Ask HN: How do you ask your employer to help you develop? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you ask your employer to help you develop?

7 pointsgppk6 comments

In the world of professional software development, there are many different avenues in which employers can offer funding in order to help us knowledge.

That can be through attending conferences, being sent on training, allowing personal time for personal projects etc.

So how do your employers help you to develop? or alternatively, what do you ask of your employers?

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It depends on your and your employer.

Some employers will spend lavishly on this kind of thing, others want to squeeze every penny for the short term.

My take is that conventional conferences are a racket; they charge a lot of money, you spend a lot on airfare, and I think many people don't get so much out of it. On the other hand there are other gatherings that you can attend on the cheap which have great learning opportunities too.

We have down time built into our schedule: 3 30 minute breaks scattered throughout the day. I often use that time to read and improve. We do promiscuous pairing which helps all of us improve at an impressive rate. We actually create learning content for IT professionals so we already have at our fingertips a lot of info that we are encouraged to watch, in fact we have to watch a course (5-30 hours of content) every quarter, usually whatever we want to watch.

Good read on 'How to Ask' from HBR; essentially how to pitch a business case for investing in your professional growth > https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-to-ask-your-boss-for-time-to-lea...

Ive been thinking a lot about this too. Im a consultant and booked on one project after another with no downtime so any professional development is done on my own time and my own dime. Would love to some training or build in time to spend on projects.

It's the other way around:

If your employer is against learning, informal discussions and notoriously wants you to chop shop, leave your employer.

The last two places I've worked had a bank of available Pluralsight licences developers could request.

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