Slashdot Mirror
How Much Do Employers Budget for Education?
FunkyMonkey asks: "I've been able to convince my current employer that we (the programing staff) need to maintain our skills and keep up with rapidly changing technology by implementing an ongoing training/education program. Apparently, my plan entails more time in training than my employer is willing to give us and thinks that there should be 'some extra effort on the programmers part to make this happen.' My question to the Slashdot community is how much time does your employer allocate for ongoing education? Do they expect you to do on your own time?" It's an interesting question, and I'm sure that this varies wildly from employer to employer. Still, this might be some interesting information to share for those of you out there trying to make a case for (or against) budgets for IT training. If you were in control, how much would you spend on training?
Where I work is a subsidiary of NewsCorp. We have to pony up for the classes and do them on our own time to start. If you got the class approved by your manager ahead of time and you make a "B" or higher in the class the company will reimburse you for the full amount.
That is about the same as a couple of other places I have worked.
-dan
From my experiences in the IT departments of non-computer-related companies in NYC, I typically see allocations of a few weeks of training per year, as long as it relates directly to an upcoming project. The companies I've worked for realize that it's cheaper and better for everyone if a few weeks of full-time training are allotted, rather than hiring new people with different skills as needed. It also keeps the employees far more loyal. I know more than just a few developers who chose jobs particularly because they would be sent to continual training as needed. I've only worked for financial institutions, however, so I can't speculate how a software company might react towards training requests.
---
Developers: We can use your help.
It varies so greatly from place to place.
Case in point:
at my current job, my IT director places a huge focus on training, and he's managed to convince the upper management that it's necessary to survive. How he did it I'll never know, but they've allocated $3000 per Development worker for training (of our own choice, with the IT director's approval). However far we can make that stretch is our own business. I've been taking french courses with part of it (we work with a lot of people who speak french better than english). On top of that, there are regular training courses for the whole department that don't come out of your personal training budget.
All in all, it's pretty great.
At my last job, I waited over a year for a single course, and when it did come along, it was because the manager of our department was on vacation and we managed to sneak it past the boss for approval. When he DID come back, he freaked.I saw other people who wanted courses offered an hour and a half outside of town, who were told to find them locally, or they couldn't take them. Any course found was analyzed several times over for price cuts: hotels were severely budgeted (the place i stayed in for my one perl course was infested with centipedes), and any cost-cutting measure that could be taken, were.
God am I ever glad I got out of there. They completely did not understand that training their workers was to their benefit. That and they were (rightfully) scared that anyone who had decent training would look for a job that paid them what they were worth. Which is pretty funny because the place I'm at now (with the huge training budgets) has a much happier, more commited workforce and a much lower employee turnover.
Moral of the story: treat your employees well, and they'll reward you with more than your money's worth.
Personally, I'd rather have a $3000 training budget than a $3000 raise, of which half would go to taxes and the rest would end up being a piddly few extra dollars per cheque.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
For the kind of job I do (Technical Management), formal education doesn't make sense. I have alot of control over how I spend my time, and I find it more effective for me to educate myself. If I come across a conference or seminar or whatever, then I have to make a business case for the cost of me going to that, and that's fine. This kind of ad hoc self education relies on two factors:
1. The company leaves you enough 'free' time in your general plan that you can schedule in your own days for reading XML books or whatever
2. You do the kind of job where it's possible to teach yourself.
Computing seems to be one of the industries in which it is easiest to teach yourself. I don't blame companies for taking advantage of that. As a manager I can also sympathise with not wanting to book employees on long training courses in advance. That two weeks in October may look free now, but by September we may really need that person on the project.
From both learner and manager perspective, I prefer to see a budget for books and journal subscriptions, and enough slack in people's schedules that they can teach themselves.
-----
I've found code reviews to be very helpful. I've learned a hell of a lot from having someone go over my code and challenge me on it. And for doing it to someone elses. At most of the places where I have worked we have had a lot of smart people, you might as well learn from them.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I think programming/sysadmin etc. are jobs where you 'bring your own tools' similar to many professions and trades. In other words, you're hired as a programmer because you have a skill. Maintaining that skill is up to you.
If the company wants you to learn a new skill, then clearly they should either pay to have you trained or hire someone that has the skill.
If you want to get ahead, avoid being obsolete, or just do something different, then you should invest your own time in gaining new skills.
