Has a company ever invested in your professional growth?
Posted by NotScrollsApparently@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 116 comments
Has a company you worked for ever dedicated time for you to learn new technologies, try out new tools or practices - on company hours and/or budget - or is it something that you've always been expected to do on your own and in your free time?
I've never been big on conferences and similar events since they were more about networking and representing your company than actually learning something useful, so I'm wondering how do companies usually maintain the skills and expertise of their employees (if they do)?
Zealousideal_Hawk240@reddit
Only when I was 24 out of college and well liked at a 200 person company. They ended up getting a lot of value out of me and let me train but never coughed up a raise so I left.
I feel the pace of the industry and reliance on devs to be Jack of all trades has changed the landscape. I have to beg managers to pay attention and point out how I’m doing to them.
And I find my self in jobs where I’m expected to be proficient for feature work in 2-4 weeks instead of the longer expected onboarding for devs that used to be common. It’s not fun but at 7 YoE I can adapt but idk man industry gone wild.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
and then you get a cookie-cutter response that they will happily contradict next week if they want to
Yeah this is crazy, someone expected me to understand ElasticSearch querying in less than a week (I have never worked with anything related to Elastic)
elusiveoso@reddit
At my last job, I did what I referred to as forward Fridays. It was a day of doing experiments and prototypes. I attended numerous conferences and workshops too.
As it turns out, companies who have a training budget and then cut it to zero is a really good indicator of layoffs in the near future.
earlgreyyuzu@reddit
Mine superficially encourages it, but when it comes to actually doing it, their reaction is not exactly positive. They are likely to make claims or assumptions against you — that it’s taking away from delivering for company goals, that you’re not interested in your current work, that you want to leave, etc. It depends on the manager though. Some people are not targeted this way, if management is comfortable with letting them grow.
alinroc@reddit
I worked for a place like this. There was ostensibly a training budget and people could get classes, conferences, etc. out of it. Except most of the good learning opportunities at the time were in-person and required travel. And travel came out of a different budget. So "yes, you can go to that conference, we have budget for it" turned into "we may not have the funds for you to actually get there."
elusiveoso@reddit
I have the "we'll pay for the conference but not for your travel plan" as well. Also known as the "you are crazy if you think I want to go to a conference bad enough to fund my own travel" plan.
isurujn@reddit
I worked at a place where they'd pay for a course but you have to sign an agreement that you'll stay at the company for X number of years. Needless to say, no one was keen on taking that offer.
GlobalScreen2223@reddit
Some people are secure in developing because the company isn't threatened by the idea of them leaving. Otherwise will be forced to spend 90% of their time managing how their leadership feels about whatever project they take on
tatersnakes@reddit
That’s the way my company is. Training, tuition reimbursement, WFH ergonomics stuff, etc — any time someone asks if it is covered, you get a “yes, but it comes out of your manager’s budget”, which I think discourages a lot of people
martyfenwick@reddit
Similar experience for me. There is a “development plan” document for me but there’s hardly ever anything on it now because it doesn’t lead to anything
GMKrey@reddit
My first full time gig gave us an online library of courses, paid for whatever within a few hundred dollars, and had a system where once every few sprints you got an entire sprint to working on/learning whatever you wanted. All that extra study time ended up being really handy once I hit my growth ceiling at that place
Sensitive-Ear-3896@reddit
Alcatel lucent once reimbursed me for college classes
hippydipster@reddit
Yes. The last time was around 2012 though. Xerox would do this a lot in the 90s as well.
Interesting-Ad1803@reddit
Absolutely! Nearly all the companies I've worked for placed a high value on continuous learning. One I worked for went so far as to schedule 3 weeks a year (1 in January and 2 in July) at their headquarters where developers had a choice of multiple seminars and classes. It was awesome.
It's too bad more companies are not this foresighted! It not only upskilled the team members but built a very strong comradery between many of us.
Others were not so format about it but did pay for classes, seminars, books, etc. Today, the company I work for has Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning available and provides the time to learn as a part of our regular processes.
