It’s an odd time in history. Travel budgets were cut to Cornoavirus; some never came back. Silicon Valley Layoffs for tech workers number in the hundreds of thousands.
It is not unusual for someone to say they have submitted for a hundred (or two, or three hundred) positions they believed they were qualified for, and they haven’t received a callback.
In this environment, time off plus expenses to travel to a conference might feel like too much to ask for.
And yet.
When I look back at the good things that have happened to me professionally, they almost all involved a connection I met at some event or specialized training. And with working remote, workers have a little bit more personal time than they ever did before. Then we have zoom, that makes remote anything possible.
Why note remote professional development? Check out Hyperskill. With tracks from Java to Python, SQL, Data Analytics, Kotlin, and MongoDB, Hyperskill allows you learn while doing real project work, inside of a real development environment. And, of course, it is free to start and free as long as you’d like — though if you want to go faster or show your work, there is a modest monthly fee.
What to attend a conference? Many folks here know that I’ve been writing a little for Lamdbatest lately. They also have a free onlline conference, Testμ, August 22-24th.
I do realize that free doesn’t mean free; our time is one of our scarcest resources. I recommend things carefully and rarely. Both of these came to my attention at a point in time when I thought they might be valuable.
So check ’em out, let me know what you think and share other online resources here.
