Home time is personal time. Here I deal with family, chores and self-connection. If you want me to learn stuff and be better and my job you will have to give me time, company time, for that. We are not machine.
In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.
Counterpoint: if you want to stay relevant in technology and be above regular level, you gotta have the passion for it and that implies doing your homework.
Look at it from another perspective. If you want to play a guitar in a band for money, you don’t require the band to give you “time to learn”. You learn on your own time.
If you don’t want to learn, you become irrelevant and get replaced.
You think doctors/nurses do homework? They go to paid courses/conferences all the time to stay up-to-date on the latest medical techniques. Hospitals have entire teaching departments for that kinda stuff. Why should it be different for engineers?
My late father was a physician and he absolutely stayed up late doing homework. He'd study for hours before an usual case.
I remember as a kid helping him swap out the latest updates to these massive binders of the latest and greatest info in medicine, which were expensive subscriptions he paid for. They'd send sections of text and instructions on what pages to remove and replace with the update so you'd always have the most current information.
Now we have web-based solutions that do the same thing, and they're often not free, either.
- I like [thing I do at my job] and I don't mind doing it outside of working hours. An incidental side benefit of this is I learn skills that enhance my career.
- A company I work for or am interviewing at is unhappy I don't like doing [thing I do there] outside of working hours, and either will fire me or not hire me unless I change.
The difference is "do companies use this as a metric", and I think it's pretty clear they shouldn't. If they do, they run into all kinds of other biases, mostly that you select out people who have family obligations (you're a parent, your partner also works, you have a sick family member, etc.).
Further, it creates a race to the bottom dynamic where a super important part of your life--your career--asks more and more from the other parts of your life. You shouldn't be able to get ahead of other people in your career by telling your kid to figure out algebra on their own, and if you can, people who advance in their careers (who will have more power in the workplace and thus society) will be the kinds of people who either had the resources to otherwise meet their other obligations (hire a tutor, nurse, etc.), or the kinds of people who didn't care about shirking them.
That's why maintaining this line is so important. It avoids an incentive structure that would empower the already privileged or the irresponsible.
How is that related? That can already happen if a company decide to have this approach. See also companies that have PIP targets.
Presumably companies have a good idea of employees' skill sets when they hire them, or they terminate the contract by the end of the probation period, so they can also plan for this necessary learning.
It’s related in the sense that if your set of skills becomes irrelevant, you get replaced. Want to keep your job then learn the things reqiured to keep your job.
Say you’re a truck driver. You have your license to drive a truck and every year you need to do your vision test to keep your license. If one day you have to buy glasses, well, tough luck - they come out of your pocket. Otherwise you can’t drive and your employer cannot put you on a truck.
Of course there are always people who are trying to one-up or push ahead up the career-advancement ladder... but I've never ever seen a better candidate appear and challenge someone's position directly. If someone started a new job and starting calling someone out for not doing their job as well, they'd be fired pretty quickly. That's just outright hostile behavior.
Granted I've always worked outside of the valley, I guess FAANG positions can be more hostile.
In France it is mandatory for the company to give time for training. Thanks unions.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006189881...