So if a company has any smaller/less-critical/throwaway/etc. projects maybe it's overall prudent to explicitly declare those as "go wild and learn things" zones?
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Businesses are 100% entitled to expect devs to be professional and unselfish in their tech choices. The onus is entirely on devs, we're not puppies
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Yes, "do not use the business's codebase as your playground for experimentation" is eminently reasonable. What I'm suggesting is that businesses also have an interest in their employees leveling up their skills. And the two things are somewhat in conflict:
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If they never use fancy features at work, they'll never gain the experience that lets them know when the feature *would* be profitable to use.
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Hence the idea of distinguishing e.g. mission-critical vs. non-mission-critical projects, and explicitly accepting greater risk-via-experimentation in the latter in exchange for greater quality/productivity (via increased dev skills) in the former.
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Yeah, I hate the idea that the only people who get to explore new ideas are those who have enough disposable free time to spend it experimenting with dev stuff in the off-hours. It isn't healthy to do this for many people, and is completely impossible for many others.
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Privilege wrt free time is a good argument, I didn't think of that. But you're ultimately still spending someone else's money
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Yup! And businesses should be willing to pay for that, and invest in the growth of their people, and the craft of programming. By doing that work in our off-hours we devalue the important work of developing new techniques and practices.
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When I've helped run events I've always been very vocal about who I give my free labor to.
Community members,individuals? Always.
Companies? Not all companies are equal, so maybe.
In general, only if our interests align, and only if I want to, because *I'm volunteering here*.
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For the same token, I'm very happy to contribute to "commercial" conferences that generate value for the community instead of capturing it all for themselves, and which are themselves community members in good standing.
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Yeah apologies, I was overly sweeping there - there's definitely nuance to how anyone uses their spare time. Personal guilt and bitterness plays a part in my response too. 😰