Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentIn what feels like an eternity ago but was actually only a few months, many of us participated in the JMP brainstorm session. Out of this important work came three workstreams, including Professional Development.
So, I’ll cut right to the chase. We want to hear from you.
It seems foolish to develop a grand vision for Professional Development in our rapidly growing organization without first learning what folks have been doing, how well it has worked, and what resources they have used. Will you tell us?
In the comments below, please tell us what types of professional development you have pursued, through which organizations, whether it was internal/external, helpful not helpful, free or not, whatever you’d like to share.
Thank you for your time and we look forward to your comments,
“Conditions for Growth” subgroup of the Professional Development workstream
@wendytseng, @Phil_Kay, @Anonymous, @dara_hammond, @Peter_Polito
Feature StoryRe: Talk to Us About Your Professional Development@aaron_andersen for leveling up your stats knowledge, I would highly recommend this course: Significantly Statistical Methods Online Course | JMP
It's 100% free like STIPS but goes more in depth on foundational statistical concepts, applied through the lens of JMP and prepared so excellently by our own Julian Parris.
STIPS covers a lot more ground but in less detail -- if I only had time to take one module, I'd pick "Decision Making with Data".
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional Development@aaron_andersen You can try STIPS instead. This might not be an official statistics course like at the NSCU but I believe it comes close. You learn a lot about the background of why to use what statistics and it is quite easy to follow along in your own pace 
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentAs a software developer who has worked for a "statistics company" for over a decade, yet knows only basic statistics himself, I have for a long time been wanting to level up a bit in that area. I actually tried the online statistics MS at NSCU at one point, but had to quit due to a combination or cost and family obligations. But it was fun while it lasted! So that's something that's still on my "maybe someday" list (and certainly tuition reimbursement and/or it being acceptable for some of the learning to occur during work hours would make that easier).
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI have used the https://learning.oreilly.com/ resources a few times, for both live training sessions and for video courses.
Knowing that these resources are simply there, for free, all the time really reduces friction and makes me think "why not learn this" instead of "hmm, let me consider whether it's worth writing up a proposal / getting reimbursed".
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentThanks to the team working on this workstream, and to those who are sharing Professional Development experiences and thoughts!
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI use many of the resources already mentioned for continuing to grow professionally: journal articles, books, online tutorials, workshops and talks at conferences, youtube videos, etc. I also rely on my peers, manager, and network to point me to the right material or share their insights.
Just before the pandemic --and again a few months ago-- we had week-long C++ courses that were offered internally. I really enjoyed and benefited tremendously from both of them! I was very appreciative of having protected time for learning new skills. For me, the hardest part of professional development is carving out the time to engage in these learning activities regularly and purposefully. The C++ courses provided us with that time in addition to the great material that was covered.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentWhen I first started as an SE, I had a lot to learn about our core industries to be able to speak credibly to our customers and perform effective discovery. The industry training sessions that Product Management put together were very helpful in that regard. I also found some value in the Industry Focus series in the SAS learning catalog. Nothing beats just speaking with SEs who've worked in these industries, though.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentJust want to add sales perspective as this might be of interest also. I am in IT sales for over 20 years now and started from a total different job. During the years I went through many different ones such as "Selling to Vito", "Challenger Sales", "Key Account selling",SPIN, DISC to just name a view. The Sales Training that was I personally consider most helpful (and not only for business situations) was “NLP Business Practitioner Training” I went through when working for a large US based company. Whiles there was something in every training for me, I do not believe that sending sales through these standardized trainings is the only thing needed to develop skills. I my view there is no “standard approach” that can be used in “every” Sales Situation.
People by from people that are confident, authentic, do listen carefully and are able to establishing a relationship to customer more easily.
Here are the 3 things that helped me most during the years:
- Ongoing coaching and mentoring through dedicated “Sales Development/ Mentor/ Coach/ Buddy” program when I started, some companies I worked for had dedicated resource for this and I learned a lot by shadowing many different and more experienced sales people.
- Time and “freedom” to develop own sales approach and personality – Management that is encouraging and motivating
- Frequent brainstorming with other sales people – p.e. I am regulary discussing and brainstorming with other sales people
In a nutshell: I personally do believe that a Sales mentoring/ buddy and encouraging Sales People talking to each other and exchange is the best way to “grow” in sales area. Goes without saying that basic training like p.e. “Account planning” are needed for beginners also.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentAs for Marketing, I had the chance to work for Aprimo, at the time when it was both a Campaign Management and Marketing Resource Management software editor. I have learned a lot by talking with CMOs and getting trained on the tool itself.
