Hiring a tutor to mentor me in a technology I want to learn. Building MVP’s with them to master the tech.
How did you find such a mentor?
upwork, linkedin, codementor.io
Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
321–330 of 553 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#322Earlier 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’ve tried that and they wouldn’t budge. I got rock bottom and I offered to do financing if they would go lower but the incentive structure of the individual sales person didn’t match that of the dealership so no go
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.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#323The habit I’ve stuck with the longest, which continues to bear fruit: 1. If a book comes to mind, just buy it. No wishlists, no libraries. Feel free to get _both_ kindle and paperback, even the audible. The returns on this habit are incalculable. I do this at an extreme level, which amounts to about 5k / year. That’s similar to a great gym membership or owning a small car. Expensive but doable.
I buy most books second hand. I'm not interested in the newest and latest (hearing about a book years after it was published is a signal of quality) so that saves me a lot of money.
Also, I'm not attached to those books as much as I would be if I had bought them new, which means I have less of an issue clearing them out to save space.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely understand, which is also why I waited way too long to buy them. Which one do you doubt and what are your questions ? I would be happy to provide more about my experience so you can decide if it matches your need.
Thanks a million! IDE: How do you estimate which one is going to be best /after/ you invest in the training? I have been really trying to get better at emacs, for example, but it still feels clunky a lot of the time so I only use it for org-mode. I also switched to VS Code and honestly don't see what the hype is about - but does that mean I just need more training? From who? ("If brute force isn't working, use more o…
If you're in EU, every single one of these you can try for 14 days with no engagement, often 30 days if bought on amazon.
> IDE
This one I probably can't answer you because of how personnal it is. My two best advices are:
- if there is a paying tool where you thought "yes it's cool but I don't really need that I can do without", don't do that and buy it. You will feel a lot better buying a tool that you ultimately don't need much than discovering after 10 years that you were wasting your time that a 100e spend could save you
- try a tool that is diametrically opposed to what you are used to, and force yourself to use it for a while no matter what, see if that different way of thinking works better if or if your original choice works better
Eg if you're a vim guy, don't try emacs or vs code (small steps); but intellij or similar, discover an entirely opposite way of doing things. It may convert you, or you may learn that you were right in your choice. Mostly all such tools have a free trial time. Hard part is to force yourself to use the new tool no matter what for a while.
My eye opener was debugging a hard problem in PHPStorm and noticing that instead of fighting/trying to extract information from its debugger, I was helped and supported by it. Suddenly that tool became my assistant and I couldn't do without, and I have been subscribed to jetbrains ever since (their intellisense is also miles ahead but I don't know if that alone would have converted me)
> I bought a gamer laptop
Ah, I have one too ! Love it ! Used to be Asus ROG serie, now is MSI G-serie. Awesome thing. The keyboard is the worst thing ever made for coding (especially on msi, they're steelseries keyboard, re-arranged for gaming).
I don't know your personnal situation, but if you can afford it and assuming you are a coder, buy a dedicated work laptop. Only thing that matters are screen and keyboard. Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell XPS, that kind of thing. Price in the 1000-2000 range usually. Not having anything but work on it will end up as a bonus and net positive, I promise you that (no distraction).
My current laptop is a thinkpad matte screen with semi mechanical key, if I need to show it to someone it looks terrible (and right out of the 60s), but it's awesome. If you spend more than 5 minutes a week fighting against your keyboard, you need to change it. If you need to "change position" because of the glare, change.
> Monitor
High refresh rate (120/144/240 hz, look for gamers latop they care about that), good color rendering (eg look for srgb screen) and contrast. In this one, opposite the laptop one, gamer's things are actually pretty good because rendering fast and clearly matters a lot there. The contrast is important because you want something that you can see clearly without being at 100% brightness, so the gamers 120hz/hdr compatible screen are a welcomed thing.
Do not think 60hz/75hz is enough, you won't see the difference going up but going down after being used to it makes it clear how better it is. This is a ~300e spend max.
> Chair
The rules are: it should not be an effort to be sitting in a good posture in it, and it should be your natural posture in it. If you don't sit better on it "unless I force myself to sit that way", forget it you won't do it. I bought a "medical/ergonomical" chair meant for people with back problems, for 240e.
> Standing desk
Absolutely agree, I bought one from autonomous during a sale. One thing I can tell you is it's a lie to thing standing is always better, so I would really suggest a switching that can do both. I'm still not sure it makes my life better per se, but I know at least I'm not sitting all day anymore and I don't feel terrible working standing up which is what I scared of.
