Not everybody can spare a few hours a day of their own time to get better at their craft, nor should they be expected to. Kids and family, responsibilities, hobbies…there are many reasons why one would not have time or would not want to spend time on the craft. Mental health and having a life are two of the strongest reasons: “we work to live, we don’t live to work”.

I’m one of those people that, if they wouldn’t need to work, they’d still create software for fun. In a way, it’s a hobby, and learning and improving makes me happy. Paradoxically, working as a developer is often not as satisfying, and there are many moments when I despise the industry.

With software being a hobby, I had to learn to separate it from work, and make sure that the work didn’t swallow my personal time. One thing is enjoying the journey of improvement and following my curiosity, and another thing is to give away my labour for free or spend extra hours on things that, when I’m on my deathbed, won’t matter at all. There’s a life to be lived.

In these times, the company that doesn’t adapt, that can’t be nimble, has fewer chances of survival. Many companies proclaim they want workers to learn, and advertise they encourage a learning environment. Workers that keep improving will be more productive, which will have an impact on the bottom line. Despite the fact that organisations want their employees to keep learning, initiatives are superficial: a workshop on how to learn more effectively, learning goals tracked against your progression, managers encouraging you to learn something related to work, etc. There’s an issue with all the superficial initiatives, companies want you to learn on your own time, without affecting “the work”, but benefiting from your new skills and knowledge anyway, isn’t that exploitative? If learning and improving is so important—and it is—, then it should be considered work.

Even though I believe the industry has a real problem with developers—and other roles—who don’t know the fundamentals or don’t want to keep improving, I can’t blame anybody wanting to spend their personal time however they want. I do think that if companies want to reap the benefits of learning, adaptability and higher productivity, it’s more effective to invest in creating spaces for learning and continuous improvement within the workday.

Looking back, I spent almost three years at Findmypast, and the default for developers was to have one hour a day dedicated to learning. On top of that hour, we had front end and back end sessions occasionally, where devs came together and shared what they were learning, or talked about issues across teams. From time to time, there were also presentations showing improvements to the system or the addition of a company-wide library, tool, or new initiative by the platform team or other people. Add to that the fact that developers did pair programming by default, which is also a form of practice, learning and sharing knowledge. Without those years in a learning environment, I probably would’ve been at a different level and would have not learnt as much in the same timeframe. You could feel that people were actually improving and that there were devs better than you in different areas that you could collaborate with and learn from.

Interesting links

• When Wouldn’t You Want a Fast MVP? (Debbie Levitt). MVP is one of those things that nobody understands (it’s not the minimum rubbish you can churn ASAP to show the user). This is an insightful article that covers when not to do what is typically understood as an MVP.

• Lectures on Lean-Agile Product Management (Jez Humble). Fantastic resource for learning about Lean/Agile PM. “It covers the complete lifecycle of product management, from discovering your customers and users to release planning, economic frameworks, and managing teams”.

• An Extended Subtweet on Power (Cat Swetel). “A combination of liberalism and power-over looks like teaching everyone to reach their fullest possible potential within the game…rather than changing the rules of the game to benefit all people.”