Articles and white papers also bring me a lot. And I highly recommend marketers to subscribe to the ANA Business Marketing smartbrief newsletter (Association of National Advertisers), which compiles very interesting and inspiring articles and white papers from varius media.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentThis is a great topic – glad we’re tackling it! Interesting to read about others’ experiences. I’d be curious to hear more perspectives from my colleagues in marketing. Personally, I have found many excellent free online training resources that have helped me address various ad hoc marketing analytics challenges over the years – particularly with regard to the Google ecosystem (Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Data Studio, etc.). Similarly, there is no shortage of free online resources to learn about best practices for various marketing tactics, i.e. email marketing, social media marketing, marketing automation, conversion rate optimization, etc. Of course, there are paid courses available for all these topics as well, but so far, I’ve found the free options to be more than adequate. (I am eyeing some paid classes for GA4, however.) Regarding softer skills – things like managing people, interpersonal communication, presentation skills – SAS has some solid offerings in these areas which I’ve taken advantage of over the years.
I will add that I think professional development isn’t just about individual development in a vacuum. It’s also about being part of an aligned organization that is collaboratively working toward a common understanding of operational excellence. There are a lot of moving parts in marketing with lots of interfaces to other groups – lots of opportunity for inefficiency if we’re not all on the same page. One thing I’ll say about my time in marketing over on the SAS side: there was a recognition that all those hundreds of people (thousands?) needed a shared understanding of what type of “marketing factory” we were trying to build and how all the components fit together. To that end, they adopted the Pragmatic Marketing framework and sent many of us through that curriculum (it’s been a while, so I’m not sure if they have remained committed to that paradigm). My point is just that in addition to a self-directed pursuit of development, there is also definitely a place for joint training on shared, organization-wide processes and best practices. I think both are needed and both are rewarding!
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentWhen I look back I took a lot of different trainings and classes. In general I found more value in these about personality and behavior, like
- Negotiation, Difficult Conversations, Communication
- Great Demo, SPIN Selling, DISC, Ethical trainings from SAS
These help not just with my pre-sales role but all over the place, also in personal live. Thinking about others, understanding or at least stay open for others needs and behavior has helped me a lot in many aspects of my career and personal live.
Of course job role specific trainings were crucial as well to me having worked in many industries (from aerospace and automotive to finance/insurance to hi-tech, pharma, and more). If it is about technical , industry specific, programming or statistical/mathematical aspects, this is unavoidable and should be supported (many options have been mentioned already)
In addition I grew by taking language courses, English of course, but in my former company I had to support Spanish customers and therefore could participate in a Spanish class to improve my basic skills. (I don't call out loud austrian and bavarian dialect, these are just nice to have )
I like the mentoring option SAS provides, though I regret I didn't push me so far to participate. Now working in the prof. dev. workstream on it for JMP makes me feel good about it again. I definitively will take the chance when it's rolled out.
One thing not to forget, growing has a lot to do with mirroring from others doing something really good (or even really bad - I've never done something really bad (ironic smile 
)). So it is very valuable to watch others doing what you should do as well: a demo delivered by another SE, a code concept developed by another developer, a way to do administrative work someone has really fun with doing and that very effectively, a way to talk to others or treat others, ... We should encourage learning from others all over the place (which basically supports Patrick's point of just doing and get together with others and learn from them, and it can be done without lots of rules and regulations)
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentTwo things that stick out for me - the ability to attend conferences, and the encouragement of management to pursue collaborations that might fall outside of the job description.
I've personally found conferences to be extremely rewarding, both the academic and applied, and I hope that the ability to attend in-person conferences continues to be allowed. I've felt supported by Brad/management to attend conferences when I have an invited talk or even some new research that I want to present on as a contributed talk. The DOE conferences are smaller, so I've been able to make personal connections that I couldn't virtually. Attending conferences has also pushed forward research within the group, leading to papers and patents and keeping up with state-of-the-art research in the field.
I also appreciate the willingness of other teams to collaborate. The UX Development workstream has already led to some useful insights and tools/techniques we can use going forward. Some other examples: working with the Stat R&D team helped in the testing/exploration of the profiler with disallowed combinations, chatting with Russ after his XGBoost presentation led to the addition of space-filling designs for hyperparameter tuning within the platform, and a Discovery talk with Phil & Ben has provided further ideas that Wenjun and I have been exploring, and has sparked ideas with what we might implement in JMP 18 to help our users.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI've experienced a variety of technical and professional development resources over the years. The initial additional technical material I learned in university level courses on campus in the evenings and online. I preferred the online classes since the videos could be taken when I have time and repeated if necessary.
Later on, I turned to self-teaching specific technologies with technical books and attended technical and managerial courses and seminars offered by employers. Since joining SAS, I've been using SAS library resources for technical and professional development.
