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>And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing move... unless you turn it into one, by letting your skills

by omouse 11y ago

>And having a single development job at a big company for a decade isn't some kind of career-killing move... unless you turn it into one, by letting your skills stagnate and wither, which is on you. Working 40 hrs without training or proper mentoring leads to skill stagnation. A $500 training budget will get you nowhere and you'll find yourself using long weekends (like I'm doing right now) learning new skills. Maybe that's expected in the industry and I've made my peace with it but in other industries you get sent to training courses even if they take away few days or even weeks of "productive" time.

meddlepal 11y ago
Can anyone please tell me what developers use training budgets for? I feel like most things I have learned are from free resources such as blogs and StackOverflow. What do people spend money on? Books I suppose are the most likely candidate, but those can definitely be bought with $500... Do people actually get value out of conferences? Those always seem more like cash grabs and marketing events than actual training value-adds.
- knodi123 11y ago
  > Do people actually get value out of conferences? In terms of skill development? Yes, although it's value you could get for free if you read the right blogs, keep involved in the community, and are a self-motivated person. In terms of networking? Yes, although perhaps you could get that for free too, if you go to enough hackerspaces and meetups etc. Ironically, a lot of the people I meet at conferences are the kind of driven, motivated, outgoing people who are well suited to getting those benefits for free. But not all of them! I certainly derive value from going to conferences.
- djKianoosh 11y ago
  I think you'll get more value from local Meetups and the very few non-marketing conferences out there. If it's a tech company putting on a conference, expect a lot of marketing. Conferences like Strangeloop and the no-fluff ones are usually better. Other than that, books and screencasts seem to be a good way to spend that training budget as well. But there's a ton of videos online available for free too. Of course, they all require time. Which is money. :)
- FLUX-YOU 11y ago
  We've paid for numerous video tutorials and live talks about specific technologies. I suspect there's plenty of value in the well-known conferences.
mkozlows 11y ago
Three points to that: 1. This differs more from workplace to workplace than industry to industry. Many dev workplaces will give developers a week or two of official "training time." Many other industries have workplaces that don't do that. 2. The reality is, training on new technologies has more value to you than it does to your employer. If your employer uses J2EE, Subversion, and Oracle, there's little benefit to them sending you off to learn Node, git, and Mongo. But there's a big benefit to you in knowing that, potentially. If the benefits of learning flow more to you than to your employer, you shouldn't be surprised if the burden of learning falls onto you. 3. But mostly, if you're a person who finds software development genuinely interesting (the hobbyist-type), you'll keep up on stuff basically recreationally. When you read about the latest whatever, you'll be curious and want to try it out and learn how it works because you're interested in that. You don't need any formal training to learn new technologies, just a little motivation and time. An hour spent not watching TV can get you a long way in understanding a new technology.
- phamilton 11y ago
  2. The same could be said about any compensation. It generally benefits you, not your employer. That doesn't mean there's no incentive to pay you. Training should be seen as a part of compensation. While there's some alignment with the employers needs, giving employees a training budget shoulder be seen as a cheap way to provide more compensation and they should be able to use it to hone their skills in whatever area they want, regardless of its utility to employers.
  - chii 11y ago
    the question isn't whether a training budget is bad, but whether the company accounted for it when they computed your salary. Would you have swapped a training budget in lieu of some of your current salary? I think most people would say no to that.
- RabidSquirrel 11y ago
  On point 3 I'd say yes, enthusiastic people learn new stuff, but it has limits. There is too much technology for any one person to master, but I also think it's a trap to spend too much time constantly learning the latest technology, at the expense of actually building stuff (and learning from the experience). At least I found myself falling into that the last time I was between jobs -- constantly watching beginner videos on new thing X, Y, Z instead of actually doing something useful in one of them. Back in employed world of course it can be the opposite -- you become a master of whatever tech your company is using but get little exposure outside that. It is however often possible to guide the company into a new technology and get the best of both worlds.

by omouse 11y ago

meddlepal 11y ago

Can anyone please tell me what developers use training budgets for? I feel like most things I have learned are from free resources such as blogs and StackOverflow. What do people spend money on? Books I suppose are the most likely candidate, but those can definitely be bought with $500... Do people actually get value out of conferences? Those always seem more like cash grabs and marketing events than actual training value-adds.

knodi123 11y ago
> Do people actually get value out of conferences? In terms of skill development? Yes, although it's value you could get for free if you read the right blogs, keep involved in the community, and are a self-motivated person. In terms of networking? Yes, although perhaps you could get that for free too, if you go to enough hackerspaces and meetups etc. Ironically, a lot of the people I meet at conferences are the kind of driven, motivated, outgoing people who are well suited to getting those benefits for free. But not all of them! I certainly derive value from going to conferences.
djKianoosh 11y ago
I think you'll get more value from local Meetups and the very few non-marketing conferences out there. If it's a tech company putting on a conference, expect a lot of marketing. Conferences like Strangeloop and the no-fluff ones are usually better. Other than that, books and screencasts seem to be a good way to spend that training budget as well. But there's a ton of videos online available for free too. Of course, they all require time. Which is money. :)
FLUX-YOU 11y ago
We've paid for numerous video tutorials and live talks about specific technologies. I suspect there's plenty of value in the well-known conferences.

mkozlows 11y ago

Three points to that: 1. This differs more from workplace to workplace than industry to industry. Many dev workplaces will give developers a week or two of official "training time." Many other industries have workplaces that don't do that. 2. The reality is, training on new technologies has more value to you than it does to your employer. If your employer uses J2EE, Subversion, and Oracle, there's little benefit to them sending you off to learn Node, git, and Mongo. But there's a big benefit to you in knowing that, potentially. If the benefits of learning flow more to you than to your employer, you shouldn't be surprised if the burden of learning falls onto you. 3. But mostly, if you're a person who finds software development genuinely interesting (the hobbyist-type), you'll keep up on stuff basically recreationally. When you read about the latest whatever, you'll be curious and want to try it out and learn how it works because you're interested in that. You don't need any formal training to learn new technologies, just a little motivation and time. An hour spent not watching TV can get you a long way in understanding a new technology.

phamilton 11y ago
2. The same could be said about any compensation. It generally benefits you, not your employer. That doesn't mean there's no incentive to pay you. Training should be seen as a part of compensation. While there's some alignment with the employers needs, giving employees a training budget shoulder be seen as a cheap way to provide more compensation and they should be able to use it to hone their skills in whatever area they want, regardless of its utility to employers.
- chii 11y ago
  the question isn't whether a training budget is bad, but whether the company accounted for it when they computed your salary. Would you have swapped a training budget in lieu of some of your current salary? I think most people would say no to that.
RabidSquirrel 11y ago
On point 3 I'd say yes, enthusiastic people learn new stuff, but it has limits. There is too much technology for any one person to master, but I also think it's a trap to spend too much time constantly learning the latest technology, at the expense of actually building stuff (and learning from the experience). At least I found myself falling into that the last time I was between jobs -- constantly watching beginner videos on new thing X, Y, Z instead of actually doing something useful in one of them. Back in employed world of course it can be the opposite -- you become a master of whatever tech your company is using but get little exposure outside that. It is however often possible to guide the company into a new technology and get the best of both worlds.