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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?

#111

Post by melenaboija »

- 15k with an MSc in Data Science after 10 years of professional experience. Key aspects that made this useful for me: I commited to it 100% and went for a 4 gpa as that was the only way to take it seriously, I could do it because of my personal situation and tine availability. I learned A LOT, among other things that I am not that stupid as I thought while taking CS, it was just a matter of interest to me. This gave me my currennt job with a significant turn to my career.

- Spending 2k with a work station and changing my environment from expensive Macbooks to an expensive workstation and cheap laptops as a front end

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

#112

Post by dtech »

totally wrote: post #95
esond wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The audiobook is good as well, you can hear the tone of voice, which is useful.

I looked it up and saw it was read by Michael Kramer. It's worth it do just hear his voice.

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

#113

Post by Bishonen88 »

zorked wrote: post #78
bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #16

A subscription to O'Reilly's digital library https://learning.oreilly.com

This is the thing that used to be called Safari, right? This is great, but a tad expensive at $50/month. I wish O'Reilly would just charge a bit less for that.

There are sales every now and then which get you pay less for whatever period you continue being subscribed. I pay 20 dollars a month since 2 years without any “student discount” shenanigans

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

#114

Post by roland35 »

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…

When I was purchasing a car this helped a lot too! Salesmen are much more experienced than me since they negotiate every day, but even accounting for that it is easy to see what they are doing with other customers and easy to see through the attempts they make on myself. The most common one of course is the "time limited" deal... As if I just happened to show up on the only day there is a sale...

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

#115

Post by baggachipz »

Improv lessons. Seriously. Being confident speaking in front of others and the life lessons it provides ("yes, and") are absolutely indispensable. It brought me out of my shell and advanced me in my career significantly, all while having fun and making friends.

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

#116

Post by s_dev »

camnora wrote: post #9

Destroy All Software screencasts by Gary Bernhardt has some great content. Besides the typical CS degree, I felt that these videos were most pivotal in me writing better code. https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts

He does heavy Black Friday discounts if anyone is considering buying them. Maybe wait a couple of weeks.

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

#118

Post by unmole »

zorked wrote: post #78
bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #16

A subscription to O'Reilly's digital library https://learning.oreilly.com

This is the thing that used to be called Safari, right? This is great, but a tad expensive at $50/month. I wish O'Reilly would just charge a bit less for that.

Get an ACM Memebership instead, it's significantly less expensive. Among other things, it gives you access to O'Reilly Online.

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

#119

Post by randomNumber7 »

kristopolous wrote: post #108
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, C…

> If this is out of some people's budgets, check eBay.

Just google "library genisis" ;)

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

#120

Post by IggleSniggle »

sgt wrote: post #38
nolok wrote: post #26

I found that (for me !) it was less useful to invest in learning to do new things, as opposed to investing in being more efficient and / or having my work time more pleasant. Make your work feel like pleasure and there is no limit to what you can achieve. So maybe don't only think "what can I be better at ?" but also "how can my life be better while I work ?". Software: A proper training session with a high level deb…

Unless you buy a cheap brand I don't think the matte / glossy holds up anymore. A good quality screen can have a degree of gloss and still offer superior quality to matte. Crystal clear rendering of fonts is a given. Having said the above, I think there's actually very little competition out there that beats MacBook Pro's etc.

I have a MBP, and often end up working in the dark or turning my screen brightness way up just to fight the glare. That said, the only thing matte gives you is diffusion of light, and often at the cost of actually being brighter (but again, more diffuse) than the glossy. Personally, I still prefer matte.
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