SAS's library used to offer both Lynda.com(now LinkedIn Learning) and Safari(Now O'Reilley). I preferred LinkedIn Learning when it was available. The library also has professional development Audio CD's and other digital media that I used to borrow for my long commute home.
More recently, since being enrolled in the SAS Management Curriculum, I'm refreshing old management training with newer SAS specific training. The same learning management system holds many non-management professional development courses.
Besides introductory JMP Courses, I took a JSL course which I found very useful.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentIn my case, I learned statistics in an actual manufacturing company. They gave me Six-Sigma Quality tarining at first. When six-sigma quality was achieved at the product shippment, it is expected less than 2~3 ppm failure happens at customers. Next DOE using JMP on any experiments in the laboratory. After some management trainings, I learned DFM stands for Design For Manufacturability. It covers a lot of things of company's operation. Since I joined SAS/JMP as Pre-Sales SE, I'm trying to make seminar contents for current JMP users to let them make use of JMP more efficiency, from data reading to analysis report sharing/reuse/publishing.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentSome technical workers (SE and TS) in JMP Japan held the book-reading club. So far, we finished reading JMP for Mixed Models. Currently, we are reading a famous Japanese math stat book, and Optimal Design for Experiments.
In Japan, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics offers some modern courses for data science. Some academic societies sometimes offer interesting tutorial seminars with reasonable fee also in Japan.
I myself got RSS/JSS Graduate Diploma although this certification was abolished. I also took JSS Certificate, Grade 1.
* RSS = Royal Statistical Society, JSS = Japan Statistical Society
I myself don't know how to study statistics in the real world although I should do.
I also attend a paper-reading club held by some people who like machine learning in SAS Japan. It's tough for me because the culture is different a little from statistics' one.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI joined most of the training suggested (such as 7 Habits of Highly Effective People & Crucial Conversation etc) when I was in SAS. Since I join JMP, it is all self-learning and private mentoring by my Team Lead, @Melisa_Muhd. Sometimes, I still go to SAS LMS and take any of the available free training for personal development. I hope we can come out with our own JMP-LMS before this features is no longer accessible to all JMPers.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI place huge credit on me being here at JMP (the company) and largely capable with JMP (the software) on the time I have shared together with "mentors"; 2 or 3 key people whom I sought out and with whom I offered to share what I could in the service of giving back what they have taught me.
We ended up sharing the same mission and vision: but we didn't even have to express it in words or formalize it in a spreadsheet -- instead, it evinced itself because the relationship sparked off a steady nourishment for me and the other, and we both recognized it. I've learned the most from those precious key people who have taken the time to enter into this kind of give/take relationship with me. As some like to say, "The best way to learn is to teach." To me, it works because there's an emotional aspect to it (shared connection and active-dialogue) that makes the learning process resonate more.
To this end, I can give to one lucky taker, my own personal offering of "Hypothesis Testing through JMP" (focusing on equivalence and t-tests). Who can give me their version of: "Scripting Logic 101 & JSL for Dummies" in return? Let's meet twice a month for 1/2 an hour (I'll go for the first session, and then we can alternate).
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentAs a new manager at JMP in 01JAN 2021 I was immediately enrolled into the Manager Essentials series from JMP. It was lots of classes that were mandated, and others that were electives. I believe they're all found in the SAS LMS system, to include Coaching for Performance, Situational Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Crucial Conversations and more. I've also taken a few productivity courses to discuss time and energy management, my favorite title The 5 Choices of Extraordinary Productivity. With my managers support I completed Gallup's "Boss to Coach" training and as of January am certified, which focuses on the Gallup Clifton Strengths that @SamGardner mentions. I find professional development to be meeting people where they are and helping them get where they want to be - whether that be a new position, a promotion, or being a super amazing rockstar in the very job they're in. I also task myself to read a business book every couple months and write up a report to share. My last add is that I encourage (just shy of assign actually) myself and team to involve themselves in cross-functional projects at JMP for additional variety, and exposure within JMP.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentEons ago when I first started at JMP, we were encouraged to take training classes related to our jobs. I took two classes from Adobe: one in Boston and the other in Austin. SAS not only covered the class fee, but also my travel. Obviously, these can be done online now, but I appreciated the encouragement to improve my skillset.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentI am currently enrolled in a degree earning program (@JerryFish, I hear what you are saying regarding fine print) for a Master's Degree in Data Science. Doing it online. There are various options out there that range from free classes with a small fee for a certificate to tuition for a degree.
Each path has their plus and minus. I think in general online courses like those at EdX are pretty well done and doing a series like those found at MITx have a certificate of completion if certain grade requirements are met. The only detraction is for those of us who like to have a program laid out for us as to which course and in which order they could taken, then these types of paths are not as amenable to this style of learning.
