Many companies will pay for training to enhance your value to them but may not always pay for training which enhances your value to you, in part because occasio

Many companies will pay for training to enhance your value to them but may not always pay for training which enhances your value to you, in part because occasionally (good! ethical!) companies have a plan for your career which is not the optimum plan for you. In this case, it makes sense to pay for training personally when the day job won't subsidize it, or otherwise invest in one's own professional development. (Via side projects, OSS contribution, yadda yadda whatever capital-building exercise you can licitly do outside the confines of 9 to 5.) For example, my old day job happily dropped $10k to fly me to JavaOne so that I would more effectively map XML files and JavaBeans together, but "Most efficient cog in an Enterprise Java consulting shop ever!" was not a long-term career aspiration of mine. They were pretty understanding about providing for career growth during work hours but when they didn't I did it on my own time. That eventually cost them my services but, hey, capitalism happens. Generic career advice for everyone: You are the captain of your own ship. You will have mentors, employers, and other folks who you are to some degree reliant on, but at the end of the day you have both responsibility for creating and authority to mandate forward progress.