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As an engineering manager, this is what I expect my top performers to do and encourage my junior folks to do the same. It benefits the IC, the delivery team, an
by sasper 7y ago
As an engineering manager, this is what I expect my top performers to do and encourage my junior folks to do the same. It benefits the IC, the delivery team, and the company at large.
You can't heads-down slam out code for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Be responsible with your time and use it to push forward the vision & mission of the company by taking your professional development into your own hands.
- philjr 7y ago110% agreed I've always felt a level of entitlement around that. You (the business) want me to learn and get better. You get more value over time that way.
- hkmurakami 7y agoI think we're lucky that many companies have this attitude. I've experienced the polar opposite in a Japanese bigco where we were given extensive material to learn (generally about the industry, or certifications), and it was very clearly understood that we were to learn the material off company time. As an American naturally I had an allergic reaction to this culture.
- ddek 7y agoFriend of mine is a senior exec for the Fujitsu Europe. I met him doing the Haute Route, a two-week ski tour in the Alps. He says the amount of persuading he had to do to the global execs that being off-grid for two weeks might have it's benefits almost made it futile. I can't help but wonder if this attitude has inhibited japanese progress.
- koheripbal 7y agoTo be honest, it's impossible to survive in tech if you are not constantly keeping up to date.
- holmboy_ 7y agoContinuing education in software engineering has always been a challenge for me. While my current employer allows for 20% time to learn new things, I find that I'm just unable to. Many employers (not all) place constraints on what one can do with that time. Typically the biggest constraint is that it must relate to the business in some way. As such, it can be hard to justify why you're spending your 20% time learning how load balancers work in nitty-gritty details since it's unlikely you'll be writing one from scratch or helping the company with it. Not only that, but if you choose to learn on your own time, finding a lesson to fit in your daily routine is also tricky, especially if you're caring for a family or have other commitments. Couple that with uncertainty about what to learn next, it can become overwhelming just to get started. Very recently, I started working on a project[1] to address this exact issue. The project is to help established software engineers progress their careers, learn new concepts, and refresh their existing knowledge with daily bite-size software engineering lessons designed to fit in their daily routines. [1] https://www.dailyswe.com https://www.dailyswe.com
- jimbokun 7y ago"As such, it can be hard to justify why you're spending your 20% time learning how load balancers work in nitty-gritty details since it's unlikely you'll be writing one from scratch or helping the company with it." Unless you use load balancers in non-trivial ways at scale and really need to understand the ins and outs of how they work to utilize them effectively.
- commandlinefan 7y agoWell, you know that, and I know that, and OP knows that. But it’s likely that OP’s boss not only doesn’t know that, but is mentally incapable of comprehending it. And even if he does (my boss is actually a sharp developer who does understand what’s going on), remember that we all have 8 bosses at any time.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoYou can't generally predict how that knowledge will be useful, load balances don't exist in a vacuum, he might learn about packet structure, fail over and all kind of other stuff directly applicable
- tobych 7y agoWhat's IC?
- sasper 7y agoIndividual contributor. It's a fancy management word for SWE or anyone else in a non-management role.
- ACow_Adonis 7y agoUg...ok, I'll be that guy: what's an SWE?
- coffeefirst 7y agoSoftware Engineer. I have no idea who started using these acronyms but they definitely forgot they're new and not universal.
- SenHeng 7y agoI guess the W is to differentiate it from Systems Engineer? We use SE here in Japan for both software engineers and system engineers. How are they difference? The latter is older and seems to have originated from people doing architectural, consulting type of work. Fun fact, consulting/contracting businesses here and also known as SES, System Engineer (as a) Service.
- pjscott 7y agoI haven't heard SE outside of a Japanese context, so this may just be a case of different countries randomly picking different acronyms.
- SenHeng 7y agoA simpler, more universal word might be grunt.