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Are You Getting Enough Say In Your Training?
DrEducator asks: "Has your company ever contracted external instructors to train its programmers? Have you been satisfied with the lecturer's level of expertise? I think we all have a good grasp of how vital the role of training is to both a corporation and its employees, but given its importance should you have more of a say in selecting or evaluating instructors before they deliver training? I firmly believe in the tenet that 'geeks should train geeks'. Moreover, I think that the geeks themselves have to take a more active role in the whole process. So, I'm curious - do you think you have enough say in your training? Do you actively refer instructors that you've seen at conferences or previously taken courses from (university, college, or adult ed)? If not, have you had the opportunity to interview an instructor, or at least review their qualifications? Share your experience - how much input do you want/need/have?"
[keys dictionary] Oh yeah, training. Don't get much of that here.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
If you alter your phrase to "geek teachers should train geeks", I'm behind it 100%.
--Chag
- 1.) This is to prep you all for an ad they will be running about how Dr.Educators employer has GOOD training, unlike the examples of bad training that will come up in the posts (or to determine if slashdot IS a good place to advertise).
- 2.) Dr.Educator has been assigned to poll professionals, and is using you to get the results.
You won't get an answer from me. Sorry.Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
...and my employer makes many of them.
1. Train management only. We're quite good about sending management to technology conferences. They attend the conference, don't understand what's being presented and conclude that conferences are of little value.
2. Train only to address skill deficits. I've been told I'm one of the experts on my team and have somehow wound up as the only full time employee who hasn't gone to training in four years. I'm a web programmer who's taught himself enough Unix and SQL to survive. When I've had a task on hand, I've been willing to teach myself enough to get the job done; most of my co-workers just throw up their hands and say "I don't know how to do that." So they get sent to training.
3. Ignore the class syllabus. One of my co-workers took an online class then promptly took a sit-down class from another vendor on the same material. So, of course, he comes back and says that the class didn't cover any new material. Good luck for getting anyone signed up for that class now.
You are assuming the training is aimed only at programmers and for the purpose of teaching programming. This is seldom the case - most often training is used to promote a programmer's skills to include design knowledge, or management.
Where the object is to teach programming, the result is often shocking. Experienced C/C++ developers regularly come out of courses saying "Hey, I had no IDEA it worked like that".
Many developers take a "know one, know 'em all" approach to languages, without understanding that every language has its own unique way in which it is best applied. For all their syntactical similarity, Java and C++ are worlds apart in the way they should be used, for example, algorithms which are efficient in one are dogs in the other.
I have never been on a training course where I have not learned some useful piece of information. Even a presentation of the Thinking in Java course (after I had read the book and had 5 years of experience with Java) provided some insights which proved useful during project implementation.
On the other hand, I have never met someone who can be an "expert" on a language in one week. There is a lot more to language than syntax, and if you believe otherwise, you are seriously deluding yourself.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
An Instructor Needs to Be: ... low ummmmmm ratio ... avoids random snoring, actually helps the learning process ... yes even at professional levels
A geek at heart.
Knowledgabel about the subject (obvious)
Great communicator
Part Entertainer
Part Baby Sitter
Part Drill Instructor
and Patient
Not an easy combo to find
At Student Needs ....
To want to learn the subject! i.e. not *forced* to take it (hugely important)
To have some skin in the game.
I like the system my company has used before, The student puts up the money for the class and then gets 100% reimbursement for an A 90 % for B etc from the company. Also the company was pretty liberal with what course could be chosen.
As a boss, :)
training is great bang for the buck, if well chosen. If nothing else its great for morale and it build loyalty to me
Most of the things I can do well, are things that I've sat down and figured out to do myself. Training doesn't cut it because, as they say "the devil's in the detail". If your willing to describe "training" as an "overview" then Ok, but getting training and certification so you can parrot some textbook word for word isn't anywhere as useful as people think.
"There's no scarcity of spectrum any more than there's a scarcity of the color green.", David Reed
As a person on the other side of the desk (i.e. one of the evil 'contractor companies' that get hired to design training) I have an opinion on this issue.
...
First some background -- I am an instructional designer. Like an interface designer or architect, I work with other people (content experts, lecturers, multi-media programmers) to create learning materials. When I am hired by a firm to develop some training there are few very important questions that any reputable learning consultants must ask
1. Is it a 'training' problem? There are all kinds of problems that are not training related. Maybe all the web-programmers know how to use Dreamweaver, but they still prefer Notepad.
Most times 'training' is only one piece of the puzzle -- there are usually environmental factors like rewards/acknowledgement, time/project management, human resource and other issues that will affect training.
2. Who is the target audience and what are their PERCIEVED, STATED, ACTUAL needs. The manager might say they need an in depth course on XYZ (percieved) whereas the programmers might say all they need is the 'X' of the XYZ (stated) and having done a proper needs assessment/instructional design, the learning consultants find out that the programmers need some remedial Calculus to even understand XYZ (actual).
