Education Is Your Responsibility

[MCWebsite.Staff]

** This thread discusses the article: Education Is Your Responsibility **
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[kingsalomon]

Education Is Your Responsibility

** This thread discusses the article: Education Is Your Responsibility **
"Speaking as an employee, I can say that while I do enjoy my job, I do not do it just because I like it. I have expenses and a family to provide for. Furthermore, if God had meant humans to be out of bed at the time I have to be at work, then the humans would not have had to invent alarm clocks. I'd rather be sleeping. If you, Mr. Company, aren't planning on providing me with working conditions and compensation that I find satisfactory, I will be out of here as soon as I can find another company that will." This isn't an employee argument, this is just an employee complaining. An employee argument would be that spending on training makes an employee more valuable to the company. If an employee learns easier, faster, more modern techniques, he can either get stuff done faster or produce more solid, flexible programs. This has the added benefit of boosting morale which keeps people from burning out.

[Guest.Visitor]

Education Is Your Responsibility

** This thread discusses the article: Education Is Your Responsibility **
My short take on the bullets in the article: Harsh reality is that about 80% of the IT people I've encountered expect to be trained and their skills advanced by someone else. 95% of the time, that won't happen. No budget: The training budget isn't the companies responsibility. You're right-butt-cheek is sitting on the training budget. For 5-7 thousand dollars out of pocket lifetime, I've increased my salary over what I was making as a meat-cutter 20 years ago by 60+ thousand annually. No Hardware: There's more than enough to keep most programmers busy for the rest of their careers right in front of them on that 5250 emulation session. No time: Put down the cigarettes, the sports section, get off all the junk web pages. Go to IBM Infocenter and start reading all the stuff you haven't learned yet. Home Stretch: 80% of IT people are...well...Ok! I'll just say it. They are LAZY! The other 20% or fewer actually go the extra mile, learn new skills, earn more money because of it...And we don't understand how the 80% got as far as they did. Dang-it take their car keys away from them right now for all our safety...!!!

[Scawa]

Re:Education Is Your Responsibility

** This thread discusses the article: Education Is Your Responsibility **
I have been both an employee and a consultant (which I am now). I enjoyed working for companies that provided education. Some were better than others. One company funded an "educational event" once a year. Another had in-house seminars where someone was brought in to teach a topic. Some didn't provide anything. But I think the one I enjoyed the most was a company which provided a "brown-bag" lunch seminar that was taught by the employees. Each person would research a topic and present it once a month or so. I always enjoyed researching and presenting, but the whole thing began to fizzle when people found excuses not to research and present. In today's world, however, because a small company's margin is so slim I wouldn't wait on the "company" to educate me. And if that is your only criteria for staying with a company, you are in the wrong business. In the IT world, things change daily. One has to keep on top of growth on their own. Again, saying that it is the corporate responsibility to educate you is an abrogation of personal responsibility. If you feel that way, then you should be in another business. The common theme is is should be someone else's responsibility not your own. The pay in IT is good. I have around a $200.00/month Barns and Nobel habit that I spend almost entirely on IT books. I look at it as investment. When I was working for other companies, I would see a need or idea, I would figure out how to do it. Then, I would propose it and most likely I would get the project. The only time I left a company is when I could not advance my skills by working on projects and technologies for which I had researched. The bottom line is "If you don't take responsibility for your own education, you probably won't become educated."

[Scawa]

Re:Education Is Your Responsibility

** This thread discusses the article: Education Is Your Responsibility **
I have been both an employee and a consultant (which I am now). I enjoyed working for companies that provided education. Some were better than others. One company funded an "educational event" once a year. Another had in-house seminars where someone was brought in to teach a topic. Some didn't provide anything. But I think the one I enjoyed the most was a company which provided a "brown-bag" lunch seminar that was taught by the employees. Each person would research a topic and present it once a month or so. I always enjoyed researching and presenting, but the whole thing began to fizzle when people found excuses not to research and present. In today's world, however, because a small company's margin is so slim I wouldn't wait on the "company" to educate me. And if that is your only criteria for staying with a company, you are in the wrong business. In the IT world, things change daily. One has to keep on top of growth on their own. Again, saying that it is the corporate responsibility to educate you is an abrogation of personal responsibility. If you feel that way, then you should be in another business. The common theme is is should be someone else's responsibility not your own. The pay in IT is good. I have around a $200.00/month Barns and Nobel habit that I spend almost entirely on IT books. I look at it as investment. When I was working for other companies, I would see a need or idea, I would figure out how to do it. Then, I would propose it and most likely I would get the project. The only time I left a company is when I could not advance my skills by working on projects and technologies for which I had researched. The bottom line is "If you don't take responsibility for your own education, you probably won't become educated."