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Ask HN: Where to spend company’s education budget?
Our company offers few thousand dollars each year for employees to use it of loose it towards education. I have was thinking of using them for conference however They are no longer happening so bought few books. Still have some money left so looking for good suggestions.
- austincheney 6y agoLicensing, certifications, and tests.
- auslegung 6y agoIs there relevant hardware you could purchase? Maybe an expert in your field will take money so you can pick his/her brain for a few hours?
- cryptozeus 6y agoNo hardware unfortunately, separate budget for that
- muzani 6y agoPluralsight is a good place to spend it - it's a little expensive but the courses are top notch and done by professionals, for professionals looking to cram. Masterclass.com looks good too. Lots of non-code related things like writing and cooking by experts in their respective fields. Considering most of us don't know any professional actors or Michelin chefs, this is a fast way to pick up skills into the top 20% as cheaply as possible. Plenty of books out there, but this is not the thread to list them. Would it cover fitness? A personal trainer or dietician will take you further than most advice from friends and the internet.
- el_dev_hell 6y agoJust an aside on Masterclass.com. You may want to manage your expectations a little before clicking buy. I purchased 3 Masterclass (before they went recurring). The production quality is insane, but the content is closer to infotainment than education. I have no problem with infotainment and found the Chris Voss negotiation series helpful. The James Patterson course is interesting (if you're a fan), but I didn't find it helpful at all for my writing.
- muzani 6y agoI haven't tried it myself and the teasers looked nice, but thanks for the review.
- alexmingoia 6y agoBuy expensive textbooks with good resale value and then resell them to transfer that educational budget to your personal bank account.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sethammons 6y agoThis is unethical.
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoI'd spend some on screencasts, but then again I would say that. Check out: - https://laracasts.com https://laracasts.com (PHP, Vue, related topics) - https://gorails.com https://gorails.com (Rails and other tech useful for Rails devs) - https://vueschool.io https://vueschool.io (Vue, Nuxt, etc) - https://fireship.io https://fireship.io (Angular and Firebase) - https://alchemist.camp https://alchemist.camp (Elixir, Phoenix and complementary skills) I'd also strongly recommend spending a good portion on books. No Starch, Pragmatic Bookshelf and Manning are all great publishers. Books are so cheap there's no reason not to buy a dozen or more a year and refer to them only as needed. Manning regularly runs 50% off discounts and I've gotten at least 20 No Starch books in Humble Bundles for even less. Pragprog discounts are rarer, but they're still a great value. For the cost of a single US conference, you could literally subscribe to every screencast site I listed above, buy 25 tech books and still come out ahead.
- thedevindevops 6y agoQuestion: Are you a manager spending your department's education budget or are you the victim it's being spent on?