Excellent point. If you find yourself at a job where they discourage programmers from reading tech blogs once in a while then RUN. FOR. YOUR. FKING. LIFE.

Excelent advice. I have a mental list of companies that block the internet from their employees so they don't do that.

I think that is just stupid. If you hire people you have to at least trust them to do their work otherwise fire them and unlock the freaking internet.

What if someone likes blogs to become entrepreneur more?

It's self development, and very few folks have 8 hours of continuous concentration in them.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the average person can concentrate on one thing for a maximum of 30 minutes. After that, attention wavers and efficiency declines.

No idea where I read that, though. It might be rumor only.

That can't be right. Concentration is not some magic ability only STEM professionals have.

That seems low. I can concentrate for hours is the topic is compelling enough, and I'm not that atypical. But not 8.

I came to the same realization recently. I have a lot of flexibility at work to work on personal projects that relate to my job. Unfortunately work doesn't provide some of the infrastructure I need/want. So now I have a decent lab at home and a VPN connection in. Work gives me the time, I give the resources. Good balance.

I work for a Fortune 500 company as a programmer and I've spent probably 70-80% of my time at work over the last four years reading random tech news.

Pretty bold statement for someone who has their full name + location + place of work in twitter handle in their profile ;-)

I don't think they are really outside the norm for corporate life. If people were productive at work, we'd need less web proxies to handle the load.