In some companies, training is actually used to help achieve the company's goals. In others, it's a to-do item to be fullfilled, and nothing more.
At one company, training was mandatory, but apparently only if it was useless.
We were developing embedded, real time, safety critical software. HR sent out the list of available courses, which all had titles like "How to optimize Excel worksheets", "Improving business communication", "How to make more effective presentations", and "Challenges every leader will face". We just ignored them. HR then complained to executive management that "engineering is refusing to take training".
We pointed out that we were software developers, and there was no software training offered. HR countered that there was, in fact, a software course. There was "Introduction to Visual Basic". HR had found it *very* useful in their team, so why didn't we want to take it?
Executives said we *had* to take training. So we looked online, and found things like Plurasight and Coursera, which offered unlimited online training in things like git, python, perl, and ruby. While not exactly what we did, those would at least be *some* benefit, and at something like $300 for a year of training as opposed to $2000 for that full-day Visual Basic course, it would be significantly cheaper *and* more useful.
Naturally, it was rejected. So a group of C++ and assembler coders spent a day playing on their phones sitting in a course on a language they'd never use. Even the trainer asked "Why are you people even here? This course is for non-programmers". The answer was "HR made us".
At the second company, I'll just quote the phone conversation I overheard my boss having with HR:
Okay, you want my people to train on this real time kernel course.
How much does the course cost?
Uh huh. And how many of these kernels will we be getting afterwards?
None? Do we buy them separately then?
No? Then how do we get them?
Well if we're not going to get them, what's the point of the training?
I don't care if we have training budget we have to spend, I need my people to be working on their projects...
At my previous company, at one point in time they started talking about the "training budget". That was just around the time, if my memory serves, when they first started talking about the "team building budget".
They were not referring to obvious pain points or trying to understand better where they are and how to alleviate them, no. What would be point of doing that? Better to invest in these strange, nebulous concepts. Organize parties for employees to attend at a specified time, usually at whatever time worked best for the managers. Us grunts who started their day a good hour and a half before the majority of the company, f**k us.
Anyway, they asked me a few times to find some training I would like to attend.
To provide a bit of background, most of my days were spent in ticket management (which I taught myself to a high degree of proficiency, even if I say so myself) and quite onerous SQL work. Which I also taught myself to a very decent level. Both at a rather high cost of an investment in time and effort.
Just about that time I finally managed to figure out that I will be that much more punished the more knowledge and skills I acquire. But I digress. From my point of view, I felt quite saturated by the obscene amount of problems and I wasn't really interested to get involved in even more work and problems.
But I had a suggestion, training wise. I wanted to organize a SQL training event involving a sort of a not so well know SQL influencer. I found that guy to be entertaining at the time and I wanted my team to have some sort of a training/brainstorming session(s) where we could go through some database problems we were having (which were many, a whole big lot), take a moment to look at problems from a fresh perspective and have an experienced SQL guy expand our views and lead us into new ways of thinking. We needed it, we were stuck in a massive rut.
Of course, this was quite an unorthodox "training" concept, but I also didn't unveil my actual plans to the middle management people. They asked me to pick a training I would like to attend (they didn't have any suggestions; excel training suggestion would sound not so terrible, because it would indicate brain activity and care, but no, none of that could be had) and when I did, they rejected me with the usual passive aggressive approach.
Of course I knew that's how it was going to end, so I just bided my time. When they again asked me to pick something, I reminded them of my initial choice. They said they were not interested in going that rout, to which I replied that that was fine and that I had no further suggestions. The unspoken part was "so stop f**king asking me about training".
The actual unadressed pain points, however, were elsewhere.
- constant firefighting in numerous production environments leads to constant knee jerk reactions to stressful situations instead of strategic thinking
- servers were locking up every day; many of the performance problems were known, but there was no willpower tackle them
- lack of accountability in middle management; when things go wrong you are left hanging alone, waiting for buzzards to pick your bones
- lack of documentation, self explanatory
- insane development cycle; self explanatory
These things can be resolved by mere mortals, none of these are insurmountable problems. But for the switch to happen, people have to stop doing the same things that drove them to the current predicament.
