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Ask Slashdot: Who Should Pay Costs To Attend Conferences?
An anonymous reader writes I wanted to get your opinion on who should pay the costs associated with attending conferences. In the past, I've covered costs associated with attending some local (in town) conferences, but despite claims to be willing to cover some costs associated with conferences, training, and certifications, my requests have been denied. The short version is I would like to attend a national conference, hosted in Las Vegas, and that while specific to a technology, it is what 90% of my day is related to so its directly work related. My employer has declined to pay some of the costs associated with the conference, but has said if I pay my way, they will pay for the training associated with it. Since this is a pretty hot technology, I'm very interested in getting certified and appreciate their offer.
I should add that I work for a public entity and due to some fairly public issues, we have enjoyed record levels of funding the past couple of years. We know that they cannot afford to continue so we're about to start a multi-year decrease in our budget. My current thoughts are: First, I was working for a company where we faced potential layoffs, getting as close as to within 24 hours of one. Even just having some job security is extremely appreciated. Second, I work in a WONDERFUL environment. They aren't clock punchers, its about getting the job done. We're not micromanaged and have freedom to try new things. For the public sector, I know those are rare things and I appreciate them. Third, I work on a very talented team. I am probably the weakest member, so for me its a perfect learning/growth opportunity. Finally, its not my employer saying the conference isn't important, its looking at the bottom line and that we are a public entity so its not like we can easily raise more money. Tough decisions must be made.
For this particular conference, I decided to try and save up my own money. Unfortunately, my personal life has gotten in the way, so I've resorted to begging. My problem with this is I hate begging, but what am I going to do for future conferences? So should I re-think my acceptance of my employers policy and start looking for a new job? Obviously, it is a personal decision, but I don't have a mentor or close friends to act as sounding boards, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I should add that I work for a public entity and due to some fairly public issues, we have enjoyed record levels of funding the past couple of years. We know that they cannot afford to continue so we're about to start a multi-year decrease in our budget. My current thoughts are: First, I was working for a company where we faced potential layoffs, getting as close as to within 24 hours of one. Even just having some job security is extremely appreciated. Second, I work in a WONDERFUL environment. They aren't clock punchers, its about getting the job done. We're not micromanaged and have freedom to try new things. For the public sector, I know those are rare things and I appreciate them. Third, I work on a very talented team. I am probably the weakest member, so for me its a perfect learning/growth opportunity. Finally, its not my employer saying the conference isn't important, its looking at the bottom line and that we are a public entity so its not like we can easily raise more money. Tough decisions must be made.
For this particular conference, I decided to try and save up my own money. Unfortunately, my personal life has gotten in the way, so I've resorted to begging. My problem with this is I hate begging, but what am I going to do for future conferences? So should I re-think my acceptance of my employers policy and start looking for a new job? Obviously, it is a personal decision, but I don't have a mentor or close friends to act as sounding boards, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.
They're mostly a waste of time anyway everyone just strokes their own egos and you spend 2 days digesting information in an archaic inefficient way
lecture style
They should be bearing the cost of the training and conferences. The only time I've shelled out cash for anything was when I didn't prepare enough for a certification test and needed to retake it. That was all on me though. Had I studied a bit more, I'd have passed on the first time.
Companies that want to retain talent need to shell out for training and conferences, especially if the budget isn't a concern for the time being. It's not as if they squirrel that money away for a rainy day. If the conference is as relevant to your work as you say and isn't insanely expensive, this should be a slam dunk.
isn't it ??
Subject says it all. What next, dating advice for geeks?
From personal experience I doubt if you'll get useful info out of the panels and presentations, I mean information that you could not get otherwise. But of course your conference may be different the ones I sometimes attend or where I occasionally have to speak. However in my experience, conferences are good for networking, which is important in longer term career or commercial planning. Would I pay for my work related conferences? Probably not.
See if your employeer is willing to pay for the conference, while you pay travel expenses (or vice-versa). That may make things more platable.
Don't over think it - you can't afford to go, but they will pay for training. Find the training locally and forget the conference. Conferences are over-rated and while I wouldn't pay for my guys to attend a conference (especially Vegas), I always paid for training (and even exam costs when I had the budget for it - the last few years I could only cover training). If your job is as good as you say it is, you're a bit crazy thinking about leaving over a conference. A whole bunch of IT sucks hard out there, these days. Just my opinion and I hope this helps - it's what I would tell you if you worked for my office and came to me with this issue.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
This is really pretty simple. If the funding isn't available to send you to a conference in Vegas -- You don't go. Or if you want to go you pick up the tab.
It seems that you can't afford to go and your employer doesn't see value in sending you.
Life sucks get a helmet.
Your description of the work environment sounds great, and it's awesome you recognize and appreciate that. High pay comes with high stress, high responsibility, and worse working conditions. Lower pay comes with less stress, and better working conditions. You have that -- be happy!
Your employer can't pay for you to go to the conference. That they offered to pay for the training (if you get yourself there) is better than zero! Some would call it half-assed but it's all about that glass with water and how you see it.
Treat it as a vacation to Las Vegas (one of the cheaper places to visit) and during that vacation... IF YOU SO CHOOSE you can attend a seminar/conference that your employer is willing to pay for. If you don't, it's a vacation.
Hotels are inexpensive both on and off The Strip. Rental cars are unnecessary but $20/day (seriously). Food is plentiful and cheap so long as you walk through a casino to get to it. Drinks are free while gaming. There are shows all over the place.
If it was my job and I really wanted to attend this conference I'd book a reasonable hotel (I love Mandalay Bay or MGM or Planet Hollywood) close to the conference, get a flight in on a cheap air carrier (American formerly AmericaWest and SouthWest and JetBlue are three popular options), take a $9 shuttle or $20 cab from the airport, and party my little ass off until conference time. I would get myself tickets to see a show or two while out there.
Instead of begging for $$$s, ask who wants to come with and make it into a party-atmosphere for a small group. Well worth digging into the credit-card for the once-in-a-decade experience. Have a bachelor's party/bachelorette party atmosphere without the wedding. Skip the limo :)
Enjoy the trip. Enjoy the show!
Ehud
Tucson AZ
Full disclosure: I go to Vegas about 4 times a year.
If you don't need other training or certification classes, and actually are learning from your conferences, have your manager use her education budget to send you.
If she doesn't have an education budget, why the hell not? Their investment in you is probably large enough to warrant it, and they'd BETTER be budgeting for it, vs. throwing the occasional wad of cash out there. You're cheaper to train up to a new internal position than to find someone new and start from scratch.
Provided you're not going to the Shriner's convention for the water balloons and the little cars (unless you're in the water balloon or little car industry) education and conferences are normal, expected business expenses.
