not actually working for a different company during this time, it's all good. If company doesn't like it, move on.

My experience has been that KPIs, metrics, and reviews don't matter a whole lot. Do what you want. Get the job done, and done well. Management knows who is worth keeping and the numbers will somehow magically show that.

And if that doesn't work out then move on.

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

#345

Post by Viliam1234 »

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.

I worked on a small project where it was just two people: one back-end developer, and one front-end developer. The project was not important enough to hire more people, but important enough that the manager complained about the "bus factor" and asked us to plan our vacations responsibly (i.e. not more than one week at a time).

Because both of us were interested in the other part of the work, we offered a solution that we could spend some time teaching each other. At the end, both of us would know both parts of the work, and be able to substitute for each other during the vacation.

"No, that would be a waste of time."

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

#346

Post by randomidiot666 »

all2 wrote: post #265
randomidiot666 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ This is the way. Learn how to sell it or hide it from those HR parasites.

Calling an entire field of personnel "parasites" is an ad hominem attack. Even if you were to justify your statement, it would be an ad hominem attack.

No shit. Cheers for pointing that out for us.

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

#347

Post by yters »

Braggadocious wrote: post #336
yters wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The precise narrative you just articulated is that of the enlightenment in the 18th century, which is a period much latter than the invention of the printing press and Protestantism. A good book for you to check out is Rodney Stark's "For the Glory of God", written by a secular historian debunking much of the above narrative. The fact that many educated today take your narrative for unarguable fact also illustrates t…

The brutality of the dark ages has been debunked. The timeline I just gave you about illiteracy, the printing press, the enlightenment, and our 400 year old education system remains in tact. Neil postman's a good source for the history of education (see "The Disappearance of Childhood") or you can simply wikipedia it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography) There's some graphs that show how the enlig…

Hmm, I've received different information than yourself. There were more printed books, but that doesn't mean there was significantly less learning and literacy that came before, although a different proportion of the population was literate. And lack of general literacy does not necessarily entail lack of learning or understanding. For example, much of the iconography comes from that era, and the lay person was taught through imagery and liturgy, not necessarily to their detriment. As far as I know, the university system we know today came into being mostly within the context of Catholic Church's clericalism and much of the great philosophical synthesis came about during that time, especially with Thomas Aquinas.

At any rate, we are obviously referring to different things by the term 'enlightenment', definitely different historical epochs.

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

#348

Post by wayoutthere »

r00fus wrote: post #287
protonimitate wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we handle this is by padding our sprints enough so that there's always "extra time" at the end. E.g: If we as engs think we can do 12 tickets in a one-week sprint, we commit to 8. This leaves room to pick up any production issue related work, address tech debt, and have some breathing room so we're not rushing through jira tickets. It's also workplace specific, but imo product people shouldn't be engaging in…

How does this fly in an organization where your promotion is based on sprints and not sustainable coding/quality?

It doesn't; find a better job.

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

#349

Post by gherkinnn »

r00fus wrote: post #287
protonimitate wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way we handle this is by padding our sprints enough so that there's always "extra time" at the end. E.g: If we as engs think we can do 12 tickets in a one-week sprint, we commit to 8. This leaves room to pick up any production issue related work, address tech debt, and have some breathing room so we're not rushing through jira tickets. It's also workplace specific, but imo product people shouldn't be engaging in…

How does this fly in an organization where your promotion is based on sprints and not sustainable coding/quality?

The beauty with imaginary numbers (sometimes known as story points), is that that they are just that — imaginary. And as the dev, you know how to massage them to your liking.

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

#350

Post by nashashmi »

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…

For me and my people, learning never works when it is a task independent of actual work, meaning I only learn something new when I see a place I can use it.

Learning must be optional, never required. And must have incentive: I learn programming because it makes my work faster. But if I can't use my program, I feel like I wasted my time.

Learning should tell me that I am increasing my value.

I can never learn new stuff just because I am supposed to. Nor will anyone suffer a book if there is no IMMEDIATE benefit.

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