I'm guessing this varies by sector. I've been involved with trying to recruit people from the videogame industry to academic and academic/industry crossover con

I'm guessing this varies by sector. I've been involved with trying to recruit people from the videogame industry to academic and academic/industry crossover conferences, and companies tend not to be happy at all with their engineers attending. Afaict none in this sector have any sort of explicit policy; it's more a matter of trying to convince your boss that this somehow benefits the company and isn't going to leak secrets all over. I've heard much more positive stories from other areas of computing, though. (Shameless plug: if you're a game dev doing anything with a researchy or applied-researchy angle, esp. if located in Europe, consider submitting a demo or paper or panel, and coming to Crete next May: http://www.fdg2013.org http://www.fdg2013.org)