[allo37]

I can sympathize, but keep in mind most professions expect you to commit to a certain number of hours of continuing education. Often you can convince your employer to let you do this during work hours (or even pay for it!), but not always.

[ziddoap]

Continuing education credits is pretty far from "bring in a hobby project for code review for this interview".

Is there even a CE credit available for coding up a hobby project (and who from)? Completion of a course, attending a lecture, attending a lunch & learn, etc. are the CE credits I am familiar with (spanning a few different professional bodies).

[allo37]

Sometimes you can declare "self-learning", depending on the order.

But anyways, that's not really my point: My point is just that in professions it's not uncommon to be expected to perform some kind of extracurricular activities related to your job. Often software "engineers" aren't members of a professional order, but I'd argue that the idea still applies. Tbh learning by working on a hobby project is way more appealing to me than watching some PowerPoint presentation...

[ziddoap]

>My point is just that in professions it's not uncommon to be expected to perform some kind of extracurricular activities related to your job.

If my employer _expects_ me to do something related to my job, I get paid for it. I really wish we'd all stop normalizing working for free.

[physPop]

I don’t understand your view. How do you improve your skill in the craft ? Or learn new technologies ? You wait for your employer to tell you to learn something ? That’s a sure fire way to always be behind the curve.

[ziddoap]

I don't understand how you reached that conclusion.

If it is a personal interest or hobby, I do it on my own time. If it is something required for work, I do it on company time. If there is a lot of overlap, I do it whenever.

Other than that, I learn and improve like any other person does.

Continuing education credits, which is what started this subthread, is something required by the professional body that my company wants me to be a member of. So they happen on company time and dime.

[allo37]

Employers don't require their employees to be members of a professional order because they think professional orders are nifty- It's because certain jobs are only legally allowed to be performed by a member of said order. If you were a dentist and ran your own clinic, you'd still need to be a member of a professional order (at least in Canada and the US afaik) to practice dentistry legally, which would come with obligations outside of your usual working hours.

Software engineering exists in a sort of gray area where you can often be a professional software engineer without having to be a member of any order, which is great in many ways. But I feel like one could argue that the informal expectation of software engineers to care about software outside of their work is similar to what is expected in other professions with more rigid governing bodies.