December 4, 2016 at 11:33 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Work/Training Balance - The hidden balancing act
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 5, 2016 at 12:09 am
Our CIO stood up and said that our delivery targets were ambitious and have very little slack in them to investigate the best ways of doing things. He then said that those targets were set by the staff, not the management and certainly not from him. He told us we needed to factor in time to learn the craft.
December 5, 2016 at 1:47 am
Impending retirement is no excuse! Keeping up to date is a great way to keep an active mind and also keeps open the possibility of some part time work. Idle retirement is a great way to kill people off quickly.
December 5, 2016 at 4:34 am
djessopeng (12/5/2016)
Impending retirement is no excuse! Keeping up to date is a great way to keep an active mind and also keeps open the possibility of some part time work. Idle retirement is a great way to kill people off quickly.
But an individual may have another thing, perhaps a hobby, that keeps their mind active. Leaving a career behind doesn't necessarily mean idleness.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 5, 2016 at 4:37 am
David.Poole (12/5/2016)
Our CIO stood up and said that our delivery targets were ambitious and have very little slack in them to investigate the best ways of doing things. He then said that those targets were set by the staff, not the management and certainly not from him. He told us we needed to factor in time to learn the craft.
The buck stops where? That is a CIO who basically has admitted that he is not in control of IT. Good job for him that I am not a shareholder otherwise he could take his slopey shoulders elsewhere.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 5, 2016 at 6:29 am
Gary Varga (12/5/2016)
But an individual may have another thing, perhaps a hobby, that keeps their mind active. Leaving a career behind doesn't necessarily mean idleness.
My hobby is more stimulating and fundamental enjoyable than my job. I found this quote that explains why:
"Humans suck, when I grow up I'm going to work in computers. No social pressure."
*turns out job is mostly working with humans*
"Darn it."
The crux of the issue, is most of my tasks are dealing with issues caused by other people. The time spent at the console solving the technical issues pales to that spent in meetings, phone calls and emails. Any time spent coding uninterrupted is golden.
December 5, 2016 at 7:03 am
chrisn-585491 (12/5/2016)
...Any time spent coding uninterrupted is golden.
I once had that. :crying:
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 5, 2016 at 7:36 am
David.Poole (12/5/2016)
Our CIO stood up and said that our delivery targets were ambitious and have very little slack in them to investigate the best ways of doing things. He then said that those targets were set by the staff, not the management and certainly not from him. He told us we needed to factor in time to learn the craft.
Unusual, but outstanding.
I have found that a lot of companies expect people to just know things, whether by osmosis, or some other magical process. They want to hire people who are experts, pay them like they are rookies, and then a year later have the staff train their replacements as they outsource the jobs for half the money. During the process they expect perfect quality, 50 hours a week at a minimum, and anyone who complains is shown the door.
OK, a bit more negative than reality, but I am willing to bet that all of us have seen at least part of this in our careers.
I also experienced a company that expected you to work about 32-35 hours a week producing, and the rest of the time learning something you were interested.
There has to be a balance between the two that most companies could target, but unfortunately director's bonuses are typically based on how little they spend. Since it is difficult to measure the benefit of training budget wise, there doesn't seem to be a common way for companies to tie budgets to spending money on the right things.
Dave
December 5, 2016 at 7:43 am
I'm one of those that fall into the "will be retiring soon" group. Yet a year ago I moved into the compliance arena and find that I am learning new stuff every day. Maybe I am just developing the road map for those that follow.
December 5, 2016 at 7:51 am
How about work/life/learning balance?..
I agree with the earlier post which said that idle retirement is a good way to kill off people. You should always keep learning to keep an active mind but it does not need to be all about work. Taking up a seemingly unrelated skill, like learning a musical instrument, can also benefit your career. Most data scientists I know are also musicians.
December 5, 2016 at 8:08 am
Its interesting that getting work/life balance right is perhaps about guilt - too much of one or too much of the other. Work/training clearly isn't about guilt - it's about seeing/believing in the need for training (for worker and/or manager).
December 5, 2016 at 8:20 am
jarick 15608 (12/5/2016)
How about work/life/learning balance?...
I wrote:
...By this I am considering the work aspect of the classical work/life balance...
I guess Work/Life might actually be (Work/Training)/(Life/Learning) balance but that doesn't quite roll off of the tongue. :pinch:
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 5, 2016 at 8:25 am
"chrisn-585491 (12/5/2016)
The crux of the issue, is most of my tasks are dealing with issues caused by other people. The time spent at the console solving the technical issues pales to that spent in meetings, phone calls and emails. Any time spent coding uninterrupted is golden."
[/i]
Man oh man, ain't that the truth; on both counts.
December 5, 2016 at 8:46 am
Where I work, I've recently suggested to management that we have weekly "lunch and learn" sessions. We will block off a couple of hours on a Friday for to DBA team to eat take-out pizza and watch an Azure SQL or PASS related video.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 5, 2016 at 8:56 am
Good article, Gary. I learned very early in my career the importance of training, when I lost a job opportunity because I wasn't skilled at the new job. Since then I've tried to go to wherever I could where training their employees was important.
More recently I was unemployed for a long period of time. I had to take the job I'm currently in because it was the only offer I got and we were in very serious financial trouble. I'm working in a state government position where they don't train anyone in anything (well they do have some internal training classes on Word and Excel, but that's it). So I cough up my own money for my own training using Pluralsight, the most expensive subscription because I commute in part by train and there's no Internet nor cell phone access on the train in areas. The Pluralsight subscription allows me to download training videos to watch.
But there's something which I didn't realize may happen in an environment where training has no priority. The agency I work for hasn't had any training for IT people (both devs and ops) for literally decades. It lowers the common denominator of skills sets so that we have a proliferation of very old technologies in such wide spread use that only people with really old technical skills are valued. I'd even go so far as to say that in a way anyone seeking to improve themselves are actively discouraged from doing so. You get nothing for it here and are bucking the trend so much since there just aren't the apps that need it. There are exceptions of course, but they're the rare exceptions. Its strange, I didn't realize that this sort of environment would result if its forced to stay in the past.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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