My current employer requires 40 hours spread over two years of work-related education/training/etc. This is normally spent at conferences or trade shows, although some people go for a specific week-long class or whatever. There's also a great tuition reimbursment program, but that requires you to do it 'on your time' (and pick up about 20% of the cost assuming good grades).
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Oftentimes geeks like technomyopia take over and assume that technology is the only field that makes rapid changes. Law, medicine and education make rapid changes not only in technique of practice but of information content. How do those professions and professionals handle training and continuing education?
I know that continuing legal education is actually a requirement of attorneys in Minnesota (45 credit hours every three years). I would imagine that it's seen as the lawyer's professional responsibility to maintain his or her certifications. Some rich firms may reimburse, but small firms may just see it as another professional cost the attorney has to keep up with to be an attorney.
I think it's probably wise for a business to encourage continuing education to the extent of paying for it. Training feels like an investment to an employee and eliminates the potential for "but I didn't know how.." excuses from employees. Some training should be almost manditory and free to the employee. But I do think that employees also have to show some commitment to their field: by either paying something for further training, doing some training during work hours at half salary, or not mitigating work deadlines to accomodate training -- accomodate the training but make the employees demonstrate it has value.
My new CIO says he had a policy at his last company to require managers spend their training budgets or get dinged at review time. He said that training is important, but his experience was employees will often whine for training if it's not an option but if money is budgeted for training they come up with excuses not to do it.
Not nessicarly on company time, but we are required to have 40 hours of training a year. How we get that it up to us. This year I was about to attend to classes at work, on company time. (Accually it worked out to 48 hours of training).
Basicaly if it is directly related to your current job, and a lot of people (20-30) people need the same class, then they bring the teacher in and you get training in during work hours. Otherwise you have to do it when you have time. Nothing is wrong with studying during downtime, so when I'm waiting for a compile or reboot I can study. (at a couple hours for a compile, and an hour for a reboot this is significant, but your process probably isn't that messed up)
Some people get their 40 hours by presuing anougther major. It must be work related, but that doesn't take out much. (art, and farming) Buisness is encouraged, as are engineering degrees.
Some people get their 40 hours by reading various books and doing the example.
Some people get their 40 hours by going to confrences.
Basicaly it is up to the manager to enforce 40 hours a year on each employiee. We are flexable about what you do on your own time, so long as over a year you do it. What you do on work time must be directly job related. (or downtime at work)
My old employer was one extreme. They would not send me to training on the specialized tool (BMC Patrol) I was expected to support. Nor would they bother buying the manuals. Since the online user community for this product was pretty small/nonexistent at the time, I had to kludge ways around everything, which included trying to glean information wherever I could, experimenting, and finding ways to get stuff done without the tool. I believe this was unreasonable (the extra time I spent cost them more than training would have).
My current employer is a lot better about this. I have been sent to training on tools I don't even use. While this has benefited me greatly, I don't know if I would have been as generous if I were the boss.
I think it's reasonable to expect some cooperation from your employer on technologies you are currently working on (especially specialized ones for which documentation is scant). But it is unfair/unrealistic to expect them to support your Java certification, send you to linux training, or otherwise increase your value for your next employer at their expense. For most technologies, I imagine your life will not be too difficult. Nobody will stop you from buying a book on Java, XML, Linux, etc. and most employers will/should pay for such things. They should also encourage some playing around with new technologies because this is beneficial to both the employer and the employee (and helps retain geeks :).
I would, however, be careful about trying to demand things from your employer that does not directly benefit them, and might in fact harm them (such as a 2 week training session in Hawaii from which you might not return).
Now, mind you, we are a biotech/pharma company, but training is training, be it advanced computer use or molecular polymorphism. We've had a fair number of classes on stats and using JMP (which I don't use enough).
The company also offers tuition reimbursement: 100% if you get an A or B, 50% for a C, and, well, if you somehow manage to get lower, you're SOL.
This is by far the most liberal company education policy I have run across (with the exception of people who work at universities).
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
I have been on both sides...
My former job, we were "allotted" 5k a year for training. Good luck getting it approved though. In the 5 years I was there I was only sent to 2 training classes. One of them was since I knew nothing about relational databases, and was expected to be an expert DBA (since the guy who was leaving did that also). I wore several hats, Unix admin, DBA, security admin and operator. I think the main reason they sent me to database training was 1) I hosed the database 2) I was begging for the class. My old job would also pay for college tuition if you had a c or better, but you had to sign a contract that said you would stay for 5 years after getting your degree. Needless to say I didn't let them pay a dime for my college classes.
