[OJFord]

True, but not the support of colleagues and work that puts it into practice.

Reading about Foobars at Scale isn't the same as working on them at Netflix or wherever. (Even if you try to put what you read into practice and it's somehow free/cheap to deploy at massive scale and load test it, it's still not the same.)

[coastflow]

This is reasonable, though on the flipside, the commenter could also become stuck in a role at a large corporation where either the work is repetitive, or the skills are non-transferable to other companies (i.e. the work is highly specific to internal tools not used elsewhere), with no on-the-job time to improve one’s skills.

You’re right that conditions could be far better for skill improvement, though having paid free time is also a great environment (e.g. for potentially earning a graduate degree online from a reputable institution).

[OJFord]

I agree and wouldn't turn such a position down :') - I just wanted to point it that it's not a completely rosy skill-building scenario. Depends also on what you want to be learning, and how you learn I suppose. (E.g. I think I learn best from textbooks, at least as a first step, so I might fare better than someone who learns better with instruction, or less theoretical more hands-on stuff.)