** Sean Gibbins <sean@???> [2008-05-21 09:57]:
> Captain Haddock wrote:
> > Is there really a high enough demand that companies can charge such
> > fees and get away with it?
>
> You'd better believe it!
>
> Most of the courses I attend through work are in the region of £1-2K for
> a week or so's worth of training. I can reckon on attending two of these
> a year and I work in a very large organisation.
>
> Bearing in mind that this organisation makes billions out of moving
> money and information around the world, and that this is facilitated
> largely by technology these days, it is in their interests to ensure
> that the knowledge accrued by their staff is regularly topped up, and
> when new technologies emerge that better facilitate this process, that
> their staff have it made available to them in the interests of remaining
> competetive.
>
> Many full time employees see regular training as a benefit too, and will
> gripe loudly if it is not forthcoming.
** end quote [Sean Gibbins]
Impressive training record. I worked at IBM Havant and its chainging
faces for 10 years and managed the sum total of 2 courses [1] (if you
don't count my fork lift truck training [2]). They were, even back when
I did them in 1999/2000 in the region of £1-2K, and to my mind worth
about 50p.
Good training can be worth far more than many months of self teaching
with books/internet. Sadly neither of the courses I went on could be
considerd good training. One was an official Microsoft one, the other
wasn't. The MS one was on SMS and the main thing I remember on that was
a big push on how the data was stored in SQL Server so you could analyse
it with something like Crystal Reports. What they neglected to mention
was that there was no way to get hold of the database schema, so access
to the data was largely pointless! The second was an NT4 administration
course that could have been covered in a day, let alone the week we had.
I did this having installed NT4 workstation the week before and
installed but never used significantly NT 3.x and not having done any
prerequisite courses. The questions I asked stumped the tutor as too
technical, and although there was a big push on interpreting the dreaded
blue screen data, he had to admit when pushed that the information you
gleaned was largely only of use to people with access to the code who
could actually do a proper fix!
All this has soured my opinion of training, especially when coupled with
the fact that I geared my education towards IT/programming only to be
told when I entered the world of work that companies weren't interested
and would rather take a geography or history graduate with no
preconceived or out dated IT experience. Every break I've had has been
down to personal experience and interest done in my own time and not
training.
Not that I'm against good training. I did a very good course at Highbury
College on C/C++ at my own expense as evening classes. Nowhere near as
expensive, more technical and better delivered imho :)
[1] It might have been 3 but only two stick in my mind, one of which
because I spent half of one of the days in a London hospital being
checked out and then had to make my way back to the training centre to
pick up my bag from security of the next door building so I could get
back home! There was one or two more courses on my training passport but
the company wouldn't let me take the time to do them before it expired
:(
[2] Not a lot of call for driving fork trucks in IT, but I had to use
one for getting the larger test pieces on and of the equipment in my
days of 'breaking under controlled conditions' various kit - the comms.
cabinets and photocopiers were pretty large!
--
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