So you’ve got talented people and as we all know, you need to invest in maintaining those skills. While there are a lot of ways you can do this, some of which are quite expensive, sometimes the little things have the biggest impact.
At Ephox we have a good collection of technical books and I’m always looking for new ones to add. It was suggested that we should get a copy of “Head First Design Patterns”. As the Head First series are designed to be written in, I purchased a copy for each member of the team.
I was sure it was a good decision when the day after they arrived one of the team stopped me to tell me how good it was. This was quickly followed up by one of my senior engineers raving about how easy and compelling it was to read. Finally, one of the team rang me on the weekend prior to their week of leave to confirm they could write in the book, as they were really getting into it.
So, if you want a low cost form of training, don’t just buy books for your team library, but actually give them their own copies.