If you're in the US and the company won't send you, you can deduct your own purchase of the conference and associated costs from your taxes as "unreimbursed business expense" - BUT NOTE that there's a threshold that has to be met: I forget the number, but I think you can only deduct unreimbursed bix expense greater than 7% of your salary. So if you are $5 higher than that 7% mark, you deduct $5.00.
The begging thing might make your taxes complicated...
It's very employer dependent. Some employers will want to train you on vendor products, others will want to hire someone with experience as an already established expert and expect you to bring that knowledge with you.
The real question is: do you want to work for someone who would not pay to train you on the product they're expecting you to use? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
John
It comes down to whether the certification/conference is being taken/attended at their behest or for your own interest. If the former, you should expect the company to pay. In the latter, it's up to the company, but you have far less bargaining power. With most IT pros, what we do and want to do only overlap with what our employers want us to do and learn.
My employer won't pay for me to go to a conference
I can't afford to pay for it myself
Plus my personal life got in the way.
What should I do?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Since it is a public entity you'll likely run into a roadblock of what the law lets them pay for. Honestly it isn't much and the rules are rather inflexible due to some abuses that regularly come up (a conference in Vegas is likely to be huge red flag after this).
It sucks, but it's one of the trade offs for working for a public entity.
That being said, you're career is just that, you're career. If it's something you care about, you should be willing to invest some of your own money into making yourself as awesome at it as you can be. Without that willingness, you should consider doing something different. While things have changed in your personal situation, and you may not be able to make this conference because of travel costs (though you can make some pretty cheap travel and lodging arrangements in vegas), I don't think this should cause a complete rethink of your situation if everything else about it is good.
Do your best to invest in yourself, it's nice when others will invest in you as well, but don't let the lack of that hold you back.
My (ex)employer has slashed funding for participation at conferences, resulting in the situation where you can provisionally submit papers (to academic conferences) but if your paper is accepted, you may need to find someone at a local location to present the paper. That's happened to several people over the past few years, funding was cut after their papers were accepted, and they were forced to add a local employee as co-author to be the presenter.
As for paying your own way, some companies might fire you for that. It creates issues with insurance and liability. You're doing business travel on your own time and while paying your own way. If something happens to you while on the trip, is that a work-related injury or not?
Pay for the cost of the trip yourself and thank them for the training. I've worked for companies who 1) don't train, 2) offer outdated manuals on current software 3) expect you to stay current and up to date even though they don't use the newer software and aren't willing to pay to 'upgrade' employees: they would rather replace employees than pay for training. So consider yourself lucky. If your job security is tenuous, being trained in the newest would be better for you if you suddenly find yourself needing to find a job.
This is actually a question you might consider directing at your accountant. Specifically:
1. Some or all the conference costs may be tax deductible. Depending on your tax bracket this can end up being an instant 30% discount.
2. Corporate structures or other accounting tricks may allow you to change who your company pays (are you a W-2 employee? or do you have your own company?) This may again lead to favorable tax treatment for your conference, further reducing what you're actually paying.
Of course tax deductible doesn't mean free. But depending how things are structured the conference could cost you more or less money.
If your employer expects you to go, they should pay. If they don't care, you should. Anything your employer expects you to be doing, they should be paying for. It's as simple as that.
I, personally, find them worthless marketing scams. At best, all I get out of them is that someone is doing something new that I should google later. Other than that they seem to be sales pitch after sales pitch. I can't stand them and would never pay for an employee to attend. If there's training or something? Cool, I'd pay for that. But lets separate training from conferences. Most real training doesn't happen at conferences anyways.
That being said... if I were running the company that was doing that marketing scam at the conference... i.e. I wanted you to attend to drum up business, that's entirely different and I'd pay for you to go.
samzenpus,
I run into the long term(big) vs short term(small) focus of managers. This tends to lead them to undervalue conferences and focus on the very near term, get x,y,z done. That's my bonus... Often conferences and long term items are not something they are reviewed on..
Here are the items that seem to work for me.
Business awareness
- networking with others in the field. Birds of a feather, potential future hires and of course job opportunities for you or your friends.
- where are the trends going, what are people talking about...relate it to your business, insightful inputs to management...
- what's competition doing, or worried about , or at least looking at....?
Training
- sometimes specialist training opportunities exist, short courses and so on..
Academic/ research
- if there are academic papers, presentations and profs/students at the conference, you can get a sense of what's going on there,
- perhaps identify some potential new hires.
Customer visibility
- by being there and visible, perhaps even doing a talk, there are opportunities for customers to see, it can improve their perception. "Oh look is investing in the future, they know what they are doing etc.."
Vendor interactions
Some conferences have vendors present giving demo's , closed door demos of cooler stuff and so on. You can learn a lot and make contacts by attending some of these.
Magnify the value of your attendance ...a reversal !
- If there are multiple people from your company going, meet ahead of time, scope out who is covering which aspects of the conference, are there gaps. Often we might have some flexibility to cover gaps and return home with a broader picture of everything.
- organize a brown bag knowledge share upon returning...
- Send an executive/management briefing summary, make it valuable, next year they may be begging you to go
If they won't pay for me to go or a portion, I can sometimes at least get paid time off so I can go with reduced personal financial impact.
good luck..
Public and companies with government contracts are different than the private sector, and selling taxpayers on a conference in Las Vegas can be difficult.
In the private sector, companies should budget about 5% of annual salary for training. That includes time and expenses. Usually our approach is to make sure the employee has some skin in the game-- either pay part of the cost or take PTO to attend if it isn't after-hours.
As an employer, I am generally torn on the matter though; much of the benefit is to the employee rather than the employer; I care that you can do your job not that you have a piece of paper that says you can do your job. New technologies, keeping skills sharp, networking... all of those things have a split benefit.
There is no "right" or "wrong" answer here. Typically employers pay these costs, but not all do at all times. My own employer has paid for me to attend conferences, but has also had dry times where it has been very difficult for anybody to travel to anything that isn't local.
You have to look the whole package. If you're skilled you could probably find another employer who would pay for you to attend the conference. On the other hand, maybe there is some other benefit that you currently receive which you would not in another job, or maybe you would have to relocate to an area you might not prefer to live in.
I think employers should pay for development if they want to succeed, but there are lots of short-sighted companies out there.
You need to look at the big picture and decide what makes sense for you. If another employer will pay $2k for you to travel to a conference but will pay you $10k less per year, etc, you have to decide if that tradeoff makes sense vs just paying your own $2k and pocketing the other $8k, and then getting to pick any conference you want. And so on...
As someone who has repeatedly attended and presented at conferences in my field, I make it a point during negotiations for any new job to ensure these are funded fully but only if I am presenting; otherwise, I opt to share in the costs associated in attending with my employer.
