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.