Yea, my company paid for my trip, hotel, and conference fees.

Pycon, through the support of all the sponsors, is actually fairly cheap. Only $300 to attend, and they did an amazing job organizing it. Lunches and breakfast included. I know of other tech conferences that are much more expensive.

I think it could be easily argued that sending employees to things like Pycon directly benefit your company. We work in a really fast moving industry so it's a necessity to keep employees on the ball. Going this year I learned a ton of new things about Python that made me more productive.

I was a tutorial presenter — I have a startup and a tiny tiny salary, so my company was not able to subsidize the trip. I did however get a big financial aid grant from the conference/PyLadies.

I was not able to go this year, but one of the perks of my job is paid trips to cons. It is worth asking for most reasonable employers will say yes.

Developers have a yearly budget ($1.5K) to go to conferences. So, one biggish conf or a bunch of smaller local ones.

Speaking for me, my company paid for everything because I'm speaking.

My company paid for my trip.