Do you pay for your own training?

[squarepeg]

I'm new here (to this forum and to the UK) so please be gentle with me ;-) I would like to offer a practical cloud computing training course for programmers/devops in the London area in May/June/July.

I have quite a bit of experience writing technical (computer) books and training sys admins and programmers, but I have always done it by invitation, never marketed my training classes directly.

And here's my question to you: do you pay for your training out of your own pocket and arrange it yourselves or do your clients? (agencies?) arrange that for you?

Mod note: Hi Square peg. No blatant advertising on this forum please, but since you asked a question I'll let you through.

[cojak]

My company pays for my training.

And I wouldn't accept any training from an agency (who wouldn't offer it anyway) or a client unless it was health and safety or SOX compliance and I needed it for contractual reasons.

(and generally speaking, I don't bother unless it's very niche, from the best renowned provider or it's got a certificate at the end of it.)

[Sockpuppet]

Same, you can't train people how to be good at something. Only experience does that.

[squarepeg]

Mod note: Hi Square peg. No blatant advertising on this forum please, but since you asked a question I'll let you through.

Thank you! It is a genuine question. No cloaked advertising intended.

Getting back to the question, if you're under contract, do you just take a day or two off or go for the training during weekends?

[cojak]

Many contractors hate taking time off for anything, I do as I consider it part of my ROI.

For example I'm in my best paying contract for years (not a huge raise but makes up for previous rate cuts) in exactly the role I was aiming for as a direct result of a training course I took at the beginning of the year.

A fellow attendee gave their PM my card and waited until my previous contract finished.

[nomadd]

Same, you can't train people how to be good at something. Only experience does that.

This^

Just hit The Bench after a 2.5 year contract. Been at the computer and the technical books for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week since then.

Last training course I went on was in 1989 - paid for by the last company I worked permie for.

[squarepeg]

(and generally speaking, I don't bother unless it's very niche, from the best renowned provider or it's got a certificate at the end of it.)

The subject is a niche one, there is no certification for it, but the demand for it is growing fast. It's been the bane of my life, I always look for the latest tech well before there are certification programs for it. :-)

[BlasterBates]

You can learn as much from books as a training course, probably better actually. Look for reviews on books in Amazon, there are usually "bibles" for each subject. Then if it's a programming language you're learning, down load compiler etc and write some example programs.

[squarepeg]

You can learn as much from books as a training course, probably better actually. Look for reviews on books in Amazon, there are usually "bibles" for each subject. Then if it's a programming language you're learning, down load compiler etc and write some example programs.

One could say that if there are no books on the subject, yet, a training course might be the only option to get answers you cannot get otherwise or to connect with people interested in the same technology.

[nomadd]

The subject is a niche one, there is no certification for it, but the demand for it is growing fast. It's been the bane of my life, I always look for the latest tech well before there are certification programs for it. :-)

Cloud Computing is niche?

Amazon.com shows over 12,000 hits for "cloud computing" as a search term; 100s of books on the subject; 1,000s of white papers, guides and documents on the web. Most cloud vendors have been active in the space for many years now. As a contractor you can either get a free account from most of the Cloud vendors, or purchase an environment on a monthly basis dirt cheap. Then fire up the PC and do plenty of dev/testing and deployments.

BTW - I specialise in distributed/cluster/cloud computing.

EDIT: As regards, "It's been the bane of my life, I always look for the latest tech well before there are certification programs for it.", I'd say that's true for about 90% of the people on this forum.