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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?

#261

Post by animesh »

unoti wrote: post #172

1. Book: Nonviolent Communication, by Marhsall Rosenberg PhD. Great things are built by teams. The more senior I become, the greatest challenges involve teamwork, and the programming is the easy part. I've read countless leadership and self help books, but the simple concepts in just the first few chapters were absolutely transformative to me. 2. The Fast AI for coders course and associated book. (Maybe this shouldn'…

> The Fast AI for coders course and associated book

Is it this course? https://course.fast.ai/

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

#262

Post by whimsicalism »

titanomachy wrote: post #257
whimsicalism wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to demand scientific evidence behind all of their assertions, but have (kicking and screaming) come to realize that many important things in life simply don't/can't have studies at my preferred level of rigor. Hm. I still haven't accepted this, perhaps it's why I think a lot of management "techniques" are bullshit or bullshit combined with obvious truisms.

Even if you don't accept "can't", "don't" is pretty reasonable IMO.

Well, I accept the "don't", but in those areas I wouldn't feel that breaking from what others are doing is unjustified.

ie. If there isn't a strong justification in doing it, then there is no compelling reason for it to be done in that particular way.

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

#263

Post by jedberg »

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…

> For some topics though, it's not just a matter of time savings. I'm working on a topic now that doesn't really have many useful books, so I'm having to read technical specifications produced by industry groups, which lack context and are pretty opaque. I'm missing having a book that explains these ideas in a coherent fashion.

I know a couple of tech book authors, and this is how they all got started on their first book. :) There was no good book, they did all the work of becoming an expert, and then curated their learnings into a book for others.

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

#264

Post by geewee »

mac01021 wrote: post #245
ilyas121 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This for me as well! I used to think that if I was inward-looking enough I could handle all of this myself. But outsourcing this kind of work to a professional has saved me so much time and trial&error with how to take care of my mental health.

Is it possible for you, without sharing personal details that you would rather not share, to give a more concrete and detailed account of the value that your therapist has provided to you? I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. And, while I'm open minded to the idea that I am wrong about that, I just have trouble imagining or envisioning what I might be missin…

Not the OP but I have similar experiences and am also very introspective. For me, my introspection dealt a lot with what my thoughts were and how I behaved, but I had a lot of feelings that I had suppressed so deeply they never really came into consciousness. Therapy helped a lot with that.

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

#265

Post by hinkley »

On this general topic, someone pointed out to me years ago that whenever interest rates are lower than inflation, 'investing in your future' may be the best use for the money. That could be increasing your salary, making yourself more employable, building your social network, or even finding a pastime that makes you happier than what you usually do with your free time.

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

#266

Post by gtf21 »

rdtwo wrote: post #237
gtf21 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I really agree -- I have found having a coach extremely valuable (and mine is totally unqualified in terms of psychology degrees, but has heaps of experience of coaching founders). Having someone to help you think through problems who can do so objectively, and doesn't get fascinated with the detail because she's removed from the problems to a degree, is great.

A psychologist can basically be a coach for things like social anxiety. You might be able to get a better coach but you can also get a highly qualified one subsidized by healthcare.

Oh I see, solving a different problem to me I suppose but fair enough.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

jeeshan wrote: post #249
locochef wrote: post #204

The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affe…

Fully agree. There are therapists who also do coaching.

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by animesh »

kranner wrote: post #35
paulgb wrote: post #17

I've enjoyed having an O'Reilly Safari subscription for random access to books. In particular, the Pragmatic Programmer and Designing Data-Intensive Applications. I've also had good experiences with SCPD courses from Stanford, if your budget would cover those (they are at the other end of the price spectrum).

For anyone in India, the cheapest way to get a Safari Books subscription is via an ACM Professional or Student membership. It’s only INR 1500 per year.

Going through the student membership options, this seems to be only for current students. Was I missing something here?

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

#269

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

I’ll give an example of a horrible waste of money on manager training: Plucky

https://www.beplucky.com/

The whole thing has this arrogant faux-subversive “not your grandma’s manager training” attitude that seeps into every aspect, and it makes a lot of pretense about being candid but in reality it has zero useful or new advice to offer, just rehashing well-known management considerations but trying to retrofit some notion of being more candid and edgy onto it. Most of the advice is even harmful because forcing more confrontational notions of candid behavior into management will not work at all in most large corporate cultures.

Plucky is essentially a way to get your company to pay for you to travel to another city, and mingle with other “edgy” tech leaders, which is insufferable and boring.

1000% do not recommend.

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