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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.
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.
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.
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.