The joy of training programs
Almost every company out there with some sort of ‘enterprise’ product will try to offer you some scam training crap. Said training usually involves either them sending you some kind of ‘expert’ to talk you through their course (lots of wild hand-waving and powerpoint madness), or you going to their ‘labs’ for an ‘intensive hands-on training program’.
Supposedly this will make you some kind of expert, as well as setting on the road to some kind of ‘certification’ that will hopefully mean everyone makes lots more money all round; a complete circlejerk.
Needless to say, the fees for said training are astounding. A few thousand dollars per seat for a short session is par for the course. It’s a hugely lucrative market that is bound to keep on growing since it is based on a very sound principle. That principle is that the people in charge are idiots, and feel that even armed with a dazzling array of sharp and pointy objects, their employees couldn’t figure their way out of a wet brown paper bag. Thus, what better way to hone their skills that by sending them to the very source of the knowledge you want them to have? A certified authentic training program of course!
Needless to say, the poor bastards who actually go through the training are the ultimate losers. These fools get fucked every which way.
First they have to endure the excruciating pain of endless hours of tedium and repetition. Training material is usually aimed at a frightfully low common denominator. It’s aimed at people with the mental capacity of a guppy.
Secondly, they have to put up with the odd actual retard in the group. There’s almost always someone who no amount of cajoling, explaining, or rationalizing can help. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s always the idiot smartass tossed in for fun. The kind of person who will respond to statements like ‘if you click the check prices button then the prices will be checked’ with relevant questions like ‘…but I was wondering what happens during my Ankara stopover if I buy an egg in Amman then try to take it with me on a Royal Jordanian flight out to London’
So now, let’s be honest, has anyone ever been to a training program that they felt was aimed at the right level, where they learnt a ton of new stuff and were excited and thrilled to put all this new found knowledge to power to good use in their lives?
November 19th, 2003 at 11:39 am
The only reason you need their fucking training is because most of the fucking documentation is either non existent or written in some dead language that no one understands.
THAT’s why we have training courses and THAT’s why most products/projects have shitty documentation.
November 19th, 2003 at 11:47 am
I’ve never had the pleasure of sitting through training, but have worked with coworkers who absolutely to learn any new skill or API or whatever until they had training. “I can’t do that, I’ve never worked with that, send me to training”.
My old company did that…they’d arrive back from training, still idiots but able to throw around a lot more jargon to assure the point-haired bosses the company got their tons-o-money’s worth.
Hell, if you’re even a moderately advanced developer, you could begin advertising your one-on-one tutoring services, charge 50% what some of these other jackhole-infested companies charge, and the recipient would come out better in the end…everyone wins.
November 19th, 2003 at 1:29 pm
I have to disagree with you on this one. You seem to have overlooked the fact that training is simply an excuse to go party for a week…isn’t it?
November 19th, 2003 at 1:57 pm
You’re right, as usual, on most parts. Still, I believe training can make sense – it gives you a chance to focus on single topic for some length of time, and enables you to ask someone knowledgeable (admittedly, not always) to get around the stupid, show-stopping, time-consuming fiddling with minor and stupid user errors.
November 19th, 2003 at 2:04 pm
Sometimes you are just swamped at work and no time left for self improvement. If your company is willing to pay for it then GO. You’ll have a break from the daily grind,and hopefully just hopefully the new knowledge you acquired will be of good use.
November 19th, 2003 at 2:17 pm
You forgot the one where the “trainer” is a new employee and has himself just learned the product, so he just tells you where to click and you empty your wallet.
November 19th, 2003 at 2:21 pm
The worst people in class are the ones that must prove they are smarter than the instructor and have to have extremely long conversations about obscure things that just don’t matter….
November 19th, 2003 at 2:37 pm
Hani there you go again, insulting real retards and idiots! Im thinking the individuals you are referring to are training moles. Their only purpose is to ensure the intellectual level does not exceed that of drool. These companies can only come up with 4 to 8 hours of legitimate training material and plants job is to make sure training is drawn out over a 4 to 5 day period.
November 19th, 2003 at 5:41 pm
Trainings IMHO are just another curse that marketing summoned upon us. Or, more worse, are the result of lazy programmers.
Marketing guy: “Hey people dont buy our product. they say it is fucking complex and they don’t get it.”.
LazyDeveloper: “Hey, organize some training seminar. I will explain that and they will be happy.”
