SIGMOD conference, only been once so far (2019). I am interested in database theory and related hard practical problems though, you may not be.
Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
81–90 of 553 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#82Spend $0 for tuition and third year PhD student in compilers. The best decision I have made. Hated my masters thesis subject which was about lattice based cryptography.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#83Aside from college, not much. I've read some books and done some courses and conferences but I didn't find any of them to be the least bit useful. One thing I did in college outside of CS education was a class on voice and diction which really helped my speaking. Absolutely everything I've learned to be good at, I've learned by doing. And that includes programming despite having a CS degree.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#84I 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.
Seconding this book. I took grad school level negotiation classes and this book added as much or more value when I've negotiated for pricing, salary, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#85If it wasn't 2020 I'd say - Travel
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#86Starting a failed startup many years ago, if opportunity cost counts.
Right? I too failed at a self-funded startup. Most expensive 'mistake' of my life, but boy did I learn a lot.
Making these kind of mistakes is something people avoid. But I'm a little happy I made this in my 20s. It can accelerate your learning by years to even decades. On a longish view of things a lot of things that are clear to me, are still murky to people in my age peer group. That kind of helps making lots of beneficial decisions especially financial and health before others can even see or realize them. You come out ahead in the bell curve.
A start up failure might be painful, and even a little expensive. But it's like a college degree, or other high quality training program. It teaches you a lot and most of it is beneficial stuff if you are willing to apply the lessons elsewhere.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#87Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#88I've found project management qualifications to give the best ROI. I've done Prince 2 and Scrum. Although I've never had a job title of Project Manager or Scrum Master, they've helped me get senior/lead developer jobs just because recruiters like to see those words on a CV.
PRINCE2 is the best-designed course I've ever taken. Very concise and practical.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#89Udi Dahan's "Learn Advanced Distributed Systems Design" course. https://particular.net/adsd At one point, I was considering paying out of pocket to attend the course. Fortunately, the company I was working for at the time wanted to send people to it and I got selected. After taking the course, even if I did have to pay myself, I wouldn't have been upset. That course is outstanding.
Very interesting, can you elaborate more on what was the impact on your professional life?
I wish I had that money now or my company could pay for me.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#90I 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.
I was part-way through the book and I needed to sell some things on Gumtree. Normally I'd expect some low balling at first and then accept below the asking price.
However using what I'd read in the book, I got the asking price for all 4 items I sold!