Each and every company I have worked at in the past (and current) has a budget for training and professional development of its employees, some more than others; however, by making a case that I am giving back to a community of like-minded professionals and putting our name and brand out there during presentations, I have found this is an easy sell for companies for which I want to work.
I work extensively w/SAS and utilize a lot of the conference (SAS Global Forum/SUGI prior) materials in my day to day both for myself and our entire organization. By making it clear to my employers that I want to give back by presenting, I have opened organization's view on how the sharing of information benefits the business while benefiting the entire industry.
Make your determination and desires known when you sign on and, if that is not an option, make it clear to your management that you want to do the same thing. While I have received a variety of different types of pushback over the years for this view, they have all relented and ended up changing their world view when the benefits are presented as they are.
Conferences are not inexpensive (SAS Global Forum is usually around $3000 - $3500 for a single person encompassing travel, conference registration, lodging, meals, etc) but the ROI can be HUGE beyond that depending on the knowledge transfers that occur, the networking opportunities, and the new business development which I have seen from these conferences.
While I did not attend SASGF 2014 this year, it was solely due to my available time to develop a presentation topic, not because my company would not send me (this was my first missed attendance since I became involved in the SAS world) and I look forward to contributing to and learning from others in the future.
Best of luck.
Your employer probably gains nothing from you attending the conference. Whether you go or not, likely makes no difference to how much work they get per dollar of your paycheck.
Note my wishy-washy words "probably" and "likely." If you can provide an argument that a particular conference is an exception, then you have an argument to offer your employer, for how they will come out ahead by paying this money.
If it's a gray area (you have a valid argument, but it's somewhat weak) then splitting the cost with you (which seems to be what they proposed), seems sensible.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
You are already considering looking for a new job so why should a entity (especially a publicly funded one) pay for you to beef up your resume.
No employer should bear the burden of continuing education without a guarantee that they will retain some benefit of the training. My public organization will pay for your jr. and sr. years of college but requires a guarantee of 5 years employment after graduation. If your fired or quit you risk your certifications, however if you are downsized, the debt is forgiven. It has similar requirements for continuing education, unless the certification is a legal or contractual requirement. The Policy has made employee and management much more responsible with CE funding.
In my opinion, the larger conferences tend to be a complete waste of time -- they're basically a time for press releases by vendors who want to sell you something. You get the same thing with the mid-sized conferences in the D.C. area with the 'free for government employees' conferences.
My preference is towards mid-sized conferences (under 1000 attendees), where you actually have a chance to get to talk to people and do some networking ... of course, employers don't always like these, as part of the networking may be your finding another job elsewhere.
Really small workshops (20-200 attendees) are very educational, but they're so small that there's generally an expectation that they're more about collaboration and discussion. I've been to a few that were either 'by invitation only' (typically my boss is invited and sends me in his place; for one I talked my way into an invite; another required everyone to submit an abstract and they selected ~50 people to attend based on them). They tend to be strategy related -- what issues does the community need to be aware of & working on.
You also have the more 'academic' vs. 'practical' conferences in some fields ... the academics present on research but often end up missing what I believe are the really key questions that they need to be asking. Practical conferences can also be tiring, if you end up with talk after talk of people coming up with effectively the same solution to a given problem.
From the sounds of things, what you're looking for is training, not conferences. Some conferences do offer training either before, during or after the conference ... and for the pre- / post- stuff, you may not need to register for the main conference.
As for who pays ... it depends. At my work, training is handled seperately from conferences ... for conferences, I get reimbursed for my expenses (travel, hotel, food, registration). For training, I get registration back (provided it meets with their requirements for 'training', but not the rest of it unless it's 'company directed training' (they told me to go, vs. my asking to go). In many cases, I've worked with my manager to get listed as 'teleworking' during the conference, so they'll pay my salary while I'm there, but I pay the rest of the costs.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I definitely agree that if there is training local to you and your company is willing to pay for that then do it. More and more companies aren't sending their employees to conferences, not because that part is expensive but to cover your room, meals...etc.
Good luck
Is this some super special training only offered at Las Vegas? Have you looked into alternate ways to receive the training? Every training I have inquired about stated that while they do offer training at the conferences, they also offer other options to provide it.
I work in a WONDERFUL environment. They aren't clock punchers, its about getting the job done. We're not micromanaged and have freedom to try new things. For the public sector, I know those are rare things and I appreciate them. Third, I work on a very talented team. I am probably the weakest member, so for me its a perfect learning/growth opportunity
Ultimately it should depend on what you negotiated or are able to negotiate with your employer. If it is training you really need, make a good case for it.
Training gets *very* expensive if you're doing a lot of it. It may or may not be necessary to your job as opposed to good for networking. I have seen cases where someone's training budget gets absolutely out-of-hand, and they are going to a dozen conferences or more a year when realistically, they need less than half of that to do their job as well (i.e. their job is not networking) and it is mostly about them *enjoying* the conferences and maintaining a political status within the community.
We should never stop learning, but doing it *all* on an employer's dime isn't okay unless that was negotiated as part of the job.
Why do you want to attend the conference?
If your goal is to be able to do a better job for your current employer, then the employer should pay.
If your goal is to become better at the kind of thing you do, then ideally your employer should recognize that value to them and pay, but if they don't recognize it, then you have to decide whether the personal growth is worth it for the personal cost... and perhaps seriously think about finding an employer who is less short-sighted.
If your goal is to have a bit of a vacation, save your money and go on vacation some place that's interesting to you. Perhaps even Las Vegas (though that wouldn't be my choice).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
A good employer would invest in training and developing their employee. So, company should paid fully for the conference or training that is directly related to your job. If they don't, you should decide whether you want to work for someone that does not want to invest in you. The truth is that if they value something they will find room in the budget. Do not beg; either pay for it yourself (and consider it a personal investment) or get a new employer that actually cares about your development.
With that said, as a manager, I would carefully scrutinize the value of the conference or training. Some conference are so broad, it probably not that useful to the company. I would rather the employee pick a few conference in the beginning of the year, and work with them to narrow down to the most valuable one, and maybe come up with a plan for alternating local and out-of-town events to save on budget.
Not just the conferences themselves, but air fare to conferences and hotel accommodations to conferences, too.
According to the great HR expert Ian Betteridge, the answer to the question: "Who Should Pay Costs To Attend Conferences?" is "no."
Greetings!
I'm a frequent speaker at Java, Python, and other conferences. I love to travel, and I use the conferences to scout for talent for the various ventures in which I'm involved. Since I love the travel, the conference participation, etc. but lack the budget to go everywhere I want to go on my own, I instead focus on writing articles for various publications. Several of my write ups resonate with the audiences for the publications with whom I work (e.g. DZone, InfoQ, etc.) and I get invited to present at various conferences. Problem solved! I let the conference organizers cover all or part of my expenses.
