Wk33:

Best experience of 2016 is probably just realising I'm a pretty good programmer. I have a physics undergraduate degree and a 1 year masters in CS, I'm working on back end algorithm stuff so pretty mathsy at times, but I've found from working with others that I write good quality code. I've still got lots to learn but I've got a solid foundation, am reading, learning and coding outside of work.

Worst experience of 2016 is working with people for whom it's purely a day job, only about the money, get things done in whatever hacky way works.

I really can't stand people whom development & IT are just day job and they have no intention of learning how to do stuff.

As you start out in coding you normally have time like I did 18 years ago, as time went by I too coded outside of work read books etc. Now I have a wife and two kids I don't have time and my job is a day job, I don't expect to work out of hours for nothing and I certainly have no time to read or code out of hours. ( this situation is called life ) I still try to write the best code I can but I am now up against 16 year old me and people like yourself who have the time to do stuff like code out of hours and read and learn new stuff. No doubt as my kids get older and my wife runs off with a younger model I will be able to swing the balance back the other way.

I guess I'm saying you are lucky you have the time to code outside of work and read and learn. But don't forget not everyone is lazy and coding isn't all there is to life! If you do forget you will probably end up burnt out.

There is a happy balance between work and family in my life but it took 10 years to get it right!

Moral of the story: don't give a shit. Solution to everything

Did not expect this to be so controversial. My mother is a teacher, spends hours and hours outside of class marking and planning, even around having kids managed to write a book about bullying in schools. My partner is in the medical field, HAS to be reading to keep up with the progress in her field, has to do a certain amount of cpd to remain acredited. The same applies to a range of professions, this is in no way CS specific, many institutions require certain amounts of cpd to be acredited.

I don't blame people that have the attitude that it's just a day job, I do mind people that can barely be bothered while they are there and leave mess for others to clean up, I've had it in a few jobs. Believe me, I understand the pressures people have on their times.

My op probably failed to make that distinction sufficiently clear, and for that I apologise.

@fbomb it's a postgrad masters, they're reasonably common in the UK. Far more intensive than undergrad studies.

@uddinstock chartered accountants have cpd requirements. True, hr and managers don't but you don't exactly need relevant qualifications to do those jobs. Cpd requirements are common among a range of fields.

And don't get me wrong, completely agree with you @uddinstock I work my contracted hours and work can jump off a bridge. We have maybe 1 crunch a year, and they're not that bad. The programming, the reading I do outside of work is in subjects that I want to better myself in, obviously work will benefit from some of it but not all. My company does software for video processing, I'm currently looking at setting up a website/online learning environment as a personal project that they'll probably get zilch benefit from.

As I said earlier I think I miss spoke in my op, the coworkers that can barely be bothered while they are there is what irks me, not the people that aren't spending hours in their spare time doing job work. Although those guys irk me too because as you say then there's an expectation on the rest of us.

As a final note my current job is actually my 3rd, I think the comments to not give a shit are overly broad.

I don't give a shit about arbitrary management demands and corporate bullshit as you say but I do give a shit about the quality of my work and how I act when I'm at work. My first job was a corporate machine that didn't care, my second job was a startup that managed to have the mentality of a corporate machine that didn't care. My current job is better in some ways but not perfect. C'est la vie !

TLDR: my complaint was about people that can barely be bothered when they are there, they're common in many work places and industries. Not about people that aren't doing hours and hours out of work.

@uddinstock i am not saying that you should give up your life for it but I believe that if your whole job is doing/using X then you should atleast have basic knowledge of his to do/use it. And i am not even song you to learn it on your personal time,I have seen people slacking off not doing their job. You could've used that time to lean something.