Training - A Company or a Worker's Responsibility? 709
r0wan asks: "I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade). It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found
numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT? If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career.
Thanks in advance for the input."
In a word... (Score:2, Informative)
No.
Training (Score:5, Informative)
Every company I've worked for (small, large, huge) have either paid for or reimbursed employees for relevant training.
Re:Training (Score:2, Informative)
Remember however, that training also benefits you. Training plus experience will get you a lot further than just experience alone. When studying for certifications, you will more than likely be forced to learn skills that you would not face in day-to-day operations at your job, as few companies end up using every feature/function of their chosen OS. Learning these skills will make you a better technical resource, and may help you land a better job down the road, or a promotion, or both.
Also note, that anything you spend toward self-training is tax-deductible under "un-reimbursed business expenese"
Depends on focus, but mainly yes (Score:3, Informative)
There is experience that will follow you even though technologies change; what I learnt while using DOS is still relevant (creating directories is still something I do); a strong OOP formation in C++ makes Java/C# easier; knowing how pointers work makes a better coder in any language.
Even if experience is a great mistress, everything changes so quickly that continuous self-education I think is a must. Recall all the hot technologies of 1996 - only 10 years ago, a small fraction of your life in the workforce. Almost nobody wrote Java, C#/.NET didn't exist, most dynamic webpages were written in Perl, CSS wasn't there yet, XML was unborn, there were no "Seamless Open Integrated Solution Providers (!)", etc, etc, etc. Now think 1985. 1975. 1965. Somebody born in 1945 and who worked all his life on computers will retire in 2010.
Problem with courses is that they always lag a couple of years behind - they still teach table-based HTML tagsoup... and though you may have a 12-hour intensive session on a subject, you won't be ready to use it before you play on your own time with it.
You don't need to lose your life, I guess spending a couple of hours a week on new technologies is more than enough. You don't have to know everything, just focus on what is created in your field.
Re:In a word... (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, I bet that this CURRENTLY is not in your job description. That should put you in an interesting position of requesting training AND a promotion in title.
Shan
The semi-serious answer? "Yes"... (Score:3, Informative)
In return, the employer would reimburse you for your training, and recognize your increased expertise with more money and respect as your skills grew.
The reality is that this sounds like a far-from ideal employer that also got burned last time they paid for someone's certification and then lost them. So you'd probably have to take most of the initiative to advance your skillset. It's worth it - and you can learn a lot of stuff pretty cheaply just with the combination of a couple of middling boxes with plenty of RAM, VMware, and a subscription to the MS Action Pack along with a few books. For a pretty small investment of time and probably a couple of thousand dollars, you can teach yourself enough to know, at the very least, whether you want to stay on the sysadmin side of the business, and at best you can get a great head start on an MCSE (If you want one). It also makes for a very low-pressure way to learn more off-hours when you want to.
Ultimately, if you want to stay in the field and you want to stay with this employer you'll have to show them the folly of their training-miserly ways. Picking up some good AD kung-fu is part of the puzzle - and if need be it'll be a good way to brush up for the job interview with your next employer!
In this business the unfortunate reality is that while you can have a life, it's tough to keep up if you do. I'm lucky now - working for myself I can designate some time for the "keeping up" during the workweek, but when the customers want me they get me, even if I've set up downtime (I do charge a lot more for any off-hours work, and as a result I don't have to deal with things too often outside of the workday at least). So you can have a life - but it helps if you really, really like IT work. In general, though, formal training is something that the employer should provide some time for, but you should be willing to pitch in as well. And the homework and studying is something you're on your own for. It's partly to help in your day-to-day work, but it's also career advancement as well. Both parties gain, so both parties (should) give.
One relevant example from my old career: when I was an IT manager (prior to my old company getting bought and shrunken - part of why I'm on my own now) I had a staff with three techs. I had the training budget to send them all to class if I wanted, but I would only do so if they were willing to spend some of their personal time in pursuit of the goal as well. Typically I'd allow up to a day out of the office per week over a period of a couple of months during that, pay for everything including materials, and pay for the testing. I wouldn't send folks out for things like a 2-week bootcamp or anything of that sort. Was that the most progressive training policy around? No, but it was a reasonable and fair one, balancing my interests (as manager and company representative) with the interests of my employees. Of six people who worked for me during the five years I was there, only one never took us up on the training offer (the person liked their limited function and wasn't really interested in advancing), one left after a year to transfer back to their old department, and the other four went to classes. Of them, I lost one a month after they got their MCSE - they went to a dot-com for over $25k more than I was paying. Neither that nor the dot-com lasted. Go figure.
Re:But who does it really benefit? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:He's discovering reality. Isn't it cute? (Score:2, Informative)
I know this is Slashdot, but did you finish TFS? Note especially the phrases "readers of the female persuasion" (there are at least two or three of us) and "I have a husband."
MOD PARENT UP! (Score:1, Informative)
comment
ever!
