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Comment by lugg | Hacker News Reader

It's not a privileged point of view. You can find a new job. You might not like it. It might not be possible for everyone. But the idea that there are only jobs in tech is asinine.

All qualified and experienced people are expensive to replace.

That's not unique to software.

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I work in a bar. If I was to take 20% of my time to learn new things and sharpen my skills (without being told explicitly by management), I would be fired very quickly.

It is a privilege not shared by the large majority of jobs.

You're right that it wouldn't be as easy for different kinds of jobs and working in a bar is a good example. Even there though, I think you could be clever about it - you can find opportunities that blend in with your work (e.g. coffee foam art, small talk in a language you're learning). These probably wouldn't increase your value as much but with some creativity I'm pretty sure in most jobs there is some kind of opportunity for learning.

> I'm pretty sure in most jobs there is some kind of opportunity for learning.

This is absolutely not the case.

There is a vast swathe of jobs that are labour under very strict conditions imposed on you by middle management, for example anything in a harbour or construction context. That's not the sort of rule that you can just opt to take some time for self improvement under. I would wager the percentage of jobs with such conditions is probably higher than without.

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