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Comment by arn3n | Hacker News Reader

I love conferences and talks and wish I could go to them more — what stops me is the sudden drop in corporate sponsorship of them. It’s been nearly impossible to convince leadership to spend money to train their employees or to socialize within their own discipline, and while I’d love to go to conferences, taking time out of my own PTO and my own wallet to see them isn’t worth it.

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> while I’d love to go to conferences, taking time out of my own PTO and my own wallet to see them isn’t worth it

I’ve been using PTO and my own dime for conferences this whole time! It’s been super worth it career-wise especially as a speaker. Lots of fun, meet great people, have a bunch of “sawdust” to show for it.

The biggest impact has been that people in the industry generally know of me and that lends itself to creating opportunities / opening doors that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

> what stops me is the sudden drop in corporate sponsorship of them.

That's true in two ways: not only are less companies paying to send their attendees to training, but less companies are paying to sponsor these events as well.

Even at AI research conferences the trend seems to be such (also fewer industry exhibits), though I'm not perfectly up to date on this, might have turned around very recently. The reason seems to be that they are not hiring as much right now.

I think this is a shorter-term trend in the economy though, it doesn't necessarily hold as much inertia as other factors. Unless the AI job replacement really works out the way many companies hope.

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