My rules of thumb are:
* Conference organized by volunteers/non-profits? Cover something like lodging or a domestic flight.
* Conference organized by a company or for-profit organization? Cover lodging + travel.
This way I get to share on cool things on which we work, get to meet interesting people, scout for talent, and otherwise have a great time (and 99% of the time, a great trip!). This year so far I've spoken at conferences in Beijing, Tokyo, Krakow, and London. Moscow and Zürich are in the immediate future. All conference organizers almost always throw an attendance pass to all presentations for free. Since I travel with my girlfriend, she tends to attend for free as well (I cover her travel expenses, though).
I hope this helps -- cheers!
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Employers know what DEFCON is, and there is nothing formal about any training received there. The topics are invaluable, the experience gained there can beneficial, and the social networking has potential. However the bottom line is that DEFCON is not formal training by any means. You can not cram the value and complexity of a properly planned conference, into just one of the 45 minute talks presented there. Also, at official business conferences you do not have laptops and ATM machines coated in imagery that makes hardcore pornography look like G rated material, and people drinking vodka from plastic bottles from dawn to dawn. I enjoy a trip to DEFCON. However I would never expect my employer to pay. You might as well ask them to pay to send you to Comic Con.
Just because it's relevant to your day job doesn't mean it's of any benefit to your company for you to go. If you want to go for your own interest you can't expect them to pay. It wouldn;t be unreasonable for them to insist you take annual leave for the time away from work too. If it's to learn things that will make you more efficient at your job and benefit your employer I'm sure they'd be willing to pay (assuming costs are sensible). Or if they want you to present something that is good PR for the company I'd expect them to pay for you. However, if you want a certification, perhaps for something you can already do anyway, that makes you more valuable (when you start asking for a pay rise) and potentially more employable somewhere else (when you get head hunted after chatting to someone at a conference) all of which are negative for your employer, I wouldn't expect them to be keen on you going let alone at their expense.
I've been sent to conferences numerous times by previous employers. It's great and all. I learned a lot and brought a lot of new skills back to my workplace, but there's a downside to it as well.
Conferences are a great place to network with other employers. Maybe you wouldn't feel the same, but I kind of felt bad about talking to other potential employers while i was there on my current employer's dime. Sure i signed something saying if i left my company within a year, i'd pay them back. Still, it sort of feels underhanded to me.
I feel a lot better about job hunting at conferences if i send myself. Of course, if i really love my job, i'd love it even more if they paid my way to the conference.
Employers should pay, and should also pay your salary while attending. They are reaping the benefits of what you are learning. I work in a group where we rotate who goes to the conferences and every year it gets harder to go (budgets always get cut). We always come back with tidbits that change the future of what we are doing and where we are going with our technology (conference of choice for us has been SAP TechEd / dCode) Suggestion: do up a budget and get it approved before booking. Keep the approval. When you submit the expenses, submit with a copy of the approval. If they reject it keep pointing back to the approval.
Your job sounds great. Make some friends on your team and learn what you can from them. Maybe buy a book or RTFM or do a side project. The training will always be offered again somewhere else, and Vegas is a hole.
Use the conference time to fix whatever's going on in your life -- that sounds way more important. Feel free to post here about that!
Good luck!
It is almost certainly too late for this conference, but for future ones it may help if you can do a paper or presenation. First off, many conferences let presenters in free or at least give them a discount. Second, it may help make the case to your employer, especially if the paper publicizes a project there. If nothing else, such papers look good on your resume.
I wanted to get your opinion on who should pay the costs associated with attending conferences. In the past, I've covered costs associated with attending some local (in town) conferences, but despite claims to be willing to cover some costs associated with conferences, training, and certifications, my requests have been denied.
Conferences =/= training. At least in general, they are more opportunities to socialize and listen to some speakers. That's it.
So you need to consider very carefully why you want to go to conferences, and why your employer should pay for it.
Very few, bleeding edge companies pay for conferences. Engineering companies OTH, tend to pay for graduate education, and some of them actually pay some type of work-related certifications. But in the end, save up and budget for your own certifications.
If you can't manage to save up for certifications - while working in one of the best paid professional fields of our times - you have much bigger problems to tackle before thinking about certifications. Seriously, save $100 a month and you have $1200 of disposable income a year for your own training. And if you truly cannot save that, then deal with the issues that prevent you saving a meager $100 a month (again, in one of the professions that pay some of the best salaries.)
There used to be a time when companies would pay for their developer's training. 17years ago, my first employer forked over $7K for me to get trained in new software tools. That doesn't happen anymore, and I don't expect we will ever go back to those times.
Those times are gone!
Plan to adapt, save and pay for your own training. There is no other choice nowadays.
I work in a WONDERFUL environment. They aren't clock punchers, its about getting the job done. We're not micromanaged and have freedom to try new things.
That isn't a 'wonderful environment,' that's how it should be. If a company weren't like that, I would quit because I know I can do better.
A WONDERFUL company pays for lunches and has free drinks and a nap room. At a minimum.
Also, don't be afraid of layoffs. They are coming, even in the public sector (have you seen the size of the debts?) In this industry, job security comes from being able to find a job quickly, not from staying at a company a long time.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
My theory has always been that training my employer pays for is to make me a better employee. Training I pay for is to get me a better job. Both you and your employer should ask what the training is really going to do for you. If it's going to get you a new job, yes, every penny should come out of your pocket. If it's for the employer's benefit (and you aren't leaving for a reasonable period), then every penny should come from theirs.
Your manager probably has a defined training or employee development budget (that you may not know about). Ask directly if/what that budget is and how much of it can be used for professional development toward the costs of the conference you wish to attend. The other angle is to plan ahead and make it part of your goals during an annual review, write it out as a goal on your self evaluation when it's review time.
Take one more step back and you'll see it all
I've worked in companies during both flush times and tight times. It was nice when they would pay for courses and conferences. But against my advice these items are often dropped first in cutbacks and I observe employee skills suffer. Maybe because I've earned my way through college and have a science background that I decide to still educate myself. Choose the more rewarding conferences, do fewer of them, stay local and cheaper etc. Online training and conference has become better in recent years. I have observed the complainers i.e. "i wont lft a finger to educate myself unless the company pays for it" tend to be let go first in the numerous layoffs I have observed.
These costs are tax deductable once they exceed 2% of your salary, but I havent gone that far yet.
I've been programming a long time, am in my mid-30s, and have never attended one of these conferences. In fact, I've never attended any sort of employer-sponsored training whatsoever. Companies just don't pay for this sort of thing any more (I've had several employers over the course of my career, ranging from small businesses to mega corps -- all have been identical in their lack of training budget). In fact, I wonder how in the world conferences manage to fill their seats -- your average middle-class software engineer is not going to be willing/able to cough up several thousand $$ of his own money to attend a three day conference.
