Comment by wes-k
3 years ago
> the opportunity cost of working in a rapidly-changing field is highest for the best learners
It's not that learning is an unattractive aspect (I agree, it's a great feature!). Instead it's that it levels the playing field between those entering the profession and those that have been in it for many years. Yes, you still have "experience" as an advantage, but you can't say you've worked with LATEST_TECH for many more years than someone coming out of college.
Contrast that with other professions, like law, or medicine. Where it's not just "experience" working in your favor. But actual knowledge of the existing laws and medical practices.
That's an excellent point which mirrors my experience as well. My parents are both recently retired civil engineers one which was working for the government/city, the other in a private company. Both very valued in their professional circles, and even outside just because of their reputations.
I've never seen them at home reading a law, bylaw or a "teach yourself how to design a bridge in 30 days". Whenever something changed in their profession (very rarely) be it law or similar they went to seminars about it. Some of the time they (or their "guild") were even consulted so that stuff ended in the law itself. Something really new in the industry (say some software tool or whatever), the company paid for the trip, and the training. The older they were, the more compounding experience and knowledge they had. With each year they were worth more to their respective companies.
Contrast this to my current company (previous were even worse), where my boss proclaimed that all new infrastructure is going to be in Terraform (I had no problem with that, but zero experience), hired a new guy almost straight out of school with 1.5 years of TF experience (and absolutely nothing else from what I've found out later) with much better pay than the rest of the team. Oh, and he said he'll expense us any TF book we want to buy. So here I am, on my 2 week "long" vacation reading a fat book about some technology X which we'll be abandoned in couple of years time.
> Contrast that with other professions, like law, or medicine. Where it's not just "experience" working in your favor. But actual knowledge of the existing laws and medical practices.
In my experience knowledge decreases very fast if you work in a programming job (exception: if you use an insane amount of your free time to avoid this decrease).