Maybe the manager needs to figure out how to get out of the way, maybe the manager should accept that someone else has substantial knowledge in the particular area and that there is likely no other soul in the world better positioned to make some of the difficult technical calls that need to be made.
Maybe the manger needs to stop worrying about signing off on stuff he doesn't understand and instead provide support to people who do. There are a whole lot of things one can do after letting go off all those things they can do nothing about.
Our manager once said we'd lost a major contract, so there was no training budget that year. Fair enough. Two weeks later, she then reprimanded the entire team because no one had submitted a training request, and they were overdue. Other teams had submitted theirs, so our not doing so "makes us look bad". By which, she meant it made *her* look bad.
But... didn't you say there was no training budget? Yes, I did.
So, are you saying that now if we ask for training, it *will* be improved? No, of course not.
Then... what's the point?
"If we do not request training then we are saying we do not need training, and that is not true".
There's a wonderful British word "jobsworth" that I introduced to my Canadian and American colleagues. It describes many, if not most, of the managers I've had.
Well, it wasn't actually Excel training, it was Visual Basic training. HR used VBA to write spreadsheet macros. That's programming, right?
Writing embedded real time safety critical software, writing spreadsheet calculations, what's the diff?
I do (or did) have a set of t-shirts specifically dedicated to HR type events. I wore "Does not play with others"at any disciplinary review meeting (of which I had many), and usually customer relevant shirts when meeting with the bigwigs.
In 1989, at the end of my presentation to VPs and other executives of the Fortune 100 company we were making a proposal to, their CTO asked me if that was a Batman watch I was wearing. This was the year the Batman movie was coming out, and yes, I was wearing a Batman watch. I was, in fact, wearing the gold Batman watch I'd been given by friend who was a comic book professional.
Our HR and Finance VPs at the meeting groaned, thinking that they were about to lose an eight (possibly even nine) figure deal because I broke their dress code. Instead, the customer CTO rolls down his sleeve and shows off *his* Batman watch, which is just the black bat logo on a white background. Mine was the special edition, there were only something like 500 made. He wanted to know how I got one, where I'd gotten it, who did I know, did I prefer Neal Adam's art over Jim Aparo's, etc.
My geek attire not only wasn't a problem, it might actually help close a major deal. You could just see our HR trying to control their rage at the fact that there was no way in hell they'd be able to order my team to stop putting Gundam figures on their desks, or wearing Batman t-shirts now.
Ah yes, VBA training it was. But still the t-shirt would have been a great fit.
You mean to say that HR used to suck quite hard even back then? Blimey. I got into the workfarce quite a bit later than you and haven't had any dealings with HR up to recently as I mostly worked at, shall we say, more traditional companies that did not use HR. They had people to handle the HR paperwork, but higher ups handled hiring, firing and people issues that popped up now and again. Responsible people using people skills to handle relations between people. A crazy concept, insane even, belonging to bygone era.
I can vividly picture them at that 1989 meeting: "Bill made this event look human, what the f**k are going to do about that!?". They invest profusely in making everyone believe that these company interactions have be to as inhuman as possible, and so when humanity occurs, I can only imagine they would get pissed.
Some jobs require a certain amount of paid extra education, it's part of the job description. Which sounds good, but then ofc it's more like corporate indoctrination classes you don't pick 🤣
(not that I'm speaking from actual experience, just talking shit)
I worked for one company that required me to take college courses. At my own expense. On my own time. It was actually fine; they were just looking out for me. And none of it applied to what I was doing at work.
My schedule was basically drive to work, take the bus to the university, take another couple buses back, then work my eight hours.
Between work and studying I barely had time to feed myself, but once I could afford through pay raises to park on-campus, I cut out the time-draining bus riding and gained back enough time to eat and hang out with my roommates.
