
Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on? - fandawg195
Hi,<p>I&#x27;ve been given a $2K budget from my employer to spend on training, books and&#x2F;or conferences. I currently do Web Development (mostly front-end) and was looking for suggestions on what to spend it on.<p>My long-term goal is to work for Microsoft or Google and wanted to learn more about the fundamentals of algorithms and data structures. But I wouldn&#x27;t mind to learn more about whats coming around the corner in the world of front-end development since things are changing and advancing so fast.<p>Thanks in advance!
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arihant
There is only so much you can spend on books, I would suggest you register for
an Algorithms/Data Structures course at a decent local university.

It could be the Sophomore level Data structures + Basic Algo course or a
senior level Algorithms, wherever your comfort level is. Since you mostly do
front-end development, this could bring serious depth in your computing
skills.

For most CS programs, the data structures and basic algorithms course
(typically at sophomore level) forms the backbone for most of the curriculum.
If you didn't go through a CS program, this is the most important component
that you might miss on.

~~~
lastofus
If the goal is Google or Microsoft, then this is the correct answer. A solid
foundation in algorithms and data structures is a strict necessity when
applying to those places as a developer.

Analysis of algorithms can be a bit intense, and also hard to trudge through
as it seemingly has little direct relevance to coding. I found it's better to
be in a classroom of people you can work with together to get through it.

It's very much worth it though for the intuition you will take away from it.

------
davidw
Conferences are expensive. I'd go with books, and local conferences that are
cheap and don't cost a lot of money in terms of hotels/airfare/etc...

Another way of looking at stuff changing really fast: wait until it settles
down some until you jump on board, or you risk wasting your time. I remember
in the 90ies when CORBA was going to be the "next big thing". Glad I didn't
spend time learning that...

~~~
fandawg195
i agree, you hear a lot of buzzwords thrown around these days and then a few
months later its fizzled down.

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strictnein
I've started taking a couple of Coursera specialization tracts:

Data Science - Johns Hopkins
[https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1](https://www.coursera.org/specialization/jhudatascience/1)

Data Mining - UIUC (edit: was Johns Hopkins - bad copy/paste)
[https://www.coursera.org/specialization/datamining/20](https://www.coursera.org/specialization/datamining/20)

There are more specializations that you can get here:
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations](https://www.coursera.org/specializations)

It's kind of a layer on top of the free courses. I've been pleased so far.
They'll also look nice in the education section of your resume, if you care
about that.

~~~
acconrad
Will they actually? Are employers starting to value Coursera courses as
valuable educational experience?

~~~
strictnein
Not sure about the individual courses, but I've seen the certified tracts
mentioned in job descriptions, most recently in some data science positions.

------
mahyarm
If you want to work at those companies, your time is better spent with
something like Cracking the Coding Interview and reviewing it on the weekend.
If you actually go through the entire book, you'd stand a pretty good chance
at doing really well on all of your interviews as far as stuff you don't use
on the job frequently questions go.

This former googler who's interviewed a lot agrees with me: "For instance, if
you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e.,
actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a
good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process."
[http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/10/gaming-coding-
interview.htm...](http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/10/gaming-coding-
interview.html)

If you have never studied any of these topics, keeping this book in mind as
you study for your algorithms course will be definitely helpful for your grade
and your future interviews!

------
Yadi
I would buy and look into the following books:

# HTTP: The Definitive Guide - O'Reilly Media

# Algorithms by Sedgewick

# Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen.

Check out some Machine Learning books:

# Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning

# Computer Networks (5th Edition)

I would look at the following book if you wanted more Q&A and interview
questions:

# Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions ...

Tutorial memberships:

# I would buy a Tuts+ account, they have been very slow in releasing new
content (too bad), however they have lots of great Web Development stuff.

