RE: Service Programs VS normal Programs (Jon Paris)

I knew I should have stayed out of this discussion ..... hey ho ....

 >> Now, Jon, don't take this the wrong way, but being on the outside
looking in it's too easy to be judgmental in this
manner and especially on this topic.

I'm not sure which "outside" this is but ... I'm not running a programming
shop day-to-day at the moment - but I did for many years.  I found I got
significant ROI by "forcing" my staff to take a half-day of "play time"
every week.  They learnt a lot and the shop benefited greatly from it.

"judgmental" ?  Maybe - but every single shop I've worked with in recent
years that took the time to reengineer have all said the same thing - "why
the heck didn't we do this earlier".  If it is judgmental to feel that the
"good enough" attitude is doing a better job at killing the iSeries than
anything that IBM have done or not done - then yes your honor I'm guilty as
charged.

 >> Yes, I'd love it if everyone kept up to speed, but sometimes it's just
hard to find the time and resources.

I'll play devil's advocate here and simply ask why would one continue to
employ people who don't "keep up to speed"?  I am constantly hearing about
the large number of highly skilled RPG programmers who are out of work - so
....

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky and am old fashioned enough to think
that furthering my career is _my_ responsibility and not that of my
employer.  So I study a lot in "my" time to keep skills up-to-date.  I still
get further behind with each passing day but that's the pace of technology.
It doesn't stop me trying.

I also happen to believe that any employer who doesn't give his staff time
to improve their skills is an idiot, but that's not pertinent to the current
discussion.


Jon Paris
Partner400
www.Partner400.com