Why should an IT technician take out a brain?

I can be called a victim of training. It just so happened that for his labor biography due to all kinds of seminars, trainings and other coach sessions, he has long exceeded one hundred. I can say that far from all of the educational courses that I completed were useful, interesting and important. Some of them were completely harmful.

What motivation does HR teach you to teach?

I don’t know who told HR that if a person doesn’t succeed at work, this is due to a lack of knowledge. There can be many reasons: internal processes in the company, hidden motivation within the team, objective situation in the market. Options wagon and small trolley. But sooner or later, the idea of ​​the life-giving power of new knowledge comes from somewhere. And now, dozens of managers rush into enclosed spaces in search of the holy grail. All these meetings are an amphitheater, flipcharts, presentations, motivational speeches, cases, brainstorming sessions, absolutely nothing. Time eaters. I remember once having a chance to attend three identical workshops on the agenda. Just the person who organized them lived in a paradigm: “Boring and lonely? Gather a meeting! ” And dozens of busy people usually gathered in corporate meetings, discussed something violently, and then dispersed without visible results. And what is most striking, after a while everything was repeated. Just like in the movie "Groundhog Day." No argument wasted for wasting time. No consolidation of the results of group work, no visible consequences, nothing. A process for the sake of a process. Needless to say, it cost the company money? Room rental, coffee breaks, fare and accommodation for nonresident employees. And so several times in a row and only for one not the largest division. In the company where I used to work, there were dozens of them. no visible consequences, nothing. A process for the sake of a process. Needless to say, it cost the company money? Room rental, coffee breaks, fare and accommodation for nonresident employees. And so several times in a row and only for one not the largest division. In the company where I used to work, there were dozens of them. no visible consequences, nothing. A process for the sake of a process. Needless to say, it cost the company money? Room rental, coffee breaks, fare and accommodation for nonresident employees. And so several times in a row and only for one not the largest division. In the company where I used to work, there were dozens of them.

So why all this? The first is planning. In a large company, the budget is usually lined up a year in advance. And if according to the schedule you have 256 events, then there will be exactly so many of them, otherwise the next year you, as a budget holder, will face “circumcision” in pieces and money.

Another motive for organizing corporate training is leadership. If the boss studied in a Soviet school, then Lenin’s study, study and study again! firmly ingrained in his brain. This quote, by the way, has an informal continuation: “To study, study, study, better than work, work, work!”.

I don’t want you to have a wrong perception of this publication, the author says that it’s against teaching as such, simply, if the educational process is non-alternative, compulsory and thoughtless in nature, you won’t have to wait for miracles.

Have you ordered an infotsygan?

Every time I receive an invitation to attend another training, I recall a funny parable.
Some type of car drives up to a shepherd grazing a flock of sheep, leans out of the window and says:
“If I tell you how many sheep you have in the flock, will you give me one?”
A slightly surprised shepherd replies:
“Of course, why not.”
Then this guy takes out a laptop, connects it to a mobile phone, establishes a connection to the Internet, goes to the NASA website, selects the GPS satellite connection, finds out the exact coordinates of the place where he is, and sends them to another NASA satellite that scans this area and gives ultra high resolution photo. Then this type transfers the image to one of the laboratories in Hamburg, which after a few seconds sends him soap confirming that the image has been processed and the received data is stored in the database. Through ODBC, it connects to the MS-SQL database, copies the data to the EXCEL table, and begins to perform the calculation. After a few minutes, he gets the result and prints 150 pages in color on his miniature printer. Finally he says to the shepherd:
“You have 1586 sheep in your herd.”
- Exactly! That is how many sheep I have in the herd. Well, choose.
A man picks one and loads it into the trunk. And then the shepherd said to him:
“Listen, and if I guess who you work with, you will return it to me?”
After a little thought, the man says:
- Come on.
“You work as a consultant,” the shepherd unexpectedly issues.
- It's true, damn it! And how did you guess?
“It was easy to do,” the shepherd says, “you appeared when no one called you, you want to get paid for an answer that I already know, to a question that no one asked you, and besides, you don’t mean a damn thing my work. So give my dog ​​back.

No matter how ridiculous, the percentage of experts who talk about a subject in which they absolutely do not understand anything is much more than truly highly professional specialists. I am convinced of this quite often. Elementary clarifying questions, beyond the scope of the stated topic, can put speakers at a standstill. Moreover, most often this occurs at seminars on a wide range of topics: “Innovative Marketing”, “Digital in Digitalization, etc.”. When it comes to applied topics like backend, frontend or C #, such stories are rare.

I will teach you how to live ...

In addition to the classic educational seminars, several years ago large companies were carried away by personal growth trainings and all kinds of life spring technologies. In some places, it seemed that fish were being launched into your brains and you were beginning to lose touch with reality. I admit, even for me, who was usually skeptical of all kinds of manipulations, sometimes there were "differences". The technology is understandable, you are emotionally shaken, constrained by group commitment and commitment, and then immersed in uncomfortable training conditions. As a result, the brain melts, values ​​shift, and ambitious corporate pledges of allegiance are made. It is as if the Stakhanovites were hypnotized and asked to go into outer space for tomorrow.

There is such an old joke:

- Boy, what’s your name?
- Lech !!!
- And what do you want to become?
- The astronaut !!!
- And why the astronaut?
- Lech!

In other words, corporate mantras usually do not provide much room for maneuver. He mounted his horse and “Alga!” (Kaz. Alғa - forward).

The most difficult thing was for familiar IT specialists. Have you noticed or not, but usually people in IT work with structured thinking, with a formed system of values ​​and views. And imagine that you are such an independent, authoritative and accomplished professional, they suddenly begin to publicly declassify and try "weakly." It is extremely difficult not to become a victim of manipulation in this situation, especially if everyone is sitting with their heads bowed in this ill-fated training circle, without sleep and rest for the second day. In addition to the emotional load, anxiety for the future is also added, because, usually, leaders of different levels, temperament and ambitions are selected in a group. In this race for common sense, it’s not easy at all to not lose one's head and lose one’s head. People really based on the results of such exercises, changed their place of work, left their families, started to do strange things. For example, they quit their jobs for painting or knitting. I do not think that the company set such goals when it carried out similar educational projects at the corporate expense.

For what…

At one of the past trainings, a respected person said: “It would be nice every time before starting something important, you asked yourself the question:“ So what? ”. And you know, I agree with him. When you yourself suggest sending you to a particular educational course, seminar, conference, you usually understand why you need it. Well, or so it seems to you. In the case when the company decides this for you, it would be nice to have in mind the answer to the question: “So what?”. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money. What do you think?

Instead of an afterword

- Hello! We are starting the seminar “How to make a million rubles in one day”. Question to the audience. How much did the seminar ticket cost?
- Thousand rubles.
- And how many seats are in this room?
- One thousand.
- Thank you, the seminar is over.