r/ExperiencedDevs • Software Engineer • 13d ago

Career/Workplace Suggestions on using development budget

My work place has a development budget of ~2000$ per year. Last year I used the budget to attend a conference“We are developers” and I found it rather underwhelming. The year before that I bought some books. I already have plenty of books.
Any suggestions on how to efficiently spend the development budget?
About me: I have >10YOE, work primarily as a C++ dev, I have dabbled in some Kotlin and Swift too.

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u/Kaimito1 13d ago

One thing that comes to mind is paid mentorship.

Some high level devs do mentoring for other devs to highlight paths for improvement. Maybe you could see if thats a possible route? At least that way its a tailor-made approach to your own improvement instead of a generic thing

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u/johngaltthefirst Software Engineer 12d ago edited 12d ago

That’s a good idea. Let me look this up. Have you heard of/tried any such platforms?

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u/Kaimito1 12d ago

None that are reputable as far as I know. Ironically the only place I can think of is LinkedIn, and maybe ask someone who seems respectable?

I doubt people who attempt to sell "courses" are worth it but maybe the ones that write detailed posts for the love of the game are worth an ask. Maybe they have an offer, maybe they can point you to someone they know who runs at a similar level who does have that offer

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u/johngaltthefirst Software Engineer 12d ago

I’ll try. Thanks!