From paying to learn, to getting paid to learn

I find it interesting how we first pay to learn in school, courses, and universities from other people who’ve established themselves in an industry. We learn from their experiences, how they solved real world problems, and executed projects to completion. Then we go into the real world and get a job or build a business that serves other people’s needs, where people pay us to learn about their problems and try to solve them.

In most cases, a job advertisement or business service only describes the outcomes of what the job or service looks like. It rarely goes into detail what’s actually needed to get the job done, hence the risk involved when paying someone to learn the job. Rarely do we even come across someone who has done the exact thing before, so whenever such fit happens, it’s almost an immediate hire. But in most general cases, there’s probably only a 60% to 80% fit between past experience, and actual work it takes to get it done. Sometimes, as an employer or service provider, we won’t even know what is needed to get it done, so we just hire someone to get it done for us at the market rate.

But anyway, whenever we’re hired to do a job, we’re paid to learn about people’s problems and there’s always something new to learn in every job. Getting paid to learn can be fun too because it implies we don’t really know everything about it, but we’re confident that given our past experience, tools and skills, we can learn and do whatever it takes to get the job done.