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Subject:Re: Who should pay for career development? From:"Wilcox, John (Contractor)" <wilcoxj -at- WDNI -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 5 Mar 1997 14:41:00 -0800
On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 21:26:39 -0700 Russell Kilday-Hick
<rkilhick -at- SFSU -dot- EDU>
writes:
>I recently attended a Photoshop conference of 600. It seemed to me
>that
>most of the attendees were sent by their employers, who paid their
>fees,
>flew them cross-country, and put them up in expensive hotels. I, on
>the
>other hand, commuted locally to the three-day affair and paid a third
>of
>the cost myself.
>
>I would like to know how common these two scenarios are? What kind of
>training or career development does your company offer and who pays?
>Do
>you expect your employer to pay for all or at least part of retraining
>?
Very simply, I expect to pay for training if it benefits me primarily,
and I expect the employer to pay if it benefits them primarily.
Weyerhaeuser (the company I'm contracting at) budgets 10% of each
emplyee's time for training, and they pay all the tuition. For
contractors, they'll pay for the tuition but not for the time. For
example, recently they would have paid the $500 or so to send me to an
Information Mapping class, because they're big on adopting it as a
corporate standard. But I elected not to attend because it was a 3-day
class and I didn't want to lose that paid time, plus the fact that
Wasser (the agency I'm employed by) has not yet heard of a company
requiring IM as a prerequisite to getting a contract.
>And if you are independent, what trainings do you find worth your time
>and
>money?
Um, I guess that sounds like a rhetorical question. I mean, you take a
course if it's going to have a positive impact on your career or earning
power, right?
>What is your perspective on continuous education to keep up with new
>developments in technology? Do you avoid it when you can, or is
>avoidance
>professional suicide? What kinds of trainings are the most effective
>for
>you?
I consider continuing education a must, but I do most of it out of class
(i.e., read trade rags and books, etc.). Unfortunately, there are still
companies around who put undue emphasis on sheepskins and certificates,
rather than on experience and sheer expertise, and Weyerhaeuser is one
of them.
John Wilcox, Documentation Specialist
Timberlands Information Services
Weyerhaeuser
WWC 2E2
Tacoma, WA 98477-0001
206-924-7972
wilcoxj -at- wdni -dot- com
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