3 ms·

Sure, why would anyone want to waste time lifting their nose briefly from their employer's grindstone to get exposed to new colleagues, new ideas, and new busin

Sure, why would anyone want to waste time lifting their nose briefly from their employer's grindstone to get exposed to new colleagues, new ideas, and new business opportunities?

badpun 8y ago
They are a waste of your employer’s time. For you they’re great, you’re still getting paid, but don’t have to work.
- dclowd9901 8y ago
  Quite a myopic view. My employer is pushing hard right now to sponsor lots of meetups and conferences to reach new (read: diverse) recruits.
  - badpun 8y ago
    I was talking about employee being sent to a conference. Employer organizing local conference as a hiring honeypot is a different case.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  If you’re looking at conferences from the point of view of “a way to improve programming skills” it really isn’t. It’s the equivalent of workforce training in other fields.
- cyphar 8y ago
  I tentatively agree with the idea that conferences reduce the amount of work that someone gets done for a few days (you can see this by how much work free software maintainers like myself generally get done during conferences), but I absolutely disagree that it is a net negative for your employer. In my view, as someone who contributes to free software as my job (though the rest of this is somewhat related to proprietary developers too), conferences are a great opportunity to have IRL discussions over current development topics as well as meet people from other free software communities (who might work for proprietary software companies). And arguably that is getting work done (and I have written patches side-by-side with someone while at conferences quite a few times). Having connections in your field, as well as being well-known by your field (perhaps by submitting talks to conferences) is very useful for both you and your employer. In most cases, a lack of conference attendance by a company is seen as a "bad smell" in some communities (it indicates that they don't have an interest in the community around something they use -- maybe because they think that interacting with their community through conferences is a waste of time). It also potentially gives you access to more recruits, because people looking for work often attend conferences to expand their connections. Not to mention that most medium-and-larger companies can spare a few thousand dollars a few times a year to send their employees to a conference to act as both a marketing tool and as a form of training at conferences. I'd bet that medium-sized companies spend more on stationary and tea+coffee supplies yearly.
- crispyambulance 8y ago
  > They are a waste of your employer’s time... Yet it is employers who [often] pay for employees to go to these things? Hmmm, why do you think that is?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - mactrey 8y ago
    It's because non-monetary benefits are a good way to attract talent in a tight labor market, which is more or less how the software developer market has been for the past twenty years. Developers like going to conferences, so they like working for employers who pay for them to go. Think about why tech companies provide ping-pong tables and nap-chambers (obviously unproductive) and yet Wal-Mart isn't sending its warehouse workers to warehousing industry conferences (presumably at least somewhat productive).

Sure, why would anyone want to waste time lifting their nose briefly from their employer's grindstone to get exposed to new colleagues, new ideas, and new business opportunities?

badpun 8y ago

They are a waste of your employer’s time. For you they’re great, you’re still getting paid, but don’t have to work.

dclowd9901 8y ago
Quite a myopic view. My employer is pushing hard right now to sponsor lots of meetups and conferences to reach new (read: diverse) recruits.
- badpun 8y ago
  I was talking about employee being sent to a conference. Employer organizing local conference as a hiring honeypot is a different case.
saagarjha 8y ago
If you’re looking at conferences from the point of view of “a way to improve programming skills” it really isn’t. It’s the equivalent of workforce training in other fields.
cyphar 8y ago
I tentatively agree with the idea that conferences reduce the amount of work that someone gets done for a few days (you can see this by how much work free software maintainers like myself generally get done during conferences), but I absolutely disagree that it is a net negative for your employer. In my view, as someone who contributes to free software as my job (though the rest of this is somewhat related to proprietary developers too), conferences are a great opportunity to have IRL discussions over current development topics as well as meet people from other free software communities (who might work for proprietary software companies). And arguably that is getting work done (and I have written patches side-by-side with someone while at conferences quite a few times). Having connections in your field, as well as being well-known by your field (perhaps by submitting talks to conferences) is very useful for both you and your employer. In most cases, a lack of conference attendance by a company is seen as a "bad smell" in some communities (it indicates that they don't have an interest in the community around something they use -- maybe because they think that interacting with their community through conferences is a waste of time). It also potentially gives you access to more recruits, because people looking for work often attend conferences to expand their connections. Not to mention that most medium-and-larger companies can spare a few thousand dollars a few times a year to send their employees to a conference to act as both a marketing tool and as a form of training at conferences. I'd bet that medium-sized companies spend more on stationary and tea+coffee supplies yearly.
crispyambulance 8y ago
> They are a waste of your employer’s time... Yet it is employers who [often] pay for employees to go to these things? Hmmm, why do you think that is?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mactrey 8y ago
  It's because non-monetary benefits are a good way to attract talent in a tight labor market, which is more or less how the software developer market has been for the past twenty years. Developers like going to conferences, so they like working for employers who pay for them to go. Think about why tech companies provide ping-pong tables and nap-chambers (obviously unproductive) and yet Wal-Mart isn't sending its warehouse workers to warehousing industry conferences (presumably at least somewhat productive).