Now, I have certainly asked to attend conferences in the past, and even for local conferences I was always told "Nope, not in the budget. Feel free to pay the $2000 registration fee yourself and take vacation time to attend." Gee, thanks.
I don't know how your company deals with performance reviews and pay raises or bonuses but just like salary, bonuses, and vacation time you can negotiate for something beyond what's typically provided. And just like all of those things, it comes down to how much they want to keep you and how much money they can justify spending on you. Training could be an easy sell since the company stands to benefit.
You could say that you'd like to go to one national conference per year or every other year for the purposes of training and staying on top of industry trends. Or maybe rather than saying one conference, you'd like to them to be willing to spend a certain amount annually and anything beyond that would be on your dime.
The problem with traveling to many conferences is that they can be a very expensive way for a company to train employees vs an actual class or even setting aside a certain amount of time each week for employees to work on pet projects. I consider them something of a perk actually and if a company has cash flow issues, I would hope they'd be one of the first things to go.
If a company requires or clearly wants you to go to a conference or class, they should definitely pay. If you expect them to pay for training, they should have final say over which and how many conferences/classes you attend. There are grey areas of course. If I think a particular conference would be great for my career but doesn't have a particular application to my job, I'd not expect them to pay for that. If it's something I want for my career but also has some benefits to the company, then I would see if they'd pay, but would understand if they wouldn't and not leave the company if I were otherwise happy.
I work for a major telecommunications company in network operations... and they don't pay for ANY of our conference costs unless we are presenting at the conference.
Scrape the money together to go, network with your peers, find a job that actually values its employees.
I have gone to conferences and found out things I wasn't aware of, or found new ways of looking at things that then translated into new solutions at work. After attending the conference two years in a row, I was able to contribute, and got to present the third year. I know there were people who didn't know the technology I was presenting, so I'm sure it helped other organizations. As a presenter, I got to attend for free, and just had to cover the travel costs (which were then covered by my employer). My employer was also able to say their employee had presented at tech conferences as well. A win/win.
You have to be in demand for this technique to work but it can happen. I was offered compensation for the first time this past year to run a workshop at an out of town conference. Not nearly enough to cover the costs of going but every bit helps. And if you're a speaker it does offer a bit of free advertising/prestige for your employer (if you don't suck). The downside for you and your employer is that there is prep time involved which can take away from your normal duties.
What I would recommend is to start out by attending and presenting at local user groups on your own time. You will learn a lot and hone your presentation skills.
Since no one has mentioned this yet - I'm not sure if this applies in the U.S., but at least in Finland you can deduct profession-related (not necessarily work-related!) expenses from your income taxes.
This typically includes stuff like literature, computer equipment (if used for said income), and yes, even travel expenses. Of course the expenses have to be related to your profession - my education and entire professional history is from CS, so I cannot put e.g. gardening tools in there, but a trip to a conference related to your field can be easily put under training expenses.
In general, just about every conference I've been to has been a waste of money. The only real benefits I have gleaned from them have been free software for development use and/or making contacts. In general, the information that I would receive from the confs. is more readily accessible online or through books. An example would be a yearly conference that I used to attend for a particular software that I develop. On average, the conference + hotel + travel would run me about $6000. It was a massive waste as, all we really spent time doing was drinking and chumming around. In 3 years, I might have had 1 or 2 actual lectures or Q&A sessions that had any real benefit.
Justify the cost of the conference as training. (Justify, as in prove, that the conference will teach you something) Assuming that your company has a training program.
One thing that annoys me is that it seems the only documentation worth a damn is the documentation they give out at a training session. i.e. the available system documentation is engineered to ensure that the training is the only viable way to learn enough to operate the system.
Nullius in verba
Helping to keep the multitude of barbarians from tearing civilization apart is contributing to society.
Given that the conference you're describing is most likely .conf, and that means Splunk, you should go easy on your employer as you're already blowing their budget on license.
The employer should pay all costs. Favored groups or departments received better treatment but I wasn't intimidated by a manager who tried to make me pay for and drive my vehicle to attend a great training conference 125 miles away. I got a company car and a gas credit card.
Whoever benefits from attending the conference should pay. If your company benefits, they should foot the bill. If you also benefit, maybe you should chip in if they balk.
I was out to lunch a number of years ago with a co-worker who related an IT conference story. A buddy called and exclaimed: "Want to go to a Party" . I don't know what the conference was, but the attitude was telling. Conferences for scientists where they're there to meet many of their peers and see presentations by some are one thing. Conferences for IT folks where you get to "meet the vendors" for a few minutes in a booth, not the same thing. Yes the sessions are a draw, but the content these days is usually available elsewhere without the travel costs and sometimes for no cost at all but your time. I just attend local meet-ups on the hot topic of the day. No costs, Plenty of folks to meet and talk with. Pizza sometimes...
When I go to conferences, I don't usually learn a lot. That said, I always pick up a few nuggets of information that are handy for my job. It is also nice to get away from the office for a few days or a week. I think some companies see that value. Sure, there are more economical ways to train/educate an employee. But knowing you are getting a somewhat paid vacation is one more nice reason to stay in your current position.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
In a perfect world, your employer would jump at the chance to send you, give you full per diem and a room in the conference hotel, rental car, and an allowance for books and materials on sale at the conference.
But as Huey Lewis said, "Ain't no living in a perfect world."
I was fortunate to go to Black Hat and Defcon in Las Vegas for 11 years while I was at my previous (private sector) employer. They paid for all but the first time. For that one, I took leave, paid my own way, and then came back and demonstrated to them the value and knowledge I picked up (mainly by starting just about every sentence with "Well, in a talk at Black Hat..." I got laid off when the company was downsizing, ended up in a public sector agency, which sounds very similar to your situation (great people, interesting work, surprising lack of sticks inserted up people's butts). Same situation - I had to go on my own first, the next year they willingly paid for me to go.
Your employer is at least offering to pay for the training piece, which says that they see some value in this. And I know how hard it is to do things like this on a public sector salary (which is still about 40-50% of an equivalent private sector one). My advice: look for the bargains. Stay at a cheap casino (you can get into places like Excalibur for $40-50/night, sometimes lower) instead of the conference hotel. Walk and use the monorail to get around ($10/day). Eat fast food, or fill up on conference munchies - don't eat in the conference hotel or celebrity chef restaurants, but find the coffee shops and cheap buffets. And most of all, talk to your employer. Tell them you're willing to go on your own dime this time, but when you get back, you'll want to make the case for someone from your group going every year, fully paid.
Should is meaningless in this context.
Unless you have it written into your contract, they don't have to pay for this.
If they do - then you might consider that a valuable perk.
The value to you may be less than the ticket/travel/accommodation price (or even negative if you hate conferences and are required to go).