I would read some other non-technical books:

# Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham

# The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

# The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change The Way You
Do Business by Clayton M. Christenen,

# Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

# How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

If you wanted to understand some Cloud stuff, look into the Whitepapers from
Amazon Web Services:

# [https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/](https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/)

~~~
fandawg195
> # The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

this is an excellent book! also i would have to recommend How Google Works.
its fairly new.

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JSeymourATL
>What should I spend it on?

Leverage your training budget to show your personal goals are aligned with
your employers overall business goals.

It might be instructive to start surveying different company stake-holders,
from their perspective what works well or what needs improvement? What are
their challenges? That feedback is Gold.

Those assorted needs & wants might inform the sort of training you seek. For
example, the marketing department might want next generation Big Data
Analytics & SEO. While, the operations group might be concerned about Security
& Fraud issues.

Imagine if you could show how your training interests are aligned with company
priorities-- that might earn a bigger budget allocation. And makes you even
more valuable to company.

------
nastysquar3d
As everyone has already said, conferences are expensive. However if you can
find one that you maybe don't have to pay travel / lodging for (crash at a
friends place, driveable distance, etc..) I say go for it. They can be
extremely informational. Especially if you like front-end technologies.

As a front-end developer, knowing what's "around the corner" is helpful, but I
wouldn't invest a lot of time in it. Browser support for many "around the
corner" technologies and practices is so far off it's not (yet) worth the time
investment.

So, conference if you can without blowing your whole budget, then online
courses / books.

------
rb2k_
I can recommend "Programming Pearls":

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Edition-
Bentley...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Edition-
Bentley/dp/0201657880)

It hasn't a lot of algorithms per se, but it has a lot of examples of how a
different view on a problem can lead to an easier/more performant solution. It
also does a good job at explaining tradeoffs. I think it's great for people
that have had some basic introduction already.

[Ref link if anyone feels like it:
[http://amzn.to/1CnQUQ7](http://amzn.to/1CnQUQ7)]

------
cunninghamd
If you want to work for Microsoft or Google, while you likely can't get away
with using your employers's $2K, the best books to read are Cracking the
Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews. Both books have very
solid algorithm questions which you can use to go research the various
algorithms and learn them. Although, I'd wait for Elements of Programming
Interviews v2 which will include Java samples, as opposed to C++, but that's
just me.

McDowell's The Google Resume also has some useful tidbits in it.

------
theGREENsuit
One more vote for
[http://www.safaribooksonline.com](http://www.safaribooksonline.com) and
[http://www.pluralsight.com](http://www.pluralsight.com) If you do check out
pluralsight, take a look at [http://www.lynda.com](http://www.lynda.com). It's
also a video learning site but also allows you to download a project to work
on along with the course you're taking.

------
greenpinguin
totally agree pluralsight is great, they've been on a spending spree and
bought my two favourite sites:

codeschool.com and peepcode.com

That said, why don't you do a Nanodegree from Udacity?
[https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree](https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree)

The founder is a Googler and they partner with allot of great companies for
their courses.

Also great is [https://frontendmasters.com/](https://frontendmasters.com/) for
anything JavaScript

------
webnanners
[http://safaribooksonline.com](http://safaribooksonline.com) It's basically
Netflix for programming books.

------
tsax
I would find out the medium term goals of the organization, and find all the
resources I would need to accomplish some of them - people (on LinkedIn,
Meetup.com), courses (Udacity Nanodegree, Coursera Specialization, Thinkful,
etc), books (Such as Intro to Algorithms, etc).

And then draft a comprehensive plan to make this happen. If you do this, then
you will become truly irreplaceable for your organization.

------
jackmaney
If you only have $2,000, you'll get a better bang for your buck with books and
online courses than traveling to a conference--especially in an expensive city
(which is where tech conferences tend to be). I went to KDD[1] last year, and
racked up a bit over $3500 in expenses without even trying.

[1]: [http://www.kdd.org/kdd2014/](http://www.kdd.org/kdd2014/)

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LoraBeros
I work at Pluralsight and I'd highly suggest giving us a try. We have over
3,500 courses in our online training library. Check out our 10-day free trial
here:
[https://www.pluralsight.com/a/subscribe/step1?isTrial=True](https://www.pluralsight.com/a/subscribe/step1?isTrial=True)

------
jsonne
If you want to work at Google you should for sure learn Golang.
[https://www.eventbrite.com/e/go-programming-bootcamp-tour-
sa...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/go-programming-bootcamp-tour-san-
francisco-march-tickets-14944319863)

------
AustinScript
Do you get time off to receive training?

The "drier" the subject matter the more I like to it to take place at an
offsite location where that is all I will doing for several days.

Pluralsight certainly is a good resource if you are more diligent than myself
at managing your own curriculum.

------
Oras
For your current work, I would say put your objectives, discuss it with your
employer to see which ones fits better and then have a side project and learn
how to do it in a new technology that you don't know. Examples will be
AngularJS, EmberJS .. etc.

------
ElijahLynn
You should spend it on 1 or 2 good books and then take a week or two off and
use the 2K to cover your unpaid time. And then focus like a sunbeam and
magnifying glass night and day and absorb everything you can in that sprint!

