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Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#101

Post by rectang »

I ran a lunch-time book club at work for groups between 3 and 10 people, covering technical topics like programming languages, version control, and so on. After a management change at the company, I couldn't get budget for books or lunches any more.

So I bought the books and bought the lunches.

The most effective way to learn something thoroughly is to teach it, and I was the facilitator for the book club, leading all the discussions and planning things out. The thousand dollars or so I spent per book, which won me sufficiently motivated study partners depending on me to lead, offered much more value than money spent on typical coursework or conventions.

Never mind the value I was providing for the company (lost on the new management, but I felt good about it nonetheless), spending that money was justifiable solely in terms of creating a maximally stimulating learning environment for myself.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#102

Post by PatentlyDC123 »

lsiunsuex wrote: post #4

I'm a big fan of pluralsight.com (no association). It's only $29 / month USD. I always go back to it when I want to brush up on something or learn something completely new. Not all videos / instructors are created equally of course, but their content has been the most consistent IMO.

Any instructors you recommend?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#103

Post by Cthulhu_ »

If your budget is a few hundred, an IntelliJ Ultimate license. For me it's a force multiplier. Built-in highlights of things that can be improved (e.g. linting) is a bonus. In the end, things like VS Code are just text editors.

I mean, you can't get a warning that the `[]` syntax isn't available in your old codebase's flavor of PHP (5.2) in VS Code. I think.

Alternatively: Take time off. If you have enough money to live on for a month, take it. Make a list of things you'd like to dig into, or just spend a month doodling. Or take half days off for a month and participate in something like Advent of Code. You can challenge yourself in various ways, like use an unfamiliar language for the month, or a different language every day. Do some tutorials and make stuff in Pico-8, embrace the limitations and embarrassingly unreadable code, which is amazing at the same time because you wrote it and it all fits in your head. Just throwing it out there.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#104

Post by Balgair »

rovr138 wrote: post #57
smt88 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get them for free at the library. No need to spend professional development money on them.

Assuming they're there.

Many Librarians are more than happy to find what you are looking for on inter-library loan. If by some chance the book is still not there, you can request that they buy it with little to no fuss (at least in the US). The catalog that your local library has online is more of a starting bid.

Additionally, if you have an alma mater, try looking with them. Most universities will give full library access to alumni if you are part of the alumni association, including journal articles, newpaper subscriptions, magazines, etc. Dues aren't too expensive and lifetime membership is reasonable, at least for me.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#105

Post by cashsterling »

esond wrote: post #77
ThePhysicist wrote: post #58

I once did a two-day workshop on negotiation techniques, which covered not only methods but also helped me to become more comfortable dealing with the psychological stress that's induced in many negotiation situations. So far I'd say the course (which was free as I won it as a prize in a business plan competition) is directly responsible for at least 50-100.000 € of additional revenue that I made in the last years, s…

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. This relatively short book has made more of a difference to my personal livelihood than maybe any other pice of literature or advice. You really don’t realize how much negotiating you do in day to day life. Its good to be comfortable with it.

Another vote for this book... it is very good. I negotiate contracts, price, and terms & conditions as a significant portion of my job.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#106

Post by ajmurmann »

I attended a weekend-long T-Group. It's a workshop in sick you get to practice interpersonal interactions dialed to 11 with super fast feedback. It's really hard to describe without it sounding ridiculous. In essence one person says something and then someone else will give them immediate feedback on it. It's hands down the best learning experience I've ever had. It's also very, very hard emotional work.

There is a class at Stanford graduate School of business that follows this. I understand it's their most popular class. At Stanford it's stretched over several weeks. The workshop I attended we've from Friday evening to Sunday evening and was hosted by Jana who also is involved with the Stanford class. You can find the Stafford class and links to others who offer this type of experience here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/experience/learning/leadership/...

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#107

Post by omginternets »

I was lucky enough to get paid for this but I'll say it anyway: learning to speak is the only thing of lasting value I have gotten out of startup accelerators.

I would have gladly drop a few grand to acquire that skill. In fact, I'm considering hiring a speaking coach to improve.

I've historically been a strong written communicator, but it turns out that speaking is very different from writing. In fact, I had thought of myself as a pretty strong speaker due to my experience giving scholarly presentations ... how wrong I was. Academic talks are a different beast altogether.

If you haven't seen Patrick Winston's How to Speak lecture [0], drop what you're doing and watch it now. I'll leave you with a (paraphrased) quote from his lecture: your ideas are like your children and you don't want to send them off into the world dressed in rags.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#108

Post by kristopolous »

jkingsbery wrote: post #48

As many others have said, books are the best things I've spent money on, but let me say more: Do books sometimes say things that are obvious? Yes. For example, when I first read Martin Fowler's book Refactoring, I had been renaming variables and moving methods from one class to another for years. But he gave a new framework for thinking about something that obvious. I've found the idea of separating out my coding flo…

> A typical industry book is $40-$50, and a typical text book is $100-$150.

If this is out of some people's budgets, check eBay. Also some thrift store chains have certain locations that are book focused.

You can get older edition textbooks for practically free. It's not like Claude Shannon's equations have changed. The old editions are effectively just as good.

I've picked up plenty of classic books, HBR, Drucker, Christensen, Moore, etc ... $2-3 in fine condition. To be honest, half the time it looks unread. Then you can donate them "back into the stream" when you're done for others.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#109

Post by coachtech »

gtf21 wrote: post #67

As a founder / CTO the best money I have spent is on a really good coach. My coach (my cofounder's too, and now some of our leadership team) doesn't have particular expertise in founding or leading companies, but works with many founders, and she's not technical, but the things I think I have found hardest to learn are mostly around people management and leadership, which I think are underrated skills that require se…

People are asking "How do I find a coach?", and like most personal services, the best leads come from referrals and friends.

I'm a tech mentor and lifecoach myself, and I'm ready to work with you to help achieve your dreams. I offer a free discovery call to get clear on your goals: https://calendly.com/ryanpetroff/discovery-call

Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?

#110

Post by npsimons »

Books, but then I've always learned best from books - you set your own pace, they are easily cross-referenced and indexable, and to top it all off books are more often than not structured and well-organized. Re-reading is also an option. I point out all these things to contrast books to lectures or coaching, or even videos; they're just not the same or as good as a good book.

As for specifics, if you haven't read it already, "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master" is excellent and a great place to start, and one of their biggest tips? Read books, at least one per quarter.

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