Re:Oddly enough... (Score:4, Informative)
The USA is the only country in the developed world without nationalised health care. Appropriately, the US government is the only government in the developed world that I wouldn't trust with that kind of control.
Incidentally, not every nationalised health care system is like the British NHS. In Australia, for example, you basically pick which doctor/pharmacy/hospital you want and get a fixed amount of money back from the government. Doctors get to charge what they want. Some doctors charge only what the government gives you, and therefore are effectively free. Others charge more, and so you have to pay some money. And, of course, you are free to buy extra health insurance if you want.
In all cases, the government doesn't make the choices. You do.
Re:Oddly enough... (Score:3, Informative)
All in all, I'd rather have the NHS look after me than have my healthcare dependant on working for some company that wields that power as a beating stick.
Re:Asking slashdot won't help (Score:2, Informative)
Does your wife work? I'm not asking as a retort but as a genuine question.
In response to the "What's your problem" and the "Without trying to sound mean, whats your problem? Is everything supposed to be given to you?"
questions...I have serious health issues. I didn't include this in my original question, as I thought the explanation of such health issues would take up valuable space. In the past I ignored said issues to fufill the demands of my job, but it's gotten to a point where I need a clear demarcation between work life and home life in order to keep up with the work I need to do at my job.
I like computers, its a life choice for me. Maybe you don't. My advice? Use common sense and choose your own path.
When I originally got into this field, I loved computers and enjoyed learning about them as much as possible. I'm at the point where the job demands and management insanity has sucked dry whatever interest I originally had. Hence the reason why I posted this question.
This is not a flamebait response, but most moderators will treat it so.
Why? It's blunt, and more than a little harsh, but it raises some valid points and outlines an alternative point of view. Any information regarding the original question is useful.
Re:Does you husband do anything?! (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, no. He works a thankless position that he took only because the company lauded its reputation for promoting from within. This was after a two-year intensive search for a job after being laid off. He is working hard to move up so that I have the option of pursuing an alternative career if it comes to that.
Re:Oddly enough... (Score:2, Informative)
HAHAHAHA
OK, I actually work with doctors here in the US, let me tell you how it really works:
Step 1: Every year, the AMA and the US Government create a list of all of the procedures you can possibly perform and bill for, these are called CPT codes (aka HCPCS Level I) and HCPCS Level II/III codes, respectively. The US government (Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services) assigns them a "relative value unit" measurement that basically says "this heart surgery is worth twice as much as this knee surgery, so the heart surgery will have two times the RVU as the knee surgery". Then they do a bunch of math to arrive at a dollar amount for each procedure or drug in each region of the country, based on the cost of living, scarcity of doctors, ruralness, and whatever else the government wants to meddle with. This generally becomes called the "Medicare Fee Schedule". It sets what a doctor will be paid for performing that procedure on a Medicare patient. The doctor is free to bill however much they want, but that number is what they'll be paid. Furthermore, Medicare specifically tells the doctor how much they're allowed to charge the patient (copay/coinsurance/deductible). Every year it changes, and in almost every case the numbers are lower than the last. As an aside, Medicare also determines which procedures match which diagnosises... you can't do heart surgery for athelete's foot, for instance.
Step 2: Insurance companies take these numbers and run with it. They establish their own fee schedules, and start shopping them around to doctors. For the biggest companies (Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare, BCBS, and so on), doctors must contract with each insurance company in order to accept that insurance company's patients (smaller ones have the in-network vs. out-of-network distinction, and the doctors are paid less for being out-of-network, encouraging them to contract with those insurers as well). For 98% of these contracts, the Insurance Fee Schedule is derived as a percentage of Medicare's Fee Schedule. Usually it's around 115%, some higher. I have one client who actually dropped an insurance company because they wanted to revise their existing contract to 95% of Medicare's schedule. (have you ever had a doctor tell you they don't take your insurance?) For another 1.9%, the contract is for a Capitated contract (this almost always applies only to primary care, and is a small subset of their contracts), meaning that the insurance company sends them X patients, and pays them $Y per capita per time period, whether they see a patient 0, 1, or 50 times. The last 0.1% are the generous ones who will pay whatever they're billed, within reason, and possibly pending an audit to ensure that the charges are legit. Again, the doctor can bill whatever they want, and the insurance company will pay whatever they want. And again, the insurance company contract specifically tells the doctor what they can and cannot charge the patient.
But here's the kicker: A good number of these contracts also require that the doctor set their prices for uninsured patients within a certain range of what they pay. Almost all of these require that the doctor never charge an uninsured patient less than what the insurance company can pay them. After all, if uninsured patients can get cheap care, why would they pay the $700/month (the rate my coworker pays to insure his wife, should she become pregnant, or worse, become pregnant and develop gestational diabetes which pretty much makes you permanently uninsurable for the rest of your life, even if the diabetes goes away with the delivery as the majority of the cases do) to be insured against having to spend lots of money for medical care? The doctors can reject those contracts of course (meaning that they'll be cutting themselves out of a ve