Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?

There is only so much you can spend on books, I would suggest you register for an Algorithms/Data Structures course at a decent local university.

It could be the Sophomore level Data structures + Basic Algo course or a senior level Algorithms, wherever your comfort level is. Since you mostly do front-end development, this could bring serious depth in your computing skills.

For most CS programs, the data structures and basic algorithms course (typically at sophomore level) forms the backbone for most of the curriculum. If you didn't go through a CS program, this is the most important component that you might miss on.

Consider paying someone to tutor you. Consider using Air Pair for that.

If you want to work at those companies, your time is better spent with something like Cracking the Coding Interview and reviewing it on the weekend. If you actually go through the entire book, you'd stand a pretty good chance at doing really well on all of your interviews as far as stuff you don't use on the job frequently questions go.

This former googler who's interviewed a lot agrees with me: "For instance, if you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e., actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process." http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/10/gaming-coding-interview.htm...

If you have never studied any of these topics, keeping this book in mind as you study for your algorithms course will be definitely helpful for your grade and your future interviews!

Don't forget that you can stretch $2k a lot further on something like half.com instead of buying new books: http://product.half.ebay.com/Introduction-to-Algorithms-by-C...

And they just bought CodeSchool which I've been pretty pleased with. Not sure of their integration plans yet, outside of CodeSchool offering some pluralsight videos.