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> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engin

> Conference Austerity > Conferences get nuked because someone upstairs sees them as a “nice to have.” The irony? That conference could’ve been where your engineers learned about a new technique that would’ve saved you a million bucks in infrastructure costs. Instead, they’re stuck reinventing the wheel – badly. I agree with the thesis in general but this point is not resonating strongly with me. Conferences are expensive. AWS reinvent for example requires you to spend 2000 dollars on a conference ticket and travel to Las Vegas and pay for expensive hotels etc. Most of the content from the sessions and talks there is posted online on YouTube ... in recent memory they posted them online within a day (full credit to them). The added benefit of attending conferences in person is very hard to justify IMO. Yes there is networking and yes there are some hands on workshops etc. Instead of the justification offered in the blog post ... I would say, sponsoring your employees' visits to conferences shows that you treat them well, care about their personal learning and growth, and inturn motivates them to look for synergies between their interests and work. They might end up learning that technique from a free youtube video anyway, but only the motivated ones care about applying it at work.

unsnap_biceps 2y ago
I would also add that people shouldn't overlook regional or local conferences. The big ones are a lot of fun and have a lot of benefits, but local or regional ones can often be way cheaper and also still have some great content and networking.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Conferences are often great places to receive better offers at other firms too. =3
hooverd 2y ago
re:Invent sessions aside from chalk talks are useless. It's definitely a fun experience though.
joenot443 2y ago
Totally agree about conferences. I worked on a great iOS team at a FAANG where during WWDC we had scheduled time to watch as many talks as we wanted and then an EOW meeting to deep-dive into what we'd learned. It was our lead's idea and management was in full support, when I joined the team they'd been doing it for years. Shipping code was optional that week, the stated goal was just to absorb as much as possible. The privilege was being able to use our good, fresh, caffeinated engineering time on real learning. When I was in college I could do 8h of homework and then watch lectures at 9pm, at this point, not so much :)
Aurornis 2y ago
> say, sponsoring your employees' visits to conferences shows that you treat them well, care about their personal learning and growth, and inturn motivates them to look for synergies between their interests and work As much as I’ve enjoyed employer-sponsored conferences in the past, I have to be honest that it seems like very few people are there to learn and come up with ways to help their employers. It feels like an open secret that people go to conferences primarily for networking and finding other job opportunities to trade up to. It’s actually a common recruiting strategy to go to conferences and find people looking to find new jobs.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  At one job I had in Sweden, conference trips abroad were a way to give engineers a reward that wasn't taxed at 60-80%. I enjoyed my trips, but I learned very little.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    What kinds of rewards were these that are not taxed?
    - hiatus 2y ago
      Business travel is not taxable for the employee.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        Okay, but how is that a reward? Maybe I wrongfully assumed we were talking about a money / material reward here.
        darkwater 2y ago
        If you consider going to a conference abroad like a mini-holiday with everything paid, and maybe even some fun activity, well, it can be seen as a reward.
udev4096 2y ago
These conferences are nothing but a waste of time. There is hardly any value to it. Instead go to USENIX, NDSS, all-systems-go, linux plumbers event, fosdem, and a bunch of other community driven confs
- fragmede 2y ago
  But then you're just nitpicking on which conference to go to. Places I've worked had a broad education budget that let the employee choose which conference they'd prefer to attend.
viraptor 2y ago
> Conferences are expensive. > AWS reinvent for example requires you to spend 2000 dollars on That's an extreme example. There's thousands of other, more local, less expensive, less extravagant conferences. It's more for show than useful for the attendants, especially with the YouTube recordings. Anyone who can gain thousands or millions from new ideas in AWS also has TAMs ready to relay the interesting parts of reinvent during regular meetings.
TZubiri 2y ago
" travel to Las Vegas" Yep, that's a paid vacation for SF engineers.
Benanov 2y ago
My boss and I once justified a visit to one of the Autodesk conferences (which was, in my opinion, quite lavish and expensive) by my getting time with some of their API developers. It was maybe 15 minutes, but it was worth every second.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Can you say more about why this time was valuable?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dakiol 2y ago
I have to agree. And I’m all for “give everything to the engineers”, but I cannot rationally justify tech conferences. The only thing is that it creates cohesion among your team (if all of them go together to the same conference), but one could just as well organise a meet-up in the main office for a couple of days.
hingusdingus 2y ago
I would say it depends on the content of the conference. I'm a EE but work on process controls systems. If it's a specialized industry specific users group where people in the same type of role swap operating experience, that's worth it. I.e. a heavily regulated industry where the safety of the public is involved like nuclear power, air planes, oil, etc. The other type of conference is if your plant is specifically on a certain vendor for your core process. So automation firms for industrial controls conferences fit this bill If you're a Honeywell shop, go-to Honeywell users group, Allen Bradley go to process solutions users group, or anything with aveva going to aveva world. If the production of your plant is dependent on the lifecycle of a vendor for parts, support and licenses, this type of conference is a must. For both of these types there is a smart option to save a ton, volunteer to present. Most of the time if you present something worthwhile at a conference they waive the fee.
solatic 2y ago
I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types. But the vast majority of large company payrolls are stacked with 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. If a company wants these people to skill-up, they need to do it on company time, and they need to bring someone from the outside to bring in outside knowledge. Conferences are basically just an easy way for companies to outsource this, and companies will prefer to pay for conferences like re:Invent which will showcase vendors who got stuff like SOC2 to ensure they will pass Compliance, Legal, and Procurement, and not for conferences like FOSDEM which will help people build stuff that Only One Person Understands And Therefore We Can't Maintain It.
- m463 2y ago
  > These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. on the other hand, some read to distraction...
- croes 2y ago
  > 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, I think you mix two types of employees. There is nothing wrong with being a 9-5 guy. Doesn’t mean they don’t inform themselves on HN etc. Your example sounds more like the type who just does what they’re told and nothing more. I don't know if this type would benefit from a conference or if a learning course wouldn't be more suitable.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  >I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types. I assure you, HN has plenty of us stupid, lazy and incompetent people.
- soco 2y ago
  Having a healthy work life balance doesn't preclude self study. As a matter of fact, instead of losing a few family days for the privilege to clink with some tech bros, I rather prefer watching the recordings on fast forward past the useless banter and lame jokes until I get to the meat of the presentation - if any.
mooreds 2y ago
I think conferences are good for a few reasons, but agree they are expensive. Things conferences are useful for: - exposing you to new ideas - letting you interact with others in your community - carving out time to learn The last one is really important. Sure, I can watch re:invent videos on YouTube, but will I? Having focused time that isn't interrupted by normal work (or, minimally) is a great luxury that conferences afford.