Ultimately - it just weighs into your assessment of whether you are getting a good deal at work, and whether you want to stay.
-how much do they pay
-how much holiday do you get
-how much are you learning
-what are the benefits like
-etc, etc, etc
Asking who should pay for your conference is like asking who should pay for your coffee. Nice to get it for free - but just one factor in the mix.
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1) Quitting a great job because of a conference is a really bad idea. Get some perspective, man!
2) You can't really learn much (anything) from a conference. It just gives you a good idea of the stuff you should learn when you get home. Instead just read the conference abstracts and study the subject areas that look interesting. Have your work buy you 2 books on the subject matter and spend one work hour per day working through examples.
3) Enjoy the job that you otherwise love.
I haven't been modded troll in, like 40 hours, so I was feeling left out. Anyway...
You're employer is under no requirement to pay for training unless they have asked you to job which requires that training and they hired you knowing that you did not have those skills. Some companies provide training as a benefit - allowing you to increase your skill level in your field or even a related one on their dime because they feel that developing in house expertise is valuable and will pay dividends. If your company identifies a need for a skill which you do not have, I would expect them to either hire someone else or offer to send you to training.
In any case where you bring a possibility for training, your manager (we hope, though sometimes it's faceless management or HR) will look to see if it increases your ability to perform work and provide additional value to the company. That gets played against the budget, the path your employer has for you within the organization, your value to the organization, and your overall marketability.
As a business owner, I can tell you that training is wildly expensive. As a former employee, I can tell you that conferences - on the whole - are wasted time and money for the employer. Training is a toss up unless it's directly related to your work or the work the company would like to go after or compete for. If you ever think training is cheap, take the cost of the class, the cost of transportation, the cost of lodging, the cost of per diem then add to it about $500 in internal time processing all the requests and approvals, then take your hourly rate times the number of hours you'll miss work and multiply it by 2.5. THAT'S the cost to the company. And that's why not all training is approved. A $250 conference for half a week can easily hit $5,000 in costs to the company.
I'm not saying that training is bad, or that companies can't find value in training, or that this particular company is good or bad. Merely pointing out that the cost of training is far higher than most employees ever realize.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Whomever wants you to go to the conference pays.
If you want to go to the conference, but haven't been asked to by your employer, you pay
If your employer asks you to go to the conference, they have made the determination that your presence there is critical to the company's mission, so they should pay.
If the employer wants you to attend a specific conference, then absolutely they must pay all expenses, including travel, hotel, and meals, plus any conference costs. For other conferences that you want to attend, then it depends. For example, one of my former employers had a policy that each engineer had a $5000 annual budget for any conferences they wanted to attend (including expenses). Naturally, the engineer's manager had to approve the time as the employee was still "on the clock" so to speak. It didn't come out of vacation or other PTO. If the employee was going to give a paper at the conference, then all costs would be born by the company and didn't come out of their conference budget.
These liberal conference attendence policies enabled me to attend a number of major conferences without paying a dime out of my own pocket, such as ACM and IEEE conferences and invitation-only workshops where I would present workshop or conference papers that I had submitted to the conference organizers and was accepted to present. It was good publicity for the company, good for my career development, and enabled me to make a number of good friends and colleagues that I would have not otherwise been able to meet. One of these contacts ended up with me being asked to provide a chapter for a graduate-level engineering textbook published by Wiley and Sons. Another arrow in my CV quiver.
If you employer will pay, great. If they won't and you believe there is a benefit to you, go anyway. If it helps your long term career, it is worth it to you even if your current employer may not agree.
Did you consider volunteering to save money? Many event use volunteers to help with registration, setup, etc. and provide a discount for doing so. Volunteering will also help your professional networking.
Employers will pay for what is of immediate benefit to them, not what is of long term benefit to you.
Unless it was proposed in their contract during the solicitation period, they can't just charge your time to the contract you work on. Then, it becomes an issue of whether or not you're attending as part of your regular duties, part of your company's requirements, or just to keep your skills sharp (personal). A public entity has to abide by the rules/regulations put forth in the cognizant entity's Acquisition Regulations. They may REALLY want to send you, but if the money's not allocated, they can't spend it.
If you really want to justify it, ask your HR/Director of Public Sector contracts when the current contract period expires, and if there's any option periods left. If not, you should emphasize that your improved skill set will help them move you from Journeyman to Senior skill level, and thus able to charge more. Even if the contract doesn't call for that particular skill, it will still look better on the proposal.
Finally, try selling it as a 'pay for my conference/training fees, and I'll foot the travel and per diem' to see if they really are interested in you having the skill set.
I'd never recommend paying for someone to get "certified" in anything. Certification is (in general) bullsh*t.
Most of the best Java developers I've ever met were NOT SSJE's. I've met MCSE's who couldn't solve a practical problem if it bit them, even though they were great at taking tests. When I hire someone, and they have a bunch of professional certifications that they wave loudly in front of me, I'll ask why they value the certification so highly. Certifications (in my experience) are often a crutch for hiring managers who don't know how to evaluate real-world skills, and so decide to "farm out" that work to certification bodies, and a crutch for job seekers who want to impress algorithmic candidate search processes.
Don't get me wrong - certified people have SOME level of implied competence on the underlying tech, but expecting someone who's "certified" to magically have all the knowledge (and uncertified people to lack it) about a given technology is laughable.
I'd happily pay for books, or online classes, or (if available) in-person classes for someone to learn a skill that we can use (or might use). Even tangentially - if we're a Java shop, having you learn Scala can bring some perspective to how we code, even if we don't use any Scala in production. I want you to learn. I want to help you in your quest to get better at your craft. But certification doesn't accomplish the goal of making you actually better, or actually learning anything. And certification you can get at a short conference? On a technology you're "trying to learn?" Not worth the paper it's printed on. Actually, it's a waste of the paper it's printed on (hello, every Certified Scrum Master!)
If you want to understand the tech, find a way to learn the tech. If you want to be certified, get certified. But those two things are VERY different goals.
If you're the one wanting to go, then you should pay. Your employer is your best and only customer. Why should they pay for something you want to do? How would you feel if you hired a guy to do some construction, and this guy says "Hey, there's a seminar on using the newest nailguns going on downtown next week. I'd really like to learn how to use those new nailguns. How about you pay the $150 admission so I can go?"
My employer wants me to go to a conference in Vegas, DevLearn. Since it's something they want, they are paying.
I wanted to ho to a local conference on information security. Since it's something I wanted, I was willing to pay. My employer paid anyway because the bureaucracy says they should pay for one conference per year or whatever, but I have no problem paying for something I want to do for my own benefit.
If my employer wants me to fo it for their benefit, it's reasonable for them to pay for it.
