A regular salary is the death of self-development. Why learn new things, when you get paid regardless? Why put in effort, energy, and inspiration, when you're not rewarded for them? Why push the edge of what you can do, so long as the checks keep coming anyway?
— John Arundel (@bitfield) November 28, 2019
The above was posted today by John. Now while John is entitled to his opinion, I find the idea that a regular salary causes people to not better themselves absolute nonsense.
Since starting out in the web, I have always strived to do better, learn new things and be the best I possibly can. For the majority of that time, I have been on the company payroll. That never stopped me. For some of that time, I was freelance. Again, I pushed and pushed to be better. Once the working day was done, I would often be found upstairs in the back bedroom, trying out new things in CSS or trying to get to grips with Javascript.
I’ve had to juggle family time with 2 kids but I’ve always made time to keep on top of my career. I want to better myself at all times it seems regardless of who I work for.
Now not everyone is like me, I get that. I know many people who come in, 9 to 5, go home and do something completely different. Family time is important and at no point am I saying you should be learning morning, noon and night. There has to be a balance.
But that is down to the individual, nothing to do with the status of their employment. People learn at their own pace, if and when they want to regardless of how they bring in the cash.
John mentions reward for the learning. I know many who have been rewarded for improving themselves and I know a few who have not. The ones who have not tend to move on eventually and land better roles with the new skills they learnt. It never goes to waste.
Learning is important. If we don’t improve, we can get left behind.