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I've been working at my current job as a Junior Software Engineer for approximately 1 year. I have a performance review coming up soon and know that I will have the opportunity to request additional training if I want it.

To show initiative I've been trying to find training courses that I can bring up in addition to any that my employers already have in mind.

We work primarily with AngularJS and node for our web component. We also have software that is built around C#. I haven't formally studied networking.

I tried to have a search for helpful courses that would add to my knowledge base from university but I can't seem to tell which courses are actually worth taking, which leads me to my question.

What are some possible training courses(online or not [Based in Australia]) that you can recommend that I ask to take?

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    This question is off topic, but as a general answer, your best bet would be to ask someone around you. Ask one of your seniors for a next step, or consult your manager. They may have some specific skill they feel you're lacking, or would be useful in an upcoming project.
    – Mars
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 2:29
  • What kind of budget are we talking about here? Could they be used to fund part of a masters degree?
    – Matthew Gaiser
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 3:13
  • @MatthewGaiser Ah that's hard to say but I believe that the funding of a masters degree (if desired) is definitely within realm of possibility.
    – FishV
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 5:25
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    It may be a good idea to also look at soft skills trainings. Sometimes becoming a better employee is not just about technical knowledge
    – Laurent S.
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 11:53
  • Ask them to pay for a subscription to an online training portal like O'Reilly Online or Pluralsight. They're not very expensive and have tons of different things you can study hands on, either by reading or watching videos..
    – O. Jones
    Commented Dec 9, 2019 at 13:53

5 Answers 5

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I would recommend gaining some knowledge in cloud computing space by studying and exploring services provided by popular cloud vendors like AWS, MS Azure.

This will be helpful not only in your current role but it will also increase your future job prospects since Cloud skills are really sought after these days.

If you are already on cloud then you can contribute by suggesting cost optimisations and security enhancement on applications already using cloud services. If you are not using cloud yet then its a good opportunity to make yourself familiar with some basic cloud services offered by cloud providers so that you can draw a basic comparison between Cloud and on premises infrastructure and suggest some improvements for your on premises environment.

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    Plenty of great answers but Mohammad's is the most applicable in my position (and the state of our industry [IMO])
    – FishV
    Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 0:44
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If you have to choose one, The most natural feeling technology to add to your current set will be some RDBMS tech (PostGres, MySQL, SQL Server etc).

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Company training dollars are extremely underutilized

Company training money is often budgeted for and just not used. At my company, permanent employees (So unfortunately not me as we seem to be contract to hire) are eligible for $2000 a year in training. And it is apparently very easy to get.

Seriously, don't get a $50 course with this opportunity. Have them pay for something big and permanent like a certificate or a graduate degree. You can get a Masters in Computer Science for 10K USD.

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Some good ideas in the other answers already. Another topic for training could be advanced software testing. Such as how to write good (unit) tests for components that interact with external APIs and possibly unstable network connections.

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Personally I find most 1-week courses a waste of time. By the time they come around I've already had to work out the basics, so the first couple of days don't teach me anything. The middle day is useful, then the last two cover stuff I'm never going to use.

Instead you could go to a conference. These give you short introductions to lots of new ideas and technologies. If you see something interesting, you can usually look it up afterwards. You'll meet other developers and build your network too.

Also, use some of the budget to get a few new books every year - much cheaper than a training course, and you can go at your own speed.

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