[ZeppelinDePlomo]

If it has nothing to do with a way to increase production, then the company has no business by investing in you learning that. BUT, if the company can benefit from you learning those skills, then it could be a missed oportunity not give you the resources to do it (learning it while on the company's time).

Of course it's all a product of culture and supply-demand (systemic), if there are enough great programmers that are willing to learn everything on their own time, then of course it will become the norm that programmers should learn everything on their own time. And, of course, that's great for the employers.

[vitd]

I get what you're saying, but at the same time, how can a company possibly know whether any given technology is useful to them if they don't have anyone evaluating it?