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I will never expect my employer to pay me for my education - I never have expected. I spend a portion of my earnings towards educating myself. If my employer pays me for my education, that would be awesome. 
But I have no expectations; I can take care of myself.
It is a crappy thing, but it's life -^ Carlo Pallini
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I don't think any programmer can wait for his company to provide him with a training especially with new technologies were each company move to new software release only when this product come into stable version and most of the time company management expect from you to know it when you asked about(but how or when) they don't care so you have to study and improve your skills in your free and spare time.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
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How can you not spend some portion of you off time improving your skills? No company I've worked for has ever given time to learn new tool sets or update skills, your just expected to know it.
only two letters away from being an asset
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I am another old git of 62 years and I have been making my living from cutting code for almost thirty years. You may be surprised to learn that although I have quite a few languages under my belt I have never used COBOL.
I am a bit stuck in C++ and really should move to C# but I am employed to write C++ for Windows so not a lot of choice really although I get the occasional foray into Web development that makes a nice change.
The reason for this reply is to say GET A LIFE there is something beyond coding to do in your spare time. I know; I used to spend all my waking hours doing or thinking about code but now I am really old I have learned better.
This quote from Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman says it rather well:
It is no longer enough to be smart all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.
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For me Fortran 77 was a first language. I thought - you can anything you want - draw graphs and charts, do calculations, ... Why would anyone bother about inventing another language? Then it was C, then C++, then VB, SQL, Javascript, Java, C#... And every time I have to spend 120% of the time at work doing work related stuff using technology I know. It just makes business sense for the company you are working for not to redo millions of lines of working code in some new technology every 5 years. The only way to prepare myself for the next carrier move is to study on my own time and pray that I will be picked by prospective employer. Not once in my 20 years manager came to me and said "I know it's not something we use, but to promote your marketability we decided to send you to the training...". But that's the name of the game. On the positive side with the rate of the off-shoring we have it's not going to be a problem within 5-10 years any more. And believe you me, once I'm out of the computer business the only thing I'm going to do with IT is to check e-mail, news and TV-guide...
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The question was confusing. The header asks if I spend non work hours "furthering your work related education" but the the question above the answers says "in order to help you in your day to day work". These are not the same thing. In the first case, to me it means things not necessarily related to my day to day work but things that will help me in the future, keep me current in the technology etc. That doesn't necesarily map to what I do in my day to day work.
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Yes, that's my argument about so many of these surveys; they're just not well thought-out and worded clearly.
Often the two statements are at odds. Generally I go by the title.
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I voted: Yes, and sometimes get paid.
Sometimes, because, like others here, I enjoy coding and IT in general and study for pleasure. Luckily I was fortunate enough to work for enlightened employers who believed in the old adage "If you think training costs too much, have you calculated the cost of ignorance?'.
RIGHTS FOR THE ELDERLY!!
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL OLD GITS!!
WE DEMAND OUR SAY!!!!
I'M 84, YOU KNOW?
CAN I HAVE MY TABLETS NOW? THEY MAKE ME FEEL ALL FUZZY!
Henry Minute
Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain
Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?"
“I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Henry Minute wrote: I'M 84, YOU KNOW?
Wow. What tool you used before computer was invented? Did it have "ok" and "cancel" buttons? 
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As someone who has been professionally programming for 22 years, I have seen many people passed by because their skills were deemed out of date. Frequently it isn't overt discrimination - just expediency. Regardless, this tends to favor the young over the old - and I want to keep on programming for many many more years!
The only way to avoid obsolescence is to continually educate and refactor your own abilities.
I have an Amazon Prime membership. I probably buy 8 to 10 technology books a year (and fully read many of them). I go to any local training opportunity I can to learn (mostly free, some low fee). I lobby my company heavily for trips to conferences (things are too tight right now though). I've recently put myself through MS certification.
I check out what the community is doing with web sites like CodeProject, what the MVPs are doing with blogs like CodeBetter, etc. I've picked up a lot from reading about the ALT.NET projects and looking at how that is impacting the future of .NET.
I try to get my peers at work involved - but they rarely participate. is a shame, you can lead a horse to water... 
Dale Thompson
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Agree with you.
We must educate our self for new technology.
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Dale Thompson wrote: I have seen many people passed by because their skills were deemed out of date
I'm about to throw out 6-8 pages of CV or at least condense it to "previous technologies", bloody thing is littered with stuff that no longer exists or is so obscure no one uses it any more. Is turbo pascal still in use by Delphi I wonder.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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What if your main job is working on with COBOL?! Will you continue learning on it? I am lucky enough to be the one. So, I never waste time on work-related education. 