Marketing: “Nice, lets charge 5k per seat. Great Idea, bye.”
Marketing guy is happy, he will make more cash. LazyDeveloper is happy cause he can do something else than working on his own shitty code and isnt forced to create (boring) documentation.
Training Programs only exist because someone didn’t come up with either a good understandable documentation [JBoss Documentation anyone?] or the program is fucking NON understandable and no one in charge can refactor it to be easier.
There are alot of exceptions on this of course. Some things ARE complex and cannot be made easier, but these guys normally provide a hell lot of documentation and for the lazy people not intending to read this awful lot of text they offer training.
Disclaimer: I have never been to a training. But i can’t think of a single one where i would have wanted to be. hell ya, i never been to University either. BUT i was suggested to visit alot of trainings. i always declined and learned it myself.
November 20th, 2003 at 4:19 am
Have to agree with you on that one, for the most part. Training that is organized by some company trying to sell a product is generally useless. Most of the time you will just get a sales pitch aimed at developer level.
The only technical training that usually works is when you have the chance to actually speak with the trainer beforehand and agree on topics, schedule and so on.
I helped organize a technical training for some of the developers on my time a while ago. We would talk to the trainer and put up a schedule proposal for him to flesh out. He made some changes and suggestions, it went back and forth a couple of times until we agreed on it. The resulting training was pretty successful.
The only problem is that you can only do this if you can “hire” the trainer for this exclusive (e.g. in-house) session. If you just send one or two people to an external training course, you don’t stand a chance.
November 20th, 2003 at 5:09 am
We had a consultant come in and give us a half-month training course on OO… this was when I was fresh out of college, and my OO skills were limited to projects that had less than 20 classes (and classes that were very much NOT OO, because the teacher wasn’t trying very hard).
It was one of the single best learning experiences I had as a developer. I think it was sort of the exception, not the norm tho…
November 20th, 2003 at 6:20 am
Went on a very good week-long UML course once – excellent instructor, learnt lots of useful and worthy stuff, and only a couple of dim muppets amongst the attendees. However, I’m deeply concerned at how many tens of thousands of pounds my local city council spends on sending people on XML courses when a simple book would suffice. I pay my taxes so I get good local services, not so a bunch of half-wits can learn the difference between an element and an attribute.
November 20th, 2003 at 6:27 am
‘…but I was wondering what happens during my Ankara stopover if I buy an egg in Amman then try to take it with me on a Royal Jordanian flight out to London’
Are _you_ flying that plane, Hani?
November 20th, 2003 at 8:10 am
Training Sucks.
Books Rock.
November 20th, 2003 at 9:24 am
Anonymous said:
Training Sucks.
Books Rock.
For the most part I agree. But more than that, having a book and having your company give you time to read it and build a sample rocks even more.
November 20th, 2003 at 11:56 am
“Are _you_ flying that plane, Hani?”
No, Hani flies for Lufthansa in Jordan.
November 20th, 2003 at 2:12 pm
…when he is not moonlighting as an IT Help Desk for some pathetic company.
November 22nd, 2003 at 1:02 am
“The worst people in class are the ones that must prove they are smarter than the instructor and have to have extremely long conversations about obscure things that just don’t matter…. ” — Hey! I’m that guy! Although honestly, I’m not trying to prove I’m smarter, I’m either 1. really trying to figure out what the heck is going on or 2. really bored – you’re bored off your ass anyways, what do you care? ;-)
November 22nd, 2003 at 12:43 pm
This is a real good one for you fate. I think the companies are paying these exhorbitant prices because all of this training discourages ppl from thinking for themselves like we used to do in the good old days.
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/blowme.html
November 26th, 2003 at 1:12 am
I am a trainer for like 8 years.
Let me tell you: Most training Sucks!
But having said that, my class rocks. My students tell me, the ones that went to other training. People that expect a vacation on my week a SOL.
If you want advanced Struts, let me know, you will learn it. 80% of the class is hard labs… to do master detail processing multi row.
No newbies allowed in the class.
.V
December 5th, 2003 at 1:14 am
Hani,
Yeh, I’ve been to appalling training, mediocre training, and excellent training.
The excellent training was for webMethods – which was a new framework to learn.
Most J2EE/Java courses are stupid but it’s par the course, in large companies, to provide it somehow. It’s a corporate circle, sure – most corporate coders don’t really keep up with things, the ones that do are bored at training. It’s still a need in the marketplace.
biv