I severely overestimated the number of conferences my jobs would send me to

I used to read Usenet posts, personal websites, and early blog posts of people “in the industry” when I was studying computer science in college and it always seemed like they were at yet another conference either as a speaker or attendee. Same for the grad students I worked with - always working on presenting a paper for a conference.

I work with Linux - both on workstations and in embedded systems, including cybersecurity. Do you know the number of conferences that I was approved to attend before COVID? None.

No Debconf, no Linux Plummer’s conference, no Linux.conf.au, no Linux Security Summit, no SuSEcon, no Red Hat Summit, hell, there was a regional conference that some of the LUG folks were going to attend that they wouldn’t approve. I’ve paid my own way to some of these because I find them helpful to keep up with new things with my limited time, and the break from work has been nice.

The straw that has broken the camel’s back is that I applied to them to pay for me to attend the Linux Security Summit in a few days and their condition was that I work from the conference as I would if I was working from home, which defeats the entire purpose of going. I’ll likely register for the online sessions so I get SOMETHING out of it, but they won’t even pay for that so it’s again out of pocket.

Did you expect to go to more conferences as part of your work, and did that pan out for you?

i went to Gophercon a couple times via work, or they paid for the conference ticket at least
it was cool but a struggle to deal with the jetlag + early conference talks
and a nice excuse to go to america, although i have no ties to denver it was nice to visit there too

current job situation doesn’t seem to allow for this kind of thing at all :c

it’s a shame they are trying to make you work during the conference. i think a lot of employers don’t realize how effective schmoozing at conferences is for recruiting etc.

i never went to why conferences when i was in computers, although i wish i had. culture definitely doesn’t promote it, although they should. it’s just dumb not to foster professional growth in some of your most valuable employees.

now that I’m in medicine they actively encourage it and i still haven’t gone lol. hopefully will get to one or two this year though.

I’m in medical devices and they two big conferences for my specialty are strictly sales degenerates only. They breathlessly blog about how nice it is to connect with people and see things and the software org just sits there and takes it.

bizarre how corporate cultures get things so wrong sometimes

Feature, but a bug - we’re just not the end user of the corporate system.

If you let the software guys think they’re important then they’re going to try and get more money in salary or go to more conferences and then you’re spending money, not saving it.

If you make sales feel important by sending them to every convention that they want then you can pay them less and will get orders - you’re making money.

Cost versus revenue.

Works also for the medical personnel - send them to a conference and they learn something new that saves you money or makes you more money.

i think it has more to do with the culture of continuing education in medicine that people really prioritize. still happens with the engineers obviously, but the higher ups haven’t prioritized it like they should. fostering growth in your employees makes good business sense, it’s just not immediately obvious to the bean counters.

You see it more with credentialed engineers - people who get their PE and are required to have a certain amount of professional development to keep it. Lots of orgs employing them will go out of the way to maintain that because they need to for their business to function.

My company throws a PluralSight subscription at us, assigns us some regulatory training, and then closes the dungeon door.

if unions worked the way they should these are the sorts of issues they’d be good at negotiating.

Every software engineer I’ve talked to seems to be very anti-union. Some of them have even said “unions are for blue collar workers, not professionals like me!”

Software engineering is a lot more like being a carpenter, electrician, plumber, welder, or even a construction site foreman than it does with being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or actually credentialed engineer.

yeah it’s a shame.no reason professionals can’t unionize though when they’re cogs in a big corporate environment. the civil servants, including all the engineers, were unionized when i was at nasa. unions aren’t entirely blameless for the state they’ve fallen to, though.

From: MasterOfMagic at 2021-09-27 20:59:07
Every software engineer I’ve talked to seems to be very anti-union. Some of them have even said “unions are for blue collar workers, not professionals like me!”

Software engineering is a lot more like being a carpenter, electrician, plumber, welder, or even a construction site foreman than it does with being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or actually credentialed engineer.

100% agreed

From: MasterOfMagic at 2021-09-27 20:59:07
Every software engineer I’ve talked to seems to be very anti-union. Some of them have even said “unions are for blue collar workers, not professionals like me!”

Software engineering is a lot more like being a carpenter, electrician, plumber, welder, or even a construction site foreman than it does with being a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or actually credentialed engineer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

the libertarian streak that is so ingrained in this shitshow of a career path i chose is one of the biggest pet peeves i have

California was a mistake