At Code Koalas we have brought back company lunch & training Friday's a couple of weeks ago. Everytime I make a presentation I'll post it here.
So why are we training people? That seems like a simple and dumb question but lots of companies don't invest in training. A good quote shared by Robert Manigold on this subject is:
CFO to CEO "What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?" CEO "What happens if we don't, and they stay?"
McDonald's trains their employees how to make hamburgers, why shouldn't we train our people the proper way to program?
We came to a point in our company where we were able to make the decision of whether we start hiring more senior people or if we stick with junior people and teach & train them to be better. We decided that our company culture was one where we hire people who are forever learners. So then the next question was how do we encourage this?
We bought everyone a Kindle Paperwhite and give them a $50 a month (per person) for learning purposes. We said they can buy books, training videos, take people out to lunch who are smart basically just whatever it takes to get better.
We also every Friday have three presentations by team members to raise the general knowledge of everyone in the company. One person speaks about programming fundamentals like HTML, CSS, JavaScript or PHP. Another person speaks on something cool they learned or built this week and shows it off. The finally someone does a walkthrough or QA of a product that's supposed to be ready or almost ready for launch.
So far I think this has been going well and it will help raise everyone's knowledge and willingness to learn & grow.
:wq
*This blog was written while on narcotics as I crashed my motorcycle two days ago and I'm still recovering.