You should spend it on 1 or 2 good books and then take a week or two off and use the 2K to cover your unpaid time. And then focus like a sunbeam and magnifying glass night and day and absorb everything you can in that sprint!
Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
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Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#12Use the money as your salary. Work for four hours, research for the other four. Learning is free but time is limited. Ask your boss for four hours a day with the $2k dwindling according to your rate.
Hah, this is almost exactly what I just posted. Yes definitely use as salary so you can focus, I would see if you could take a week or two of to focus more intensely though.
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#13Pluralsight, Safari Books Online, and small local conferences.
A good way to get Safari Books Online is to join the ACM organization. You get a subset of Safari and other bookstores for around $100 a year. There maybe others with the same deal.
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#14Buy a bunch of books, scan them, and resell them. You can profit and obtain the knowledge!
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#15As everyone has already said, conferences are expensive. However if you can find one that you maybe don't have to pay travel / lodging for (crash at a friends place, driveable distance, etc..) I say go for it. They can be extremely informational. Especially if you like front-end technologies.
As a front-end developer, knowing what's "around the corner" is helpful, but I wouldn't invest a lot of time in it. Browser support for many "around the corner" technologies and practices is so far off it's not (yet) worth the time investment.
So, conference if you can without blowing your whole budget, then online courses / books.
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#16does your local university allow non-degree seeking students to take courses?
This was my thought.
If you want a deep dive on algorithms and data structures, it would make sense to me to take a university course.
I had a friend who used to do this. He'd go through the University course catalog, find some interesting CS courses and then buy the books, show up for class, even take notes and do the homework. Said it was the best way for him to learn and get really deep into subjects which really interested him. After a while, I think he finally enrolled and tool some classes.
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#17>What should I spend it on?
Leverage your training budget to show your personal goals are aligned with your employers overall business goals.
It might be instructive to start surveying different company stake-holders, from their perspective what works well or what needs improvement? What are their challenges? That feedback is Gold.
Those assorted needs & wants might inform the sort of training you seek. For example, the marketing department might want next generation Big Data Analytics & SEO. While, the operations group might be concerned about Security & Fraud issues.
Imagine if you could show how your training interests are aligned with company priorities-- that might earn a bigger budget allocation. And makes you even more valuable to company.
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#18totally agree pluralsight is great, they've been on a spending spree and bought my two favourite sites:
codeschool.com and peepcode.com
That said, why don't you do a Nanodegree from Udacity? https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree
The founder is a Googler and they partner with allot of great companies for their courses.
Also great is https://frontendmasters.com/ for anything JavaScript
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#19You should spend it on 1 or 2 good books and then take a week or two off and use the 2K to cover your unpaid time. And then focus like a sunbeam and magnifying glass night and day and absorb everything you can in that sprint!
While I agree that taking time off helps recharge and sharpen the mind, imagine how that will look to the employer:
"Look at how Joe spent the $2k we gave him for professional development: He spent $30 on books and the rest on a paid vacation."
Re: Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?
#20don't waste your money on conferences, they are super expensive and the best talks will land on the internet. Unless u need them for networking - but even then you can just go to free meetups.