What % of your turnover goes on training ?

[aussielong]

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?

Why would I learn boring sh1t to halve my day rate?

[aussielong]

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.

If you go this route you've got specialisation risk, for which you demand a premium. If you bet your career on a vendor product and do not do EXTREMELY well out of it, more fool you. You should always maintain a core transferable skillset as well as a niche money spinner.

[AtW]

Why would I learn boring sh1t to halve my day rate?

You can't possibly have your day rate halved because that would be against minimum wage laws.

[aussielong]

You can't possibly have your day rate halved because that would be against minimum wage laws.

ha ha good one

[Dominic Connor]

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".

Perhaps we need a new thread on avoiding "the next Delphi". I don't have a simple answer, because its a function of what skills you have personally which determines which new ones you can pick up easily and cheaply.

Some of what I tell people sounds obvious to you and frankly to me as well. However you would be surprised how many people don't think their way out of career crises and being mildly well known I get a lot of people coming to me after the fan has been hit.

Even allowing for that you point about it being a little obvious isn't without merit, but I'm not punting a prepack solution here, I'm trying to get people to think about this a problem to be solved rather than a situation you are in.

[BillHicksRIP]

The courses I would need to go on are £2500 a week plus travel and accomodation and I'd lose a similar amount for non-billing. I'll wait until I'm between contracts and then just hammer the books then.

[DodgyAgent]

The courses I would need to go on are £2500 a week plus travel and accomodation and I'd lose a similar amount for non-billing. I'll wait until I'm between contracts and then just hammer the books then.

You can go to Thailand and get laid for less than half of that

[d000hg]

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

Plenty of deviants around, but I'm not sure they are very standardised.

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.

You've eaten a chav?!

[doodab]

You've eaten a chav?!

I have walked among them, breathed the same air and purchased the same prepacked ready to barbeque morsels. I'm only a tracksuit and a baseball cap away from switching over to ITV4.

[sasguru]

I'm into hard stats work like standard deviants and normal distributables.

It's good you Ozzies retain your sense of humour even when you're such losers generally.