
Ask HN: Does your employer pay for conferences? - Raed667
Does your employer pay for conferences and give you paid time to attend?<p>If so, how often?<p>Do you think refusal to do so is a bad sign?
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taylodl
Yes and yes, BUT - and this is important - you must be able to identify how
attending this conference aligns with the organization's goals and help
achieve them. In practice then you end up going to a conference every 2-3
years.

There have been instances where we've had tight budgets and couldn't afford
conference fees, lodging and travel but the company provided paid time off to
attend, since payroll is built into the budget. Even then they try to pick up
one of the items such as lodging (which can get quite expensive if the
conference is in San Francisco - we're in the Midwest).

Is it a bad sign? Well, what other opportunities is your employer providing
for professional growth?

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Raed667
In this particular case the conference was right next to my work place, it had
some tracks that were very related to what i'm working on.

The only cost to my employer would have been three days I don't show up at the
office. No travel or housing expense.

~~~
taylodl
Was anyone else from your team going to the conference? Did you give them
enough notice? Or are they being hard-nosed on never sending anyone to
conferences ever?

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evgen
Is the conference and/or the schedule of talks directly relevant to my job
responsibilities or am I going because my employer wants me to be there to
learn something specific or doe a bit of passive recruiting? In that case
employer pays.

Do I just want to go to a particular conference and my employer doesn't
particularly care about the conference or I can't make a convincing case for a
specific business interest that this conference serves? No, the employer does
not pay.

Next time make sure that you add attendance at a conference that seems
somewhat relevant into your employment contract. I have found that this is one
of the better times to make the ask (e.g. "I want to make sure I am on top of
my game and delivering best practices and new techniques to the company, so I
think we should add PyCon attendance to the list of benefits/duties and I will
also do a bit of recruiting there for the company...")

As far as what refusal means, it could either be that the department just
doesn't have spare discretionary budget to fly you somewhere to sit in a hotel
for a week or else they have the budget but just have no interest in sending
you because they do not think it would be worth it. For the latter you can
plan ahead a bit more and spend 4-6 months reminding the decision maker about
some interesting talk at conference X and how it might apply to some activity
the company cares about.

~~~
Raed667
Thank you, I think I will do that next time, and note since the start that
community & engagement is important for me.

