This AskSlashdot question asks for advice from slashdot crowd on how to do her job effectively when her employer is unwilling to sponsor the required training and she cannot devote her personal time on self-training.
Most of the discussion is off-topic, ranging from communism-capitalism debate to feminist movement and self-employment, there are some nuggests of solid advice:
- Start with a plan (of your professional activities) and work with your manager. Chances are that the manager will respond more positively to the plan for improvements than the demand to sponsor a training class.
- Beware of mis-placed training.
- Collect and use data to make a case for a formal training.
- Make the vendor pay for it.
- Learn bit-by-bit, as and when the opportunity comes.
- Choose the right company (for you) to work for.
- A manager's expectations.
- Loosen the constraints a bit. Reorganize your family life.
What would be my advice? the last one -- loosen the constraints a bit and reorganize things. I consider this as any design problem with lots of requirements and no perfect solution. You must assign priorities to each of the requirements and be happy with a less than perfect solution that meets all the requirements. It is hard to solve a problem if all the constraints are completely fixed.