I've heard the argument made that it's bad for business because when you train someone they just leave for another job. Well that can happen but it's the exception. Additionally, in an environment where learning is not a part of the culture, the best people will leave anyway.
marceemarcee@reddit
First company, to a point, yes. Time given for learning attendance in conferences for example. Current, they're very into the optics of it (conference once a year, but actually not much learned. Mostly networking if you're into that). Actual time and money into my professional development, not so much.
sehrgut@reddit
Nope. One job once gave me a free day off to attend a conference that I got into for free by volunteering. That's it.
audentis@reddit
Yes, two different companies now.
The first one was an engineering consultancy which had extensive training for juniors and mediors. Most of this wasn't company specific. It was about making the engineers more business savy as required in these roles, which was also incredibly valuable for the rest of my career.
The second is my current employer where we have €10k annual educational budget with practically no questions asked. The only condition is that if there isn't a direct application in your current position, you do it in your own time. But if you can link it to your current or upcoming projects you even get the study hours. You can use this for conferences, but also courses and certifications.
NiteShdw@reddit
Yes. I had two leadership classes paid for at $4k each.
__deeetz__@reddit
My old gig allowed me to visit various conferences over the years, had an internal developer talk program, and 8(!) weeks of hack time per year.
It was glorious.
The new one gives us Fridays time for this. It’s less focused but still ok.
handsoapdispenser@reddit
My take is that courses, conferences, hack weeks are basically just paid goofing off. I've only ever learned anything by doing. The times I've gotten true career growth it was getting staffed to projects that were outside my experience and being given a clear goal that I had to figure out how to achieve. Any training I've ever had has left my brain long ago and I've never learned anything tangible at a conference.
syklemil@reddit
Personal development time, including hack weeks, can be pretty variable. I like'em pretty well as an opportunity to explore stuff and some serendipity, like discovering Kyverno and introducing it to eliminate some configuration errors people are prone to making, rewriting a small but misbehaving python pod after going to a talk on kubert at kubecon (and teaching myself Rust at the same time).
But it is on management to keep the employees engaged and eager to try stuff out. If they make people averse to experimentation, or mentally checked out, then they're not going to get much out of it. But at that point the lack of gains from personal development time will be the least of the company's problems.
Courses and hack weeks absolutely should have you doing stuff; conferences are more a short burst of keeping up to date with what's happening in that field. You're not going to come away from them with the knowledge of how to do X, but you should come away with a "huh, are we kind of late on adopting X? And what is this Y stuff?" kind of feeling, which can again be followed by "I don't think this thing is worth it" after looking more into it.
__deeetz__@reddit
I disagree. Not completely of course, there’s not 100% ROI. But I’ve done things in the Hack weeks that then helped me later. Even completely private projects had some positive feedback. Famously one colleague hacked a feature that then became a part of the product.
And on conferences I got inspired to try things differently and learn about tools and approaches I didn’t know until then.
So sure, there’s a part of it that’s “just” fun. But something immediately salvageable was in it, too. Plus a happy dev is a good dev I guess.
martyfenwick@reddit
I’m in Perth, Western Australia and the only conferences I get to are the freebies that wash up in my city. My company don’t pay to send you to conferences unfortunately
Breklin76@reddit
Yes. Most of my employers encouraged it. My very first job out of college sent me to several certification courses and workshops. We have an education reimbursement program at my current. It’s nice to have folks foster learning.
Constant_Stock_6020@reddit
We have "free Friday" which no one makes use of. You can learn whatever on free Friday. We also go to conferences, to learn. Not at all to represent the company. We also get paid university courses or whatever, to learn something useful. Mostly for a reason, but also just to develop your skills in an area. Its pretty common to be sent to a 3 week project lead course. Not internal. We also have some internal courses, to learn from each other.
I really enjoy the benefits of it :)
Whitchorence@reddit
I think even if such a thing is not explicitly scheduled it is a normal and expected thing for the time to complete a task to include the time spent researching the problem and the tools at hand to solve it.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Yes. This was a common theme early in my career. I had great managers who would identify new challenges then give me projects that were a slight reach beyond my current skills. If I wanted a book or course or software license it was paid for without question. It was expected that I’d take longer to finish the task but the investment was worth it.
Wild_Struggle922@reddit
How does one find a manager or mentor like this? I’ve been a senior software engineer for 10 years (1 year x 10) and I still have not found the Mr Miyagi that I’ve been looking for who will take me from amateur to expert. I’ve only been in sink or swim environments and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll last in this industry given that I don’t have the brains or the chops for this field
chicknfly@reddit
Homie, I’ve only made it for five years and I’m about to jump ship over to operations management with a stint as a barista in between. I started coding for fun again now that I’m laid off and it’s a night and day difference in enjoyment.