My current job: I am required to take 2 classes a year, minimum. I will get whatever training that relates to my job. I'm supposed to be an expert on their systems in the customer's eyes, hence I get the training I need to become an expert. I also can get books for free (they only ask that they relate somehow). And they will pay for college also, without the draconian contract of the old job. Needless to say, I'm much happier at my new job, and heck even if I won the lottery, I'd still work for them.
--
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
Why shouldn't the company help out a little? If you worked in a machine shop and a new machine came it it would be the company's responsibility to train you. So in a programming environment where new languages/environments etc are coming out constantly why shouldn't the company invest the money to get the most out of its workers. Its easier to pay to train people then to fire the ones who don't learn on ther own and get new people. So even from a costs/benefits viewpoint its good business sense not just a handout.
I can see the value of this, but in my experience is that most technology people are at best highly competitive and at worst raging egomaniacs when it comes to the work they've done.
Peer review has to be done carefully or can become a pissing contest. Review by senior people keeps the peace, but is only really valuable if senior people are senior because they're smart.
I can say that they budget less this year than they do last year, thanks to all the dot-bombs. Training seems to be viewed as a soft expense: one of the first to jettison when times start to look bad.
I allocated 2 weeks worth of training per person. That is usually 2 - 1 week classes. Which ends up being about $6000 per person plus travel. The only deal I made with my guys is to try and take it some place close so the travel expenses don't kill me. But, if it's only held once a year or is something special (aka Upper Management is hot on it) I usually let them go. I also tell them to take it in either the spring or fall. There are too many vacation days that get taken over the summer and Christmas/New Years time.
Travel usually runs about $1200 for round trip and about $150 per night for lodging plus $40 per day food. Some times the numbers are lower, this is to pad for the times when they are a little higher.
Often times, I'll read a book (or a PDF, or a web site or whatever) but there are times you just can't do without training.
A hungry mind should be able to feed itself from the documentation and the system at hand rather then being read PPT slides
If "you don't know what you don't know", you might just end up wasting your time re-inventing the wheel, especially if a product has a huge documentation set and you just need to do a few specific things. Or if the product is very new and the documentation is patchy. Anyway, sitting down with a book is no substitute for hearing lessons learned in practice, or hearing the developers explain their design decisions. If you say that it is, I can only assume you've only worked with simple systems.
So long as you've some familiarity with the subject before the classes, and can ask specific, relevant and intelligent questions, training is very valuable indeed.
advancing yourself proffesionally (don't forget it is YOUR carrer)
Quite.
As this crowd well knows, any computer-related class worth taking is very expensive. I'm of the opinion that proper training pays for itself, but I'm also of the opinion that tech workers are some of the most disloyal employees on the planet.
They readily jump ship to the employer down the block for stock options. So, as the employer, what are you to do? Spend $20K-$50K per year training your employees, who simply plans to get as much experience and as many certifications out of you as they can so they can go job shopping with a resumé you paid for?
Contracts are a fair way of ensuring you at least get your money back from training classes. Say for every $1000 spent on training, the employee agrees to work for a month. If the employee chooses to break the contract, he will be financially liable to repay the company the remaining cost on his contract. This would also allow an ouside company to buy out an employee's contract if they *really* wanted him/her, without financially damaging the first employer.
Personally, I hate classes. You're always stuck at the absorption speed of the middle, and often low end, of the class learning curve. I'll take a well-written book anyday.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Frankly, that's pretty harsh. I don't think of a training budget as a way to "pay you to learn to do your job". That implies that the training budget should be used for remedial training, which I agree is a waste of $$$. However, it's to a company's benefit to offer training in tools and techniques that would make their employees more productive. And there has to be some room for experimentation in that regard as well. Not every tool or technique that's introduced will help the bottom line, but some will, and it's worth it to spend the time doing some research to find out.
As I said in another post, more and more companies are resorting to hiring consultants and outsourcing to fulfill software development projects that use new technologies, to save time and cost in training the internal employees. And in my experience:
As a self-taught professional programmer, I feel it is MY responsibility to keep up-to-date on the latest technologies. My labor is a commodity, and I try to provide the best product (me) for my customer (my employer) that I can. If the cost of using my labor goes up (because of training costs, etc.), my job security goes down. It's a competitive world, and I'm willing to do what I have to retain my position as a highly-valued (and valuable) asset. As such, I probably spend at least $100 a month on books and magazines, and I take the time (at home) to read and learn about new technologies.
