I've been programming 8 years for a company. We build business intelligence software systems. Since I thought working is learning, I've always studied in terms of what I was doing at the company while working for 60 hours per week. These days, however, I am looking for a new company for employment, I can see that thought was a dumb idea because I frequently fail in job interviews mainly due to lack of knowledge on the other areas. Of course, I am still willing to improve myself and am really trying. But while working that much of time per week, I can't find good amount of study time to catch up.I don't think I am the only one to concern about this so I would like to ask how you guys find time to study for your career? How many hours do you assign to studying other areas? Am I missing some time management skills?
How to manage time for studying while working?
training;time management
Working 60 hour weeks is going to make it pretty difficult to code much outside work and have anything that resembles a balanced lifestyle. That being said, you are where you are so you have to make the best of it. I would recommend that you try to leverage your domain knowledge to land your next job, rather than relying purely on coding skills. In my region at least, I see a fair amount of jobs that are in the realm of BI analyst/programmer. Surely you have learned plenty of transferable knowledge in the last 8 years, at least within your domain. This could be nothing more than a confidence issue, since that sort of experience is really pretty valuable.Keep in mind, you really do not need to be a human hard drive of programming knowledge. Doing your current job well, using best practices, is probably enough to keep a good grip on things. If you happen to work in a language not deemed worthy by HR departments any longer, then I would recommend learning a new language or two on the side. Pick up a couple books on Python or .Net (or any HR-friendly platform) and read them a few hours a week. This will make you a bit more marketable and allow you to be exposed to some new paradigms outside of what you are used to. A few hours a week for learning can always be found, even if its the time you would normally watch TV or something else that is not too productive.