Itchy_Platform_4503@reddit
From my experience they arent at big places.
They are at smaller companies where they can run the whole thing and not have a shitload bureaucracy. Mine taught me so much and now I’m starting my own team after 4 years of working with him.
It was amazing to learn with the mindset of dont ask for permission but ask for forgiveness. He gave me the keys to the castle and said try not to break it and ask for help if you are really stuck, and then threw me head first into the fires lol.
We now have quarterly lunches to meet up and discuss all the new fun shit we’re doing at our new jobs lol.
Wild_Struggle922@reddit
That’s awesome man, I wish I had these opportunities. I’ve been in super hyper competitive environments where everyone constantly tries to one up each other and it has decimated any confidence I have left as a professional software engineer. I’m just not good enough and it kills me
Itchy_Platform_4503@reddit
Look in weird places. My first job that started as an internship and ended with 4 promotions was for a Manufacturing company that did nutraceuticals.
I always thought I’d work at Intel or Microsoft, but i have had a helluva lot more fun at these random places than i think i would at a big company. Plus once you get experience you can get into pretty niche spots to earn a decent pay.
Both of my jobs have been at manufacturing/wholesale oriented places and theres no competition with one another, we all try and help each other grow and shit. Just be a cool guy without an ego and know the basics and be unfront if you dont know shit and other developers will be inclined to help you grow.
Wild_Struggle922@reddit
That last paragraph.. man, that’s what a normal work environment looks like? I genuinely wish I had that. My company does stack ranking and it brings out the worst in people, no one is willing to help and people are quick to throw others under the bus and take whatever credit they can get
Altruistic_Brief_479@reddit
Even with stack ranking, the culture you are seeing can be avoided. The manager just needs to place value on collaboration and helping each other in the review phase. Also, lots of places will give higher performing teams more favorable distributions amongst the categories.
Culture starts from the top, and lower and middle management can help fight, but if they fight too hard, they'll either get run off or burnt out.
There's lots of places that can't pay as much so they use things like extra PTO and work life balance as selling points. Research retention rates when applying. If you constantly chase top dollar, you're more likely to end up with super high expectations.
JoeBidensLongFart@reddit
All stack-ranking employers have shitty culture. Its unavoidable. Nobody will genuinely help others if they know it could very well work against them at review time.
YodaTurboLoveMachine@reddit
And you're always in the panopticon with Jira and Agile: management can pull reports on how much you produce per time unit at any time. Daily standups keeps you in line and stresses you a bit when you have staff people reporting daily in the same meeting. Remote work makes you interact less with people (my experience). The hiring funnel throws you directly into leetcode. etc
Itchy_Platform_4503@reddit
This advice probably wont help in those like… predator grounds environments? Lol
Ive never worked somewhere like that but tbh i can not be bothered to argue and fight for me job. Like fire me dog idc ill leave you zero documentation and say GG GL lol.
But if you end up somewhere chill, don’t bullshit us. Don’t lie and pretend, like we know you’re lying we just cant be assed to call you out and try and give you the benefit of the doubt but really like theres no way github didnt save your fuckin push lmaoooo. Instead we will just secretly despise you and not want to help you and it’ll snowball into a bad job for you. Just be honest, upfront, and eager to learn and just happy to be there and not somewhere else.
DanManPanther@reddit
They can be at big places or small places. If you aren't working for one - talk to engineers in other areas at the company you are at. You'll find most engineers want to find people to mentor - it helps them out too.
If you find a better manager for where you are at in your career, stay there. Learn. It tends to be worth it.
NotScrollsApparently@reddit (OP)
I'm mostly self-taught and when I needed to learn something I'd just tinker with it, read the docs, find online tutorials or nowadays even watch youtube videos. I don't know how I'd even get started on finding courses or good items to use the budget on without it feeling wasteful or performative, as you said.
However, I think i'm in a position where I could get at least a small budget for educational purposes and it seems like a shame to not take advantage of that. Do you have any advice on what was the most helpful in the end, besides lucking out on great managers :D?