I also decided to go back to school. I wanted to do that for myself, so I'm paying for it. My employer also gets some benefit, so they are paying part of it. Having an educated workforce paying more taxes helps the whole country, so the federal government is paying a small part via Pell grants. But mostly, it's something I want to do, for my own reasons, so I pay for it.
And one more point – Most places in the US pay for training because it is easier and more beneficial if the business can take the tax deduction. Employees might not be able to do so. Thinks like this get complicated fast so talk to somebody who knows taxes. In that sense it is a little like medical insurance – tax law favors this the corporation to pay for it. And I do see good training as a good benfit.
Get a second job. Or get a bank loan. Your future is your problem, not ours. If your employer wont pay or allow you the time to attend move on find a company that will. But no company will pay the way 100% if its not 100% in there best interest that is what i have experienced.
Jack of all trades,master of none
He says, using the computer which is a direct result of WW2 code breaking technology, across the Internet, a direct descendant of Arpanet.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
In order to justify expenses and hopefully get them covered by your employer - you need to present a business case. This means identifying what you plan to gain (realistically) and how that will benefit the employer, ultimately relating that to an efficiency or performance increase in some measurable way, which ultimately impacts the bottom line - the business decision your boss needs to make is: "Is this going to be profitable for us down the road..." and thinking that through deeply comes down to many factors, including the replacement/time cost should you go elsewhere as a result of the decision. If you can't put together a good business case as to why you should be there, then likely you should expect to pay for it on your own -- unless previous discussions included that sort of thing as a 'perk' of your employment.
It all comes down to business sense. Surely your boss would love to send you - however, for him to justify it to anyone who asks, it needs to also be a sound *business* decision..and that's where you need to put on your non-techy hat and instead, think about cost-benefit.
I was able to get my company to send me on the Java Jam cruise since its cost was 1/2 the price of JavaOne. If a company does not want to train me and is too cheap to send em to conferences, then to hell with them. I will leave the company for greener pastures. Vote with your feet people; do not let the bean counters ruin you work. There are better companies out there.
First off, if you enjoy your job and this is the single sticking point, then I would consider it to be relatively minor. In which case you either play by their rules, quit, or some how convince them to pay. If I was in the position of your manager, I think their offer is fair. For instance, it might be easy for him to get payments made for an actual training or conference, but employee expenses might involve a lot of scrutiny. So, in your ideal world you want him to pay for it. Well, every time I've been in this situation (i.e. paying for training that wasn't budgeted), I've always told the person that if they can directly show me a cost/benefit that I'll go to bat for them and sign off on it. For example, one guy wanted us to pay for his CCNA and later CCNP training and at the time we had an external support contract in a specific area. Well, he made a convincing case we'd be able to cut back on that support contract. He was right - the first year we went from a $48000 expense to a $24000 expense and later down to a $6000 expense. I wanted to go to a conference to meet some contacts, so I told my boss we'd be able to save on custom reporting that was being outsourced. Sure enough, 3 months later a guy I met at the conference did some simple modifications to a canned report that our vendor would have charged a bunch for. I've almost always been able to send someone to training or a conference if I can directly show how it'll benefit.
----- obSig
I worked for a public entity and any work travel to Las Vegas wasn't allowed (I guess thanks to previous people not having control). Maybe your employer is trying to work with you within that restriction as well.
They're mostly a waste of time anyway everyone just strokes their own egos and you spend 2 days digesting information in an archaic inefficient way
lecture style
But dude! He gets to meet Stan Lee! THE Stan Lee!
They should be bearing the cost of the training and conferences.
By "they" you mean us right? because the OP specifically said this is a public sector job, so all the training is paid for with tax payer money.
They should be bearing the cost of the training and conferences. The only time I've shelled out cash for anything was when I didn't prepare enough for a certification test and needed to retake it. That was all on me though. Had I studied a bit more, I'd have passed on the first time.
Companies that want to retain talent need to shell out for training and conferences, especially if the budget isn't a concern for the time being. It's not as if they squirrel that money away for a rainy day. If the conference is as relevant to your work as you say and isn't insanely expensive, this should be a slam dunk.
I have to disagree with your assertion that your Employer bears the responsibility of providing you with training and conferences. I believe this blurs the lines between multiple issues (training, certifications, and conferences).
Certifications provide no value to a company, unless they are in an IT services business where cerfications are paraded to customers as a means to win the business. However they (can) provide the individual with tremendous value, as this can demonstrate to future employers that you know how to do X, Y, and Z. Your current employer either already knows you can, or they didn't care enough about that to not hire you.
Training provides value to a company, as it allows them to ensure you know the proper ways of working with equipment, and ensuring that nothing breaks or that when it does it is dealt with appropriately. So in some respects it is an insurance policy. For the individual however having the know-how to do something doesn't add value immediately, they need to do something with this knowledge in order to extract value from it, such as sitting for a certification test, etc. Before the rest of the IT world will grant them the acknowledgement of the skillset.
Conferences on the other hand provide little value outside of networking, so on an individual basis the only value is in the free drinks and late nights. For the company again in an IT services business where networking is paramount, that will again provide some value there. Also another note, is that often there are deals around training and certifications offered at conferences, so that can change the value proposition.
The bottom line is that there is no clear cut "who should pay" the argument can be made either way, and you need to be prepared to make the argument that it benefits the business to "buy you stuff". Don't expect them to simply read your mind or to even recognize the same value that you do, because they likely won't.
most of the responses are "your employer" or "just pay it"...
i'm self-employed...or you could say i work for a company that's too small to afford conference trips
however, i had no idea i could *ask* for help attending a conference! people do this?
when i worked in Academia, the whole conference thing is all set out for you...it's almost a cottage industry
i'm ABD in Systems Science and I want to attend the Cybernetics conferences like the IEEE SMC and Weiner in the 21st Century but do not have the funds
Thank you Dave Raggett
They're mostly a waste of time anyway everyone just strokes their own egos and you spend 2 days digesting information in an archaic inefficient way
You're doing it wrong.
The reason to go to the conferences is NOT the lectures (which these days are all on videos anyway) but to spend AS MUCH time as possible talking to either the people working for the company who produces the technology the conference is about, or people working heavily with said technology. You learn a LOT more that way and make great contacts that are really useful in solving problems or finding new jobs.
Going to conferences is also something to mention on a resume in general, it shows a lot more dedication than most people to keeping technically sharp.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I worked for a company fairly well-known for not putting much into the development of its technical workforce. I had a chance to go to Google IO in 2011 (the last time I was actually able to get a ticket) and was about to purchase one myself when a manager suggested I just let the company pay for it and the trip for me. Knowing that Google would be handing out a lot of stuff, I asked who would own the stuff they gave me. He said "The company would". I declined the offer, and bought my own ticket and paid for the plane trip and hotel myself.
