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Comment by jpincheira | Hacker News Reader

Bad. Went I went from JS front end to iOS, I was put in a learning period on my own + internship in the iOS team and that worked great. It’s how companies like Spotify also did it. They paid companies like the Big Nerd Ranch to travel to Stockholm and give workshops to future iOS devs.

They benefited and I also did, as it helped me evolve into a full-stack (web, mobile & server) developer. This was essential for me to transition into building my own company [1] at a later point, as I could build the product on my own both for web and mobile.

[1] https://standups.io

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We have a formal mentorship program and employees get 4 hours a month for professional development. We still feel we fail them.

Using the word "still" there is uncalibrated. 4 hours per month is barely anything.

Imagine yourself trying to learn a real skill in that allocation of time.

If anything, you may even be reducing your tech employees' "professional development" with that metric, because I bet the average tech employee already spends greater than 4 hours per month on active learning with or without management actively allowing them.

>4 hours a month for professional development

So half a day a month? That's pretty much nothing. Maybe time to work through a couple chapters of a book on some new topic.

Yeah, it's supposed to be on top of their existing 1-1s, but we still feel we fail them.

Make that 4 hours a week and maybe you'll feel better.

Unfortunately, HR is in charge of 'professional development'. Noone wants to fight HR and would rather keep their cushy job, get paid and let this thing crater.

Unfortunately, that is when, as a team, you have to not classify things certain ways. Still meet your commitments, but bake in learning time. It just becomes part of what you do during the sprint. Likewise, you should not have a "testing time", "quality", or "security" budget - you just bake those into how the team operates.

^ This is the way. Learn how to sell it or hide it from those HR parasites.

Calling an entire field of personnel "parasites" is an ad hominem attack.

Even if you were to justify your statement, it would be an ad hominem attack.

No shit. Cheers for pointing that out for us.

We do 4 hours a week, and I still feel it's too little.

We've just given up on it, I just give people tickets with stuff they want to learn about. "Oh, you want to learn Selenium, here's a ticket that has Selenium"

How did it work out for you? I'm also trying to do the same.

It worked out great, but you have to want to do this. You have to set out time for it. No wonder why people from Lambda School get well-paying jobs: it's because you have to be motivated to reach the goal.

Educational materials/courses are out there, it's all about you, wanting to smash it on the wall and work hard for the goal.

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