As a software engineer I have adapted to the world turning upside down every couple of years and having to learn new concepts and technologies. However, I have been noticing other fields struggling to adapt as things change in a faster scale.
For example, some researchers have pointed out that the number of papers about ADHD increases exponentially every year. However, most mental health professionals, at least in my area, seem to be severily outdated, often using information that has been debunked within the last 10-20 years.
So, I was wondering if other fields are affected and how they are adapting?
Edit: Bonus question, assuming a 40hr week (a luxury for most), how much time out those 40hrs would you need to spend on education?
I haven’t flown in ten years, so…yeah.
I have news. This “rapid technological change” thing? It’s window dressing. At the end of the day it’s how humans relate to and interact with technology that matters, and humans haven’t changed. The core principles, that you develop a deeper understanding of with experience, really haven’t changed appreciably.
When professions are protected from competition by government, those participating in those professions get lazy.
When I was a software developer it blew my fucking mind to meet doctors who didn’t learn anything new about their profession. I was making forgot-your-password workflows and if I didn’t learn constantly, my career ended. They’re saving lives and can’t be arsed to read a paper now and then.
My impression is it seems most doctors are honestly way too busy to have time to read a paper, even if they have the best of intentions. The “can’t be arsed” is more of an institutional problem. I work in tech and if I said I spent the entire day reading & trying to understand something new, nobody would bat an eye, but doctors don’t have that luxury.
My workplace has doctors as clients. Some of them are really busy.
But some are just floating through space and time.
It’s basically like school. On the one side of the room is the wizard of scheduling on the other is the complete imbecile who coasts off of co-students group work.
When professions are protected from competition by government, those participating in those professions get lazy.
Congrats! I know it’s early but this is definitely the silliest take I’ve read so far today.
Don’t work in a company where they only use cutting-edge shit, it’s usually a sign of a scam to pump up a company to impress dumb money investors and get a golden exit for the owners.
I mean, it’s all relative. For example, in 2024 there’s still places where basic software practices like git and ci/cd are “cutting edge”. I’m not saying those are usually the best places to work, but there are places out there still working on stuff like cloud migrations where the work culture is chill you can be pretty well valued for having some basic knowledge about best practices.
Also it indicates nobody knows what’s important in their tools. “New” is a stand-in for quality when a person cannot distinguish quality.
“Innovation” is the brainrot of tech. If something is innovative but ultimately worse than the existing solution, then it is worthless. The general public reads innovation as a new solution that is better than existing ones or that makes an old proposal work. But tech chases innovation for innovation’s sakes. And so we end up with block chain scams and NFTs.
Not really, but that’s largely because what I consider to be my area of expertise is extremely niche. I am a Lead Product Manager for an internal software. I started out as an IT business analyst for the software literally as soon as it started development out of the proof-of-concept phase. Two years in, I got promoted to Product Manager. Five more years and I’ve had 2 more promotions, growing to the Lead role I have now.
There is only one person at my company whose knowledge of the application rivals my own, and he started out in QA at the same time, then backfilled my BA role when I moved to Product. I know that application inside and out; its upstream dependencies, its users, its place in our business and our technical architecture, etc. And that’s because I’ve had a hand in building it since the beginning.
People I’ve never even met think of my name as synonymous with the software. I am literally the expert on it. My tool touches almost every part of our business and ultimately makes the day-to-day jobs of over 60k people easier. I constantly learn from working on it, and in seven years it has never been boring.
However, I am no longer the only PM for it. I manage a team of 3, and I empower them to run as autonomously as possible. Every year I am less of an expert because it has outgrown what one person can maintain in their head. I use my knowledge to build up my team, and they are becoming powerhouses in their own right. I am proud when I don’t know something in my app, because it means one of my staff owned that feature so wholly that I didn’t need to be closely involved.
Now, what of this knowledge is applicable to a broader industry? I honestly don’t know, and that sometimes freaks me out a bit. I think of Product Management as my vocation, and yet I’ve only ever done it on one team, one product. I take a course every couple years, but otherwise am not super up on generic Product Management skills/trends. However, multiple people who have broader backgrounds working with Product Managers than I do have called me the best PM they’ve ever worked with, so presumably I’ve gotten something right.
Not really an answer to the question as you intended it, I’m sure. But I do think about my role and my expertise in it a lot. And I really love it.
You sound like a truly awesome PM. I hope I get to work with someone like you one day.
Aww, thank you! Having a great team all around (PMs, devs, designers) is a big part of what makes it so great and so fun. I am lucky to have all of them. I also hope you get to work with an awesome PM. The PM can really make work hell for developers if they’re bad.
I thought of myself as a shield for my developers until I learned the industry term is “shit umbrella.” And yup, that’s exactly what I try to be for them! Pass through all the good things and reframe the crap I hear into something we can improve.