The era of "minimizing harm" is over. We have entered the era of Regenerative Recovery.
I represent a convergence of two worlds: the cutting-edge precision of Quantum Intelligence (Altiora Quantum) and the ancient, ethical craftsmanship of the Indian Artisan (Eco Anima). For too long, global technology has ignored the grassroots, and grassroots industry has been left behind by technology.
We are building the bridge.
Our roadmap is not a corporate plan; it is a Planetary Recovery Engine. By processing high-dimensional climate parameters through quantum frameworks, we provide our network of 10,000 organic farmers and thousands of local tailors with the intelligence of a global superpower.
Our Commitment to the Global Network:
Economic Sovereignty: We are digitizing the skilled labor of small towns like Jhajjar, giving local tailors direct access to the global market without the "middleman" of fast fashion.
Scientific Integrity: Through Altiora Quantum, we prove that fashion can be a tool for carbon sequestration, not carbon emission.
Ethical Accessibility: We are breaking the monopoly of "Expensive Sustainability" by delivering toxic-free, biodegradable clothing at an inclusive price point (₹800–₹2,500).
I am a Machine Learning Engineer who believes that potential is universal, but opportunity is not. I have built the algorithms. I have mapped the supply chain. I am now seeking global partners, fellow founders, and visionary investors to help us scale this bridge.
The Bhagavad Gita teaches us that we are entitled to our work, but not the fruits of it. However, if we perform our work with Seva (selfless service) and scientific rigor, the "fruit" will be a healthier planet for our children.
Let us stop disrupting the earth and start restoring it.
Oh god, training.
In some companies, training is actually used to help achieve the company's goals. In others, it's a to-do item to be fullfilled, and nothing more.
At one company, training was mandatory, but apparently only if it was useless.
We were developing embedded, real time, safety critical software. HR sent out the list of available courses, which all had titles like "How to optimize Excel worksheets", "Improving business communication", "How to make more effective presentations", and "Challenges every leader will face". We just ignored them. HR then complained to executive management that "engineering is refusing to take training".
We pointed out that we were software developers, and there was no software training offered. HR countered that there was, in fact, a software course. There was "Introduction to Visual Basic". HR had found it *very* useful in their team, so why didn't we want to take it?
Executives said we *had* to take training. So we looked online, and found things like Plurasight and Coursera, which offered unlimited online training in things like git, python, perl, and ruby. While not exactly what we did, those would at least be *some* benefit, and at something like $300 for a year of training as opposed to $2000 for that full-day Visual Basic course, it would be significantly cheaper *and* more useful.
Naturally, it was rejected. So a group of C++ and assembler coders spent a day playing on their phones sitting in a course on a language they'd never use. Even the trainer asked "Why are you people even here? This course is for non-programmers". The answer was "HR made us".
At the second company, I'll just quote the phone conversation I overheard my boss having with HR:
Okay, you want my people to train on this real time kernel course.
How much does the course cost?
Uh huh. And how many of these kernels will we be getting afterwards?
None? Do we buy them separately then?
No? Then how do we get them?
Well if we're not going to get them, what's the point of the training?
I don't care if we have training budget we have to spend, I need my people to be working on their projects...
At my previous company, at one point in time they started talking about the "training budget". That was just around the time, if my memory serves, when they first started talking about the "team building budget".
They were not referring to obvious pain points or trying to understand better where they are and how to alleviate them, no. What would be point of doing that? Better to invest in these strange, nebulous concepts. Organize parties for employees to attend at a specified time, usually at whatever time worked best for the managers. Us grunts who started their day a good hour and a half before the majority of the company, f**k us.
Anyway, they asked me a few times to find some training I would like to attend.
To provide a bit of background, most of my days were spent in ticket management (which I taught myself to a high degree of proficiency, even if I say so myself) and quite onerous SQL work. Which I also taught myself to a very decent level. Both at a rather high cost of an investment in time and effort.
