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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

#431

Post by heymijo »

tephra wrote: post #429
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…

Someone who is great with how to develop good processes at work recently said something that made me think a lot about this as well. Why have WIP limits? Well one of the reasons is to be able to create downtime where you can go watch a video or read a newsletter. So I've been trying to spread this message in my team when someone has asked "The WIP is blocking and I can't really help anywhere at the moment" by answeri…

Since you weren't explicit about it, having a PM or manager who a) understands this concept, and b) can communicate it to the team is important and what you did here!

I mentioned in a comment above that with the Theory of Constraints in mind, sometimes the right thing to do for an individual contributor at a point in time is, nothing.

You went ahead and explicitly turned that into time to learn for them. Bravo.

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

#432

Post by u02sgb »

travisjungroth wrote: post #394
BigJono wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were the case then standups would be totally useless unless the org was so cooked that nothing gets done unless someone is made accountable in front of the entire team. If I run into a blocker why would I wait until the next morning to try and get it resolved?

I had a new manager start his first weekly meeting by asking if there was anything on fire. People filled the ensuing silence with recent annoyances. Of course nothing is on fire right now (and I get it’s a metaphor). If something is “on fire”, I’m not waiting till the Monday meeting to bring it up. I’m not even going to attend the mandatory meeting while I put it out, if that’s when it happens. That’s the definition…

He was perhaps trying to get a feel for the team?

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

#433

Post by znq »

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…

As a remote company we're dedicating a 1-hour video call every week to learning. On top of that we've 2-3 voluntary video calls that we call MJ Talks (similar to TED Talks) talking about all kinds of topics ranging from technical and software related topics, but also health, fitness, personal finance, etc.

On top of that we dedicate one week every year to something that we call MJ University. We rent a hotel in a location and fly everyone in to that location. If you're interested on all the details, we've written them up here: https://mobilejazz.com/blog/mj-university-staying-ahead-of-t...

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

#434

Post by Xelbair »

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…

Same here - i keep all the deadlines and use the spare time to better myself. Or even implement new ideas in production code.

Also latter half of Friday is officially, by company policy, set up for such tasks - learning, and finishing internal tasks that always get pushed back.

The more i learn, the better value/cost ratio for my employer.

I would immiedetly change jobs if they didn't challenge me, or at least provide an environment where i can learn.

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

#435

Post by Kneecaps07 »

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…

Make sure they have time to do it. If they feel like they have a lot on their plate or a higher-up breathing down their neck, then new learning will not be a priority.

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

#436

Post by sailfast »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #402
sailfast wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you haven’t just always been micromanaged and this is another way for that to happen? All things can be abused for bad purposes. I haven’t heard too many examples of “oh man we used to be free and ship great features on time but now that we have a backlog and talk to each other every day it’s a hellscape death march”

I've done my stint in "large enterprise". It's a whole new world there where management believe that if projects aren't on track, then the solution is more meetings, more agile training and in-house "coaches", and even more micromanaging. I'm no longer in that world, and I'll never go back.

As someone that has also worked for large enterprises as well as government, I’d say that using agile can be another way to micromanage, but it can also be used in a way that improves product quality and impact while helping developers.

Generally, I’ve found that the level to which agile approaches make life better depends on how much management is actually willing to let the team do its work and stay empowered. This can happen with trust and top cover in large enterprises, but it takes constant work at the PO / product manager level otherwise regression to the mean takes over. Also hard to avoid the inertia of making successful teams bigger rather than letting them continue small.

I wonder how the Amazons / Facebooks of the world avoid the trap, but then their enabling teams are likely a big percentage of their workforce because they understand how important software is to their business.

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

#437

Post by arnold_palmur »

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.

Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

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

#438

Post by knightofmars »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #329
knightofmars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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. I don't think this analogy works, because CompSci and English are pretty unrelated to each other as fields, whereas frontend and backend by definition work together to create…

I did say it was an attempt. :)

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

#439

Post by knightofmars »

woutr_be wrote: post #386
knightofmars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I need to disagree with you here, I consider myself full stack, but if you were to ask, FE would be my deep experience. And for me this is perfect, I have no problems with any FE work, and the same goes for BE work. Sure, we have BE engineers with very deep experience, but I've never found myself in a position where I couldn't keep up with them. I acknowledge a lack some knowledge in BE, especially when it comes to d…

Knowledge about how the other side of the fence works doesn't suddenly make a full-stack engineer. I'm sure if we actually came up with a ratio (80/20 vs 50/50) of work it would provide a clearer understanding about when a person is FE, BE, or FE/BE. Alternatively, we could look at the type of work the individual is doing. For example, in your role are you going to be an architect doing solutions for the back-end?

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

#440

Post by knightofmars »

syndacks wrote: post #399
knightofmars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I double majored in English and Economics and consider myself an amazing full stack developer.

"But in practice, and accounting for exceptions..."
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