I don’t experiment and explore because i have a job. A job which confines me to the same legacy codebase and tech stack for the last 5 years. And when the beloved company sacks me, i find myself in a different world.
I spend 8 hours working. I don’t invest in my up-skilling. The uncaring attitude of the company forces me to not care about myself. And i promote this lifestyle to others too.
Work without experimentation is weird. Maybe in some fields workers should not keep themselves updated or they don’t have the sufficient background to experiment but, software is such a field where it makes sense to know what’s going on and explore.
And, having great employees benefit the company too. Unless the company is big enough to afford to tell people to code and stop talking, this is a missed opportunity. Some big companies love their employees not knowing outside tech, so that they might feel that their worth lies in remaining at the company.
This is why contributing and maintaining OpenSource is a great way of experimenting with ideas without fear.