unsnap_biceps 2y ago

I would also add that people shouldn't overlook regional or local conferences. The big ones are a lot of fun and have a lot of benefits, but local or regional ones can often be way cheaper and also still have some great content and networking.

Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Conferences are often great places to receive better offers at other firms too. =3

hooverd 2y ago

re:Invent sessions aside from chalk talks are useless. It's definitely a fun experience though.

joenot443 2y ago

Totally agree about conferences. I worked on a great iOS team at a FAANG where during WWDC we had scheduled time to watch as many talks as we wanted and then an EOW meeting to deep-dive into what we'd learned. It was our lead's idea and management was in full support, when I joined the team they'd been doing it for years. Shipping code was optional that week, the stated goal was just to absorb as much as possible. The privilege was being able to use our good, fresh, caffeinated engineering time on real learning. When I was in college I could do 8h of homework and then watch lectures at 9pm, at this point, not so much :)

Aurornis 2y ago

> say, sponsoring your employees' visits to conferences shows that you treat them well, care about their personal learning and growth, and inturn motivates them to look for synergies between their interests and work As much as I’ve enjoyed employer-sponsored conferences in the past, I have to be honest that it seems like very few people are there to learn and come up with ways to help their employers. It feels like an open secret that people go to conferences primarily for networking and finding other job opportunities to trade up to. It’s actually a common recruiting strategy to go to conferences and find people looking to find new jobs.