I like the more formalized degree path myself, not just because one is set to a specific time line for completion of the material as a whole but also to assignments and that they are graded. It puts pressure on me to get it done and not linger about. That does not work for everyone.
There is also the perspective as to which means more: series of classes taken at your own pace, a certificate based path, or a degree path. The answer depends on future plans. Why is one taking the course, what is one going to do with the newly acquired knowledge, does it make a difference in pay or responsibilities for ones job or a new job somewhere else....Also depends on how you learn most effectively as well.
If looking to change jobs (internally or externally), it looks like either a series of certificates based path or a degree based path is most likely to get you where you want to be. If looking to acquire knowledge to do a better job at what you do now, then a series of one off classes is probably cheapest and more flexible. If just for knowledge acquisition, then do what ever works best for your learning style and what fits your scheduled/budget.
SAS does provide a $5250/yr tuition re-imbursement for a degree earning path in the US, with conditions, but I think that amount is not quite sufficient anymore. Even local public state universities in the US can charge ~$900 a credit and most classes are 4 credits per quarter (so 3 to 4 classes a year, remote learning) for a Master's Degree that might take 3 years to complete (one course per term). That can be a lot to absorb over the time for the degree (like the cost of buying a new mid-tier car).
SAS does also provide reimbursement for short course/conferences if one wants to get further education in this type of path but that doesn't seem to include an online/in-person course.
And, as others have noted, if books are your go to for learning, then there is reimbursement for that as well (I am not a big book reader and that mechanism of learning is very painful for me for various reasons).
I hope that my experience helps others figure out their path and what is provided by JMP/SAS
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentAttending short-courses and professional conferences was very valuable to me early in my career, it gave me a broader perspective and exposed me to new ideas and methodologies. I don't get as much from professional conferences now, but I still like to take a short-course as part of a conference every year or so. I just took one on Causal Analysis and it was helpful for me to learn more about that area.
Some of the most valuable professional development training I have had focused on
- Interpersonal Communication, Negotiation, Conflict Resolution
- Influential Leadership: I took and then was later involved with teaching The Effective Statistician Leadership Program. It describes a leadership model that is based on being influential in an organization. While I am no longer involved with this, I think it is a good program, especially for those who work as data analysts, programmers, statisticians, data scientists, ...
- Public Communication & Presentation Skills
- Career and Personality Assessments
- I particularly like Gallup Clifton Strengths (If you want to see my Strengths assessment, let me know and I will share it with you)
- A personality and preference assessment is also nice. I like Insights Discovery . (If you want to see my Insights assessment, let me know and I wills share it with you)
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentHere are some of the resources I have found helpful (but also have been wondering if there are more or better resources):
Industry understanding: Product Management training, recorded Technically speaking webinars, one-on-one conversations with SE's, shadowing SE demos ad hoc (would love more in this category...maybe attend some industry-specific conferences?)
Statistical knowledge: SAS Education courses (live and hopefully soon recorded ones), YouTube (StatQuest is one of my favorites...and it's not just because of his fantastic singing), Mastering JMP webinars, Google, textbooks occasionally
Selling/Demo-ing: Pre-Sales Collective recordings, more recently BTS because of awareness from Nick Shelton, ad hoc shadowing of SE demos, The Great Demo book of course but I haven't reviewed it since onboarding, (would love to learn how other companies are innovating with virtual demos to make them more interactive and fun but not sure how to go about it)
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentGood point about the books Don. I will say that JMP/SAS/Management has always been VERY good about letting me buy any book that I need for my work!
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentOver my career, I've used a combination of self-directed study and in person/online classes.
For the self directed study, I pick a statistics textbook with an application based orientation and work my way through it with two general goals in mind: 1) understand the statistical theory and 2) duplicate as best possible the examples and exercises in JMP.
The structured classes I've taken have been mostly through the American Statistical Association during the Joint Statistical Meetings. Over the last few years they've expanded their online offerings. You can find a list of offerings here. The American Society for Quality has a similar resources, though I've never used them. While most people know about Coursera and Udemy, Statistics.com focuses exclusively on statistics and statistical programming classes.
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentOK, I've got something to contribute here.
A year ago I got interested in "People Analytics." I audited a class (for free) on Coursera, then decided I wanted something more rigorous. So I signed up for a People Analytics class through U Penn (Wharton Business School). The class cost something like $2000, and was excellent.
Unfortunately, I didn't read the SAS fine print on class fee reimbursements. In order for SAS to reimburse, the class needs to be part of a program that culminates in a degree. Since this was a "one-off" class, I wasn't reimbursed. That's OK, I still think it was a worthwhile class. Just wish we had some way to cover "continuing ed" class costs.
That's my story!
Re: Talk to Us About Your Professional DevelopmentAnd what do people feel about calling this "Grow with JMP"?
