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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?

#431

Post by peterstensmyr »

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

Same for me. As a previously solo half-developer, Gary's videos really drove home how to do best-practice development on a real project. He pushed TDD, separating concerns, and really diving into a single line of code and obsessing over getting it right. Thanks Gary! Sad that he's not making them any more, I really enjoyed the "Web framework from scratch" series. He's recently posted a new video about TypeScript types which is also very good: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDzfXZxesMP-LUICN-RWcbQ

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

#432

Post by andrewmcwatters »

jldugger wrote: post #411
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LowEndBox, and you can get $15/year VPSs out there.

free-for-dev lists a couple of free forever hosts -- OCI and GCP.

Thanks for sharing! I've never heard of free-for.dev.

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

#433

Post by contravariant »

equality_1138 wrote: post #425
azinman2 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do “woke politics” prevent you from doing your job well?

How familiar are you with the term? Perhaps I used an offensive slur for convenience and should reconsider the phrasing? In my experience, over-emphasizing "social responsibility" that has nothing to do with the product tends to put less competent managers in power. Less competent managers tend to favor less competent engineers. And it's a vicious cycle.

That's just office politics, only centred around a particular hype.

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

#434

Post by lmilcin »

Nice pen, paper and ink.

I have found I am getting much better results and much less stuff falls through the cracks when I make notes on paper. Nice pen, paper and ink aren't essential, but they make it more enjoyable.

Audible.

I used to fill my long commute times with Harvard Business Review and other similar content. As I already have a bit of experience, these allowed me to connect a lot of dots together.

*

In general most of good advice is not given out freely and learning on your own mistakes costs a lot of time (and reputation).

Be prepared to pay for it.

I pay regularly for access to materials that let me save time and grow faster and for tools that let me do that with less effort.

Not all of them give me immediate results but the ones that do make it all up.

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

#435

Post by PopeDotNinja »

systemvoltage wrote: post #406
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for therapy. Best $10K I ever spent. Over 18 months I ever spent.

Can you please tell us what kind of things were discusssed? Not going into your personal details, just general idea would be great. A lot of people here who haven't talked to a therapist are wondering the same in unison.

Sure. I can't remember exactly what led me to this point, but I remember going to workout with my personal trainer & feel really angry towards her for no particular reason. I realized in that moment that I was not OK, and I booked a session with a cognitive behavioral therapist. I basically started with "I'm super angry & don't know why", and went from there.

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

#437

Post by geoduck14 »

parliament32 wrote: post #246
JackFr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a fascinating EconTalk episode about the economics of a car dealers. https://www.econtalk.org/cole-on-the-market-for-new-cars/ One interesting point was letting the buyer successfully negotiate to an absolute rock bottom price, but then making back the margin on financing.

I keep hearing "they make money on financing" but I don't see how that's possible. I've bought three new cars financed, and every time the finance person puts my info in and gets finance "offers" from 4-5 big banks plus their in-house financing, and just lets me pick the one with the best rate -- usually most of the finance offers are under 5%, with the best one being under 1%. One time I went to one of the offering…

Hi! I work in auto finance. About my company: we finance in the USA and we focus in "sub prime" (aka bad credit), but we are a "full spectrum" lender.

Dealerships TOTALLY make money on the financing. In your example, it might be $1000 - it sounds like you have pretty good credit, and the margins are thin there. You should remember that if someone is leaning YOU money, they just want a reliable investment for their portfolio - they'll make their money on the next guy.

If you are getting Also, did you buy a warranty or gap coverage? Cause that is profit for the dealer, too.

You probably think you got the "best rate" because you SAW ALL THE OFFERS. Nope. Dealerships see the rate from the bank and can bump it up. Did Wells Fargo offer you 2%, well, let's show him 3% and I keep the difference.

Also, yup, getting a "direct rate" is difficult. The bank doesn't really know the car you are buying, and they might see that you were already approved at the dealership and give you a WORSE rate DELIBERATLY simply to maintain a relationship with the dealership.

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

#438

Post by sorum »

atlgator wrote: post #192
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…

I love my Bose QC 35! The problem lately is I can't find any current music that is appealing to me. Alas, I must be getting old.

Anything after '73 is highly suspicious to me

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

#439

Post by lucasfcosta »

omginternets wrote: post #107

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…

I’ve just watched this lecture and I can’t thank you enough. It was one of the most useful talks I’ve ever seen.

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

#440

Post by vb6sp6 »

maccard wrote: post #390
conductr wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You showed too much commitment. In either situation they knew your were going to buy. The trick is to keep one foot out the door until you're locked in on price.

I had the same experience. The dealer knew I was ready to walk, but it was as simple as "computer says no lower". I sold them a car, and saw it listed the following day. My napkin math said that the margin was close to 0 on the car in the first place,once they had paid £30 to tax it and a salesperson an hour to talk to someone and take their details.

> and saw it listed the following day.

The car business is a giant recursive function where cost can be added at every step.

The sales price may have been low but the dealer has lots of ways to add pure profit:

* sub-prime loans with high interest

* gap insurance

* alarm systems

* extended warranties

* window tints, undercoats, towing hitches, etc.

The buyer might also have a trade in which conveniently starts the whole process over again.

The "Forbes list of Billionaires" has several car dealers in it.

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