The answer is that "it's your career, not your bosses'".
I don't have a formal degree from any institution of higher education, but I've been fortunate enough over the past 23 years to learn and advance according to the amount of time and energy I've put into staying current.
When I first entered this industry in '78, there were no peecees, Unix was just beginning to emerge, and there was barely an ARPANET at that time. I cut my teeth on mainframes, and I really had to push to demonstrate that there is never anything like a "one size fits all" solution to the range of business and systems problems that I've been asked to solve over the last couple of decades.
In the time since, very few of my employers have been willing to send me to school (formal or otherwise) -- it would have taken me off of coding or other tasks, and the one constant in the IT business is that you're always behind schedule. That 'real-world' aspect never changes.
I have always found a way -- most of the time on my own time -- to investigate, experiment, and learn about new and emerging technologies. Sometimes I've been able to suggest and even apply this "new stuff" in production projects, and -- of course -- I usually come out looking like a genius, when all I really did was borrow from the experiences of others.
Yeah, staying current takes a lot of my personal time and effort; but it's worth it over the long haul. I consider it a personal investment to my own career (which hasn't worked out all that badly!). Had I waited for one of my employers to send me to school, I'd probably still be coding "file-in, file-out" programs in COBOL. (Ugh.)
As far as being individually motivated, that's the best advice I can give people. When it comes down to "hey boss, I need 8 more coders just like me to get this done", it's a little bit harder to find those people. Sometimes the answer is for Mr. Bossman to cough up those bucks, and sometimes it's in hanging around the water cooler long enough to find those people like yourself -- internally motivated.
It's tough ... hang in there!
------ Give a man a flame, keep him warm for a night. Set a man on fire, heat him up for life.
Code reviews are a terrible practice. They either turn into a week of web surfing and at the end everybody says all of the code is perfect or what's worse they are taken seriously and turn into a morale killer. People don't like having their competence questioned. Even if they are fairly junior they like to think their work is up to scratch. Senior people don't like being questioned about their particular programming style: they know they have a number of successful projects already behind them and don't want to be questioned on how they perform the work. If it does the job and is maintainable it should be good enough. Code reviews almost always end up turning into personal attacks. It's a sneaky management ploy to turn developers against one another. They cause harm, quarrel amongst seniors and intimidation for juniors. THEY SUCK!!!!!!
How to avoid the problems of lack of code reviews? Number one is have good comprehensive unit tests. They tell you a lot more about code's correctness than any amount of code reviews you can think of. Pair programming eliminates the issue of "lonely wolves" where individual programmers hoard a piece of application and don't let anyone else near it. These two suggestions are the fundamental blocks of extreme programming.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I have done a reasonable amount of training which has been supported by my employers. I have taken project management classes from the University of Toronto, paid by my then employer, which were "for credit". And when I was an employee of Sun Microsystems, I took courses from their SunU - no external credit recognized. Of course I have also had books paid for, etc.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all the different modes of training and learning. Getting books is good from the perspective of time and cost, and sometimes learning effectiveness. Going to a seminar or formal classroom environment is good because of the interactivity and the (human) networking that can be done. Different methods are appropriate to different people with different learning styles.
However, in all cases, the training is in one "direction" only: the employee gains knowledge and noone else does. In other words, the money an employer spends on training an employee is tied up in that employee's head. Unless _extraordinary_ efforts are made to have that employee "share", which is usually done with some form of company show-and-tell session (read: expensive).
Because of this experience, and my generally strong interest in education, I have been working on a knowledge-sharing educational system called Oomind. The basic idea is that a company can set this up so that employees can learn, are motivated to share their knowledge, and can use their critical thinking skills to determine the worth of knowledge.
This system will (doesn't yet) allow a company to train people, track that training, share knowledge in a repository (so that other employees can access it), and have a permanent record of "credit" so that when/if an employee leaves, they have something to show for their training.
And of course, Oomind is meant to be the best place to learn on the Internet. It's still very new so there isn't much content - feel free to register and contribute. Its kinda like nupedia, except tied into a truly open editorial process and more importantly tied in to an educational system!
http://www.oomind.com/
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Lab Time.
I'm a backbone engineer. BGP, OSPF, routers, ATM/Frame switching equipment, Ethernet switching, etc. I've never once worked for a company which had a proper lab where you could actually work with new equipment or a new protocol/design architecture etc before having to use it live. This is because operationally redundant equipment is an expense that managers are unwilling to spring for.
