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Comment by daniel-cussen | Hacker News Reader

Did your boss try to get you to read things on your own time? If the work requires reading something, it has to pay me to read it. If it's my own time, for my own benefit, reading for free, flat-out cannot read anything other than the Bible, which I haven't finished. And if your boss doesn't like it he can literally go to hell. Which is both more and less metaphorical than is widely believed.

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Nope, I am not expected to read work stuff outside of working hours.

During the first 2 to 6 weeks on a job (it probably varies more than this) most corporate US environments expect significant amount of time to go to processing/onboarding. When providing status updates in meetings just state as much, usually with little to no specifics. I've yet to see anyone respond at all within the first month. What's remarkable to me is the amount of overhead/cost associated with these institutional mechanics, despite tools like Workday, which frankly I don't see as actually being effective. Staff counts of 2 and more (in addition to the new person) with these tools still can't manage to communicate with new staff where to go, where to send equipment, etc which reveals a significant need in the market.

Yeah a Stanford professor told me you need 6 months to be productive in a coder job. 3 months, others have said. To pull your weight, and then pull more than your weight.

Of course where I've worked the firing threats start on day 1, and they obviously expected (Unholster for one) that I work at home. Those guys wanted the whole install to be done at the end of day 1.

When I onboard someone I fully expect them to spend a good chunk of their first days / few weeks reading and not being tremendously productive - absolutely within working hours.

This comment is terrific even though I'm not sure I quite agree with the sentiment. Upvoted.

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