OkMacaron493@reddit
Nope. I study outside of work and add on 5 hours of study meetings per week. My performance is too high for my calendar to be analyzed so it works out.
kevinossia@reddit
I get to work on projects that stretch the boundaries of what I actually know how to do, and I get to build a lot of stuff from scratch, in a domain that, when I first started, was totally new to me.
Pretty good way to grow professionally.
Never been to a conference, though.
ChadtheWad@reddit
Usually if I want to learn something on company time, I stuff it into a project or add it as part of a proposal. I think the challenge people here have is that they assume you have to ask permission... however, speaking from experience here, usually it's just a matter of setting it up so that what you want to do isn't a question or request. You don't say "I'd like to learn this to develop my skills," you say "I'm going to demo this because it's likely the best solution to solve X" and the less you try to justify it, the better.
SpeedingTourist@reddit
That’s how software gets bloated and full of tech stacks it doesn’t need that will be challenging for anyone to maintain. Also can result in immature tech/projects being used in business critical systems (I think back to early days of Kubernetes when there were so many immature tools being crammed into new infrastructure stacks just because the tools were new and fresh).
I think your approach can work, and I do it too when it’s a low consequence decision or when the tech actually fits the needs of the project. But one needs to exercise restraint and be brutally honest about whether it really is the best tool/tech for the task/project before immediately using it. It should be a balance, ya know? And you’ve gotta think about the medium to long-term consequences.
ChadtheWad@reddit
Oh yeah, it absolutely has to be part of striking a balance and not adding it as a rider to critical stuff. Otherwise it creates a bad reputation. However, my main point is most engineers think they need to ask for permission to experiment... and often don't realize that it's possible to get this stuff done without going through channels.
However, I'd say it's fine to sometimes make suboptimal decisions in order to prioritize personal development. The truth is that the vast majority of software is junk that'll be lucky to last 5 years. If you're especially unlucky, it could be actually useful and last for longer. Fortunately, the important stuff is usually important enough to justify a reversal of experiments if needed. From my own experience: I've had really shitty experiments before for critical work that ended up being a total failure... but I used to learnings to start other experiments that became massive successes. One in particular I know spawned its own team. Point being, it doesn't hurt as much as people think to be more risk-seeking.
SpeedingTourist@reddit
Thank you for the perspective! I think we are in agreement about most of this. :)
Simke11@reddit
One of the places I worked for a while had 2 weeks of paid study time per year. However chargeable time > paid study time, so I only used this once over the course of 6 years I was with them, when they needed to bump up number of people who had certification due to partnership requirements. Most other places were just learning on the go, if we decided to use new technology you'll just learn on the job by doing it. My current employer will reimburse exam costs, but only if I pass, and expectation is to study in my own time, which due to having family and life outside of work is not possible.
TalesOfSymposia@reddit
As in they spend extra money, not much. Wherever I worked they usually don't have the sufficient staff or budget for that. The one place that most likely does I didn't stay long enough but they did allow time to get familiar with their codebase for about a month.
Surprisingly I had a freelance client buy me a programming book. They needed work done in Ruby which I had no prior experience in, but showed enough backend skills to convince them I was good enough to learn quickly enough.
derangement_syndrome@reddit
Yes. Every place I’ve worked does this. I don’t think I would work somewhere that didn’t, but that’s just me.
unheardhc@reddit
Yep. In fact, one of my colleagues is getting their fill salary but only required to work 30hrs a week. The other 10hrs they let him study since he is pursuing his MS.
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit
We have B2B Udemy subscription. Company provides unlimited training for basically anything. Even non-tech related stuff.
cleatusvandamme@reddit
Are you happy with Udemy? I have a few issues with it. I sometimes I have a hard time following the speakers if they aren't from the US. Their accent can be distracting.
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit
If you are working in tech, you get to learn all kind of accents
analoguewavefront@reddit
How does this work out in practice? Unlimited offers are usually highly limited by other factors such as workload and expectations.
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit
You take courses in the evenings or the weekends. Udemy is also quite cheap. Courses can range from $10-500.
Obviously no one is paying your work time, while you taking a course.
Bingo-heeler@reddit
The expectation is you train on your own time
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit
This guys gets it.
Fabiolean@reddit
This IS a thing but in my experience it is tied to a leadership culture that values it. Time is money so even something as simple as "the engineering teams keep 8a-9a on wednesdays free for learning stuff" is something the leadership has to be intentional with.
The places I've worked that *did* value this would either provide a block of time for regular group study sessions on new topics (this month we're learning K3s!) or gave space for people to formally share what they learned on new projects with the rest of the crew (Here's how we integrated dooblers with that last client's IPAM.) Those same places also usually had budget for ordering educational material like books or online courses.
erinmikail@reddit
In my experience - like many others have said - it totally depends on the manager.
I’ve had managers go above and beyond for me to help me find growth and managers that couldn’t be bothered.
At all different size companies
snes_guy@reddit
Once upon a time this was common practice. I think 2012-2016 was the height of this. I worked in a place that had lots of tech talks, training sessions you were encouraged to attend, and a Safari Books subscription, which I think included virtual courses we could take.
Nowadays, I think the expectation is that you'll just learn on your own, or if the company pivots in a major way e.g. to a totally different technology or product, they'll just fire everyone who isn't a fit and hire up for the new skills they require. In this kind of labor market, there is no pressure to provide training for workers since they figure there is a lot of talent looking.
busybody124@reddit
It's more likely that you can invest in your own growth and get your company to reimburse you. Many tech companies have lots of budget available for learning and development, but it's on you to seek out opportunities to use it. I've used this money to buy books, courses, go to conferences, and so on.
chsiao999@reddit
Yup, every manager I've had has encouraged me to learn and grow. Task planning has always been a balancing act between business requirements and my own interests and growth areas.
barkingcat@reddit
My former company has a corp subscription to Linkedin Learning and allows us some time per week to just learn anything. If it's relevant to the current position, that's a bonus that I can put on my personal evaluation for the job to get a better raise.
If it's not related to my position, that's ok, that's what the sub is there for, and usually people use it to get a different/better job, or to use it for self-care (things like learning about gardening or playing an instrument, etc)
AchillesDev@reddit
Doing projects just outside of your expertise (whether you push for it or management does), going to conferences (I do actually find them valuable, regardless of how shitfaced I get at night, if you're not learning at them you're doing them wrong), paying for courses and books, etc.
EnvironmentOld9015@reddit
What you are looking for is a learning organization. A company that provides easy learning opportunities, technical book clubs, teaching Thursday's, etc. My current company is what I would consider a strong learning organization. The first conference I went on was with my current company, I was able to spend an entire week learning DevOps about 7 years ago. Since then I have been back at the same conference once more and two internal AI conferences. As for mentors, in the last year I started mentioning sessions for coops and new grad new hires. I teach them to find a mentor whenever they are and I also help them find learning organizations. That might be the most important thing early in your career.
aznraver2k@reddit
My place pays for pluralsight and O'Reilly Safari subscription. I find it really useful.
Jesus-was-a-mushroom@reddit
My company is currently sponsoring my master's degree in beam physics. I take classes part time (6 credit hours per year) so the overall impact on my day to day is minimal.
-Quiche-@reddit
My company will pay for all of the certifications I want with the vendors we usG, along with language lessons in any country that the company has a presence in.
They'll also pay for me to get a Masters degree at the schools they work with, but then I have to stay for a certain amount of time afterwards or pay it back.
Altruistic_Brief_479@reddit
My company paid for tuition/books/fees for my master's degree.
I get about 40 hours per year of paid training. I can do more on my own time or if I can justify that I need it to accomplish current tasking.
I also get about 40 hours per year for mentoring early careers, and an additional 40 hours to be mentored by senior leadership.
Sometimes, there's programs that target leadership or technical development that you can apply to for additional networking/mentoring, and conferences are available for a select few.
drguid@reddit
Been a coder for 27 years now and the last useful training course I got sent on was back in 2008.
Now I just have to do fire safety training (not really useful when you wfh) and DEI woke courses.
The world has changed, and not for the better.
wholesomeguy555@reddit
They got me a one year pass for LeetCode (2019) that I used to land a better job.
diablo1128@reddit
Not in a direct sense over my 15 YOE.
Are these "new technologies, try out new tools or practices" directly related to getting work done? If I need to learn Jenkins because I am being tasked to setup CI/CD, then yes that's part of work time.
If you mean more along the lines of you are a Front-End SWE, but want to learn embedded development, that is of no use to the company you current working for, then no. That would be something you need to do on your own time since that has no direct value to what you are working on.
I feel conference are pretty much useless for companies that I worked at. They send Bob and Jen to Google I/O in SF, back when it was in person, and hear about all the new Android features. Yet Bob and Jen doesn't do anything when they get back to disseminate that information within the company.
So they learned stuff, but nobody else did unless they watched videos online on their own time. It seemed more like a reward for people management favored. The company is obviously not going to send all 20 Android SWEs on various projects in the company.
Companies I worked for do nothing unless it's part of getting your job done. Anything you want to learn for fun is expected to be done on your own.
If a new version of C++ is released then it's up to the self starter SWEs to get that propagated through the project / company. They do that by talking to leads and manager and explaining the benefits to upgrading compilers and writing code using the new standard. Otherwise it really doesn't happen.
Even then if other SWEs on a project doesn't get on board and leads / managers are not invested on seeing it happen, then usually that initiative fails with the SWEs that were motivated to do something.
I'm sure there are companies out there that are better with this than others. My 15 YOE at private non-tech companies in non-tech cities have more or less operated in the way I've stated.
huuaaang@reddit
Yeah, every review I’m asked about.my professional goals and they try to accommodate.
chills716@reddit
The company I really enjoyed, we had a $5,000/ yr/ person, training allowance. The high dollar stuff required approval, but under $300 you could either do a reimbursement or add it to a system and they would cover it without question. I also did a handful of instructor lead MS courses where I would miss a week of work and it was fine.
qqqqqx@reddit
I have a $5000 allowance at my current company, but it only applies to accredited courses. I've found it pretty hard to find a good class I can sign up for, unless you're working towards some kind of college degree.
teslas_love_pigeon@reddit
Get a masters in CS at University of Texas. Their program is fully online and only costs $10k.
https://cdso.utexas.edu/
Itsalongwaydown@reddit
mine is 10k but need to stay there 1 year for 50% and 2 years for 100% without needing to pay it back. Its pretty standard stuff.
scoot2006@reddit
When I worked at LinkedIn (post IPO but before the Microsoft acquisition) their motto was “If this isn’t your dream job we want to help get you there”. And they meant it.
We were able to attend conferences, take classes at colleges (there was a limit on tuition reimbursement), and they provided us with free access to several online learning resources. Beyond all that we had an “InDay” every month to focus on personal development. There was also something, apparently stolen from Google, called 20% time where you could block off 20% of your time for personal development.
It was the best job I’ve had professionally. For a few years, anyway. Then things changed after a few years and MS acquired another year after and I went elsewhere.
Spider_pig448@reddit
LinkedIn still had all of this up to 2022 at least, from people I've talked to. So it's not something that disappeared with the Microsoft acquisition. Also their week off in July, on top of unlimited vacation
scoot2006@reddit
I didn’t want to speak to anything I wasn’t aware of. Wasn’t trying to say those things in particular had been taken away. The overall attitude of the company and many perks we had when I started had definitely changed, though.
Spider_pig448@reddit
No worries. Just further characterizing the experience. From what I've heard, last year is when many of the perks have started disappearing (in NYC at least)
scoot2006@reddit
Interesting. I never got to visit the NY office. I was out at the headquarters in Mountain View and then Sunnyvale. The entire office situation may have been a lot different between the two in the first place 🤷♂️
tassadar8584@reddit
Not always sadly :(
ivancea@reddit
Both! Never depend on your company to learn and improve, always do it yourself. If the company offers you time or money for it, use and enjoy it as an extra.
My idea is, you hire people with motivation, and people with motivation will keep themselves outdated, unless something happens (which you as a company can't usually control).
But it's harder to "control" whether your employees are learning or not. Just keep them as happy as possible, and let them run. Also, letting them work on funny things from time to time.
Engineering-Mean@reddit
My first job payed for me to go to grad school. They didn't have a tuition reimbursement program, the CTO just declared that they were going to do it because I mentioned in passing I wanted to once a few months before.
KnarkedDev@reddit
All the time. I've been to conferences, bought tools and books, tried out new languages on microservices.
grizzlybair2@reddit
Was given a full month to go get aws dev cert. Outside of that it's always been expected on our own time or it's a new tech our dept is going to use - here's a story go learn for $ days lol. We are implementing this sprint lol.
Drayenn@reddit
My company offers 52h of self training time on whatever i want per year.
Theyre also very open to switching teams. I swap everytime i feel i stagnate so far, trying techs i havent yet.
New team im switching too is more experimental, they straight up told me they make a lot of mini projects and will try diferrent tech regularly.
general_00@reddit
The best company I've been at provided extra time off for studying, entrance to conferences, and basically any book / course you wanted. They also hosted a local programming meet up group and provided free food and drinks.
We had hackathons with the wackiest, weirdest projects we could think of. Everyone loved it.
At some point new management came and started "improving" the work efficiency by increasingly requiring that all extra activities be strictly work related. They gave us slashed budgets, tighter deadlines, and marvels like hackathons where you could work extra doing your regular day job.
It was good while it lasted.
Rymasq@reddit
if I am not learning something new at a job I am wasting my time. Every position in the 8 years I’ve spent working has had me touch something new and different
ravigehlot@reddit
Yeah, I’ve been sent to some cool places for work. I went to Amsterdam for a conference, then there was another one on a cruise ship that took me to Nassau and Cocobay. I’ve also been to Miami and Atlanta for more conferences, and once they sent me to Jacksonville. Oh, and they even covered our Azure training recently. Not sure if it counts, but one of my old companies used to provide lunch, too.
deefstes@reddit
My current company, absolutely! They have many incentives to encourage and reward professional growth. One of my favourites is an annual company wide competition where you can submit a proposal for an app or system that you want to develop. Throughout the year, the offer mentorship and hackathons to help you progress. They give you a certain number of days off from client work to dedicate to your side project. They assist with AWS or Azure cloud infrastructure. They provide licenses for productivity tools you might use etc.
And at the end of the year, you stand to win a handsome sum of money. I came second last year and won an amount roughly equivalent to one month's salary.
Spiritual_Hearing_39@reddit
No. They always say they have a budget for it and then they specify that it doesn’t include travel to and from a conference or something, just online classes that you can do on your own time. The days off generous Silicon Valley companies is over outside of FAANG.
Spider_pig448@reddit
Yes of course. All of them have
theavatare@reddit
Yeah when i started i used to get 5 day training and 1 conference a year.
The internet kinda killed that. Now everyone is just like watch some youtube
Rain-And-Coffee@reddit
Once! I got sent to a dev conference.
Unfortunately I already had an offer, I went and gave my resignation when I got back.
I would have sent someone else but didn’t see how to do it without revealing my hand.
xabrol@reddit
Often, I get paid to go to conferences, ted talks, free courses, or anything else I can justify as advancing my knowledge.
peteg_is@reddit
Yes
I worked for an American company for 12 years and got sent on quite a few personal development as well as technical development courses - they were big enough to have their own in house training.
Ever since then (over 20 year ago), not so much.
Scarface74@reddit
The company I work for has unlimited PTO and measures managers by how many of their directs take at least 15 days off a year. However, they also have a separate bucket of 5 days per year where you can take time off for training. But honestly, the best thing that a company ever did for me was when the CTO allowed me to volunteer to lead projects when we both knew I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. That’s how I learned AWS.
Conferences in my opinion are a waste of money to learn. They serve as a good marketing and networking event.
We have a small budget for courses.
bluelexicon@reddit
No. But the people I worked with were often smart and it was easy to learn from their example. Ive had a lot of success and many promotions, but it came from putting in hard work and going above and beyond. Not one company ever provided me training, or anything of that nature. That being said, as a now manager/leader i know all the things i wish had been given to succeed faster and better, and i think it gives me a lot perspective to be supportive and grow the people on my team while being a buffer from upper management who retains poor support values I’ve experienced in my career.
Use_Panda@reddit
Never.
tcpukl@reddit
Apart from conferences which all shared online anyway is you pay, my current company has learning days every month where we can just learn whatever we want. Often Devs do talks about useful stuff to learn and spread knowledge.
Though no other employer has invested in staff like this.
Some_Guy_87@reddit
There is a budget to my knowledge and you are allowed to allocate time. I think even up to 1/4 of your work time or something like that. The problem is that this does not consider you won't be doing actual work. So you need to be really aggressive in saying no to things, not delivering on time, and things like that to really free up this time. Or depending on your position, I guess. For some it's probably easier to "sneak it in".
I switched to just spending 20-30 minutes each morning as an alternative for now because that makes it easier than expecting to get actual big blocks without any disturbance.
martyfenwick@reddit
Only on paper. The prof dev annual budget is $500/yr which is better than nothing but you can’t fly to a conference on that so you are more or less resigned to online courses and the likes.
There’s no encouragement from any levels of management on your prof dev so it is all up to you, which means you could suggest something a d be working on something that leads nowhere. There’s no career progression plan - it quite literally doesn’t exist. There’s only was you get a career level up is if someone above you leaves
metalbirka@reddit
At my previous job we had allocated budget for trainings and people usually used this opportunity to attend conferences (usually abroad) or getting training materials and certificates without paying a penny. Personally, I attended conferences around EU, and it was truly a unique experience that allowed me to connect with many fellow engineers in my specialization. Besides this one exception, most my employers invested in employees was giving half Friday off and or paying for Udemy courses. Sometimes, it wasn't worth the hassle, and it was easier to just pay for such courses out of pocket.
It is possible, but unfortunately not very likely. This is one of the question I always ask during interviews, and at least I know what I'm dealing with when they brag about those 10 dollar udemy courses.. as "we support professional career development "
HackVT@reddit
Yes. I encouraged my teammates to go and find things they’re stoked to go to. Some were easy sells especially things that were local or could be done remotely. Especially if people wanted to present it was such a great win to make that Allen.
lookitskris@reddit
Early on in my career I got an expensed trip to the states to go to a conference. But I went freelance pretty quickly after that so I don't think it's fair to say I haven't had anything else since as it's been down to me to sort out
NickFullStack@reddit
I don't see it as very useful for the company to spend money on my learning. That is the easy part, since I'm paid well.
The main challenge is finding the time to learn. I'm constantly learning things at work, in small chunks. These are things that are already in use by the company/team for the most part.
To learn any substantial new thing, I read at home on my own time. I doubt most companies would have me just sit at my desk for a week to learn some random new technology. That said, if it needs to be worked on and it needs to be me to work on it, then I'll learn during work hours out of necessity. But then, I'll probably just be reading some docs and doing trial and error until I get something working (rather than my preferred method of learning, which is to do a deep dive with a book, and supplement that by trying it myself).
engineerFWSWHW@reddit
Yes. Sometimes i do ask though. They paid for my project management training and certification (i do the learning on my free time). They also give us access to book subscriptions, great for upskilling. They also sponsor people who wants to go for masters or phd.
KosherBakon@reddit
Bigger tech companies often have an L&D stipend that's use or lose each year. They vary on what you can use it for.
JohnDillermand2@reddit
Mine required me to spend a least a week a year in training. I generally used that to attend a few conferences and it was entirely my choice on how/where that time was spent.
nio_rad@reddit
Yes, I attended many conferences and courses/workshops over the years, paid by the employer. I always had to be pro-active though, there was nobody "sending" me there. Also not much in terms of representing the company; the company-name is on the lanyard, and that's it.
Back when the front-end-frameworks became popular I organized multiple workshops with external coaches (mostly Angular, React, Vue) for our front-end-team, and everybody else who was interested.
Apart from that there are several coachings on non-technical soft-skills, presentation- and rethoric-skills.
Never had to use my free-time for that, although I used to code and learn a lot in my free time anyways before kids and covid.
dinosaursrarr@reddit
One paid for 2/3 of a masters degree.
JuJuTheWulfPup@reddit
My workplace has:
* on the last Friday of the month: early release (1PM), and
* on the 2nd Friday of the month: a meeting free "focus time" with examples of what to use it for as: Innovation, Learning, Collaboration, Engagement (more work, or giving people feedback), Health & Wellness
jkingsbery@reddit
A few thoughts:
B1WR2@reddit
Yes… they spent a ton of money on me to shadow AI engineers for a year… ran a couple of projects and how to determine projects.
bdzer0@reddit
I spend a lot of time researching new tech (new to our company). If I find useful training (free or otherwise) I can generally get the money/time for myself and typically at least one other.
Happens once a month or two these days, lots of initiatives in motion here.