To figure out the all these needs -- a proper Needs Assessment must be completed -- this doesn't have to be a huge ordeal, but it should be a proportional effort to the size of the 'course' that is to be offered. So for a half day workshop, it should only take a couple phone calls and maybe a quick site visit for a good 'instructor' to understand the requirements.
3. What are the barriers to implementation in the users environment? What will enable implementation? This is where alot of the customization will come in -- let's say the company cannot use process ABC and ABC is a generally accepted industry practice. Well first, the trainer needs to find out about this (by doing a needs assessment), the work with the company to come up with an alternate to ABC -- or find that an alternate already exists in house.
The bottom line is -- if your company is paying for customized training and you haven't seen or heard from the 'trainers' until the first day of the course -- then chances are it will be a rip-off and waste of your time.
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
...was just communication with my coworkers.
What better way to learn to do kernel debugging than to be tutored (and given a helping hand when needed) by the fellow down the hall that does it all day long? What better way to learn good design process than to hang around with the product leads and get involved in their discussion? What better way to learn the QA process than to get involved in writing software with them for a bit? I've done the formal education thing -- spent four years doing it -- but I never learned as much in as little time as when being given a helping hand (or just chatting over lunch) with a coworker more experienced than me.
Alternately, I've had the opportunity to help and tutor some (other) coworkers as well. An environment in which folks are encouraged to share with -- and learn from -- others is perhaps one of the most valuable things a company wishing to have a robust, happy engineering department can have.
I don't know that there's anything that's been done by management or by the founders to encourage this behaviour, by the way, except hiring the very best engineers they could. Politics and one-upmanship don't mix well with an engineering mindset (well, not a hacker mindset, in the Jargon File sense), particularly when everyone involved respects each others' skills -- and teaching and learning are things we all enjoy.
A geek may have vast experience and knowledge to share.. but if that geek is a poor speaker or communicator, training dosen't do the audience any good. I once had to deal with a geek who talked so damn fast and mumbled every word that nothing he said was understood.
Besides--I train myself. I say to my manager to just give me the books and tools and I can be ready inside of a month.
Replying to my own post to correct my 'english'.
So we do have geeks training geeks. [washtech.org] Classes happen if folks want them and if we can find a qualified teacher. Qualified has come to mean, 'knows his/ her stuff and can communicate it'. We have hired some non-members on occasion, too. They're damn cheap, and unemployed members can delay payment for 6 months.
When I say 'damn cheap', I mean the classes, not the teachers.
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I just made a similar reply to another post - but it is still relevant to say this here. Another industry with short-term projects is construction. These guys work themselves out of a job just like we do. The industry also has a cut-throat bidding process. But there are some big differences on training! Really - contrast the fate of most geeks to a union construction worker, like an electrician. Geeks (most) pay for college. Union construction worker - employer paid apprenticeship program of class-room instruction and OJT. So how many geeks start out their work careers paying off debt? How many construction workers have debt starting out? Geeks have to continually upgrade skills to avoid being obsolete. You can check out the responses to this story as to what are chances are. Construction workers have to upgrade their skills as well - whether mandated safety programs or for new tech. Union construction workers have zero out of pocket costs for this, paid from dues and from employer contributions. That's why I'm a washtech member. Here's our training program - geeks training geeks. [washtech.org]. Why do construction workers have company-paid training? The same reason microsoft forces dell to sell microsoft. The same reason the Washington Software alliance lobbies to kill premium overtime pay for tech workers and bring in more h1-b visas at lower than market pay. These folks organize and use their strength. Why don't we?
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.
I am a geek training other geeks I guess. I do not teach proprietary software or anything like that, mostly just training on products like Visual Basic and SQL Server. People come to me to do the training, I very rarely get sent to a company to do training (cheaper for companies to send people to us). If this is the route you are going, I would look into these things 1) Talk to the instructor. After the economy went into the pooper, most companies didn't keep the smart trainers, they kept the people who were ok at lots of stuff. You'll see a lot of MCSE, MCDBA, CCIE, MCSDs out there claiming to be able to teach anything. They can't. Make sure your trainer has a passion for what they are teaching. 2) Try to find out if there will be "career changers" in the classes. A class full of career changers (former truck drivers who heard you can make 85,000 a year being an MCSE an other missinformed individuals) goes entirely different than one with people who need to know this to do their job, or are looking to better themselves. Each class with people who really use this stuff is much more enjoyable and enlightening because you see all kinds of view points and questions. Good times 3) Make sure you read the outlines. I taught a class on the Programming the .NET Framework. The outline clearly shows that we will be covering topics like streams, serialization, threading, remoting, memory management. Kinda the nitty grittys. Well, I get someone in my class who right away asks when we'll get to webpages. Um, who signs up for a 5 day class without reading the outline for the class? I teach 10 seperate .NET courses, 5 different VB6 courses and three seperate SQL Server courses. There is a lot of variety out there...
4) Keep an open mind. Ask questions about the how and why. Your instructor might not have even thought of your question yet, but if they are anything like me they'll help you figure it out.