>If a company took this to the logical extreme - making the employees the consumers of the product/service - then it would cease to be "work", and would instead be a "hobby/internship/volunteer/education/experience".
I think there are a few places where you can fight for this experience. One at a (extremely well-funded) University lab where you are paid a Software Engineer salary to work on computational research problems. Two at a (extremely lenient) company where you are allowed the freedom. like 50% time to take classes on company-time and company-dime and/or pursue your own open source projects that tickles personal intellectual interest, not the company's production needs.
I will however add, being at a place that does offer a 20% time and tuition credit to take your own independent class of choosing, attend journal club/internal machine-learning and algorithm group classes or pursue a open-source project. It is very very hard to take the initiative because it's much easier just to cruise and do 80% of the work in the 100% allotted time. Especially after the first year of novelty of given the opportunity.
So regardless of wherever your workplace, I think whether a person really pushes their own intellectual boundaries is more the person's aptitude to apply themselves than their work environment/culture.
I think there are a few places where you can fight for this experience. One at a (extremely well-funded) University lab where you are paid a Software Engineer salary to work on computational research problems. Two at a (extremely lenient) company where you are allowed the freedom. like 50% time to take classes on company-time and company-dime and/or pursue your own open source projects that tickles personal intellectual interest, not the company's production needs.
I will however add, being at a place that does offer a 20% time and tuition credit to take your own independent class of choosing, attend journal club/internal machine-learning and algorithm group classes or pursue a open-source project. It is very very hard to take the initiative because it's much easier just to cruise and do 80% of the work in the 100% allotted time. Especially after the first year of novelty of given the opportunity.
So regardless of wherever your workplace, I think whether a person really pushes their own intellectual boundaries is more the person's aptitude to apply themselves than their work environment/culture.