Danial Kalbasi

Notes on engineering leadership, building products, and figuring out what matters.

Org-wide training is a waste of time

Org-wide training is a complete waste of time. It teaches what a person should already know when they get hired.

Take leadership training. If you are training your manager on how to give feedback or how to coach someone in a simple situation, it means the person was not ready to get promoted. The person should have learned and trained for much more than that before they even get promoted.

Another common training is security training. If your employee doesn't have a basic understanding of security topics and they work in tech, they shouldn't be near any important work. You should also question how they get hired in the first place if they can fall for a phishing email easily.

Training works when done differently. The very same manager training could empower future managers. The very security training could prepare people for new scenarios.

Even better, hire great self-learners, so you never need to train.