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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

#441

Post by knightofmars »

itronitron wrote: post #272
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 disagree, there is a point when having too much 'deep experience' in either BE or FE (usually BE) becomes counter-productive to performing useful work.

Then why do Google (and others) hire specifically for FE and BE roles?

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

#442

Post by knightofmars »

naniwaduni wrote: post #148
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…

> 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 e…

Basic competence is just as you stated, basic. If you are BE with basic competence in FE then I would argue you're not a BE/FE. You're a BE who has basic knowledge of how FE work is done.

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

#443

Post by sealthedeal »

I’ve been noticing my employees recently will walk away from there desk and find a nice cranny to read some type of business book to help them improve in there personal and professional career. I LOVE it. The craziest thing is we have never had any discussions about continued education, but we do keep a library of great books and resources readily available. My take, when your employees continue to learn on the job, it’s just them investing in themselves which in turn will be an investment in your company, and will ultimately make them better asset to the org. It’s a win win. I love it.

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

#444

Post by slumdev »

BigJono wrote: post #320
slumdev wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've shot down two companies in the past three days because they made it known during the recruitment that they expected more than 40 hours a week, sometimes well in excess of it. It's always couched in some doublespeak about "ownership". Trust me, if I were owner or part-owner in the enterprise, I wouldn't mind. But I'm not. People complain about entitlement attitudes among the young. They need to look at employers…

The other thing about those places is that they only attract the desperate devs. So you know when they pull out that bullshit in the interview that if you were to take a job there you'd be on a team chock full of juniors with a few "seniors" that just fill a chair for 50 hours a week and haven't learnt anything new in the last decade.

I got that impression. At the first shop, the people I met didn't seem like they would be employable anywhere else.

The hiring manager also spent some time whining about the state of the developer market and said they couldn't afford the higher end of the range they had posted on their website.

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

#445

Post by jSully24 »

vagab0nd wrote: post #385
ddek wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's a way away from ideal. You're unlucky, there are a lot of software teams out there where the developers are pretty much autonomous. That's not to say they do absolutely whatever they want, but micromanagement is usually out of the question. A couple of months ago I spent about half my working hours in a week watching everything that happened at .Net Conf. I didn't ask anyone, I just said I was taking trai…

Any idea what to look for when searching for such a job? I have asked about micromanagement in interviews before but I usually just get bullshit answers.

Brainstorming a bit on this. Curious for other ideas:

Start with asking questions about how work is assigned/doled out. Where does all of their work come from, the Agile board? Someone stopping by and asking "can you do x" or "can you help Jill with Y".

Follow that up by digging into how they then talk to others about their progress on that work. Ask if they're interrupted or allowed to progress independently? How often does someone ask them "Is that done yet?"

Ask about how often they're asked about the status of the same piece of work by different people. Dig into how they keep everyone else apprised of what they're doing.

Ask them about their relationship with their Scrum Master, Project Manager, Product Owner, Dev Manager, etc. Ask what they could change about it if they could.

That line of questions may uncover the micromanagement pattern. Even if it doesn't, it will go a long ways in helping you get a feel for how a team works.

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

#446

Post by travisjungroth »

tempestn wrote: post #419
travisjungroth wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, your new manager doesn't know that's how you operate. It seems a reasonable question to me, with the expected answer being no. But why not ask just in case? You wouldn't want to be the new manager who just launches into new business not realizing that one of your developers is too timid to interrupt you with the major breaking bug that's currently live, or whatever. Once they get to know the team and can…

Maybe I’m too sensitive to the phrase “on fire”. I can’t imagine someone at a factory starting a meeting the same way.

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

#447

Post by oswamano »

protonimitate wrote: post #250
paracyst wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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…

Man, I wish this is how my last place did it. Instead, if we were getting through 12 we'd commit to 14 and then the dev manager would wonder why stuff wasn't getting done.

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

#448

Post by oswamano »

slumdev wrote: post #191
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've shot down two companies in the past three days because they made it known during the recruitment that they expected more than 40 hours a week, sometimes well in excess of it. It's always couched in some doublespeak about "ownership". Trust me, if I were owner or part-owner in the enterprise, I wouldn't mind. But I'm not. People complain about entitlement attitudes among the young. They need to look at employers…

Eugh, annoys me that people talk about entitlement in this case then management is surprised when developers don't stay any longer than 3 years

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

#449

Post by oswamano »

doh wrote: post #63
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.

Unfortunate approach. My company not only encourage transitions, we actually "pay" for them. That means we will assign a senior developer that will have responsibility for growth of the new mentee and we purchase any educational materials the person requires. We have quite decent amount of transitions within last few years and all were successful. They do require commitment and investment from both sides. I do believ…

Man, I wish I actually had a job where I got mentored.

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

#450

Post by numbsafari »

graphenus wrote: post #413
numbsafari wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I encourage my staff to do. We have a company-wide bagel breakfast in the morning, and then no more meetings. We also skip our daily “async slack stand-up” on Fridays. My expectation for the day is that you prioritize personal development, long-term planning, or just “deck clearing” if you’ve had a long week or desire something less mentally demanding for the day. Obviously, thing happen that can interfe…

Except when the Friday deployment breaks production and one of your employees needs to fix the issue on Saturday instead of relaxing with their family.

I agree. Employers, teams, and employees need to have clear expectations and communication around availability, including how that is related to compensation, but also how it relates to the design of the systems themselves, the planning that goes into rollouts, and a culture of quality and accountability.

Also, sites "go down" for more reasons than deployments, and often, a deployment is one of the fastest or only ways to fix or work around the issue.

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