Just about that time I finally managed to figure out that I will be that much more punished the more knowledge and skills I acquire. But I digress. From my point of view, I felt quite saturated by the obscene amount of problems and I wasn't really interested to get involved in even more work and problems.
But I had a suggestion, training wise. I wanted to organize a SQL training event involving a sort of a not so well know SQL influencer. I found that guy to be entertaining at the time and I wanted my team to have some sort of a training/brainstorming session(s) where we could go through some database problems we were having (which were many, a whole big lot), take a moment to look at problems from a fresh perspective and have an experienced SQL guy expand our views and lead us into new ways of thinking. We needed it, we were stuck in a massive rut.
Of course, this was quite an unorthodox "training" concept, but I also didn't unveil my actual plans to the middle management people. They asked me to pick a training I would like to attend (they didn't have any suggestions; excel training suggestion would sound not so terrible, because it would indicate brain activity and care, but no, none of that could be had) and when I did, they rejected me with the usual passive aggressive approach.
Of course I knew that's how it was going to end, so I just bided my time. When they again asked me to pick something, I reminded them of my initial choice. They said they were not interested in going that rout, to which I replied that that was fine and that I had no further suggestions. The unspoken part was "so stop f**king asking me about training".
The actual unadressed pain points, however, were elsewhere.
- constant firefighting in numerous production environments leads to constant knee jerk reactions to stressful situations instead of strategic thinking
- servers were locking up every day; many of the performance problems were known, but there was no willpower tackle them
- lack of accountability in middle management; when things go wrong you are left hanging alone, waiting for buzzards to pick your bones
- lack of documentation, self explanatory
- insane development cycle; self explanatory
These things can be resolved by mere mortals, none of these are insurmountable problems. But for the switch to happen, people have to stop doing the same things that drove them to the current predicament.
Maybe the manager needs to figure out how to get out of the way, maybe the manager should accept that someone else has substantial knowledge in the particular area and that there is likely no other soul in the world better positioned to make some of the difficult technical calls that need to be made.
Maybe the manger needs to stop worrying about signing off on stuff he doesn't understand and instead provide support to people who do. There are a whole lot of things one can do after letting go off all those things they can do nothing about.
Pardon the unload.
Been there, done that.
Our manager once said we'd lost a major contract, so there was no training budget that year. Fair enough. Two weeks later, she then reprimanded the entire team because no one had submitted a training request, and they were overdue. Other teams had submitted theirs, so our not doing so "makes us look bad". By which, she meant it made *her* look bad.
But... didn't you say there was no training budget? Yes, I did.
So, are you saying that now if we ask for training, it *will* be improved? No, of course not.
Then... what's the point?
"If we do not request training then we are saying we do not need training, and that is not true".
There's a wonderful British word "jobsworth" that I introduced to my Canadian and American colleagues. It describes many, if not most, of the managers I've had.
Just imagine if you attended that excel training in the shirt Dave's wearing. Oh, that would have been some fondly kept memories.
https://i.imgur.com/Yi4ZqHx.png
Well, it wasn't actually Excel training, it was Visual Basic training. HR used VBA to write spreadsheet macros. That's programming, right?
Writing embedded real time safety critical software, writing spreadsheet calculations, what's the diff?
I do (or did) have a set of t-shirts specifically dedicated to HR type events. I wore "Does not play with others"at any disciplinary review meeting (of which I had many), and usually customer relevant shirts when meeting with the bigwigs.
In 1989, at the end of my presentation to VPs and other executives of the Fortune 100 company we were making a proposal to, their CTO asked me if that was a Batman watch I was wearing. This was the year the Batman movie was coming out, and yes, I was wearing a Batman watch. I was, in fact, wearing the gold Batman watch I'd been given by friend who was a comic book professional.