-----------------------------
Can anyone understand my poor English?!
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Zhuofei Wang wrote: What if your main job is working on with COBOL?! Will you continue learning on it? I am lucky enough to be the one.
What happens if the company that you are working for closes their doors and there is not a single COBOL position available in a 100 mile radius of you home?
John
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Continual learning is critical - don't become that old guy who knows COBOL
That is the reason why we also have an age-old truth too --> "Art is long and Life is short".
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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Well, the truth is in my university They are still teaching COBOL.
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My company now is expecting us to put in a little extra time here and there to keep up with the demand. Sadly, they are not hiring any new blood, and won't pay for the extra time we use to learn new techniques and technologies that could be beneficial down the road. But as another person mentioned, we are not your average developer and actually do side coding as a hobby. 
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Learning new things may reduce the time you need to develop something dramatically. During the years I saw so many abominations produced by junior developers just because they didn't realize there was a better way. So they coded tirelessly for days resulting in hundreds of lines of code when the same could be done by calling a single function or just by 10 lines of code, however they decided to reinvent the wheel...
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Ali Jawad wrote: My company now is expecting us to put in a little extra time
In a team rah rah recently the boss suggested that 15%-30% of our time should be spent on investigating new technologies, and propmptly loaded us with work that takes 120% of out time - that management for you.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I tend to do my 'assigned' project in bursts of furious coding. This gets them done comparatively quickly and I use the residual time to browse new topics, techniques, and occasionally annoy people at the CodeProject.
This has been a remarkably lucky experience - more often than not, the topic that caught my interest is coincidentally what someone needs in a relatively short time frame.(Aside from the annoying part)
Possibly it's all tied to risk taking. I made myself a wall-sign (just letter-size), which looks like:
Damnant quodnon intelligunt. Audaces fortuna luvat.
CARPE
DIEM
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
How often do I look at it? Rarely. But those times it's a reminder of who we (programmers) are - or ought to be.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to stop bothering them and just go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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Damnant quodnon intelligunt. Audaces fortuna luvat.
CARPE
DIEM
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
They condemn that which they do not understand. Fortune favors the Brave.
Seize the Day.
I will find the way or make the way.
just in case someone needed it translated.
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Based on the various software developers I've interviewed over the past 2-3 years I would say the reality is nearer zero percent bother to try and continue their education outside of a work environment. It really is quite depressing.
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Colin Angus Mackay wrote: Based on the various software developers I've interviewed over the past 2-3 years I would say the reality is nearer zero percent bother to try and continue their education outside of a work environment.
Yes, but remember this is CodeProject.com - people who participate in surveys here are hardly "your average Joe" developers.
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So, do you as a hiring manager do what you expect of your staff? I find it even lower for management than i do for staff. Sit back and drink that cup o Joe matey!
Also, this is a contextual and relative statement you are making, are you hiring lead programmers? are you hiring fresh out of school? are you paying adequately? does your HR write the help wanted tags?
"Looking for SQL Developer with 10+ years of experience in SQL 2008, wiht Masters. Pay negotiable, 30k USD." seriously i have seen ads like this... so much wrong with this tag line.
There good programmers and good managers and the quantity of either is usually directly proportional to the amount of money to pay them.
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good god all the names are taken wrote: So, do you as a hiring manager do what you expect of your staff?
I spend £2500+ of my own money last year on my own education. I expect to spend roughly the same this year, and I expect to do it again next year.
That's money for books, journal subscriptions, user groups, community conferences (I can't afford the commercial conferences) and so on.
good god all the names are taken wrote: Also, this is a contextual and relative statement you are making, are you hiring lead programmers? are you hiring fresh out of school? are you paying adequately? does your HR write the help wanted tags?
I've been in a position of hiring across the range. "Seniors" are the worst. They leave university and think "right! That's my education done". A friend of mine recently discovered that one of the devs at his work didn't know what inheritance was after almost 15 years working with OO languages!
A couple of years ago HR stuck their oar in for a few weeks until we managed to rewrite the job spec to something more sensible.
We ask for basic skills only. We don't have a massive shopping list. SQL Server and C# (or VB.NET) - That's pretty much it. If it is a senior we ask for X years of software development experience (so long as the last couple have been in our technology area - and even then, we are open to cross training)
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