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Ask HN: How should I spend my companies $500 education budget?

10 points by thunkle ↗ HN
I'm a software engineer working on web related tech (servers, websites) for a big well known tech company. My company offers $500 to spend on education (books, courses, etc...) What should I spend it on? Our company uses ruby, typescript mainly for the area I work in. I've been working for about 15 years so I've absorbed most of the basics without reading.

17 comments

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Attend local events. Buy books. Try a new language.
thunkle
Anything in particular?
joshxyz
you're in HN, the answer is everything about Rust of course ;)
rl1987
O'Reilly Learning - $499/yr. for a large library of technical books, videos and a selection of webinars.
thunkle
We actually already have access to O'Reilly learning, but I can't say I take advantage of it. How would you approach learning via O'Reilly Learning?
mdmglr
Find a book read a chapter a day. Repeat. I sometimes distill what I read into 15 minute “take always” presentations for my team. Helps to reinforce.
rl1987
Just keep reading and watching stuff on regular basis. Think of it as information gym membership - you're losing it if you're not using it.

Another thing you can try is attending the webinars about something you want to know more about.

StayTrue
Are you interested in traveling to conferences?
schwartzworld
$500 won't even pay for the ticket to most conferences.
thunkle
I'd prefer not to travel. I've been to a few conferences, and haven't gotten as much out of them as I'd imagined I would.
solardev
How about some specific domain that interests you? Graphics, ML, GIS, data science, devops, firmware, crypto, integrated circuits, whatever?

Or learn more about a specific industry that interests you? Film, games, energy, natural resources, healthcare, accounting, finance, whatever?

Software is your pencil, and you might have great penmanship, but there's still infinite topics to create stories around.

thunkle
I'm currently interested in roguelike game development, but I probably couldn't justify that as helping my current job.
labarilem
Ok so maybe books/courses about algorithms you could use for the game?
ilovhn
Some cloud course/cert exam, like AWS dev associate, would't be a bad idea.
mynegation
Not exactly learning, more like training, but for me the biggest ROI was Leetcode. Probably not something you want to expense through your company though, I paid with my own funds.

Outside of this, I am paying for DeepLearning.ai specializations on Coursera and enjoying it a lot. The material itself can be reconstructed from free web resources and textbooks but the value is in systematic syllabus, quizzes and programming assignments.

cosmodisk
Pluralsight, LinkedIn learning, Packt publishing.