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I Like My IT Budget Tight and My Developers Stupid
Esther Schindler writes "'Who has money to train these guys nowadays? They should be lucky they're still employed, right? Keep thinking that way,' writes Lisa Vaas. The competition applauds your choice to glue your wallet shut. Or, to put this another way: This is why the boss won't pay for developer training. Vaas explains how those still training manage to get their training budgets funded."
Really not trying to troll anyone with that summary.
seriously.
When they'll do it themselves on their own time and their own dime?
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Most developer training is absolutely useless. For any recent technology, unless you've got one of the engineers directly from the vendor teaching you, you're likely only going to be dealing with a consultant or lecturer that has read a book on the subject, and has maybe played with the technology in question for a week or two.
The time is better spent in the trenches, going to battle with the technology you want to learn about. You'll need to fight with it. You'll need to grab it by the testes and twist it into what you need it to be; into what you need it to do. You will learn so much more than if you sit in a room with a bunch of your co-workers and listen to the lecturer ramble on, using one unrealistic micro-example after another.
I welcome my idiot colleagues that take this approach. To an IT pro, training is as valuable a method of retaining good staff as offering more money. Being proactive and obtaining training for your staff tells them you actually give a damn about them and their future, whether with the company or not, which promotes loyalty in employees who recognize the effort and, lo and behold, INCREASES the chances of retaining talent.
Those that don't care are likely to move on anyway regardless of what you do. Those that only work for money and don't want training aren't the kind of employees I want on my staff anyway (the only exception being those that go home at the end of the day and do their job as a hobby as well).
Ultimately this approach is self-defeating as the staff is untrained on evolving technology. Not only will the talent leave, those that are left are incapable of handling new projects that Management demands making you, as the manager, look like a FOOL when you can't deliver.
No secret, the only way to get a decent raise is to jump ship. No one gets up the ladder at one company. Get experience, go to another job and get the raise you should have gotten, then get more experience, jump ship again.
I worked for two fortune 100 companies, and people would quit, and then they'd be back in 2-3 years. Earning 30% more.
Companies would rather hire an outsider with paper experience than give someone who knows the company a big enough raise to keep them. I even went for salary matching once and got a counter offer $8k less.
Pay me what I'm worth, and the certifications won't lead me away. Otherwise I'm skipping back and forth, chasing a decent raise.
Not only that, but training is different from experience.
Not only that, but people often muddy the issue by confusing the terms education (attending a class, studying to pass a cert test) with training (hands on, real-world experience).
To help clarify the difference, a colleague of mine once put it this way... if you are having trouble drawing a distinction between education and training: Just think of your teenage daughter and how you would feel if her school offered sex education vs. sex training...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Your comment is telling.
You're not sending your good employees (you know, the ones that you already know are intelligent) out to get certs. You're attempting to hire talent that already comes pre-trained so you don't have to do it. Anyone can fake their way through a class and memorize questions for a test, your goal should be to know your workers and send the ones that show promise off.
Find that smart kid from ops who seems to spend his days fixing printers and ghosting machines and send him out to get a MSCE. You'll probably wind up with half decent net admin when you're done. Hiring some mouth breather just because he paid for a cert and you've got a 95% chance of failure.
Actually that could be a way to weed out cert idiots, just ask them who paid for the cert. If it's their last employer it could be an indicator that they saw some talent there. Food for thought that.
The funny thing that I've noticed is that management at the big corps still don't care about this. I've been watching this specific scenario happen over and over. IT turns into a kludge due to a lack of direction (those managers you speak of missing), and for whatever reason these companies think the answer is cutting costs even further. How they are doing it? Outsourcing! Your local helpdesk to India or Philippines, and your local IT people? Pushed over to the outsource company if they are techs, and if they are coders, engineers, etc. they have been getting the axe. They end up replacing them all with overworked people from the outsourcing company who come in with no clue about the buisness, likely will never set foot on their buisnesses property, and think all of that will make things better.
Larger corporations really have quite the hatred for the very people they need to make the wheels go round, and it makes no sense to me. They all end up getting burned anyways. They either end up having to kick the outsource group out on their ass, and try to kiss ass to their employees they just screwed, stagnate since projects to push the company forward cost the outsource group money when what's in place "works right now", or even more comically, they end up bringing on an VIP IT staff specifically to manage the higher up's ideas and problems since the outsource companies won't do a damn thing an SLA doesn't make them do, CIOs know this, but run with it anyways for that bonus before they jump ship.
It's getting much worse before it'll get better...
Aaaah, to be 23 again. Full of equal amounts of shit and confidence without the wisdom to know it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Instead, you should DEMAND that they read books (that you bought) and pass certifications (that you pay for) and then use those skills on side projects.
Wow, way to lose your best talent - Y'know, the ones that actually have options other than putting up with you, Mr. Bonaparte?
If you "DEMAND" that I learn CrappyLegacySystemX that I will never, ever see outside the present job, I'd do what it takes to learn it and make myself the best damned CLS-X coder you've ever had; but you can bet your ass I'd do it on company time, and we can take it up with the labor board if you expect me to learn externally-useless skills, unpaid (no, buying the goddamned books and tests doesn't count, you weasel). Or more realistically, you'd give me an ultimatum, and I'd laugh as you squirm when I call your bluff and leave for greener pastures.
If, however, you want to help me learn ThingI'veExpressedAnInterestIn, which oh by the way happens to translate directly into skills applicable to CLS-X, then we can talk. But don't think my off-the-clock time belongs to your whims except insofar as they first satisfy my own.
Good managers don't threaten and manipulate, they remove obstacles to their team getting the job done. And when the manager himself counts as the obstacle... The same rule still applies. Remove yourself, or explain steadily declining output to your own boss, when no one but C-student interns will put up with you.