> Most of my friends that work at larger public tech companies — it just feels like they're constantly doing unimportant things, going to conferences just for the sake of it
Working at a BigCorp(tm) right now, this is somewhat of a false statement imo, at least for us.
Being in such a standardised place, it is very hard a lot of times to find new inspiration for technologies to adopt and things like conferences or meetups are the perfect opportunity to network and hear about how people make use of new things. Usually, we don't really get much time to explore new technologies as capacity is always planned for our current workloads. That's why I love being able to go to a conference every few months (this year it'll be 4 for me) to be able to bring some things back into my team that might be interesting to us.
We get the time approved for conferences, but not to explore things "while at work".
This obviously differs from company to company but that's my experience at my current one so far.
Yeah, and I didn't mean to slam conferences. I enjoy going to conferences and find the well regarded ones beneficial (especially ones offering workshops and certifications).
My point was more about the token conference goer.
I have an acquaintance that has given the same talk at 13 different conferences over the last 12 months. I don't know how that benefits him or the company. He's also on twitter literally all day. I just don't get it (as I hypocritically type this out on HN).
Are you really saying that you don't get how presenting to multiple conferences benefits the presenter, or the company he works for? Or am I misunderstanding your point?
From my perspective it seems that there's tremendous benefit in becoming known by thousands as an expert in a particular topic and in having the skill to present that material to others.
Working at a BigCorp(tm) right now, this is somewhat of a false statement imo, at least for us. Being in such a standardised place, it is very hard a lot of times to find new inspiration for technologies to adopt and things like conferences or meetups are the perfect opportunity to network and hear about how people make use of new things. Usually, we don't really get much time to explore new technologies as capacity is always planned for our current workloads. That's why I love being able to go to a conference every few months (this year it'll be 4 for me) to be able to bring some things back into my team that might be interesting to us.
We get the time approved for conferences, but not to explore things "while at work".
This obviously differs from company to company but that's my experience at my current one so far.