Ask HN: I have education budget to use before year end, how should I use it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I have education budget to use before year end, how should I use it?

21 pointsJeremy102614 comments

I have about $1,200 that I can use for any education purpose. Buying books. Registering for training classes, certifications, conferences. Even things not directly related to my job as a software engineer like subscriptions to Brilliant or Skillshare can go towards the budget.

What are some educational things/tools that you've found useful recently?

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Find a skill that's useful outside of your work environment. Take some cookery classes, for example. Or get a basic certificate for working in a different field.

Diversifying your education is probably more useful than deepening it.

Coursera has an offering, Coursera Plus, that costs $399/year. If I understand correctly, it gives you access to the various certificates and graded projects that you often don't get with the free tier of some courses. I have considered subscribing to it in the past but have not. If I were given an education allowance e.g. by work, I would probably do so.

FYI it doesn't give you access to access to all certificates, e.g. the deeplearning.ai ones are not included.

That’s a great heads up, thanks. I did a little additional digging re: what is and is not included and this [0] is the best that I could come up with. It’s a bummer but if one were thinking of signing up for Coursera Plus, one would probably want to list all of the courses of interest for a year and check them to see if they’re included.

[0] https://www.coursera.support/s/article/360036151932-Courses-...

A one year subscription to oreilly.com is $499 +taxes

In addition to what was said about AWS Solution Arch I would add in getting the CKAD and then follow-up with CKA is a good secondary path if you are at all exposed to k8s. Linux Foundation usually has a class+exam bundle. I like these because they are not multiple choice tests, you get a terminal and have to solve problems so I found studying more interesting and hands-on.

If you're a Software Engineer I suggest to use it to get some Network Certification.

If you're into SRE, I would suggest go AWS certificate route.

Why? Because ebooks you can buy or borrow from library easily or read online. But getting certs you need to pay with real cash. Learning for these certs usually leads to down the road opportunity and you get discount on next certs etc.

O'Reilly. Pluralsight.

Public speaking or presentation course can be good.

I've been doing some certs lately. AWS Solutions Architect Associate was about that for a virtual course + exam voucher.

Find a conference somewhere next year and book that? Not sure where you're based but $1200 would cover a couple of days and some travel depending on the conf.

MasterClass has some of the best courses I've encountered. It's pricey but you can skip years of learning something, finding out it's wrong, going through other teachers and so on. There are some bad teachers and lessons in there, but even those can be quite enlightening.

What are the best examples?

high end in person public speaking course

I’ve used my learning budget for music lessons on this site virtu.academy

Hookers and blow.

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