HACKER Q&A
📣 softwaredoug

How should I spend my annual prof. dev budget?


I’ve got a few hundred or so in professional development budget that goes away at the end of the year.

I work in machine learning, search, recommender systems. I frankly get more value “doing” (and failing a lot) than books, courses, and the like. Though of course there are notable exceptions. Usually they are the top 1-5% of books in terms of quality to hold my attention.

I’m a principal engineer. Leadership is another area I could spend money in as professional dev.

I’m at a loss.

So I thought I’d ask the Internet. Don’t stress about whether it’s going to don’t into the letter of the law, I’m just interested in some unique ideas folks may have.


  👤 jinct Accepted Answer ✓
You could consider an annual O’Reilly subscription if you don’t have access to one through your role.

They have large library of books and videos, and I have found it useful to skim interesting parts of relevant books as things come up over the course of the year. They also have live sessions which span technical and nontechnical topics. I liked Curtis Newbold’s live session on leadership communication.

What’s nice is you’ll enjoy the benefits all year unlike other materials which are often one-and-done.


👤 ggm
I did the glasgow Haskell course one year with mine to learn something outside my comfort area. On the assumption you have a comfort area no matter what it is, try learning something outside it, and refresh the learning-is-hard muscle.

👤 softwaredoug
I'm contemplating David Beazley's classes: (http://dabeaz.com/raft.html)

👤 mindcrash
O'Reilly like mentioned below. Lots of great content besides books.

And Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/ - Get the Premium plan if you have the money for it


👤 renaissance_tea
Udemy Business is overpriced for sure, but nice alternative to Pluralsight

👤 ankush-garg
I'm currently enrolled in a reinforcement learning course. It's worth every penny!

https://joindeltaacademy.com/


👤 GauntletWizard
IEEE and ACM memberships are a good choice; the orgs run good journals and good conferences.

👤 pabs3
Something open source related?