As technology evolves, so do the skills that engineers need to succeed. This environment of continuous change may come with its challenges, but it is also an opportunity for a lifetime of learning.
Fortunately, most employers today recognize the importance of ongoing professional development and provide resources to help workers advance. Flexible education stipends are a valuable — and often underutilized — part of many corporate benefits packages.
They can offer employees the chance to earn new certifications, get hands-on training, network with peers and mentors and gain tools to become better leaders — all without paying out of pocket. Plus, taking advantage of these opportunities now can pay dividends down the road, paving the way for leadership roles and greater job security.
And while there’s never a bad time to learn new skills, this may be an especially crucial moment to do so. According to the World Economic Forum, almost half of all workers who remain in their current jobs through 2025 will need reskilling as industries adapt to automation and other technological disruptions.
That may sound like an ominous prediction, but in practice, learning and development tend to be enjoyable perks.
Just ask Bennett Garner, a staff software engineer at Boston-based agricultural-technology company Indigo, who recently used his company stipend to attend PyCon, an annual conference dedicated to the programming language Python.
“Over the years of working as a developer, I’ve watched many PyCon talks on YouTube, but this was my first time attending,” Garner told Built In Boston. “It has been a goal of mine for a long time to participate in the conference, so it's awesome that Indigo provided a way for me to do so.”
With in-person professional events back in full swing and online courses available to suit virtually any goal and schedule, engineers have ample choices for how to use their benefits. Read on for more on how Garner made the most of his.
Indigo builds innovative solutions to improve the sustainability and profitability of the agriculture industry.
What sort of learning and development stipend does Indigo offer? How have you made use of this stipend?
Indigo offers a $2,000 stipend for tech team members to spend on books, courses, coaching or professional memberships.
I’ve previously used the stipend to purchase Udemy courses and e-books. When I joined Indigo, the courses were helpful as I learned the fundamentals of Indigo’s tech stack and ramped up on our code base and infrastructure.
This year, I chose to spend my stipend attending the annual Python developers conference PyCon.
The conference was in Salt Lake City and included four days of workshops, keynotes and discussion panels. While there, I made a lot of professional connections with other developers and heard from important people in the ecosystem, such as the steering committee and open-source maintainers. I also attended talks about the language’s features, its future and interesting ways other teams are using Python to solve new problems.
What was the result of utilizing this stipend?
Back at Indigo, the things I learned from the conference are helping my team build and deploy Python projects at scale. We’re using some of the tips and tricks I learned from the various talks to improve our Python code.
It was especially relevant for me to attend PyCon since I’m the developer on my team with the most experience working in Python. Other developers on my team come from different backgrounds working in other languages. With my experience and now my learnings from PyCon, I’m able to serve as a resource on my team for Python-specific coding and runtime questions.
I’m also happy to have expanded my professional network at PyCon. There were several mixers and chances to get to know new people. While none of those relationships has directly led to a particular result (yet), I’m glad to have other Python developers in my network as a resource for the future.
When it comes to utilizing an L&D stipend, the options can be pretty bountiful. What advice would you share with engineers so that they can make the most out of this resource?
How to use your stipend is up to you. I can’t give perfect advice to everyone since what you’ll need will be different depending on your background and circumstances.
That said, I encourage engineers to think outside the box with their stipends. Conferences aren’t specifically outlined in our education stipend policy, so I had to ask if travel and lodging at PyCon could be included as an education expense. In my case, just asking opened the door for me to go. But it did require some planning and approvals.
I encourage engineers to think outside the box with their stipends.
If you can make it happen, I’d highly recommend attending in-person conferences with an education stipend. You develop relationships and have interesting conversations that you can’t replicate any other way.
The flexibility of the program at Indigo means that there are no wrong ways to use your stipend, and managers are excited to make sure their teams take advantage of their professional development allocations.
