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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
You're cheaper to train up to a new internal position than to find someone new and start from scratch.
Training budgets at most Fortune 500 companies were cut at the behest of Wall Street years ago. If you want training, you need to pay for it yourself. Especially if you're responding to job descriptions that require five years of experience in a new technology that came out six months ago.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 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.
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?
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.