Vendor training courses (the ones I've been on) were 80% practical. Equipment was in the room, and you got to play with it and poke it and break bits and learn how to fix them. This was extremely valuable in operation. And much, much cheaper than outfitting a proper, internal lab.
Software engineering? I can't comment. Networking? Training is not just for the lazy and incompetent.
Qualifications, on the other hand (directs a nasty look at all the 'MCSE' and 'CCIE' incompetent idiots that I've worked with) ...
~cHris--
Chris Naden
"Sometimes, home is just where you pour your coffee"
On the average we find $2000 and about a week usually does the job. This allows them to attend one major conference a year or attend a week long training class for the newer members. Proper budgeting allows newer members two weeks of training for $2000. We find that we get a very good return on the investment.
The senior members that attend the conferences share their experiences with the team and usually focus on those seminars that are valuable to the team. When they return we all benefit from the experience as they share the knowledge.
No Zen is good zen
If "you don't know what you don't know", you might just end up wasting your time re-inventing the wheel, especially if a product has a huge documentation set and you just need to do a few specific things. Or if the product is very new and the documentation is patchy. Anyway, sitting down with a book is no substitute for hearing lessons learned in practice, or hearing the developers explain their design decisions. If you say that it is, I can only assume you've only worked with simple systems.
I agree. There are some complex systems out there that simply do not lend themselves well to book learning at all. Sure, if you want to learn Java or C++ or Perl you can get a book and tinker around on your Linux box. But if you're a developer or implementer for a proprietary system (like Peoplesoft, SAP, etc) then you need to take the classes to learn it. Most people don't have 3 or 4 servers lying around plus access to the software plus a set of sample databases to teach themselves on. Additionally, books are plainly not available for many of these topics.
I think that too often people on Slashdot make the mistake of thinking that all Slashdot users are developers who have jobs that can be learned from an O'Reily book or some derivative. That's not the case. Some of us have much more esoteric jobs, and others have much more mundane jobs.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
I had this very discussion yesterday with my supervisor. We have $2000 budgeted per year per person, but it doesn't carry over from year to year. You can use company time, and travel is paid for, but it has to come out of the same $2000. Our fiscal year ends on 7/31, so anything not spent as of then turns into a pumpkin at midnight. I've got a brand-new co-worker here who's just got his bearings in the company, and would like to take a A+ prep course this coming month. Since the guy's short on knowledge, it seems like a good starting point for him. At $1500, it sounds like the best thing we're going to find before the deadline. My supervisor doesn't want to approve it because "it's $1500 and it's so late in the year". What, does the amount of money available to us decrease in proportion to the amount of time left??? Where is *this* written in the policy??? The kid just started in March, he didn't have 12 months to spend this money! Of course, he's perfectly willing to send him to $120 worthless Holiday Inn seminar. Those things aren't worth the time out of the office. Our folks need technical training, not Effective Business Meetings or whatever they're offering this month. So the time and money allocated, whatever it may be, is in some ways less important than the policy and most of all, the people who excute it.
Hey, you know, I spent a few years as a teacher. I wasn't very good at it, I'll admit (I have a hard time presenting matirial at the level of the students, I tend to go over their heads without realiseing it. I thought this was a problem, but after reading your post, I've come to understand that it was all my students fault.), but I did learn one interesting thing. Different people learn differently. That's right! Everyone is not like you! Wow, quite a concept I know, it really surprized me.
This kind of comment really pisses me off. Are we professionals, or are we some kind of 133t club, where only people that got their mad skillz from an approved source can be real haxors? "I'm sorry sir, we can't hire you for this position, because you were recently seen with a copy of Perl... For Dummies instead of the Camel Book. As you know, the only Geek appoved source for learning Perl is the Camel Book, so despite your demostrated competance, I'm afraid we shall have to look elsewhere." I mean come on, Some people just learn better from audio input. Some learn better in a social environment. If nothing else, a class gives you at least on additional view point, that of the teacher, and probably those of your classmates as well. Professionals meet, professionals exchange ideas and techniques. Doctors and lawyers go to classes and confrences, so do scientists and professors. Dr. Jones knows that just cause he's a hot shit cardiologist doesn't mean that Dr. Smith doesn't know more than him about infectious diseases, and how they can affect the heart. It's great that you're an ubergeek and you can learn every skill on you own, and you don't need anything from anybody, but you know what? If we fired everyone in the industry that couldn't do that, there wouldn't be enough people left to keep it afloat.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.