> Quality noise cancelling headphones
Of the entire list this is probably the first one you should go for (if you can, eg don't need to answer your colleagues every 5 minutes). You will be very surprised by how much many distraction you didn't notice it removes and how much more centrated you become when it's only you, the screen, your mind and maybe some music.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead. This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about…
this is such a good description of the process. i laughed and it also definitely stung a little bit :) therapy is 100% worth it
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#326The 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…
how does one find a therapist? Like what search terms and what kinds do we need advise as someone who works on the tech field.
Starting therapy earlier this year was possibly the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. It took about 3 months of weekly sessions to properly “notice” what a difference it was making, but now it’s blindingly obvious, and I’m so glad I did it.
I found my therapist through https://www.bacp.co.uk/ — I’m not sure which country you’re in, but there’s bound to be similar directories out there.
I set their filters to find therapists who deal with issues relevant to me, and within a practical distance. After that, I just systematically went through each of their profiles, read their bios, and narrowed it down to a shortlist of 10.
I then picked two based on gut instinct. I had an introductory session with them both, and immediately “clicked” with one of them, who I’ve been seeing ever since.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#327The best money I've spent on professional development is paying to travel to industry conferences at which I was accepted to speak. Like many people, I was nervous about public speaking earlier in my career. Out of a desire to improve myself and to "give back" to the community, I applied to speak at some industry conferences. Many people think about conferences as TED-talk style luxury events, at which speakers are c…
this is a surprising answer. in my world (react/frontend) most conferences pay for travel or at least help defer a significant amount of the cost up to a limit. your employer should also have a budget for conf travel. but agreed on the reward of speaking at confs. just that people shouldnt find it a norm to pay to speak.
> your employer should also have a budget for conf travel.
In my case, my employer paid my travel/lodging fees and I did not have to pay anything out-of-pocket (or take PTO or anything). However, if I were (for example) between jobs -- or if my employer refused to pay for travel/lodging to conferences -- I'd still strongly recommend the buy.
In my experience, larger or more corporate conferences tend to pay more (including travel, lodging, and sometimes cash compensation), but the smaller, more "community-oriented" conferences do not.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#328Textbooks in general (like academic textbooks, not orielly style books). Work through a textbook or three each year, and once you’re a decade into your career it’s like you have another degree under your belt. Find something you want to dive deep on and instead of reading a dozen blogs, buy the textbook and do some of the exercises as you go. It keeps you spending time in foundational stuff rather than specific frame…
Examples of textbooks you have used?
I just looked through my bookshelves and here’s what I’ve been through since college (in no particular order other than top to bottom on my shelves):
7 books on general ML (highlights: Murphy’s Machine Learning, Hastie et al’s ESL, Koller&Friedman’s PGMs)
5 on more specialized ML (highlights: Agarwal&Chen’s statistical recommender systems book, Manning&Schutze’s statistical NLP, Settles’ active learning)
13 on stats (highlights: Wooldridge’s econometrics of x-section/panel data, Angrist&Pischke’s econometrics)
4 on numerical methods (highlight: Absil et al’s optimization on matrix manifolds)
4 on CS (highlight: CLRS’s intro to algorithms)
10 on calculus/geometry/topology/algebra (highlights: Bachman’s geometric approach to differential forms, Hestenes&Sobzyk's Clifford algebra to geometric calculus)
8 on fiction writing (highlight: Bickham’s Scene & Structure)
And Rosenberg‘s Nonviolent Communication (not a textbook, but still a highlight worth mentioning).
It amounts to between 3 and 4 per year. Looking back and counting them up, my reaction is holy crap that’s a lot, but that’s kinda the point. Each year it is a reasonable amount of self study. Not nothing, but not anything crazy. Over the course of many years, it adds up to a hell of a lever.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#329A therapist, haha. But this was already stated here.
Otherwise?
Hard to say. I think nothing that cost me money has helped me at least as much as the things I got money for.
I got a bunch of certs, but I think they alone aren't any good. Certs, jobs, projects, customers, awards, all together form a picture that you know what you're doing. The more you show, the less people ask questions that are potentially not it your favor.
Re: Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on professional development?
#330The 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…
I've spent a lot of time with therapists but they've only had the effect of being a sort of guard rail to keep me from falling too deep when I fall; it doesn't seem like they have helped me make any lasting improvements.
Based on what I've heard from friends and on this thread, it sounds like it's possible to get a lot more out of talk therapy?
What's your range of experiences been like with better or worse therapists, and how do you know when you should look for a better one?