What % of your turnover goes on training ?

[aussielong]

I am sure you could put all the courses in a little spread sheet and tell us all the median cost once you know how to work it out

Naa, get a Bob to do that. I'm into hard stats work like standard deviants and normal distributables.

[minestrone]

Naa, get a Bob to do that. I'm into hard stats work like standard deviants and normal distributables.

I think I know what is coming.

[darmstadt]

I think I know what is coming.

Does it involve the word 'cretin' anywhere?

[doodab]

Having just availed myself of the gelatinous horror that comprises the subset of society that shops In Tesco I feel like something of a deviant myself.

[Dominic Connor]

I would like to do the CQF (Dominic's course) Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF) - Mathematical Finance Qualification | CQF

But it's too damn expensive at over 10k sterling ..

I'm paying a maths PhD to teach me the same stuff at a much lower cost

The certificate itself is not recognised anywhere, especially outside of the UK

Dominic, why not make it 5k? Its largely self study anyway

The pricing is not my call, sadly.

[AtW]

I've been eyeing a statistics course lately. There are some decent rates about if you are a good statistician.

Its a one week course in London- project based with multiple choice exam. The 2000 sterling price is putting me off though

So, your calculation is that paying 2000 GBP for a course that might allow you to get contracts with 500+ per day кфеу isn't a good investment of money?

[Dominic Connor]

The value of training

As has been pointed out I do some training, but given that the course is both expensive and niche, I'd be surprised if it were useful to a large % here.

One reason for training is protection for the bad times, be clear I've had the market for my own skills go titsup (I was an OS/2 guy) and it wasn't pleasant. When listing some skills I had on an article for the Register, a couple had died so abjectly that the editor asked me what they were. Some of my skills are so stupid that some people don't believe they ever existed, these include Microsoft Unix and programming modems with Excel macros.

Given that this is the fate of all skills, why so little effort to move on ?

Yes you can blag version N+1 if you've done N or even N-1, but eventually there isn't a version N+1 (else we'd be on dBase 12 and DOS 42) and as we're seeing with Java a skill can get so common that the price comes down even if a lot of clients use it.
It doesn't take many extra chargeable days to justify a course and a small % on your daily rate has much the same effect.

[MadDawg]

As has been pointed out I do some training, but given that the course is both expensive and niche, I'd be surprised if it were useful to a large % here.

One reason for training is protection for the bad times, be clear I've had the market for my own skills go titsup (I was an OS/2 guy) and it wasn't pleasant. When listing some skills I had on an article for the Register, a couple had died so abjectly that the editor asked me what they were. Some of my skills are so stupid that some people don't believe they ever existed, these include Microsoft Unix and programming modems with Excel macros.

Given that this is the fate of all skills, why so little effort to move on ?

Yes you can blag version N+1 if you've done N or even N-1, but eventually there isn't a version N+1 (else we'd be on dBase 12 and DOS 42) and as we're seeing with Java a skill can get so common that the price comes down even if a lot of clients use it.
It doesn't take many extra chargeable days to justify a course and a small % on your daily rate has much the same effect.

But what do you pick and why? There's a myriad of technologies out there - who knows what will be the next .Net and what will be the next Delphi?

On a side note - I'm assuming some of the training you offer isn't just stating the bleeding obvious - why not update the example video with something that makes us think "That sounds useful".

[Lockhouse]

I splurge every few years; do a few courses to get some more "stamps in the book" at an appropriately benched time. I did three courses this year, one after the other as soon I finished my contract then used them to get another gig within two weeks. They were the first courses I'd done for five years and my CV needed an update.

The only reason I do any sort of formal course is to get the certificate to get my CV in front of clients - not to actually learn anything. If I need to learn stuff for my contract I'll generally do it on client time.

[aussielong]

The pricing is not my call, sadly.

You'd sell a lot more units if 7City dropped the price. It's not far off the price of a Masters.

It's mostly employer funded, hence your price level I guess. Which excludes contractors.

Can you not discuss this with those who do call the price please?