The Lack of Training Culture: An Employer must support their Employees

Our software industry has a significant Lack of Training Culture. In my last article, I wrote that "Learning is not an Integral Part of your Profession". Today, I focus on the fact that your employer does not support your learning.

If you want to know more about me, you have the short version in my previous post, "Learning is not an Integral Part of your Profession", and the extended version in my post, "About Me".

Here are the Four Signs of the Lack of Training Culture.

• Learning is not an Integral Part of your Profession
• Your employer does not support your learning
• You hire for Skills but not for Attitude
• You unlearned learning

I'm now an employer, but I will argue from the employee's perspective. This is only a stylistic choice because most of you are probably employees.

Let me continue with the second sign.

Your Employer does not support your Learning

Employers must support the learning of their employees. If not, the following automatism happens.

You want to be the best

You, as a software developer, do what you love. and are eager to learn new technics and programming languages to solve your daily challenges. Our challenges are pretty high. You have architectural decisions to make, care about secure communication, or deal with multithreading.  This means we must maintain and improve legacy software or implement brand-new products. Often, our projects are bleeding edge and require our full potential. But we embrace these challenges and want to implement the best solution. This is our passion.

You learn in your spare time

Our passion is so powerful that we invest a significant part of our spare time in our improvement. This is necessary because how we solve our challenges has a short life. Every two years, the way we solve problems changes. We must know and apply the appropriate techniques to provide the best and most elegant solution. This challenge becomes too high if your employer does not support you and the learning is only based on your shoulders.

You are good and change the company

If you cannot stay in lock-step with the current state of the art of programming, there are only two options.

1. You invest more time and effort in your spare time to fill the deeper and deeper growing gaps.
2. Your search for an employer that supports your passion and invests time in money into your learning.

Honestly, step one does not work in the long run. Therefore, you must apply for another job, but this is easy: You are a highly motivated and good programmer. Probably other employers and employees already know about your extraordinary skills. You don't have to look for a new job; you will automatically get better offers.

You are good and want to be the best

Your new company supports your learning in time and money. The new company cares about its employees and has a training culture. After a few years, you are excellent. Now, your new company earns its seed in many respects.

1. You are the best in your domain and provide the best solutions.
2. Begin the best is highly influential. You help the other programmer to become better because you love to share your expertise as a mentor.
3. The best only want to work for the best. Your reputation grows inside and outside the company; you work as a magnet for extraordinary programmers.
4. Your company becomes excellent and gets the best programmers. The existing ones become better and better.

To Be Continued

 There are more signs of a Lack of Training Culture in a company. Let me continue in my next post with the third one: You are hired for skills but not for attitude.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts and want to keep the ball running. Please write an e-mail to  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and state if I can quote you. I will write a follow-up post about this key challenge of your software domain. 

Modernes C++,