"Wouter Verhelst"  wrote

| If you're starting a job and *then* start learning the language, you're
| wasting your employer's time.
|

  Interesting comment. A few years ago, and still
today in many places, that would be a cynical,
selfish comment. It implies no relationship or
loyalty between employer and employee. That
might be typical in the programming world.
Amorality is typical in the programming world.
But it's not relevant logic in many places.
Many people, from housepainters to physicians,
typically get paid, on-the-job training. No one
starts out proficient at a professional level.

   But in a culture
with few benefits, little loyalty, and tech companies
trying to redefine minimum wage grunt work as
"contracting", there isn't much room for training.
Since employees can't look forward to a pension,
or even to their company existing in 5 years,
there's no reason for them not to look for a better
job on a constant basis. And people like that are
not worth the effort to train.

  What surprises me the most is not the selfishness
but the naive idealism of people who think it's classy
and futuristic to get paid $4/hour with no benefits,
as a non-union taxi driver for Uber or Lyft. Or who think
they're incredibly lucky to work at Google, the ultimate
sleazy spyware company, where the culture assumes
they have no life outside of work. That stuff is not
new and futuristic. It's why we [used to] have unions.

  Then the same people allow Facebook to own their
social life and sell it back to them, while they allow
Apple, Google, Amazon and numerous dataminers to
have them wearing a tracking collar. People in Whole
Foods now *show off* that they're Amazoniacs on
a leash. Then they look at me with a pitying expression
because I'm not diddling a cellphone and don't have
an Amazon account: "Poor guy. Just can't adapt.
Look, these apples that were $1/# last week are now
$3/#. But I get them for $2/# with my Amazon account.
Can't beat that!" :)

  I'd say you're in the wrong business, maybe even
the wrong life, if you work for someone else and
there's no humanity or generosity between yourself
and your employer. In that case you're no more
than an adjustable wrench -- a tool to be picked
up and discarded as the situation dictates. And you're
spending the majority of your time in that role. You
might consider starting your own business. When
you have 100 bosses [customers/clients], none has
the power to bend you to their will. You don't have
to sacrifice dignity or conscience for a paycheck.
Though self-employment is not for everyone. You
have to be self-motivated, responsible, a good
communicator, and willing to live without a safety
net. But.... come to think of it.... it sounds like you're
already living without a safety net. So what's to lose?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05