Fast-forward to now. I have a first-edition ChromeBook, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10" with little Androids all over the back of it (no longer works), a Verizon hotspot that worked for 30 days free of charge, and an ADK. All collecting dust in various spots in my basement. Who's the smart one now, company I worked for in 2011?
You might be able to either, make a better case or select a different conference or classes. If they simply will never pay for continuing education, figure out the cost to pay for it yourself, consider your earnings that much less. Now assess if you are still making a competitive wage. It may be time negotiate or move on.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I plan on going peacefully in my sleep sometime in my 80's. Of course the rest of the folks in the car with me will probably be screaming....
Agreed 100% with this advise.
I view speaking engagements the same way I view my publications: they by themselves don't pay much, even for an "on demand" speaker. The upside is in the prestige that translates into better job offers or better consulting opportunities.
You can write something in your resume like "I have excellent communication skills" or you can just list your management experience, speaking engagements, and publications. At that point people can be pretty sure that you can communicate better than a majority of people.
Prep time == fun time too. The creative work that goes into condensing a 6- or 12-month project into 28 slides without making them too busy is great. Judicious use of animation effects to help you make your point (e.g. making the layers of a system appear on the screen as you talk about them) is also fun. Last, don't change your topic every time you go out! Instead, figure out a topic that different audiences will find interesting, create the presentation, and then tweak only one or two slides when the time comes. A good presentation has a 6-months shelf life (or 3-4 conferences if you have a busy schedule).
Cheers!
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They usually will send us, even if the location is exotic (like a cruise) as long as there is some smidgen of learning involved. It is one of the perks of working for a good company...
What your employer is telling you is that they don't want to know all that. Or more likely if they imagine themselves quality business professionals, they do want to know that, but they don't want to pay for it. So there will come a time when they expect "their guy" to know what is going on, but you won't, because you didn't go, so they will lay you off and hire somebody that knows it already, because that somebody previously worked for a company that paid for him/her to go.
You are an asset to the company because of your skills and knowledge. Like any other asset that has some limit to its usefulness, the company has the option to upgrade or replace it. If they refuse to upgrade the CPU or RAM in their server, what is going to happen eventually? If they refuse to upgrade your knowledge, what are they going to do eventually? Eventually in both cases they'll be forced to replace or upgrade. However, if they don't upgrade preemptively, they will no doubt be faced with a failure situation: server crashed = lost customers; bad technology decision = lost customers.
But since servers today are not (yet) able to upgrade themselves the question is (that you're facing it seems): who's responsibility is it to upgrade you?
That is just an ROI analysis.
So, sell the conference as no different than a hardware or software upgrade for which they no doubt already acknowledge the value of over purchasing new systems. Of course they can go out and hire a replacement for you, and then pay to train them and bring them up to speed and hope they're as good as you; but that is a monumental waste of money. So make sure they understand that if they don't send you, they will have to replace you, at great expense to themselves. And in the meanwhile, you are not behaving optimally. Just because the server hasn't crashed yet, doesn't mean some disgruntled customers aren't leaving due to some spotty performance. Likewise if you're not fully informed, you may be making non-obvious decisions that are not the best for the company.
If they still refuse, then do your own ROI analysis. Is it going to help your career to go? Is that $2500 (or whatever amount) you're begging for going to help you that much, or more (not just cash, maybe your whole life is happier if you're on top of the technology; take your goals into account)? Can you instead just wait until your time at this company is done, and then go take some crash courses to catch up before job hunting some more?
Personally, I expect an employer to pay for a relevant conference not out of any sense of right or wrong or deserved or not deserved, but because of greed and competence. It is cheaper to upgrade than to replace. So either your employer plans ahead appropriately, or doesn't. There are obvious exceptions, especially for startups, but for any established business a refusal to train is a symptom of poor management.
Going to conferences on the government nickle raises all sorts of complexities (at least for the US and most state govts). Particularly when they're in known "desirable" locations like Las Vegas or Hawaii. No matter that LV has good infrastructure for conferences, the funding agencies live in deathly fear of a "Government employees paid to gamble" news story.
A lot of agencies have a (not particularly well documented) quota system, too. You have to forecast your conference travel months in advance, and there's a bunch of folks who go through and decide which are the most worthy. A conference in Leavenworth, KS will definitely seem less a boon-doggle than a conference in Maui,HI or Big Sky, MT. And the quotas may be applied across branches and directorates too, according to a complex strategy driven by office and agency politics, as well as the "optics" of the conference.
A couple strategies for approval:
1) Be giving a paper for which you are the lead author, or for which the very senior lead author has said they're not interested in attending.
2) Be a session chair or on a committee for the conference. This is where being a member of IEEE or ACM or similar can really help.
3) Be an invited speaker. If you're government, they can't pay you a stipend or honorarium, so it's cheap to invite you from the conference organizer's standpoint.
This isn't the industrial revolution. You're free to take any job, leave any job, for any reason. Take some personal responsibility and make your career YOUR CAREER. If you want the training - go for it! And pay for it. It's nice when employers pay for things like this - but they are not responsible for where you want to be - you are.
Yes, the employer should provide training; but they also have to prioritize what training is important to them, and that might not line up with what is important to you. So it's a negotiation. It seems like they've been considerate for local conferences, and that's great. But you can't expect more without negotiating and proving to them the benefit of it.
In the end, I hold one rule: If my employer is paying for, then I'm representing them at the conference. Their name is on the registration, etc. If I am paying for it, then I'm a free agent during the conference and I'm representing myself and myself alone. If it's somewhere in between, well...best to play it safe and act like you're representing your employer because they'll probably think of it that way.
So, if you really want to go, then go on your own dime, as a free-agent. And make it clear to them that that will be the case unless they want to poney up at least some of the money for the conference. Who knows, may be there is some other opportunity they could use a well while you're in the area to make it more than just a conference trip too. But you'll have to negotiate all of that.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Your employer.
If your employer agreed that your attending the conference was worthwhile for your work, then they pay, and you get your supervisor's written agreement to that before making your booking (and sending the bill to Accounts for payment, attached to the relevant Purchase Order countersigned by your boss. Or whatever your local procedures are.
If you want the course or conference, but your boss disagrees with you about it's value, than you go, you pay the tickets and your bills, and you retain the value. And you probably leave shortly after, for a better employer.
If your Boss is only partly convinced, then you get written agreement about what they'll cover, what you'll cover, and crucially, who owns any resultant certifications or training. In particular, cover how much they will attempt to claw back if you leave "shortly" after the conference/ training/ certification. Settle this, in writing, before you leave. If necessary, take it to the point of getting a contract amendment written up with Human Remains (define things like "shortly", above).
If it's worth that hassle, then the event is probably worth the candle ; if it's not worth that hassle, then is it really worth atending?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"