[mwfunk]

This is absolutely true, at least from my perspective. All of the programming jobs I've had in my career have been for medium- to freaking-huge companies, and most of my projects at those jobs have required me to do a ton of self-teaching to get up to speed on a bunch of technical (or scientific, or mathematical) stuff that I had no previous exposure to, in order to get my job done. On only one occasion did I ever get any training for anything, and that was just for two days.

I guess that's a combination "back in my day/get off my lawn" statement, plus a little whining, and maybe a humblebrag, but I don't think that's an unusual story at all for software developers.

I interned at IBM during grad school with a team of consultants that all did enterprise Java stuff for financial institutions- that was very different. IBM would frequently send those developers away for a week or more at a time, multiple times a year, to get training on specific technologies. I'm not sure how common that is anywhere other than IBM though, or if IBM even does that anymore. Maybe Google does it? I don't know.

Sometimes I deal with developers who either can't or won't teach themselves anything, and can't or won't learn by doing. They absolutely need someone to hold their hand and explain things to them every step of the way, and they will just throw their hands up in the air and fail before putting any time into trying to read up on whatever topic is giving them trouble. I don't know what to attribute this to, so I'm trying really hard to not jump to the conclusion that they suck or they don't care or whatever. I'm sure a lot of them do just suck at their jobs and/or just don't care, but maybe some of them have genuine problems with learning that aren't their fault. The only thing I can say for sure is that this is a trait that is a major impediment to their careers and getting their jobs done without sucking up too much of their cow-orkers' time (as we all know, orking cows requires long stretches of uninterrupted concentration).

TL;DR Spot on, and being able to develop your own technical skills to keep up to date and expand your horizons is absolutely critical to being a really successful developer. You are also the only person that you can count on to do this for you. You can't really count on any employer, even some mythical ideal company with bottomless resources that treats each employee as a magical snowflake, to do this. Even if your company does provide training, it's not necessarily going to be the training you want or need to receive.

[zzzcpan]

I disagree with that and the notion of constantly learning new languages on your own. I happen to know couple of companies that were unable to find Perl developers, so they decided to train their own and now they see it as the only way to hire such developers. What you know is no longer a requirement for them, just be good at learning things and preferably have a CS degree. And I see this becoming a norm in a heavily fragmented future of software development.

[shubb]

I find it is usually possible to convince your employer to give you time to study up - whether this is extra time tacked onto a project because "I need to learn the framework", or actual formal training.

I think not making your employer pay a fair share of your training is like being one of those people who stay 4 hours extra when their project isn't late. People do it through a mixture of anxiety, peer pressure, and possibly not liking their children all that much.

To me, it is your responsibility to learn the tech you want to use in your next job, but it is fair to ask the company to pay for new skills you need for them.

From the companies perspective, it is worth spending the money up front so that you don't mess up a project by not really knowing what you are doing.