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Formalized training is waaay too slow. I have a thousand tech videos I want to watch but can't because there's no easy way to watch them at 2x speed. A live i

Formalized training is waaay too slow. I have a thousand tech videos I want to watch but can't because there's no easy way to watch them at 2x speed. A live instructor is just a slow IRL video. the best material is usually slides. Transcripts of tech talks would be ideal. When those are missing or lacking, developers will go straight to the code as the best source. There's two types of training, enrichment and learning things to get stuff done. If it's learning stuff to get stuff down, a developer usually only has a few seconds to review a dev guide, manual, or API. Ir he/she were to spend an hour on each, reading the whole thing out it would not be feasible. development is an endless stream of hundreds of tiny bits of knowledge that have to be assembled. So there's not really any training available in getting stuff done because it's an exercise in knowledge triage. So to answer this, yes I have sat through countless hours long training sessions that could have filled a half sheet of paper. What works well is one to one conversations with experts where the developer has already built up a large list of critical 'why' questions. The 'how' questions are easily answered in seconds through q&a websites. Insight into why things work a certain way are the best.

peteretep 14y ago
Regarding the 'formalized' part, really I was thinking of there being time formally set aside for training. As you point out, for senior developers, there's often a huge list of things they want to work through on their own - I'm thinking really about supporting their doing that, and making sure that there's a small amount of discipline there where they set out what they want to watch, and why, and jot down some thoughts on what they learned afterwards.
- Khurrum 14y ago
  Might be good to schedule both some personal learning time as well as scheduling time for the tea to share new insights and discuss standards they think are worth adopting. If you want company standards, you can use software like Brainshark to build presentation slides with questions that can be answered and reviewed so that you can be sure that people understand and are on the same page.

peteretep 14y ago

Regarding the 'formalized' part, really I was thinking of there being time formally set aside for training. As you point out, for senior developers, there's often a huge list of things they want to work through on their own - I'm thinking really about supporting their doing that, and making sure that there's a small amount of discipline there where they set out what they want to watch, and why, and jot down some thoughts on what they learned afterwards.

Khurrum 14y ago
Might be good to schedule both some personal learning time as well as scheduling time for the tea to share new insights and discuss standards they think are worth adopting. If you want company standards, you can use software like Brainshark to build presentation slides with questions that can be answered and reviewed so that you can be sure that people understand and are on the same page.