Timeline for Is it my responsibility to learn a new technology in my own time my employer wants to implement?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
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| Mar 28, 2019 at 18:57 | comment | added | computercarguy | You can't emphasize the "good company" part enough. Too many companies seem to think their employees are slaves that grovel at their feet for the privilege of working there. I've left companies like that and didn't regret it. It kind of sounds like the OPs company is one of these. There's a huge difference between making yourself better for the company and your employer changing everything on you while expecting you to keep up on your own. If you let them force you to do everything on your own, then you are teaching them you will do anything they say, becoming that slave. Run away, don't walk. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 17:14 | comment | added | xyious | There is a huge difference in learning something to get hired and learning something to do your job. So you learn java, get a job as a java dev and then your company switches to erlang. Does that mean that you should now go out and learn erlang in your own time ? no. Why ? You're an employee, you need to learn erlang to do your job. That means it's work time. This is not a grey area. You learn for work, you're doing something your employer asked you to do. It's clearly work time. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 16:43 | comment | added | Flater | @Mark I have no idea where your assertion, that the expected training won't be modern tech, is coming from. Also, not every company only looks forwards. I've had several customers hiring me and then requiring me to work with an outdated stack that I never listed any experience with; which is not something I'm going to to on my own dime unless I think it benefits my career outside of this particular company. As a .Net dev I absolutely refused (and will continue to refuse) learning Assembler or Delphi (this actually happened), let alone on my own dime. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 16:35 | comment | added | Mark | @Flater If the company is asking for training on this stack outside work hours, they aren't going to provide training on modern techs, which means it's the obligation of the employee to go home and learn whatever modern tech he needs to. There is no way around it - if you have a career in tech, you need to do homework to stay relevant. Tech I use today didn't even exist 18 years ago, and I know people from 10 years ago who are unemployable because their skill set didn't keep up. Your Career is YOUR career. Don't invest in yourself at your own peril, and don't expect anyone else to either. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:48 | comment | added | Flater | There is a bit of a caveat here if OP's employer is focusing over very niche stacks that the developer isn't interested in (careerwise), or when the company wants to train the employee in outdated technologies (but new to the employee whose employer still wants to use that outdated stack). If the employee has no interest in learning a new stack for their own career benefit, they cannot be forced to do so outside of working hours. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:45 | comment | added | BittermanAndy | Agreed. Hence why I specifically mentioned that good employers will provide training. But not all employers are good employers, and not everyone can afford to leave a bad employer at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, "what's best for my job" is the right question. Other times, "what's best for my career" is the right question. It changes per person, and over time. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:39 | comment | added | Ruther Rendommeleigh | @BittermanAndy "What will help my career in this company?" is certainly a valid question to ask yourself, but, personally, I wouldn't feel compelled to bind myself too tightly to a company that demands unpaid overtime just so I may keep my job. I might decide to learn the skills that I consider more useful / in demand instead and look for a place that respects their developers more. Free time is a rather limited resource, after all. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:30 | comment | added | BittermanAndy | @RutherRendommeleigh well, there is some merit in knowledge for knowledge's sake, but that has limits of course! One way to look at it might be: will the employer start to ask themselves whether providing training will cost more (time and money) than hiring a replacement? After all - while we all want to enjoy our jobs - we're not actually paid to have fun, or write code for the sake of it; we're paid to solve the problems our employer wants solving. Sometimes we have to do things we might not otherwise choose to do, in a way we might not otherwise have done. That's why it's called "work". ;-) | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:25 | comment | added | Ruther Rendommeleigh | There's a big difference between failing to keep up with the state of the art and not feeling compelled to jump on the bandwagon of every "monster of the week" JS framework your project lead digs up. What if what the company picked isn't career advancing, would you still recommend to learn it in your free time? | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:15 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | +1 for the "however". Studying at home helped me jump start my career in the first two or three years I was working in IT, and I quickly became indispensable at my first job and got a lot of raises in a short amount of time. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 15:15 | comment | added | ShinEmperor | For me, this is the right response. It's an odd middle ground. Yes, we should learn. Yes, an employer should provide training. But assuming worst case, you have to take responsibility and keep up to date and stay sharp on your skills because your employer WILL replace you. That's the nature of the beast. | |
| Mar 28, 2019 at 14:42 | history | edited | BittermanAndy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 32 characters in body
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| Mar 28, 2019 at 14:35 | history | answered | BittermanAndy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |