I Like My IT Budget Tight and My Developers Stupid 235
Esther Schindler writes "'Who has money to train these guys nowadays? They should be lucky they're still employed, right? Keep thinking that way,' writes Lisa Vaas. The competition applauds your choice to glue your wallet shut. Or, to put this another way: This is why the boss won't pay for developer training. Vaas explains how those still training manage to get their training budgets funded."
yeah okay (Score:4, Insightful)
Really not trying to troll anyone with that summary.
seriously.
Why Train? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most developer training is useless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most developer training is absolutely useless. For any recent technology, unless you've got one of the engineers directly from the vendor teaching you, you're likely only going to be dealing with a consultant or lecturer that has read a book on the subject, and has maybe played with the technology in question for a week or two.
The time is better spent in the trenches, going to battle with the technology you want to learn about. You'll need to fight with it. You'll need to grab it by the testes and twist it into what you need it to be; into what you need it to do. You will learn so much more than if you sit in a room with a bunch of your co-workers and listen to the lecturer ramble on, using one unrealistic micro-example after another.
Re:yeah okay (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of stupid developers - what is it with blogs including hundreds of KB of Javascript for a mostly static page now?!
Just check out the page size there - it's 1.5MB in size uncompressed (532KB compressed) for a pretty short article in a plain-looking page. Not only that but it pulls in scripts and documents from all over the web, slowing page loads even more..
Re:Most developer training is useless. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like your experience with training is more about poor training environments than it is about the usefulness of training itself. Training is supposed to... well, train you. Train you for what? For actually using the software in real environments for real problems and creating real solutions. If the training isn't accomplishing this it may be that the training company/trainer/consultant is garbage.
Re:Why Train? (Score:5, Insightful)
When they'll do it themselves on their own time and their own dime?
It depends on the topic. It is quite likely that the more interested engineers will teach themselves Scala or some other hot language after hours. It is much less likely that they will spend their home time learning how to integrate with AcmeHorribleLegacySystem or FooCorpProprietaryTechTheyCantAccess that you need your software to work with in order for your business to earn cash. And it's not terribly easy to direct what people learn after hours -- half the replies to this post might well say "Scala??? Why would you want to learn that, ${OtherTrendingLanguage} is the way of the future!".
The bigger problem with training from my perspective it that it is usually so dumbed down and slow.
As an IT Manager (Score:3, Insightful)
I welcome my idiot colleagues that take this approach. To an IT pro, training is as valuable a method of retaining good staff as offering more money. Being proactive and obtaining training for your staff tells them you actually give a damn about them and their future, whether with the company or not, which promotes loyalty in employees who recognize the effort and, lo and behold, INCREASES the chances of retaining talent.
Those that don't care are likely to move on anyway regardless of what you do. Those that only work for money and don't want training aren't the kind of employees I want on my staff anyway (the only exception being those that go home at the end of the day and do their job as a hobby as well).
Ultimately this approach is self-defeating as the staff is untrained on evolving technology. Not only will the talent leave, those that are left are incapable of handling new projects that Management demands making you, as the manager, look like a FOOL when you can't deliver.
Give your people raises. (Score:5, Insightful)
No secret, the only way to get a decent raise is to jump ship. No one gets up the ladder at one company. Get experience, go to another job and get the raise you should have gotten, then get more experience, jump ship again.
I worked for two fortune 100 companies, and people would quit, and then they'd be back in 2-3 years. Earning 30% more.
Companies would rather hire an outsider with paper experience than give someone who knows the company a big enough raise to keep them. I even went for salary matching once and got a counter offer $8k less.
Pay me what I'm worth, and the certifications won't lead me away. Otherwise I'm skipping back and forth, chasing a decent raise.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but training is different from experience.
Not only that, but people often muddy the issue by confusing the terms education (attending a class, studying to pass a cert test) with training (hands on, real-world experience).
To help clarify the difference, a colleague of mine once put it this way... if you are having trouble drawing a distinction between education and training: Just think of your teenage daughter and how you would feel if her school offered sex education vs. sex training...
Re:yeah okay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most developer training is useless. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is more to training than "time spent in the trenches"
- learning a new language/paradigm often allows you to think of your current language/environment in new ways
- often at a conference/training there will be BOF sessions and/or Q&As that are worth a lot more than the training/conference themselves, but if you're not there you won't see them
- at a conference/training you can expand your network, so next time your company is hiring you can remember that person xxx at course yyy was great to work with and you can try to refer them
- if your company sends you to an expensive conference/training it's saying that they care about your career enough to invest in it, rather than treating you like a shelf-limited resource
- training/conferences can expose you to different areas that you would not necessarily work in, and often this exposure translates in insights directly applicable to your area
of course the % of companies that actually see their employees as a valuable resource instead of as an easily replaced cog is exceedingly small, after all companies that force developers to work on antiquated PCs with postage-stamp monitors and on rickety dollar store chairs aren't likely to spend 3-4k/year + time off for their education...
Re:You don't need a certification to know somethin (Score:5, Insightful)
Your comment is telling.
You're not sending your good employees (you know, the ones that you already know are intelligent) out to get certs. You're attempting to hire talent that already comes pre-trained so you don't have to do it. Anyone can fake their way through a class and memorize questions for a test, your goal should be to know your workers and send the ones that show promise off.
Find that smart kid from ops who seems to spend his days fixing printers and ghosting machines and send him out to get a MSCE. You'll probably wind up with half decent net admin when you're done. Hiring some mouth breather just because he paid for a cert and you've got a 95% chance of failure.
Actually that could be a way to weed out cert idiots, just ask them who paid for the cert. If it's their last employer it could be an indicator that they saw some talent there. Food for thought that.
Re:The death of Middle Management (Score:4, Insightful)
Larger corporations really have quite the hatred for the very people they need to make the wheels go round, and it makes no sense to me. They all end up getting burned anyways. They either end up having to kick the outsource group out on their ass, and try to kiss ass to their employees they just screwed, stagnate since projects to push the company forward cost the outsource group money when what's in place "works right now", or even more comically, they end up bringing on an VIP IT staff specifically to manage the higher up's ideas and problems since the outsource companies won't do a damn thing an SLA doesn't make them do, CIOs know this, but run with it anyways for that bonus before they jump ship.
It's getting much worse before it'll get better...
Re:That young fired up guy... and conferences (Score:5, Insightful)
Aaaah, to be 23 again. Full of equal amounts of shit and confidence without the wisdom to know it.
Re:Most developer training is useless. (Score:5, Insightful)
They also tend to force you to not do the "I'ma skip this chapter, because I know this stuff" that often plagues my attempts at self training. Sometimes suffering through the chapter with the stuff you know can help put something in perspective, give you some critical insight on how this implementation is in fact slightly different than what you thought you knew, or just give you a critical refresher you didn't think you needed. I can and have forced myself to read that chapter anyway, but I know I'm not giving it the attention it deserves. In a classroom you have little else to do anyway, so you generally pay attention; and sometimes go "Oh, hey, I hadn't thought about that. Glad we did this part after all".
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, way to lose your best talent - Y'know, the ones that actually have options other than putting up with you, Mr. Bonaparte?
If you "DEMAND" that I learn CrappyLegacySystemX that I will never, ever see outside the present job, I'd do what it takes to learn it and make myself the best damned CLS-X coder you've ever had; but you can bet your ass I'd do it on company time, and we can take it up with the labor board if you expect me to learn externally-useless skills, unpaid (no, buying the goddamned books and tests doesn't count, you weasel). Or more realistically, you'd give me an ultimatum, and I'd laugh as you squirm when I call your bluff and leave for greener pastures.
If, however, you want to help me learn ThingI'veExpressedAnInterestIn, which oh by the way happens to translate directly into skills applicable to CLS-X, then we can talk. But don't think my off-the-clock time belongs to your whims except insofar as they first satisfy my own.
Good managers don't threaten and manipulate, they remove obstacles to their team getting the job done. And when the manager himself counts as the obstacle... The same rule still applies. Remove yourself, or explain steadily declining output to your own boss, when no one but C-student interns will put up with you.