Software biz is done, stick a fork in it - Re: Computer Science - Re: teaching programming to kids

It's one thing for a company to pay you to stop doing productive work for a long period of time to retrain you in a new specialty. It's an entirely differet thing to receive support to learn new technologies. The statement was made: In article <CAALmimmn7ZO96S=LfAaSYrknGq2Syk8mBLW8C2xS99COwtAp=g at mail.gmail.com>, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> writes: Every place I have worked, there is always time to learn something new and I have always received support for it. If by "time to learn anything" you mean that the company should effectively put you on paid 6 month sabbatical, then yeah, *no* company is going to do that. I don't know of *any* company that ever did that. 6 months is half a release cycle for most software projects. For an agile shop it could be anywhere from 2 to 180 software releases. (Yes, there are shops that release daily to the web.) Learning new technologies, practices, techniques, etc., is an ongoing part of software engineering because the field moves too quickly. If someone sits down at a job for 10 years and doesn't learn anything during that time, then sorry but it's their own damn fault they don't know anything that is needed in the current marketplace. Usually all it takes is reading some books to stay up to date and that can easily be done for like 10 minutes a day during lunch. It really isn't that hard to keep learning new stuff, but it's your responsibility to manage your career and make it relevant to marketplace demands, not your employer's responsibility. For people that aren't good autodidacts, there are things like code camps, user group meetings and so-on. The only person looking out for your career is you. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>