Indeed, they should study at work.

Heresy!

Home time is personal time. Here I deal with family, chores and self-connection. If you want me to learn stuff and be better and my job you will have to give me time, company time, for that. We are not machine.

In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006189881...

> We are not machine.

Counterpoint: if you want to stay relevant in technology and be above regular level, you gotta have the passion for it and that implies doing your homework.

Look at it from another perspective. If you want to play a guitar in a band for money, you don’t require the band to give you “time to learn”. You learn on your own time.

If you don’t want to learn, you become irrelevant and get replaced.

You think doctors/nurses do homework? They go to paid courses/conferences all the time to stay up-to-date on the latest medical techniques. Hospitals have entire teaching departments for that kinda stuff. Why should it be different for engineers?

My late father was a physician and he absolutely stayed up late doing homework. He'd study for hours before an usual case.

I remember as a kid helping him swap out the latest updates to these massive binders of the latest and greatest info in medicine, which were expensive subscriptions he paid for. They'd send sections of text and instructions on what pages to remove and replace with the update so you'd always have the most current information.

Now we have web-based solutions that do the same thing, and they're often not free, either.

Pretty difficult to do guerilla surgeries. Those are regulated jobs and you need to study/finish education to have a license.

Also, let us distinguish “engineers” and say, I’m not picking a fight, “java spring boot developer with 2 years of experience”.

I work closely with a doctor who does indeed do a lot of homework.

I thought we're already over with the "every minute of your life is monetizable" mindset ?

I am. But I also learn stuff I can apply on my job. I find it nothing out of order. I’m doing this job for 22 years.

I think there are are 2 situations here:

- I like [thing I do at my job] and I don't mind doing it outside of working hours. An incidental side benefit of this is I learn skills that enhance my career.

- A company I work for or am interviewing at is unhappy I don't like doing [thing I do there] outside of working hours, and either will fire me or not hire me unless I change.

The difference is "do companies use this as a metric", and I think it's pretty clear they shouldn't. If they do, they run into all kinds of other biases, mostly that you select out people who have family obligations (you're a parent, your partner also works, you have a sick family member, etc.).

Further, it creates a race to the bottom dynamic where a super important part of your life--your career--asks more and more from the other parts of your life. You shouldn't be able to get ahead of other people in your career by telling your kid to figure out algebra on their own, and if you can, people who advance in their careers (who will have more power in the workplace and thus society) will be the kinds of people who either had the resources to otherwise meet their other obligations (hire a tutor, nurse, etc.), or the kinds of people who didn't care about shirking them.

That's why maintaining this line is so important. It avoids an incentive structure that would empower the already privileged or the irresponsible.

then i would consider it working hours, so the premise here seems to reduce to how much overtime i'm willing to spend.

Then you also don't have any problem if better candidate appears and challenges your position, right?

How is that related? That can already happen if a company decide to have this approach. See also companies that have PIP targets.

Presumably companies have a good idea of employees' skill sets when they hire them, or they terminate the contract by the end of the probation period, so they can also plan for this necessary learning.

> How is that related?

It’s related in the sense that if your set of skills becomes irrelevant, you get replaced. Want to keep your job then learn the things reqiured to keep your job.

Say you’re a truck driver. You have your license to drive a truck and every year you need to do your vision test to keep your license. If one day you have to buy glasses, well, tough luck - they come out of your pocket. Otherwise you can’t drive and your employer cannot put you on a truck.

Here, your skills are your glasses.

Where the hell are you working where someone can come in and challenge you for your job?

I’ve been working for over 30 years and this has literally never happened.

Where do you work exactly and what do you do for a living?

Because new hires vying for more influence in the office has been a staple of the modern workplace and organizational politics for a long time now.

Of course there are always people who are trying to one-up or push ahead up the career-advancement ladder... but I've never ever seen a better candidate appear and challenge someone's position directly. If someone started a new job and starting calling someone out for not doing their job as well, they'd be fired pretty quickly. That's just outright hostile behavior.

Granted I've always worked outside of the valley, I guess FAANG positions can be more hostile.

Indeed, I was being sarcastic.

thanks unions for the millions of unemployed people too

What's wrong with those two? I'm genuinely interested, software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about and you're upset about not being able to put extra 5 hours of time a week to improve your skills related to something that's your career?

And we wonder why quality of everything is awful and why people are unreliable and entitled.

> software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Then why do companies keep on paying these salaries? Besides, that doesn’t really apply outside of unicorns and SV. I’ve been doing this for a while and have never had catered lunches or dry cleaning etc provided by my employers.

Also, what are you comparing to? Professional athletes or traders are overpaid compared to SE. if you compare to burger flippers then it doesn’t make sense either.

Accountants are paid quite well for instance. Their employers pay for their time and expenses when they go to a seminar and keep their skills up to date. Why should it be any different for SE?

It's easy: if you want your employee to do something, all you have to do is pay them for their time.

Not willing to? Then I guess it's not important to you.

It takes two to tango. If you want to get paid, become someone who's useful.

This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

You’re missing the point. It’s that companies shouldn’t expect employees to improve themselves for the companies benefit on their own time. Not that employees shouldn’t improve themselves for their own benefit on their own time if they want to. Ergo if companies expect employees to work specifically to get better at their jobs they should provide resources and training in work time as its part of the job itself.

well after education usually salary can be upgraded, so it’s a benefit for employee. if employee does not educate himself, he may stay the same level with no salary bumps. sucks for both parties I guess?

> This attitude where employees sit like bags of potatoes waiting for knowledge to permeate their brains via osmosis is awful.

I think you misunderstand. A person who is getting paid is already useful. That is why they were hired. By studying you want them to be more useful and that is an extra demand over their contract.

But if things changes and you no longer need their services then should you just fire them? Telling the employee that they can keep their job if they update their skills is a nice thing to do, it is much better than just firing them without giving them a chance.

If you need more services than you initially contracted for, then you give them time to learn. Why is this so hard to understand?

If you no longer need the services that you initially contracted for, then you fire them since there is nothing left for them to do. How is that so hard to understand? There is nothing saying that you need to keep people around when you no longer have any need of their services, not even any moral reasons.

You're paying your employee because they are suitable at this moment. Expecting someone to study in their free time is nonsense. If you want that you either need to pay for it or allow study time during the work time.

I want to provide service to clients that we're paid for. I want staff to actually know what they claim they know. I want to deliver so we can all get paid and go home and do whatever else interests us.

That's what I want.

But I'm the proxy between staff, clients and government. So when I stay up late every night in order to reconcile all the warring parties, the comment I get is "pay more if you want to get more".

Or I could not deal with entitled underskilled staff, right? That's also a viable option? Why beg people to sharpen their craft if they don't want to? I might be old fashioned and I might take pride in what I do because I want to do it to the best of my abilities. I might have wrongly assumed that the rest of fellow programmers are similar to that, but it seems not.

I doubt highly skilled modern workers would want to work for someone with the attitude expressed. Those people have options and working for a company that has a one-sided old-fashioned attitude that refuses to train them for the companies chosen development stack would be foolish.

Are you involved in the hiring process? It sounds like you're hiring juniors when you want intermediate/seniors

Juniors are cheaper but you have to factor in training costs if you want them trained lol

This reads as "My work-life balance sucks, but rather than fight for improvement, I'm going to complain about how others have it so good."

You sound like you live to work rather than work to live. It's a sad way to live your life. Years from now, you'll be on your death bed wishing you allowed yourself to relax a bit and have more fun.

It sounds like you're not getting paid enough for the late hours you work.

You can probably find a job where you’re not staying up late every night. What are you doing that’s worth sacrificing your health for?

exactly, you are paying for current skills. If employer is fine with current skills, and employee wants a better salary, which would require new skills, who should make effort?

Overpaid? https://www.harveynash.co.uk/jobs

>software engineers are overpaid as is with benefits that nearly every other industry can only dream about

Maybe in some parts of America. Even highly paid developers generally do work that not many people outside of the industry can't do (though I encourage everyone I know to try programming).

In my mind software developers and other tech workers are one of the driving forces of human development, though not quite so much as those working on the forefront of technology (ie proper engineering/research and development). The industry I hold in the highest regard is the medical industry; doctors are just amazing and I appreciate what they do and their importance (fair warning that this is a non-American/public healthcare perspective).

The salaries are only high in the US though, but the recession is global.