Ask HN: 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. I’m a principal engineer. Though there are exceptions.
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.
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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.
And Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/ - Get the Premium plan if you have the money for it
https://joindeltaacademy.com/
The course has 16 people enrolled spread across the world. During the week you read tutorials and complete exercises. Over the weekend you and your partner let your trained agents compete at a game in a tournament style competition. This week it's Othello.
The course material is top notch and you have office hours each week to discuss with the folks running the course.
Other courses either don't have this peer to peer interaction or run for too long.
Even though its been a lot of work to go through this course, I can't recommend it more!