BurningFrog 2y ago
At one job I had in Sweden, conference trips abroad were a way to give engineers a reward that wasn't taxed at 60-80%. I enjoyed my trips, but I learned very little.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  What kinds of rewards were these that are not taxed?
  - hiatus 2y ago
    Business travel is not taxable for the employee.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Okay, but how is that a reward? Maybe I wrongfully assumed we were talking about a money / material reward here.
      - darkwater 2y ago
        If you consider going to a conference abroad like a mini-holiday with everything paid, and maybe even some fun activity, well, it can be seen as a reward.

udev4096 2y ago

These conferences are nothing but a waste of time. There is hardly any value to it. Instead go to USENIX, NDSS, all-systems-go, linux plumbers event, fosdem, and a bunch of other community driven confs

fragmede 2y ago
But then you're just nitpicking on which conference to go to. Places I've worked had a broad education budget that let the employee choose which conference they'd prefer to attend.

viraptor 2y ago

> Conferences are expensive. > AWS reinvent for example requires you to spend 2000 dollars on That's an extreme example. There's thousands of other, more local, less expensive, less extravagant conferences. It's more for show than useful for the attendants, especially with the YouTube recordings. Anyone who can gain thousands or millions from new ideas in AWS also has TAMs ready to relay the interesting parts of reinvent during regular meetings.

TZubiri 2y ago

" travel to Las Vegas" Yep, that's a paid vacation for SF engineers.

Benanov 2y ago

My boss and I once justified a visit to one of the Autodesk conferences (which was, in my opinion, quite lavish and expensive) by my getting time with some of their API developers. It was maybe 15 minutes, but it was worth every second.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
Can you say more about why this time was valuable?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dakiol 2y ago

I have to agree. And I’m all for “give everything to the engineers”, but I cannot rationally justify tech conferences. The only thing is that it creates cohesion among your team (if all of them go together to the same conference), but one could just as well organise a meet-up in the main office for a couple of days.

hingusdingus 2y ago

I would say it depends on the content of the conference. I'm a EE but work on process controls systems. If it's a specialized industry specific users group where people in the same type of role swap operating experience, that's worth it. I.e. a heavily regulated industry where the safety of the public is involved like nuclear power, air planes, oil, etc. The other type of conference is if your plant is specifically on a certain vendor for your core process. So automation firms for industrial controls conferences fit this bill If you're a Honeywell shop, go-to Honeywell users group, Allen Bradley go to process solutions users group, or anything with aveva going to aveva world. If the production of your plant is dependent on the lifecycle of a vendor for parts, support and licenses, this type of conference is a must. For both of these types there is a smart option to save a ton, volunteer to present. Most of the time if you present something worthwhile at a conference they waive the fee.

solatic 2y ago

I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types. But the vast majority of large company payrolls are stacked with 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. If a company wants these people to skill-up, they need to do it on company time, and they need to bring someone from the outside to bring in outside knowledge. Conferences are basically just an easy way for companies to outsource this, and companies will prefer to pay for conferences like re:Invent which will showcase vendors who got stuff like SOC2 to ensure they will pass Compliance, Legal, and Procurement, and not for conferences like FOSDEM which will help people build stuff that Only One Person Understands And Therefore We Can't Maintain It.

m463 2y ago
> These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, etc. on the other hand, some read to distraction...
croes 2y ago
> 9-5 types who clock in, clock out, go home to spend time on anything not related to their job. These types don't read HN, don't watch engineering YouTube, don't read r/programming, don't read Slashdot, I think you mix two types of employees. There is nothing wrong with being a 9-5 guy. Doesn’t mean they don’t inform themselves on HN etc. Your example sounds more like the type who just does what they’re told and nothing more. I don't know if this type would benefit from a conference or if a learning course wouldn't be more suitable.
Qwertious 2y ago
>I agree that conferences like re:Invent are a waste of time and money on the HN crowd, who are anyway self-motivated continuous learner types. I assure you, HN has plenty of us stupid, lazy and incompetent people.
soco 2y ago
Having a healthy work life balance doesn't preclude self study. As a matter of fact, instead of losing a few family days for the privilege to clink with some tech bros, I rather prefer watching the recordings on fast forward past the useless banter and lame jokes until I get to the meat of the presentation - if any.

mooreds 2y ago

I think conferences are good for a few reasons, but agree they are expensive. Things conferences are useful for: - exposing you to new ideas - letting you interact with others in your community - carving out time to learn The last one is really important. Sure, I can watch re:invent videos on YouTube, but will I? Having focused time that isn't interrupted by normal work (or, minimally) is a great luxury that conferences afford.