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?"

Comments

While "Geeks should train geeks" might seem ...

[burgburgburg]

obvious, there is a fundamental flaw within. Just because someone understands something does NOT mean they in anyway have the skills to relay that information to others. "I know it" does not mean "I can make you understand it". Teaching is a skill that comes naturally to very few people. The trainer should know the stuff down, but also needs to know how to instruct it to others.

If you alter your phrase to "geek teachers should train geeks", I'm behind it 100%.

Re:While "Geeks should train geeks" might seem ...

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I recently attented API training class offered by one of our vendors. It was a 3-day class taught jointly by a customer representative and one of the engineers. The first day ran smoothly; the representative managed to make the class personal and comfortable, and he seemed at home with the slides and printed material. He deferred most of the questions to the engineer, who clumsily spat out biased answers and misinformation. The rep had to leave on some personal errand on the second day, and the class dissolved into a programming exercise reminiscient of a 10th grade BASIC class, wherein the engineer spent all of his time hopping from desk to desk trying to get things to compile on an IDE none of us was familiar with. The agenda and printed materials went right out the window. We learned no new material that day.

The rep stayed at a pretty high level, but it was useful background and it was organized. Between him and the engineer I learned quite a bit. I a figured out a few things myself while I was fighting code on the second day, but not as much as I would have had there been some semblance of order. I much prefered the rational, methodical training offered by the rep and the printed materials to the chaotic, hands-on approach of the agitated engineer.

Classic business problem...

[Chagatai]

The difficulty with getting proper training is that what you want for training doesn't always equal what the company wants for training. You may know of someone from a seminar who will give the best presentation on the latest and greatest tool, but business needs dictate that you need training on a tool that is ten years old. I've run into this quite a few times, being sent for classes where I didn't care for the subject but had to go because the business needed it. Throw in a mix of PHBs and you will soon realize why you're enrolled in that OS/2 starter class.

I have pretty good control

[JoeWalsh]

Every year, I get a personal training budget. I can spend that money on whatever technical training I want, from whomever I want. Obviously, if I choose to take courses out of state, the money will go much less far due to travel expenses, so I mostly take them locally. It usually works out to about 4 weeks of training per year.

I guess you could say my company treats me like an adult - or maybe like a member of the family. It gives me the money I need to get good-quality training, then trusts me to decide what training I need, where I should take it, etc.

It's a really good situation, and one of the reasons I've been working at the same company for nearly 10 years now.

-Joe

Google Trains Me

[scott1853]

Anytime I have to learn something new related to computers, I head over to groups.google.com and look up "[fancy-new-product] sucks" and read the results. Saves many hours later on.

This smells of free commercialism...

[FortKnox]

After reading this, I have a sour taste in my mouth. I'm thinking its one of two things:

• 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.

Common training mistakes

[borkus]

...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.

Re:Common training mistakes

[King_TJ]

On item #2 there in your list of mistakes, I'd venture to say that honestly - you're better off in the position your in.

The people complaining "I don't know how to do that!" who get sent off to training are still going to come back with less usable knowledge than you have by figuring it out, hands-on.

What I've started figuring out is that training is of relatively little value unless it earns you some type of certification upon its completion. Certifications help get you future jobs. The other stuff doesn't. I've been to all sorts of training on everything from MS Exchange Server to Dynamic HTML development - and without certs. from any of it, people don't seem to really care.

I doubt the people getting shipped off to training classes in response to the "I can't do it!" exclamations are earning certifications.

Re:Training is a joke

[Twylite]

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.