Have you ever faced this problem before? Whether you are brand new to the industry, technology or a position; or you have been fighting out issues, troubleshooting in the trenches for decades upon decades. This problem often rears its ugly head, often in the form of “We don’t have the budget to train our employees”, or as the comic captioned above so eloquently puts it, “If we train our employees they might leave.”
This is a quandary I personally have experienced in my life time and one I know technician, to engineer, to architect, to all roles within an organization who have equally faced. It is not to say that all organizations suffer this same fate, technology vendors often ones who have their own certification program tend to support education, training, certification. Partner or Resellers often tend to support and embrace education within the workplace. Even furthermore organizations where they dictate requirements around “Your position must have ‘x’ education/certification in order to advance within the organization”. It would be awkward to have requirements yet no support of the organization to achieve them.
Yet even given those few scenarios where I have seen them be supportive of training, I could pull a dozen Administrators into a room, System, Network, SysOps and DevOps and probably 2 to 3 out of each of those groups would say their organization supports education, whether financially, providing time, or training and resources to pursue this education.
I can think of more admins than not who spend countless hours educating themselves, searching out and researching problems, constantly staying up on tomorrows technology while supporting the systems of yesterday, even those who regularly read up on and comment on forums like this within the Thwack community. You are the heroes, the rock stars, those who in spite of an organizations support of your actions you continue to pursue your own evolution.
I’ve published in the past countless resources for others to educate themselves, free or discounted certification programs, even one I’ll mention here where SolarWinds has a free training & certification program to become a SolarWinds Certified Professional (SCP) Interested in becoming a SolarWinds Certified Professional FOR FREE?!?!?
(I just checked and it seems to still work [Someone let me know if it's not still free!], two years on from when I wrote this blog post, so worth adding to your arsenal if you’re Cert limited and want to know what it feels like to have resources to learn something and then get a cert around it ) But enough about me!
What are some of the ways you the people are able to keep up to date on things, to continually grow and educate yourselves. Share your experiences of how you cope with organizations who do not support your advancement for fear you may ‘jump ship’ with your new knowledge. Or if you are some of the few who have a supportive organization whether Company, Partner, Vendor who gives you the fuel to light the fire of your mind, or just to continue to support and maintain your existing environments. And anywhere in between.