~~~
gk1
While I agree that taking time off helps recharge and sharpen the mind,
imagine how that will look to the employer:

"Look at how Joe spent the $2k we gave him for professional development: He
spent $30 on books and the rest on a paid vacation."

------
Slartibreakfast
I know how I'd spend the first $100:

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-
algorithms](http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms)

I don't know about the other $1.9K.

~~~
fredleblanc
Don't forget that you can stretch $2k a lot further on something like half.com
instead of buying new books: [http://product.half.ebay.com/Introduction-to-
Algorithms-by-C...](http://product.half.ebay.com/Introduction-to-Algorithms-
by-Clifford-Stein-Ronald-L-Rivest-Thomas-H-Cormen-and-Charles-E-
Leiserson-2009-Hardcover/73175956&tg=info)

~~~
saalweachter
Abe is generally the only place I check, besides Amazon Marketplace:
[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=stein+rives...](http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=stein+rivest&ds=20&sts=t&tn=introduction+to+algorithms)

Also, don't worry too much about getting the latest edition -- for the core
things, it won't have changed much.

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rukittenme
Use the money as your salary. Work for four hours, research for the other
four. Learning is free but time is limited. Ask your boss for four hours a day
with the $2k dwindling according to your rate.

~~~
ElijahLynn
Hah, this is almost exactly what I just posted. Yes definitely use as salary
so you can focus, I would see if you could take a week or two of to focus more
intensely though.

~~~
hatu
Write your own book and self-publish on Amazon. Set the price at $1990. Buy
your own book with company money.

------
greenpinguin
don't waste your money on conferences, they are super expensive and the best
talks will land on the internet. Unless u need them for networking - but even
then you can just go to free meetups.

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adamzerner
Consider paying someone to tutor you. Consider using Air Pair for that.

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kpennell
I've found the Pluralsight videos to be pretty easy to follow. They have a
nice interface and you get a lot of videos for the price. Taking their angular
ones now at 1.5x speed.

~~~
strictnein
And they just bought CodeSchool which I've been pretty pleased with. Not sure
of their integration plans yet, outside of CodeSchool offering some
pluralsight videos.

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FLGMwt
Pluralsight, Safari Books Online, and small local conferences.

~~~
pkaye
A good way to get Safari Books Online is to join the ACM organization. You get
a subset of Safari and other bookstores for around $100 a year. There maybe
others with the same deal.

~~~
song
Yes but the subset from Safari Books Online is quite restrictive. I ended up
having to get Safari separately to access some of the books I wanted...

~~~
pkaye
Sure but the full version starts at $399 per year. If you only occasionally
read the books that the $100 might be a better deal supplemented by buying
specific books you really want.

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fandawg195
@aluciani + @FLGMwt - i didn't know about pluralsight. i'm looking at their
courses and its quite extensive. thanks!

~~~
Avalaxy
Can confirm, pluralsight is a great resource. Lots and lots of interesting
stuff.

Other than that it really depends on where you want to go and how much you
already know. If you'd like to go work for Microsoft I can recommend events
and books, but if you want to work for Google, people will recommend
completely different stuff.

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eddie_31003
Pluralsight, Safari Books Online, and MeetUps +1

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gadders
Safari online bookshelf membership?

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abfan1127
does your local university allow non-degree seeking students to take courses?

~~~
at-fates-hands
This was my thought.

If you want a deep dive on algorithms and data structures, it would make sense
to me to take a university course.

I had a friend who used to do this. He'd go through the University course
catalog, find some interesting CS courses and then buy the books, show up for
class, even take notes and do the homework. Said it was the best way for him
to learn and get really deep into subjects which really interested him. After
a while, I think he finally enrolled and tool some classes.

~~~
abfan1127
I was listening to a podcast where the guest goes to university courses,
listens to the lectures, goes to office hours, but doesn't sign up or even pay
tuition... Seems cost effective to me :)

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aluciani
Pluralsight - great resource

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WWWade
Hookers and blow.

------
lettergram
Buy a bunch of books, scan them, and resell them. You can profit and obtain
the knowledge!