Our HR and Finance VPs at the meeting groaned, thinking that they were about to lose an eight (possibly even nine) figure deal because I broke their dress code. Instead, the customer CTO rolls down his sleeve and shows off *his* Batman watch, which is just the black bat logo on a white background. Mine was the special edition, there were only something like 500 made. He wanted to know how I got one, where I'd gotten it, who did I know, did I prefer Neal Adam's art over Jim Aparo's, etc.
My geek attire not only wasn't a problem, it might actually help close a major deal. You could just see our HR trying to control their rage at the fact that there was no way in hell they'd be able to order my team to stop putting Gundam figures on their desks, or wearing Batman t-shirts now.
Ah yes, VBA training it was. But still the t-shirt would have been a great fit.
You mean to say that HR used to suck quite hard even back then? Blimey. I got into the workfarce quite a bit later than you and haven't had any dealings with HR up to recently as I mostly worked at, shall we say, more traditional companies that did not use HR. They had people to handle the HR paperwork, but higher ups handled hiring, firing and people issues that popped up now and again. Responsible people using people skills to handle relations between people. A crazy concept, insane even, belonging to bygone era.
I can vividly picture them at that 1989 meeting: "Bill made this event look human, what the f**k are going to do about that!?". They invest profusely in making everyone believe that these company interactions have be to as inhuman as possible, and so when humanity occurs, I can only imagine they would get pissed.
Some jobs require a certain amount of paid extra education, it's part of the job description. Which sounds good, but then ofc it's more like corporate indoctrination classes you don't pick 🤣
(not that I'm speaking from actual experience, just talking shit)
The usual reaction my teams had when HR listed the paid courses available to us was "does HR know what we actually do in this company?".
Usually the answer was no, they didn't.
Safety critical control systems, budget spreadsheets, what's the diff?
Ouch. 😖
I worked for one company that required me to take college courses. At my own expense. On my own time. It was actually fine; they were just looking out for me. And none of it applied to what I was doing at work.
My schedule was basically drive to work, take the bus to the university, take another couple buses back, then work my eight hours.
Between work and studying I barely had time to feed myself, but once I could afford through pay raises to park on-campus, I cut out the time-draining bus riding and gained back enough time to eat and hang out with my roommates.
This is great tip for managing your own savings account... Money in, no way to get them out ; )
Suddenly grateful I have never in my life been offered any kind of workplace training…
To the Stewards of Our Global Future,
The era of "minimizing harm" is over. We have entered the era of Regenerative Recovery.
I represent a convergence of two worlds: the cutting-edge precision of Quantum Intelligence (Altiora Quantum) and the ancient, ethical craftsmanship of the Indian Artisan (Eco Anima). For too long, global technology has ignored the grassroots, and grassroots industry has been left behind by technology.
We are building the bridge.
Our roadmap is not a corporate plan; it is a Planetary Recovery Engine. By processing high-dimensional climate parameters through quantum frameworks, we provide our network of 10,000 organic farmers and thousands of local tailors with the intelligence of a global superpower.
Our Commitment to the Global Network:
Economic Sovereignty: We are digitizing the skilled labor of small towns like Jhajjar, giving local tailors direct access to the global market without the "middleman" of fast fashion.
Scientific Integrity: Through Altiora Quantum, we prove that fashion can be a tool for carbon sequestration, not carbon emission.
Ethical Accessibility: We are breaking the monopoly of "Expensive Sustainability" by delivering toxic-free, biodegradable clothing at an inclusive price point (₹800–₹2,500).
I am a Machine Learning Engineer who believes that potential is universal, but opportunity is not. I have built the algorithms. I have mapped the supply chain. I am now seeking global partners, fellow founders, and visionary investors to help us scale this bridge.
The Bhagavad Gita teaches us that we are entitled to our work, but not the fruits of it. However, if we perform our work with Seva (selfless service) and scientific rigor, the "fruit" will be a healthier planet for our children.
Let us stop disrupting the earth and start restoring it.
With respect and a vision for a shared future,
Suman SuhagFounder, Eco Anima & Altiora QuantumMachine Learning Engineer | Climate Strategy Specialist